Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

‘Damnation and horror are yours to endure for eternity,’ he whispered calmly to the shade of Jactos Goldenmane as it bled away into the Realm of Chaos.

Khul then stood, turning as he hefted his axe on to his shoulder, and began to climb the Red Pyramid. He clenched an immortal skull in his fist. It was the last skull he needed for his ascension.

By the time the Hammerhands reached Neros, the Goldenmanes were reeling and would have been destroyed were it not for the other chamber’s arrival. Hordes of khorgoraths surrounded them, tearing off heads as a veritable lightning storm raged above the battle with the discorporating bodies of the Stormcast Eternals.

Bellowing to Sigmar and Azyr, Vandus charged into the frenzied ranks of the beasts on the back of Calanax. His Warrior Chamber was hard on his heels, led by a spearhead of Liberators wielding twin blades and hammers. In their wake came the shield-bearers, acting as a protective vanguard for Malactus’s Judicators.

The storm deepened as the skybolts took flight, arcing down in crackling volleys. Chained lightning wreaked havoc as shock bolts were unleashed. Boltstorm crossbowmen took to the flanks, killing khorgorath with intense, destructive fusillades. A booming rumble amidst the tumult presaged the unleashing of a thunderbolt crossbow as one of the Chaos monstrosities was blasted apart with a single deadly quarrel.

With the khorgoraths’ ranks so depleted, the Liberators fell upon them with disciplined fury and cut them down.

It was nothing compared to the fury of the Lord-Celestant.

Vandus reaped a brutal tally with Heldensen. By his hand, khorgoraths died by the score. His mount was also deadly, and together they hewed a red path to Neros.

‘Your arrival is timely, Lord Hammerhand,’ said the venerable Lord-Castellant, ‘but I fear you are too late.’

From his vantage in the dracoth’s saddle, Vandus saw over the thronging Bloodbound to where a single gold-armoured body lay headless in the dirt.

‘And we are still beleaguered,’ said Neros.

‘Not for long,’ Vandus replied grimly, gesturing to the south where a golden phalanx of warriors had already entered the fray and was advancing fast.

An Exemplar Chamber, led by a Lord-Relictor.

‘Ionus Cryptborn has arrived.’

Ionus smashed through the unruly ranks of the Bloodbound, his skull-mask spattered with gore. Bloodreavers and blood warriors died swiftly and painfully to his hammer blows as he led one phalanx of Retributors into the fray.

Noble Theodrus led the second phalanx, each cohort of paladins arranged on either flank of the battlefield. Two hammers of unrelenting, righteous might swept into the mortal worshippers of Khorne and destroyed them as the Stormcasts met in the middle.

Prosecutors flocked overhead, under the keen command of Kyrus. Ionus called to him as he flew by.

‘Thin the herd,’ Ionus told him. ‘Forge me a path to Lord Vandus.’

Nodding curtly, Kyrus went about his mission. He swiftly mustered his warriors into a thin lance and drove them ruthlessly down into the heart of the Chaos army.

Ionus clapped Theodrus on the shoulder, who was busy crushing the last few remnants of the horde they had just vanquished. ‘There, Theodrus…’ Ionus pointed to the bloody havoc being wreaked by the Prosecutors, ‘…our path to the others.’

About to lead the Retributors out, Ionus stopped short as crippling pain seized him. He clenched his shoulder beneath the pauldron, and felt the chill of the grave fall upon him like a deadly mantle.

‘Lord-Relictor!’

Ionus felt Theodrus’s hand supporting him, but the Retributor’s words were lost to him as another voice took hold.

A tithe is owed. A tithe shall be given.

A soul for a soul.

‘There… is… nothing for you…’ spat Ionus, gritting his teeth. The strength of Sigmar filled him, warming his frozen bones and restoring the vitality his old foe had sought to take from him. ‘I defy you,’ he declared. ‘I defy you!’

The chill faded, and the dread presence that had enveloped Ionus dissipated. A fell reminder was left in its wake.

I shall remember this. His soul or yours, Eonid. The tithe will be paid. It will be paid…

‘Aye, but not this day.’

Theodrus heard everything, and leaned in close to his Lord-Relictor as he helped him stand straight.

‘What plagues you, my lord?’

‘An old menace, brother. One I believed gone. Pay it no mind,’ said Ionus, seeing the Chaos hordes amassing again. ‘And reunite us with Vandus. Be quick, as the lightning from which you were wrought.’

Theodrus obeyed. With the Retributor-Prime at the fore, the paladins rushed into the furrow being cut by the Prosecutors. None would stay their wrath.

At last, they were closing but the distance to the Gate of Wrath was swarming with the followers of Chaos both mortal and daemon alike. Just beyond the gate itself was the Red Pyramid, as forbidding as any monolith Vandus had seen in these benighted lands.

The light was fading as the sun began to dip. He hoped it did not bode ill. It mattered little now. They would succeed here, now, or they would perish. There was no retreat, not for any of them.

Spurring Calanax, Vandus charged into the warbands that Khul had allied against them. He struck down a red-skinned daemon that had leapt to tear out his throat. Another bloodletter disappeared beneath Calanax’s claws. A third was ripped in half by the dracoth’s jaws.

Vandus whirled Heldensen around his head in a punishing arc. In the hands of the Lord-Celestant, it was a twin-tailed comet smiting everything that dared to step into its path. As gouts of lightning spewed from Calanax’s mouth and Heldensen slew without cessation, Vandus began to feel invincible.

Ever since his vision, the one where Khul had placed his head upon the pyre of skulls, Vandus had felt a power growing within him. Destiny had brought him to this place, to this moment. It was a fate determined not just by gods, but by his own indomitable will and sense of purpose. It stretched back through time, to before all of this, to before the Direbrand tribe and the dreaded age of Chaos. It went further and further, a legacy that began before time itself.

Vandus knew not how this was possible, or even what it meant, but he was certain it would be he who ended Khul’s reign. At last, he realised why Sigmar had chosen him, why he had been the vanguard.

This knowledge filled him with glorious purpose.

‘We are the storm!’ he roared, Heldensen held aloft and crackling with power. ‘Bringers of retribution and light. Reforged by Sigmar to reclaim these lands in his name and restore order. I am the lightning!’

The Hammerhands roared in answer. ‘Azyr!’

But the road to the Gate of Wrath was long and choked with the lost and the damned, an unholy Chaos warhorde without end.

‘Righteousness versus damnation,’ Vandus murmured to himself, his gaze alighting on the grim archway that led to Khorne’s own realm. ‘One must break before the end.’

Vandus had not seen the danger. So intent was the Lord-Celestant on reaching the Gate of Wrath that he had become oblivious to the true threat in their midst. But Ionus saw it, and he knew what it portended.

As he began to marshal his powers, he cried out and let the magic of the celestial carry the strength of his voice like a thunderhead.

‘Lord Vandus!’ he cried, his deathly voice echoing across the battlefield so that all in gold turned to heed him. Ionus gestured with his hammer. ‘Atop the pyramid!’

The beast’s skull exploded against Heldensen’s might, and as its lumbering body fell Vandus looked up to see the Red Pyramid. Close now, it throbbed like an angry wound and stirred feelings of wrath in the Lord-Celestant. Between it and the Gate of Wrath, he felt the unholy presence of Khorne.