by Rob Sanders
Archaon stood amongst the brood as they huddled, soaking up the bleating threats and abuse of the beastmen. Above him, on a stinking palanquin, raised upon the shoulders of ten mock-Archaons, the Chaos warrior saw Mother Fecundus, ordering her creations on. Drawing Terminus slowly from his scabbard and shrugging his shield from his shoulder, Archaon prepared himself. He was ready to face himself. Plunging the greatsword straight through the back of one of his doppelgangers, Archaon pulled the blade free to take the heads from two more. Mother Fecundus shrieked in maternal horror, directing her progeny to destroy the betraying son. Within moments the maggot-men had turned on Archaon. They didn’t just look like him. They moved like him. They fought like him. After his initial element of surprise, the warlord suddenly found himself hard pushed, desperately trying to predict his own movements as great swords and shields clashed.
Suddenly the Great Spleen was there. The anchor came around on its colossal chain, smashing through maggot-men and the beasts fighting them. Archaon watched his own face crumple in horror as the anchor punched through bodies and dragged them away in a swirl of red. There would be little stopping the Blood God’s maniac. Of that, Archaon was sure. The best the Chaos warrior could do was make the monster work for him. Stabbing the maggot-man behind him through the neck, Archaon ran up the mound of building corpses before the palanquin. He discovered Mother Fecundus in her birthing throne. Nurgle’s witch gurgled her horror at Archaon. The Chaos warrior snarled up at the mountain of putrid flesh.
‘You’ll get no mercy from me, hag,’ Archaon told her. He turned to show the Great Spleen that it was him but found the monster confused at the appearance of so many similar faces. ‘Here!’ Archaon called at the thing, immediately drawing the champion’s attention. Archaon leapt. The anchor sailed around on its chain, the furious force of the improvised weapon smashing straight through the palanquin and birthing throne, turning Mother Fecundus into an amniotic explosion of rancid gore and fluids.
Landing and rolling across his shield, Archaon regained his footing. There was death and violence everywhere. The air was thick with the howls of vengeance and the stench of lives lost. The dragon’s flames ran rampant across the decks and through the dark sanctums of the floating fortress’s interior. The dragon itself had launched its slithering bulk from the Citadel and into the heavens. Rippling like a serpent of the skies, Flamefang weaved and banked on its great fleshy wings trying to acquire several winged warriors in flight. Nodding with admiration and approval, Archaon watched his Swords go head to head with the beast, on their own infernal wings. Diving and spinning, the Swords slashed at the monster’s sides as they passed, but the creature would not be denied. Opening its narrow jaws wide, the dragon turned sharply and swallowed two of Archaon’s bodyguards whole. Another landed on its back and proceeded to open the dragon up at the spine with one of his bone swords. The monster brought its wings in close and turned into a dizzying roll that threw the Sword from its flesh and sent him into a tumbling descent of his own. Before the Chaos warrior could regain control, the Chaos dragon had whipped its serpentine body around and blasted the falling warrior out of the sky with a stream of purple flame. Archaon watched the flailing spawn tumble from the heavens before thudding horribly against the stone deck of the Spite. It looked like it might have been Vier.
With a growing snarl on his face and his head held low, Archaon made for the main mast-tower. He could feel the pounding steps of the ogre behind him, crushing beasts and maggot-men underfoot. Cutting through Kurgan warriors on the deck as he ran, he smashed their weapons aside with Terminus. He left the marauders to the Great Spleen’s wrath that unfolded about the monster like an unholy storm. Shouldering his shield and slipping the greatsword into his back-scabbard, Archaon weaved through the mutinous crowds. He ducked, weaved and slid out of the path of marauder blades, Norse axes and druchii crossbow bolts. As the Blood God’s monster closed on him, dragging the chain and anchor across the stone deck behind him, the hordes parted ahead of Archaon. The ogre snatched up the champions of enemy gods with a colossal fist and chewed their heads clean off before tossing the armoured bodies aside and sweeping the deck for another victim.
On the final approach to the Citadel tower, Archaon had to rely on his bare hands alone. He turned blades around in the hands of others, popping shoulders, tearing tendons and breaking bones. He wrenched at limbs, prompting the most excruciating crunches from his passing enemies. Enemies who had been former allies. Marauders and warriors screamed as he hurt them with impunity. Several were swept by Archaon’s leg but such movements were restricted by the dark templar’s armour. He dallied long enough to kill two. One received a gauntleted fist in the throat while another had his neck broken in an elegant twisting motion that the warlord risked as he passed.
Leaping up at the mast-tower’s willowy architecture, Archaon climbed for his life. Every wicked spur and toothed ledge was a blessing. Hauling his armoured form up the black stone of the Citadel, the Chaos warrior heard the Great Spleen thunder up behind. As his armoured digits clawed their way to handholds and Archaon began to climb the tower foundations he heard the whoosh of air through the thick chain and the sound of the wicked anchor cutting through the air. Archaon found that his face split with a smirk as the thing smashed through the stone beneath his dangling boot. The anchor came around. This time the Chaos warrior had to lift his knees to escape the Great Spleen’s whirlwind attack. He felt the mast-tower shudder as the anchor went to work on the black stone foundations like a massive pick axe. Again and again the ogre swung its huge chain around, smashing through the stone, each time narrowly missing the dark templar.
‘Come on, you beast!’ Archaon called, enraging the monster further. ‘Can’t you hit me?’ The warlord felt the Citadel tower foundations crumble under the ogre’s relentless assault. Nor would Archaon want him to. The stone gave an ear-splitting crack from within. Like a lumberjack, the Great Spleen was felling the tower – with the temptation of Archaon’s anchor-skewered body directing every swing. ‘Harder you mindless thing,’ Archaon roared as he climbed. ‘For the hate in your veins and your abominable god…’
Suddenly the anchor appeared beside him. The black metal of the thing was buried in the stone like a grapnel and the Great Spleen was attempting to heave its colossal blood-stained bulk up the tower after him. Archaon felt the Citadel quake. As the ogre hauled on the chain with its savage strength, something shattered in the stone foundations. Scrambling across the side of the tower, desperate for handholds, Archaon felt the tower go. The sound was excruciating. At first the mast-tower rocked. Then it started to lean and waver. Then it fell. Like an ancient tree it toppled, its foundations pulverising under its own weight. Rigging and the Citadel’s colossal sails began to fall.
Archaon dropped to the deck and scrabbled away. There was an almighty splash as the bulbous towertop struck the water. The air was thick with black dust and a teeth-grinding sound. Through the deck Archaon felt the Spite begin to lean to one side. Pushing himself to his feet and with the silhouettes of battling marauders all about him, Archaon climbed up onto the side of the tower. Beneath his feet he could feel the floating fortress listing. The colossal weight of the Citadel tower was dragging the Spite over onto her side, flooding her upper catacombs and lower decks. Archaon’s flagship was going down. Beneath the tower base, the Chaos warrior saw what was left of the Great Spleen. The blood-mad ogre had heaved the tower over onto itself in its blind rage. The monster-champion bulk had been crushed by the weight of the stone, so that now only a brawny arm and gore-stained fist was visible. The beast’s barbarians stood before their fallen god, weeping tears of blood.
Archaon squinted through the dust along the length of the tower. The bulbous keep that crowned it was already in the water and flooding but the druchii and the degenerates that had made the tower their home were crawling out from windows and loop holes. Sliding Terminus from his back-scabbard and his shield fro
m his shoulder, Archaon began to jog along the wall of the tower. As he met Chaos warriors and champions extricating themselves from the flooding tower he ended them. He briefly fought Kallidon the Dark before opening up the Kurgan warrior from the navel to the jaw. He butchered without a thought men and monsters who would formerly have given their miserable lives in his service. Archaon pushed on behind his shield as the bolts of corsair crossbows hammered into its surface. As he met them they drew their wicked cutlasses. He slammed them back, turning and cutting them down with blade-shattering sweeps of his own sword.
Beyond the corsair’s cleaved corpses, Archaon found the druchii who led them: Sularii – Dravik Vayne’s witch-lover. Terminus came up to claim her but there was something in the dark elf’s eyes… a gaze Archaon felt difficult to break. As she made her alluring way up the tower towards him, her dark eyes and coquettish smile becoming his world, Archaon found that he had sheathed his sword and shouldered his shield. The witch reached out for him and touched his face. She licked her lips with a forked tongue. A new blessing. Archaon found that it both aroused and disgusted him. As her willowy fingers and sharp nails touched his flesh, he felt a warmth in his chest and loins.
‘Sularii!’ Archaon heard the stabbing words of Dravik Vayne. ‘Stop playing. Just kill him.’
The dark templar blinked the sorceress’s bewitchments away. She was there, in front of him, but it was a curved dagger of black metal that caressed his cheek rather than the druchii’s fingertips. Archaon looked down its length. The blade glistened with the witch’s poisons. Further up the toppled tower Archaon could see Dravik Vayne, the corsair commander, seething with hatred. His pair of cutlasses dripped with deadliness also and their tapering points sat nestled in the back of his prisoners’ skulls. Gorst and Fitch clutched each other nearby while before his blades, the servant of Slaanesh was walking Father Dagobert and Giselle down towards him.
‘I’m sorry, master,’ Dagobert said through his curtains of long, grey hair. The priest held the precious Liber Caelestior in his clawed grasp. Vayne not only had the priest prisoner but the ancient tome also. Giselle said nothing. She simply gave the Chaos warrior a stabbing glare. He watched as she slipped a stiletto knife from her sleeve – a knife she had used in attempts on his own life. Now she intended to use it on Vayne. Archaon gave the slightest shake of his head. He grabbed Sularii’s wrist and brutally twisted it in his grasp, turning the poisonous blade between them and spinning the witch into his embrace. Holding the dark elf to him, Archaon put the blade in her hand to her own throat. Dravik Vayne’s contorted face slackened to a smile.
‘You’re dead,’ the druchii said, staring at the warlord.
‘I’m many things,’ Archaon said, ‘but dead isn’t one of them. You will not be able to say the same soon, you treacherous worm.’
‘You have no army…’
‘It wasn’t worthy of my name,’ Archaon told him. ‘And its lieutenants were not worthy of it.’ Dravik Vayne gave him a snide smile. Out of the corner of his eye, Archaon noticed movement.
‘And you were not worthy of us,’ the champion of Slaanesh told him.
‘Perhaps,’ Archaon agreed.
‘You are not worthy of your gods,’ Vayne continued. ‘You are not worthy of your destiny.’
Like a dark thunderbolt, Eins dropped down beside him, the black stone of the tower pulverising beneath its boots. Funf landed beyond the dark elf corsair, on the sinking tower keep. The pair drew their bone swords from their wings and prepared to engage the druchii, prompting Vayne to turn and point his poisonous blades both ways. The Slaaneshi’s face screwed up with hate.
‘Back,’ he warned Archaon’s remaining Swords.
‘I am worthy of a destiny of my own,’ Archaon told him. The weaving movements drew closer. ‘A fate of my choosing. Not some snaking, labyrinthine path that gods, daemons and traitors choose for me.’
‘Then go,’ Vayne seethed, moving his poisonous blade tips between Archaon’s people. ‘Seek out such a fate, if it exists. Leave me to my god and his desires. Leave me to my Spite.’
‘Your floating fortress no longer floats, druchii,’ Archaon told him. ‘It’s going to the depths. And it’s taking you with it, you treacherous scum. The captain goes down with his vessel.’
‘Kill her,’ came a voice from behind. It was Khezula Sheerian. The ancient was hobbling up the tower behind the Chaos warrior, his bone staff tapping its way up the black stone. ‘The priest, the girl,’ Sheerian said, ‘they’re dead. Kill the witch.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Archaon demanded of the sorcerer.
‘Do it,’ Sheerian said. ‘Do what you do best, Archaon. End her.’
‘You’ll doom us all,’ the corsair-captain snarled.
Archaon nodded slowly to himself. ‘I’m known for that.’
And it was decided. Sularii managed a half-scream as he cut the witch’s head from her shoulders with her own blade. Tossing the dark elf’s head into the ocean, Archaon felt the stone beneath his boots suddenly judder. The charms and incantations that kept the Citadel afloat were losing their battle with the depths. Water about the colossal vessel began to thrash and foam as the black stone and rocky foundations of the vessel started taking it down below the waves. Vayne watched with a lover’s horror as Archaon allowed Sularii’s body to fall into the white water. It was all there in the druchii’s screwed-up face: his love for Sularii; his love for the Spite.
‘You idiot,’ Vayne spat, his dark charm and venomous smile gone. ‘You’ll put the Altar of Ultimate Darkness on the bottom of the ocean.’
‘Where it belongs,’ Archaon told him.
‘It was a gift from the gods,’ Vayne said, considering his own anger at his failure to reclaim the altar for his witch-queen.
‘They give,’ Archaon said, ‘and they take away.’
‘They do…’ Vayne seethed. The corsair-commander turned and rolled back up the tower at the two Swords blocking his escape. He passed under the bone blades of Funf and slashed the Chaos warrior with the poisoned metal of his own cutlass. The Sword shrieked as Archaon had never heard and fell to his armoured knees. The warlord couldn’t tell whether it was a cry of pain or pleasure, enslavement or release. The poison’s effects were swift and devastating. Funf simply withered to nothing before Archaon’s eyes.
‘He’s mine,’ Archaon called as Eins went in to attack. Vayne turned and assumed a druchii fighting stance. Something dark, exotic and designed to catch Archaon off-guard. He only need nick or slice the Chaos warrior with his blades. He sneered his madness at Archaon who advanced without drawing his blade. The black stone of the tower cracked and shattered underneath them. Water foamed and fountained about as the Spite began its torturous descent into the depths. Beyond, Archaon’s army of darkness tore itself to pieces, the gods delighting in the butchery and spectacle.
‘Master!’ Giselle screamed.
‘We’ve got to get off this ship,’ Father Dagobert called.
Archaon didn’t have time to dance with Dravik Vayne. Dagobert was right. The Spite was going down fast. Without druchii magic to keep it afloat, the unimaginable weight of the black stone fortress and the bedrock it sat upon was pulling it swiftly down. Archaon had seconds before they would all be in the freezing water being dragged down with the Citadel of Spite. As Dravik Vayne closed on him, his blades oozing their deadly poison, Archaon stopped and tore a piece of shattered black stone from the crumbling tower wall. Vayne ran at the Chaos warrior, eager for the advantage. Archaon hefted the small, jagged boulder up onto his armoured chest and then above his head. Throwing it down on his enemy with all his hate-fuelled might, Archaon’s rock smashed through Vayne’s offered blades and put the corsair’s skull in. Dropping the cutlasses, the Slaaneshi’s largely headless corpse stumbled about for a moment before dropping to its knees and slipping down into the foaming waters. Arc
haon spat after the corsair-captain and traitor.
He turned to Dagobert and Giselle, with Eins standing with them.
‘Now we go–’
Sickening shock stole the words from the end of his sentence. The beast was there. Flamefang. The Chaos dragon, tearing up the water as it swooped in low and fast. It was flying for the toppled tower, intent on claiming the winged warrior that had evaded its sky-snapping pursuit.
‘Down!’ Archaon roared. But it was too late. It was natural for them to turn. To set their own eyes on the danger before they tried to evade it. Such split-second curiosity cost them, however. The length of the beast’s fang-filled jaws were open. Its neck, its tail and its body were straight. Carried on a gargantuan flap of its wings, the horror came at them like a bolt from one of the druchii throwers. Gorst pushed Father Dagobert down through a tower window and into the flooded chamber within. Eins grabbed Giselle and tried to take off from the tower. Fitch stood in honest horror and soiled himself.
‘No!’ Archaon bawled as Giselle and Eins disappeared into the gaping trap of the dragon’s maw, swiftly followed by Gorst and Fitch. ‘No!’ he roared again, but there was nothing to be done but save himself. He turned and ran back up the length of the tower. He found Khezula Sheerian standing there. The daemon sorcerer was clutching his bone staff, leaning against it with his misty eyes closed. The sorcerous gemstone that crowned the staff blazed blue. Sheerian had seen with his Eye his Lord Tzeentch’s perversity. He had seen that as he had claimed the Brothers Spasskov in his summoning that the Chaos dragon would claim him as part of its own. Archaon leapt from the sinking, black stone of the tower. The great jaws of Flamefang missed him but took the daemon sorcerer a moment later.