Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

‘I do wonder why we have been given this task,’ said Eldroc. ‘We, the sons of vengeance, grubbing about in the dirt looking for folk that do not wish to be found. One would think a Stormhost with a less belligerent character might be better suited. I worry the God-King does not trust us.’

‘You question Sigmar already, Lord-Castellant?’ asked Perun.

‘Forgive my impatience.’

‘I feel it too. I will explain how I see his strategy,’ said Thostos, ‘The duardin respect might at arms as much as they do craft. They bear a grudge a long time, and will not let it lie until they feel they have been fairly recompensed. So who better to approach them than those who place revenge upon the Four Powers above all other things?’

Eldroc made a noise of agreement.

‘We are all untried in battle, we Stormcasts,’ continued Thostos. ‘If I were Sigmar, I might send my more restrained warriors in first so I might better judge their virtues. And I might hold back my most ferocious for a time when they were truly needed. Patience, brothers. We have waited for centuries for battle. What does a handful more hours matter? We will all get to blood our hammers soon enough. An eternity of war awaits us. It may come to pass that we yearn for peace before long.’

‘Never,’ said Perun firmly. ‘I will never yearn for peace again, not until Khorne himself is cast from his iron throne and his collection of skulls smashed to bone meal.’

‘Aye to that,’ said Eldroc.

The stairs opened to a level place, floored with sand. A cave, were it not for the gap high above that showed the brazen sky. But the way seemed to end in a cul-de-sac. A wall of rock greeted Thostos.

‘This is it?’

‘Yes, Lord-Celestant. Another trick for the eyes. Follow me.’

Eldroc approached the rear of the cave, his turquoise armour flashing as he stepped through a slash of sunlight. It appeared he had vanished. Thostos and Perun stopped in amazement until Eldroc’s arm appeared again and beckoned them. What looked like one sheet of stone was two overlapped with a passage between.

‘Another marvel made with simple stone,’ said Perun.

They followed Eldroc. Another chasm awaited. The convoluted sides matched one another, so it seemed like the stone had parted like a pair of lips. A sandy path wended its way along the bottom, finally opening out in a large, bell-shaped chamber. Forty Stormcasts guarded the way in. They clashed their hammers on their armour as their officers approached.

‘Let’s see it then,’ said Thostos.

Eldroc pointed to the left. Set into the back wall of the chamber, right into the side of the mountain, was a great portal. Thostos walked to the centre of the chamber so that he might see it more fully. The sun was at exactly the right angle to shine through the small light in the roof of the chamber and play across the huge carvings surrounding it.

The gate was monumental in size, three hundred feet high and one hundred across. Two enormous duardin herms made up the bottom half of each side of the frame. Their heads and backs were bowed with carved effort, long stone beards brushing the sand along the cliff face’s foot. They were guarded by friezes of lesser carvings, a row of figures who scowled out at the Stormcasts and pointed with accusing hands. Tall, geometrically patterned pillars carried upon the upturned hands of the herms made up the remainder of the height, and bore the weight of a long lintel artfully fashioned from a single massive piece of stone. An outer band deeply carved with repeating geometric designs made the outer edge. In the flat space of the middle of the frame ran an unbroken run of six-foot-tall runes bordered by perfectly chiselled flora and fauna, thinner against the geometric band and thick around the gaping mouth of the gateway. Thostos had seen none of the things depicted there in the Chaos-tainted wasteland of Anvrok; the world the carvings showed was long gone.

The mountain here was black rock shot through with glittering seams of galena, but the arch was a creamy colour, a different kind of stone. Thostos could see no join to mark the transition between the two sorts — it was as if they had been welded together. Perhaps it had been. The duardin had skills none could match. The gate runes glowed feebly in the sun of Chamon, lambent with quiet magic that hinted at past power.

Thostos removed his helmet. Underneath was a face framed by blond hair and a beard, square jawed and heavily featured beyond the norms of mortal men. His eyes alone seemed completely human, and only they had remained unchanged during his remaking. They were the same eyes that had once beheld Amcarsh in its dying days. But neither his eyes nor the sweat and dirt streaking his skin could hide the god-gifted power crackling within him.

‘The fabled Silverway of the duardin,’ Thostos pronounced. With his mask removed, his voice was warm and rich. ‘How disappointingly easy to find.’

A few of the men chuckled, pride and frustration both in the sound.

‘There was no resistance at all? It was just here, waiting for you in the mountainside?’

‘Retributor Eustos found it,’ said Eldroc. He held up a hand to indicate a warrior who bowed his head in recognition.

‘A blackbird alighted upon a mountain stone,’ said Eustos. ‘I had seen no other life in this place, and so it drew my eyes. When I looked at the bird, the stair was plain to see, though I would swear to Sigmar himself that there was nothing there before.’

‘Plain for you to see.’ Thostos took in the clean lines of the carving, unsoftened by time and unmarked by violence. ‘There is no taste of Chaos here at all. Even if the damned had not found it, I would have expected this place to be the lair of a beast. But there is no sign, past or present. It is as if it has been hidden for centuries. It is almost as if we were meant to find it.’

‘That is what Lord-Relictor Cryden suggests, in fact, my lord. That the duardin hid this place from the enemies of their god Grungni…’ began Eldroc.

‘But not from his allies,’ concluded Thostos. His sigmarite armour rattled quietly as he walked the length of the gate and back.

‘There is more, Lord-Celestant.’ Eldroc nodded to the men guarding the gate. One went to the far side of the chamber. It was so wide it took him a minute to run the distance. Once there he raised his hammer and tapped at the stone.

‘Are we to become miners, Eldroc?’ asked Thostos.

‘Watch,’ said Eldroc. He signalled the men by the gate. They placed their hands into the mouth cavities of two of the smaller figures in the frieze.

The ground rumbled. A low hum followed. The runes upon the gate burned brightly blue.

The rock chamber flickered. One moment the Stormcasts were within a giant cavern, the next they stood upon a platform set into the open mountainside. All around them were stout ruins. Where the far chamber wall had been, a wide road led down from the Silverway, passing over several landings and sweeping flights of stairs as it descended. Then the bare rocky slopes many hundreds of yards in all directions wavered and vanished. In their stead a duardin town followed the road down the mountain. To the left and right, a vista covering all the vale of Anvrok was open to the Stormcast Eternals. Warm sun basked Thostos’s face. The only element that remained unchanged was the hidden path by which he had come to the Silverway. It still came out of the stone by the gate, its entrance dark in the sun.

‘Now that is impressive,’ Thostos said, sweeping his gaze over the view. ‘Such art! I have never heard of an illusion so great in scope to hide a whole city, excepting Sigmar’s cloak about Azyr.’

‘The city is desolate, abandoned like all the rest,’ said Perun. ‘Disappointingly so.’