Archaon: Everchosen

by Rob Sanders

  The air was thick with the haze of blood. Archaon was there. In the chaos, in the havoc. Amongst the pushing and pulling. The crimson flash of blades. The hot agony of injuries sustained. The glory of inelegant violence visited upon others. There were shouts. Challenges. Screaming. There was death everywhere. The sky darkened to a doom-laden red. Black lightning stained the sky. Moments seemed to grind to a halt.

  The horned head of the red-skinned beastmen Archaon was about to end suddenly exploded. Skull fragments and what passed for the mindless brute’s brain were spread across Archaon’s breastplate. As the creature’s muscle-bound body dropped, the brazen flash of an axe betrayed another warrior of Chaos. One of Gorath’s Bloodsworn. One of the Ravager’s infernal contraptions. The thing moved with clockwork assuredness, its plate barely containing the daemon-force that drove the mechanical nightmare. Its steed was the thick-set parody of a horse. A brimstone-snorting beast of cog, mail and clinkered plate.

  Archaon should have been impressed. He wasn’t. He had faced the Ravager’s clockwork knights before. Flinging his battered shield around, Archaon smashed the knight’s head from its shoulders in a shower of metal intricacies and ichor. The blood-cursed thing that possessed the suit of armour howled from its confinement with a forge-spitting fury. The knights were there, about him. They had hacked through their own to get to the Chaos warrior. Their steam-snorting steeds were suddenly everywhere, as were their axes. Archaon’s Swords rode at the knights, smashing them aside with their own midnight steeds, engaging the warriors and preventing them from burying their master in blades.

  Gorath the Ravager had decided that his prize could wait, however. He would honour both his Blood God and his Gorequeen with the death of a warrior equal. Smacking aside the brazen fury of the knights’ colossal axes, Archaon stabbed his greatsword straight through the breastplate of one – only to find that no heart resided behind it – and rent open the back of another as it passed on its daemon-fuelled mount.

  Gorath the Ravager was ready for him. Smashing aside two more of his daemon knights, the champion of Khorne rode forth. Archaon knew this was his foe. Decked in gore-bathed brass and mounted on an infernal metal steed, Gorath was all but indistinguishable from his Bloodsworn knights. His armour did not glow with the same daemon radiance, however. His suit was more than just a prison for some daemon machine. Beneath his breastplate hammered something far more dangerous than cog or piston. Beneath it beat the heart of a thrice-cursed warrior. A man who had pledged his soul to the Lord of All Hate. A man who had promised his god a world drowning in blood. Like Archaon he was committed to a singular doom. His axeblades had never known defeat. His name threatened to burn itself into eternity.

  Archaon got his shield between the first of the weapons and an axe-cleaved torso – but only just. The force took him from the saddle and into the bloody mire below. As Gorath turned his infernal steed into a slowing turn, he ran down on Archaon again, smashing the shield and Archaon with it back into the ground. The Chaos warrior was barely back on his feet when he found the steed standing over him, the brazen fury of its hooves smashing at the shield. Archaon backed from the onslaught, only to find that Gorath was no longer in the saddle. The Bloodsworn’s serrated axes opened Archaon up, both his plate and the flesh beneath ragged with gouges and gashes. The dark templar’s shield and greatsword rang with the pneumatic impact of the blows as they rained down one after another on the warrior of Chaos.

  For a moment, Archaon came to believe the Blood God’s champion unconquerable. Every time he rallied, every time he pushed back the rhythmic storm of axeblows and managed to plunge the tip of his blade into the monstrous warrior, he found little to suggest a man. Something that could be killed. Stabbing blows to the thigh, to the shoulder and Gorath’s back only revealed the arcane working of infernal machinery. The Gorequeen’s chosen did not slow. Did not stumble. Did not stop. It was all Archaon could do to withdraw Terminus from the screeching metal embrace of the damaged bronze to smash aside the Ravager’s furious whirlwind of axeblows. Archaon’s world became the seconds he snatched from death as the Khornate champion pushed him to his limits. Axe. Axe. Axe. Axe. Axe. Occasionally the Ravager would butt him with his extravagant helm or bury the chisel-tip of an armoured boot into Archaon’s stomach. Mostly Archaon was just a moment’s doom away from being hacked apart by the Ravager’s relentless axes. Their barbed edges ripped through his plate where they managed to make contact, while the flat of the blade bludgeoned Archaon from side to side, sending the Chaos warrior tumbling into brawny marauders and druchii shields, necessitating swift kills before he was forced to face the flashing storm of the Ravager’s blades once more.

  As Archaon fell through the druchii shield wall again, he turned – battle-drunk – and took the head from a dark elf warrior. As he did, the bloody glower of the sky blinked darkness. Archaon readied himself for the Ravager’s axes but suddenly they weren’t there. Archaon looked to the Khornate champion to find that he too had noticed the brief darkness and was staring up into the sky. Concerned at the progress the combined marauder hosts were making through their bolt throwers, their hail of repeater bolts and ranks of spearmen, the druchii had despatched one of their great beasts to destroy them.

  The drake was a youngling. Broad of wing but slender of black body. A reptilian nightmare, it was a thing of sinuous, serpentine beauty. Seated on its midnight shoulders, between its beating black wings sat a druchii sorceress. Guiding the young beast left and right with her thighs, the dragon witch screeched her intention to own the field of battle. Her skin was the white of ice, while behind her an impossible length of sable hair twisted and turned with the drake’s sky-slithering manoeuvres.

  Gorath the Ravager roared at both the battered Archaon and the dragon witch. The champion’s voice seemed to proceed from deep within his infernal armour. It was the sound of roaring forge-fires and contorted steel. He would take them both for the glory of his Blood God.

  As the sorceress directed her beast down at him, the drake spewed forth a stream of corrosive gas that turned a column of his Bloodsworn marauders to molten flesh and steaming bones. As both Gorath and Archaon had to roll away from one another and out of the drake’s stream of corrosive horror, the dragon witch hauled the beast skyward and turned it around for another pass. Holding her willowy black staff high, the witch visited upon the battlefield a howling gale of phantom blades that cut those enveloped in its swirling course to strips of flesh. Again and again Archaon and the Ravager managed to evade the sorcerous storm, with their warriors dying about them. With every pass, the Blood God’s champion roared his challenge to the witch but the only way the screeching druchii hag would oblige him was by bathing him in the blood of his mulched marauders.

  With the valley floor a red mire about him, swallowing armour and bone that steamed as it sank, Archaon felt a quake beneath his slipping boots. A rumble that proceeded from the very ground itself. The herald of a doom he had arranged for all of them. It was time.

  Looking up he saw Dravik Vayne on the valley side. Horns were being sounded. Several of his Swords looked up from the butchery they were committing in his name. They seemed loath to leave the field of battle as he had ordered.

  ‘Go!’ he roared. ‘Get the host to high ground.’

  With hesitation the winged warriors rode for the western slope, waving Archaon’s army on with their bone blades. The marauder host were retreating back to the treeline at the corsair-captain’s insistence, leaving their warlord alone amongst the enemy. There wasn’t much time. Cleaving a nearby druchii warrior in two, Archaon watched the dragon witch bring her midnight drake down low across the carnage. Gorath was waiting for her, directing her on with his axes. Archaon had to act now. It had to be now. Slipping his gore-smeared blade into his back-scabbard and shouldering his mauled shield, the Chaos warrior ran at the Ravager. Stamping through sizzling bones and with pools of blood erupting about his footfalls, Archao
n came at his enemy, his hands empty of weapons.

  Looking from the foul drake as it swooped down on them to Archaon’s madness, Gorath’s mindless certainty abandoned him for a moment. Turning, the Ravager went to hack the defenceless Archaon in two but the dark templar dropped into a roll at the last moment. He rose as the champion’s axe passed overhead, sinking his armoured digits into the baroque armour’s busy design. Hauling the Ravager to him, Archaon threw Gorath’s armoured form over his own and rolled the two of them through the slaughter-swamp. With Archaon sinking into the gore and Gorath the Ravager held on top of him, the Chaos warrior waited. The drake was coming straight at the pair. The dragon witch held her staff high and unleashed her bladestorm. The razor-gale sliced up the mire about them and tore up through the Ravager’s back. Gorath roared with infernal insistence and hauled himself away from Archaon but the dark templar held his foe to him, using the brazen-armoured warrior as a shield against the dragon witch’s stream of phantom blades. Archaon felt the druchii magic tear through Gorath. Through his ornate plate. Through his brass workings and the workings of his infernal enhancements. Then finally through what remained of the Ravager’s hate-blessed flesh. As the remains of the Blood God’s champion were torn from his grip by the bladestorm, Archaon felt the drake pass overhead.

  Archaon laid there for a moment. Drenched in blood. His soul fired by murderous desire. He felt the Blood God’s favour in his heart. His own blood boiled within his veins. The moment was mindlessly intoxicating.

  ‘Get up…’ Archaon told himself. Scrabbling out of the gore, the warrior of Chaos watched the dragon witch take her monster up into the sky. Staring about the havoc of the battlefield, Archaon found himself surrounded by the carnage of the decimated Bloodsworn. In the face of his own host’s retreat back up the valley side, rallying druchii forces were rushing down on him with their slender spears and jagged blades. With the bolts of repeaters plucking at the marshy slaughter, Archaon ran for Oberon. The stallion was rearing and kicking out with its hooves at a pair of dark elf spearmen. Archaon came up behind and twisted one of the druchii’s head from its shoulders. The second he grabbed from the back, drawing the spearman’s own weapon across his face. Hauling the shaft of the spear towards him, Archaon felt the warrior’s jaw break before he worked the weapon most of the way through his shearing skull. Tossing the body of the druchii aside, Archaon mounted Oberon and rode for the eastern slope of the valley. Like the west, through which Archaon had brought his host, it was sparsely wooded. Bolt throwers blasted spears down at him and scouts fired their repeaters from their hiding places. Weaving through the fired spears and with Oberon soaking up a number of wicked-tip bolts in his stallion-flesh, Archaon rode into the trees. He didn’t wait to engage the ballista crews he passed, or scouts appearing from behind the rusty-brown trunks of evergreen giants with slender swords. Archaon knew what was coming. Knew what he had unleashed on the valley. He knew he had to get as far up the valley side as possible.

  Behind him he heard the battlefield slaughter die away. Dreadlords would have ordered their weapons turned on the fleeing champion. Riders and their reptilian mounts would have clawed their way up the incline to engage him and Gorath’s daemons would have hunted him through the trees. None of these things happened. Chaotic and druchii alike were transfixed by a spectacle so horrifying that they had even stopped slaying one another.

  The tendrils of mountain mist feeling their way through the trees fled like scared spirits. A serpentine hiss descended upon the valley and the pines shook with a sudden gust of icy wind. Archaon’s hair whipped about him. Everything felt cold. Then the valley echoed with the cataclysmic boom of the terrible things about to happen.

  The freezing water crashed around the valley’s meandering course, spuming and foaming up the slopes and mountainsides that guided its scalding wrath. It shattered the lower reaches of the highland forest, rending fir and splintering pine, leaving naught but smashed stumps as the waters cascaded back down into the raging advance of the thunderous flood. The deluge tore up the black soil of the valley floor and carried with it the collected debris of its destructive path and mighty bergs of ice.

  Archaon patted his steed. The show was about to begin. An offering to the dark pantheon. Ruin. Havoc. Fear. Death. A gift worthy of a true champion of Chaos. Catastrophe. He was no butcher. No expert in the bloody arts like Gorath. He was a living expression of the apocalypse to come. He was Archaon. Herald of the End Times. He rode fate like a ship slicing through the waves. He would not be driven from his course. He would not sacrifice his destiny for blood, not for pleasures unimaginable or limitless power. He would not exchange it for immortality. It was his name that would echo through the ages, until there was no one left to hear it, to utter it, to fear it. Archaon looked down into the valley at his sacrifice. He saw the ice-waters smash into the Bloodsworn’s rearguard. Furious bodies went everywhere. Backs were broken and brains bludgeoned from warrior skulls by huge chunks of ice. Weapons glinted uselessly in the coursing depths. The raging flood was an enemy even the chosen of Khorne could not fight. Archaon watched. Enjoyed. Like toy soldiers his enemies had their legs washed out from under them. They rose on the seething froth before disappearing into frozen waters. Their rag doll bodies were mangled in the tumbling logs, rocks and debris rolling across the valley floor and became part of the elemental force that smashed into their compatriots.

  ‘Run, you bladeslaves,’ Archaon said, his words hot on the breeze. ‘Run.’

  The Chaos warriors could not outrun their doom, however. Beastmen hammered into the ranks of Shadowland barbarians. Berserkers cannoned through Gorath’s clockwork knights. Even the unearthly band of bloodletting daemons and mounted Bloodsworn riding at full speed couldn’t evade the wrath of the valley-swallowing flood. A smile split the frozen mask that was Archaon’s face as the Bloodsworn host – the infamous butcherers of Gorath the Ravager, the Rage-blessed of Khorne – were snatched, mechanical steeds and all, by the rising waters and dragged into the glacial maelstrom.

  Archaon did not fool himself into thinking that the wall of furious water would be enough to kill all of the Blood God’s champions. Gorath might be gone but the infernal Bloodsworn knights and the slayer daemons that haunted his warhost might stand a chance of surviving the watery doom. Being tossed about in the thrashing currents, buried in an ice-stabbing havoc of water, berg and black earth, might have given Gorath pause for thought. He might come to understand that there were others who coveted the treasures of Chaos. Others who might be Everchosen of the Dark Gods. Archaon’s army was small but tempered in the relentless battle of the Wastes. They were not the Bloodsworn, however, and a champion – even a champion of such Ruinous patrons – needed to think of victories beyond the blade.

  When Archaon had thought of his army at Gorath’s boots, chunks of hacked flesh and puddles of gore, it was more than he could bear. It wasn’t sentiment. It wasn’t ownership. It wasn’t pride. Every useless death represented a backward step on his dark path. He would sacrifice them all in a heartbeat if it advanced his interests – taking the world but one moment closer to Armageddon. The very blackness of his soul yearned for the doom of all the world. He was the instrument of the Dark Gods. Their key to dark and shackled futures. Hang mercy, loyalty and rank presumption. His appetite for the end was the irresistible force that kept him moving forwards. Fatewards. Determined to see the destruction of all. Blade, flame, flood or famine. Archaon didn’t care – as long as there were fewer souls to plague the world than there had been moments before.

  That had been the reason Archaon had instructed a retreat and saved his army from death. A swift and bloody death at the hands of Gorath the Ravager and his Bloodsworn. It had been the reason he’d had the Hundun archer signal the Brothers Spasskov. It had been the reason he had left orders with the Tzeentchian sorcerer to halt the creaking advance of the Eisarnagga Glacier and unleash the howling energies of change on
the colossal ice floe. Like an unbroken stallion, free of chain and halter, the glacier had charged away. A seething wasteland of ice had crumbled to a thick, berg-clashing slush that in turn had given way to the scalding torrent that had swamped, flooded and crashed its inescapable way south through the gorges and valleys of the Iron Mountains.

  Within several heart-stopping seconds, the tsunami of ice and dark water had smashed through both Gorath’s army of hate and the druchii formations that were standing their ground against him. Thrashing dark elves and Bloodsworn warriors were carried away by the thunderous current. The Hag Queen’s minion-soldiers at first thought to make for their stubby garrison towers but it swiftly became apparent that the fortifications – including the thorny crown of their keeps – were going to be under water. Some desperate druchii even contemplated climbing the tainted berg of dread rock upon which the Citadel of Spite sat. They were not given the chance to seal their doom in such a fashion, however, as the crashing meltwaters of the Eisarnagga snatched them from their purchase.