Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

‘Then it is for the good that our interests diverge,’ snapped Ephryx, ‘or we should forever be at each other’s throats.’

Maerac laughed. With his teeth he tore the flesh from the bird leg, exposing a bone made of a light, silvery metal. He leaned out of the window and tossed it upwards. There was a loud snap as something on the roof caught it. ‘Very good, Ephryx. But I cannot help but feel that you are hiding something from me.’

Ephryx affected to look guilty. ‘Nonsense.’

‘Go on, tell me. Let us while away the time until these warriors come to fight. Amuse me with your convoluted schemes.’

‘There is no scheme.’

Maerac slapped Ephryx on the back. ‘There is always a scheme, sorcerer.’

‘Oh, very well! For long years I have sought to perfect the defences of this fortress.’

Maerac smirked. ‘I know that.’

‘To which end I have transmuted the many skulls you have provided me into copper.’

‘I know this too. Did you think I was unaware what you did with them? You really do have a low opinion of me.’

‘You are better informed than you suggest!’ said Ephryx. ‘Into these skulls, a measure of the power of the sun and the ether are funnelled at daybreak.’

‘And all this I know too,’ said Maerac smugly. ‘And I know of the thing you keep below, this artefact of Order you parasite upon and pretend is not there. I know of the slave army you gathered to build this place, the ogors you blinded who fashioned a cairn of lead around the item. Why would you need to do that?’ he asked with mock thoughtfulness.

‘But you do not know what it is,’ said Ephryx. It was his turn to be superior.

‘I do not, I admit. None who have seen it kept their sight or sanity, and most have been dead for hundreds of years. However,’ he looked out at the warriors marshalling in the vale, ‘I can hazard a guess. I may be a dullard compared to you, Ephryx, or so you seem to so fondly think, but I am possessed of a modicum of wit.’

‘Well then!’ snarled the sorcerer. ‘Then you will know also that once this energy reaches a critical mass, this fortress will never fall.’

‘That I did not know either, but have long suspected,’ said Maerac. He popped a mewling blood grape into his mouth, and bit down with relish. ‘It is only because you show no interest in expanding your holdings that I allow you to pursue this aim, you realise.’

Oh, he is so satisfied with himself, thought Ephryx. I will see him choke upon his own tongue! Maerac was ignorant of the skulls’ true purpose. If he was aware of Ephryx’s plan to annex Chamon to the Realm of Chaos and gift the entire realm to Tzeentch, then Maerac would certainly not be here. As devoted to Tzeentch as Maerac insisted he was, he had little desire to take up residence in Tzeentch’s crystal labyrinth personally.

Ephryx’s agile mind considered that Maerac might in fact be bluffing, and that he knew what the artefact was. If that were so, the chances were high that Maerac had come here to assassinate him at his moment of triumph. Ephryx discounted the notion just as quickly as it had formed and revealed none of this through word or gesture or mien. He spoke conspiratorially instead, as if he were sharing his deepest secrets with the Lord of Manticorea.

‘These beings are all of magic. I could taste it when I fought them myself at the Silverway gate. I have seen them die, their bodies streaking away to wherever they came from when they fall. That I can exploit. We shall slaughter them, and I shall capture their essences in my vessels of copper. The Eldritch Fortress will become charged with their magic until no creature of any plane will be able to breach my defences, thus keeping all our lands safe, Lord Maerac. If I am successful, the gods themselves would not be able to cast down this castle.’

Maerac’s eyes narrowed. He shook a six-fingered fist at the sorcerer. ‘You are wrong there, Ephryx.’

Ephryx’s heart skipped a beat. Could it be now that this prince of dullards would cast aside his mask of idiocy and strike him down? Ephryx brought a spell to the forefront of his mind, ready to turn the lord’s brain to lead.

‘Really, my Lord Maerac. How so?’

‘It will be I that does the slaughtering while you cower in your keep. I will not allow you to forget that.’ Maerac stepped up to the edge of the balcony and climbed upon the balustrade. He balanced there a moment. ‘Remember, sorcerer, when you perfect your fortress of flesh, stone and steel, that you are able to only because I, Lord Maerac of Manticorea, permit it!’

Maerac leapt from the balustrade, his clothes snapping in the wind. A piercing shriek rippled the gold in Ephryx’s scrying bowl. A huge manticore leapt after its master with a crack of leathery wings. A moment later it laboured upwards with Maerac in the saddle.

‘A modicum of wit you say? Evidently not,’ whispered Ephryx nastily.

Clouds scudded across the sun, the forerunners of a storm. Ephryx shivered. War was coming to the Eldritch Fortress.

He went to prepare his magics.

Elixia was before them, a labyrinth of dereliction, the Eldritch Fortress lurking in the centre. Eight tall towers were linked by a wall bristling with spikes and set with thousands of coppery skulls. From the centre rose an enormous keep, the top twisted into the blasphemous emblem of Tzeentch — a great eye, gleaming purple, set into blued steel and surrounded by curving tendrils of metal.

The Bladestorms came south along a road that led out of the Glimmerlands. Outlying districts of Elixia lay in ruination either side. The remains of fortifications edged the bluff, the majority of which Elixia occupied, but the extent of settlement outside the walls suggested to Thostos that Elixia had enjoyed a long period of peace before it fell.

The Bladestorms marched alone, the majority of the Fireblades and the Harbingers of Vengeance. They approached up the main highway from the west, their Lord-Celestants Cumulos and Harekuthos leading them. Further Warrior Chambers came from deeper within Anvrok, but would be a while in arriving. Thostos hoped he had enough men.

The Stormcast Eternals passed through the devastated gates of Elixia. The towers had wilted, the metal sagging from the effects of some great heat. Slicks of solidified metal still puddled the floor under coatings of dirt. The highway past the gates was increasingly choked with debris. The destruction was random. Entire buildings stood untouched next to piles of scrap creaking in the wind. Everywhere the transmuting effects of Tzeentch’s magic could be seen.

They passed a street where every building had been upended and set upon its roof, then another where the buildings had been miniaturised, and sat in the centre of a field of glass under whose clouded surface strange shapes swam. One street had been peeled up from its foundations, the materials fashioned into hideous and giant figures whose static postures silently changed when unobserved. There was a square full of statues of salt, whose lumpen nature could not hide the fact that they were citizens of the city transformed as they fled. Immobile faces screamed from walls. A fountain ran incongruously in a dry plaza, spurting out a mixture of quicksilver and blood. Hysterical voices sounded from empty halls.

The Stormcasts ignored it all. They had been made to fight Chaos, and Chaos held no fear for them. They spoke little as they entered the city, and were entirely silent as they penetrated deep within and approached the dread fortress. Their hands gripped weapons tightly, eager for vengeance. Wordlessly they reached the inner boulevard of the city and split, Thostos heading straight forward, the other Lord-Celestants heading right and left. The rumble of their footsteps was the only sound they made.