Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

Ephryx recalled the drops of rain, so few and easily absorbed. The torrent that followed would not be stemmed.

‘Invasion! Strife! War! They are coming here!’

Ephryx hissed in dismay. Why had he not foreseen this? Why had great Tzeentch not warned him?

‘So close to my triumph, so close!’

He suspected ill motives on the part of his master. He would have known.

Tzeentch not knowing was impossible. Impossible!

Well, he would not be outmanoeuvred, no! Ephryx gritted pointed teeth and muttered guttural words of power. He passed his hand before his face. A nimbus of magic played around his horns, and he was gone from the room.

Ephryx rematerialised in the summit of his tall tower. He came fully clothed, cleansed and scented. His limbs were clad in robes of deep blue worked with arcane sigils of gold. His horns were painted in lacquer that shifted hue with his every movement. In his left hand he carried an onyx staff topped with an icon of brass. His right unconsciously twitched out magic. And so Ephryx came to his scrying chamber, a vast, lopsided room set into the eye of Tzeentch that crowned his fortress. There was but one window, the pupil of the eye set with amethyst that afforded views towards every point of the compass and wherever Ephryx willed. From that height his beautiful castle appeared small, laid out like a model artfully made in many metals. Ephryx could see every one of the eight points of the castle’s walls and the gate there. Little more than building blocks joined by thick lines from his vantage, made of steel and copper, gold and brass. They throbbed with sorcerous energy. Fields invisible to the mortal eye rolled and twisted in multiple colours around the fort, sent into fractal eddies by the thing hidden at the base of the tower, the great artefact he had constructed his domain around.

Ephryx watched the gentler play of the ether over the still, dark valley. There the Silver River glowed softly orange with inner heat in the last dark of the night. Along its dim shores, the shadows danced with the light of Argentine’s fire. The metal magic rising from the river twisted as it encountered an opposing force a hundred feet above the molten stream. Something perturbed the currents of energy; he had to hurry.

A platinum pedestal occupied the centre of the room, baroquely cast. Imps and cockatrices wrestled all over it, their writhings perpetually arrested, their moist eyes tracking the sorcerer around the room. Upon the pedestal was a bowl filled with liquid gold, and it was to this that Ephryx went.

The skies were light with the coming sun, but dawn had not yet broken. He looked towards the end of the vale and into the void to the east. Already the first rays shone from beneath the floating land. The great crucible high in the eastern sky was bathed in its light already, and shone like a second sun. The Argent Falls gleamed bright. The scales of Argentine sparked with orange notes, and the light of his fires were robbed of their brilliance.

Tainted light glanced off the thousands of copper skulls that covered the fortress and lit the grim, bladed facets of the eight great towers and gates. Shadows fell long upon the fortress, shortening as the sick star rose swiftly over the walls. Copper and adamant sparkled. Warmth chased off night’s chill. Then the sun shone through the lone window set in the lowermost portion of the tower. By crystals grown from madness, the light was redirected again into the keep entombed within the tower, then to a cairn hidden within the keep. Through one small gap left in a wall of lead blocks, a single ray of light was allowed to pierce and fall upon the artefact.

The effect was instant and potent.

The tower shuddered. A boiling sphere of magic burst from the stolen prize. The copper skulls drank deeply of the power, their hollow sockets glowing eerily. Ephryx waited in his tower for the bubble to pass through his scrying chamber. The magic arrived from below, passing first over his toes, then up his legs and into his trunk, invigorating his Chaos-twisted flesh and setting his blood racing. The gold in his scrying bowl bubbled, and Ephryx bent eagerly over it. The images presented at the moment of dawn were the clearest, the most truthful.

He was not the only one waiting for the rising sun. In answer to its appearance, light flashed in the sky. Dozens of lightning strikes, thicker than the others, came not from the clouds but through them, stabbing downward from a place that was not of this realm. They emanated from somewhere beyond the Celestial Swirl, that galaxy of lights and stars that turned high in the northern sky. The lightning was white, but Ephryx’s witch-sight showed him pulses of azure that accompanied each strike and sent the currents of Chamon into disarray.

The first bolt split the peak of a mountain to the north-east. Many more pounded into the valley at various points to the north of the Silver River. The first left behind an imposing figure in smooth armour surrounded by a small bodyguard of warriors upon the mountain peak. These surveyed the lands revealed to them, then spread broad wings of blazing energy and took to the heavens. The sky blackened above them, and they flew up into a downfall of rain. The other bolts struck domes of force from the ground, all around the dormant Bright Tor Gate.

As in Ephryx’s dream, the domes faded to nothing, revealing small armies, although these warriors wore armour of deep turquoise, not the gold of the warriors he had perceived in Aqshy. Then the image in the bowl wavered, and Ephryx drew back from the gold, the play of it illuminating the surprise on his face. His expression hardened. With pinched fingers he clicked out a brief rhythm with his nails upon the platinum of the bowl’s stand. He called upon the power of Tzeentch, steadying the image. None could best the arcane power of Ephryx. He willed the minds of these interlopers to open to him; their secrets would be his, their plans laid bare.

He permitted himself a small smile.

The minds of the strangers remained closed. Their images wavered harder.

The sorcerer’s smile evaporated quicker than a soul in a spirit forge. Ephryx looked out of the windows with a scowl. The dawn was passing over the fortress and the ruined city it squatted in. Its light now struck off the Vaulten Mountains, dancing from peak to peak of the Bright Tors, lighting the underside of the storm clouds beneath both. Then it slid down rocky bluffs and steep banks into the great valley of Anvrok to light the Silver River, overpowering the dull glow given off by the hot silver.

‘No, no! Show me their thoughts, their purpose!’ Ephryx made swift gestures over the liquid gold. The surface rippled, breaking the pictures into circular nonsenses. The bowl lost its focus, skipping from one party of the turquoise storm warriors to the next. ‘No, no, no, no! Show me, show me! I demand it! By the thousand thousand names of Tzeentch, be revealed!’

The sun ceased shining into the vault of the fortress. Day broke fully across the Hanging Valleys of Anvrok. The sphere of magic collapsed. The skulls that studded the walls of the fortress sighed, and the light in their eyes died.

‘No!’ Ephryx set his will upon the bowl. Every corner of the land, every nook and crevice, every tumbled cottage and fearful tribe scratching an existence from the rock — all was his to see when he chose. But when he turned his eye upon the storm warriors, he saw nothing.

Ephryx hissed like a cat and slapped his hand upon the pedestal. The gold stirred fitfully. He glared at it until his eyes watered.

A draught of spiced air stirred the wizard’s robes. A chuckle emanating from two throats broke the quiet of his sanctum.

His master had arrived.

Ephryx screwed his eyes shut. He muttered a prayer to Tzeentch and smoothed out his features. Composed, he turned to face the source of his power and of his pain.