Archaon: Everchosen

by Rob Sanders

  Archaon felt it immediately. His armour and mail burned his skin with the deep cold of the water. The shock almost knocked the wind out of the dark templar. Within moments he had something else to worry about – the weight of his plate was dragging him down like an anchor. He clawed at the foaming water. Bubbles raged about him as the colossal Spite started its descent below the waves. The evacuating air and thrashing waters were about the only thing keeping the Chaos warrior from sinking. As his head broke the surface he heard the shouts and screams, the drowning boom of the sinking fortress. He saw Father Dagobert. The priest was still clutching The Liber Caelestior to his belly to protect it from the water. He was on his knees, precariously reaching out his pudgy hand for the struggling Archaon. The Chaos warrior went under again. Bubbles rushed past his sinking form and it took a clawing, thrashing effort to reach the surface again.

  Dagobert was still there. He was shouting something to Archaon, his long, grey hair framing a face lined deeply with his concerns and fears. Dagobert never saw the Chaos dragon return for a second pass. This time flying up the length of the sinking tower, Flamefang streamed purple flame before it. Archaon looked at Dagobert. The priest looked back at him. He didn’t even turn around. He knew what was coming. Archaon watched Dagobert disappear in a wall of unnatural flame. Archaon would have called out but he was already half-drowning. All he could do was stare up through the shallows as Hieronymous Dagobert – his priest, his father, his friend and his conscience, was lost to the transformative horror of the dragon flame. In that one moment Archaon lost both his past and his future.

  The Celestine Book of Divination – Necrodomo’s predictions and the destined path he had seen for Archaon the Everchosen of Chaos was now gone. Burnt. Warped to oblivion with its faithful translator. Mulched ink and parchment, sinking slowly to the bottom of the Great Eastern Ocean.

  At the realisation, Archaon stopped struggling. The deadweight of his armour dragged him down towards the depths. He cared nothing for the men, beasts and daemons that had joined his ranks. To them in turn he personally was nothing. Merely a path to greatness. Hieronymous Dagobert had raised him like a son. Giselle had been ardent in both her love and hate for him. Like the girl and the priest, even Gorst had been with him at the beginning of his dark journey. In turn, the damned tome whose secrets had become both Dagobert’s life and his own future was now lost. Forever. Like the Altar of Ultimate Darkness, it was on its way to the darkest depths where no champion of Chaos, no Everchosen of the Dark Gods might acquire them. He was lost and everything was lost to him. The Ruinous Powers had played their sick game. They had tricked him into thinking, feeling and believing that he was the one. They had tricked others into following such a doomed pursuit. They had done this for their own infernal entertainment. They had made Archaon a beacon of darkness. A living deathtrap – so that he might draw mighty souls to his cause before slaughtering them in the Dark Gods’ names.

  The Citadel thundered through the stormy depths. Archaon felt the weight of his armour and the irresistible pull of the sinking fortress take him down. Above, the light of the world was fading. Below there was only the cold invitation of darkness. Archaon allowed it to drag him down. He was done. He was finished with the world of men and gods. They had finished him. The remaining air in his lungs scorched his way through his chest. He wanted to let it go. He wanted the ice-stabbing cold of the blackness below to take him.

  Then he saw it. Death from above. Framed in the dwindling twilight of the sea’s surface, he saw the thing he had unleashed on the world. The serpentine outline of the monstrous Flamefang. The Chaos dragon had plunged below the waves, drawn down on the sinking doom that was Archaon. Its spindly claws and massive wings pushed it down through the raging bubbles, down through the crumbling masonry of the Citadel and down through a sea of bodies. Down to feast on the blinding darklight of the Chaos warrior’s soul.

  Archaon felt his body tense. The desire to breathe, to live and to fight shot through his frozen body like a lightning strike through a mountain top. Terminus came up in his grasp, the water and the deep cold a sluggish drag on his movements. He watched the growing silhouette slither through the water like a snake, its colossal jaws moving from side to side, the horror of its long serpent body cutting through the depths with an undulating ripple. Archaon tensed the remaining warmth in his body through his right arm, preparing for the strike. The Chaos warrior was ready. Terminus was ready.

  Then he heard a single word echo about the addled, air-deprived rawness of his mind. That word was ‘No…’

  A ‘No’ of defiance? A ‘No’ of defeat?

  The Chaos dragon’s narrow jaws opened. The dagger-trap of its maw and the bottomless reaches of its throat beckoned. Archaon would never know. As Terminus slipped from his grasp and dropped quietly into the depths, Flamefang snapped its colossal jaws closed and plunged Archaon into a darkness he had never known.

  ‘No…’ was all he could hear.

  ‘No…’ said Archaon, though his lips spoke not. His tortured spirit ached for release.

  ‘No,’ said the Dark Master, his words echoing though eternity. ‘You are a slave to shadow. You are the prince of calamity. You are the future, my son. You are my future.’

  ‘I am an end to all futures,’ Archaon roared at the reasoning darkness.

  ‘Yes you are…’

  ‘All futures, thing of dread that stalks my soul,’ Archaon told it. ‘My will is my own. My destiny cannot be held in the pages of a damned tome. My soul will not be crushed in the claw of some daemon or dark god.’

  ‘Whatever you need to tell yourself…’

  ‘This flesh will never be yours,’ Archaon told the darkness. ‘This soul will rail against your bidding. You will come to regret the day you chose me, horror.’

  ‘You were not chosen, Archaon,’ the Dark Master raged, scorching him with every word. ‘You were never chosen. You were sired on the world so that I might end it. And end it I shall, Archaon. End it I shall. Return to embrace your destiny.’

  CHAPTER XV

  ‘I am settled, and throw all that I am,

  Every corporeal desire and spiritual agent at this hopeless feat.’

  – Dantalion Altieri, From the Abyss

  The Black Meridian – The Cliff of Beasts

  The Southern Wastes

  The Blazes – Dies Irae dies Illa

  ‘No…’

  Just a word.

  Archaon felt the scolding touch of plate against his skin. The weight of Terminus in his frozen fist. The darkness all about him. From the shimmering twilight above he saw the black shape of dread itself descending. The Chaos dragon – its narrow jaws stretched wide, its great talons and wings carrying its serpentine bulk down through the waters. ‘No…’ Archaon said, bubbles raging from his blue lips.

  Instead of kicking away through the water or clawing himself to the side and out of the path of the dagger-trap maw, Archaon surged straight at it. He felt the colossal jaw envelop him like a cave, with rows of twisted stalactites and stalagmites ready to stab straight through him. The dragon’s mouth began to close but the Chaos warrior had some stabbing left to do of his own. Kicking up and away from the beast’s eye-pimpled tongue and its mangled lower jaw, Archaon thrust upwards with his greatsword. Up at the grotesque roof of the dragon’s mouth. Up through faces that stared back down at him from the soft, wet flesh in unspeakable horror. Terminus slipped straight through the assimilated patchwork of victims. Archaon put everything he had behind the blade – despite resistance from the icy water. The crusader blade passed through flesh, gristle and slammed through the bone of the monster’s malformed skull. Archaon slammed the weapon all the way up to its jewelled crossguard, in the hope that the blade would pierce the abomination’s warped brain and once again end Flamefang’s reign of transformative terror.

  The jaws suddenly spasmed open. The tong
ue assumed a choked rigidity and the water about Archaon clouded with regurgitated blood. The jaws closed and then jerked opened again. Archaon’s gauntlet slipped from the sword’s grip and the Chaos warrior found himself tumbling through the dark water as the creature’s neck retracted the colossal set of jaws. Terminus had not sliced deep enough to kill the monstrous thing. With the length of crafted steel embedded in the back of its throat, the monster was finding it difficult to swallow. Archaon watched the snaking shape of the monstrosity beat its wings for the surface. Fading… fading until finally it broke the ocean surface and disappeared.

  Archaon yearned for the weight of Terminus in his grip but the greatsword had gone with the dragon. The Chaos warrior had bigger problems. The air trapped in his lungs was roasting him from the inside out. The pressure was unbearable. It threatened to rip its way out of him. He instinctively tried to breathe deeper but there was nothing left of the desperate gasp he had taken on the surface and only the murk of salt water about him. He was deep. Deeper than he had thought possible and between the dragging force of the descending Spite and the deadweight of his own plate he was sinking further. With feverish hands he began to tear the mangled plate and shredded mail from his body. Armour sank from his thrashing form and with every piece the dark templar felt the grip the depths had on him loosen. As he tore the final few pieces away from his blood-sticky body he kicked for the surface. The Chaos dragon was gone from his thoughts. As was the loss of his blade. Armies and the destinies that went with them were unreachable in his thoughts. He had only one feeling. One desire. A need so overwhelming that all else fizzled to oblivion. Air. Archaon needed air. He felt his limbs weaken. He felt his mind slip. The Old World had not claimed him and neither had the New. He had survived the insanity of the Northern Wastes. He would be thrice-damned before he allowed the Great Eastern Ocean to claim him. He kicked. He clawed. He roared himself free of the freezing water’s seductive grasp.

  The sound echoed through the clear, chill skies above. There was splashing. There was coughing and spluttering. There was the sweet ecstasy of lungs filled to bursting with urgent air. Archaon kicked in the water to keep his head above the surface. For a moment he just breathed. He blinked the stinging salt water from his eye. He was there – in the frozen seas of the south. The unexplored seas near the bottom of the world – which no northerner had known – skirted even by the traders of the elder races. Into waters only the damned would dare to venture. Archaon was not alone, however. The Citadel of Spite had gone down, taking the Altar of Ultimate Darkness with it to the bottom of the cursed ocean. Wreckage floated about the site of the Spite’s sinking; canvas and cordage mostly. Vessels from Archaon’s flotilla that had not blown each other to pieces had been flame-savaged by the Chaos dragon and were now making their escape. The water was crowded with bodies. Some had been dead before they hit the water, victims of the mutinous insanity that had swept through the Spite. Others had succumbed to the deep cold, as Archaon would if he couldn’t find a way to get out of the water.

  Marauders and Chaos warriors were screaming for help. With their last frosted breaths they called for compatriots and enemies to return in the fleeing vessels, but the ships were leaving. Archaon could tell by the angle of their masts that many were listing and wouldn’t make it far anyway. Those that could make their escape did, on a northerly heading. They weren’t coming back. Not for the scum of the world or the Chaos warrior that had led them. They were wise to do so. If they had returned, Archaon would have butchered them for their betrayal.

  Archaon swam. It was the only thing he could do to retain what little warmth remained in his body. He felt the icy tendrils of doom creep through his body and stab through his mind. It was becoming difficult to think. Men and beasts died about him in the water; their fur frosting; their armour dragging them down. The dark templar sensed creatures in the water – monstrosities newly liberated from the caverns beneath the Citadel had surfaced to feed on the calamitous bounty. Warriors screamed for their lives as serpents and great-gulleted beasts took them. As an undulating monstrosity closed on Archaon, the Chaos warrior smacked his fist at the freezing waters. Sensing that the dark templar might be more trouble than he was worth, the sea monster followed its instincts and slithered at a nearby Hundun tribesman who let loose a gargling scream before being chomped below the waves.

  Archaon knew he had little time. As he rolled with the motion of the waves he stared up at the empty sky. If the cold or sea creatures didn’t get him then the returning Flamefang would. He could only hope that it had sought out havoc elsewhere. Spotting a tangled piece of floating wreckage, Archaon swam arm over exhausted arm across to it. It appeared to be some mangled spars and cordage from a sunken war-junk. Upon reaching the debris, Archaon discovered that the wreckage had already been claimed by three Kurgan warriors, huddled together and shivering. Archaon hauled himself up onto the bobbing spars, drawing from the marauders a storm of curses and warnings in their tribal tongue. Archaon – bare-chested and white with rime – climbed out of the water. The Kurgans drew their cruel weapons. Archaon gave them the slit of one eye. His mouth curled to a frozen snarl. For the first time the marauders saw the patch on his eye and the eternally burning Mark of Chaos that smouldered like a crown about his bare head.

  ‘Leave,’ Archaon growled. The Kurgan looked to one another for reassurance but there wasn’t any. They looked to their weapons. ‘Go on, get out of here,’ the unarmed templar snapped as he moved towards them, prompting the marauders to jump into the deadly waters.

  After the Spite, the collection of ropes and spars was a miserable command. That didn’t stop rabid Chaos warriors from trying to climb aboard – like Archaon attempting to save themselves from the frozen waters. Taking a length of spar, the dark templar bludgeoned his former allies, caving in their helmets and heads before lashing their bodies to the wreckage for extra buoyancy. Stripped bodies of wet floating debris and mounds of corpses floated about him. What full-bellied sea monsters could not swallow, Archaon claimed for his raft. Some were almost frozen solid by the time he got to them, while others – in death – had started to rot and balloon with unnatural speed. As he rolled corpses in the water to get them into position, Archaon discovered that one of the ragged cadavers was a winged warrior of Chaos. It was one of his Swords. Vier. There was movement beneath the Sword’s armour that Archaon took for breathing and the dark templar hauled the warrior up onto the raft.

  Incredibly, Vier was alive. He had not only survived the dragon’s flame but also the fall and brutal landing. Archaon swiftly discovered, however, that the movement wasn’t breathing. Vier was suffering under the influence of the Chaos dragon’s breath. His form was undergoing grotesque changes that simply through force of will alone Vier was attempting to resist.

  Archaon dragged Vier’s mangled body into an upright position. Beyond having bone-shattered injuries, his back was hunched. At least one of his wings and an arm had been horribly fused to his body. Things writhed about within him wanting to be free, wanting to blossom into new forms, but the Chaos warrior groaned his way through them. The two of them sat and they shivered as the raft bobbed away from the floating collection of bodies and debris.

  Without means to steer the raft, Archaon was at the perverse mercy of the currents that seemed to be dragging his macabre jury-rigged vessel further south into the darkness and temperatures that plunged further than Archaon could imagine.

  Frosted in his scraps of armour and decorated in a motley collection of mismatched weaponry, Archaon appeared more like one of his miserable marauders or tribesmen than the warlord who had led them. Survival was his prime concern. Water. Food. Warmth. He licked the frost and rime routinely formed on the wood of the spars. He cut frozen meat from the mound of corpses that made up the raft. He established a small fire in a cooking pot, burning scalps and the fat cut from the better-fed of the cadavers. Enough to dry his furs and armour – scrap by painstaking sc
rap – and warm hands that felt as if they had already fallen off. Vier took nothing. The Sword just sat and suffered through his attempted transformations. Archaon found himself watching the Chaos warrior for signs of treachery, signs that he might have become something else. He was loath to dump his Sword of Chaos, however and secretly welcomed the distraction.

  It was a miserable existence but as the days turned to weeks, it was an existence – and to Archaon that was all that mattered. He spent his time searching both the seas and sky. Flamefang would make short work of the raft with its narrow jaws and streams of warping flame. He saw nothing of the dragon, however, and assumed that it had headed inland in search of more populous prey. The bleak horizon was equally empty. The waters were dark, the air cutting and the seas empty of sail. Mainly Archaon slept. Boredom, exhaustion and futility combined to drag him into wretched dreams. In some he was still a warlord, commanding champions and the legions of Chaos. In others he was haunted by a daemon darkness. The thing that watched him from the shadows and even now, in the stark emptiness of the polar seas, seemed to be with him. Murmuring the insanities of fevered sleep, Archaon wished it gone. Sometimes it stayed. Sometimes it seemed to leave. Sometimes it left others in its stead. Corpses that rose from the lashed cadavers to point, to accuse and berate with droning insistence. Father Dagobert, Giselle, Sheerian. Giselle in particular would scream at him, spit at him, slap him. Her furious strikes were too feeble to leave an impression on the Chaos warrior but were sometimes enough to snap him from his nightmares.

  Shuddering to wakefulness, Archaon found that he was shaking. It was cold. Colder than before. The fire in the pot was out. Vier was groaning his agonies. The raft was rocking and the dark templar could hear a slushy creak. He had been asleep for some time. Rubbing some life back into the frozen mask of his face, Archaon got to his feet. The horizon had changed. It was not the mind-bending flat line stretching into eternity that it had been. It was angular and shattered. He had reached the seasonal ice of some southern land. Great bergs bobbed about him. The dark waters were gone. Ice lay before the raft and the skies were the broiling black of pitch. Far beyond, in the distance, Archaon could see the distant pinnacle glow of eruptions, betraying the presence of volcanoes dotted about the horizon.