The Many-Eyed Servant whispered what he seen to his master.
‘There is a light in the darkness, Exalted One.’
‘Light is but a brightness of the moment,’ the Everchosen said, his words burning on the air. ‘The spark of flint. The strike of lightning. It passes. Darkness is forever.’
‘This spark,’ the Many-Eyed Servant said, ‘has started a fire, my lord. A fire from the sky that threatens to rage through the Shatterlands and bring hope to peoples beyond. The God-King’s warriors rain from the heavens and have made landfall. Our bastions along Cape Desolation are theirs.’
‘Sigmar’s warriors,’ Archaon said, ‘in the Shatterlands?’ The Many-Eyed Servant heard both searing outrage and relish in his master’s voice. ‘Its people will come to know the exquisite torment of hope dashed and the terror of lights extinguished.
‘Send word to my warlords, my champions and the fell kings of the surrounding regions. Summon my unholy Varanguard. I shall lead the Knights of Ruin myself in a counter invasion. Those bastions shall be mine again. The God-King’s light shall be banished and his warriors shall flee for the skies. I want Sigmar to know that he will find no purchase in lands forever dedicated to the Chaos gods.’
Peering down through the tumultuous skies of the God-King’s storm, the Many-Eyed Servant could see his master. Riding atop the monster Dorghar – an abominable creature of twin-tail, colossal wings and three terrible heads – Archaon led the way through the holy tempest. With his cloak streaming in the maelstrom and the Slayer of Kings held out in front of him, the Destroyer of Worlds rode out the storm at the head of his fleet.
A thousand dreadships coursing through the crash and squall of a spectral sea, all flying the flag of the Everchosen. The sea was a ghostly swarm of lost souls, the crash of waves and the hiss of the surf the sound of spiritual suffering.
Thrashing with their galley oars and with flayed-flesh sails full of sacrifice-bought winds, the armada surged on towards the black peninsula. Each ship carried hordes of Chaos warriors and Archaon’s own Knights of Ruin – thousands of dark templars, clad in plate of black and gold, utterly committed to the Everchosen’s service and the absolute destruction of his enemies. Among them was a worthy warrior the Many-Eyed Servant recognised from a past trial – the sorcerous warrior they called Orphaeo Zuvius, the Prince of Embers, now a knight in the Everchosen’s service.
The Prince of Embers burned for battle.
Standing on the deck of the dreadship Aftermath – so named for the death and destruction left in its blood-churned wake – Orphaeo Zuvius felt the surge and drift of the vessel through the spectral sea. Crafted from the torched wood of treelord ancients that groaned their suffering still, the landing galley’s black prow cut through the ghostly seas. Riding the swell, he looked to the flesh-sails, filled with the doom-laden winds that took the Everchosen’s armada on towards the skull beaches of Cape Desolation. Bloodreavers scrambled up and down the rigging of raw tendons while masts of braced bone creaked with the weight of wind and sail.
Zuvius made his way across the deck. His plate was black and gold and hell-forged to fit his slender frame. While one pauldron bore the crafted symbol of Archaon, the other had a metal spike. On the spike perched the familiar Mallofax, a reptilian bird of blue feather and black heart. It had been Mallofax that had guided the Prince of Embers down his destined path and into Archaon’s dark service. The wind ruffled the intense blue of the bird’s plumage.
About the main mast the deck was crowded with warriors of Chaos – Varanguard like Zuvius who had proved their worth to the Everchosen. The bloodreaver crew gave such warriors and their monstrous, armoured steeds a wide berth. The planks smouldered where the hooves of the mounted Varanguard held firm to the deck. The ruinous knights bled malevolence and, despite the subtle differences in their appearance and the myriad blessings of their dark gods, all wore the black and gold of their master. He was the Exalted Grand Marshal of the Apocalypse and they were his instruments of doom.
Zuvius mounted his own steed, Hellion. A muscular abomination that seemed mostly horse, Hellion blinked multiple dead eyes that ran the length of its fang-filled snout. Horns erupted from its malformed skull and its transparent hide revealed the ghastly inner workings of the beast’s grotesque body. Hellion’s spiked hooves clopped across the deck. Zuvius’ daemon-forged glaive A’cuitas sat in a saddle sheathe like a spear ready to be drawn in the charge.
Around the prince, warriors of the Varanguard were making preparations. Some were readying weapons and armour. Others were bringing their steeds to heel with vicious tugs on the reins. Some were even mumbling dark prayers to the Ruinous Pantheon, bidding the gods to grant them worthy foes and a merciless victory for their Everchosen.
Nearby, Zuvius saw fellow former acolyte of the Great Changer, Aspa Erezavant. Like him, the prince had forsaken his dread god in favour of service to Archaon. Through the Everchosen, Zuvius had pledged his soul, blade and talents to the unified forces of Chaos. Aspa Erezavant never spoke of such a pledge, however. The Varanguard warrior said nothing. He never did. There was only flesh where his mouth used to be.
Zorn the Brazenfleshed, however, always had something to say. A knight of dread threats and bombast, the Varanguard had once belonged to the Blood God. Now he commanded the Aftermath for the Everchosen, ensuring the vessel – in coordination with others cutting through the souls of the spectral sea – landed their Varanguard and meatshield hordes on the beach.
‘By the fell gods,’ Zorn roared through the storm at the ship’s bloodreaver crew, ‘if you don’t get more flesh to the wind I’ll flay your hides for extra sail!’ He turned to a pair of bloodreavers attending to the rebellious tiller. ‘Hold your course, damn you. And you,’ the Varanguard warrior bellowed at a bloodstoker called Killian, ‘get below decks. More power on the stroke. Take your lash to the oar crews. I want them sitting in a pool of their own blood. The Exalted Grand Marshal demands from them everything they have to give. Gods help the wretch who holds back his best from the Everchosen of Chaos!’
Zuvius watched the Varanguard warrior knock a passing bloodreaver brutally to the deck and then deliver a vicious kick with his armoured boot.
‘Fetch my weapons and my steed!’ Zorn roared at the unfortunate.
‘The Everchosen watches,’ Sarsael Hedra said. ‘The Brazenfleshed bids to be first on the beach for our master’. The Varanguard slipped his helm down over the oily flesh of his handsome face. The warrior’s words were slick with suggestion – insolence even. No one would actually level such an accusation at Hedra, however. He had killed too many in Archaon’s name.
‘I think he just might be,’ Kadence Salivarr said, looking from the saddle out across the ghostly waves at the rest of the fleet. His eyes were bright within his twisted helm. Like Salivarr, Zuvius could see that the Aftermath was pulling ahead.
‘Not if I get there first,’ Sarsael Hedra said, pulling on the reins to line up his fell steed with the ship’s prow. An armoured mountain of filth, Vomitus Grue, shook the deck with the boom of his laughter.
‘The Everchosen watches,’ said another Varanguard warrior through the ranks of mounted knights. Known as the Unslaked, his words were barbed much like his blood-stained blade. ‘He sees all. He hears all. He hears the prattling of his warriors. Witless boasts to calm the nerve and steady the cowardly soul.’
The deck fell silent but for the clop of hooves and scolding tongue of Zorn the Brazenfleshed. The Prince of Embers moved Hellion around, edging the steed ahead of Sarsael Hedra’s own. He licked his lips with a silver tongue.
‘The Varanguard will see the dark will of the Everchosen done,’ Zuvius said, his voice assured and even. ‘Each according to his gifts. We can all trust in that – as the Exalted Grand Marshal puts his trust in his Varanguard.’
Kadence Salivarr nodded his helm slowly at Zuvius. As the storm raged about them and the
ship, that seemed to be the end of the matter. The dark templars waited. Waited to disembark, to take the beach and then the bastion beyond for their dark master. If every warrior of the Varanguard did their duty well, each fortress along Cape Desolation would be taken back in the Everchosen’s name. The warriors of the God-King would be naught but the blot of an afterglow on the eye. The Shatterlands beyond the dark peninsula would belong stone and soul to the Chaos powers once more. The Varanguard about the Prince of Embers weren’t wrong though. Archaon and his sorcerous servants would be watching. They always were. Orphaeo Zuvius aimed to give them a sight to see. The Prince of Embers would make it his honour to lead the warriors of the Aftermath in their charge up the beach, behind the Everchosen himself, who would ride on ahead and strike the first terrible blow.
As well as the unhallowed ranks of the Varanguard, the Aftermath carried a small horde of Chaos killers to help take their section of the beach and soak up enemy fire: hulking khorgoraths of the Red Death, Tzeentchian sorcerers of the Glass Spire, and spindle-limbed bloodletters of twisted horn and daemon wrath. The largest contingents were the indomitable plague-bloated warriors of the Rank and Vile, led by a sack of corruption called Bloatus Belch, and the Chaos knights of the Mazarine in their glowing blue plate, directed by a two-faced champion called Vitas and Volitae. Even the Fleshblessed, the Slaaneshi spawn shackled below decks, had their role to play in the battle to come. But they were all nothing to Archaon’s chosen.
A bloodreaver walked past Zuvius with his eyes on the deck. He carried a crude spyglass in his hand for scanning their landing at the beach and the approach to their target fortress, called the Ebon Claw. Unlike Zorn the Brazenfleshed, Zuvius needed no glass. Isolated straggles of blue hair danced in the wind, while the remaining threads of his skin squirmed over the red raw flesh of his face. His silver tongue licked at scorch-smeared lips. The prince’s crow-pecked sockets now contained jewels instead of eyes – sorcerous gemstones, one blue and one pink to honour his former patron. These eyes saw for Archaon now, the labyrinthine facets of the precious stones giving him unparalleled vision.
He could see the spectral sea lapping up along a beachhead of weathered skulls. He took in the Ebon Claw beyond, a craggy edifice of petrified, black stone. Its battlements were razored like flint, while its towers were jagged like the crooked fingers of a grasping talon. Across the phantasmic waves, Zuvius saw other dreadships of the Everchosen’s armada, carrying knights like himself to take the Ebon Claw and all the other enemy-occupied forts along the coast of Cape Desolation.
Zorn had instructed the bloodstoker and his bloodreavers to keep the tiller trained on the lightning stream coursing down through the stormy skies into the Ebon Claw. It was just one of many pillars of searing power that carried the God-King’s warriors and their reinforcements into the bastions that punctuated the peninsula coast.
The dreadships converged on the shoreline. Zuvius could feel the rancid excitement on the air. Below decks, the spawn of the Fleshblessed were whipped to an ecstasy while bloodreaver oarsmen surged the galley towards the beach. The oars of the Aftermath tangled with those of another closing dreadship. Every knight of Chaos in the fleet wanted to be the first to reach the beach and earn the approval of Archaon.
Peering down the coast, however, Zuvius saw that his unhallowed master was busy. He had already reached the peninsula on the back of his monstrous daemon steed. The beast flapped his giant wings and soared across the battlements. While most would flee before the sight of the Everchosen astride his monster as they might a city-razing dragon, Sigmar’s Stormcast Eternals stood like golden statues: cold, implacable and unimpressed. As Dorghar banked, Archaon swept helms and heads from shoulders with the Slayer of Kings. Dorghar stove in towers with his lashing twin-tail and tore away sections of battlement with his great claws, sending Stormcasts raining to the ground.
‘Pass the word,’ Zorn the Brazenfleshed called down the length of the ship. ‘Prepare to disembark and fight for your lives.’
Zuvius heard Bloatus Belch and the Tzeentchian Vitus and Volitae readying their warriors below decks. He knew that the Red Death would barely be able to contain their fury and that the predacious bloodletters would be hissing their anticipation of the kill. The Varanguard would go first, however, for there were no servants of Chaos worthier than Archaon’s dark templars. And among the Varanguard ranks, there would be none as worthy as the Prince of Embers. Zuvius promised both himself and his Exalted Grand Marshal that.
‘The honour is mine,’ Zuvius hissed to himself. He worked Hellion around, lining the beast up for disembarkation. He could hear raised voices beyond.
‘My lord…’ Bloodstoker Killian said.
‘Hold your damned course,’ the Brazenfleshed spat. Zuvius looked down the coastline. Dreadships were taking in sail and stowing oars, coursing through the shallows the rest of the way to the shore. The Aftermath would not take such precautions on the approach. Zorn meant to hit the coastline at ramming speed and ride the galley as far up the skull beach as he could get.
As the vessel coursed through the shallows ahead of the armada, Zuvius saw bloodreavers wind their arms and legs about the rigging. The Chaos warriors below the decks began to chant their bloody expectation, while the ruinous knights settled into their saddles and stirrups, ready to follow the Prince of Embers.
‘For the Everchosen,’ Zuvius roared, kicking his heels into Hellion’s flanks. It was as much a challenge as an announcement. ‘May he and all who follow in his shadow know absolute victory this dark day.’
Standing up in the stirrups, Zuvius urged his steed down the length of the ship. With the steed’s spiked shoes tearing up the deck, the unnaturally swift and strong beast hit a gallop by the time it passed the mast. Dread knights of Chaos watched the prince thunder by, readying their own steeds for impact. Even on Hellion, Zuvius felt the Aftermath shudder as the vessel’s keel bit into bonemeal and then the shattered skulls of the beach. He readied himself for the inevitable. In the contest between the galley and the land, the land would eventually win.
The prince’s timing was perfect. The Aftermath had rammed its way out of the shallows and cut into the skull beach. As the vessel ground to an abrupt stop, the mast let out an excruciating creak and the flesh-sails billowed the other way. Steeds stumbled and bloodreavers were thrown from the rigging. Hellion made his jump just as the full force of the impact struck. Clearing the bulwark, the monstrous steed soared across the skulls. Hitting the beach of shattered bone at a gallop, Zuvius slipped the glaive A’cuitas from its sheath and spun it in his gauntlet. His exalted master had been the first to achieve an enemy kill on the cape. Zuvius would be the second. At his side, keeping pace with the monstrous steed, flew Mallofax.
‘Find me a way in,’ Zuvius said. The bird squawked an acknowledgement before taking to higher altitudes. Looking back, Zuvius saw that only now the other dreadships were slowing in the shallows and lowering their ladders for disembarkation. The Aftermath, however, with her keel torn out and hull well and truly beached, was disgorging her fell cargo. Inspired by the prince’s example, the knights of Archaon’s chosen had followed Zuvius and were riding up behind like a tidal wave of blade, plate and doom.
The khorgoraths of the Red Death hadn’t waited for bloodreavers to open the vessel’s fang-lined boarding-maws. The monstrous creatures of red flesh and fury had smashed their way through the hull and were lumbering up the beach towards the enemy. While the Fleshblessed spawn were unleashed upon the beach and made their mindless approach at unnatural speed, Bloatus Belch and the two-faced Tzeentchian exited the vessel through the holes the khorgoraths had left behind. They led their warriors past the sorcerers of the Glass Spire and out onto the bonemeal. Bloodstoker Killian cracked his whip and blew a horn, prompting the Aftermath’s bloodreaver crew to grab their blades and leave the ship.
Racing towards the Ebon Claw, Zuvius could see the golden shapes of the S
tormcast Eternals. The God-King’s warriors had been busy. The black talon of petrified stone was now but a derelict shell. Like the petals of a dead flower, the sharp walls and cragged towers of the fort had given way to new fortifications built within the ruins. About the column of lightning streaming down, new and glorious fortifications had sprung up – domed citadels of silver and gold. Immaculate structures of globed indomitability, at odds with the petrified jaggedness of the surrounding fortifications. It was as though the Ebon Claw suffered some kind of taintless cancer, with towers of metal, light and storm blooming amongst the twisted architecture of the malefic bastion.
Zuvius read the enemy’s defence of the fortress. Archers in glorious plate and their watching lords took position on razor-sharp battlements and looked down on the beach approach through crooked arrow slits. Meanwhile, destroyers in burnished plate collapsed the fortress gateway, turning the entrance into a barricade of smashed rubble with earth-shaking blows from their crackling hammers. Atop towers and derelict ramparts, Stormcasts waited for the Chaos invaders with glaives and great shields, their impassive stillness an invitation to death.
Suddenly everything was gold and bone. Zuvius resisted the urge to haul upon the reins as the beach exploded before him. Hitting the ground and throwing skulls and bone shards into the air with the force of their landing were the warrior-heralds of the God-King. Launching from the walls of the Ebon Claw, armoured warriors had flown down to the shoreline, dropping with the force of a meteorite shower crashing to the ground. Their wings were a spread of lightning blades whilst they clutched a pair of ornate hammers in their gauntleted hands.
Zuvius would not be stopped. Urging Hellion on into the warrior heralds, the prince extended A’cuitas out in front of him like a spear. Zuvius crashed into his foes.
Age of Sigmar: Call of Archaon Page 23
