Archaon: Everchosen

by Rob Sanders

  Archaon got to his feet. He found the sorcerer intensely annoying and didn’t relish the opportunity to serve his warped god as some kind of puppet executioner.

  ‘That means you too, sorcerer,’ Archaon told him with dark certainty. Khezula Sheerian smiled his ghastly smile. He rattled the jewel of the Eye in the setting of its bone staff.

  ‘I die,’ the daemon sorcerer told him, ‘but not by your hand, you insatiable cur.’

  Archaon grunted and turned. The great flesh-smeared belly of the Chaos dragon snaked its way above them. It was getting bigger. With every swallowed victim, the monstrosity grew in size and horror. Its victims became part of its slithering bulk. In its warped form Archaon could see faces staring down on him. He recognised them as members of his own army. Their mouths open and screaming. Flamefang was claiming his army for its own. It was harnessing the power of their flesh. The Chaos warrior wondered if he had done the right thing in having Sheerian unleash the creature once again on the world. Indeed, it was an exquisite punishment for his enemies and the followers that had failed him. It thwarted the designs of men and gods but Archaon had to wonder whether he too would be its victim. Whether he would find himself in the colossal creature’s belly and swiftly assimilated into its dreadful form or bathed in its transformative flame. Archaon knew that he possessed no blade, no shield and no armour that would turn such a weapon aside.

  He had no intention of fighting the beast, however. Like all of the servants of the Dark Gods, the dragon itself was a weapon to be wielded. A punishment to be delivered. That was all that mattered. The daemons, the princes and the Dark Gods would know that he was not their plaything – a slave to infernal destiny. His choices were his own, no matter how insane they seemed to others and indeed himself. He would feed Tzeentch’s monstrous pet his unworthy army. In horrible death, the warriors and marauders that had failed to unify under his banner would be joined in their shared failure. There were a few amongst their number who deserved his special attention and walking away from the cackling sorcerer Sheerian, Archaon made good on the distracting carnage that Flamefang was creating at his flagship’s stern and returned to the Citadel’s main deck.

  Even before the arrival of the horrific dragon, the Spite had been in chaos. News of Archaon’s death, brought by Dravik Vayne and his sorceress, had initiated a full-blown mutiny. Chaos warriors who coveted command of the army for themselves went on murderous rampages, assassinating champions they considered to be their greatest competition. Weak-minded marauders and beasts flocked to the banners of such mad men, spreading the carnage, mindlessly changing allegiances as the dark warriors behind which they had thrown their brutal support were brained and butchered. Petty rivalries and long-standing hatreds – formerly kept in check by Archaon and his lieutenants through the threat of retribution – exploded in wanton murder and massacre. The case for every Chaos god was argued with the blade. Each champion and marauder fought for the prospects of his own patron or power in the bloody belief that the Blood God, the Lord of All, the Changer of Ways or the Prince of Chaos was worthy of the host’s destructive potential.

  Archaon drank deep in the havoc of it all. His hands trembled in expectation. His gauntlets rattled about them. He walked through the death and the destruction. Bolt throwers had been turned inwards and their spear-storms unleashed on the crowds of marauders fighting for control of the stone expanse of the Citadel’s blood-slick decks and wards. Punching through the bodies of five, six, sometime seven Chaos warriors at a time, the wicked shafts tore men from their death-dealing and skewered them like meat on a giant’s spit. Other artillery pieces had been man-handled around in the chaos and fired into the riotous carnage. Druchii bolt throwers adorned the razor crenellations of the Citadel of Spite’s port and starboard sides at intervals, ready to slash through the sails of escaping enemy vessels or ensnaring them in barbed line-trailing grapnels. As well as these nightmares being turned on the Chaos host, the fevered hordes had to contend with the motley collection of other artillery pieces that the army had pilfered from captured vessels before scuttling or re-appropriating them – great cannons, mortars and carronades. Archaon blinked as the Hung marauders fighting amongst themselves before him turned to a thunderous drizzle of red. His armour was showered in their gore as the great muzzle of an ancient bronze carronade belched canister shot into the crowds, cutting a murderous swathe through the madness. A cannonball trailing some kind of enchanted fire whizzed over the warlord’s head, while a corsair’s crossbow bolt twanged, snapped and glanced off his armoured shoulder.

  The stone deck was awash with blood and body parts, while barbarians, buccaneers and slave-warriors slaughtered each other before him. It was pure insanity. There was little room for manoeuvres amongst the throngs on the slippery deck, just grabbing and killing. The hands of the fallen grasped for Archaon’s boots as he walked through the sweet butchery. Druchii corsairs, spike-furred Norsemen, clansmen and retainers of the Dreaded Wo. None of them recognised Archaon as he moved through the confusion and horror they had brought on themselves. Shaggy beastmen roared challenges at him as he moved through the mutinous massacre before being axed down by bearded berserkers of the dawi-zharr. Some madman had opened the stables and released rhinoxen and horses out onto the confusion of the deck. The animals ran about in panic, slipping in the blood and scrabbling their way through the carnage. Marauders were trampled and gored, while others saw the animals no differently to the other murderous shapes coming at them out of the pandemonium, slashing at them as they cannoned by or slaughtering the steeds and beasts of burden with pikes and spears.

  Archaon saw several warriors of Chaos attempt to mount passing horses: Hrodgar Deathchosen and Orchan Varg, one of the Bloodsworn clockwork knights. They rose above the rabble and the death to ride and kill but their ascendency was short lived. The horses could not keep their footing on the rolling, blood-greased deck and swiftly both the steeds and the warriors were dragged back down into the butchery. Hands and claws grasped for them. Spear-points jabbed. Axes flashed. Within moments the mounted warriors were part of the mess on the deck.

  Archaon came to a stop. He could smell the coppery sting of death on the air. He licked his lips. He could taste annihilation. He had spent so long attracting dark souls to his destiny like moths to a flame. So many years of his life building a horde of Chaos warriors, slayers and madmen. An army of such skill and number that could end a world and be worthy of the Ruinous Star. He had failed. Even as they hacked each other to pieces about him, he could not see in them the warriors, beastmen and daemons of his doom. They were a wretched assemblage. A rag-tag union of the lost and the damned. Slaves to darkness, blundering through their existence, savagely striking out like blinded animals. They had not been worthy of his apocalyptic fate but worse, he had not been worthy of them. The loyalties of maniacs, marauder tribesmen and altereds were held together with little more than the skein of a spider’s web. They were a liars’ alliance – lying to each other and themselves about their intentions. They were a monster of the deep, horribly devouring itself.

  Standing on the stone deck, with the crooked mast-towers and sinister citadels stretching for the skies about him, Archaon took some comfort in the likelihood that this was the way it was meant to be. He was being tested. How could he lead these legions if he couldn’t hold together an army of beastmen and Shadowland marauders? Archaon nodded to himself. His worthiness was to be found in the way he had achieved so much with so little. With a malingering horde of spawn, savages and back-stabbing lieutenants he had achieved much. A place in history, at least. He had swept across the Northern Wastes, besting with sword, stratagem or number all challengers who had stood in his irresistible path. He had smashed his way through icy Naggaroth before making the Great Eastern Ocean his own. They would not be the ones to accompany him into eternity. At his side they had indeed earned their squalid place in history – but Archaon was destined to destroy the world
– a world without a future and in no need of a history.

  The gods were cruel. They persecuted even those that realised their prophecies and prosecuted their will. The Altar of Ultimate Darkness had been their gift. It had bequeathed on Archaon their Mark. The eight points of the Chaos Star – a Ruinous union of blood and treachery. The Chaos gods were monsters. Their gifts were invariably curses also. Like the spawn whose horrific form bequeaths strength and murderous abilities that the trapped soul within could barely have dreamed of in its former existence. Every favour of the Dark Gods was also a test or some sly part of a greater doom. Archaon only needed to look upon his flagship to know that. The Spite – whose banner-trailing, cloudscraping towers was a sight to strike distant captains and port governors stone dead with dread, whose flotilla trailing darkness had been the terror of an entire ocean – had been a lens through which the darklight of evil had been concentrated. The conflicting influence of the Ruinous Powers, reaching out from the Altar of Ultimate Darkness and into the souls of every great warrior, every witch and every wretched thing that fought in Archaon’s name. It had promised them their heart’s desire – whatever that had been – and perversely destroyed the beautiful confederacy that had united behind their chosen champion.

  Dravik Vayne’s Citadel of Spite had already been a devastating study in dark genius. The enchantments of its black stone, the lines of its serrations and crenellations, the crooked cruelty of his towering architecture. The Spite had indeed been a wonder. The Altar of Ultimate Darkness had sat within its depths, corrupting the simple evil of its black heart. It had brought it to the floating fortress from which Archaon terrorised the high seas. Spreading its corruption like veins and arteries through the dark stone, it pumped its poison into the souls that called the Spite home. It almost became a living thing. Its catacombs were haunted by much more than nesting sea monsters. Its archways became toothed gateways to whispering oblivion. The tents and camps that sprawled across its stone decks and plazas sat upon glyphs and symbols that had wormed their way through the stone to demand sacrifice. The towers and citadels became secret temples to individual Powers, channelling the altar’s dread influence. He could see that now. The warping stone and midnight metal of the Citadel’s architecture was not twisting into agonising new forms to honour the warlord Archaon and his victories. It was contorting with its hate for his endeavours. It was laughing at him. It was spitting in the face of his failures.

  No more. No more.

  Archaon looked up at the Citadel tower. The warlord knew where Dravik Vayne and his witch would be. Father Dagobert and Giselle would be with them, up in what had been Archaon’s cabin chambers. He could feel the floating fortress turning in the water beneath his feet. The corsair would take the Spite back to Naggaroth. He would be changing course without delay. He would be setting that course atop the bulbous keep, crowning the main mast-tower, the tallest of the Spite’s towers. That was where Archaon would find him. Between him and the tower, however, was a horde of his Dreaded Wo, arch-marauders that had terrorised Northern Cathay for as long as anyone could remember. Archaon passed through throngs of Dreaded Wo like shadow. In their lacquered armoured and horned helmets they came at their attacker. Archaon slipped their curved blades from their scabbards and drew their single edges across marauder throats. Turning his wrist and bringing the oriental blade back for the strike, the Chaos warlord cut through the Hundun sword clans with their own cursed weapons, burying steel in one warrior only to snatch a pike from another’s retainer and hurl it into the chest of another. As they came at him with blade, boot and back of hand – their movements dark and graceful, Archaon broke them. He ducked beneath the discipline of their fists, scooped aside their dancing blades and killed with a messy efficiency the Hung marauders did not have within them. He turned and spun. He broke necks and twirled the vicious attacks of lesser warriors into one another – impaling tribal princes and their peasant servants on each other’s weapons. Archaon stabbed and cut with the superior blades of the Dreaded Wo, slicing limbs and heads from marauder bodies, working his way across the madness of the stone deck.

  The easterners became an archway of steel. Archaon worked his marauder sword, the dull glint of the wretched skies flashing off its arcs and crescents. Blood sprayed his way as throats were opened and wrists were slit. The grating hiss of razor-edges clashing filled the air, punctuated by the plunging of Archaon’s blade through marauder torsos. Stabbing the weapon through the side of one unfortunate sword clansman’s helm, the sword went straight through the skull and out the other side. Snatching a retainer’s pike from his trembling hands, Archaon rested his boot on the marauder’s lacquered breast plate and kicked the warrior away. Swinging the pike around by the tip of its shaft, the Chaos warrior opened up a throng of closing Dreaded Wo, the point of the pike blade tearing through the arms and chests of the marauders.

  As the black-armoured warriors crumbled to the deck about him, Archaon heard it. The unmistakable roar of one of the Blood God’s foetid servants. An unreasoning bellow of rage that shook the stone of the deck and made the littering corpses jig and dance. The Great Spleen had awoken. Dazed. Furious. Eager to appease its dread deity with sacrifices, the ogre was enraged. Like a gore-dipped statue it rose above the Hundun warriors, each bare footfall a stone-pulverising quake. Archaon saw its beady eyes – black with rage – peering over the tusk-snarled mess of its maw. He heard the rumble of the great metal links of an anchor and realised that the Great Spleen had one of the Spite’s colossal anchors in its possession. Throwing the cruel weight of the black, barbed thing into the air, the Great Spleen turned on its blood-slimy heel, swinging the anchor around on its length of chain. There was little Archaon could do to defend against such a weapon. Unlike the Dreaded Wo attempting to skewer him on their beautiful, curved blades, he could see the weapon coming. Dipping down into the gore, helmet pressed to the deck, the Chaos warrior heard the dreadful path of the anchor as it ploughed through the armoured bodies of the Hung marauders, dragging their smashed corpses along with it.

  Archaon was up, pike ready in hand like a javelin, but the ogre heaved and the anchor hummed through the air, orbiting the corpulent mass of the Great Spleen and searing around for another pass. The anchor bounced and sparked off the deck, showering Archaon with shattered stone. Archaon went down again, allowing the deadly weight of the thing to pass over his helmet. Kneeling, Archaon launched the pike at the ogre, burying it between the slabs of pectoral fat that wobbled from its chest. The anchor came crashing down to the deck, smashing through the legs of Hung marauders and some of the Great Spleen’s own blood-barbarians. The ogre snorted two streams of snot from its flat nose in fury before snatching the pike from its steaming flesh. Archaon was already up and on the run, stepping swiftly through the demolished corpses the Great Spleen’s anchor had left behind, scooping up the pikes of retainers and the curved blades of Hundun sword clansmen. These came at the Blood God’s champion like a shower of steel. Pikes sailed through the air, swords whirled hilt over blade at the monster. The Great Spleen roared as it feverishly removed the weapons from its belly. With all of his might, Archaon launched a pike at the ogre’s head. The monster turned, just in time, allowing the pike to sink into its globed shoulder – the Great Spleen’s muscle and fat soaking up the entire head of the weapon. The creature bawled its pain. Archaon had not killed the ogre – as he had hoped to – but he had reminded the Blood God’s champion how to bleed and how to feel the agony of the flesh.

  Archaon closed on the beast. Snatching a pair of bone axes from the deck, the Chaos warrior took the Great Spleen barbarians to task. The savages were beside themselves. They had never seen their god-monster bleed. It was impossible. It was blasphemy. Like Archaon’s own, their weapons were roughly hewn from the bones of great beasts and sharpened to lethality. He hacked through the cultist barbarians, turning aside the savagery of their mindless attacks while ripping open bellies and the backs of skull
s. While surrounded by the painted wildmen, Archaon heard the sound of hooves on the deck behind him. He expected to find beastmen attacking from the rear. Instead he found a recently recruited Chaos warrior called Horakrux Hearteater, mounted on a steed liberated from the deck-stables and riding down on his new master. Archaon could feel the champion’s hunger for his end. Tearing a bone axe from a blood barbarian, Archaon hurled it at the rider but it glanced off the warrior’s shield. The warlord need not have bothered. The Great Spleen’s anchor passed straight through its own barbaric acolytes and smashed both horse and rider aside.

  Before Archaon knew what was happening, the anchor had come around again. He jumped and the horrific inevitability of the thing passed beneath his boots. Again the Great Spleen swung the anchor around. Archaon tried to jump again but the anchor hooked the dark templar by the heel and sent him tumbling across the deck. Archaon felt his plate buckle and crack as he bounced off the stone deck and through the flesh-canvas tents adorning it. He hammered through a warherd of beastmen like a cannonball before smashing into the horde of foetid warriors the beasts were fighting. He came to a sudden stop.

  Archaon’s landing was cushioned by the throng of warriors about him. He tried to shake the confusion from his head. He slipped his helmet off and to his surprise found a hand offered to him. Not an axe coming for his head or a dagger in the gut but a hand. He took it and found himself pulled to his feet amongst a group of armoured warriors. As he blinked the daze from his eye, Archaon came to realise that they looked very much like him. Their armour was rough and chitinous but similar in style and colouring. It was not unusual for warriors to honour champions and warlords so, but the figures were eerie in their similarity, to each other and to Archaon. As several turned he saw their cold and clammy faces. A face he had seen before. And not just in a looking glass or mirror. He was amongst Mother Fecundus’s maggot-men. Her birthed horrors. Her brood. The fruits of her sorcerous reproduction.