Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

Redbeak leapt after him, but the sorcerer waved a hand at the gryph-hound, sending it spinning aside.

‘Judicators, bring down the curse caster!’ roared Eldroc.

The disc bobbed in the air, rotating at stately speed until the sorcerer approached, whereupon it stopped and sank low to the ground. With a single bound, the sorcerer jumped upon it. The disc’s revolutions restarted and quickened as it rose up, bearing the sorcerer over the heads of the combatants. A hail of stormbolts came at the sorcerer. None hit their target. A fresh wall of blue fire erupted around the disc, and the bolts clashed off it harmlessly. Shrinking rapidly in on itself, the ball of fire darted up and away, heading off over the duardin ruins and then to the south.

Eldroc noted its direction, but could spare little time in consideration of pursuit. The damned warriors, seeing their master gone, were fighting all the harder, and Thostos’s flank was being pushed back before their fury.

‘Slay them! Slay them all!’ called Eldroc. He and his men laid low the remainder of the wizard’s bodyguard, then turned to the mountain path entrance to fall upon the rear of the Chaos warriors fighting there.

Minutes later it was all over. Stormcast Eternals stood, hammers suddenly heavy in their hands, chests heaving. The broken bodies of Chaos slaves lay on the sand and rock of the platform floor. The statues of the duardin on either side of the arch looked on impassively. Eldroc let the haft of his halberd thump to the floor as Thostos came to join him.

‘Finally,’ he said. ‘Vengeance begins.’

‘And it is a beginning only. Did you see the way the sorcerer fled?’

‘To the south.’

‘Aye,’ said Thostos, and there was grim pleasure in his voice. ‘Towards the ruined city of Elixia. Towards the great fortress.’

Once the battle at the platform was done, the wounded ministered to and the tally of those returned to Sigmaron calculated, Thostos elected to take fully two-thirds of the Bladestorms off the mountain by the stairs in pursuit of the horned sorcerer, leaving Eldroc to his duty as guardian of the Silverway.

As they descended, it became apparent that the ruins were even more expansive than they had originally thought. They marvelled that such a site could have been hidden from view for so long, for the tumbled buildings stretched down to the lowlands and there were many shafts and hewn caves visible in the rock of the mountain besides.

They left the ruins of the duardin behind and headed south, following the directions of Prosecutor scouts towards the other city and the fortress that filled its centre.

By the end of evening they had reached the edge of the Glimmerlands. Thostos ordered a halt, and his men set up camp within a ruin upon a low hill. Once a palace, its walls were cast down and towers broken, so that no portion stood taller than a man.

Thostos watched strange night fall over Anvrok for the fifth time. The sun went into the rippling fires of the great wyrm Argentine. A long shadow fell on the valley as the wyrm obscured the light, only for the sun to return a quarter of an hour later an exhausted red. The sun had fought its daily battle with the wyrm’s jaws and it had lost, as it did every day.

Argentine’s coils filled the western sky. Through the day its vast bulk was pale as the daytime moon, but night lent it solidity and it became ominous. Towards the lands of the deepest east, a haze of metallic dust tinted the air the colour of brass, purple beyond where night marshalled itself in the void, ready to march on Anvrok. From the west, a new light came to conquer the sun’s dominion. In the valley of Anvrok, the land danced already to the endless writhing of Argentine’s fire. Shadows leaped around rocks frantically, as if seeking to avoid being seen. The Silver River lost its sheen and glowed, the intense heat it harboured revealed by the gloaming. And so the battlefield was set, dark night against the Chaos-tinged fire of the wyrm.

Liberator-Prime Perun came to stand beside his lord. He rocked a loose stone in the wall. The mortar was dry dust and frittered away to nothing on the hot breeze. He grunted, hollow behind his helm, and reseated the stone. ‘Better than nothing, I suppose,’ he said.

Thostos made no indication he had heard. He did not take his eyes from the great wyrm. ‘I grew to manhood in Amcarsh, before the God-King took me to his side and made me anew. In that realm were creatures as tall as towers, and fiercer than the storm. Only in a few places fenced in by sea or mountain could we make our homes, so mighty were they. But I look at that wyrm in astonishment. I have never seen anything like it.’

Perun nodded. ‘It defies belief, Lord-Celestant. I see that and the crucible it warms. But I cannot credit it a rightwise part of this realm. It seems more a whim of Chaos than a thing of Order.’

‘But it is a thing of Order, or was.’ Thostos turned away from the dancing fires of the creature and looked Perun in the eyes. ‘I am told that it was a celestial dragon, a creature as noble as our dracoths, but turned to fell purpose by the great changer. It gives me hope.’

‘How so?’ Perun removed his helmet and shook out a mane of dreadlocks. His skin was dark brown, eyes a piercing green. A native of some desert land, overthrown like all the others.

‘Because if Lord Sigmar believes that we are mighty enough to challenge the likes of that serpent, perhaps rid it of its taint, then truly we can accomplish anything. We shall be victorious, Perun.’

At night the land changed. The mark of Chaos upon the Hanging Valleys became more evident. The Alchemist’s Moon clambered high up the ladders of heaven, its louring face crisscrossed with strange patterns. Weird fires sprang up from nowhere, pillars of multicoloured flame that twisted their way across the slopes with sinister purpose. Perhaps they sought to taunt the Bladestorms, but the Stormcasts of Sigmar paid these sprites no attention. They did not run from their camp nor loose shots, but watched carefully, hands close to their weapons. Odd noises sounded out in the dark, and the bleating calls of beast-folk echoed from the crags. But the creatures were craven, and none dared approach the camp of such mighty warriors.

The Celestial Vindicators were therefore disappointed until the following day, when they encountered their next resistance.

With a cry of pure fury, Thostos swept aside the Chaos knight’s sword with his runeblade and slammed his hammer into the warrior’s chest. Armour cracked under the weapon’s heavy head, pulverising the flesh underneath. Blood spurted from the rents in the metal. The knight slumped sideways drunkenly, and Thostos finished him with a blow to the chest that stove in his ribs. He whirled his sword around his head, reversing the point and driving it through the steel hide of the strange beast the knight rode. Despite its bizarre appearance, it had a heart, for it collapsed and died. ‘Sigmar!’ called Thostos, holding his hammer aloft. ‘Vengeance!’

All around him his men were slaughtering the Chaos warband. The Chaos warriors had approached confidently, almost eagerly, seeing the Stormcasts as worthy foes. Little did they realise how outmatched they were.

The clash of arms and shouts lessened, until all the warriors lay dead.

‘We have finished them, my lord. Victory!’ called Perun.

‘Victory! Victory!’ chanted the Bladestorms.

Thostos looked down at the man he had killed. The knight had been huge, granted great strength and size by his patron. The fashioning of his armour would have bankrupted a good-sized kingdom of the old realms, being set with precious stones and rare metals. Thostos cleaned his weapons with a thought, the magic of them boiling off the blood from hammerhead and sword edge. He sheathed his runeblade and bent down, reaching for the knight’s helmet with his free hand.