by Rob Sanders
Archaon noticed his cage wagon with the broken bar. Watching the daemonettes snap their claws and crack their barbed whips at the trumpeting beastfiends, Archaon dropped down onto the gravel. Keeping cages and their monstrous occupants between him and Lord Agrammon’s watch-daemons, Archaon sprinted towards the wagon and grabbed the axle, skidding down between the curved bone of the wheels. Allowing the vehicle to crunch overhead, the Chaos warrior slipped his shield and the templar blade Terminus out from the crude workings of the ribs and sinew of the wagon underside.
Rolling aside before the wagons of the next train rumbled forth, Archaon slipped the blessed blade of Sigmar into its back-scabbard and loosened the buckles on the weighty shield, sitting the eight-pointed star over one shoulder like a dark penance. He ran at the cageside of the opposite enclosures, the impact and rattling ascent disturbing the slumber of some three-headed brute and rousing the restrained savagery of a chimeric nightmare overhead. As he hauled himself atop the cages he set a flock of blood-sucking imps to whirling about their foetid enclosure in a maelstrom of wing and screeching ugliness.
This process the Chaos warrior repeated: climbing cages, dropping into the concentric spiral of gravel thoroughfares and crossing the keeper-haunted pathways unseen. He did this in the spiked shadow of the citadel, thrown across the stinking menagerie of the daemon lord by the bright hellshine of the great Southern Gate – working his way ever inwards, through the hoarded misery that was Agrammon’s ever-unfinished collection of exotic monstrosity. There the daemon lord kept his most prized exhibits.
Chapter IV
‘Today we sighted land. A frozen coast of darkness and storm. The horizon burned with eruption and hellfire. On the wind we heard the sounds of suffering and rage. The crew were unsettled and I came to know how my ambitions had damned us all. To the glad hearts of all on board I ordered prayers said and sails set for the safety of the north. This cursed land is no place for god-fearing men. I know that now.’
– Rodrigo de Velasca, captain’s log, The Plutón (lost)
The Gatelands
The Southern Wastes
Horns Harrowing: Season of the Raw
From the cagetops of the inner thoroughfare and the curving promenade of the tower-approach, Archaon saw the twisted enclosures of barb and bar built up around the black-brick exterior wall of the citadel. In the cages he saw some of Agrammon’s most prized specimens. Great daemons tethered to the tower wall with gargantuan chains of silver sat in an eternity of misery on floor-carved wards and bindings. Spawn of exquisite grotesqueness and warp-sculpted grandeur. Monsters of every size and shape – crafted of nightmare, savagery and world-withering hate.
The enclosures about the citadel were guarded by a small army of daemonettes. The creatures’ black leather armour was sewn into their obscene flesh with razored wire. Their pincers constantly clicked and snapped, while filthy locks of midnight hair danced entrancingly about the depravity of their bodies in braids, tails and blankets of black. Their faces alternated between horrific masks of needle-toothed glee and ghoulish, shrieking displeasure as they slashed the black stone of the promenade with whips and jabbed their sickle-spears through the bars of enclosures.
As Archaon worked his way across the cagetops unseen, ignoring the suffering, rancour and pleading from below, he looked for his prize. The fourth treasure of Chaos that deviant destiny had seen fit to hide in such a benighted place. Dorghar, daemonic Steed of the Apocalypse. He could not see the monster, however. In the enclosure opposite was a gargantuan thing. A giant. A colossal savage long dead, its mummified flesh and brown bones sat wrapped in shredded furs and tattered skins. Its skull was a massive horned horror of empty sockets and tombstone teeth and its towering spine curved into a malformed hunch. The corpse giant sat in the enclosure, barely a fit for the twisted cage, in unliving despair and deathly stillness. Through the tatters of its clothing and the ribs of its barrel chest, Archaon could see the green curselight of sorcery that allowed the long-rotten twisted colossus to live beyond the grave.
Further around Archaon saw a great bird of fiery purple feather and strange flame that writhed about its body like a living hell. The cage floor was carpeted in the ash of plucked feathers as the demented bird half pecked itself to death in its miserable captivity, only to rise again. In the vivid inferno about the dark phoenix Archaon could see the torched souls of the great bird’s victims thrashing in torment and reaching out for bars of the cage.
A shovel-nosed dragon was curled up in the next cage, its armoured skin a nest of crystalline shards instead of scales. The tips were blackened with old blood and scraps of flesh where the creature had sidled past its last shredded victim. The creature trembled with some kind of affliction or distemper, making its razor-sharp shards rattle like glass against one another, creating a haunting cacophony.
Beyond the dragon was a brute of a monster, its armoured hide stained red with the slaughter it perpetually sought. Its head was a horn-crested nightmare within which snapped a crowded maw of fang and ferocity. A multitude of false eyes peered out from the abomination as its tree-trunk arms and the mountain of muscle that was its torso tore at its chains. Even wearing Jharkill’s crude enchantments, the slaughterbrute seemed in a constant state of murderous agitation.
Then he saw it. In the enclosure next to the blood-drenched beast was a maelstrom of black and spectral flame. A furious miasma whose searing blaze and silky shadow could not settle on one midnight form or another. One moment it was a thing of slithering menace, the next a chitinous midnight horror. Its darknid form swirled from one shape to the next. A thing of leathery wings and serrated maw. An extravagantly horned head on a wall of steaming muscle. A monstrous pig of twisted tusk and hunched back. A blubbery creature of flipper and shaggy mane. A tentacular beast of bulbous head and innumerable eyes. A dark, reptilian monster of snapping jaws, powerful legs and whipping tail. A chimeric fusion of predators and their prey.
Looking this way and that, Archaon dropped down from the cage and rolled through the grit. His appearance in the thoroughfare drew a raucous response from the miserable beasts in the surrounding cages. Above Archaon, the citadel – spined like a great towering urchin reaching for the churning vortex of cloud and darkness above – blacked out the sickening glare spewing from the Southern Gate. Despite the welcome darkness, the Chaos warrior felt exposed. Lord Agrammon’s prize beasts were roaring, moaning and screeching to the dread heavens and Archaon knew that the monstrosities guarding such wonders could see as well in the darkness as the Chaos warrior could see in the day – not that Archaon had seen the true light of day for a long time.
Thoroughfares beyond, he could hear Mange taking his revenge on such wretched custodians. Daemonettes squealed both their agony and joy as the monstrous manticore savaged them. Beastfiends trumpeted their alarm, calling more infernal sentries down on the escaped beast. Mange was not the only flesh-hungry predator bounding down on them on all fours, snarling heads from slender shoulders. Archaon pictured him rearing up like the beastfiends who sat about him in pieces. He could hear the manticore liberate other lethal monstrosities from cage and curse, adding their unleashed fury to his own.
Padding across the thoroughfare with the light crunch of a thief, Archaon walked past the twisted enclosures of Agrammon’s most prized and deviant wonders. Stopping before the daemonic darkness that raged in ever-changing torment and flame, Archaon knew that he had found his prize. The fourth treasure of Chaos. Dorghar, Steed of the Apocalypse. Doomed to wretched captivity here, at the bottom of the world, kept at the pleasure of a hoarding daemon lord.
With the Chaos warrior standing before the enclosure gate, the swirling transformations seemed to slow. The fire and shadow drifted to a stop. The beast was a miasma of black that watched Archaon as an unbroken steed might the approach of a foolhardy rider. Archaon felt the daemon’s hate. He had no doubt it meant him harm. As shadow bled into shadow and the
darkness intensified, the creature settled on a form. Archaon stepped forward and gripped the warped bars of the enclosure gate. It was as though the infernal monstrosity had reached into his mind and selected its appearance from the foetid dungeon-depths of his memory. The darkness solidified into the shape of a huge, black stallion. A noble beast of glistening muscular flanks, shaggy hoof, midnight mane and tail.
‘Oberon,’ Archaon said with wonder. He remembered the black stallion of his youth. The horse that had served as his templar mount. The transformation was not complete, however. The flesh began to split with equine brawn, forming criss-cross scars that seemed to heal as fast as they formed. Spikes of sharpened bone erupted from black muscle and fur. As the creature snorted, its nostrils blazed with the fires of damnation, while what should have been a whinny was a howling, brain-aching roar of crackling, infernal fury. As the stallion closed its mouth and the glare of banelight faded, Archaon watched the black eyes of the beast flush to a Ruinous red.
‘Let’s do this,’ Archaon said with relish. He took an armoured saddle, spiked stirrups and bridle-harness from a twisted post by the gate and entered the enclosure. He approached the infernal steed slowly. The creature seemed to settle into its new form. It stamped and snorted short bursts of hellfire. Archaon lifted the heavy saddle onto the dread stallion’s back. Dorghar backed and bucked a little. Archaon held up a finger of his gauntlet as a warning. As the daemon shivered its caution and attempted to shake the saddle from its back, Archaon slapped the monster across its monstrous muzzle, causing the thing to flinch. It stamped back at him and got a savage backhand from Archaon’s armoured hand. Dorghar stomped on, lowering its nose. Fire-threaded drool dribbled from between its tombstone teeth. Its nostrils blazed. The steed brought the raging damnation of its eyes level with the slits of Archaon’s helm.
Dorghar moved forward, resting the flat of its head and the points of its muzzle-spikes against the Eye of Sheerian, and pushed at the Chaos warrior’s helm. Warlord and steed pushed against one another, until finally Archaon stumbled back. He allowed the beast the moment’s illusion that it had won the battle of wills before slipping the studded, spite-cured leather of the bridle over its thrusting head. As the Steed of the Apocalypse stamped and turned with animal fury, Archaon made swift work of belting both bridle and saddle to the monster’s furious form. Hauling the wicked bit up between the chisel-like blades of its teeth, Archaon rested the thick reins over the pommel of the armoured saddle. He came back to the front of the stallion and found Jharkill’s bone charms jangling before the creature’s chest on a string of sinew. Archaon knew that he had to tame the beast himself. He could not rely upon the beastmaster’s primitive enchantments.
‘Let’s see what you’ve got,’ Archaon told the steed as he tore the charm from the solidified shadow of the daemon. As he tossed the bone trinket away, Archaon might have expected some kind of bestial gratitude, as he had found in Mange’s cage. Dorghar had no intention of fulfilling such an expectation. It snorted smoke and glowing cinders at the Chaos warrior. Once. Twice. A third time. Within a blink, the monster came at Archaon.
It charged the Chaos warrior and slammed him into the twisted bars of the enclosure behind. By the time Archaon’s armoured body was smashed into the unnatural and unrelenting metal of the cage, Dorghar had changed form. The first time its head hit him it was a thick nest of spiked, skull-fused antlers. Archaon felt the full weight of the beast behind the charge and the spikes of the twisted antlers smash him into the cage side. With barely a moment to recover, the daemon steed came at him again, this time assuming the monstrous hammer-head of an unspeakable daemon that butted Archaon’s battered body back into the bars. Dragging himself up, the Chaos warlord found that Dorghar had changed yet again; now its head had assumed the armoured shape of some hellish juggernaut. It came at him again, and this time the infernal metal of its head struck Archaon on his faceplate and crunched him between the battering ram of the steed’s metal head and the warped bars beyond.
Archaon clawed blindly at the rivets and plates of the monster’s head. He held on as the creature retreated. Tearing its head upward, Dorghar sent Archaon’s armoured form into the barred roof of the enclosure. As Archaon found himself back on the floor of the cage in a demolished heap he spat blood at the inside of his helm. He pushed himself to his feet but found that Dorghar had morphed once more into a black, bovine monstrosity that kicked back at the Chaos warrior with its hooves. Archaon struck the wall of the enclosure once more with the force of daemonic ferocity. As he tried to pick himself up he found the nightmare form of the black stallion once more before him. Rearing. Roaring balefire. Cycling its spiked forelegs and shaggy hooves like a pugilist before smashing Archaon back into the ground with a savage kick. And another. And another.
Archaon’s world became the grit of the cage floor and the sense-smashing impact of hoof on helm. The Chaos warrior’s own fury got the better of him and, pushing himself up, he lurched at the beast. Launching himself at the stamping and hiss of steam from scorched nostrils, the Chaos warrior stumbled through the open door of the cage and into the black murk into which Dorghar had dissipated. The darkness suddenly became the whirlwind maelstrom of a storm. The blackness howled about Archaon like a cyclone, dragging the Chaos warrior into the air and catapulting him into the cage wall. As the storm the steed had become screamed darkness and flame about the enclosure, Archaon was tumbled along the barbed bars, pinned to the outside of the cage.
As the storm died to a shadowy whisper, Archaon brought his helm up off the floor. Dorghar had once again assumed the shape of the stallion – an infernal perversion of Oberon’s noble form. It scraped its hoof through the grit of the enclosure and snorted like a bull. Dragging his smashed body up off the floor, Archaon smacked his helm with a clutched metal fist in the hope that he might knock some sense into his skull. The steed suddenly tore away, spraying grit behind it. Archaon came unsteadily to his feet and slapped a gauntlet on the pommel of Terminus. It suddenly became apparent that the beast wasn’t coming for him. Like a streaking shadow it was thundering for the gate. Without the enslaving sorcery of Jharkill’s charms, the daemon steed wanted a taste of freedom. It would make short work of the enclosure gate.
Archaon knew he couldn’t allow the monster to escape. Instead of heading for Dorghar, the Chaos warrior turned and sprinted for the gate. Drawing Terminus, he turned the blade about in his gauntlet, grasping the weapon by its crossguard. As the infernal beast drew level, Archaon shouldered the steed from its step before smashing its head aside with the pommel of his Sigmarite sword. Slugging the monster with the grasped hilt of the greatsword, Archaon turned the beast enough to send them both crashing into the bars beside the gate.
Smashing the creature again with the pommel of the weapon, Archaon dropped the sword and grabbed Dorghar by its black tail. Dragging the dazed creature from the buckled bars, Archaon leant back into a swing and hurled the steed around and into the unforgiving metal at the other end of the enclosure. Dorghar stumbled away from the warped bars like a new-born foal, its legs unsteady. Shaking its head and snorting a brief burst of flame, the beast turned – the monster’s eyes were rageshot. Its hooves scraped the grit of the enclosure and it lowered the bone spikes on its head. Archaon scooped up Terminus. He knew what was coming.
Dorghar charged. The daemon was suddenly a blur. The streaking shadow came at the Chaos warrior. Archaon feinted one way with his great sword before side-stepping out of the steed’s rocketing path. Leaping, he grabbed for the pommel of the beast’s armoured saddle, allowing the creature’s momentum to carry him up onto its back. Archaon was no sooner in the saddle than the daemon steed blasted straight through the enclosure gate. Within the blink of an eye it had blazed across the thoroughfare, leaving a flickering trail of dark flame behind it. Archaon braced himself as the beast struck the cages opposite. He roared as the steed turned and slammed both its brawny side and Archaon’s armoured le
g into the twisted bars.
Desperately clawing at the reins and thrusting his boots into the stirrups, Archaon slapped the beast’s flank with the flat of his blade. The flesh of the beast seared and steamed on contact with the Sigmarite steel and the creature once again thundered off. Captive monsters hissed, spat and roared as Dorghar crashed along the side of the cages, dragging Archaon through the barbs and bars of the enclosures.
With Mange creating havoc in one section of the menagerie and Dorghar in the other, the attendant beastfiends and daemonette keepers were stretched. Between Jharkill’s barbarian enchantments and the mangled labyrinth of cages, there was little to demand the attention of Lord Agrammon’s servants, but this was something else. Monsters, mutants and daemons were howling in the cages while escaped exhibits tore infernal jailers to pieces and smashed their way to freedom.
Dragging itself away from the enclosures, Dorghar began to buck and kick with daemonic fury, snorting flame and roaring its infernal displeasure. Bouncing and sliding savagely in the saddle, Archaon dug in with his heels, hauled on the reins and slapped the beast’s flanks with the flat of Terminus.
Finally the monster settled and steamed but the Chaos warrior’s efforts had far from broken the beast. Both Archaon and the steed heard the crank of a twisted portcullis and the screeching call for weapons. As a spiked gate in the side of the citadel shot up into its stone frame like an opening maw, hordes of daemonettes spilled out of the tower and into the menagerie thoroughfares. They were monstrous shieldmaidens of obscene form. The creatures shrieked and squealed their delight as they raced out onto the thoroughfare with sickle-spears and spiked, black shields. Skulking between them were shaven beastfiends. The long-snouts were all sinew and scraps of leather and were battered between the bulks of the daemonettes as they trumpeted their alarm.
