by Rob Sanders
Such surprise almost cost Archaon as the spear seared down at him once more. Archaon turned around, allowing the toothed curvature of the sickle sword to glance round, absorbing the clash of the spearheads. Archaon whipped his cloak and furs about him but by the time he had turned, ready to wheel the sickle sword at Kastaghar, the dark prince was once again thrusting for him. Leaning out of a throat jabbing stroke, Archaon lurched immediately at Kastaghar. As the Adulant brought the spear in close, twirling it over his head and then about his twisting body, Archaon dived into a heavy roll beneath it. With his plate jangling about him, Archaon swept the barbed blade of the sickle sword through Kastaghar’s knees, but the dark prince had jumped up out of its path. As Archaon’s sickle sword came up, Kastaghar’s spinning spear smashed into the toothed weapon, tearing it from Archaon’s grip. Archaon grunted as the hell-forged weapon, inferior in weight and craftsmanship, skittered across the stone floor of the fortress-temple nearby.
Kastaghar seemed to hesitate. He brought the spear blade down with all the force his left arm could muster. Archaon wasn’t there by the time the blade sparked off the stone and was racing across the circle. Ducking beneath an opportunistic backslash of the spear, Archaon slid down onto his armoured side and snatched up the sickle sword as he skidded by across the smooth stone. Kastaghar was there almost immediately – the daemon prince not only moving with infernal grace and speed but also unencumbered by a full suit of plate. Again, Archaon felt the Adulant hesitate. This time Kastaghar didn’t thrust or spin his spear at all but waited honourably while Archaon got to his feet. The dark prince wouldn’t blood his opponent as he scrabbled about on his temple floor.
Shaking out his plate and turning the sickle sword in his own wrist, Archaon nodded his appreciation to the Adulant, who nodded back. The blistering attack that followed was nothing short of a sword storm, fuelled by Archaon’s scorched pride. Bringing the serrated blade back and forth, around and surging up in a curved, gut-punching thrust, Archaon followed with a rhythmic succession of hacks and slashes, each manoeuvre sending the lighter blade at Kastaghar with all the belligerent force his arm and inner turmoil could draw upon. Kastaghar’s defences were no less graceful than his attacks, using his twisting wrist and single arm to negate Archaon’s furious assault.
Clutching the spear shaft along his forearm to turn aside the cleaving motion of Archaon’s blade, the daemon prince twirled the spear around and about, the bladed ends clashing the sickle sword’s relentless attentions away. Archaon fought on. As the Chaos warlord lurched forward with attack after murderous attack, Kastaghar was forced to weave, retreat, flip back acrobatically and twirl the spear before him in a whirling circle of death. Archaon’s blade simply would not be stopped, however, and with a force that drew a roar from the warlord, Archaon chopped the spear in half.
Startled by the ferocity of the counter attack and the splintering crack of the spear, Kastaghar took several swift steps back. Archaon did not follow, however, allowing the daemon prince a moment to catch his breath. Dropping the demolished weapon, Kastaghar called for another and caught the chain of a flail that had been cast to him across the circle by one of the brotherhood. He clutched the handle and allowed the black chain of the flail to fall. Archaon could see that it sported a modest metal ball with eight spiked points, forming the shape of the Ruinous Star of their calling. Kastaghar nodded, returning his appreciation, before stepping forward.
As Archaon closed once more, moving about the dark prince, he worked the serrated blade around with slow turns of the wrist – like a scorpion ready to strike. Kastaghar had started to work his flail with his left hand, expertly sending the spiked ball about him, occasionally swinging the length of the weapon out at Archaon’s head or sword. The two warriors of Chaos seemed to have the same idea at the same time. Closing suddenly, Archaon’s serrated sword came up. Kastaghar’s flail shot out. There was the excruciating sound of metal being tangled as the teeth of Archaon’s sickle sword caught in the links of the black chain and both spiked ball and the curved edge of the serrated blade became a knotted mess.
Both Archaon and Kastaghar abandoned their weapons simultaneously, surging for one another with their gauntlets. The brotherhood and Archaon’s Swords stood by to throw their masters fresh weaponry, but the pair did not seem interested. Latching onto one another with their armoured fists, the warlord and the daemon prince dragged each other in close. As they did so, their helms almost clashed. With a grunt, and still holding his enemy close, Archaon brought up his leg and rested the sole of his boot on the Adulant’s chest. Archaon kicked Kastaghar away with such force that the dark prince went stumbling back at the ranks of Archaon’s own followers.
Then the warlord realised his mistake.
While Kastaghar had held Archaon with his gauntlets, he had snagged him with one of his knuckle-hooks, the sharpened point of one hook finding its way between the plates of his cursed armour and pinching at Archaon’s flesh. As Archaon kicked him away, he felt the hook tear away and the warmth of blood dribble down his chest. It was the most minor of wounds but the daemon prince had indeed drawn first blood on Archaon.
Archaon stood there and lowered his gauntlets, while Kastaghar tumbled through the inner ranks of the circle. He regained his balance at the edge of the ring, his chest rising and falling. He looked to Archaon. The dark prince knew that he had blooded Archaon but with the scratch hidden from view beneath the armour of Morkar, no one else but Archaon knew this to be the case. The two champions regarded one another. Archaon’s lips formed about a concession but then he saw Giselle. The girl was standing in the circle immediately behind Kastaghar. Archaon’s heart leapt at the danger the girl was in, standing so close to the Adulant with his clawed gauntlets – especially if Archaon failed to honour the wound the daemon prince had inflicted. Without a muscle on her face moving, Giselle reached to one side and pulled a bone dagger from a sheath in one of Vier’s broken wings. The misshapen Sword of Chaos was as surprised at the movement as Archaon and tried to reach for the girl’s arm, but failed. Grabbing the oblivious Kastaghar from behind, the girl drew the razored edge of the bone blade across the Adulant’s throat.
With a single slice, Archaon’s hope of assimilating Kastaghar and his brotherhood into the ranks of the horde died. They died with Kastaghar the Adulant himself. As the dark prince fell slowly to his knees and the bone blade tumbled from Giselle’s bloody red hand, the circle was silent. Kastaghar’s knees hit the floor of the fortress-temple before the daemon prince crashed face forward into the stone. Behind him, Giselle had a withering gaze of blank venom for Archaon before turning into the ranks of his horde.
Archaon knew he had to act fast. He bit back a snarl. Whether it was madness, some kind of petty revenge or some love-spawned hatred, it didn’t matter! The girl had cost him. There would be violence. The brotherhood would attack, intending to avenge their beloved master of the deadly gods in the world. Archaon’s own horde might tear Giselle to pieces in shocked fury, knowing that the girl defied their master, and her own, in such a cowardly action. Archaon raised an armoured finger and aimed it at the brotherhood who were beginning to break ranks with weapons and tears.
‘Destroy them!’ he roared.
Any enmity among the half-breed horde for Giselle evaporated as Ograx the Great and the vanguard of the bestial mob bellowed and ran at the acolytes of the fortress-temple. Within moments every beastfiend at Archaon’s command was surging through the demolished walls, intent on blood-eyed butchery. As Archaon stood unarmed in the centre of both the fortress and the havoc of battle, he watched Giselle walk away. Shadowed by an uncertain Vier, the girl left the inner ward and climbed up through the rubble of the smashed wall, intent on returning to her wagon. Archaon stood motionless as the massacre unfolded. The remaining brotherhood fought with skill, discipline and dark love for their fallen master – who had fought with the same himself – but they were no match for the unleashed sava
gery of Archaon’s barbarian horde.
With Eins, Zwei and Drei forming a triangle about him with their bone blades drawn, Archaon felt the death about him. Lifeblood gushed at the sky. Heads rolled across black stone. Soon the inner ward was puddled in red, with body parts, scraps of flesh and shredded armour littering the floor. Archaon looked at the purple blaze that roared up at the heavens from the breached polar portal, the dread radiance in which they were all bathed. A stone cold inferno that hid an open gateway to the gods. He turned to see Khezula Sheerian looking at him. The sorcerer’s face was unreadable but Archaon had no doubt that Sheerian’s twisted patron would have found the grim spectacle that had unfolded in the fort amusing.
Chapter IX
‘There is beyond this eternity another. An existence all of its own. It is dark as the mortal mind is dark, deep as the mortal heart is deep. This realm is sustained by the self. It is a spiritual plane made up of the thoughts and feelings, needs and beliefs of all the knowing races – the highborn and the low things that walk the world, with aims of it being their own. It gives back in the form of energies that leak into our world and are harnessed by the gifted in the form of magic and its many refractions. Entities beyond understanding inhabit this dark realm of spiritual energy, this sea of soulfire. They are the behemoths and great monsters of the depths, although our seven seas together are but a teardrop in the dry, dark ocean of the beyond. There they endure, drunk on power, bitter with impotence – curdling in the malefic nightmare of their own existence.’
– Caledor Dragontamer, Prophecies of Despair
The Gatelands
The Southern Wastes
Horns Harrowing: Season of the Raw
Although Archaon’s army was only blazing a single trail of destruction through the crowded citadels and infernal palaces surrounding the collapsed Chaos gate, daemon lords and princes throughout the Gatelands knew of his presence. It had been many hundreds of years since a half-breed host had unified in such numbers in the darkness of the Wastes to attack the dread palaces of the mighty, in the Gatelands of infernal royalty, where some of the greatest daemons of the Chaos gods ruled. When they learned that it was a man-thing from the north at the head of the bestial horde, rather than one of their own savage kind, this interested the denizens of the Gatelands even more. Not an immortal, an infernal or diabolical being crafted of the gods – but a weakling mortal; nothing more than a plaything of the gods.
First came challenges. Territorial warnings. Assassination attempts by creatures that had been dreamcrafted of murderous desire, singular of lethal purpose. The unleashing of titans that strode across walls and stomped their monstrous way through the castle courtyards and palace grounds of their daemonic foes. The mobilisation of infernal hosts, swarming through the wretched narrows and bone-jutting trails weaving between the vaulting walls of infernal palaces. Lank-limbed horrors and fountains of warping flesh that filled cramped walkways with lurid flame. Great fanged slugs that rotted their way through fortress walls on carpets of plague-ridden slime. Soul-thirsty slayers of red flesh and twisted horn. Packs of flightless shrikes, hunting, tearing and savaging on all fours, wearing spiked collars in the fashion of eight-pointed stars.
When Archaon and his horde weren’t fighting their way through monstrosities between the royal residences of daemon princes and hellish dukes, they were mounting assaults on the palaces themselves. The palace of Sybarith the Forgotten had walls that seemed never-ending. When Archaon ordered an assault on the palace he almost lost half of his host to the endless debaucheries inside. Forgetting themselves, and the Chaos warlord they fought for, half-breeds – intoxicated by what they saw – had to be dragged away. Sybarith seemed unaware of Archaon as he stood over the profane creature and even as it was slain would not abandon the delights of daemonflesh.
Its sibling, Cybriss, ruled from the palace beyond. The palace architecture flowed with the curve and suggestion of beautiful bodies, while the walls had been mortared with the undying bodies of the daemon’s victims. Limbs reaching out suggestively stroked the stone surface of the wall while faces stared out from their rocky prisons in horror. Mouths were contorted about shrill screams but what proceeded from the slave chorus was so horrifically beautiful that even Archaon felt compelled to enter the open gates of the lip-lined barbican. Just as he was about to step inside, the Chaos warlord – having no desire to battle his own bodily needs to slay another daemonic hedonist – brought his infernal mount to a stop and directed his curious horde around the monstrous palace instead.
Their journey took them into forge-forts of iron that glowed with furnace-light and cloaked the area with the smoke of infernal production. These were the daemon smithies of Hak’grorfane of the Black Flame – crafter of monstrous weaponry for his brother thirsters of blood. Lumbering juggers proceeded forth from the forges in which they had been created: hulks of black brass and spike on two legs, bearing mighty blade-horns on their armoured snouts and chimneys that belched smoke from the daemonic fires driving the metal monsters. When enough of Archaon’s beastfiends had been trampled before the juggers’ implacable advance and brutal forge hammers, the Chaos warlord unleashed his other monsters, who smashed the creations of Hak’grorfane and his infernal smithies to smoking scrap. Archaon found Hak’grorfane itself – a many-armed beast of metal horns, chain and forge-scorched flesh – to be lacking in the death-dealing arts of his brother daemons. It seemed that the Blood God had bestowed favour on the mighty fiend not for the skulls taken by Hak’grorfane personally but for those taken collectively by the brute craftsmanship of his hell-crafted weaponry.
After a gargantuan battle in which Archaon’s sickle sword broke and Hak’grorfane wielded every weapon the daemon could lay its many clawed hands upon, Archaon fought him all the way back to the edge of the smith’s hellish forge pit. Ducking beneath the swinging onslaught of a number of blades in a number of clenched claws, Archaon managed to unbalance the raging hellsmith and knock it into the liquid metal of its own forge. While the daemon still thrashed, roared and reached up out of the glowing, black steel, Archaon ransacked the smashed forge, taking for himself a selection of swords, axes, spears and hell-crafted daggers, which he draped from Dorghar’s saddle in armoured scabbards and sheaths. The rest he left to the pillaging claws of his half-breed horde as they moved through the forge-forts and on towards the blazing rift roaring up from the collapsed polar warp gate.
Beyond forts filled with riches and reptilian temptresses of golden scale were palace-labyrinths that led to nothing. Fat, tower-crowded citadels floated above the serrated skyline on colossal ray-like behemoths that drifted through the Gateland skies. Beneath, there were monstrous fortresses that seemed alive, shaking the warp-infused ground with their demolishing movements and cannibalising the surrounding palaces with gate-shaped maws and portcullis teeth. Similarly to be avoided, even by Archaon’s great bestial horde, were the black towers of the daemon Mardagg, the shadows of which drained years from the lives of beastfiends falling beneath them, turning some into white-furred withered husks, others into browned bones and others still into dust on the wind.
Archaon found, upon mounting a determined assault on a mirror-plated palace near the rim of the polar rift, that his horde had been fighting themselves for days – and winning. Beyond the illusory nightmares of Tzeentchian prince-fiends, Archaon discovered that the palaces of infernal royalty could not be touched – let alone conquered. The inner citadels and fortresses were but ghostly mirages of warped castles and towers that existed in neither one place nor another. They belonged to the world of flesh and stone. They belonged to warp-tortured oblivion. They belonged to the nothingness of nowhere.
As Dorghar cantered on, with Archaon riding high in the saddle, the Chosen of the Chaos gods became suddenly aware that there were no daemonic palaces and fortifications – ethereal or otherwise – before them. There were only the eternal fires of ruin, blazing high into the sky, all but
blinding the eye and warping the flesh. What had been a brilliant radiance, up close had an indescribable absence of colour. It was not mind-scalding white, nor soul-devouring black. It refused to be any colour inbetween.
Archaon tried to hold its gaze but failed, for as the Chaos warlord stared into the fierce depths of the beyond, a thousand beyonds stared back. His eye stung with its woeful inability. His darksight was next to useless – the malevolence and smouldering doom that was Archaon was nothing in the presence of the raw effervescent abomination of Chaos spilling unfiltered and unstoppable into the victim world. Only the Eye of Sheerian gave Archaon any sense of a bearing – the sorcerous jewel’s abilities being more powerful than ever, fed by the unnatural energies that bathed all who stood before the blazing flux of oblivion. Overwhelmed by such Ruinous brilliance, its sorcerous gaze seared to a narrow beam through the tumultuous clash of realities beyond. Even with the powerful artefact – one of the treasures of Chaos, no less – Archaon still felt as if he were standing in a midnight desert, trying to light a starless sky with a single candle.
Archaon didn’t know how long he had stared into the dread depths of loathsome eternity. His plate felt warm on his skin, despite the fact that the warping radiance gave off no heat. Similarly, his blood ran hot in his veins and his mind felt slow, as if he were drunk on what he had seen and bottomless with curiosity for what he had not. Shaking his horned helm and some sense through the melting thoughts of his mind, Archaon willed Dorghar around.
