Striding on towards the fortress, buried in the shadow of the Varanspire’s mighty walls, the Prince of Embers held his nerve. The raw stench of death was intoxicating. He drank it in, uncaring of the daemons that swooped by. The furies’ attacks became ever more savage and indiscriminate. A muscle-bound barbarian of the Blood God, as broad as he was tall, was knocked from the walkway and into the flames below. A bloated knight of Nurgle exploded with the rank gases of decomposition as a daemon sank its talons into him, while a smooth-skinned marauder screamed in pleasure as he was dragged up into the sky and shredded.
Zuvius tried not to flinch as another of his Hexenguard was snatched from the walkway and his flesh stretched between winged monstrosities trying to tear him apart. A moaning sorcerer of the Unseeing was next, and then another, the wretches never setting eyes upon the horrors that were their end.
Zuvius felt the blood-bead eyes of some plummeting beast upon him. It was a thing unknowing of the Prince of Embers’ destiny. Zuvius’ gauntlets tightened about the shaft of his glaive. He killed the Khornate crusader before him, knowing the fury was sweeping down towards him. With savage beats of its wings it surged, claws and talons ready for the kill.
The prince held on for as long as he could. As he turned the glaive to present it to the beast, however, the thing’s infernal reflexes saved it. Crashing down onto the walkway, it skidded and hauled its head back. Zuvius swung the glaive about him with a devastating reach, but it was not enough. The arc of the blade should have passed straight through the monster’s ugly skull but instead whistled past it, incensing the beast. Screeching its rage, it drew others from the sky and away from their slaughter. Zuvius felt a throng of furies, all enraged by the champion’s challenge, swoop down towards him.
Like some hellish hound, the fury on the walkway snapped and shot forward. Jabbing with the glaive, Zuvius held the creature’s blood-stained jaws at bay. Pretending that he hadn’t seen another fury dropping down at him with outstretched talons, the Tzeentchian kept his focus on the beast in front of him before bringing the weapon up suddenly. Skewering the airborne monster with the force of its own momentum, Zuvius heaved it aside, smashing it into the stone of the walkway. As the first daemon surged, it found the thrash of wing and claw and the spear-point of Zuvius’ glaive. Holding tightly onto the weapon as the thing impaled itself, the champion leaned back out of the snapping, spitting death-rattle of the beasts.
As a third landed behind the sorcerer, cracking the stone, Zuvius unleashed the sorcerous power of the glaive. With the weapon still skewered through the daemons, he blasted the newcomer off the walkway with a stream of lightning. As scraps of the creature and a mist of infernal blood hissed across the surface of the flames below, more furies swooped in on Zuvius. Putting his boot against daemonflesh, he freed his glaive from the bodies of the impaled creatures. Behind him, the Unseeing moaned their blind fear and the Hexenguard stood with shields raised.
‘Protect your prince,’ Zuvius ordered, prompting the Tzeentchian knights to run forward and surround him. Beasts smashed their horned heads against the blue steel and tried to push their snaggle-toothed jaws between the shields. Sir Abriel put his ghastly form between Zuvius and an attacking fury, distracting the creature while the Prince of Embers thrust his glaive over the knight’s shoulder and into the daemon’s open mouth. Retracting the polearm and pulling half the monster’s warped skull out of its jaws with it, Zuvius turned to find another fury almost on top of him.
The beast reared and brought up a wicked claw, aiming to rip down through the Tzeentchian champion. Its eye bulged suddenly and its jaws chomped in surprise as its flesh suddenly rebelled against it. Bones broke within it and leathery skin stretched over the new form it was taking. As it fell to one side, Zuvius could see a sorcerer of the Unseeing behind, visiting the damnation of his dark magic on the thing.
It suddenly came at Zuvius, morphing into something warped, ungainly and even more terrifying than before. The prince ducked a pair of jaws within jaws and rolled between the spawn’s erupting legs. As it turned to reacquire him, the wretch-sorcerer visited his dark visions upon the daemon once more – twisting and sculpting the monster into ever more horrific forms. As a second head and a pincer ruptured from the body, Zuvius batted them aside with the pommel of his glaive. Aiming the opening metal eye of the weapon at the abomination, he prepared to blast it to shreds, but the transformation inflicted upon it by the Unseeing finally – horribly – wrung the life out of the creature.
As Orphaeo Zuvius and his warband fought their way towards the fortress, other warriors of Chaos kept their distance. Some even watched with bitter amusement as daemons rained from the sky to attack their competition. Zuvius spat. He would kill them all. Flicking infernal ichor from his glaive, Zuvius turned around and then around again. Up until now there had always been some winged thing behind him ready to pounce. Suddenly there was not. Looking up, he saw that rather than hauling off or losing interest, small throngs of furies were simply hovering, flapping their bat-like wings. They were waiting for something.
The fortress before him shimmered in shadow and heat. Zuvius looked about. Something was not right. In fact, everything seemed wrong. The flames around them seemed higher.
‘Mallofax,’ the prince called, catching his breath.
‘My lord?’ the bird squawked, swooping in to land on the warrior’s shoulder.
‘Fly on ahead,’ Zuvius ordered. ‘I want to know what we’re walking into.’
Zuvius could see now a tidal wave of fire rising through the flames surrounding the fortress. It was a doom conjured by Archaon’s fell sorcerers. Roaring its way around the Varanspire, the wave would engulf the elevated walkway. That was why the furies had taken to the skies. Zuvius would be damned before he let himself be seared free of the Varanspire like an insignificant insect.
‘Hexenguard,’ the Prince of Embers called. ‘Form up and lock shields.’
Sir Abriel and his Tzeentchian knights moved to create a shell of battered blue steel. Bringing in the Unseeing behind the shield wall, Zuvius watched for warriors of Chaos attempting to take advantage of their distraction. A mounted Slaaneshi warlord in immaculate plate looked down his nose at Zuvius. Khornate killers bedecked in spikes and horned helms fought on towards the Varanspire.
A nearby figure stood regarding Zuvius and the shield wall with suspicion. The champion was a Tzeentchian warrior whose ensorcelled blade crackled with dark energies. He held out the weapon between Zuvius and himself as a warning, slipping off his helmet. A nest of tentacles that had been squirming within dribbled down his breastplate like a beard. The change-blessed warrior regarded Zuvius with dead, deep-sea eyes, before considering the apocalyptic tsunami of flame rolling towards them. Shouting to his cerulean-skinned followers, the champion of Tzeentch and his horde of warrior witchbreeds took cover behind the shield wall of the Hexenguard.
A chain reaction was initiated along the stone walkway. Champions and the servants of Chaos behind Zuvius saw what was happening and saw the blaze encroaching with their own eyes. Some emulated the Hexenguard, locking shields if they had them to present a unified front against the wall of flame. Others abandoned their warped steeds, skidding and scrabbling down behind blue steel.
Zuvius watched as a hulking warrior of Nurgle ran towards him, slimy, pale rolls of fat spilling out of his rusted chainmail. The warrior shook the stone beneath Zuvius’ feet with his determined steps, grubs, maggots and leeches raining from his blight-festered flesh as he ran. Ducking down beneath the shield wall Zuvius waited for the blast wave. The Tzeentchian smiled to himself. He cared nothing for the followers of other fell gods, disciples of his own or champions of Chaos competing with him for the Everchosen’s favour. He only cared for what might be achieved through saving their lives in the undoubted challenges to come.
Zuvius heard the boom of the inferno against the shield wall and felt the shudder of the
stone walkway. He watched the Lord of Decay’s monstrous warrior disappear in a rush of flame. Slaaneshi swordsmen on steaming horseback lost their race with the firestorm, while there was little the blades, muscle and fury of the Blood God’s brutes could do to save them in the face of such fiery destruction.
The Prince of Embers felt his hair burn and his flesh blister. The raging flame boomed about him – and then it was gone. The Hexenguard unlocked their shields and the Chaos warriors that had sheltered behind them brought up their heads. They watched the bank of flame roll away.
Zuvius heard the flapping of wings. Mallofax was back. He had flown above the fire and scouted out the fortress approach, its portcullis gate and defences.
‘The gate?’ Zuvius asked as the bird landed on the blade of the glaive.
‘Carnage, my lord,’ Mallofax told him. ‘The gate stands firm against all assaults. Archaon’s warriors wait within.’
‘And the wall itself?’
‘Sheer,’ Mallofax told him. ‘There’s no way in.’
‘There’s always a way in,’ Zuvius growled. ‘There has to be. All those who stand in service of Archaon within once stood beyond the fortress walls.’
Zuvius knew he had to keep pressing forward. He wasn’t going to wait for the infernal wave to come back around. He wasn’t going to wait for the furies to attack again. He had saved the warriors of Chaos on the walkway. If he could just get them and others into range of the fortress’ warped defences, a retaliatory assault on the Varanspire might be able to achieve some momentum. He would lead by example, down a doomed path the warriors of Chaos had already chosen.
Zuvius ran. The bridge between him and the Varanspire was all but clear of warriors. Only those champions already close to the Varanspire’s walls had managed to find shelter from the bank of flame and, hiding in the architectural flourishes of the dread fortification, they had survived the inferno. Now, they were dying.
Arms of sorcerous stone shot out from the Varanspire wall, grabbing warriors and dragging them to their deaths in the solidifying wall. Boiling spawnflesh spurted from the mouths of daemonic gargoyles decorating the ramparts, splattering down on the warriors below. Coated in liquid horror, the spawnflesh assumed the shape of lesser daemons that assimilated the warriors’ dissolving forms. Braziers situated either side of the gate smouldered with a debilitating fog that, when breathed in, afflicted the victim with blistering burns to the skin, an agonizing blindness and a lung-curdling cough. Arrow slits sang with the thud and whoosh of crossbows and monstrous spear-shooting ballistas. Each bolt was crafted from hell-forged iron and carried a bound daemon within. Even if a striking bolt or spear failed to kill an approaching warrior, the blood-mad daemon that bled from the iron to possess the injured victim shredded both their flesh and soul.
Zuvius ran towards the fortress with his warband following, while the knights, butchers and swordsmen who had taken shelter behind the shield wall stomped across the bridge after him. Zuvius didn’t care whether this was out of a desire to kill him or to attack the Varanspire. Once they were in range of its dread defences, intentions would matter little. The Chaos fortress was a challenge that could not be ignored. The Chaos warriors accelerated across the bridge. The energy of their charge was almost infectious: blood knights in full plate, wasted warriors in leper’s robes, barbaric pleasure-seekers whose flesh was stuck with pins and shards of bone, and sorcerous champions like himself, wielding daemon-forged blades. The growing horde charged along the walkway. The fortress wall grew higher above them and the monstrous gate hove into view, shimmering in the heat of the broad moat.
A great arch lined with iron teeth, it was sealed by a series of warped portcullises, each lowered one behind the other. Through the grille of the bars Zuvius could see the warriors of Archaon, armoured silhouettes in thick plate mounted on fearsome steeds. They waited, weapons sheathed, seemingly unconcerned. They were confident in the Varanspire’s defences. Zuvius snarled. He would make them pay for their arrogance and serve Archaon all the better for taking their place. No warrior would breach the Varanspire while the Prince of Embers stood in their path.
Suddenly he was amongst bodies – the unfortunates who had failed to breach the Varanspire’s defences before him. Zuvius would not fail. Their remains were trapped amongst a forest of iron shafts and ballista bolts embedded in the stone. Zuvius could feel the raging daemons bound to the iron reach out for him in their fury. Savages and warriors who had shed their plate sprinted ahead of Zuvius, desperate to get out of the killing ground. They could not, however, for the fortress was designed with such desperation in mind.
Within seconds, the vanguard of the horde was dead. Such was the power behind the crossbows and the infernal ballistas that within a blink, daemon-bound bolts and spears were thudding into the stone about them. Marauders were thrown off their feet by shafts that hammered into their chests. Black projectiles hit the ground about Zuvius’ feet while shards of stone showered him where the missiles from ballistas shattered the walkway. A daemonic roar could be heard with their passing. Half-stifled screams and grunts of sudden death filled the air as Chaos warriors were impaled by the missiles and staked to the bridge.
There was no avoiding such an onslaught. Mallofax, who soared above the stabbing storm, had called it carnage; the bird had not been wrong. Aspiring champions, pledged to all manner of Dark Gods, died with brutal indifference. They had braved the lethality of the realms to reach the Varanspire and now it was their undoing. Alongside them, Zuvius heard members of his own warband dying. He ran on through the forest of iron and the impaled warriors. The heart-stopping whoosh of a ballista bolt nicked Zuvius’ ear and thudded straight through the battered breastplate of a Hexenguard knight. Zuvius heard the daemon in the missile rip the armoured warrior apart in seconds.
Step after feverish step took the Prince of Embers on towards the gate. It grew before him, its iron teeth threatening to swallow him whole. Madmen and driven warriors of darkness ran beside him. Behind them pounded a swollen blightking of Nurgle, who seemed to soak up bolts and the Varanspire’s daemonic heralds with his diseased flesh. As they neared the gate, the hail of bolts from above began to ease. Confidence welled up once again in Zuvius and those about him.
Suddenly, Sir Abriel’s shield flashed before him. The Tzeentchian knight put his willowy fingers on Zuvius’ chest to slow him. The prince heard the thud of several opportunistic bolts slam into the shield – daemon iron that had been meant for him. He didn’t usually waste sentimentality on the Hexenguard but immersed in the death and destruction, he found himself grinning hysterically at his father’s former captain of the guard.
When the ballista bolt came, it sheared the shield in two and did much the same to Sir Abriel. Skewered through his ruined chest and down into the stone, the groaning knight was pinned. Zuvius wasted a few precious moments trying to pull Abriel free before coming to his senses. The knight was all but dead already; Zuvius would not end the same way.
‘Sorry, old friend, but this is the price of entrance,’ the prince told the warped knight as the bound daemon ravaged what was left of him. With screams echoing about him, Zuvius ran for the gate.
A huge Khornate knight in baroque plate smashed into the portcullis with his colossal axe, causing the metal gate to shake. Feverish berserkers thrashed at the grille with their axes, while pus-swollen warriors of the Lord of Decay put their backs and bellies into lifting the colossal portcullis. It would not move, however. Even if it had, two more lay behind it, as secure as the first. With a metallic squeal, the hell-knights beyond the gates thrust the length of their fellspears through the gate grilles and skewered the Chaos champions hammering to get in. With infernal discipline, the knights withdrew their weapons and allowed their victims to fall before thrusting forth and impaling those that took their place.
Dark champions, filled with a warrior’s ecstasy at surviving the sorcerous flames and the
storm of bolts, threw themselves at the fortress gate. Sparks flew where their hammers bounced off daemon-forged metal. Light-armoured deviants covered in tattoos, chains and studs reached through with their cruel blades, attempting to slash at the machinery that raised the gates, but nothing worked. Archaon’s hellish garrison were ready for them. The interlopers would die at the gate. With a whoosh of steam, a foul liquid cascaded down the walls and turned the besiegers to screaming statues of melting flesh. All the while, the skin of champions blistered as they stumbled blindly through the diseased smoke of braziers.
Zuvius felt the fight leaving the attacking horde. Even dread warriors such as these needed some expectation of success, but the Varanspire gave them none. For a moment the prospect of braving the ballistas back across the walkway began to assume a grim appeal. Zuvius knew he had to rally the besiegers. He had to find an advantage.
‘My sorcerers,’ Zuvius called. ‘My Unseeing, move on. Show me what you can see through this wretched gate.’
The Prince of Embers knew the cost of the sacrifice and accepted it. Before the Varanspire and under the gaze of the Three-Eyed King, he had to relinquish the trappings of a Tzeentchian warrior. Those that fought for Archaon cared not for the Dark Gods they formerly served or the warbands that in turn served them. Their only concern was the wish and whim of the Everchosen of Chaos – for to be one of his knights was to forsake all other things.
The Unseeing moaned as they stumbled through the bodies before the gate. They flinched as they bumped into the grille and laid their gnarled hands on the bars. Several died immediately, the cruel points of fellspears bursting from their backs. Reaching through the warped grille, the wretch-sorcerers struck out their palms.
Age of Sigmar: Call of Archaon Page 18