Archaon: Lord of Chaos

by Rob Sanders

  Having unbalanced the beast, Archaon ran back towards his Sigmarite blade. He skidded down through the grit and fragments of stone, his gauntlet reaching the hilt of the buried blade. Tearing it from its scabbard of stone, Archaon pushed himself up and flew back at the injured Be’lakor. The Chaos warrior was bursting with hope against dark hope; a need for the daemon prince’s pain and fury to anchor him in reality. For the monster’s appetite for revenge to keep him where Archaon could kill him. Perhaps, the Chaos warrior hoped, some choice words would keep the fires of Be’lakor’s fury burning bright.

  ‘You will not destroy me!’ Archaon roared at his father-in-shadow. ‘You need me…’ He spat as his rabid steps took him surging through the demolished architecture of the chamber – on towards the twisted creature that was the bane of his molested existence. ‘I, however, have no need for you!’

  Indeed, the Chaos warrior had stoked the fires of his father’s daemonic fury. More than he could know – for seconds later the colossal shadow sword passed straight through him in a murderous arc of darkness and gore. The armour of the Everchosen remained untouched by the blade that had simply solidified as it had cut Archaon in two within his plate. The Chaos warrior’s legs took two more stumbling steps before collapsing beneath him. In a cacophonous clatter, Archaon reached the floor, coming to a stop on his side. With his final, dust-choked breaths he watched the hulking abomination that was Be’lakor tower over him, the muscular black flesh of his chest rising and falling with effort and a father’s regret.

  You think you are the first?

  Blood of my infernal blood? Flesh of my damned flesh? You think you are the first fool to challenge me? I was slaughtering turncoats and traitors at the dawn of time, you miserable cur.

  I am Be’lakor. First of the daemon princes. A monster given form before histories were written and the degenerate races of this world came to know their capabilities. I was a warlord like no other. Primitive. Powerful. Pure of dark purpose. Before your rat-warren cities and delusions of civilisation. Before your mongrel God-King and the fall of his hammer, the tribes of men looked to the greatest of their mortal kind to lead them. To unite the barbarian and the savage. To conquer. To kill. To create.

  The degenerate legions of man were spoiling fruit in my claw. They erected great monuments to my majesty – primitive stone structures of insanity and slavish ambition. With numbers beyond counting, the base and bloodthirsty rallied to my banners of flayed skin. They butchered their own in my honour – the weak of mind, of faith and flesh – and brought death and destruction to the lesser races.

  Those that hid in the great forests of the world, those that took to the depths and those who thought themselves safe in far lands beyond broad oceans. The world was mine – as it will be again. Under my leadership – nay, my sponsorship – champions rose from the raging deluge of barbaric butchery that was my horde. Swine like you, Archaon of the North. Living weapons I honed to a razor’s edge. Minds to which I had introduced pride, belief and ambition. Men of traitorous heart, in whose veins treachery ran free.

  Some say this was my own doing. My mistake alone. That I had underestimated how deep the rot ran in men’s souls. That with my dark example, I had inspired a generation of chieftains and champions. Dread warriors of growing skill, supremacy and influence, who came to be known to the gods.

  Those that know better lay blame at the feet of the Changer of Ways. The foetid god, Tzeentch, all supreme in his understanding of the world, its people and princes. Patron of the ascended. Plague of the prideful.

  The horror of mortal hope and fear. It was from him that such aspirant warlords and warriors learned of their power. From him they learned the arts of conspiracy and how to catch the eye of a god. Tzeentch, the betrayer. Tzeentch, the great wheel of the world that turns. Tzeentch, the bane of all existence – but one of many. Tzeentch, the doom of Be’lakor.

  He saw the Dark Pantheon’s faith diluted. Their trust spread between my dark champions and chieftains of their individual choosing. Soon I was a prince among many. The first among equals. I hunted down and slaughtered those that had betrayed me or intended to do so. Their appetite for power rivalled my own. So many hungered for a dominion of their own. So many followed such fools into oblivion. I was abandoned by my hordes. Robbed of my gifts. Drained of the power fed by our dread faith.

  I see the same in you, Archaon of the North, as I see the Great Changer’s hand in this. His poison drips from your ear. His lies guide your hand and the blade within it. Archaon – blood of my infernal blood, flesh of my damned flesh, living legend of my dark craft – you will not be the Great Changer’s puppet. You will not be the double edged sword that wounds he who wields it. You will be Archaon, Everchosen of Chaos – blood of Be’lakor’s blood and flesh of Be’lakor’s flesh – or you will be destroyed. Destroyed. A thousand times, destroyed.

  Chapter V

  ‘To swords, shields and armour blind,

  Foes to forever darkness consigned.’

  – Inscription, The Blade of Shadows

  The Forsaken Fortress

  The Southern Wastes

  Horns Harrowing: Season of the Raw

  The daemon prince hobbled back through the demolished wall, snorting its otherworldly agony from the flaring slits of its nostrils. Archaon got up from the ground. Slow. Confident. He had wounded the monstrous beast. His father-in-shadow, who had come to know pain at his hand. Archaon scooped up the wretched, black claw from the marble floor. Ichor dribbled from its cleaved root. It was a foul thing to hold. A razor-sharp thing of daemonic dread, sharpened on the souls of the faithless to a searing point. It drizzled darkness into the air. Archaon slipped it into his belt like a prize.

  ‘They say daemons are more than the sum of their parts,’ Archaon scorned. ‘We shall see. I’ll take you piece by piece if necessary.’

  You will know no peace, shadow-son of mine. Not so long as I live, Be’lakor told him.

  Archaon pulled Terminus from a mound of rubble and blew dust from its blessed blade.

  ‘Let’s see if we can do something about that,’ the Chaos warrior told him.

  Archaon advanced. Daemon and warrior circled one another. Be’lakor hobbled. The Dark Master worked his bruised jaw and gashed lip. Ichor dribbled down the eight-pointed star carved into the flesh of his chest. Archaon watched for a weakness. An opportunity. The daemon did the same. The shattered shield rattled ever so slightly in the warrior’s grasp, as though it were an effort to hold up. He bent slightly over to one side, protecting an internal affliction.

  Then it happened. Like a crack of lightning or a peel of thunder, father and son were locked in savage combat of the most desperate and merciless kind. Blades clashed in the darkness of the palace. Archaon and the daemon prince moved back and forth through the flowing chambers, sable sparks showered about them as the Sigmarite sword and shadow blade sang horribly off one another. Terminus was a thing of hallowed beauty. Anathema to the foetid things of the Wastes. Its steel was cold certainty whose weight could be felt in the hand and whose keen edge could be felt passing through the flesh. Be’lakor’s sword of shadow was an unearthly weapon of notched darkness that raged in and out of reality at its wielder’s whim. It smashed the blessed burn of the Sigmarite sword aside and blazed shadow through the air, threatening to cleave the Chaos warrior in half. It mauled Archaon’s shield and knocked the warrior skidding across chambers. In the daemon prince’s grip its colossal length was a swirling and black storm of impending doom, the shadow of death mere seconds away.

  Gritting his teeth and with rivulets of effort working their way down his face within the mugginess of his helm, Archaon began to feel the rhythm of his opponent’s manoeuvres. He got a sense for the daemon’s movements. The predictability even of its unpredictability. The tireless sweeps of the massive sword that carved up stone and demolished architecture, searing back at the Chaos warrior just that litt
le bit faster before some feigning strike or new movement. The twitch of its wings before it lunged the great blade at him. Even the horrific blade seemed to have a pattern. A time to cut down through reality with all the weight and sundering inevitability Be’lakor could bring to bear. A time to bleed away to nothing like oil on water, allowing Terminus to pass straight through. Clash by titanic clash, Archaon tried to learn his father-in-shadow’s preferences, the diabolical tells that gave away his intentions and the style of the daemon’s death-dealing bladework, all the while, moments from the shadow blade’s decapitating path. Be’lakor clearly knew a thousand ways to kill a man but, like all warriors, favoured a certain approach. For the daemon, the length of his cursed blade was the fury of a black tempest to be visited upon its opponent. A savage style learned at the beginning of time that had remained with the daemon prince from the murderous dawn of the world. The massive blade was something to be swung with force and unrelenting devastation at a foe until the daemon’s opponent lay in bludgeoned pieces scattered about the monster.

  Archaon pressed the creature. Chopping. Stabbing. Countering with savagery and brute bladework. Hair’s breadth evasions snapped back into furious lunges. Sparking deflections with the mauled shield rolled into pivoting slashes, the desperation of parries carried through into bellowing ripostes. Archaon drew on every murderous instinct: the technical excellence of his templar training, the exotic elegance of Hung swordsmanship and the barbarian bludgeonry of bestial slaughter. He threw all at the daemon prince, exploiting every weakness and forcing the monster into the unfamiliarity of defensive manoeuvres. Archaon’s muscles ached with the relentless speed and power of his attacks while his mind seared with the split-second strategies of the choreographed assault. About the pair, the flowing chambers of the Forsaken Fortress lay in blade smashed ruin. The daemon prince’s infernal weapon had carved a path of destruction through the midnight stone of the palace, leaving rubble, smashed balustrades and derelict stairwells in his ferocious wake. All the while, Archaon was pushed back through the chambers by the blade’s black fury and the storm of shattered stone unfolding before him.

  An inventive combination of hacks, slashes and shield-battering took the Chaos warrior within the shadow blade’s arc of streaming darkness. Archaon felt his father-in-shadow’s sudden caution. The conservative urgency of his movements. The great black blade was a poor weapon for close work and while Terminus was by no means a small sword, it gave Archaon the advantage in tight quarters. The shadow sword worked back and forth to turn aside the templar blade’s onslaught. Several times in the manic blur of the battle, the sacred steel of the Sigmarite blade almost grazed the daemon prince’s royal flesh. Be’lakor roared at even the suggestion of such success, and within moments Archaon and the monster were locked crossguard to crossguard. Between the thwarted blades father and son leaned in. The daemon prince roared the gargoylesque horror of his face while the muffled thunder of Archaon’s bellowing rage came back through the leering skull of his faceplate.

  ‘No…’ Be’lakor hissed and heaved the Chaos warrior back. The blades parted and Archaon skidded back through the grit on the marble floor. As he did so, his arms came out with sword and shield to retain his balance. Be’lakor was suddenly in the air, the prince’s wings outstretched and his colossal blade bleeding darkness down towards Archaon. The Chaos warrior felt the blade’s terrible presence rip down through flesh, muscle and bone. Solidifying to a cleaving edge, the weapon had cut down through Archaon’s sword arm and passed with ghostly insistence back out through the unhallowed armour of the Everchosen. The shadow blade was real once more as it hacked straight down into the marble to the side of Archaon’s boot. Terminus fell from his non-existent grip and rang mournfully as it hit the marble. Heaving the shadow sword free of the cleft it had created in the stone, Be’lakor backed away, scraping the black tip of the sword along the floor with him.

  Archaon stumbled back. He could taste blood and bile in the back of his throat. Time seemed to slow as shock wrestled for control of his senses. His arm had been sheared from his body at the shoulder. The dead weight of a limb hung uselessly in the plate, the armour down one side of his body dribbling with the blood gushing within. Archaon could imagine the stricken horror of his face and for a moment that became all he could think about. As his ruined shield dropped from his other arm and clattered noisily to the floor, the Chaos warrior shuffled around. He bent down with horrible difficulty, scraping at the floor with the armoured digits of his gauntlet as he tried to pick up the sword in the other hand. Turning, Archaon presented himself. He would fight on for as long as he could.

  Through the eye slits of his helm he found only Be’lakor’s back. The daemon prince was leaving the destruction of his ruined palace. His thunderous steps took him through the mounds of rubble, the collapsed walls and past the demolished pillars. Archaon tried to get his taut lips around a challenge. He shook the templar blade and stood in a growing pool of his own blood. Be’lakor did not turn, however. He merely brought the bleak darkness of his massive blade up and chopped through the last of the thick marble pillars holding up the ceiling and the palace floor above. Archaon watched his father-in-shadow disappear as the creaking stonework gave and thousands of tonnes of crafted stone descended. Crushed. Pulverised. Broken like a child’s doll. Archaon waited for death. With the harsh rumble of collapsing architecture all around, the Chaos warrior did not have to wait lo–

  There is no life for you, my son-in-shadow. No existence to call your own. No flicker of hope, like the flame of a guttering candle before a storm. I brought you into wretched existence. Your flesh is mine to do with as I will. To desecrate with claw, steel or flame, if I choose. To extinguish or exalt. You can be Archaon of the North. A doom of my creation. Kill. Raze. Destroy. All in the name of shadow. Enjoy the power I have given you. Relish the corporal delights of the flesh while it is still yours. Blood. Greed. Lust. Women to carry new life. Men to suffer at your command. Men to die at your hand. Collect the dark treasures of our calling. Inspire the strong to fight at our side – for only they are worthy of the End Times to come. Thin our ranks of the weak and undeserving – let your wrath be their judge. Swell the horde and the bellies of harlots with our future. Sons on a dark path, champions in the making, loyal lieutenants to fight at my side.

  There are others. There will always be others. Sons whose hearts beat beneath my rising star. Ruinous champions of our purpose if not our blood. They will see this done if you will not, shadow-son of mine. On with your dark quest. North, Archaon. North. The Southern Wastes have given up their treasures. For the last two – the two that will mark you as the Everchosen of the Chaos gods and Lord of the End Times to come – you must return to the top of the world. Hear me, son of shadow. Let my words be remembered. Let them guide your black heart. Let them stay with your sorry soul. To return to the top of the world you must walk in the shadow of the gods themselves, along a path with no bearing that winds through a world beyond your own. It is a mad man’s path and you would have to be insane to take it – but take it you must.

  The End Times are coming and we are their Harbinger. Go up by going down… out by going in… north by going south. As far south as south will go. There you will find the gateway to our darkest dreams. Whatever is left of you, Archaon, shall pass through a north no mortal man has known. Beyond that is the north that tempered your Ruinous flesh and beyond that the north that will be no more. There you will find what you seek and in doing so you will realise both our destinies. You shall wear the Crown of Domination as I shall wear you. Your form shall become mine. Your soul will be but a dimming bauble in the howling darkness of your being. A memory of our time together. No man nor god shall stop me. The legions of hell shall answer to my call and the world will be mine to destroy once again. This you will do for me, Archaon of the North, for you have… no… choice.

  Chapter V

  ‘A wise man knows that he cannot escape his shadow.
It is the stain he leaves on the world and it follows him everywhere. It was there at his birth and will be with him until his last breath. When a man changes, so does his shadow. It grows with him and expands to reflect the darkness of his presence. A shadow knows no fear. It cannot be reasoned with. It simply is. A wise man also knows that the only way to escape his shadow is to cast none in the first place – but to do that, a man must truly fall from the light.’

  – Al-Malik Abyssyn, The Book of Shadows

  The Forsaken Fortress

  The Southern Wastes

  Horns Harrowing: Season of the Raw

  …choice.

  Choice?

  ‘There is always a choice,’ Archaon told the daemon prince before leaping at him. Terminus came down with righteous force, its sacred steel sizzling in the doomed darkness of the palace. Be’lakor turned the attack aside with an arc of raging shadow. Archaon hit the marble and rolled the rest of his momentum away, the soles of his boots the beat of a gnat’s wings beneath a furious backslash of the shadow sword. Up right away, Archaon feinted and then feinted again, forcing the daemon to place the colossal length of the sword where he needed it. The creature was supernaturally swift for a monstrosity of his size, and brought the heavy blade back with the whipping insistence of a rapier. Archaon skewered, slashed and batted his way through Be’lakor’s defences, forcing the beast back through an archway not quite tall enough to admit the monster’s dimensions. As marble and rock dust rained down between them, Archaon dashed for an adjacent arch, skidding his way through before resuming the relentless clash of blades that filled the halls of the Forsaken Fortress.

  Archaon’s body burned with a desire to stop, for an end to the mind-numbing combinations and the muscle-tearing efforts to strike the monstrous daemon. As the pair moved through the collapsing stairwells, sword-smashed balconies and toppling walls, the hatred between them crackled. Their moves became bolder, the arcs grew wider and the force with which cleaving blows landed, ever more devastating. The chambers of the palace were benighted no more. The darklight of black sparks rained from the ringing blades. Father-in-shadow. Son, the doom of all. Archaon roared his need to end this abomination. Be’lakor roared the frustration of a daemon will thwarted.