‘Yes,’ Zuvius told him. ‘I hear you.’
Zuvius ripped the glaive out of the warrior. The Stormcast staggered back, a bloody hole in his chest that cascaded gore down his beautiful suit of armour. The prince pulled the hammer from his ruined pauldron and dropped it on the ground with disgust. He didn’t like the feel of the celestial weapon.
‘Hear this,’ Zuvius spat. ‘Now I go to ensure that your God-King forfeits his claim.’
Leaving the Stormcast to waver and stagger in his last moments of life, Zuvius rode across the courtyard. Barging Stormcast and warhorde warriors aside with Hellion’s armoured flanks, the prince used the shaft of his glaive to smash a lunging Stormcast aside. As another took a swing at him with his grandblade, Zuvius leant down out of its devastating path. Jabbing the blade of A’cuitas through his faceplate, Zuvius rammed the glaive home in the warrior’s skull. Leaving a trail of vaulting lightning storms in his wake, Zuvius reached the other side of the courtyard.
Jabbing his armoured heels into Hellion’s sides, Zuvius prompted the beast to leap up onto a collapsed section of wall, then from the back of a mortally wounded khorgorath, who roared its blood-gurgling defiance. As lightning shafts scorched the stone about him, the Prince of Embers thrust his glaive up into an armoured archer who fell forwards into the courtyard. Urging Hellion on, Zuvius risked the scrabble up the twisted architecture of the wall. A monstrous leap demolished the structure below. As Zuvius held out his glaive to balance, Hellion’s hooves reached the battlements and carried the knight to stable ground.
At last, the Prince of Embers saw the Stormcast lord. He was backed up onto the steps of a gold, sigmarite citadel. The crowning tower was the tallest of the God-King’s fortifications.
His reptilian mount wore extravagant gold plate like its master. Zuvius was sure that he was the leader of the warriors fighting for the Ebon Claw. He was not alone in that assumption. While the armoured bodies of Archaon’s chosen lay about the battlements where the Stormcast lord and his beast had slain them, the Unslaked, Vomitus Grue and Kadence Salivarr still lived, and they had surrounded him.
Zuvius promised himself that victory would not be theirs. Pushing Hellion on, Zuvius raced for the tower. Leaping the razor-edged crenulations between battlements, he dodged several shield-bearing warriors of the God-King. Hellion cleared a section of wall demolished by a mace-swinging Stormcast just moments before and leapt the opportunistic gladius sweeps of others desperate to put themselves between the Varanguard and their lord. As Hellion leapt back down onto the battlements, Zuvius thrust his glaive through two of the Stormcasts. As their swords clattered to the floor, Zuvius ripped A’cuitas free. With lightning souls erupting about him, the Prince of Embers drove his armoured steed on towards the tower.
Everything hurt. Every twist and turn was agony. Every muscle screamed for respite. But Zuvius would not relent.
As Zuvius reached the ruined tower at last, Vomitus Grue died. The pestilent knight had felt no pain when the great hammer of the Stormcast lord smashed him aside. He had felt nothing as the reptilian beast breathed storm-lightning into his pox-scarred face. Zuvius didn’t know if Grue had felt the beast’s jaws tear his head off and spit it into the courtyard below, but it didn’t matter. The body followed moments after.
Kadence Salivarr and the Unslaked tried to take the Stormcast lord together. With their daemon-forged blades a deathtrap of cleaving and thrusting lethality, the Stormcast reared his beast and smashed the blades aside with the crackling power of his colossal hammer. The lord kicked the Unslaked’s bloody mount back while breaking the back of Salivarr’s beast with a downswing of his mighty weapon.
The reptilian mount backed up the tower steps and leapt clear over the two knights, bounding about them to get into a better position.
As a warrior-herald landed nearby to come to his lord’s aid, Zuvius skewered the Stormcast and kicked in his faceplate, sending him toppling over the sharp battlements. The Unslaked attacked next, and tried to unseat the Stormcast lord. Instead, his horned helm was smashed to brain-dribbling scrap by the Stormcast’s hammer. Kadence Salivarr tried to bring his infamous bladework to bear, but was felled by the thunderbolt blast of a crossbow bolt in the back.
As the smoking shell of the dark knight crumpled before the Stormcast lord, Zuvius drove at him. The Stormcast hauled on his mount’s reins and pointed the head of his hammer at the Varanguard before him.
‘No,’ the Prince of Embers told him. ‘It shall be you to taste oblivion.’
Such words seemed to provoke something in the Stormcast lord. Digging his heels into the scaly flanks of his steed, he urged the beast on.
Zuvius roared his defiance at the Stormcast who stood up in the saddle, his hammer aloft. Hellion wanted to charge but Zuvius kept the reins tight in his armoured grasp as he turned the shaft of A’cuitas about in his other hand.
As the Stormcast lord charged, Zuvius pointed the pommel of A’cuitas at the ground. The metal eye opened and a blaze of dark lightning scorched the stone battlements, turning them from black to a glowing red, melting the stone in the Stormcast’s path. As the reptile’s claws met the molten stone they sank, before becoming trapped as the stone cooled to glass. The beast’s momentum suddenly arrested, it threw its rider from the saddle and over its head.
As the Stormcast lord hit the battlement floor face first and skidded to a halt before Zuvius, Hellion bridled. The golden warrior’s hammer skimmed across the stone and fell into the courtyard. The Stormcast rolled over. Zuvius held the point of his glaive over his scuffed helm.
‘Unworthy,’ Zuvius told him, before stabbing down. A lightning storm raged about him as the Stormcast lord died.
The reptilian beast roared its grief and anger at Zuvius, straining to tear its legs free. It opened its jaws wide to unleash its lightning at Archaon’s chosen.
‘Enough,’ Zuvius told it before spearing it through the mouth.
Zuvius urged Hellion to the edge of the battlement. He looked down into the courtyard. He waited. The warhorde fought on against the Stormcast defenders, while other knights arrived behind them, too late to take their part in the glory and destruction of the celestial lord. Among them was Aspa Erezavant, the silent killer whose blade dripped with gore. The battle had turned. While the wretched warriors of Chaos had to step through a carpet of their own dead, the Stormcasts were being backed up to the column of lightning.
The prince’s smeared lips curled. The celestial lord was dead but the column went on burning and with it came endless reinforcements.
He had been wrong.
Zuvius furiously looked across the battle, across the golden paladins fighting for their God-King and the living corruption attempting to destroy them. He saw the Stormcast Eternal who had been speaking to the Stormcast lord earlier. The indomitable warrior was still alive and deep in prayer.
‘You…’ Zuvius said. He realised this warrior must be controlling the column of light. He lifted A’cuitas up like a spear, took aim and threw it. The Stormcast looked up just as his comrades tried to warn him. The glaive squealed down through the skull-helmed warrior’s armour, impaling him to the ground and silencing his prayer.
As the skull-helmed warrior became a coruscation of surging, spiritual energy blazing for the skies, the column of lightning stuttered and disappeared, leaving only burnt air and a sharp afterglow. Zuvius had severed the conduit. The Stormcasts remaining were as indomitable as ever but the tide had turned. The forces of Chaos fell upon them in droves as the followers of Archaon butchered their way to a crude victory.
The Prince of Embers heard the flap of wings. It was Mallofax, returned after the worst of the fighting. The bird rested on Zuvius’ ruined shoulder guard.
‘You saw?’
‘I saw, my lord,’ the bird squawked.
‘The Stormcast in the skull helm?’
‘Aye, master.’
‘Then fly to the other fortresses, to the other hordes,’ said Zuvius. ‘Tell our Varanguard brothers how to sever the storm. Tell them how the God-King’s warriors can be defeated and driven from this miserable land.’
With the beating of wings, Mallofax peeled off into the sky. Orphaeo Zuvius leant back in the saddle. With his injuries, he almost fell. Aspa Erezavant nodded at him before urging his steed back down the ruined steps leading from the battlements.
Zuvius looked down into the courtyard and to a victory declared in blood and lightning. The Ebon Claw was theirs.
Weary, Zuvius had one more thing he needed to see. He steered Hellion up the glorious steps of the sigmarite tower, to the highest part of the Ebon Claw, and stared out across the dark peninsula. Cape Desolation belonged to the Everchosen. The columns of lightning connecting each of the fortresses were being snuffed out like the flames of distant candles. He could hear cheering, sorcerous chanting and the screams of the dying. They all came together in an unholy cacophony.
Zuvius felt a ravenous pride eat away at him as he looked out across the Varanguard swarming the conquered peninsula. He felt part of something abominable and powerful. He had been a warrior, pledged to Chaos. An acolyte of dread Tzeentch. A blind man leading the blind, without true purpose. Alone among wretches, he had become complacent. Content in personal damnation.
He understood that he would never know the meaninglessness of spawndom or the monstrous powers gifted by the Great Changer. He was not the one but the one among many. Only in service to the Everchosen of Chaos had the Prince of Embers come to know the true power of damnation. Damnation of all for all. The harnessed strength of corruption, the glorious darkness of a fell blade wielded by the greatest of their kind. Archaon was a dire warlord who united not only the Varanguard behind him, but all servants of the Dark Gods as he stormed through the victim realms.
A dark silhouette in the rising dust, the Prince of Embers could see his master. Archaon. A horned shadow in his monstrous plate, his daemonsword and runeshield held in tight as he prepared to take once more to the air. The daemon steed launched into the sky, extending the great expanse of his wings. While Sigmar’s tempest continued to rage across distant skies, over Cape Desolation all was still.
Orphaeo Zuvius watched the Everchosen and his daemon steed fly high over the Ebon Claw. Gliding on Dorghar’s powerful wings, Archaon steered the monster towards the dark lands beyond. Zuvius nodded to himself. There would be more fighting. More killing to come. The arrival of the God-King’s Stormcast Eternals would have given people living beyond the peninsula hope – hope for a realm without the tyranny of a ruinous overlord like Archaon. As the Prince of Embers took up his glaive and turned Hellion back down the steps, he came to realise that hope was a truly terrible thing.
About the Authors
David Annandale is the author of The Horus Heresy novel The Damnation of Pythos. He also writes the Yarrick series, consisting of the novella Chains of Golgotha and the novels Imperial Creed and The Pyres of Armageddon. For Space Marine Battles he has written The Death of Antagonis and Overfiend. He is a prolific writer of short fiction, including the novella Mephiston: Lord of Death and numerous short stories set in The Horus Heresy and Warhammer 40,000 universes. David lectures at a Canadian university, on subjects ranging from English literature to horror films and video games.
David Guymer is the author of the Gotrek & Felix novels Kinslayer, Slayer and City of the Damned, along with the novella Thorgrim and a plethora of short stories set in the worlds of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000. He is a freelance writer and occasional scientist based in the East Riding, and was a finalist in the 2014 David Gemmell Legend Awards for his novel Headtaker.
Guy Haley is the author of Space Marine Battles: Death of Integrity, the Warhammer 40,000 novels Valedor and Baneblade, and the novellas The Eternal Crusader, The Last Days of Ector and Broken Sword, for Damocles. His enthusiasm for all things greenskin has also led him to pen the eponymous Warhammer novel Skarsnik, as well as the End Times novel The Rise of the Horned Rat. He lives in Yorkshire with his wife and son.
Rob Sanders is the author of ‘The Serpent Beneath’, a novella that appeared in the New York Times bestselling Horus Heresy anthology The Primarchs. His other Black Library credits include the Warhammer 40,000 titles Adeptus Mechanicus: Skitarius and Tech-Priest, Legion of the Damned, Atlas Infernal and Redemption Corps and the audio drama The Path Forsaken. He has also written the Warhammer Archaon duology, Everchosen and Lord of Chaos along with many Quick Reads for the Horus Heresy and Warhammer 40,000. He lives in the city of Lincoln, UK.
An extract from Archaon: Everchosen.
‘You shall know me by my works,’ the prognosticator howled.
They knew him by his pain. The agonies erupting from his ruined face. The gasps of relief and hope – both sweet and dangerous – that escaped his broken body in between tortures. They called it the Cracker. An ugly name for an ugly contraption. With the victim’s head braced between the unforgiving metal of a chin bar and a closing crown-cap, the two were drawn together by the slow turn of a handle screw. It had earned such a name for both its effectiveness in producing confessions and the splinter of skulls that echoed through the republic dungeons.
‘Battista Gaspar Necrodomo,’ a priestly witchfinder read from a blood-spattered scroll, ‘his holy vengefulness, Solkan – God of Light and Law – has judged you witchfilth and false prophet, denying the poor and ignorant of this republic the comforts of his guidance.’
‘You will know me by my works,’ Necrodomo spat. His words escaped the clenched mantrap of his own jaw in a hissing rasp. Bloody lip-spittle sprayed the interrogator sitting opposite. One of the priests milling in the dungeon-darkness beyond tore a strip from his ragged grey robes.
‘Grand inquisitori,’ he mumbled, kissing the rag and handing it to his spiritual superior. The interrogator dabbed his speckled cheeks and the whiteness of his beard.
‘Again,’ the grand inquisitori said.
‘No,’ Necrodomo groaned, his pleadings pathetic and palsied. A priestly servant of Solkan turned the screw and fresh agonies filled the dungeon chamber. Necrodomo’s screams were muffled shrieks of gargling desperation. As the turns of the screw abated, the freshly blinded seer sobbed and moaned.
‘You are a charlatan,’ the grand inquisitori said slowly, his voice threaded with the certainty of his age and station. He was the Avenger’s high hand in these low dealings of the world. ‘You are the herald of lies. You are an artist of nothings. You read the eye, the lip, the face and write false prophecy on the stars. You tell gullible widows what they want to hear, no? A sayer of soothings. Saw you this coming, prognosticator?’
‘No…’ Necrodomo managed through his shattered jaw.
‘If you had stuck to prattlemongering,’ the venerable inquisitori told him, ‘you just might have escaped the attentions of the brotherhood. Though Avenger knows, your professed haruspexery would have been known to him – he who sees all and judges all. Your time would have come, Necrodomo. Necrodomo the foreteller. Necrodomo the skygazer. Necrodomo the reader of futures dark. Now to be known – if known at all – as Necrodomo the Insane. By my order.’
‘No…’ Necrodomo whimpered. ‘Know…’
‘This, however,’ the grand inquisitori continued, picking up a bony fistful of pamphlets that littered the table, ‘this goes beyond the pilfering of credulous coin. The Celestine Prophecies. Signs and Wonders. Transcendentia. The Days of Doom to Come. The End Times. This is heresy in our midst. This is demagoguery, spreading fear through the people. It is a challenge to the Republic. It is a corruption advertised and an invitation of vengeance. It is what brought us to you, Necrodomo. It is what brought you to this.’
The grand inquisitori gestured at the quill and pots of ink on the table and the thick, unmarked tome that sat before the groaning Necrodomo, its pages clean and wa
iting for his confession. ‘Help me by helping yourself, Necrodomo. Confess your crimes to the brotherhood. Allow Solkan into your heart and I promise a death swift and clean enough to take you to his judgement. Why dally here in the meaningless filth of lies and conspiracy? Why suffer here as well as before the Lord of Light and Law? Commit your contrition to these pages and let me grant you the relief of death.’
‘Forgive…’ Necrodomo begged through shattered teeth.
‘It is not for me to do so. Only the Avenger can grant you that. All I can grant you is an unburdened conscience and free passage. Your crimes are grievous. These bold pronouncements of coming apocalypse, printed and passed between the people. We are the light in the ignorance you sought to spread with your writings of the trembling world and the End Times you profess are to come. The world already trembles, Necrodomo. It trembles with the vengeance of Solkan the Mighty. It trembles with his judgement on the unnatural and the wicked. This is the greatest of your sins, false prophet. Fear is not your weapon to wield. It is ours. Armageddon is not yours to portend. The world is the Avenger’s to destroy at a time of his choosing. If his servants fail, if the land can bear no more evil and the filth of corruption floods the–’
The oratory was shattered by a single clap. Followed by another. And another. Like the grand inquisitori, the witchfinders and priestly torturers of the chamber turned to the entrance. Stepping down from the rusted ladder that led from the trapdoor in the dungeon’s ceiling, a lone priest in the hooded, ragged robes of the Avenger stood in slow applause. Sallow clouds of brimstone drifted down from the chamber above and descended about the interloper.
‘How dare you interrupt the holy work of–’ a priest began.
‘Enough,’ the interloper said, the word drenched in the sickly, mellifluous urgency of an infernal order. The final clap was louder and more insistent than the caustic applause that had preceded it. With the sound echoing about the dungeon like a thunderclap, the priests and servants of Solkan proceeded to untie the ropes about their waists and disrobe.
Age of Sigmar: Call of Archaon Page 26