‘SIGMAR!’ The Anvils of the Heldenhammer roared at the night, and though Brennus could see nothing, he could hear a still more ferocious clash of arms.
And he knew that where the Anvils fought, the monsters could be defeated.
He was fuelled by a power far beyond his own. Bule felt the tower and the land contained in his hands. They were his to turn into the most perfect flowering. He had tended Nurgle’s Garden faithfully, and now he would make it bloom through the heart and bones of the enemy. The strength of a thousand plagues was his. He was the plague.
The dark was complete. The light was gone from the temple. His power reached its apex. And in that moment of completion, something else was accomplished.
The gate sprang to life.
The centre flashed. It twisted and coiled. Paths opened before him. He saw them with the myriad eyes of insects, a compound vision of choices. One choice dominated all others. It came into being with the activation of the gate. The power he held had opened the way, and now he must pass through or bring the temple down.
Behind him, the other Rotbringers were shouting victory as the walls shuddered.
‘Drop the walls!’ Fistula shouted. ‘Crush the lightning men!’
But Bule heard the call again, and it came from the other side of the gate. Archaon awaited.
‘What are you waiting for?’ Fistula demanded.
‘Archaon…’ Bule whispered. Louder, he said, ‘We pass through the gate.’
‘And leave the field again?’ Fistula was outraged.
Yes, Bule thought. They would leave. ‘Yes!’ he shouted. ‘Archaon calls!’
He stared at the path through the gate. It flickered. It led into a grey void. A cold wind blew in Bule’s face. It felt like emptiness, like the wail of the tomb. There was no garden at the end of this path. There would be nothing to cultivate. The call demanded he step away from any recognisable trace of Grandfather Nurgle’s dominion.
He made his decision. I will go, he thought.
The passage exploded with swarms of hungry flies. A welcome.
Bule looked back at Fistula and the rest of his warriors. His chosen few, he saw now, much as he had been chosen. ‘We do not abandon the field,’ he said. ‘We march to a grander one. A magnificent flowering.’
He entered the gate, abandoning the temple to its illusion of hope. Let the Stormcast Eternals triumph here. How meaningless that victory would be. How bitter it would taste for them when he returned.
When they and all their kind would learn what he had become.
The Trial of the Chosen
Under purple skies flickering with far-away storms brooded a vast desert the horizon could not contain.
Its sands appeared coarse, greyish in colour, but closer inspection revealed them not to be sand at all, but crushed bone. In some of the smaller pieces the delicate lattice of desiccated marrow was visible, clinging to sharp-edged shards. The larger fragments were recognisable as the knobbed heads of femurs or curved portions of skull, like pebbles and stones. Few people ever saw the desert and fewer still lived to tell the tale. The realm of Shyish abounds with lands that do not take kindly to the presence of the living. The Bone Sands were among them.
Unlike in a mortal desert, there were no traces of any living creature; no mummified plants awaiting the next rain, no tracks in the rough sand to hint at small creatures eking out a life. There was bone, and more bone, and nothing else, for league after league until the purple sky and grey sand touched at the edge of sight.
But the Bone Sands were not quite empty.
At the very centre was a monumental archway. Though huge, it cast no shadow in the directionless gloom. Two giant plinths stood either side, as tall as towers, their sides covered in bas reliefs depicting the bloodless wars of the dead, still crisp after aeons in the changeless desert. Atop the plinths waited a pair of giant necrosphinxes, facing each other across the broken bones cluttering the ground. The statues were massive beasts of stone and metal with men’s torsos atop lions’ bodies, barbed scorpions’ tails, outstretched wings and twin blade shields on their arms. The statues held their bladed limbs forward to point at one another, forming a lesser arch under which a traveller had to pass on entering or exiting the greater.
The sphinxes were huge, but the gate was bigger. Stacked vertebrae threaded onto green copper rods made the posts of the archway, curving together like monstrous tusks. The bones at the base of the columns were the size of buildings. Those at the apex were tiny, stolen from dead animals of the fields and hedgerows of distant lands. Many of the bones had crumbled. The left column leaned a little because of this erosion, but the structure held and the distortion robbed the edifice of none of its power.
The desert around the gate had a vital tension entirely lacking from the rest. The feeling of magic was strong there, and perhaps it was for this reason that the arch was surrounded by generous heaps of skeletons. All lay face down, their outstretched arms reaching for the arch. They were piled around the base of the plinths, and cluttered the span of the gateway three deep. Examples of all the strange races of the Eight Realms could be found, for all things that die find their way to the underworlds of Shyish in the end.
Pitted weapons were tangled with bones. Brittle cloth was draped over fleshless limbs, ready to vanish into threads and dust at the slightest touch of the desert’s rare winds. Banners were planted in the ground, leaning drunkenly, all colour leached from their blazons. Shields of every conceivable kind hid their designs under the bones of their bearers.
A thing walked out of thin air, growing from ethereality to solidity in the space of five long steps. It was a curious creature, with arms and legs so thin it should not have had the strength to move, but it walked with energetic purpose, its staff clacking down onto the bones with every decisive step. Its long cloak of fluttering eyes stirred the dust into lazy whorls that settled slowly.
This was the Many-Eyed Servant, agent of Tzeentch, but now unwilling vassal of Archaon.
It came to a halt fifty yards before the arch. The aura surrounding everything there – bones, gate and guardians – revealed itself to the sorcerer’s supernatural vision as a deep purple. Very rarely was one colour of magic so clearly presented, and the sorcerer stopped to admire its patterns. The creature remained in contemplation until the weight of its enslavement became palpable, invisible chains of sorcery binding it to the Everchosen’s will. The Many-Eyed Servant became uncomfortable. Archaon saw all, and he was impatient. If the Many-Eyed Servant was not swift, it would be punished.
The Many-Eyed Servant set to work. With keen magesight it pinpointed the parts of the gate that had to be charged with magic. This realmgate had long been dormant, locked and barred by parties unknown through the long centuries of the Age of Chaos.
The Many-Eyed Servant gripped its staff with reedy fingers and raised it over its hoe-shaped head. The line of eyes that crested its face closed in concentration. It began to chant.
It was a powerful sorcerer, and so its magic took effect rapidly. Power blazed from the ends of its staff in braided torrents that unfurled into individual tendrils of lightning, each striking at the gate columns’ vertebrae. They skittered about, probing for the points the Many-Eyed Servant’s magic required. Finding them, the lightning rooted itself in the bone, joining gate to sorcerer. The space between was quickly filled with jumping, arcing currents of yellow, blue and purple. The gateway vertebrae shifted on their copper supports, flexing like trees in a storm. Hidden runes carved into the bone revealed themselves in blazing colours.
The gate glimmered, the air framed by the arch growing thick with light, blurring the vista behind it, then turning opaque.
The Many-Eyed Servant cried out in pain from the magic coursing through it and in exhilaration of its mastery over the energy. Slamming its staff down, it uttered a deafening word of power. The lightning ceased. A blas
t of energy emanated from the base of the staff, sending a shock wave out across the plain that whipped up an expanding circle of dust and sent it racing towards every horizon. The Bone Sands moaned, a sound akin to the last breath expelled from the lungs of a corpse.
The staff remained embedded in the bony ground, quivering with potency. The Many-Eyed Servant lifted its hands, placed them back to back, and pushed them wide as if it were parting a curtain.
With a silken tearing sound, the realmgate opened onto another world. Some difference in the atmospheres caused an imbalance in the wind, and a gust of tomb-dry air blasted out from the desert, exchanged for the brief, moist scents of leaf mould and animals. The Many-Eyed Servant looked through onto a broad rise of forested mountains somewhere in the realm of Ghur. Men knelt on the other side, two hundred huge killers warped by the power of Khorne, a pair of chained khorgoraths in their midst. The Bloodslaves had been praying to their god to open the way, but as the gate opened they stood. They hefted their weapons and looked suspiciously through into the world beyond. The slaughterpriest Orto, the blood warrior Skull, Danavan Vuul the bloodstoker and the taciturn skullgrinder Kordos, smith of Khorne, who rarely deigned to speak to mortal men, all looked on. These were the leaders of the Bloodslaves, and they gathered around their lord, Ushkar Mir, another silent killer, although unlike Kordos his silence was not by choice. Mir was taller than a man ever should be, massively muscled, his burn-scarred head bound with a tight ring of brass that covered his eyes. The runes stamped into the band were dark for the moment.
‘The way is open! Khorne gives to those who take! Onwards to battle,’ shouted their priest. The Many-Eyed Servant winced at his bellowing. So obnoxious, the priests of Khorne. It pained the sorcerer to make use of such crude pawns.
Ignorant of the sorcerer that had opened the way, Orto lifted his double-handed axe in one fist and pointed it into the bone desert.
The Bloodslaves moved forward with a rattling of armour. They stank of blood and sweat, their beards were stiff with gore, and their filed teeth were yellow. Eyes wild with rage and desperation looked right at the Many-Eyed Servant, but they did not see it. The Many-Eyed Servant was visible only to those it allowed to see.
Mir rumbled a soundless warning and held his hand up. His men stopped.
‘See, my lord!’ said Skull eagerly. His blood-and-blue marbled face was full of triumph. One day this warrior might be a danger, thought the Many-Eyed Servant, but that was a concern for another time. ‘Why do we wait? Khorne has provided!’
Ushkar Mir stared into the Realm of Death. In his head the call of Archaon rang loud. The Many-Eyed Servant could hear it too. For each of the champions it was different; for Mir it was the brazen blare of harsh trumpets and the cries of angry daemons.
The Bloodslaves looked to Ushkar Mir expectantly. For five minutes he stood, before moving without warning straight towards the gate. The Bloodslaves followed unhesitatingly.
They stepped from lush turf to dusty plain in a single step, leaving one realm for another, their boots crunching on shattered bones as they passed into Shyish.
‘Is this the land of Khorne?’ asked one. He kicked a skull from the shoulders of a skeleton. ‘There are many skulls here.’
The khorgoraths sniffed at the bones, but quickly withdrew and mewled. Crumbling bone had no interest for them, and they were hungry.
To the Many-Eyed Servant, the Bloodslaves’ disappointment was obvious. They were wary. This was not the warrior’s welcome they expected Archaon to lavish on them.
‘No,’ growled Orto. ‘Fool! This is Shyish, the Realm of Death. These are bones stolen by the Lord of Death from the Lord of Fury. This is an unholy place.’
‘But where in Shyish?’ asked Skull thoughtfully.
‘Who knows?’ said Orto. His nostrils flared, sniffing at the wind. ‘Shyish is a million underworlds, with ten deaths for every mortal in each.’ He snorted and spat bloody phlegm onto the bones. ‘Khorne will rule it all. It is his right. This is the start.’
Such confidence, such naivety, thought the Many-Eyed Servant.
It was then that the sorcerer chose to be seen, although not in its favoured form. It drew the shape of another over its being and manifested. The champion’s test had begun.
A stirring of dust fifty feet from the gate caught Skull’s eye. He patted Mir’s massive bicep and pointed as the disturbance grew to a tiny whirlwind. Mir looked with his Khorne-given blindsight and saw fragments of bone leaping up from the ground. To Mir’s eyeless vision, the maelstrom was surrounded by flickering fires of magic. He growled and drew the axes Bloodspite and Skullthief. They howled, eager to prove themselves against weakling sorcery.
The whirl of dust grew until a column writhed before Mir. Then it abruptly stilled, what little fragments were carried on its currents pattering to the floor. In its stead stood the skeleton of a man, garbed in the ancient panoply of war, a spiked helmet on its skull, a visor covering its face and ragged robes about its legs. A dull steel sword hung at its side.
Skull took a step. Orto moved forward, axe up. Mir stayed them with the flats of his axes.
The skeletal warrior lifted up its hands to its head and removed the helm, revealing a bony face set with five eye sockets. In each one a lidless eye glistened.
‘What is this?’ asked Skull. He loosened his sword in his scabbard. The Bloodslaves drew around their leader, fear tainting their divine fury.
‘Ushkar Mir hears the call of the Grand Marshal of Ruin!’ pronounced Orto. ‘He comes to serve him!’
The skeleton remained silent.
‘Who are you?’ said Skull. ‘Answer, or I will add your malformed head to Khorne’s bone piles.’
‘It is a test,’ growled Kordos, speaking for the first time in weeks. ‘One does not walk into the camp of Archaon. Mir must prove himself worthy.’
‘Where is he? What do you know of Archaon?’ demanded Skull. But Kordos said no more.
‘Ushkar Mir is worthy,’ said Orto. He clacked his sharpened teeth at the skeleton in challenge.
‘None are worthy until they have proven themselves,’ said Danavan Vuul. ‘A simple truth.’
‘Pah! Let us cut this corpse thing down,’ said Orto. ‘Let us gather fresh skulls for Khorne. Who cares for the glory of Archaon, when Khorne’s hunger is never sated?’
‘Khorne’s fires are not what Mir desires,’ said Skull.
Orto looked at Mir uncertainly. He was still not comfortable with Mir’s blasphemous desire to challenge Khorne, and yet his might was undisputable, as was Khorne’s favour of him.
‘Kordos spoke of tests. Who will set them?’ asked Skull. ‘This creature?’
‘Khorne sets all tests for Mir,’ said Orto.
‘Archaon serves all the four powers,’ said Vuul. ‘We must be wary.’
‘A test of the gods then,’ said Skull. ‘Four in number.’
‘We should attack! Kill it again.’ Orto advanced. Mir motioned again for him to hold. Orto did so reluctantly.
That will be the way, thought Mir. The creature sports many eyes, as did the herald I saw in the sky. He struggled to keep his thoughts straight against the rage of Khorne. The red haze in him thickened daily. He must not forget who he was. Four tests it would be – one for each of the gods. To serve Archaon will aid me, he thought. I will brave these tests. No matter the outcome, there will be bloodletting, and that will take me closer toward my vengeance.
Mir nodded to the skeleton. It inclined its head in response.
‘Mir has accepted the challenge,’ said Orto. ‘Praise be to Khorne.’
‘Stand ready!’ said Skull. He drew his sword and the warriors of the Bloodslaves raised their weapons in response.
Ushkar Mir saw. In his blindsight he saw a dread purple glow creeping across the desert ground, gathering about the skeletons lying there. It was strongest around
the great statues guarding the gate.
The first test begins, he thought.
A creak of metal, so loud in that endless silence, made the Bloodslaves start.
The purple light of death magic was strong enough now to be seen by mortal eyes, glowing from every skull. Suddenly the Bloodslaves began slashing downward, smashing bony hands that were stretching out to grasp their ankles and stamping ancient skulls to fragments.
A great host of the dead was clambering up all around them. A bloodreaver went down, bellowing out glory to Khorne as he was torn to pieces by raking fingers.
The worst was yet to come. Mir pointed and growled a warning. The eyes of the necrosphinxes glared with amethyst magic. With the grinding of stone muscles, they turned their heads to look upon the trespassers. At their awakening, the skeletal warriors presented arms, adopting attack positions. The dust of ages poured off the statues as they stepped down from their plinths, revealing skin of black stone and the dull bronze of their mighty weapons. The ring of dead warriors surrounding the Bloodslaves parted noisily to let the sphinxes through, closing ranks once the beasts had trodden heavily past. The Bloodslaves waited uncertainly, brandishing their axes and cursing the silent dead.
Mir did not wait for the attack. Roaring loudly, he shoved his way through his own men and ploughed into the skeleton horde.
‘Skulls! Skulls for Khorne!’ yelled Orto, and the Bloodslaves followed their master.
Sightless eyes tracked axe swings. Skeletons dodged and parried with all the alacrity of the living. This was the Realm of Death, and its servants were strong there. The Bloodslaves roared out their cries to Khorne, but the skeletons fought soundlessly, having no voices with which to speak. They moved mechanically fast, their ancient weapons ringing from dark iron, bones clacking a rapid tattoo.
The Bloodslaves split, each of them heading into a different part of the undead army – all save Skull, who was ever by Mir’s side. Orto went at the head of a phalanx of blood warriors, sweeping his giant axe through brittle ribcages. Kordos strode on alone, his flaming anvil roaring through the air on its chains as he swung it around his head. Every pass decimated the skeletons, shattering them into burning flinders of bone.
Age of Sigmar: Call of Archaon Page 14
