by Rob Sanders
‘You think… I would aid,’ Lutzenschlager half-sobbed through his agony, ‘…a chosen of the Dark Powers?’ An irrational guffaw burst forth from the man.
‘I think you might save yourself further suffering,’ Kastner said, ‘knowing before your weakling god and in your coward’s heart that you had no choice. Because you do not.’
‘I will never…’
The battlehammer came down again. Hard. Blood sprayed Kastner’s plate. The scream was longer this time. It tailed off into a livid moan that haunted the chamber with its miserable insistence before dying further to a dread whimper. Lutzenschlager began to fade.
‘Wake up!’ Kastner roared, slapping the Grand Theogonist about his pale and stricken face. ‘The page…’ Kastner said, kneeling slowly before the throne. Lutzenschlager looked at him through pain-clouded eyes. ‘It contained details of this man – this chosen – this Archaon.’
When the Grand Theogonist didn’t respond, Kastner raised the battlehammer again. ‘Don’t make me destroy what’s left of you,’ he told him. Kastner tapped the hammer against the gilding of the seat, making Lutzenschlager jump at each impact. The Grand Theogonist let out a wretched moan before nodding his pain and conflict-contorted face.
‘Names?’
Lutzenschlager shook his head.
‘Places?’
‘No,’ Lutzenschlager answered, miserably.
‘A description,’ Kastner demanded, pointing to his face. ‘Some defining scar or mark of birth?’
‘Sigmar forgive me,’ the Grand Theogonist blubbered. ‘No…’
‘What then!’ Kastner snapped. ‘There have been others – knights, templars, good men of Sigmar who have fallen to the Ruinous Powers. How can you know that I am this Archaon? Without such details, how can you be so certain that you would have me, one of the most loyal and devoted of Sigmar’s servants, hunted down by his brother templars and killed on sight?’
Kastner smashed the battlehammer back and forth between the sides of the throne, drawing wails of terror from the Grand Theogonist.
‘Tell me! Tell me now – while some semblance of humanity yet remains within me.’
Lutzenschlager’s strangled howls found their way to the words Kastner demanded but did not expect.
‘He is the only one…’
‘The only one?’
‘The only one prophesised to come in search of his name,’ Lutzenschlager wheezed.
Kastner dropped the battlehammer down before the throne and rose slowly to his feet. He turned away, his mind wrestling with what he had just heard. ‘The page predicted its own accidental tearing from the tome.’
‘What?’ Kastner said, half-listening, half-thinking, half-feeling. ‘It what?’
‘The page contained a prediction of its own removal,’ Lutzenschlager said, his words punctuated by sobs of torment. ‘Discovered only after its first translation. The Liber Caelestior told of the living end – a man called Archaon who would kill the world. He was a man both of the Empire and not of it. And yes, one of the Sigmar’s most loyal and devoted servants. A knight of the God-King’s realm.’
‘You suspected I was this Archaon…’
‘Your priest sent word that you were coming to the cathedral with The Celestine Book of Divination,’ Lutzenschlager said, his voice struggling under the weight of the words. ‘The tome, the attack on the Hammerfall and the villages on your route – the fact that you were, even Master Schroeder admits you were, one of the finest knights of his Order.’
‘But when I arrived, you knew.’
‘Only Archaon himself is to come searching for confirmation of his true self – so the page claimed.’
Kastner stood in silence. He could hear the crowds aside on the Templeplatz. The orders being barked. The perimeter being established.
‘Why not destroy both the page and the damned book,’ Kastner said. ‘Why didn’t you just wipe it from the face of the world?’
‘You know better than anyone what we do,’ Lutzenschlager croaked his suffering. ‘Such texts have to be studied, despite their dangers. It was felt long ago, by one of my predecessors, that the knowledge in the tome itself could be used to combat the evil knowledge therein. That the best chance to destroy this harbinger of doom was to allow him to come. Grand Master Boschkowitz was uncomfortable with the risk and sent his men to intercept you – but I assume they failed, as they were destined to do.’
Kastner looked up at the golden face of Sigmar and then down at Lutzenschlager’s demolished form, bound to the throne.
‘And the Grand Master is unlikely to fail twice,’ the templar said, looking about the sanctuary. ‘If you knew this was going to happen, what were your orders?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It matters to me,’ Kastner growled.
‘Right at this moment,’ the Grand Theogonist said, the ghost of a wicked smile crossing his pain-strained face, ‘every fighting man in the city is being summoned to the Domplatz. Reinforcements have been called from Carroburg, Castle Reikguard and the surrounding weald. Any man of Sigmar has been promised eternity at the God-King’s side for your death. On top of that, the palace great cannons and batteries have been turned on the cathedral. My orders are to level Sigmar’s holy temple rather than allow one of his greatest foes to escape. I don’t care if they have to fish both of our bodies out of the rubble. You will not leave this place.’
Kastner wandered about the chamber, his gaze drifting from the incense burners to the tapestries to the side altars to the Great Sanctuary doors. An army waited for him outside the cathedral. Sigmarites, drunk on their staunch devotions, baying for a heretic’s blood. Would Kastner be cut down? Would he be burned on the Templeplatz for all to see or hung, drawn and quartered in the palace courtyard before the crowds? Would he be imprisoned, living out the last of his miserable days in some dank cell below a distant castle, buried in unbreakable chains with only daily tortures to look forward to? There was no end to the miseries the Empire could visit upon him. There was nothing left.
The priests and templar knights he had served now wanted him dead. The nobility, whose duchies, baronies and marches he had purged of evil, would come to regard him as evil, the very same. Worst of all, the people – who had enjoyed the protection of his knightly deeds – would forget the name Diederick Kastner and revel in his downfall. His execution would be a form of entertainment to the blood-thirsty crowds and his story would become a wretched ballad, the cautionary tale of a monster and virtue fallen from grace.
Kastner felt their future loathing and he hated them for it. He despised their double-dealing god and his Empire that sheltered them from the true darkness of the world. With the toe of his boot he pushed the stand of an incense burner forward, allowing the trailing material of a Sigmarite tapestry to dangle in the embers and catch light. The flame – simple flame – had the templar entranced. The flame became a flicker and the flicker a dance. Soon fire was raging up the ancient cloth, devouring the material, the ink and the history it depicted in image and the language of the long dead Unberogens. Sigmar’s comet-commemorating birth and his glorious deeds – the uniting of the tribes of men; his battle with Morkar, the first Everchosen of the Chaos gods; the Battle of Black Fire Pass and undeath from the south. Kastner watched the fires spread. Sigmar’s trek towards the Worlds Edge with its dark peaks and crowning sunset finally fell to the flame. It was the last Diederick Kastner saw of the God-King. Sigmar was facing adventures new in unknown lands and had his back to the Empire he had built. His back turned to Kastner. Within moments, the scene was lost, raining to the floor as soot – for even the God-King couldn’t outrun the ravenous fires of destruction, hungry for history and intent on turning all to ash and darkness.
As the fires crackled up the tapestries and scorched stone sanctuary walls, feasting on the beams and staining the
great domed ceiling with soot, Kastner felt a rage build within him. The injustice of it turned his blood to ice. His heart froze and shattered within his chest. He had come so far on the God-King’s path and yet had reached no destination. He had survived obscurity, sacrificed all in the God-King’s devoted name, worked his whole life in study and training and taken the fight to Sigmar’s enemies, defeating them with a scholar’s mind and a warrior’s nerve. All for naught.
His hard work, his accomplishments, his pain and his sacrifice had brought him to betrayal. Of Sigmar and his servants. The promise of Kastner’s treachery, as written in the stars. The bottomless doom Archaon intended to fulfil. Archaon would avenge him. Archaon would bring the Empire, nay the world, to its knees and punish the gods that plagued it for their falsehood. The lesser races of the world – like maggots infesting the lands in their ignorance and indifference – would be alleviated of the burden of their meaningless lives. Their existence would find new expression in servitude or an end to all suffering in death. He would drown the sun and smash the moons. He would tear down the sky and turn the world inside out – a world of darkness and flame, worthy only of the blackest souls and the evil that they may commit upon one other. A doom perpetual. The End Times would be his for the earning.
Kastner turned towards the golden statue of his accursed god.
‘This I pledge,’ Kastner spat. ‘I renounce your worship and the doubt ensconced in my heart. I curse you in word and deed, my craven-king. Your servants will be mine to slaughter. Your lands mine to burn. My body and soul I give to the darkness. This is my oath. Here – in this place – on the very spot where your Empire began, I pronounce myself as its living end…’
Kastner felt the warmth of Sigmar’s hammer on its chain about his neck. A gift from Father Dagobert. The hammer began to melt, scaring the templar’s flesh beneath his plate and dribbling molten metal down his chest.
Taking several armoured steps towards the statue, Kastner tossed his battlehammer with all his terrible might. The hammer cut through the smoke gathering in the chamber, head over haft, until it smashed into Sigmar’s aureate face. The soft gold of the sculpture crumpled about the heavy hammer-head, turning one half of the God-King’s impassive face to unsightly ruin, leaving the haft of the weapon protruding from Sigmar’s right eye.
‘The Darkness is not without a sense of humour,’ Kastner said, satisfied. ‘Unlike you.’
Suddenly the flames about the chamber roared and jumped domeward, as though extra fuel had been poured upon them from above. Kastner drew Terminus from the scabbard at his back, at first suspecting that the forces outside had grown desperate enough to employ battle wizards from the colleges. Kastner felt a warmth pass through his body. The metal of his plate and the rings of his mail were growing hot to the touch. The knight felt his hair singe and his skin roast where it was in contact with the crusader armour. Before the Grand Theogonist’s throne, Kastner watched his helm smoulder. Like his armour, its surface charred. Unlike Kastner, now pledged to the Ruinous Powers of the world and enjoying their protection, such instruments in service of darkness were scalded by their presence on the cathedral’s holy ground. Kastner’s helm and plate were scorched to a burnished black. Even the greatsword Terminus – which had done so much in Sigmar’s service – suddenly erupted in strange flame, its blade a nexus of twisting and turning tongues, the colours of all damnation.
‘This won’t save your pig-priest,’ Kastner said, marching up the steps towards Hedrich Lutzenschlager, still tied to his throne. Shouldering his shield on its straps, the templar scooped up the hot metal of his helm and slammed it down on his head in defiance, the scorched smell stinging his nostrils. He lifted the burning Terminus above his head. The Grand Theogonist’s eyes, weak and barely open suddenly came to fear-stung life. He tore at his bindings, his brave words to Kastner fleeing from his craven heart. ‘You want to be a martyr, Lutzenschlager?’ Kastner put to the Grand Theogonist. ‘Let’s go together – you to your doomed gods and me to mine…’
Thunder. Everywhere. An ear-splitting flash. A dazzling boom. The sanctuary dome rang like a bell. A great force passed furiously through the chamber. The smoke cleared. And Kastner with it.
The templar was no longer on the steps. He was back on the sanctuary floor, bathed in grit and surrounded by chunks of crafted stone – some of which had struck his shielded shoulder and armoured body. This wasn’t battle wizards or the wrath of a vengeful deity. This was Big Bathilda. The greatest of the palace great cannons – crafted at the Imperial Gunnery School in Nuln. It was famous more for the circumstances surrounding its crafting than the power of its broad barrel and gaping muzzle. It had been intended as a gift from the Emperor Dieter to his cousin Prince Wilhelm but had been insensitively named after the city prince’s mother, Lady Bathilda. As a consequence, it had never been fired. Until now.
Kastner blinked brick-dust from his eye. It was everywhere. On the floor. In his helmet. Swirling about the chamber like a thick mist. Disorientated, and with Big Bathilda’s boom still between his ears, Kastner squinted about him. The blast – if not the cannonball – had blown him across the slippery stone floor of the chamber. He could make out the infernal blush of flames about him and the glow of daylight, presumably streaming in through a Bathilda-blasted hole in the cathedral wall. The glow flickered and it took Kastner a few moments to find his way back to his thoughts and the danger he was in. The flicker was the single-file entrance of knights and soldiers through the freshly created entrance.
Kastner slapped his gauntlet about the floor for his Terminus. Fortunately, the blade was still aflame with the purity of the place and Kastner found it just in time. Murky silhouettes closed in on the templar as he pushed himself to his feet. He could hear Lutzenschlager screeching for help and Kastner assumed that the Grand Theogonist was still bound to the throne where he had left him. He could also hear Grand Master Boschkowitz’s Reikwald drawl through the dust, giving orders to his Knights of the Fiery Heart. There were shapes and shadows everywhere. The knights were cautious. In the chalky gloom, and in the heart of their sacred temple, they didn’t want to injure or kill one of their own. Kastner didn’t have to worry about that.
Rising into a swing, the templar took down an armoured unfortunate with his blade. The warrior’s death cry drew knights down on Kastner, as well as barking orders from Boschkowitz. Terminus clashed with a warhammer, lopping its ugly head from its haft before doing the same to its wielder. Another hammer glanced off Kastner’s pauldron as the templar worked his way around. With knights coming down on him faster and in building numbers, he couldn’t afford drawn-out textbook engagements. He didn’t need to fight these men. There were no accolades to win for technique or tournamentship. The Dark Gods only demanded deaths: so that’s what Kastner gave them.
He buried his blade through a breastplate. Withdrew it. Turned a broadsword aside, one hand on his hilt, while grabbing a hammer haft to stop it coming down on him. Kastner smashed Boschkowitz’s man back with the cross-guard of Terminus, before dropping to his knees and sweeping the blade straight through the legs of the other knight. As he went down, Kastner saw that he was one of his own Order. The warhammer was back. The templar turned it away with a swipe of his sword, allowing the swung weight of the weapon to take it off target. The silhouettes spliced. They doubled and took form. Soon there were knights all about him, all hungry for victory in the presence of their God-King. Kastner made them pay for their overconfidence. Regardless of the teeth-clenching effort behind their visors, the knights still fought in the way they had been trained. Their movements were restricted and measured for economy, trust being placed firmly in their plate’s ability to resist the impact of enemy weapons. Kastner knew their manoeuvres. Their combinations of attack and defence. He was an expert in such pedestrian combat. He knew the weak spots of their plate, for so long he had been forced to guard them for his own survival.
With each death – with each limb-lopping, head-cleaving, heart-stabbing death – Kastner felt the favour of darkness flow through him. Plate clattered about him, forming a mound of metal bodies that Kastner ascended. The dust thinned. He could see the knights flooding into the chamber: the Reiksguard, the Knights of Sigmar’s Blood, the Knights Griffon and the God-King’s champions – the Knights of the Fiery Heart. Amongst their number were a selection from other Orders, including Kastner’s own, as well as temple men-at-arms and city state troops – though no common soldier would come between an honour-bound knight and his quarry. Like a sea of polished plate, catching the tinted sunlight of the great stained-glass window, the knights were like waves crashing up against the shore of their demolished dead.
Like the captain of a ship reading the weather, Kastner guided the stroke of his sword through the parting plate and spuming surf of his enemies’ end. The island of the fallen at the centre of the sanctuary became his to defend and step by step, death by death, he reclaimed lost territory from the silver seas. Terminus trailed unnatural flame like a banner, flapping from the blade. It cleaved lesser blades in half, struck the ponderous heads from warhammers and sliced shields in two. The broad blade clutched in his gauntlets was everywhere it needed to be. Turning aside the practiced clash of knightly sweeps and the thrusted points of halberds and tapering blades. Cleaving through helms. Smashing down through armoured torsos. Opening up silver bellies and trailing the guts that spilled from his brother templars.
An otherworldly exaltation had Kastner’s heart in its grip. Something hidden in the shearing of armour, the crunch of bones and ugly parting of flesh was pleased. He could almost see its horrific form in the spectacular spraying of blood from lopped limbs and severed heads. He could smell its ambitions for him on the copper-tinged air. He could hear its encouragement ring in the ghastly peel of screams echoing about the helmets of his victims. He felt the presence of darkness in this death he dealt.