Hammers of Sigmar

by Darius Hinks

  ‘Faith is my valour,’ Deucius snarled as he swung his hammer into the leering visage of a creature clawing its way out of the wall beside him. The pink-skinned abomination split apart under his blow, bursting in an incandescent display of flickering lights and crackling energy. The shattered energies coalesced into two smaller manifestations, blue obscenities that giggled to themselves as they surged towards the Stormcasts.

  ‘Thriceblessed of Sigmar, do not falter!’ the Celestant-Prime shouted to his comrades. He swung the godhammer in a murderous sweep, pitching a clutch of fanged daemons down into the gap. Their splitting shapes dwindled as they plummeted into the fires of Uthyr raging below.

  A blast of aethyric fury seared past the champion’s shoulder, immolating one of the screaming fliers as it dived towards the Celestant-Prime’s back. Caught in the magical flame, the airborne daemon became frayed and tattered, dissipating in puffs of colour and sound. The warrior glanced aside, and saw Throl crouched between two of the Stormcasts, his fingers still aglow with the magic he was unleashing against the Eyrie’s defenders.

  ‘There are too many of them,’ Throl cried. ‘We cannot hope to prevail.’ The wizard spun around, a cascade of blazing light leaping from his palm to annihilate a clutch of daemons pushing themselves out from the shadowy walls.

  The Celestant-Prime brought his hammer slamming down against the slab itself, cracking a piece of the ledge and sending it hurtling into the cauldron below, a score of daemons carried down with it to fiery oblivion.

  ‘Where there is faith, there is always hope,’ he told the wizard. As he spoke, a crackling daemon bounded towards him upon its stalk-like body, blue flames billowing out from the mouths at the ends of its pulpy arms. The Celestant-Prime stood within the fiery blast, the hammer held before his body.

  In the next instant, the daemonic flames dissipated, broken apart before the holy power of the godhammer. The weapon crackled with energy as he held it before him, unharmed. The spirits of the watching Stormcasts soared as they saw the hero advance upon the daemon. With a single blow of his weapon, the Celestant-Prime burst the fiend into a spray of flickering cinders and wailing steam.

  Inspired, the Thriceblessed pressed their attack, shields locked in an impenetrable formation as they advanced upon the reeling daemons. The great hammer of the Retributor swatted capering fiends from the slab down into the fiery sea. Arrows from the Judicators felled soaring abominations. And all the while the hammers and swords of the Liberators took a toll on the creatures spilling from the Eyrie’s walls.

  ‘Faith is the armour no daemon can pierce!’ the Celestant-Prime thundered as he strode across the ashy residue of his vanquished foe. A flock of the airborne monstrosities swooped down upon him, their ray-like bodies slithering through the blizzard of soot falling from the clouds. The daemons shrieked and wailed as they drew near the hero, the gash-like mouths that yawned across the bottom of their bodies gnashing their fangs in greedy anticipation of rending his flesh.

  Before the daemons could strike, the Celestant-Prime swung the godhammer at them in a nimbus of crackling energy. Somewhere deep within the recesses of his soul, he understood how to evoke the relic’s awesome might. As the flyers descended, the energies billowing out from the godhammer rose to meet them. The hungry wails of the monsters became anguished howls as their profane substance struck the wave of holy power. The daemons wilted in the purity of Ghal Maraz’s aura, shrivelling like slugs under a hot sun. The withered, desiccated things fell from the air, the residue of their wing-like lobes fluttering uselessly as they sank into the fires of Uthyr.

  Around him, the Celestant-Prime could see the other Stormcasts fending off the daemonic host, knocking squealing horrors into the gap or skewering flame-spitting blasphemies on their swords. Othmar struck down a beak-faced creature, splitting its skull with his sword, splattering the walls of the Eyrie with its ichor. Deucius struggled in the clasp of a ray-winged beast, his hands pushing against the edge of its fanged maw to keep it from snapping at his face. Before the daemon could prevail, a bolt of magic from Throl pierced its side and sent it floundering into the fires below.

  The Celestant-Prime scowled within his helm as he saw more daemons pushing out from the walls of the Eyrie. They could stand here and fight the fiends forever, but doing so wouldn’t get them inside the fortress. There could be no confrontation with the Prismatic King while the Stormcasts were kept fighting on the palace’s threshold. How long would it be before the moment passed and the Eyrie was free to slip clean of its temporal foundations?

  He couldn’t risk such potential disaster. Firming his grip upon the hammer, he brought the weapon crashing against the shadowy wall of the Eyrie. If the Prismatic King didn’t see fit to offer a door into his fortress then he would make his own.

  A dolorous boom sounded as the godhammer struck the skein of shadow. Lances of light streamed away from the hammer, crackling through the ebon substance of the Eyrie. When the Celestant-Prime drew his weapon back, tendrils of shadow clung to it, dripping from the golden metal like rivulets of black blood. Where he had struck the wall, he could see that the web of darkness was fractured.

  ‘For Sigmar!’ the Celestant-Prime cried as he brought the weapon slamming against the already weakened section of wall. This time, when the godhammer’s blazing aura struck the shadows it did far more than simply crack them. The phantom material disintegrated, evaporating in black tatters of ash. Where it had been, an opening was exposed, a gaping wound in the side of the Eyrie.

  ‘Stormbrothers! With me!’ the Celestant-Prime shouted to his fellow warriors, charging through the fissure he’d opened. Ahead all he could see was a grey dinginess, like a cloud of dust. The foggy greyness clung to him as he rushed into the breech. Then he was through, past the walls of the fortress and inside the palace proper.

  What he saw was a deranged confusion of angles and distorted perspectives, stairways of marble that folded in upon themselves or merged with alabaster ceilings or flowed both into and out of topaz floors. Corners were at once convex and concave, defying the senses with the insanity of their violations. Crystal fountains bubbled from the roof, the chromatic liquid flowing from them arcing about in gravity-defying spectacles that mocked every effort to define them.

  The Celestant-Prime forced himself to confine his focus to only that which was immediately before him. Something inside him warned that if he tried to contemplate the infernal manipulations of the palace’s confines then the barrage against his senses would break his mind. Only by restraining his awareness could he defy the discordant architecture of the Eyrie and the transforming sorceries of the Prismatic King.

  ‘By the thunder of Azyr!’ Deucius gasped as the warrior joined the Celestant-Prime within the mad hall. As each of the Thriceblessed pressed through the breech in the wall, he felt a similar sensation of wonder and revulsion.

  ‘Do not marvel at the Prismatic King’s illusions,’ the Celestant-Prime cautioned them. ‘Focus upon what is near and tangible. Fix your mind upon what you feel and not what you see.’

  ‘Listen to the wisdom of Ghal Maraz!’ Throl echoed the hero. ‘If you allow your attention to wander, if you lose your focus, then your mind will abandon itself to the Prismatic King’s coils!’ The lean wizard looked towards the Celestant-Prime. ‘My magic can protect against the worst of his illusions but I worry that any spells I cast here may be corrupted by the sorcerer. To my cost I have learned how much greater his power is than mine.’

  ‘We will protect you, enchanter,’ the Celestant-Prime promised.

  ‘Whatever we do, let it be done swiftly!’ Deucius cried out. He pointed towards the crazed array of stairways and corridors that opened into the maddening hall. Every passage was swarming with enemies, mortal warriors in grisly armour of bone and chain rushing alongside gibbering daemons and horned beastmen. The Eyrie’s garrison was answering the intrusion of the Stormcasts into their master�
��s domain. Lost to the Prismatic King’s insanity already, the monstrous horde was accustomed to navigating the chaotic discord of his halls.

  Throl closed his eyes, clapping his hands together as he drew upon his own magic. Eldritch energies flashed from his fingers, snaking around his body before stretching outwards.

  ‘Pursue the light,’ the wizard hissed through clenched teeth. ‘The Prismatic King seeks to usurp my spell. I know not how long I can fend off his sorcery.’

  The Celestant-Prime led the Thriceblessed in pursuit of Throl’s guiding light. They rushed past gaping doorways that opened into nothingness, hurtled down stairways that descended into the ceiling and dashed around corners that bled back into themselves, racing against the malignity of the sorcerous tower. At every turn, bands of Chaos warriors and packs of shrieking daemons assailed them, seeking to drag them down with blades of steel and talons of iron.

  Before them, the hall opened into a great gallery, the walls fashioned from bizarre panels of stained glass, each pane emitting a kaleidoscope of light. Strange scenes unfolded along the translucent walls, frozen images of obscene sorceries and magical atrocities, portraits of maniacs and monsters, each more wicked and obscene that the last.

  Billowing up from the centre of the gallery, spreading like a skeletal tree, was a wide stair fashioned from shimmering hoarfrost. Branches of the stair stretched into the glass walls, vanishing through the images locked upon the panes. Other limbs of the stair connected with the raised arcade that ringed the hall, widen­ing into broad platforms of mist and ice. From these platforms and down the arctic branches charged a snarling horde of Chaos knights, their foul armour stained with cabalistic sigils and arcane emblems. The weapons each knight bore were things of fell sorcery and vile ritual – great axes of brass and silver that shrieked as though endowed with monstrous vitality of their own, hideous swords, their blades coruscating with eldritch flames, spears of iron and bone that pulsated with the discordant harmonies of unchained ether, and flails that writhed with the infernal essence of the daemons bound within their steel.

  The Stormcasts met the charge of the Chaos knights, and Ghal Maraz tore a path through the armoured fiends. The Celestant-Prime loosed the sacred fury of the godhammer against the degenerate men, shattering their armoured bodies with each blow. By the score he reaped a butcher’s toll upon the vassals of the Prismatic King, strewing the gallery with their broken bodies. Yet for each knight he brought down, a dozen more appeared to take their place.

  The Thriceblessed locked their shields, letting the charging knights break against them in a wave of rage. Swords stabbed out from between shields to gut the warriors who strove to batter their way past. Skybolts sizzled into the howling guards, piercing corrupt mail to gouge the abominable flesh within. Safe behind their defending brethren, the Judicators were able to measure each shot, loosing only when certain of a killing strike. From the shadow of the Stormcasts, Throl worked his magic, unleashing fingers of flame that licked across the oncoming knights and left their armour scorched and smoking.

  The Prismatic King’s slaves, however, took their own toll upon the Stormcasts. First the lone Retributor was pulled down, his knee shattered by the impact of a spiked mace, his head crushed beneath the halberd of a horned warrior. Then the Liberator beside Othmar was felled by a spear through his gorget, blood spilling from the mask of his helm as he coughed out his life.

  Lightning rumbled through the great gallery as one by one the Thriceblessed were killed by the enraged knights. As life ebbed from the body of each Stormcast, flesh and spirit evaporated in a blast of coruscating brilliance, hurled back through the vastness of space to return to the realm of Azyr and the golden halls of Sigmaron.

  Death might not be the end for the Stormcasts, destined to be reforged anew, but the loss of so many comrades pained the Celestant-Prime. They were now only ten. Each fighter lost raised the odds against them all and made the task ahead of them that much greater.

  Leaping upwards, powering into the gallery’s frosty air on his shimmering wings, the Celestant-Prime drove down upon the stairway. Raising the Cometstrike Sceptre, he unleashed the magic bound within the relic. The head of the sceptre blazed with dazzling energies, a spike of divine power streaking upwards, piercing the profane vaults of the Eyrie. An instant passed, and then the ribbon of holy energy was hurtling down once more, bearing a fiery sphere. A sweep of the sceptre and the Celestant-Prime unleashed the imprisoned comet. His target wasn’t the horde of Chaos knights spilling down into the hall – with a thunderous shriek the comet slammed into the stairway. Branches cracked and split, sending howling knights crashing to the floor below. The main trunk of the stair shivered, sagging to one side then another, guards clinging to the swaying balustrades as they lost their footing.

  The Stormcasts were quick to exploit the opportunity the Celestant-Prime’s attack presented. Breaking their formation, the golden warriors rushed forwards, striking down the stunned knights writhing on the floor, attacking the Chaos warriors who continued to slip free from the swaying trunk. A blow of the godhammer and the stair came crashing down in an avalanche of frost and flailing bodies. The knights caught in the collapse screamed in agony as they were crushed.

  The Thriceblessed drew away from the mound of glowing debris, listening to the anguished cries of those being consumed within the frozen heap. The Celestant-Prime swooped along the overlooking platforms, driving back those knights who yet lingered above the gallery.

  The mound of frost began to boil, rivulets streaming upwards to reshape themselves in new patterns. The Thriceblessed turned from their extermination of the crippled knights, circling around the shifting frost. The same thought was in each of their minds, the fear that the stair would regenerate and bring fresh waves of knights surging down upon them. The prospect of battle wasn’t daunting – it was the worry of failure, the shame lest they should never reach the Prismatic King and wrest from him his dark secrets.

  Striking down a clutch of Chaos knights ranged along the platform, the Celestant-Prime turned and started down towards the bubbling geyser of frost. He had smashed the stair once already. To hold the gallery against the Prismatic King’s guards, he would do so again.

  ‘Wait, my lord!’ Deucius cried out as he saw the Celestant-Prime diving towards the resurgent frost. The Liberator waved his hammer in warning, imploring him to keep back.

  The Celestant-Prime noticed what Deucius had seen just as he was raising Ghal Maraz to smash the skein of glowing ice. He pulled out from his dive, swinging away as he gazed in surprise at the billowing mass of frost. What was growing out from the mound wasn’t the stairway, but rather had the shape of an enormous door, a mammoth gate of icy spikes. Around the portal burned the magic light of Throl’s spell, the shimmer that revealed the path to the Prismatic King.

  As the Celestant-Prime flew above the gate, the massive door began to shake and shudder. Folding upon itself, without any manner of substance or solidity behind it, the door swung open to reveal a murky chamber beyond, a room utterly different from the kaleidoscopic gallery.

  Before any of the Stormcasts could draw near the uncanny pheno­menon, something vast and monstrous erupted from the murk beyond the door. It was a gigantic, brutish horror, a thing of purple scales and leathery blue flesh, black chitinous plates and scarlet membranes that fluttered angrily in the arctic chill. The thing’s shape was not unlike that of some gargantuan ape, squat, powerful legs supporting it from behind while great clawed arms dragged its ghastly mass forwards. Twin tails lashed the air behind it, each ending in a slavering mouth filled with dripping fangs. Between its broad shoulders, instead of a head, a far greater maw stretched wide, a scourge of oily tentacles slobbering past its knifelike fangs. A grotesque star-shaped growth bulged from the abomination’s back, a baleful flame blazing at its centre, pulsating with arcane energies. Fingers of sorcerous fire seeped out from between the monster’s scales, craw
ling up its hideous bulk to merge with the conflagration at the core of the star.

  ‘The Prismatic King’s hound!’ Throl wailed. ‘Its very touch is annihilation!’

  As though to prove the wizard’s words, the hulking beast sprang forwards, its great claw snatching one of the Judicators before the archer could loose an arrow. The golden armour sizzled beneath the thing’s touch. There was a cracking groan, and the sigmarite mail began to disintegrate, trickling through the horror’s claws in a stream of dust. The other Thriceblessed charged forwards to rescue their stricken comrade, striking at the beast with sword and hammer while the arcane lightning of Throl’s wizardry crackled across its hideous frame.

  The efforts of warriors and wizard alike were hopeless. The slavering monstrosity ignored their assault, instead lashing out with its tails to catch a second Stormcast. The monster started to raise its second victim towards its dripping tentacles when a fierce cry from above caused it to rear back in surprise. Even its maddened bestial brain recognized the might behind that shout and the challenge it proclaimed.

  The Celestant-Prime hurtled down upon the huge beast. A blow from the godhammer and one of the ape-like arms was shattered. His blazing hammer crushed the grisly mess of tentacles and fangs between the brute’s shoulders. Swinging the hammer on high, he brought it cracking around once more, shattering the weird star-like growth and causing the bubbling mass of arcane fire and eldritch energy at its core to cascade down into the beast’s own body. The gigantic creature howled in agony as the vortex consumed it, immolating its mutated frame from the inside.