by Rob Sanders
Archaon saw that upon coming into contact with the corruption, it was now spreading. Bestial champions, marauders and altereds who stumbled through the muck-infected slush were afflicted almost immediately by a septicity that felt its way up their pus-streaked and blistering legs. Dark knights and Chaos warriors decked head to toe in hell-forged plate were struck down by a living corrosion that crept up their greaves, turning their suits into rust-fused incubators of virulent plague. Champions of the Dark Gods, who stared on in horror as the supernatural contagion worked its way up through their bodies began to violently empty their stomachs, erupt with pox and bleed pus from their eyes, ears and nose. This spread the virulence further. Souls curdled by the Great Lord of Decay. Such warriors joined the growing horde of plague-riddled followers, stumbling in infected agony after the man-mountain of pus that stood before Archaon.
This was to be his challenge. As fast as Archaon was recruiting the warriors of Chaos to his doomed cause, the grotesque champion of Nurgle would be infecting them to his own. In their infinite, twisted perversity, the Ruinous Powers had inflicted two game changing warlords of Chaos on the Battle Eternal at the same time. Archaon, who minutes before had been so impressed with himself for bringing a fresh kind of havoc to a place that was nothing, came to understand that the Dark Gods would not be denied their cruel amusement. There would be a battle within the battle. A clash of two mighty hosts, one pouring from the decimated gates of hell and the other from the bleak insanity of the Shadowlands – each laying claim to the malevolent talent on display in the rampant, never-ending butchery of the Battle Eternal.
Turning Dorghar about with a twist of his torso and thighs, Archaon snatched the barbed length of a broad-bladed partisan from where it was standing upright in the petrified body of a Slaaneshi warlord. As Archaon rode around, through the savage clashes of champions who had been fighting through the Battle Eternal, he held up his weapon as a signal to his horde.
‘Archaon!’ he roared to the stormy tumult of the skies.
‘ARCHAON!’ the growing insanity of his horde called back.
Archaon turned to face the monstrous sack of disease-carrying putridity that was his opponent.
‘Gangrysssss…’ the Plague Lord’s champion managed through the beak of its mask. ‘Chosen of the Godsssss.’ To this his blight-afflicted followers simply echoed with the cacophonous misery of a moan that might or might not have been the champion’s dread name. Like a brain-fevered bull, Gangryss threw its disease-swollen bulk into a charge. It swung its monstrous mace through brute marauder warriors, mangling them out of its path.
Archaon’s face drew back into a malevolent snarl. The Chaos warlord had competition for the gifts of the Dark Gods. Holding the reins with the arm upon which his shield sat, Archaon prompted Dorghar into a charge of its own.
Archaon leaned back in the rolling saddle. He narrowed his good eye in the darkness of his helm. He peered at the blazing mound of diseased ruin with his darksight. He stared straight through the plague-promised hulk with the Eye of Sheerian, the sorcerous jewel granting him a vision of the champion’s rotten heart, thunder-pumping pus and spoilage about the monster’s great body. Archaon’s arm snapped forward like the string on a ballista, launching the shaft of the partisan through the air. It sailed through the northern freeze, rising, wobbling and irresistibly drifting downwards towards its target. Nurgle’s great beast of a champion did not stop and did not care. When the partisan hammered into the meat of its rancid carcass, the monster missed its splashing step. Skewered on the barbed shaft, its mighty heart a barb-shredded mess, the champion lurched forwards before crashing down onto its armoured knees in the slush. It slid through the blood, snow and bones creating a crimson wave before coming to a stop. It still clutched the monstrous mace in one greening hand, the spikes of the crowning ball acting like an anchor in the ice.
The ruin of its chest rose and fell once more, pus streaming down into the waters about it, then the Great Lord of Decay’s champion was no more. Archaon hauled up on Dorghar’s reins – approaching the defeated champion slowly – and the Chaos warriors splashed to a slowing stop at his command.
Archaon took a deep breath of the freezing air. In the presence of the diseased hulk he thought better of taking another. He feared no opponent and had faced his fair share of Ruinous monstrosities, but there was a part of him that was glad he didn’t have to face the champion of the plague-ridden.
Then he saw the partisan. The shaft of the barbed weapon had, moments before, been the sheen of midnight metal. Now it was browning, mottled and eaten through with emerging rust. Where the shaft sat in the champion’s chest, pus seeped and corruption spumed. A few seconds more saw the partisan cascade to the ice in a shower of rusted flakes. Gone.
Even where he was sitting, Archaon heard the ugly beat of Gangryss’s mighty heart thud back to diseased life. With a suddenness that shot a bolt of panic through Archaon’s own, the creature was on its feet. It turned with a leper’s grace, the spoilage of hidden strength in its arms brought to bear as the rusted ball of the mace came up and around, scraps of rotten flesh stuck on its spikes. Once again the shield, with its pantheon-blessed boss, took the brunt of the potent attack.
Spikes punctured the shield and the heavy head of the mace smashed the surface into a crumpled mess. The force behind the impact was devastating and took Archaon clean from his saddle. The armoured warrior hit the ice some distance away, rolled and clattered to a stop in a corpse-crowded pool of meltwater and gore. Gangryss was no daemon, like Archaon’s father Be’lakor, but the monstrous champion had god-given gifts of its own. Its rotten resilience. Its otherworldly contagion. Its troll-like powers of regeneration. Its nerve-dead muscles, tendons and bones that didn’t have to feel the torturous forces required to knock a foe like Archaon clean from his mount. Gangryss had been rewarded well indeed for the horror and havoc it had spread.
Gangryss was not the only one with gifts. The hulk’s devastating blow would have broken any of a thousand dark champions. Not Archaon. Not any more.
Not that Gangryss felt anything. As Archaon scrambled arm over arm for the frozen edge of the pool, he saw the monstrous champion swing its great mace back around and up before bringing it down on the daemon steed Dorghar with unearthly force and power. Red slush and diseased meltwater surged for the sky as the mace came down. The hulk’s corrupted lungs uttered a roar of jubilant determination. It didn’t knock the steed unconscious. It didn’t break its back. It hammered the beast down into the ice. Smashed into a shattered mess and into its own hollow beneath the surface of the battlefield, Dorghar was gone.
Archaon was surprised at the rage he felt, the presence of the Blood God’s wrath in his heart. Perhaps it felt like losing Oberon all over again or perhaps he had grown to value and even like the sneering daemon steed. Conversely, it might simply have been the destruction of one of Archaon’s dark treasures: the infernal steed destined to carry him into the bleak oblivion of the End Times. It might simply have been that the Chaos warlord felt that Gangryss had plagued the world long enough.
Archaon rose from the shallows, foetid water raining from his plate, as Gangryss turned to see that the champion-thing he had broken still lived and moved. Turning, Nurgle’s hulk stomped through the icy graveyard at Archaon. Stabbing the shield upright into the bloody snow, the Chaos warlord reached down into the burn of the freezing waters. Prising a battle axe from the mummified fingers of its former owner, Archaon lifted the weapon above him. Its axe-head was made up of a huge and hollow blade, crafted in the design of the unhallowed eight-point star. He jabbed the head of the battle axe at the thunderous approach of Gangryss.
‘End them!’ Archaon roared to his army. ‘End them all…’
Archaon’s Chaos warriors and the plague slaves of Gangryss surged at one another. The clang of blades was soon followed by the cries of the wounded and the roaring defiance of the dying.
Archaon feinted right and then rolled left across his furs and pauldrons. Dripping with slush, the Chaos warlord allowed the champion’s ice-mulching mace to smash into the ground, sending meltwater towards the sky. Archaon spun round, bringing the star-shaped blade of his battle axe about him. The axe tore through the stinking flesh of Nurgle’s hulk at the side. Ducking the spiked head of the mace as it was swung around, Archaon felt the savage movement of air through his helm. Chopping down with the axe, Archaon smashed through the rusted plate of one leg before dragging the serrated spikes of the steel star back across the joint behind the knee of the other leg. The armour just crumbled there and the axe bit through flesh and tendon down to the rancid bone. Ripping through slabs of flesh on the champion’s back, Archaon risked an economical hack at the thing’s diseased paunch. As the axe thudded into the belly of Gangryss, Archaon ensured that he was out of the path of the spurting boils and gushing contagion.
Tearing the battle axe out of the champion, Archaon spun back on himself to wrong foot his opponent. Burying the battle axe in the hulk’s meaty shoulder, Archaon shattered the rusted pauldron that covered it. As shards of brown metal rained about him, Archaon heaved his weapon out of the blubber of the monster’s globed shoulder. He dare not leave the blade in his enemy for too long for fear that it would rot to nothing. As he stared at the horrific, muscle-shearing gash that his battle axe had left in Gangryss’s spoiling shoulder, he was struck by a symbol burned into the champion’s flesh. A symbol the axe had cleaved in two but a symbol that Archaon recognised. The monstrous warrior was an ever living example of the Plague Lord’s patronage, yet the eight-point star seared into his shoulder supported his claim that Gangryss himself, at least, thought of himself as the Chosen of the Chaos gods. A festering champion of the Great Lord of Decay, drawing the eye and admiration of the Dark Pantheon with his ability to join all warriors of Chaos under a communal suffering, yoking the joint power of his collective horde with a single plague.
Archaon knew he had seen the symbol before. Then it came to him. In the Forsaken Fortress. His father’s palace. He was staring at no ordinary Ruinous Star – the kind cut into the flesh of a thousand pantheon-pledged warriors of darkness or carved into the surface of countless shields. It was Be’lakor’s star. The Mark of the First Daemon of Chaos. The Mark of the Bearer. The Herald. The same burned into the darkness of his shadowy champions. The same dread sigil that burned across the daemon prince’s own heart and chest. Archaon was not the only mortal champion in search of the treasures of Chaos. Be’lakor had other pieces moving across the game board of the world. Gangryss was one of them. Gangryss and how many more, Archaon wondered? How many promised the power and the position of being Everchosen of Chaos – only to be a soul-in-waiting for Be’lakor to possess and flesh for the daemon prince to wear?
The shock of the discovery had cost him. Seconds had bled away with his racing thoughts and now Gangryss – who couldn’t have cared less about the healing flesh of his shoulder and his patron’s monstrous mark – all but had him. Narrowly leaning his helm out of a brutal backswing with the monstrous mace, Archaon began to understand how Gangryss could be at the head of such a host. As fast as Archaon was opening him up – revealing bone, ripping up muscle and allowing a nest of rotten intestines to follow his retracted axe out of the champion’s belly – the monster’s regenerative powers were healing him. Gangryss couldn’t feel the pain of such injuries; he barely knew he had them before flesh knitted back together and innards slurped back inside his putrid carcass. Worse, the more damage Archaon inflicted, the more pus-streaked blood and contagion stained the slush through which Archaon was slipping and sliding.
Looking down, Archaon found that he was barely keeping a foothold on the edge of a hulk-stamped hollow brimming with bloody meltwater and doom. As his balance wavered and his armoured boot slid down, Archaon had visions of being rust-entombed in his ancient armour and living out the rest of his days in the putrescence of a plague-filled metal coffin. Instead of committing his footwork to another brutal axe swing through the champion’s maggot-squirming corpulence, Archaon held his ground. Movement meant infection. Remaining still meant allowing Gangryss to land the bone-ringing blow he had been attempting to execute. Holding the battle axe under its star-shaped head and at its haft, nothing could prepare him for the mind-numbing impact of the brute’s mace against the presented axe. Archaon was batted away from his foe and the deadly pool of corruption, rolling, flailing and skidding into a rank of the champion’s plague slaves.
Again, Archaon’s stone-laced skeleton had saved him. Blinking himself back to the moment, with the clash of steel around him slowed to a dreary metallic din, he pushed himself up and lifted his helm. The Swords of Chaos had raced into battle behind him. While Zwei and Drei leapt at the champion of Nurgle with acrobatic flaps of their wings, the wraith-warriors cutting the monster up with their bone swords, Eins was racing across the ice towards his master. Archaon felt the footsteps of the infected padding through the shallows about him.
Archaon rose and scooped up the axe that had been knocked from his grip. When Gangryss saw that Archaon still lived and was walking through the Battle Eternal towards him, it bellowed a lung-shredding challenge to the stormy skies.
‘Come get me,’ Archaon roared back, ‘you sack of spoiling meat.’
Stomping through the pus-swirling pool, Gangryss forced his fat legs on, batting champions both pledged to Archaon’s banner and his own aside with murderous sweeps of his mace.
Turning the battle axe about in his gauntlet, swinging the blade about his body to the left and then the right, Archaon marched across the red ice. He would have to destroy this plague champion once and for all or surrender all of his dark treasures to the monster – stripped from his frozen corpse one by one.
As the determination of a slip-shod march became a slush-splattering run, Archaon spied a kind of hope. Narrowing his eye he swooped under the mottled steel of rust-riddled blades and lurched out of the clumsy arcs of flails and hammers brown with old blood. Holding his battle axe beneath its star-shaped blade, he despatched those servants of Nurgle who he could not avoid, mercilessly sinking the steel points of his weapon into their skulls. Tearing the axe blade out he allowed plague slaves to drop beside his footprints before economically skull-hooking another unfortunate.
‘Youuuuuu…’ the hulk seethed, the deep rasp both an accusation and a challenge issued. Archaon didn’t need an invitation. He had invited himself to the monstrous warrior’s doom. As the champion of Nurgle brought his mace over his beaked mask, his intention to smash his opponent into the Chaos Wastes clear, Archaon stomped at speed through the slush. As he held his own weapon close, Archaon leapt from the ice. Gangryss turned the beak of his mask in confusion, since the Chaos warlord was too far away to effect an attack. The grotesque hulk was wrong. So very wrong.
Archaon curled into an axe-hugging dive. Hitting the ice with a half-accomplished roll, Archaon tumbled across his shoulders and the furs mounted on his back. Stamping his armoured heels into the freeze, Archaon brought himself to an abrupt halt – transferring the dreadful momentum of the manoeuvre to the battle axe that he launched from his clutched gauntlets. He sent the weapon off with a roar of effort, watching the battle axe spin haft over the star-shaped steel of its razor-sharp blade. The speed, cutting hiss and ugly revolution of the weapon was a sickening wonder to behold. Within moments that seemed like a sickening age, the battle axe landed in the head of the Great Lord of Decay’s champion, splitting his beak mask down the middle and cleaving through the front of Gangryss’s demolished skull.
Blood, pus and brains slurped down the champion’s chest in a slow but insistent cascade. The small mountain of fat and spoilage tottered, his armoured feet slapping backwards through the slush. His gargantuan mace tumbled from his plump, twitching fingers and his hands began to blindly grasp for the battle axe firmly buried between his eyes.
Archaon knew this would not stop Gangryss, with its god-blessed regenerative powers. The Chaos warlord had already resumed his charge. Ice and brittle bones crunched beneath his furious footsteps. Meltwater splattered behind him, while his cloak twisted and turned in his wake. Archaon closed on the skull-split Gangryss. Snatching his cloak with his right gauntlet, the Chaos warlord pulled it around in front of him like a cape. Holding the material out like some kind of shield, Archaon left the ice once more. This time he embraced the momentum of the charge and smashed into the wall of rot-threaded blubber that was Gangryss. Striking Nurgle’s champion like a cannon ball at a castle wall, Archaon felt the splatter of pus from the bubbling boils on the monster’s belly, his presented cloak keeping his armour from the worst of the corrosive corruption.
As Archaon went down in the slush and bloody meltwater, the champion stumbled backwards. Gangryss suddenly disappeared into the depths of a hollow Archaon had spotted behind it. The gruesome tentacles of a monstrous spawn slapped, grasped and seized victims from the edge of its crater. Some thrice-blessed champion or creature of the Battle Eternal, rewarded for its fortitude and butchery with transforming gifts that turned it from devout servant of the Chaos gods into a mindless, tentacular maw buried in the ice. A thing of horrid darkness that served on by dragging the weak and unworthy of the Battle Eternal into the thrashing teeth of its horrific jaws.
As Archaon crawled arm over arm towards the abomination, he heard the burst of Gangryss’s gas-bloated belly. He heard the excruciating crunch of bone and rusted steel in the beast’s masticating maw. He heard the horror of a death from which Gangryss – champion of the Plague Lord, Chosen of the Ruinous Gods and servant of the Dark Master – could not survive. As Archaon neared the edge of the hollow he could hear the groans, bubblings and rumblings of the spawn-monster’s cavernous stomach. Then suddenly a magnificent fountain of blood, pus and macerated bone rocketed up towards the heavens in a steaming stream.
