by Rob Sanders
It seemed that the raft had been drifting for some time through the outer extent of the ice. Its passage was demonstrated in the narrow channel of black water and slush it had cut south as it had drifted. Before the raft the ice had also cracked. The fracture extended south, as far as Archaon could see, funnelling the ramshackle raft on. It was like a long, black line extending into the distance.
Archaon’s mind ached back through the slaughter, the devastation and the cold. Back to what Sheerian had told him. That the next treasure of Chaos to be discovered lay on a Black Meridian. The Chaos warrior’s eyes followed the fracture south. A black line of water through the whiteness of the ice. A Black Meridian. A nasty chuckle escaped the dark templar’s burning lips.
As the raft bounced and slushed its way through the fracture, the blackening skies plunged the frozen wilderness into darkness. With the volcanic brume churning above, lanced by strange lightning it became clear that these southern lands had never seen sun, moon or the blessing of a clear sky. There was something supernatural and potent about the place. The freezing air could not only graze the skin and stop the heart, it burned with the presence of the Dark Gods and their daemons. Far, far across the great oceans – at the bottom of the world – Archaon had discovered the Southern Wastes. A frozen hell like the one he had traversed in the north. As the cursed heavens raged and the darkness became absolute, drowning the meridian and turning the ice to a frosted obsidian, Archaon came to realise that these Southern Wastes were much, much worse.
The land seemed as if it was surrounded by the chill seas. It shared no border with the realms of men. There was no eternal battle to fight. No champions vying for the favour of Ruinous gods. This was a darker place – of abyssal soul and purpose. It was primordial. A land of chaos and havoc. A place of degenerate malevolence. As he drifted further into the savage lands, the temperature plummeted and the winds picked up. The darkness beyond the raft became a blurred stream of snow and howling elemental ferocity. The mountains of fire and fury drew closer. They stormed the explosive brilliance of magma into the inky skies above, raining ash into the maelstrom and trailing bifurcating rivers of lava that cut through the unnatural ice, giving the land what little light it enjoyed – the infernal glow of a dungeon or underworld.
In the light of the lava, the denizens of this desperate land were revealed to Archaon. Even in the blackness of the storm, Archaon could make out shapes in the darkness. The movement of beings. Hundreds of them. Thousands. He was in an undiscovered realm, swarming with savages. The darklight of his own doom didn’t extend very far in such a place, however. In the radiance of the crawling rivers of magma, however, Archaon saw that the bleak realm was overrun with monsters. In the depths of the darkness, in the shrieking swirl and the infernal cold, Archaon saw beastmen without number. These were not the weakling corruptions of man and beast he had encountered in the forests of the Empire, nor the savage tribes of animal fury he had yoked to his warmongering in the Shadowlands. These were daemonbreeds. Diabolical fusions of fiend, beast and god knows what else. These shaggy beasts were sculptures in midnight muscle, cloven of hoof and crowned with extravagant tangles of daemon horn. In the ember twilight, their gore-smeared snouts and bestial fang-faces were contorted with the base desires that ruled their monstrous kingdom. On those faces Archaon found his Dark Gods – rage and the barbaric tribal ambitions it served; the hang-dog suffering of such a wretched existence and the animal indulgences that served to alleviate the afflictions of both mind and the flesh. The ruinous drives of all living things were to be found in the swarming hordes of beasts that plagued the storm-scathed wilderness.
When a throng of monstrosities were drawn in on the thawing flesh of his corpse-raft, Archaon and Vier were forced to abandon the craft. Sinking into his scraps of fur and leather and tightening a belt heavy with recovered weapons, the dark templar set off on foot with the horribly transformed Vier limping behind. Despite a broken leg, hunched back and malformed limbs, the Sword of Chaos simply would not give up and die. Drawing a bone sword from his remaining wing he hobbled behind his master like a wretched sentinel, moaning his exertions.
The beastfiends about the raft had no weapons of their own – no blades to cut flesh or hack bone. Instead they just set upon the dead marauders with their clawed hands, tearing flesh and organs out of the cadavers with animal abandon. Archaon left them to sink their muzzles into the spoiling meat but as he crept away he could hear the creatures’ fangs tearing and the pegs of their chisel-teeth working their way through the carcasses. Nothing would be wasted – of that Archaon was sure. The Chaos warrior didn’t plan on being there when the meat ran out.
His footsteps in borrowed boots took him through the howling storm. For six days and six nights Archaon stumbled along the benighted path – although without sun or moon to tell one from the other it was almost impossible to tell. All Archaon knew was that his belly burned with hunger and his lips cracked for want of water. His legs fell to numbness with the torment of steps never-ending and his senses ached with the demands of constant vigilance. Beyond, Archaon could hear the infernal roaring of beastmen at war. Tribes of fiendbreeds fought for the miserable featureless territory about the meltwater darkness of their birthing pools on the obsidian ice. They snorted, wrangled and butchered each other without end, burdening the icy gales with the perpetual bellows of death and savage celebration. Those closest sniffed with suspicion at the advancing Chaos warrior. Their milky eyes saw little but opportunity and death but their sense of smell was daemonically acute. If Archaon had been anyone else, he was sure that he would have been torn to pieces in moments. He wasn’t just anyone else. He was Archaon. Chosen of the Ruinous Powers and Herald of the End Times. None of the creatures would know his name or have heard of his deeds but the Chaos warrior had the stink of dark destiny on him. He was an evil they had never known and they were cautious of it. Occasionally beasts would charge from the darkness and rage at Archaon, prompting the dark templar’s frost-scolded hands to slip down to the jangling nest of blades and axes that sat snug in his belt. They would not attack him and as soon as he had trudged out of the barren slush of their territory, they left him alone to pursue aggressions elsewhere.
As the black fissure in the ice turned to a river of inky meltwater and the channel in turn became a road of solidifying volcanic stone, Archaon saw other things in the storm-flashed hordes. The landscape was a colossal graveyard. The bleak, howling wilderness was littered with the monstrous bones and skeletons of legendary creatures. Things giant, warped and long dead. Like outposts or tribal hubs, the great bones and vaulted ribcages of these beasts formed shelters for the swarming beastfiends of the wilderness. There were daemons here – in profusion. The storms begat the infernal things – monsters springing forth from the momentary blindness of lightning strikes and billowing blizzards of ice and ash. The creatures of nightmare stalked Archaon and each other through the crowded forest of shaggy beastmen. Their outlandish forms and the horror of their fiendflesh and faces were pure terror to behold. They were the diabolical servants of the Dark Gods, crafted in their image and just about everything else. They knew Archaon not by his scent but the potency of his presence. The Chaos warrior burned with the darklight of fate. It drew them down on him and Archaon had to be constantly alert to their predations.
Every time a horror leapt from the storm or tore through a roaring sea of beasts at him, another suddenly emerged from its hiding place in the infernal gloom and horribly destroyed its devilkin. The daemons and fiend-princes of different Chaos gods played at the game of death and destruction about the dark templar’s implacable advance, ripping each other apart in contestation for the Chaos warrior’s soul. With the maelstrom swirling above his head, Archaon could almost imagine the Ruinous Powers looking down on him. Their eyes could be hungry for glory or full of disappointment and disapproval. Archaon could not know and he did not care. He had found the undiscovered realm and was
on the Black Meridian. A mighty treasure of Chaos waited for him and nothing would put the warrior from his path.
Then he heard it. Not the roar of a beastmen or a daemon shriek. It was the heaven-shattering thunder of dragoncall. Tzeentch’s monstrous calamity. The Yien-Ya-Long. Flamefang. The terror of Grand Cathay and now the terror of the Southern Wastes. Denied its prize and still hungry for the warlord’s soul, the creature was hunting him through the maelstrom. Archaon peered into the raging tempest about him and up into the spewing murk above. For a moment he thought he saw the winged monstrosity, beating its wings through the raging turmoil of the skies – but he couldn’t be sure. The purple inferno that erupted some way distant into the hordes was unmistakable, however. Bathed in the violaceous glow of its own transformative flame, Archaon saw the thing. He dropped into a crouch, desperate not to be spotted by one of the many eyes that writhed in the smeared flesh of its supernatural hide. It was huge. Much bigger than when Sheerian had given the monster’s spirit form on board the Citadel of Spite or when Archaon had fought it below the waves. As the Chaos dragon carpeted the bestial hordes with Lord Tzeentch’s blessing, turning the beastfiend and the daemon, the torched and thrashing to spawn, Archaon could see why. Turning its head to one side and opening the colossal length of its narrow jaws wide, Flamefang funnelled the changelings down its gaping throat – their precious flesh to be assimilated into its own. With such an appetite, the Chaos dragon had decimated the east. Now, fuelled by fiendflesh and daemon souls, the gargantuan beast intended to make the Southern Wastes its own.
Archaon pushed on. Flamefang had been unleashed at his command. It had feasted on his failure but it would not claim him. The Chaos warrior nodded to himself. Greater things waited for him than a dragon’s gullet. Keeping low, Archaon hurried on along his damned path. His Black Meridian. As the endless road of black volcanic rock approached one of the many black peaks that blighted the swarming ice, the Chaos warrior felt the soles of his boots warm. The stone was shot through with glowing cracks, betraying the melted rock beneath. The road was leading him right up to the volcano and had in fact been created by a channel of magma that had cascaded down the mountainside and slowly slurped its way impossibly straight and impossibly north towards the coast. Unusually, the volcano’s summit was dark and dormant but for the slightest suggestion of a cooling glow. A crown of lesser cones reached out of the black scree-side of the central tor, each summit a furious pinnacle of dribbling ash and sky-scorching lava.
Stepping from the burning stone, Archaon trekked alongside the road – his path turning from black crust to the murky red of bubbling magma to the furious splashing yellow of liquid rock. The sputtering lava glowed with the diabolical heat of a daemon furnace and Archaon was forced further and further from its flaming shores as the channel grew wider. As he neared the volcano, with Vier hobbling behind, it became clear that a series of structures had been carved into the igneous rock. A small, craggy city of black stone, dusted with ash. The architecture was colossal and ancient. Massive pillars. Standing stone archways. Dark temples. Rough amphitheatres.
As Archaon and Vier moved through the damned structures on the rising slope of the volcano, it became clear that the city had been long abandoned. Beastfiends swarmed the ruins, assuming structures for themselves with territorial ferocity. They fought between themselves. They gorged themselves. They cannibalised their own. They slept. All the while, hunted through the ancient derelicts by predacious daemons.
Archaon and Vier moved up through the city-slope as quietly as they could. Progress was agonisingly slow, moving from building to shattered building. They hid behind fallen pillars and crumbling ruins. They moved through the darkness of collapsed temples and across the ash of forgotten arenas. They waited while hordes of beasts fought each other in the streets. They held still and silent while the victors crunched the bones of the fallen. They moved on only when the hordes passed on. Still, the Chaos warriors were forced to butcher many of the beastfiends. Grabbing the monsters. Strangling. Slitting throats. Stabbing through muscle and into hearts. Their murderous progress through the city was silent and bloody. They could not afford to bring a city of bestial monstrosities down on them.
As the ruins began to thin on the lower slopes of the volcano peak and the ascent became harsh, Archaon picked out standing stones at intervals about the mountainside. The stones bore a selection of runes and symbols, obviously infernal in nature but many the Chaos warrior didn’t recognise. Even the storm seemed to grow to a respectful stillness about the mountain. Assuming the dark peak to have some corrupt spiritual significance, like a shrine or burial ground, the Chaos warrior strode on unmolested. Beastfiends and daemons seemed not to congregate in the craggy upper reaches, where the lava channels raged and the standing stones communicated silent significance.
Step by step Archaon began to loosen the rags, furs and shreds of armour that had provided feeble protection from the murderous cold and freezing temperatures of the Southern Wastes. As the rigid rags began to thaw, Archaon felt drenched to the marrow but a few minutes walking alongside the roasting river of molten stone dried and warmed the warrior’s frozen bones. Holding a hand out against the glare and the intense heat, Archaon ascended the slope, jumping from burning boulder to igneous crag. The climb was harsh but welcome after the monotonous road leading to it through the dark wilderness and the slow progress through the ruined city. Above, Archaon could see that the channel was oozing its way from a ragged cave entrance in the side of the main tor. An entrance shaped like an eight-pointed star. The realisation put a crooked smile on the dark templar’s lips and a surge in his step. He was close.
The first indication that there was anything wrong was the coolness on the back of his head. For a while now, Archaon had been baked in the unrelenting heat of the lava channel. Beads of sweat had rolled from his brow and down his bare head. The sensation of the breeze dancing across his skin was immediately pleasant and horrifying. Spinning around, Archaon caught the final moments of Flamefang’s descent. Spotting him alone on the scree slope, the Chaos dragon had thundered from the black, billowing heavens, flapping its wings at the last moment to effect a landing on the volcano’s side. Smashing into the mountainside, its talons sinking into the hot rock like anchors, the sheer size of the beast shook the ground beneath Archaon’s boots.
Behind the creature, stone archways toppled and columns crumbled to the ground. The dragon’s mighty arrival had sent a quake through the ruined city, sending the fragility of its structures into a succession of collapses that swallowed the city in a cloud of black dust. From below Archaon could hear the furious bellow of disturbed beastfiends and the howl of daemons. As Flamefang clawed its thunderous way up the side of the volcano, its tail whipped this way and that, cleaving through the structures behind it and laying fiend-swarming temples to waste. With every colossal movement, the Chaos dragon shook the ground.
Archaon lost his footing and began to skid down towards the monster. Boulders bounced down the slope, dislodged from above, and tumbled down at both Archaon and the dragon. Moving from side to side, the dark templar allowed the larger pieces of rock to plunge past him and shatter on the assimilated bulk of the Chaos dragon.
Flamefang too was struggling with its footing, its great claws tearing through the loose rock and scree of the slope. Sweeping its neck around the monster reached up, snapping at Archaon with its gargantuan jaws. Archaon leapt from his purchase, sending the boulder he was standing on down towards the beast where it was pulverised in the trapjaw tip of the dragon’s maw instead of the Chaos warrior.
Flame washed up the mountainside, forcing Archaon to take cover behind a rocky outcrop, where he found the Sword Vier similarly taking cover. Looking back up at the cave entrance, Archaon snarled. He would never make the climb up there with the Chaos dragon at his back.
Vier seemed to know exactly what his master was thinking. What his master needed. Painfully drawi
ng his bone sword from one warped wing, the warrior bumped his mangled fist off Archaon’s shoulder before moving out from the outcrop. Archaon nodded, peering out after the Sword of Chaos. He skidded down the scree-side at Flamefang, who was simultaneously distracted by the beastfiends swarming at it from the demolished section of ruinscape. As it snapped and streamed purple flame at the gathering hordes, Vier made his wretched approach – his vengeance intended to buy his master the time he needed to reach his prize.
Clawing with bloody fingers at the shattered rock, Archaon pulled himself up towards the cave entrance. His only chance was to get inside and put the mountainside between himself and the dragon. As the agony of the climb took hold, Archaon could hear the screeches of daemons and the savage futility of beastfiends snapped up in Flamefang’s monstrous jaws. Soon Vier was lost to him, as was the crumbling city and its fell denizens as the demolishing of structures sent great clouds of ash and black dust skyward. The volcanic miasma was lit up by the purple flash of flame, as the Chaos dragon visited the transformative wrath of Tzeentch on the Infernals.
It was a gruelling climb. The ledges and handholds cut like glass and most of what Archaon placed his boots on came away from the cliff face. Below, the carnage had ended. Flamefang erupted out of the cloud of dust and destruction the undisputed victor, clawing its colossal way up the steep incline after Archaon. The beast of Tzeentch surged up the slope, several beats of its wings carrying its prey – the blazing soulfire of the Chaos warrior’s irrepressible spirit leading it on. Once more the jaws opened. With nowhere to jump to, the dark templar was forced to allow his boot to skid down the slope. The dragon chomped at the side of the mountain, its twisted teeth dislodging chunks of black rock and a shower of gravel.