Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

The verminlord hunched over and spread its long arms.

‘Aye, I’ve faced one of your kind before,’ Zephacleas growled. He brought his weapons together with a crash. The lightning flared in response, coiling about the blade of his sword and the head of his hammer as he wrenched them apart. ‘It fled, rather than fight me… what about you, beast? Fight or flight?’

The verminlord shrieked and sprang towards him, curved blades sweeping out. Zephacleas jerked back, avoiding the first of them. The second connected with his sword in a spray of sparks. The force of the blow knocked him back a step. The daemon landed two more strikes before he could drive it back with his hammer. Faster than me, for all that it’s bigger, he thought, following it.

But he’d fought bigger, faster things since before he’d been chosen to wage Sigmar’s war. It had been a way of life in the Ghurlands. There was always something bigger and faster and hungrier on the other side of your tribe’s palisade. There was always something that wanted to make a meal of you. The trick was in making it regret the attempt.

‘Did Mantius give you that?’ he asked, gesturing at the verminlord’s fire-scarred skull. ‘Did the Far-killer get in a bite, before you killed him?’

Heat flared in the daemon’s remaining eye and it gave a shriek of anger. It lunged for him again and he managed to side-step the blow. As it charged past, he caught it in the midsection with his hammer. The blow knocked it off of its hooves. It tumbled to the ground, but almost immediately rolled upright, steam rising from the point where he’d hit it.

He glanced back as something else entered the chamber through the great doors. The Dreaming Seer, on his palanquin, watched through half-closed eyes as he and the verminlord circled one another. He expected the slann to banish the daemon with but a gesture, but the creature did nothing. ‘Well?’ he growled. ‘What are you waiting for?’

The end.

The voice rang dully and deeply within him, and he shook his head to clear it.

He heard the daemon laugh. ‘It has not come to help-aid you, storm-thing,’ the verminlord hissed, darting glances at the waiting slann. ‘It comes only to watch.’

The daemon circled him, scraping its dripping blades together menacingly. ‘They only ever watch… they watched as we ate them, in the world-that-was, and they shall watch as we take our rightful place in this one. And it shall watch as you die.’

Its sickle-like blades whipped about, faster than his eyes could follow. First his runeblade, then his hammer, were torn from his grip. Before it could capitalise, he drove his head into its skull, causing it to stagger back. He lunged forward with a bellow and wrapped his arms around its midsection, lifting it off its hooves.

Its blades carved gouges in his war-plate as his charge carried it backwards into the statue of Sigmar. Stone legs cracked and the daemon squealed. It drove its elbows down on his shoulders, trying to break his hold. He ignored the blows and tightened his grip. Steam rose from the daemon’s maggoty flesh as the blessed sigmarite contracted about it. Its struggles grew more frantic and it hacked wildly at him, shearing slivers from his armour. Its knee caught him in the chest, and with a sudden, convulsive heave it broke his hold and flung him backwards.

The daemon was on him before he hit the ground. He caught the downward sweep of its blades on his bracer and knocked them from the creature’s grip. Before it could recover, he caught it by the throat. It grabbed hold of his head and slammed him back, rattling him. He drove his fist into its skull until the yellowing bone cracked.

The daemon rolled away from him, the lightning playing about its monstrous form. Zephacleas gave it no chance to recover, no chance to flee. He scrambled to his feet and hurled himself upon its back. He caught one of its remaining horns with one hand and snaked his arm around its shaggy throat. With a roar, he snapped its horn loose and drove the length of splintered bone into its good eye.

The daemon flung him off with a wail. He crashed into the statue of Sigmar. Stone cracked and split. Zephacleas rolled aside as the statue broke at the knees and fell. Ghal Maraz crashed down on the verminlord’s skull, silencing the daemon’s wails with dull finality. Its body thrashed for a moment, and then slumped in defeat. Slowly, it began to dissolve into a putrid mess of bubbling, tarry excrescence.

Zephacleas hauled himself to his feet, breathing heavily. He met the stony gaze of the statue and then looked up, through the hole in the roof, at the storm overhead. With a grunt of mingled annoyance and thanks he shook his head and picked up the golden plaques. They were warm to the touch, even through the metal of his gauntlet. He hefted them, feeling their weight. They were covered in strange pictograms, indecipherable to his eye.

It is done, the voice said, as vast and as deep as the dark between the stars. The words pulsed through him, echoing through flesh and bone. He heard a crack, as of great wings, and felt the heat of undimmed stars and blazing suns.

He looked at the Dreaming Seer. The slann was fully awake for the first time since his arrival, bulbous eyes wide open. The Starmaster gazed at him unblinkingly. Takatakk and Sutok were there as well, though he had not noticed them arrive. The skink crouched on his master’s throne, head cocked. ‘Do you hear, dream-of-Sigmar?’ the little creature chirped. ‘It is time. All has happened, as the Great Lord foresaw. And now our dream ends, and we will sleep again.’

Great Lord Kurkori extended his hand. Zephacleas hefted the golden plaques and some force plucked them from his hand. They floated onto Kurkori’s palm. As the Lord-Celestant watched, the plaques were suddenly suffused with light. They came apart with a soft sound, reduced to golden dust which spilled through the slann’s fingers and cascaded to the floor. Old calculations, best left forgotten, the voice said. It is done. The pattern may continue, unimpeded by random variables.

‘It is done,’ Zephacleas said, echoing the voice in his head. Whose voice it was, he couldn’t say. Kurkori’s perhaps, or maybe even Sigmar’s, echoing down from the Realm Celestial. Or the voice of something older, and more vast in scope than any god or sorcerous ancient.

Slowly, the slann inclined his wide head. He blinked, once, as if in thanks, and Takatakk chirruped. Sutok growled and raised his war-mace in salute. Then, with a soft whisper of parting air, they were gone. Light flared from the plaza beyond, and there was the sound of air rushing to fill a sudden void. Zephacleas knew that the rest of the seraphon had departed as well. Gone back beyond the veil of stars.

He looked down at the pile of golden dust, wondering what it had been. Had its destruction been the only reason the seraphon had come? Or had there been some greater purpose? He shook his head, annoyed by the thought of questions that would likely never be answered, and reclaimed his weapons. He was a warrior, not a seer. He raised his hammer in salute to the departed seraphon. Though he was unable to see the stars of their constellation for the storm, he knew that they were there regardless.

‘To what dreams may come, my friends,’ Zephacleas murmured. Weapons in hand, he turned to rejoin Seker and the others. The battle for the Crawling City was done but there were others yet to be fought. And Zephacleas intended the Beast-bane to be in the vanguard.

Kruk fell for what seemed like hours, his robes burning, his flesh peeling. He felt no pain, only rage, and when he struck an outcropping of bone and flesh, it was almost a relief. He bounced, struck something else, and tumbled into a pool of gastric juices. The burning waters carried him for what might have been days, hours or merely moments. Time passed strangely to his pain-fogged senses, and when he at last felt something solid beneath his claws, it came as a shock. Instinctively, he dug in and clawed for purchase.