Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

Another crack , and this time the earth beneath him shuddered. Rock plates thrust upwards, tilting to expose rivers of seething fire beneath. The arch of the Gate swelled into flames that coursed over the naked stone, burning blue like marsh gas.

Then he was running, haring back the way he had come. This was no natural storm, it was some conflagration of the daemonic, sent from the pits of madness to swallow them all. The entire landscape was shifting, knocked from its roots by the elemental violence of the heavens. Rakh crashed to his knees, losing his axe in the fall.

He felt a sudden heat. It swelled through the rain, vaporising it and making the air thick with steam. He cried out, but his voice was lost in the greater explosion of primeval forces.

It was as if the world itself were being ripped apart and forged anew — light was everywhere, eye-searing and white hot. For an instant Rakh thought he was being burned alive, but just as suddenly as it had come, the blaze blew itself out.

He looked up, shaking uncontrollably. For a moment he saw nothing, his vision hazy from the flash of light.

And then he saw what the storm had brought.

Khul led his army through the cleft just as the storm reached its height. It had been far too narrow for his armoured horde, so he had exerted his power, calling out words of eternal resonance and raising his axe-blade into the eldritch night.

His god had answered, shaking the earth and remaking it around them. The sides of the cleft shuddered, cracked and were smashed into rubble, exploding in a rain of flying stone shards. The boom of it echoed out across the plain beyond, and the great expanse opened up before them, the path bludgeoned clear as if swept aside by mighty hands.

Khul bellowed with laughter, feeling the sharp pleasure of the power at his command. Even the stone beneath his feet obeyed the will of his dark patron — it would not be long now before the final gift was bestowed and he joined the legions of eternal slaughter.

His warriors surged forward, crying out his name in fell voices.

‘Khul! Khul! Khul!’ they chanted, breaking into a run, unshackling their axes from great chains looped about their armour and swinging the curse-darkened metal in clenched fists. With the crack of barbed whips and the bellows of the warband leaders, the great mass of fighters broke out from the confines of the parched valley, poured through the demolished gap between the cliffs, and looked out over the plain of ruins beyond.

Khul was at the apex of the charge with Grizzlemaw loping at his feet, and was the first to witness the deep veins of magic unleashed in the skies above him. An actinic tempest rampaged across the Gate’s apex, and the colossal energies reverberated through his every muscle. Fell storms had been summoned in the past, some by his own command, but never like this one. Even the rain tasted different — icy, gritty, as if filled with tiny diamonds.

His ravaged old heart beat harder. Some great sorcery was at play here, of a kind he had never encountered before. Grizzlemaw sensed the battle-rage stirring and barked furiously.

‘ Advance! ’ Khul thundered, exhilarated by what he was seeing, hearing, smelling.

The Goretide swarmed down the long scree slopes, parting around their master and forging ahead, heading down swiftly to the plains. Their banners were raised against the teeming skies, and the sacred signs of Khorne swung up above the ranks of iron helms, already glossy in the rain. Companies of blood warriors marched out towards the Gate’s foundations, chanting litanies to the God of Battles as they shoved against one another. Vekh the Flayer pushed on ahead of them all, lashing them into heights of frenzy. In his wake echoed greater bellows yet, issued from jaws that were far larger than those of the blood warriors in the mass of the horde, and yet still hidden by the swirls of night-shadow and sullen flame.

Khul remained where he was, poised above the expanse, taking in the vastness of it. He saw the old ruins and the demolished walls of age-scoured cities, and the distant marks of a forgotten apocalypse. Threx’s bronze icon had already kindled with an angry fire, feeding from the energy burning around them. Khul stood atop the stone shelf, his eyes narrowing. He looked up at the enormous arch, tracing its outline, noting the runes on the lintels. It had been a long time since he had seen runes of that kind — they should have been extinct, just like their makers. The sight of them fuelled his battle-lust further — their existence was like an explicit challenge. He would take them down, one by one, ripping them from the stone with his own hands.

Down below, more of his battalions fanned out, covering the black lands in a carpet of red. As the last of them reached the open ground, a mighty crack, like the bones of the earth snapping, echoed across the plains.

Khul laughed — he couldn’t help himself. He lifted his arms, and lightning snapped against his clenched gauntlets.

‘I am Korghos Khul, Lord of the Earth! Show yourself, storm-weavers, and test your mettle against one worthy of your strength!’

The storm flared. The tempest churned faster, surging around the Gate under its epicentre. A second crack. Plumes of flame shot up from the ground, spewing oily smoke above them. The stink of ozone filled the air and the rain boiled away in hissing cloudbanks. A low rumble ran across the earth, making the rock-plates grind and crack. It felt as if giants were stirring below the world’s skin, rousing from aeons of slumber to break back into the realms of the living.

Then there was an almighty explosion of light, one that made his army turn their faces away, covering their helms with warding gestures. The banners faltered, the war-cries were silenced and the heavens erupted in sheets of silver flame. The air itself screamed, torn apart by some sorcery so potent and so pure that its elements were sundered from one another and forged anew.

Shafts of iridescence slammed down from the firmament, punching deep into the earth below. The wind’s howl became deafening, racing across the reeling landscape and flattening the iron-limbed vegetation. The Gate seemed to swell, to grow, towering higher over a vortex of gathering power. Even as the land around it was shriven and the hordes were driven to their knees by the tearing gale, the vast arch remained resolute, untouched, carved from the very bones of the world itself and glowering black as obsidian against the storm’s fury.

Only Khul kept his composure. He spread his arms wide before the elemental wrath, and laughed as the fire-scored wind tore at his cloak. He raised his axe high, and lightning snapped and licked up against its dire blade.

And so it was that he alone saw them come. He saw them borne down from the storm by the white-blue shafts and ripped from coils of shimmering magic. He saw them hurtle from the heart of the turning maelstrom, encased in brilliant cocoons of light. He saw them strike the earth with shuddering force. Where they crashed into the ground, domes of energy sprang up, each one swimming with raging coruscation. Then the domes shattered, spraying fragments of crystalline matter across the burning land, exposing the scions of the storm, the ones delivered by the wrath of the skies.

They were tall, taller than the greatest of mortal men, clad in purest gold and bearing warhammers that glistened with seething energy. Masks they wore, gold as their battle-plate, each one gazing impassively out at the devastation around them. Some had pearl-white wings that spread out behind them, bearing them aloft almost as soon as they had landed. Others strode out from their broken cocoons, their movements fluid despite the weight of arcane armour. Their every movement was perfect, poised to perfection and suffused with god-like power. They strode out from the remnants of the lightning that had hurled them into reality, hefting their weapons with an eerie, fluid power.