Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

‘To Chamon, to the Realm of Metal! Go forth and bring destruction upon your foe! Seek out the Silverway so that we might rain terror upon the servants of the Dark Gods in every realm. Seek out the duardin so that we might march with vengeful allies!’ cried Sigmar, and his voice was the thunder to the storm conjured by his men. Lightning crackled from his fingertips, lifting his hair and burning in his eyes. Raw power skittered all over the room. The comet in the ceiling blazed and a cold wind lifted up the cloaks of the Stormhost. ‘To Chamon!’

A loud boom shook the vault. Magic flared bright and just as quickly died away. Then the vault was empty of men, leaving the god alone. He looked around and marvelled at his own works.

The quest for vengeance had begun.

In his bedchamber high in the central tower of the Eldritch Fortress, the sorcerer Ephryx, Ninth Disciple of the Ninth Tower, dreamt of war. He curled in on himself like an infant, a posture his body had never forgotten no matter how much change had been wreaked upon it. The antelope horns that crowned his head pressed into his silk pillows. His eyes twitched beneath thin eyelids veined green.

As Ephryx slept, his dream ceased to be a dream.

Ephryx was in another place. He stood upon a far-reaching and desolate plain. In the distance volcanoes vomited fire. To the south churned a poison sea. Close by, a city from the Age of Myth continued its long crumble into the dust, all save the very centre. There stood a monumental structure, a realmgate. Though caked in centuries of filth it was whole. Sleeping. Locked. The latent magic woven into its fabric sparkled in Ephryx’s witch-sight.

A squally wind blew up from nowhere, whipping dust into long sheets that reeked of sulphur, death and tar.

Aqshy. Something occurred in the Realm of Fire.

In his vision-sleep Ephryx beheld a mighty storm. The sky boiled. Black and purple clouds gathered themselves from nowhere, and mounted high into the heavens. The wind blew harder, scented now with coming rain, a fierce smell whose cleanliness burned in Ephryx’s nostrils.

Raindrops as large as sling bullets splattered into the earth, scattered forays from the cloud above. These first few rested momentarily upon the hard earth, coated in dust knocked free by their impacts, then were sucked away, consumed by the great thirst of the land. They appeared to Ephryx like soldiers, a feeble advance party, isolated and overwhelmed by their foe. He paid close attention to this detail. Many things of import had been revealed to him by less.

This vanguard of moisture was soon reinforced. As abruptly as if a bucket were upended, a torrent of rain poured from the sky. It ran down the dream-being of Ephryx, over thin, purple lips that were no longer entirely human, and collected in the corner of his mouth. Ephryx inadvertently tasted it upon his long tongue, and spat violently. The flavour of the rain was anathema to him; pure water, of a kind that existed virtually nowhere within the Mortal Realms any more.

Thunder rumbled. The clouds twisted about a vortex in the sky. The parched scent of the Realm of Fire was completely washed away, replaced with the nose-prickling aroma of rain on dry earth, and the tang of magic.

Lightning stabbed out at the top of the mighty gate three times. Another growl of thunder followed.

Ephryx threw his arm over his eyes as the sky exploded with light.

Lightning bolts came down as thick as trees in a forest, grounding themselves upon the cracked plain in searing battalions. Each blast left behind a glowing dome of energy, until these covered the plain. One by one they faded, exposing ranks of tall warriors clad in gold and wielding hammers. Each one was as mighty as a champion of Chaos, only these were no followers of the Four. They came to wage war upon this landscape of toxic soil and wicked flame.

The vision shimmered, Ephryx’s point of view shifted. Time stuttered and hopped, coming to rest some hours later. A great horde of the Blood God filled the horizon from end to end. They fell upon the storm warriors in outrage and flesh greed. The rulers of that place they might have been, but their charge was met by a wall of glittering gold and they died upon it. The storm-born warriors smote the followers of Khorne into the dust. A few of the glistening host fell, but not many, and those who did were snatched from battle by soaring pillars of energy that carried them back from whence they came.

Above the ruined city, winged warriors hurled hammers of blazing light at the closed realmgate. To this Ephryx paid especial interest. The frenzied fools of Khorne did not know the gate for what it was. They focused their unthinking attention upon the thin line of warriors barring the way, crazed by blood and battle. They allowed their foes to continue their bombardment, and so the bonds of the gate strained.

Another shift in time. Ephryx witnessed a great battle between a demigod mounted upon a draconian beast and a twisted creature goaded by a cruel lord. He watched them clash a moment, but did not see the outcome. A further change brought him news of a warrior-priest bearing a reliquary that was radiant with the magic of death. The priest manipulated these fell energies with skill, but he was weak in comparison to the mighty Ephryx. The Chaos sorcerer mocked him, but the priest could not hear his scorn.

The stuff of Chaos pushed its way into the realm. Daemons erupted from the bloody mire the ground had become. Battle went against the golden stormhost. Angels fell from the skies, but too late. A final lightning strike smashed into the gate. A peal of thunder announced the opening of the way. The realmgate’s coating of detritus flaked away to reveal figures of steel and ivory, and runes that burned with reawakened power. Reality snapped and quivered, then split open with a crash. A route long since closed gaped wide. Beyond the gate was a golden host. They poured forth with wrath in their hearts and fell upon the followers of the Blood God.

Now the sorcerer saw through the eyes of the Bloodsworn of Khorne, a member of a band called the Goretide. Korghos Khul was its master. Ephryx knew this and he knew the man’s last moment, the sight of a silver warhammer descending upon his head to obliterate all hate, all red thought, along with the tiny remnant of humanity that hid beneath sanguine rage.

Ephryx sat up in his bed with a gasp. Fine silks slid from his wiry body. His long-fingered hand went to his throat, then his head, probing for marks. Although he knew he could not possibly be harmed, the vision’s intensity was such he was half-convinced of his own death.

‘Sigmar!’ he whispered. ‘Sigmar has returned!’

Drums boomed outside, a ferocious martial beat.

Ephryx’s eyes widened.

Not drums, thunder.

The sorcerer rushed to the window of his chamber. All around his tower was his beloved Eldritch Fortress, his citadel and seat of his power that had been centuries in the making. His eyes were not for its walls and redoubts, though he often spent long hours admiring his craft, or for the city beyond, whose slide into ruin he enjoyed. He instead searched the blocky mountains. There! A stabbing finger of power blasted down from a heaven beyond that of Chamon. Clear, white lightning, unsullied by the magics of his master. Another crack and bang announced a second lightning strike, then a third. On the northern horizon clouds gathered as they had in his dream. But these first lightnings seared down from the clear, predawn sky.

He waited a moment, gripping the chill metal teeth framing the window. No further lightning blasts came. Thunder rumbled from the heavens. Dark clouds began to form out over the southern Vaulten range also, roiling like black ink poured into water. Storms advanced on the great valley of Anvrok from the north and south, framing the gigantic coils of the wyrm Argentine in the far western sky.