by Rob Sanders
Climbing around the side of the volcano, Archaon attempted to take shelter behind one of the razor-sharp ridges running down the side of the mountain. He heard a horrible thunder build up within the creature’s gigantic form and knew it was about to breathe its purple flame. The inferno torched the mountainside, blasting grit and loose rock from the volcano. Archaon managed to haul himself around the razor-sharp ridge in time, the black rock soaking up the worst of Flamefang’s warpflame. With horror the dark templar realised that the purple flame had washed across the furs covering the back of his shoulder and two fingers of his left hand. The little finger and ring finger seared, as if they had been dipped in boiling oil. Archaon snarled through a cry of pain and tried to secure his purchase.
Suddenly he felt the burning furs draping one of his shoulders move. The warpflame had given them a new and horrible life. Feeling a morphing set of jaws sink into his shoulder, Archaon tore the rippling fur from his flesh and cast the mutating thing down the mountainside. Through the scalding sensation of his two fingers, Archaon felt his flesh rebel. Skin stretched. Flesh changed. Bone began to grow. Disgust washed through him. He thought of the unfortunate Vier and the horror he had both resisted and become. The fingers began to change and Archaon didn’t want to know what they were to become. He certainly didn’t want the flesh-warping effect to spread. Slipping a marauder’s axe from his belt and placing his left hand against the warm rock of the mountainside, the Chaos warrior cleaved down with the axe and struck them off. As the two digits fell with the sparks from the stone, Archaon clutched the injured hand to him. He felt his own blood soak through the material to his chest.
Again, Flamefang’s great gavial jaws came at him and with pain-fuelled fury, Archaon flung the axe at the beast. The weapon’s rough blade buried itself in the creature’s nostril-flaring snout, doing little to persuade the beast to leave him alone. With one bloody fist clutched to his chest, Archaon climbed for his life. With the monster’s jaws chewing through the scenery behind him, the Chaos warrior scrabbled his way up the scree slope, punching handholds into the igneous rubble. With the dragon’s jaws just torso-sheering moments behind him, Archaon hauled himself up through the ragged star-shaped opening to the cave. The light. The heat. The radiance of the river of lava slowly coursing through the rough, black passage beyond was almost unbearable. Everything was bathed in a blinding infernal glow and flame danced from the shreds of clothing and armour that Archaon was wearing, just by being close to the channel of bubbling magma. Slapping out the flames and dragging himself along the course with one arm, the Chaos warrior kicked back through the gravel to safety.
Or so the dark templar thought. Suddenly the Chaos dragon’s jaws were there. It had hauled itself up to the cave entrance and pushed the colossal length of its narrow jaws down into its depths. Archaon heard the tortured screams of the assimilated unfortunates whose stolen flesh charred and burned at such proximity to the molten rock.
‘Burn, you monstrosity,’ Archaon hissed back at the creature as the mournful roar of Flamefang itself joined the flesh-stolen of its form. The thing struggled with its purchase, the dragon tearing its claw-holds away and dashing itself with spatters of hide-scorching lava. Its jaws suddenly plunged down the length of the cave, the writhing dimensions of its head turning the star-shaped opening to rubble. Archaon kicked back through the grit. The blaze of the liquid rock roasted him from one side while Flamefang’s mangled fangs attempted to snap up a scrabbling foot or leg and drag its soul-prey back into the open.
Archaon watched as the dragon’s jaws opened. Bathed in the effulgence of the passage, the horror of the monster’s maw was revealed. Within its depths Archaon saw another head – a blind, obscene set of jaws set within the first. The huge head shot out at the Chaos warrior, all malformed flesh and twisted fang. Archaon kicked back from the thing that seemed to extend on a horrid neck of its own. The jaws parted to reveal a third set of jaws within the second. Like a telescope the horrid appendage extended, snapping at Archaon with a savage, rhythmic abandon. The beast wanted his flesh and his soul so badly that Archaon could feel it in the feverish snap of the inset jaw. Archaon kicked back at the monster’s reach, his right boot snagging on the monstrous fang-trap. The jaws retracted and dragged the dark templar a little way back through the grit before his boot came free. With nothing but a scavenged marauder boot for its agony and trouble, the furious Flamefang withdrew its narrow jaws from the cave entrance and took its lava-scorched screeches into the sky.
Archaon tried to spit after the beast but the chamber was too hot and his mouth was too dry. He had to get away from the infernal intensity of the lava flow. Limping with one boot through the razor-sharp volcanic shale, Archaon made his way up the searing passage. As it snaked through the blackness of the mountain’s interior, the molten glow lighting his way, Archaon looked down to his bloodied hand, to his missing fingers. He had to do something about the injury. Crouching and reaching for the bubbling lava as close as he dared, he felt the searing agony flare up once again as the heat cauterised the wound. Retracting the hand and working his remaining fingers and thumb, he found them to be burnt but serviceable. Tearing a scrap of clothing from his body he fashioned and tied off a swift bandage before lurching on through the brilliance of the cave.
The draining potency seemed to go on forever. The passage wormed its way through the roasting mountain, with Archaon stumbling along it, the half of his face and head turned towards the molten river scorched to redness. The Chaos warrior finally found some brief relief as the passage opened out and the channel widened. He rested for a moment against a crag of jagged black rock, cowering before the intense heat before drawing his gaze upwards. Only then did he realise that he had reached the end of the cursed Black Meridian. The journey was over. He had arrived.
CHAPTER XVI
‘Unconquered…’
– Epitaph – The tomb of Morkar ‘The Uniter’,
First Everchosen of Chaos
Mount Ceno
The Southern Wastes
Horns Harrowing: The Season of Fire
Pulling his rags across his mouth, Archaon found it difficult to breathe. The opening chamber was a pit of heat and noxious gases. He found himself within the colossal cone of the volcano tor. The interior seemed dormant but for the bubbling lake of lava that dominated the chamber floor and lit the walls of the cone with a dungeon glow. Limping towards it, Archaon discovered that a series of stones – like stepping stones – led from the seething shore to an island of black rock that occupied the middle of the lake. Looking about him, Archaon found that the walls all about the cone interior were decorated with stone caskets. Resting on crags and spurs, equidistant from one another and reaching up the dormant volcano interior, Archaon beheld thousands of sarcophagi, rough and carved of igneous rock. Hobbling over to the nearest, resting on jagged spurs in the rockface nearby, the dark templar saw that it bore the Ruinous Star of the Chaos Powers united. Putting his ear to the casket top, the Chaos warrior heard the strangest sound. Archaon would recognise it anywhere. It was the sound of battle. It was the sound of blades clashing, bawling war cries and men dying. The sound was distant. Like an echo of eternity. Archaon drew one of several short blades he was carrying – a Kurgan falchion. Using the flared tip of the poor blade, Archaon prised the lid off the sarcophagus and pushed it aside. Within the sound of battle eternal died. The coffin was bare of bones. It contained only the rusted remnants of a Chaos blade. Listening through the lids of the next and the next, Archaon found the same. The distant cacophony of war. Different battles. Different voices calling out in triumph or death. In each Archaon found a mouldering weapon – some still bearing the stains of ancient slaughter.
The dark templar nodded to himself. He was standing in a tomb. Here, in the wickedness of the Southern Wastes, the exalted warriors of Chaos had been laid to rest – their bones recovered to wither in the noxious heart of this mountain; th
eir souls to fight on for the glory of their deranged gods.
Tearing a rag from his torso, Archaon tied the material about his foot and strode on towards the molten lake. Once again the intense heat threatened to overwhelm him. Stepping out onto the first stone, Archaon felt assailed from all sides by the blinding fury of the lake. As he stepped from one stone to another, his will weakening and his knees faltering, the poisonous gases of the chamber filled his lungs and the heat scorched his skin. Everything sizzled, slurped and crackled. As he reached the final stone, the craggy footfall cracked and sheared away into the lava. Falling to a crouch, his hands clutching the small rock and his foot held over the searing surface of the lake, Archaon jumped. He landed on the island’s shale shore and rolled through the shattered rock, cutting his back to ribbons. Pulling shards of stone from his flesh, the dark templar walked up the shore. Above him, the volcano opened out onto the broiling blackness of a doom-laden sky.
The island seemed to support a roughly hewn architecture. It was scorch-shattered and dusted with ash. The structure lay in ruins but Archaon recognised certain elements of its construction. There seemed to be a hearth and a firepot of molten rock. Hollows contained the solidified dregs of molten metal. Shapes and moulds that had been carved into the stone. Archaon even saw what was left of a hammer, buried in the dust. The Chaos warrior was fairly sure that he was standing in some infernal smithy or daemon forge. As he passed through the crumbling ruins and reached the heart of the forge tomb, his suspicions were confirmed.
Archaon fell down to his knees in the volcanic grit. He lowered his head in reverence and relief. Before him stood a stone dais bearing the assembled pieces of a suit of infernal armour. Archaon stared up at the ancient plate. Its design had a simple monstrosity to it. The work of the insane genius of some daemon craftsman. Both the metal plates and the mail upon which they were set were fashioned of some outlandish metal. The suit’s brazen cuirass and pauldrons suggested both fortitude and elegance, while the plates that covered both arms and legs appeared to overlap for extra protection, like the hull planks of a clinker-built vessel. Sturdy armoured boots and the intricate workings of plate gauntlets sat abandoned in the dust, while the reinforced expanse of a body shield bearing the riveted glory of an eight-pointed star and a central spike rested nearby. Bronzed skulls had been crafted seamlessly into the suit’s fearful breastplate. They appeared to complement the leering, brazen skull that was the suit’s fearful helmet. Extravagant eruptions of daemon horn adorned the sides of the helm while the sculpted eye sockets allowed the infernal light of the forge to probe its inner darkness.
Archaon rose before the ancient armour. He approached daemon design with the flutter of excitement and expectation in his chest. This was truly a treasure of Chaos. He took the skull-crafted breastplate from the stone dais and held it up for inspection. The metal was thick but unexpectedly light. Unlike the weapons within the caskets, the unusual metal of the suit’s forging seemed untouched by the ravages of time or the decimating attentions of the environment. Turning the breastplate around, Archaon noticed that there was a bronze plate on the gorget interior bearing an inscription. It was an epitaph, like one might find on an ancient tomb. It simply said ‘Unconquered…’ and bore the name Morkar beneath.
Morkar. Morkar. Archaon knew the name. How could he not? It echoed about the Northern Wastes, carried on the curses of champions and the boasts of murderous marauders. Morkar was legend. Morkar – the Uniter. The beacon of Chaos whose dark light eclipsed the dawn of civilisation. The First Everchosen of the Ruinous Powers. Morkar – Ravager of the fledgling Empire of man. Slain by a false god two and a half thousand years before Archaon had been born. Archaon stared about the volcano interior at the thousands of sarcophagi lining the black walls. Morkar’s United. The honoured warriors of Chaos who had fought at Morkar’s side. Archaon nodded to himself with dark glee. The fabled armour of Morkar was his. How it came to be here so long after the Everchosen’s defeat, Archaon could not tell. All he knew was that the Dark Gods had tested him. They had sent Archaon by way of insanity, betrayal and death but finally the path to damnation had led him to victory – to this infernal mountain and a Ruinous treasure of the Chaos Powers. The armour of Morkar was his reward. The second treasure by which the Everchosen and Lord of the End Times would be known.
A smile bled through the dark templar’s cracked lips. He began tearing the rags and scraps of leather from his body. The armour was his and plate by damned plate, Archaon dressed his bruised and broken body with both its physical and infernal protections. Despite the heat of the surroundings, the armour felt cool on the Chaos warrior’s skin. Volcanic dust showered from the ancient plate revealing the strange lustre of the metal beneath. Hefting the body shield onto his left arm, he snatched up the skull-helm by one great horn. He went to slip the helmet over his bare head – to plunge face first into the darkness within – but something caught his eye. Turning the helmet around and staring down at the leering skull Archaon noticed that between the horns and set in the brow between the crafted eye sockets, he found a depression. This the Chaos warrior found odd since the armour bore no other examples of damage. Scraping the depression with the finger of one gauntlet, the dust that caked it fell away, revealing its true shape and dimension. A shape and dimension that the dark templar had seen before and instantly recognised.
Crafted in the forehead of the helm was a distinctive socket – an eye-shaped socket – set to receive a decorative jewel of some kind. And Archaon knew which jewel. It was just the right size and shape to ensconce the Eye of Sheerian. The prophetic gem of Khezula Sheerian – the daemon sorcerer of Tzeentch.
Archaon looked up from the helm. Up the black rock of the mountain interior and up out of the caldera top. He stared up at the tumultuous black skies with wretched scorn and a face full of hate.
‘You faithless gods,’ he roared up at them. ‘You monsters of the perverse. You givers and takers… Why?’
Archaon angled the helmet to see inside. The helm had been crafted to allow its owner to wear a band or crown. Morkar’s armour was that of Ruinous royalty. The front of both the missing crown and the helm allowed the setting of the sorcerous jewel which had to be a further treasure of the Chaos Powers. A treasure both Archaon and the Dark Gods had conspired to put in the belly of the monstrous dragon, Flamefang. Both cold fury and futility flooded the Chaos warrior. Then, as he thought on such a treasure being so close to his feverish grasp, Archaon’s god-cursing snarl dropped to a savage smile. As the Dark Gods had set Ruinous champion against Ruinous champion, Archaon would do the same with their hallowed treasures. With the enchanted armour of Morkar, perhaps Archaon could defeat the colossal Chaos dragon that hunted him like soul-prey across ocean and Southern Wastes. His fate decided, Archaon slipped the helm over his head and became one with the darkness within.
Staring about the inside of the helmet, Archaon knew only the deepest darkness. The slits of the skull-helm eye sockets admitted none of the evil glare of the lava lake. Holding his gauntlets out in front of him, Archaon could not see them. When he tried to take the helmet off, he discovered that it refused to be separated from the gorget and cuirass upon which it sat.
Then he heard a noise in the darkness. Distant. An ancient echo of slaughter long past. Building to a cacophonous crescendo. In the blackness of the helm he heard the sounds of battle. Blades. Shouts. Screams. Just like he had heard within the sarcophagi of Morkar’s long dead warriors of Chaos.
‘Worm…’ a blistering voice ventured from the black oblivion. It sounded as old as time itself, like an antique blade honed on the events of a dark history to come. ‘Scavenger… Robber of graves. This is blasphemy. That the pantheon would send such a miserable beggar to fall before their warlord, their prince. To fail so completely and to have his screams echo for always about the darkness of my tomb.’
As the potent presence spoke, Archaon felt the darkness withi
n the armour wash over his skin. Like a man drowning in a lightless void, Archaon felt the darkness enter his ears, his nose and his roaring mouth. It gushed down his throat and soaked through his skin. It granted him oblivion. He was completely alone. Not even he was there. There was only the voice.
‘You thought you could steal from me, worm?’ the words proceeded, powerful and primordial. ‘I wore this armour on the precipice of dark providence. It was baptised in the blood of a king who would become a god. It carried me to my doom. My doom – as it carries you to your own – pretender to the crown. This armour is mine.’
Morkar…
The impact was like nothing Archaon had ever felt. The Chaos warrior was not accustomed to being hit but occasionally it happened. When it did it felt nothing like the colossal blow that had just knocked him from his feet. He felt himself skid through the volcanic dust before coming to a stop. He was blind. He was trapped on an island of black stone at the heart of a molten lake. He was being attacked. Archaon tried to get up. The dreadful force had hammered him from the right. He instinctively brought up his shield. The same force suddenly smashed into him from the left. The Chaos warrior flew to the side, smashing straight through the igneous rock of the forge before rolling to a stop in the dust and shattered stone. Archaon tried to get up but he couldn’t even find his way to the thought. The impact had smashed his mind into a stunned ache.
Pushing up out of the grit, another blow found him beneath the chin of his helm. Archaon flew backwards through the air before coming back down with a heart-stopping crash. Archaon clawed at the shale beneath his armoured fingertips. Volcanic shale. The Chaos warrior tried to find his way to a single thought. Shale. The shore. Archaon was locked in an abyssal darkness. The blows smashing him about the island were daemonic in their intensity, supernatural in their precisely applied force. Incredibly, these were not his biggest problem. His biggest problem was the likelihood that the next blow would send him flying off the shale shoreline and into the lake of molten rock. When the impact came, it was soul-shattering.