Archaon: Everchosen

by Rob Sanders

  Archaon nodded. That was better. The battlefield was much transformed. It was no longer a field, for a start. It was a rising, coursing body of black water as wide as the wooded mountains either side would permit. Even above the waters sloshing and creeping up the mountainside, Archaon could feel the freeze coming off the crystal cold river of ice. Amongst the tessellation of smashed bergs and slush, Archaon watched druchii and Chaos marauders drowning. They were dragged to the depths by their armour. They were smashed senseless into ice, rock and each other. They swam past one another – oblivious now to the threat each other presented. Archaon had poured cold water on both the dark elves’ murderous glee and the fiery rage that burned within the warrior-acolytes of the Blood God. Archaon allowed the water to do its worst. Druchii and marauder began to grasp for one another, pulling each other down below the surface of the black water. It wasn’t murder or battle – it was survival. Too far from anything that might be described as a shore, those dark elves and Chaos warriors not bouncing along the valley bottom or smashed by the tumbling logs and debris were claimed by the cold.

  Archaon slowed Oberon. The steed’s flesh was steaming with the exertion of galloping up the mountainside. As the berg-crashing waters slushed rapidly up the slope, Archaon urged the horse on a little further at a slow trot, the Chaos warrior enjoying the carnage he had caused on the field of battle. He did not hear the druchii run up behind him. The silent assassin had trailed through the trees, up the mountainside, moments ahead of the rising waters. Archaon turned to find the athletic dark elf already behind him. He drew Terminus but by the time he had the druchii had cast his cloak aside and revealed the twisted blades of two longknives in his gloved hands. Leaping up onto Oberon’s rump, the assassin was sitting behind the dark templar as he drove the knives down through Archaon’s armour. With the twisted blades skewered down through his flesh, Archaon roared his pain and anger. Both Terminus and his shield fell from his grasp. With the assassin turning the cruel blades inside him, Archaon too was tumbled from the saddle.

  Getting to his feet, Archaon could still feel the assassin on his back. Working his blades deeper into him. The druchii had no intention of letting go until the Chaos warrior had been well and truly skewered. Stumbling at a tree, Archaon ran at the trunk. Turning and smashing the assassin between him and the unforgiving wood, the dark templar bellowed his pain. He felt something crunch in the druchii, however and the assassin allowed a gasp of his own agony to escape his slight frame. Again and again Archaon smashed the assassin into the ice-threaded bark until finally he felt the murderous dark elf slacken his hold. Reaching back, Archaon grasped for the assassin’s wrist and wrenched it around in his gauntlet’s grip. Bones splintered in the wrist. Turning the assassin’s broken arm around he forced the druchii from his back and slammed him back against the tree. The assassin hissed his pain and intention to kill the Chaos warrior. Holding him against the tree by his throat, Archaon reached for one of the knives in his back. It was excruciating to withdraw the twisted blade. Once he had done so, he stabbed the longknife straight through the chest of its owner. The druchii gasped as the blade twisted straight through him and pinned him to the trunk. Extricating the second, Archaon stared into the assassin’s eyes as he used it to cut the druchii’s heart out and held the still-beating organ before him. Both warrior and assassin shared a moment of horrific understanding before the dark elf’s head fell forward. Stumbling away from the dead assassin, Archaon roared as he held the heart up to the sky and crushed it in his fist. As gore dribbled from his fingers, black lightning split the heavens.

  When he turned to find Oberon he found that the horse was still and stricken with fear. Hovering above the tree tops was the midnight drake and the druchii witch. She had destroyed Gorath the Ravager. Now she would kill Archaon. The dark templar looked back down the slope to where he had dropped Terminus and his shield.

  Archaon looked from his bloody fist back up to the heavens, where the clouds had been rent asunder. From the swirling maelstrom above dropped a fireball that left a blood-murky trail of smoke. The witch lifted her staff. The drake’s slender maw opened wide. Archaon instinctively lifted his arms in front of his face. Instead of corrosive breath or a bladestorm of dark magic, the fiery heat of daemon hate washed over him. The fireball struck the dragon and its rider, slamming them into the mountainside with explosive fury. An inferno roared about witch and her monster. Peering through the gaps between the digits of his gauntlet, Archaon watched as some furious infernal entity fought through the flames. A daemon princess, of a terrible martial beauty, had descended. In crimson armour forged in Khorne’s own hate and bearing two great horns from her head, Archaon recognised the horrific creature as Valkia the Bloody – the Gorequeen sponsor of Gorath’s atrocities. The daemon had descended in celebration of the slaughter wrought in the valley below and in honour of her champion’s blood. Swinging a monstrous spear about her armoured form, she took the dragon witch’s head off, allowing the shock of its pale face and its lustrous length of hair to bounce down the wooded slope past Archaon.

  As the Gorequeen batted the drake’s jaws aside with a daemonshield bearing the teeth of its own horrific maw, Archaon took Oberon’s reins. Skidding down the slope, Archaon recovered Terminus and his shield. He left the doomed drake to the Gorequeen’s wrath, knowing that the daemon princess would need no assistance in despatching even such a beast. Shouldering the shield and sliding his greatsword into its scabbard, Archaon mounted his steed. As he rode back down towards the rising shoreline, he cast a glance back at Khorne’s dread consort. It was agony with the knife wounds in his shoulders but worth it to watch the monstrous daemon slice through the drake’s throat and bury her spear in the beast. Watching her, Archaon wondered if he too might one day earn the infernal patronage of a daemon sponsor. Some dark thing from the beyond to further his interests in the apocalyptic times to come. Riding for the waters, Archaon found himself snarling. Unlike Gorath the Ravager, he did not need such Ruinous favour. He would fulfil his destiny and become the Everchosen of Chaos with or without the help of the gods and their wretched servants.

  Still Archaon urged Oberon on. He did not want to be around when the Gorequeen looked for other challenges with which to slake her bottomless thirst for blood and battle.

  As Archaon reached the rising fury of the frozen waters, he smiled to himself. The Ruinous Powers had never known a victory so devastating and complete. The dark templar promised them many more. At the water’s edge Archaon found several Bloodsworn knights clawing their way out of the coursing glacial flood. They were bereft of their smashed, mechanical mounts. Their joints of infernal workings were frozen and riven with ice. The appearance of their Gorequeen on the field of battle had driven them on but there they stood, like statues, waiting for an end. Archaon granted their wish. Splashing down into the freezing shallows, he drew Terminus and cleaved helmets from Chaotic constructs. A rusty ichor that passed for blood, dribbled down their breastplates and into the water, staining the shore brown.

  Archaon slapped his stallion’s scaly flanks with the flat of his smouldering sword, urging the beast on into the frozen waters. Clamping the saddle between his armoured thighs and taking the reins harshly with one gauntlet he swung Terminus about him with the other. Guiding the horse, who was now swimming through the black meltwater with his big, broad hooves, Archaon went with the current. As he headed for the rocky foundations of the Citadel of Spite – the Chaos war shrine now baptised in the rising waters that battered their way through the valley – the Chaos warrior slapped the water with scything sweeps of his blade. Each cut and thrust put flailing marauders and drowning druchii out of their ice-rimed misery.

  Archaon dug his heels into Oberon, forcing the steed to swim for their lives towards the horrific outline of the Spite. The dark templar could feel the horse struggling with the temperature. Archaon’s plate also had frosted and burned with cold through his leggings, numbing his lim
bs. Death kept them both busy. Screeching elves and current-fighting northmen swirled past them – an invitation to Archaon’s smoking blade. He hacked the slender appendages from freezing dark elves and through the Norscan plaits and wild facial hair of hoar-frosted skulls. A biped reptilian steed, which had long thrown its druchii rider into the chaos of the crashing spume, suddenly reared out of the white waters churning along the Spite’s glistening bedrock. It snapped at Oberon, eager that Archaon and his steed not supplant the beast’s precarious claw-tip purchase on the Citadel’s rocky hull. Oberon reared – whinnying his surprise and dipping Archaon waist-deep into the freeze. The dark templar smashed the reptile’s jaws aside with the pommel of his greatsword but the thing’s jaws snapped again with almost elastic insistence. Oberon instinctively leant away, nearly toppling Archaon into the rising waters that were racing away down the valley. Throwing himself back at the beast, Archaon sliced the reptile’s scabby throat clean open. Working its jaw in gushing disbelief, the reptile scraped free of its purchase and was dragged down the valley by the coursing waters.

  Sheathing Terminus, Archaon slapped the reins either side at Oberon’s thick neck, urging the stallion on up the same outcrop of rock to which the reptilian beast had been clinging. The dark templar needed to get them both out of the water. Skidding and sliding up the wet rock, the steed managed to mount the outcrop and Archaon urged them into the dry hollow into which the rock shelf led. Climbing down, Archaon turned back and watched the glacial waters climb up the slopes of the valley side, swirling up through the pines and firs, bouncing mangled clusters of corpses along the forested shore. Looking up, Archaon could see the dark stone of the Spite’s walls and the towers grasping for the sky beyond. Had the Chaos warrior not spent what seemed like an immeasurable eternity in the impossibility of the Wastes, the vessel might seem strange. A citadel that floated on a bedrock-berg of cavern-riddled stone. A floating fortress that harnessed the wind in its colossal, tower-spanning sails and drifted across the oceans, guided by dark magics. Vayne had been right. The Spite would make him a mighty flagship. First he must make the corrupted shrine to Chaos his own. He must discover her secrets and claim the treasures she had held onto for so long. Treasures denied even to the inquisitive Hag Queen of Naggaroth.

  Leading Oberon into the hollow, Archaon found his progress blocked by the rusty bars of a portcullis. Vayne had warned him about this. He had told the Chaos warrior that the dark elves enslaved all manner of deep-ocean beasts in the system of caves running through the fortress bedrock. Exterior gates allowed water in but imprisoned the creatures until they were unleashed on the druchii’s enemies on the high seas. Archaon knew that all manner of aquatic horror lay between him and his prize. Horrors that were all the more so for being exposed to the corruptibility of the Wastes. Stepping down from his steed, the dark templar took Terminus in hand and advanced on the portcullis. The darkness beyond was thick and stank of the deep. There was no way to open the gate from the hollow. All the gates were controlled by capstans in the floating fortress. Resting his back against the bars, Archaon took one in each hand and heaved skyward. After an extended grunt of exertion, the dark templar forced the portcullis back up into rocky ceiling.

  There was a hiss. Something beyond was stirring. Archaon turned to find it slithering down the tunnel towards him. The thing was horrible to behold. A colossal black eel, with huge glazed eyes and an extendible jaw of curved glass fangs, each the length of Terminus. Despite its large disc-like eyes, the creature snapped blindly at the portcullis that Archaon had raised a handspan from the floor. Its fangs clashed against the rusty metal as the famished monster battered its head against the gate in a frenzy. Archaon watched the horrid thing for a moment, feeling the simplicity of its dark purpose. He stepped forward to let it sense the satisfaction of the meal he would make. The beast went wild, smashing its head bloody against the portcullis. Archaon leaned back and then thrust Terminus forward. The blade passed through the bars and straight into the rubbery flesh of the sea monster’s head. He held it there – the metal of the crusader sword sat in the thing’s brain as death throes rippled repulsively down its length. When he withdrew the weapon, the monster fell still.

  Forcing the portcullis up through its rusty workings, Archaon advanced up the creature’s slimy length, leading Oberon into the darkness. The knight wouldn’t ordinarily bring his horse into such a confined space, but with the waters rising up the bedrock of the Citadel of Spite and threatening to flood its labyrinth of caves and tunnels, Archaon had little choice but to allow the steed freedom to follow him.

  As the daylight diminished behind him, Archaon’s eyesight adjusted to his surroundings. It was a primordial blackness. The darkness of the deep. The druchii had imprisoned beasts of the ocean abyss. Then the warping powers of Chaos had crept in through the rock and shadow to re-craft the creatures into new horror. Archaon could imagine few places more damning and desperate. Somewhere in this dread place he was to find the first treasures of his Ruinous masters. The Chaos warrior cursed them for their twisted games.

  Desiccated weed hung from the rocky ceiling and the broad passage opened into a cavern. Archaon found himself smiling in the darkness. He could imagine how such a labyrinth might eat away at the nerve of those attempting to penetrate the depths of the lightless place. Even a lantern or torch would provide little illumination in such an environment. The rock was black. It soaked up the light, leaving nothing for the eye. At best a light source would simply show a foolhardy wanderer in the tunnels where next to place his boot. Tunnels would only be obvious to a traveller already within their craggy confines, while vast caverns and cave systems might pass totally unnoticed in the blanket of gloom.

  That most natural of fears – the dread of that you could not see – had little effect on Archaon. Like the monstrous beasts haunting the inky blackness, the Chaos warrior was part of that dread. Unlike many of his brothers of the damned, fighting their way through the insanity of the north, Archaon did not need to trust in light alone. He had been blessed with other ways of seeing. His soul was a blazing inferno of dark intent that cast all about him in the dreadlight of stinging shadow. Archaon’s time in the northern murk of the Wastes had only enhanced his talent further. This place – that would rob the worthy of their senses and feel its way into their chest with the chill talon of fear – was nothing to the Chaos warrior. He crunched through the twisting tunnels of the caves, across vaulted caverns and through the foetid shallows of groundwater lakes. Monsters waited for him there. Ravenous. Feasting upon one another in the absence of their ocean feeding grounds until only the most deadly of creatures remained.

  Taking Terminus – which struggled to summon even an anguished glow in a place of such of degenerate evil – and the shield upon which he carried the Ruinous Star of his calling, Archaon slapped Oberon on the hindquarters with the flat of his blade. The horse whinnied and clopped off into the darkness. The steed did not need much persuading to leave the warlord. Its skittish sense told it what Archaon already knew. That starved beasts from throughout the subterranean realm had been drawn down on him – led to their doom by his fresh stench. Archaon made it easy for them. Clashing Terminus against his shield, he roared his dares into the darkness. Then he saw them. Crawling. Slithering. Skittering their way towards him. Monstrosities of the deep of every shape and size. The only similarity they shared was the growl of their bellies.

  ‘Come on, you wretched things,’ Archaon hissed through the gloom. ‘Hungry? Come get some.’

  The killing began. Chitinous nightmares migrated across the cavern roofs, withdrawing into their shells before dropping like cannonballs against the Chaos warrior’s upheld shield. Twitching shrimp swarms clicked about him in the darkness, trying to get through his armour and burrow into his flesh. Giant, malformed crustaceans erupted from tight grottos – all spine and pincer – aiming to cut the dark templar in two. Lakes disappeared to reveal tentacular behemo
ths that glissaded across the cavern floor on their own slime, coming at the knight with glutinous feelers and blasting him with jets of stinking water streaming from blowholes in their octopod flesh. Coiled serpents launched at him, their trapjaw maws a pit of teeth framed with leathery frills that opened as they struck. Beasts that seemed all gulping mouth and stomach attempted to swallow him whole. Things that draped feathery tendrils about him from above burned both armour and flesh. Scaly monsters with shovel-shaped heads and clamping jaws that attempted to drag the Chaos warrior into their cave lairs.

  Suddenly Archaon heard the shriek of his horse through the darkness. Taking the heads from humanoid things with snapping jaws and shells, Archaon scrambled across the slippery rock. Clipping tentacles and grasping appendages reaching from crevasses and grottos as he passed, Archaon slammed Terminus through the slimy skulls of serpents that slithered into his path. He saw the ghostly outline of his steed pinned to the cavern floor by some crustacean horror. The crab-beast was an armoured monstrosity of shell, chitinous legs and webbing between for the unholy creature’s propulsion through the water. A nest of pearlescent eyes danced about on thick stalks while the beast went to work with the crushing pincers of its four muscular claws. Oberon shrieked its animal horror. The crab-beast had the horse clamped between the rocky floor and the bottom of its clickety body. The thing opened its chunk-claw above the terrified horse.

  ‘No!’ Archaon bawled, his announcement echoing about the caves.

  Batting away one opportunistic claw with Terminus, Archaon ran at the beast, chopping the top half of a second pincer away with a savage flash of the broad blade. The thing reared horribly, allowing Oberon a hoof-scrabbling moment of hope, but the horse was still firmly held against the ground by the crab’s shifting weight. A thick claw, as big as the Chaos warrior himself, swept in from behind, snatching his armoured form up in its crushing embrace. Archaon felt his plate buckle and mail split under the cleaving pressure. It was a second crab-beast, bigger than the first and intent on stealing the colossal crustacean’s prize. Turning Terminus about in his gauntlets, Archaon smashed the blade down through the chitinous crux of the claw in which he was clamped. Twisting the blade through the meat and sinew of the claw’s inner workings, the dark templar felt the beast release him. Dropping between the creatures, Archaon found his shrieking steed beside him. It was straining its neck to be free and Archaon laid a gauntlet on the horse’s nose before turning his attentions back to the monstrosities battling pincer and claw above them.