by Rob Sanders
Before the rotting wreck of Papa Gallows’s palace of suffering, the stonework squirming with monstrous maggots and larval daemons, Archaon and Jharkill the huntsman happened upon one of their escaped monstrosities. It was a predatory fusion of beasts standing over the carcass of some bloated fury it had snatched out of the sky. The stubs of its wings flapped with the pure joy of the kill, while its ragged mane and sabred jaws dripped with the blue-black ichor of the downed fury.
Archaon heard the creak of Jharkill’s tusk bow as the ogre hooked the string and the colossal shaft of the poison-smeared arrow with his atrophied limb, while heaving the bow away from his barrel chest. Archaon marvelled as the huntsman aimed up at the broiling sky and the distance from which the malformed ogre was attempting the shot. As Archaon watched the predator tear its daemonic prey apart, he recognised the beast. It was a manticore. It was Mange, the creature that had so effectively provided the havoc in Lord Agrammon’s menagerie that enabled Archaon’s escape. Archaon liked the idea of having such a savage creature as part of his host, but as he remembered the creature’s misery in the cage and soaked up the flesh-tearing abandon of the wild beast, he felt an intervention creep down one arm. The barbed blade of Archaon’s sickle sword came down to rest on the arrow shaft reaching out from the bow. Pushing on the arrow, Archaon motioned Jharkill’s bow down. The ogre wrapped the contorted ugliness of his face around a squint of confusion.
‘This one roams free,’ Archaon said. The decision hadn’t been prompted by sympathy or even a sense of loyalty born of the creature’s original sacrifice. It was dark whim. The same whim that warped the landscape about them. The same whim that had created the Chaos creature in the first place. Or at least that is what Archaon told himself. Jharkill grunted his understanding and unstrung his arrow before the huntsman stomped on in search of further targets.
Digging his heels into Dorghar, Archaon motioned the daemon steed on. With his horde of tribal half-breeds united behind the flayed flesh of his banner, a growing mob of abominate monstrosities and a cavalcade of beast-hauled wagons and bone-crafted siege engines trailing the colossal host, Archaon slaughtered his way through the lands and palaces of the infernal mighty.
At the Brass Citadel Archaon led his army to a bloodbath of a victory against Kruor’gor of the Brazen Horde – a greater daemon in the service of mighty Khorne. Forced to kill the daemon’s bloodletter battlehost to the very last infernal berserker, the assault on the Brass Citadel trapped Kruor’gor in his own palace. Archaon frustrated the Blood God’s abominate servant. Unusually for the Chaos warlord, he would not meet the Skulltaker in single combat. Pummelling the greater daemon with monstrous attacks from his own horde and siege fire from his bone engines of war, Archaon stoked the greater daemon’s bottomless ire to such a degree that the dread creature raged into the form of a hell-fed inferno: a titan of fury and flame. The Brass Citadel melted about the creature, drowning the great Kruor’gor in an insolent lake of liquid metal.
Before the cloud-piercing tower of the Roost, Archaon’s horde was set upon by the Cerulean Brood – a flock of savage Tzeentchian daemons whose colossal wings rode the currents of raw magical power bleeding from the polar portal and into the world. Skewering and snapping up beastfiends from the ground with their twisted, snaggle-toothed beaks, the daemons dropped egg-like orbs of dark and explosive enchantment on Archaon’s horde, the effect of each being whimsically different. Sometimes victims in the vicinity of the sorcerous orb’s impact would erupt in the blossoming horror of spawndom, while at others violaceous flames tore through the ranks of the half-breeds. Archaon himself would have succumbed to a heaven-plummeting orb that turned the ground at Dorghar’s feet into a tentacled maw of abyssal appetite, but the daemon steed’s reflexes were faster than the appendages shooting out for the stallion’s nightmare form.
While Archaon had his own winged monstrosities take to the sky and torch the feathered daemons, he charged a ghoulish giant of withered flesh, protruding bones and ancient animations laying its great, withered back against the foot of the Roost and toppling the Tzeentchian tower. Archaon let Ograx and his beastfiends do the rest, mobbing downed daemons and butchering the sorcerer infernals that worked the libraries of the Roost and fought with the cowardly craft of the witchbreed.
The Filth Fortress of Mortiphidus the Cankered slowed Archaon’s horde down considerably. The colossal rotting carcass of the Cankered One sat atop its fat, pyramidal palace like a throne. The booming laugh of the daemon was everywhere and sickened Archaon’s half-breeds to the bottom of their stomachs, producing in the creatures of the herd a phased biliousness and vomiting that did not make for ideal, vanguard warriors. Oozing, spilling, leaking and excreting from every orifice and stomach-gaping sore, the stinking essence of Mortiphidus made its way slowly down the palace tiers like lava from a volcano. Disease-ridden daemons bathed, played, splashed and frolicked in the seeping terrace shallows and rivers of rotten muck that proceeded from the great unclean daemon of Nurgle. The tiers seemed to indicate some kind of hierarchy, with infestations of miniature Cankered Ones evolving out of the rolling detritus.
Archaon’s bestial horde found fighting in the palace gardens – a sickly swamp that had grown up out of the faecal flood plain surrounding the fortress – all but impossible. Noxious gases rising from the rotting marsh asphyxiated, poisoned and infected Archaon’s half-breeds in equal measure, those returning from Mortiphidus’s gardens carrying all manner of diseases and horrific afflictions. Others were overcome by the swarms of tiny, fat imps that rose from the swamp like bubbles in churning maelstroms of disgust.
Archaon and his Swords were forced to lead an attack on the Filth Fortress after successive assaults by Ograx the Great failed. In the sinking gardens at the foot of the palace – lost in a stunted forest of petrified fungi and the mind-splitting stench – Archaon was confronted with daemonic knights emerging from the depths. As the Chaos warlord and his horde pushed on, up to their waists in rancid muck, the swamp spewed forth long-lost warriors, clad in rust-encrusted armour that hundreds of years before might have seen the inside of some hellish forge. The knights advanced slowly in their bloat-bent plate and emitted a horrible, droning shriek.
As Archaon crashed his sickle sword through the infernal warriors and took encrusted helms from shoulders in showers of red particles, he was surprised to find no daemons inside. Instead, the rusted knights were writhing with maggots, fat on daemonflesh and black swarms of bloated infernal flies. It became suddenly clear where the droning shriek proceeded from as Archaon, his Swords of Chaos and beastfiends of the horde not only had to battle the enduring, sorcerous spirits of the daemonic knights but also a plague of flies intent on eating them alive. Between the haunted suits of hell-forged armour, the blood-sucking hurricane of flies and the swamp vomiting forth a never-ending garrison of rusted warriors, even Archaon ordered a retreat. Slurping back through the unbreathable stench, Archaon waded past the sinking bodies of blood-drained beastfiends sprouting the fruits of a fast-acting plague. Upon returning to his camp in an obsidian keep he had captured from a pantheon-honouring daemon prince, Archaon only had two words for his horde.
‘Burn it…’
Wielding bone torches taken from serpent-lit bonfires of plague-ridden bodies, Archaon’s half-breeds spread out about the Filth Fortress and its gardens. They didn’t have to advance far before marsh gases from the rising rot – the same gases that had made it almost impossible to breath – spectacularly caught light. From the obsidian keep, Archaon watched as the oily discharge floating on the swamp surface spread the inferno through the gardens and fungal forest, before spreading through the tiers of the palace, up the rivers of rich muck and putrefaction. Archaon soaked up the suffering as the fires spread through the army of daemon followers flailing and screaming on the pyramidal palace terraces. Finally the flames spread to Mortiphidus itself, the colossal carcass of the great unclean beast giving the fires plenty
of fuel. The flame writhed up about the great daemon of Nurgle. Lighting up the sky, the monstrosity’s booming laughter still filled the air – riding on the crackle and hiss of the daemon’s roasting rot. It was still there hours later, making his half-breeds feel sick, as Archaon ordered the horde on from the obsidian keep.
The further Archaon’s army pushed into the Gateland interior, the more insanity they encountered. Warped daemonic furies swarmed through the cloudless blackness of a sky in which the moiling heavens had been burned dry by the elation roaring up through the collapse of the mighty Chaos gate. The creatures circled endlessly about the blaze of otherworldly energies spewing into the world. The spaces between the palaces grew tighter, making moving the horde, its accompanying monsters and the cavalcade of wagons and siege engines difficult. The fortress walls of the infernal palaces grew taller and grander in their obscene veneration of the Ruinous Powers. Colossal, crafted symbols reached into the silent madness of the skies, casting shadows down on enemy courtyards, honouring the most powerful of Chaos gods, as well as pantheon-praising eight-point stars of ruin and the rarer sigils of lesser known powers and daemon princes.
Archaon and his army found continual slaughter and butchery in the killing fields and thoroughfares that twisted between vaulting palaces, monstrous citadels and smoking fortress ruins. Bones crunched beneath boots everywhere they went, like an ivory gravel squelching in a bloody mire. Corpses swung from the razored crenellations of walls. Body parts and horned heads sat on forests of decorative spikes. Thoroughfares, that were almost rivers of gore, dammed by corpse walls and massacres.
Fighting his way over the concentric, polygonal walls of a star-shaped fort that through its eight-point layout revered the glory of the Ruinous Powers united, Archaon and his monstrous mob of mongrels laid siege to Kastaghar the Adulant. Kastaghar was a newly ascended prince, worshipped by daemonic disciples who were worshipped by other infernal creatures who, in turn, were worshipped by hundreds of other hell-born servants. The daemons of the Adulant indulged a monastic existence and lived as masons, castle custodians and worshippers of their fellow dark kindred, with only the dread Kastaghar allowed to venerate the gods of Chaos directly. With their pallid daemonflesh, and dressed identically in their midnight skull helms, black foil skirts, urchin-spiked pauldrons and hook-knuckled gauntlets, the dark brotherhood of the Adulant left their scarred chests and backs on show. Archaon found the fraternity to be staid and disciplined warriors, holding their fort and their own against the wild butchery of his half-breeds.
Face to face, Archaon found Kastaghar to be much like himself. The Chaos gods had been subtle in their gifts, with neither the warlord nor the daemon prince monstrous in appearance. They were intelligent, potent warriors who, unlike many savage creatures of Chaos, were not without dark humour or civility.
Even the multiple walls of the black fort could not stand up to the decimation wreaked upon their stone surfaces by Archaon’s abominates. Giants and monsters smashed through, allowing Ograx and his beastfiends to flood the fort. Archaon was impressed with the reverence and discipline of Kastaghar’s brotherhood, each daemonic acolyte fighting expertly for the leading disciple they worshipped. Though Archaon’s losses were grievous, the brotherhood were simply driven back before the deluge of horn and muscle that streamed in through the fort wall breeches.
Even as the Adulant and Archaon circled one another within the star-shaped walls of the inner temple ward, the pair shared some dark pleasantries.
‘What happened to your arm?’ Kastaghar asked.
Archaon saw no point in lying. His right arm was strapped across his chest.
‘It’s broken,’ the warlord said, ‘so I will be destroying you with my left today. Forgive me – I hope you are not insulted.’
‘On the contrary,’ the Adulant said. ‘In conscience, I cannot kill a warrior sporting such an injury.’ Kastaghar stretched the pale flesh of his brawny neck from side to side before straining his back and bare chest. His face was handsome for an infernal prince but screwed up with exertion and sickening pain. Finally something popped horribly in his chest and his right arm fell uselessly by his side. Archaon found that he had laughed, his mirth echoing about the walls of the fort. Kastaghar the Adulant had dislocated his shoulder for the battle.
‘Now we can both fight with honour,’ he told Archaon. A member of the brotherhood threw his master a staff bearing leaf-shaped blades of black on both ends. Kastaghar twirled the weapon expertly in the fingers of his left hand for show. Archaon nodded.
‘I find honour overrated, dark prince,’ Archaon told him. ‘But I thank you for both the gesture and the amusement I did not think to find in this place.’
‘Perhaps I can entertain you further with a wager?’
‘I like you, prince,’ Archaon told him. It was refreshing to find a creature of regard and wit in the mindless violence and horror of the Southern Wastes. ‘What do you have in mind?’
‘A trial by blade, of course,’ Kastaghar said.
‘What else?’ Archaon agreed. ‘This is the Gatelands – the Dark Gods are watching.’
Now it was the Adulant’s turn to laugh.
‘I like you too, interloper,’ Kastaghar said. ‘Despite what you have done to the walls of my temple, a temple to honour all Dark Gods. You think little of honour, but you could have had your monsters level this unhallowed place and yet you have not. Your creatures met my brotherhood blade to blade – as you have met me.’
‘Is there a point coming soon?’ Archaon teased.
‘Indeed, my dark brother,’ Kastaghar said, laughing once more. ‘Single combat: you and I – no champions. If I succeed in offering your soul to our gods, then your champion shall lead your host from this unholy place and leave my brotherhood to continue in their dark prayers.’
‘You care for these underling wretches?’ Archaon marvelled.
‘I care for their devotions,’ the daemon prince told him, ‘and the devotions they will inspire in others. For without such dread faith and the spreading of dark truths, the Ruinous Powers would be no more.’
‘I see your point,’ Archaon said, once more smiling beneath his helm. He imagined himself riding through a world of cinder and bone, with no one left to worship gods dark or otherwise. He imagined the faith-starved gods of Chaos, their emaciate energies sustained only by the atrocities of one fell warrior: Archaon, Lord of the End Times. Everchosen of Chaos. Destroyer of the Dark Gods. In the glorious taking of his own life – the last mortal to walk the apocalyptic ruin of the world – he would snuff out the dread Powers like guttering candles in the breeze. He would need more than bestial savages and monsters to achieve such a feat. Perhaps it was plain perversity. Perhaps he truly had come to like the dark prince – but in that moment Archaon decided not to kill Kastaghar the Adulant.
‘I counter your offer,’ Archaon said, drawing the barbed blade of his sickle sword. ‘First blood settles the victor. If the blood is mine, you keep your fortress-temple and the creatures who would carry out their devotions within it.’
‘And if the blood is mine, interloper?’ Kastaghar said.
‘Then you abandon this damned place,’ Archaon said.
‘To you?’ the Adulant asked.
‘To the elements,’ Archaon told him, ‘unnatural though they may be. You and your brotherhood join me and my horde. You can bring your devotions with you. I could once more use a man of faith at my side.’
Kastaghar the Adulant cast a gaze across the ranks of his surviving brotherhood, corralled as they were by Archaon’s horde, within the walls of the inner temple ward.
‘I choose life over death,’ the dark prince announced, walking forth. ‘Belief over oblivion. A brother’s love over loss. Let’s fight.’
Kastaghar came forth with his bladed spear, turning it with his wrist. Archaon tapped the cracked, black stone of the temple ward with the toothed t
ip of his sickle sword and advanced to meet the daemon prince. Kastaghar’s spear spun at Archaon with sudden speed and savagery, the rotating blades threatening to cut the warlord in two. Archaon side-stepped the display, but Kastaghar countered immediately by spinning the spear before him like a wheel. Archaon used his sickle sword to turn the weapon aside. Then again. And again. The rotating blur of the spear stopped suddenly and became a thrusting menace, stabbing forth with murderous force and discipline. Archaon lurched back, swiping the spear-point from its path towards his chest, his groin and his skull faceplate.
Archaon was impressed with the dark prince’s technique. He seemed fluid and graceful, backed up by infernal strength and fearlessness. The weapon too was a lightweight thing of craft and killing ability. Even in Kastaghar’s left hand, the dark prince turned it, back-slashed and jabbed with it as though it were barely there. Its twin blades were leaf-shaped and equal to the tasks of cutting with their curved edge or piercing with their black points. The brotherhood had gathered around to show their support. They prayed for their master and sported further weaponry for him in the event that his spear should fail. As Archaon whipped about, turned and smashed the relentless spin of the spear he saw the blur of his own gathered half-breeds, who were roaring, snorting and calling thick-tongued obscenities, insults and threats at Kastaghar.
He saw Ograx the Great bellowing his fury, great streams of drool whipping from his shaking jaws. The Swords of Chaos waited obediently as part of the forming circle, anticipating further orders. Ready with hands on the hilts of bone swords, ready to be pulled from the sheaths of folded wings. Khezula Sheerian watched nearby, an almost perpetual concern etched into the ancient’s features. Then – with great surprise – he saw the misshapen Vier, standing with Giselle. The girl had left the solitude of her wagon and furs. She had walked through the wreckage of the fortress walls and had joined the circle to watch Archaon fight. Her face was a sour void of blank disappointment.
