Archaon: Everchosen

by Rob Sanders

  – Fliessbach, Tales Untold

  The Obliviate Plain – Skelter Delta

  The Southern Wastes

  Horns Harrowing: Season of Fire

  Archaon lay Giselle down on the warm volcanic rock. The Chaos warrior had made for an infernal glow on the horizon. It was the only light in the benighted place and drew Archaon and his miserable band of followers on like moths to a lonely candle. Skies of broiling pitch and storm-smeared gales of ash and ice closed in on them. The temperature plummeted to a brutal freeze and the depths of darkness hid things that lived fantasies of killing them. The light turned out to be a delta of crackling lava, a creeping channel of molten rock from a distant volcano denied to them by the storm. The river of glowing, red death had bifurcated into a delta on the approach to an abyssal escarpment. The separated lava flows dribbled down the cliff face, into a chasm the depths of which allowed no light to escape.

  It was as good a place as any to make their miserable camp, Archaon had decided. With the bottomless chasm at their backs and the channels of slurping magma on all other sides of their position within the delta, they were unlikely to be rushed by the hordes of beastfiends they could hear beyond, in perpetual preoccupation of tribal slaughter. The glow of the molten rock would also show the daemons stalking them through the wilderness before they got too close. Most importantly, the delta had what they needed more than shelter, food or water. Warmth. The Southern Wastes didn’t need its daemon denizens to kill them. The murderous drop in temperature alone would see to that.

  Posting the silent Swords on the three corners of their wretched triangle of land to ensure nothing tried to leap the lava channels or climb up the abyssal cliff face at their backs, Archaon cut a length of Sheerian’s foetid fur cloak and covered Giselle with it. He had the misshapen Vier stand over the girl as a personal sentry. Despite the improvised blanket and the lava-warmed rock upon which she lay, the girl was still shivering. Archaon suspected that it would take time to recover from the dreadful experience of being one with the daemon-dragon. Perhaps she never would. The Swords, the sorcerer Sheerian: they were already part of the infernal insanity that was the raw power of Chaos. The girl had no such expectations or defences. She had been dragged into damnation kicking and screaming. For that the warlord knew he would have to answer. The servants of Dark Gods volunteered for their sufferings. The pig-subjects of Sigmar and the worshippers of weakling gods everywhere had it coming. There were few who were truly innocent and undeserving of their doom but Archaon suspected that Giselle might be such a soul. It was what had compelled him to save her. He was simultaneously drawn to and repelled by her. No doubt, the Chaos warrior decided, this was some other perversity of the Dark Gods. They enjoyed their games and for now Archaon was saddled with his conflicted feelings for the girl. It was about the only other thing he felt beyond seething hatred for the Ruinous Powers he served and the bottomless need he had to bring an end to the world of their enemies.

  Archaon joined Khezula Sheerian by the searing radiance of the lava channel, where the ancient was warming his bones. Sheerian leant against his staff and peered into the swirling storm beyond.

  ‘One of yours?’ the sorcerer asked, gesturing towards a figure working his way towards them. Archaon’s gauntlet strayed for his greatsword but narrowing his eye he recognised the miserable wastrel approaching. With frosted rags and chains pulled about him and his head trapped in a cage, Archaon recognised Gorst. Somehow the flagellant had tracked them from the site of his soul-scarring liberation and followed them through the storm. Archaon grunted. Yet again, the flagellant had followed his master. Even here in the impossible lethality of the Wastes, Gorst had found them. It was like old times with the madman following him across all creation.

  ‘One of mine,’ Archaon admitted, indicating to the winged Eins that he should bring Gorst across the scorching channel. There were few to truly call themselves such and Gorst had more than earned it. Archaon had led and Gorst had and continued to follow. To where the warlord did not know.

  ‘Where are we?’ Archaon asked the daemon sorcerer.

  ‘A dark realm of nowheres,’ Sheerian told him.

  ‘No riddles,’ Archaon warned.

  ‘There are no riddles to be had here, master,’ the ancient said. ‘We are in the Southern Wastes, a place of primordial evil. Where the Dark Gods are free to craft their servants from the storm. Where daemons rule and no men exist to bring sense to the dread pantheon’s insanities. We are about as far from salvation as any mortal man has been, my lord. Where are we? All frequented have names but I have no idea what this blasted place is called. I cannot tell you where we have been or where we are – and only the Eye can show you where we are going.’

  The sorcerer licked his thin lips. The skeletal fingers about his staff began to shake. He stared up at the jewel set in Archaon’s skull-helm in the hope that the warlord might use the potent artefact before him so that the sorcerer might once again experience some suggestion of its power and radiance. The Eye opened. It blazed to life, blinking as Archaon cast his gaze across the horizon – its inner darkness seeing all.

  Archaon stared into the Southern Wastes. The glorious, byzantine brutality of its all. The thunder of beastfiend herds clashing in the darkness. Soul-starved daemons feasting on the wretched existence of such creatures. The abyssal cold. The deep darkness. The raging mountaintops that banished both in their volcanic brilliance. The god-furious approach of some decimating superstorm. Sheerian waited. Archaon said nothing for what seemed like an eternity. The wandering gaze of the Eye moved between the dread perspectives of the Waste’s wicked denizens. Then, ‘I see an infernal palace, distant and huge,’ Archaon told the sorcerer. ‘No. Many palaces. All colossal. Ever changing. Indescribable.’

  ‘And, and?’ the sorcerer feverishly prompted.

  ‘Beyond them, the dark heart of the entire world,’ Archaon told him.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Like the fallen sun,’ Archaon said, ‘as black as it was bright. Impossible. Irresistible. Blazing its darkness but drawing all into the depths of its brilliance.’

  ‘As it draws your gaze, Archaon,’ the sorcerer told him, ‘and that of the all-powerful Eye.’

  ‘What draws it?’ Archaon demanded. ‘I must know.’

  ‘You fought your way across the Shadowlands of the north, yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ the Chaos warlord confirmed.

  ‘But never the pole,’ Sheerian pushed. ‘Never the very top of the world. The Realm of Chaos itself.’

  ‘No…’

  ‘Where reality gives way and men may walk the path of the gods,’ the sorcerer cackled in excitement.

  ‘Then what is this oblivion into which I stare?’ Archaon put to him.

  ‘No man can guess,’ Sheerian said. It was not the answer Archaon was looking for.

  ‘But if a man,’ Archaon said, ‘in fear for his very existence had to guess?’

  The daemonic glee on the sorcerer’s face died a little.

  ‘Some say the darkness at the top of the world is a gateway through which the dread of destiny pours. A broken gateway, ever open to an unknowable realm beyond. It infects all with its rank possibility.’

  ‘And of this southern darkness?’

  ‘A polar gateway the same, my lord,’ Sheerian said. ‘Bleeding the unknown into the world we know.’

  ‘And a man who would walk the path of the gods would need to pass through such a gateway,’ Archaon said. He was no longer asking. The daemon sorcerer nodded his agreement. ‘And might enter one gateway only to leave through another…’

  ‘Yes, master, yes!’ the ancient cackled.

  ‘Yes… Yes…’ Archaon heard. The words burned to hear and echoed about the confines of his mortal mind. A voice. From the storm.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ Archaon asked.

 
‘Hear what, my lord?’ the venerable sorcerer asked, still living their previous glee.

  There was something out there with them. Of that Archaon was sure. Unlike the monstrous creatures of the maelstrom, it was a familiar darkness. Something that had been with Archaon his whole life. Always in the shadows. A lord of such burning obscurity. Using the searing power of the Eye, Archaon searched the blackness of the furious oblivion. His gaze settled on a monstrous form, hidden in the approaching tempest. An ancient evil. Dreadful… Potent…

  ‘Do not see meeee…’

  Gone.

  ‘It will not be seen,’ Archaon said. The ancient stared out into the maelstrom.

  ‘The Eye sees all, master.’

  ‘Well it does not see this,’ Archaon rumbled.

  ‘What was it, my lord?’

  Archaon struggled for the words.

  ‘Some daemon,’ Archaon said. ‘Some dark prince of oblivion. A beast eternal that wishes to stay in the shadows – as it always has. It stalks us. It stalks me and the doom that is my fate. What being could do such a thing? Hide itself from the Eye’s gaze? Shield itself from a gift of the gods?’

  It was the ancient’s turn to struggle for words.

  ‘Well…’

  ‘Speak, sorcerer!’ Archaon boomed. He drew the blade Terminus with sudden savagery. ‘You counsel me in such matters of the damned. Without counsel, what use are you to me, daemon?’

  Sheerian searched for an answer to please the Chaos lord.

  ‘There is one,’ the sorcerer croaked as Archaon’s blade came up. ‘A beast that led the legions at the dawn of time.’

  ‘Speak on,’ Archaon hissed, bringing Terminus down.

  ‘He plunged the world into darkness but lit the abyss with his daemon arrogance,’ Sheerian told the Chaos warrior. ‘For that my master, the dark god Tzeentch – the Great Changer of Ways – punished him.’

  ‘How?’ Archaon demanded.

  ‘He cursed the prince of daemons,’ the sorcerer said, ‘forcing him into infernal subservience, stripping him of absolute power and denying him of permanent form.’

  Archaon nodded slowly. ‘He might escape the Eye’s almighty gaze,’ Sheerian assured him, ‘for if set on his daemon form there would be nothing for the Eye to see.’

  Archaon stared at the nearing tempest, as it raged its unfolding darkness through the maelstrom towards them.

  ‘I feel it near.’

  ‘The daemon dooms of men are rarely far away,’ Sheerian told him. ‘They like to remain close. Observing first hand the havoc they have wrought. This thing has no form, which means he is free to assume any.’

  Archaon looked hard at Sheerian and then cast his gaze across to the sleeping Giselle, his Swords of Chaos and finally Gorst, the miserable wretch who had followed him across the face of the world, without doubt and without question.

  ‘This beast hides both in the shadows and plain sight. If this daemon prince is invested in you, my master,’ Sheerian said, ‘he could be any of us… at any time.’

  ‘Does this thing of the abyss have a name?’ Archaon asked.

  ‘He has many names,’ the daemon sorcerer told him, seeming not to want to call the daemon by its given name. ‘The Harbinger, the Herald, the Bearer. In the frozen north, he is the Shadowlord. In the east and the west, the Dark Master.’

  ‘And to your master?’ Archaon snarled.

  ‘To my Lord Tzeentch and the dread pantheon he is… Be’lakor.’

  ‘Be’lakor.’

  It was as though Archaon had known the name his whole life. Always on the tongue’s tip or just beyond the reaches of recollection. No more. Archaon would drag this monstrous force of darkness into the light. He would know its dealings in his destiny. The daemon prince Be’lakor would answer to the Lord of the End Times or would share in the world’s fate. Archaon would extinguish the darklight of this Be’lakor’s existence and claim its dark dominion as his own.

  For a while, the Chaos lord and the sorcerer said nothing. Sheerian settled into his furs. Even without the Eye, he could see the furious tempest sweeping in.

  ‘There is a storm approaching.’

  Archaon thought on all that had come to pass and the doom he had pledged on his very soul to the waiting world.

  ‘I am already here.’

  After Diederick Kastner fell to the lure of the Dark Gods, he began his rise as Archaon, the would-be Everchosen. Now his former comrades hunt him across the Chaos Wastes, determined to ensure that he falls again...

  The events depicted hereafter take place during Archaon's time in the northern realms, between chapters X and XI of Archaon: Everchosen.

  The Wastes. The name was well-earned; a blasted, howling wilderness of twilight, blizzard and mind-numbing temperatures. Helmut Horrwitz considered the waste through which he hacked. The squandered humanity. The cost in blood. He tore a rag from a misshapen torso that, moments before, had served as a scabbard for his crusader blade. The material was filthy and rigid with the scalding cold of the place, but it was all he had to wipe the gelatinous ichor from his blessed sword.

  They just kept coming. Marauders in spikes and furs. Brute beastmen. Chaos warriors in the dark plate of an even darker calling. Horrors of the flesh. Fiends of the beyond. Wanton monstrosity. The servants of Sigmar might have been in a god-forsaken wilderness, but there was no shortage of wretched foes for consecrated steel. If more of these miserable, misguided things had indeed been forsaken by their gods then there would be precious little work for Horrwitz and his knights of the Twin-Tailed Orb to do there. The favours of corruption were everywhere to behold. Things that had long since shed their humanity begged the Ruinous Powers of this dark place to be twisted in their own inconstant image.

  Horrwitz fought on and his templars fought beside him, hacking, thrusting and smashing their way through the hordes. Horrwitz had never seen such a place. The very earth beneath his boots, the sky above his helm, the howling insanity in between: it was all an affront to nature. To the God-King’s servants. To the God-King himself.

  Horrwitz had fought the threat of corruption beyond his Empire, at its borders and within its rich and dark forests. He had been Sigmar’s shield against the witch, the greenskin barbarian, the altered and the warriors of the Dark Gods. Here, in this benighted place, he found all the horrors of his imaginings: the twisted of mind and body; the half-breed; the wielders of gifts abominable and powers unnatural; dark templars, clad in battle-scarred plate and bearing the nauseating sigils of the Ruinous Powers. They swung their blades with a belief as strong as Horrwitz’s own, their souls offered to their monstrous sponsors. Their lice-infested cloaks of fur and ragged mantles flowed about them like the sails of damned galleons as they expertly put their shields between the knight’s blessed blade and their foetid existence. It was a life of perpetual battle and savagery, however, and the warriors of darkness did not make it easy for him.

  They pressed him and they died. Between the filth of horned half-breeds, who came at him with their rude flails, and marauder madmen, mounted on deranged steeds, Horrwitz put down a knight, a champion, a misshapen monster of cursed blessings, somehow still strapped into its plate. The templar’s heavy blade turned aside the savage swordcraft of men who had forgotten themselves in the Wastes. It penetrated steel eaten through with rust and an eternity’s service at the top of the world, and squealed through armoured torsos and cleaved helms to bring an end to the feverish nightmare of half-lived lives.

  And then there was him. Horrwitz steadied himself with panting breaths of exertion echoing about the darkness of his knightly helm, the Wastes whirling before his eye-slits and his templar blade flashing forth in frantic service, the creatures came at him, all fang, claw and madness. Amongst blood-stained spear-points, spiked balls on rusted chains, serrated swords and rune-glowing blades, all vying for hi
s death, a death that was only ever moments away, Horrwitz saw him.

  It was the strangest thing. Amongst the ferocity and the smash of steel on steel, Horrwitz saw a warrior of ruin take to his knees. The sight almost cost the templar his head. His blade only just turned aside the wicked point of a spear, aimed squarely at the faceguard of his helm. He split the weapon down its shaft and then, with a twist of the hilt, the heavy sword snapped the spear in two. Heaving the knightly weapon down and back, Horrwitz did the same to its owner, before pommel-smashing a half-breed thing of horn and snout into the ground and stabbing a Chaos knight straight through the eight-pointed star of his rusted breastplate. As the warrior crashed to one side with a cacophonous clatter, the nameless warrior was revealed once more.

  Several of Horrwitz’s brother templars lay before the figure, disarmed and disembowelled. Some of their heavy blades had found the warrior wanting. His plate was buckled and split where cleaving chops and thrusts had found their mark. His mauled shield had been smashed from him and his helm was a shattered mess, barely held together with aged rivets and rust. The force of a blow had knocked him all but senseless, demolishing one half of the helm, and a blade tip had nicked his brow. The deep gash leaked blood down his face and through a ragged beard. Blood dripped from his hair and down onto the collection of medallions, charms and Ruinous symbols that hung about his neck on loose chains, twine and sinew.

  Horrwitz had seen such dread iconography on the armour and banners of many he had killed in the Wastes. It was quite a collection. Horrwitz thought it impossible to honour so many gods and powers, even if they were Ruinous ones. The kneeling knight blinked blood from his eye and leant on his tarnished weapon, blade in his gauntlets, sword point nestled in the gore-stained earth, with hilt and guard forming a cross before his smashed helm. Horrwitz took several savage steps towards him, hefting the weight of his own blade above his head.

  ‘Defend yourself, slave to darkness!’ the templar roared, but the knight didn’t move. Blinking blood that went on to steam from his cheek, the Chaos warrior watched Horrwitz advance, but remained still. Within his helm, the templar snarled. Not in fury. Not in rage. His arm wouldn’t move. He wasn’t afflicted by injury or witchcraft. It was conscience. ‘Up, I say, and fight me!’