Archaon: Everchosen

by Rob Sanders

  Both Fengshen Ku and Gorghas Hornsqualor – in the latter’s own primitive way – honoured the Chaos Powers equally, as Archaon professed to do. The army was infested with lone aspirants and Chaos warriors – claiming various infernal patrons – and eager to prove themselves in the army of a Chaos general like Archaon. The daemonsmith Zorn and the dawi-zharr, called ‘the Mechanicals’, paid homage to their bull-headed Father in Darkness and the infernal entities by possessing the hellcannons Tauriax and Wrath of Hashut. The daemon Shzmodeous, who most of the time took the form of a living darkness, revered only itself. Beyond the Great Spleen, whose followers in the barbarian Ravening thought him the living embodiment of the Blood God and Dravik Vayne, who was firmly in the barbed clutches of the Prince of Pleasure, there were two others who had brought the worshippers of individual Ruinous Powers in any number under Archaon’s leadership – in their own individual and disturbing ways.

  The dark templar had found Mother Fecundus in the thawing mires of Al-Quagoon. The witch had given herself body and soul to the Plague Lord – or as she called her patron, Father Nurgle. Mother Fecundus was carried by her followers on a palanquin. She could not walk. She was too massive – a bloated breeder of men. Her palanquin was more of a birthing throne than a litter and from it her obscene, malformed body, dropped large, writhing pupae. Mother Fecundus’s army was made up of warriors birthed in this way, for like an insect queen, she only sired males – a plague upon the world. Emerging from their disgusting cocoons, the fully-grown warriors had already received the blessings of their father in the form of chitinous plates that grew out of their bodies like armour. Many came forth too twisted for use but the vast majority of Mother Fecundus’s plague of men took their place amongst the ranks of their dour brothers. Old souls taken by Father Nurgle and placed in rank new bodies.

  No less disgusting were the Brothers Spasskov. Vladimir and Vladislav Spasskov had been aspiring ice mages in the court of Kattarin the Bloody. Eager to impress their Tsarina – the competitive desire of one brother to outdo the other took them further and further north, where the temperatures plummeted and the winds of Chaos that fuelled their enchantments were most powerful. Their rivalry took them into the Wastes, where finally the two brothers fought a terrible battle of hail and storm, cutting each other to shreds in a shard storm of ice. Attracted by the terrible war of enchantments, the Changer of Ways had the bloody blizzard reform and freeze. With a change in the weather, the patron-pleasing sculpture thawed and melted, to reveal that Tzeentch had cursed the rivals with a single body. The dark god had given Vladimir and Vladislav a leg each and both of their spell-casting arms, but their torsos and skulls had been fused back to back, to form a fraternal fusion of flesh, with twice the skill and power of a single sorcerer. This did not prevent the brothers trying to outcompete each other, using their powers, amongst other things, to craft the bodies of their enemies into god-pleasing spawn of ever-increasing horror and invention. Their macabre army of victims were called the Fleshstorm, an ever-changing scourge of spawn that could divide or join together like a single monstrosity.

  Archaon cast his gaze across his Ruinous army of Chaos. They were battle-hardened by the butchery of the Wastes. They were harnessed in a single purpose and fearful of Archaon’s wrath. They were assured that the dark templar was indeed chosen of the gods, needing to believe that their own path to immortality lay in his shadow. They were ready to be unleashed on the Land of Chill – as Archaon was ready – damnation-blessed by a bloody passage through the Wastes and the deaths of all foes that had put themselves between him and his objective. He had achieved the impossible in earning favour from the capricious Powers of the accursed north. It was time to demand their joint sponsorship. To yoke the dark pantheon to the unstoppable wagon train that was his destiny. Only the Everchosen of Chaos was granted the right to lead the infernal armies in their collective daemon glory across the burning surface of the world. Archaon had pledged on the blood in his veins and his empty soul that the title would be his. It was time to honour his gods in the passing of their perverse trials and tests. To collect the great treasures and artefacts of power that had marked his predecessors as Chaos-favoured of all. His search for such hidden treasures had driven Archaon, by force of will alone, to gather an army of the depraved and despoiling – and mount an invasion of dread Naggaroth and the druchii lands of conquest.

  ‘My lord,’ Dagobert began, as the approaching group crunched up through the ice. ‘I have great news. The Swords have located the resting place of the Altar of Ultimate Darkness. It was exactly where The Liber Caelestior said it would be.’

  ‘And this surprised you, priest?’ Archaon said with withering impatience. Dagobert was long used to such treatment from his Chaos overlord.

  ‘It resides in a great war shrine to the south,’ Dagobert said. ‘A dark citadel of black stone, towers tall and twisted architecture.’

  ‘I will see the doom of our destination for myself,’ the dark templar said, stepping down from the shelter and barefoot onto the ice. Pulling the furs of an all-encompassing cloak of shaggy mammoth hide about him, Archaon set off through the encampment. As he passed between the miserable fires his marauders, Chaos warriors and champions were warming themselves before, the considerable length of the furs trailed through the snow behind him. Many servants of evil rose in respect. Other warriors bowed. Some hammered fists into the Ruinous Star to be found in the madness of their tattoos, scarring or the inscriptions on their armour. Even the lowliest beastmen, slave or spawn acknowledged their general. The man in whose soul-crushing fist their fate resided. They snatched at the furs winding their way through the camp at his back and kissed them, they lowered their heads in primitive deference or simply withdrew before his glower like the beaten dogs they ultimately were.

  ‘Master,’ Dagobert continued behind him, ‘the Dark Gods have truly favoured this venture.’

  ‘Again,’ Archaon growled, ‘this surprises you?’

  ‘This citadel is a blessing for both yourself and Corsair-Captain Vayne,’ Dagobert informed him. Archaon slowed suspiciously. He turned to find Dravik Vayne smiling behind him. As usual the druchii was intoxicated on his favoured blood-mixed wine, some infusion, or a depraved and recent union. The sorceress Sularii was working her magic on him as Vayne and Archaon beheld one another, her tongue and a stream of indecent enchantments in his pointed ear.

  ‘Service to the Dark Gods and their chosen should be blessing enough for the captain,’ Archaon said dangerously. Dravik Vayne was easy to like. He was an incredibly useful lieutenant, the dark templar had to admit, and with his slick wit, intelligence and the convivial abandon of his leadership, always managed to keep the myriad factions of Archaon’s army as one in the warlord’s absence. He couldn’t trust the druchii as far as he could spit, however.

  ‘Why, Archaon,’ Vayne slurred away blithely, ‘whatever do you mean?’ Sularii laughed at her lover’s joke. Archaon gave his own savage smile. A warning before he turned and marched on through the encampment and across the open ice. ‘Priest, an explanation – before I gut and bone this cur like a fish and feed him to his own slaves.’

  ‘The citadel, my lord…’

  ‘It’s the Citadel of Spite,’ Dravik Vayne interrupted. Archaon frowned.

  ‘Your vessel?’ the dark templar asked.

  ‘The same,’ Vayne insisted. ‘The Prince of Excess has had his fill and has seen fit to return my Spite to me. Archaon, you must help me get it back.’

  Archaon ignored the druchii and stomped on through the ice. The sorcerous twins, the Brothers Spasskov, were standing on the precipice of the ice. Each Tzeentchian brother held an identical staff of warped crystal, one tinged blue, the other pink. Beneath their feet, and under their elemental control, the Eisarnagga Glacier was growing. Like a moving wall of ice, it cracked, it reached and it froze its way south out of the Wastes. It shattered forests and pulverise
d rock beneath its accelerated and irresistible advance down through the dark valleys and evergreen expanse of Naggaroth. Using the sorcerer’s ice magic had meant that Archaon’s army had only needed to camp on the ice floe and allow a frozen tendril of the glacier to take them into enemy territory.

  Archaon said nothing to the Chaos sorcerer. Both brothers had their eyes closed in concentration. Vayne shrugged Sularii off, allowing the sorceress to playfully hang her arms around the Brothers Spasskov with a mock pout instead. Vayne pointed the long nail of a slender finger. Some way distant, above the pinetops, between the crooked mountain peaks and through the winding valleys, Archaon could see a collection of jagged towers, lithe and leaning.

  ‘There,’ Vayne said. ‘The Spite. My Citadel of Spite. I’d know those mast towers anywhere.’

  ‘All right,’ Archaon said. ‘It’s the Spite. What in the eight points is it doing here?’

  ‘It was lost in a storm,’ Vayne told him. ‘Vast and unnatural, coming out of the north and across the Sea of Chaos. A storm that took my vessel.’

  ‘And deposited it… here?’

  The corsair-captain gave a pained smile: ‘Come now, Archaon. The Chaos Powers are not without a sense of humour. You should know that better than anyone. Their nature is the very definition of irony.’

  ‘While you wandered the timeless Wastes, looking for your floating fortress,’ Archaon said, ‘the Dark Gods had placed it here. In your ancestral homelands. In Naggaroth, where you were returning with your slaves and cargo.’

  Vayne nodded. ‘So it seems.’

  ‘These beings we serve,’ Archaon said, ‘are truly twisted in their treatment of their subjects.’

  ‘To Mathlann my course belonged, to Atharti my heart and to Khaine my soul,’ Vayne admitted, taking a dusky bottle offered to him by Sularii and drinking deep. ‘The Prince of Pleasure did not enjoy me until after I lost the Spite. Slaanesh saw me and like some trinket or bauble for sale, decided I must be his.’

  ‘We may take more from them yet,’ Archaon said, thinking of the End Times to come and the unforeseen consequences for all of the soul-trading gods of the world.

  ‘What we should do is take the Citadel of Spite back,’ Dravik Vayne said. ‘Archaon, you must help me.’

  ‘Must is not a word used to the chosen of the Ruinous Powers,’ Archaon warned the dark elf.

  ‘It is because you are the chosen, my lord,’ Vayne said, such pleading an ill fit for his thin lips, ‘that this is possible. Think, Archaon, my ship – but your flagship. Think what a glorious command she would make, bringing the wrath of the Dark Gods to the wine-dark seas. You have an army, chosen one – why not a floating fortress from which to plan and launch your reign of terror?‘

  Archaon considered. It was an appealing prospect but all too often the champions of Chaos lost their way to true greatness on side paths of distracting endeavours, calling to them like sirens on the breeze.

  ‘You may lust for such glories, sybarite,’ Archaon told him, ‘but I live only for the treasure contained within your abominate vessel and the glory it may bring my cause. What was the nature of the cargo you were transporting for your Hag Queen?’ Archaon looked from Vayne to his sorceress. The corsair-captain nodded.

  ‘An archaeological find from the Wastes,’ Sularii said. ‘Recovered stone and architecture. A temple of some kind with a centrepiece.’

  ‘A temple?’ Archaon questioned her. She nodded.

  ‘An altar?’ Again the dark elf sorceress nodded.

  ‘The gods are to be praised and cursed in equal measure. So it truly is here,’ the dark templar said to himself.

  ‘This is magnificent news, my lord,’ Dagobert said. ‘But I’m afraid that the Ruinous Powers have seen fit to set other obstacles before us for their entertainment.’

  ‘Speak, priest.’

  ‘The Swords report an engagement before the citadel of which you talk. A druchii warhost…’

  ‘Likely the garrison of a local dreadlord or sorceress securing the polluted place,’ Vayne offered.

  ‘Or the Hag Queen’s own spears, having claimed it for herself,’ Sularii said.

  ‘Some resistance was to be expected,’

  ‘The Swords claim the druchii warhost to number in the thousands, lord,’ Dagobert interjected. Archaon looked to Vayne, who shrugged.

  ‘Either the Hag really wants your Ruinous treasure,’ the dark elf said, ‘or she wants to prevent others from claiming it.’ Archaon’s withering gaze didn’t change. ‘Really wants.’ Vayne added with a smile. ‘Plus, we have no idea how long it’s been here. Time flows unnaturally in the Wastes.’

  ‘That’s not all, my lord,’ Dagobert said. ‘And you’re not going to like it.’

  ‘I already don’t like what I’m hearing.’

  ‘The Swords have sighted another force,’ the priest said, ‘coming out of the north-east. A force that currently lays siege to the druchii, the Spite war shrine and its contents.’

  ‘Not…’

  ‘Servants of the Gorequeen, my lord – and her monstrous consort, the Blood God himself.’

  ‘Gorath…’

  ‘And his Bloodsworn, master,’ Dagobert said. A snarl crept across Archaon’s face.

  ‘Curse the gods for their childish games,’ the dark templar said, ‘their confluences and coincidences.’

  Even Dravik Vayne didn’t offer some blithe joke or doom-laden encouragement. The druchii out in force was understandable, expected even. Dark elves would have been assigned to cordon off and isolate the tainted fortress. Shields and spears in even greater number would have been sent from watchtowers to the east, west and those residing in the country. The Hag Queen’s witch covens would certainly have seen the coming of Gorath’s incursion into the Lands of Chill. Gorath the Ravager. Gorath the Decimate. Gorath the Slayer-Son of Valkia, daemon princess of Khorne. Gorath of the Skull Mountain. A knight like Archaon, of some foreign land and forgotten god. His star would have burned bright on the horizon. A warrior of Khorne without equal. A killer of legendary prowess in the Wastes. A lord of cold fury.

  ‘His head shall be yours,’ Vayne pledged solemnly.

  ‘Or ours his,’ Dagobert replied. ‘More skulls for his mountain.’

  The priest and the Champion of the Prince of Pleasure began to argue but Archaon silenced them with a hand. Dagobert was right. Archaon had faced Gorath and his army of Bloodsworn knights several times in the Shadowlands. The knight was an imposing sight in the red of his bronze, baroque armour. Not that Archaon would have known it was the Ravager. His knights were all armed and armoured the same. In their murderous wake, the Bloodsworn attracted all manner of gore-praising deviancy. Berserker Norscans. Shadowland savages. Bestial dog soldiers and their flesh-rending hounds. Daemon slayers. Each time the dark templar’s warband had met the Bloodsworn in battle, Archaon’s warriors had been forced to withdraw, savaged and broken by the Ravager and the implacable advance of his knights. Some claimed that they were not men at all, but things of infernal construction. That they were built of daemon-brass in the Blood God’s forge. An army of clockwork knights – bronze warriors of cog and steam. Impassive. Unstoppable. Unbreakable. They would fight all day and all night in Gorath’s name – as Gorath did in turn for his Blood God.

  Archaon was silent for a moment. There had been others. Other champions of Chaos. Other chosen. Morbius the Unliving at the head of a thousand corpse-warriors that Nurgle had blessed with a diseased kind of life. Goldemar the Great. Theoderic Rageblade. The Newfangled. Kudren Drax – warlord of the north. Chosen of the gods. Favoured of the Ruinous Star. Those who would be Everchosen of Chaos. All had fallen before Archaon’s blade. Gorath was different. Archaon was a legendary warrior. A strategist. A leader of dark and depraved men. He was admired by the dread pantheon for his ingenuity, his singularity of purpose an
d his many gifts. Gorath had but one gift. The ending of life. He was the blood-blessed chosen of Khorne. Archaon had barely escaped with his life and the remnants of a warband the last time they met. And the time before that. If their clashes had taught Archaon anything, it was that of all the dread warriors of the Wastes, it was the Gorequeen’s champion that would probably end up standing over his corpse.

  ‘I can’t beat him… can I?’ Archaon said. Vayne and Dagobert left the question hanging in the chill air. No one would dare tell Archaon what he could and could not do. Neither did the pair rush to foolish affirmations of a doomed battle with the Bloodsworn. Archaon hadn’t been the only one to barely escape with his life. ‘Dagobert?’

  ‘My lord,’ the priest said. ‘The Ravager is of the Gorequeen’s daemon blood. Khorne’s chosen in these mighty affairs. Gorath and his Bloodsworn are here in the Land of Chill for one reason. They have been guided here by destiny – or some ill force – as we have. He means to claim the terrible treasure contained within the Altar of Ultimate Darkness. He means to usurp your fate, master. He means to become the Everchosen of the Chaos Powers.’

  Sularii moved round behind Archaon and draped herself across his muscular shoulders. She nibbled at his ear and allowed her thin fingers to drift down across his chest.

  ‘Archaon is the greatest champion the Wastes have ever produced,’ the sorceress said playfully. ‘That Gorath could kill us all in his sleep, doesn’t change that fact. If the Blood God’s followers were truly unbeatable then the lands would already be theirs. Killing is undeniably Gorath’s strength but that doesn’t mean that he is without weaknesses. We have to find them and exploit them. What say you, my lord?’