Archaon: Everchosen

by Rob Sanders

  As he despatched the lewd monstrosities he saw Rhaanoc swinging the heavy length of his chain about his head. Daemonettes swept in on the warrior, but he smashed them aside with savage arcs of the chain, the unforgiving weight of the chunky padlock like a flail or morning star, bludgeoning the daemons back into obscurity.

  With his lip wrinkling in disgust, Horrwitz tore a temptress monstrosity from Wolfram Eisenkramer. As the Witch Hunter General blinked his incomprehension, the horror turned her venomous charms on the templar, snapping at him with her slender pincers. Horrwitz smacked the shears aside with Stenzel’s sword. Turning, he swung wildly at another daemonette and another as they came at him. They were fast and moved with a dreamlike grace. Moans and screams scorched Horrwitz’s ears as he clipped a serrated claw from one creature’s arm before braining another.

  Eisenkramer kicked away from an entrancing horror that crawled through the grit and bones towards him. The lustrous river of black hair that flowed from a horned head and trailed behind it gave the monster the appearance of a sensual serpent. As she slithered up on Eisenkramer, her jaw dislocated and a forked tongue escaped her rows of perfect needle teeth. The Witch Hunter General drew his pistol and aimed it squarely at the daemon’s grinning face. With a snarl, Eisenkramer pulled on the trigger. The mechanism clunked. The primer hissed. The pistol, however, remained silent. This seemed to amuse the thing as it writhed towards him.

  With daemon ichor flying through the mist in a stringy drizzle, Horrwitz ended a warped seductress. The creatures were everywhere, tearing at knights in their plate, screeching after confounded priests, feasting on witch hunters. Like the twilight of some damned womb, the miasma brought them forth. The air stung with their cackling, their passionate shrieks and the snicker-snack of their pincers. The Sigmarites were overrun.

  With cat-like agility, a daemonette leapt from boulder to altar, altar to Father Sternthal, and Father Sternthal to Sieur Oberndorff. It was in the air before Horrwitz could work his blade free of the last infernal carcass in which he had buried it. Suddenly his own sword flashed past. The weapon had been tossed through the air, passing blade over pommel. Trailing a black drizzle of daemon blood, the blade took the pouncing creature in mid-air. Abandoning Stenzel’s sword, Horrwitz drew back to allow the monster to land in an ugly, dead heap. He turned to find Rhaanoc working up behind him. He had returned the blade to the templar and in doing so had saved his life.

  ‘This doesn’t change anything,’ Horrwitz roared as he rested his boot on the daemonette and slid his sword from her body.

  ‘My lord,’ the Chaos warrior simply acknowledged as he bludgeoned svelte daemons aside. With the monstrosities coming in with their claws under the reach of his improvised flail, Rhaanoc had coiled the lengths of heavy chain about one fist and whipped it left and right with devastating force. Horrwitz found himself biting back an admiration that made him nauseous. The warrior was fearless in the face of the daemon horde. He shattered razor claws to uselessness. He smashed the groaning beasts into the frosted grit of their feeding grounds. He tore predatory daemons from the backs of Sigmarites and chain-mashed them back to their unforgiving god.

  As daemonettes died and their ear-bleeding shrieks died away with them, Horrwitz grunted. Such fearlessness and savage confidence no doubt came of making a life in the barbaric insanity of the Wastes. Horrwitz had misjudged the warrior’s refusal to fight. He had done more with a simple chain than the warrior priests of Sigmar and the knights of the Twin-Tailed Orb had achieved with their consecrated steel. Eisenkramer had been right. Rhaanoc was no coward.

  Eisenkramer…

  Horrwitz finished a claw-snapping horror with his sword and turned. His boots took him through the mist, through the disorder and chaos, towards the Witch Hunter General. Eisenkramer was almost lost in the flowing black hair of a serpentine daemon. His arms trembling with exertion, Eisenkramer held the temptress’s elongated jaws a fang-scrape from his neck. Horrwitz stamped on through the blood and bones but Rhaanoc got there before him.

  Straddling the daemonette, Rhaanoc threw several coils of his tarnished chain about her neck. Hauling her to him, the Chaos warrior wrangled with the monstrosity like some dangerous reptile. He held her there for a moment. Eisenkramer’s arms shook before him. The Witch Hunter General found his way to a savage nod, prompting Rhaanoc to drag the horrific creature back into the mist.

  Horrwitz offered Eisenkramer his gauntlet, which he took. As the two men stood amongst the bodies of Sigmarites and seductresses, they heard the crunch of Rhaanoc finishing the daemon in the murk. About them, surviving pistols put blessed shot through surviving monsters, while consecrated blades and the unrelenting force of hammers pummelled the creatures into the earth of their daemon graves.

  Both Horrwitz and Eisenkramer were surprised to see the turncoat Rhaanoc reappear, his chains dripping with ichor. It didn’t take the Witch Hunter General long to collect himself and find his way back to the imperious fury of his station.

  ‘You led us into this,’ Eisenkramer accused Rhaanoc, but Horrwitz stepped between them.

  ‘It was the prisoner who alerted us to the danger,’ Horrwitz told him. The Witch Hunter General looked from the templar to the Chaos warrior.

  ‘They are called the Rapture,’ Rhaanoc told them. ‘The daemons of Phasma Klatsch, sorceress of the Prince of Pleasure.’ The Chaos warrior looked back to where he had despatched the daemonette monstrosity. ‘They haunt the trails thereabouts, waylaying travellers.’

  Eisenkramer looked about them, up and down the valley. The humiliation of the attack was still fresh on his face and his anger was swiftly spent. He looked to Horrwitz, who gave an all but imperceptible nod.

  ‘How far to the keep?’ Eisenkramer put to the Chaos warrior.

  ‘Rathskorn’s not far,’ Rhaanoc told him.

  And it wasn’t.

  Horrwitz was relieved to see the claustrophobic murk of the mist clear. Behind he could hear the squeak of one of the altar’s wheels as priests and the remaining horses dragged it through the frozen mud. He didn’t want to think about what such a noise might attract in the highlands around them. The templar cast a glance about their depleted number. The party had paid for their righteous hubris and still the Witch Hunter General was leading them north. North, after Archaon.

  Warrior priests and witch hunters seemed to be staying near to the God-King’s altar. Some limped close to its blessed form to ensure its protection, while others remained close to ensure their own. Only the knights of the Twin-Tailed Orb advanced beyond the altar’s sanctified influence, their blades drawn and their plate bloody with punctures and oozing injuries.

  Ahead, Rhaanoc the turncoat led them. The Chaos warrior had tossed his chains at the templar’s feet. Horrwitz saw little point in putting him back in restraints. With their grievous losses, they would need every able-bodied man to repel an attack or ambush. He fell short of providing the damned warrior with a weapon, however, and instead walked closely behind the warrior as he tracked them across the Wastes. Rhaanoc said little to draw the displeasure of Eisenkramer or Horrwitz, so it was a surprise when he spoke.

  ‘Tell me, my lord,’ Rhaanoc said, his blood-soaked boots crunching through the grit. ‘Why do you travel to the top of the world in search of Archaon? Forgive me, but it is plain to see that you do not wish to be here.’

  Horrwitz went to answer the prisoner with a brutal rebuke, something to remind him of his place and his lowly station. But exhaustion sapped the templar’s remaining strength and the cold chilled his bones. He could barely muster the indignation. He found the question went some way to distract him from the agonies of hiking in full battleplate.

  ‘We’re all here to save our souls, turncoat,’ Horrwitz grizzled, his breath escaping as a fine mist. ‘You. Me. The Witch Hunter General.’

  ‘But Archaon is just one man–’

  ‘He is not just a man,’ Ho
rrwitz continued miserably. ‘Don’t you realise? There are texts. There are prophecies. Your former master is not just some wandering madman, seeking the favour of heretic gods, a chosen of some fell power. The Grand Theogonist himself believes that Archaon is the end to all the world. He is a living doom that must be destroyed.’

  ‘And you believe you are the one to do so?’ Rhaanoc asked.

  ‘If I get the opportunity, then I will not flinch,’ Horrwitz told the prisoner. ‘I will not fail. You live only to provide that opportunity, turncoat.’ The templar considered. ‘But if you think me a glory hunter then you would be wrong. Even if I were, I wouldn’t seek it out in this benighted realm. No. I long for my bed. I long for the ancient forests of the Empire. After a lifetime of battle, more than anything else, I long for peace.’

  ‘I would have you get what you want, my lord.’

  ‘Don’t blow smoke up my mail skirts, prisoner,’ Horrwitz said, his voice trailing off. It was too weak for a warning. It was a forlorn announcement.

  ‘Still,’ Rhannoc pressed as he walked on, ‘you speak like a man who did not choose his fate.’

  Horrwitz grunted. ‘I am the Master of Blades,’ he said with feeble pride. ‘A servant of Sigmar. A knight of the Twin-Tailed Orb. I did not choose this fate. The one we seek chose it for me.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘My templars and I were selected for this as part of a penitent crusade.’

  ‘Penitence for what, my lord?’

  ‘For the sins of another,’ Horrwitz said hopelessly. ‘For the sins of Archaon. The man you followed was no northern marauder, No warlord of the steppes or twisted tribesman. He was a son of the Empire. A devout Sigmarite.’ Horrwitz shook his head within his helm.

  ‘Is that why you fear him so?’ the turncoat asked. ‘He knows the Empire. He knows you. He’s one of you.’

  ‘One of us,’ Horrwitz almost laughed. ‘Aye, he’s one of us, alright. He was a templar of the God-King…’

  Rhaanoc nodded. ‘A knight of the Twin-Tailed Orb.’

  ‘Aye,’ Horrwitz confirmed, his words laced with shame. ‘That.’

  ‘You are here to atone for his fall?’ Rhaanoc asked.

  ‘All are to atone for his ruin,’ Horrwitz said. ‘See, turncoat, it matters not if I fail here. Daily, witch hunters, warrior priests of Sigmar and knights of the Twin-Tailed Orb are despatched to the Wastes to hunt down the traitor. To destroy him. The Grand Theogonist will not stop.’ Horrwitz sighed. ‘There is the world to save.’

  ‘Master Horrwitz,’ the Witch Hunter General called ahead to them, ‘about what do you speak to the prisoner?’

  The templar pulled back but made the witch hunter wait for an answer.

  ‘Nothing of consequence,’ he called back finally.

  Following Rhaanoc step by weary step, the Sigmarites were led north. As the valley trail started to descend and the temperature began to climb above a mind-numbing freeze, the brawny warrior came to a stop in his ruined armour.

  ‘Get up here,’ Rhaanoc called, but Eisenkramer was loath to take orders from a heretic prisoner. Leaving the witch hunter behind, Horrwitz crunched up through the frosted grit at a rattling jog. There were two armoured figures wandering about their path. They seemed to smell Horrwitz and the turncoat before they saw them and made for the pair with predatory speed and intent that bellied their corpulent forms.

  Rhaanoc began to back from their stinking forms. As the Chaos warriors closed, Horrwitz could see they were victims of some dreadful affliction or plague. They had once been knights. Their plate was rusted to ruin, while their hairless skulls sat on swollen throats and multiple chins, and the teeth of their decaying maws were stained red. Their flesh was a stretched canvas of scab, weeping infection and burrowing parasites, while their disease had seemingly caused their bellies to bloat with explosive gases that had eventually burst.

  The plague knights groaned ravenously as they stumbled at Horrwitz and Rhaanoc. With ragged, gut-trailing cavities for stomachs, the templar knew the knights could never satisfy their diseased hunger. He could see the insatiability of the unfortunates in their yellowing eyes.

  ‘Don’t get too close,’ Rhaanoc warned as Horrwitz moved forward with his blade. The plague knights reached out for him with rusted gauntlets, stained black from rooting around in cadavers. They had no knightly weapons. They didn’t need them. As wandering plague bearers of infectious flesh, they were a weapon.

  ‘Don’t tell me my business,’ Horrwitz told Rhaanoc, before sweeping forward with his sword. The templar’s movements were confident and executed with knightly grace. He cleaved through the limbs of the first before taking its teeth-chattering head. The second lunged for him and he knocked it back, allowing the thing to come at him and impale itself on his broad blade. With the Sigmarite sword buried in the diseased warrior of Chaos, Horrwitz could only watch as it worked its jaw feverishly and hauled itself up the length of the blade towards him. The templar thought he was going to have to abandon his weapon to the thing but something burst or gave within the bloated torso and the monstrosity died right before him. Horrwitz looked at Rhaanoc, who gave an approving nod of respect.

  With the threat despatched, Eisenkramer came forward, prompting Rhaanoc on with him. Dumping the diseased cadaver to one side, Horrwitz joined them. Rhaanoc peered over boulders that marked the promontory of a steep headland. Eisenkramer and Horrwitz crouched with the prisoner at the bluff. Below them the valley dropped and widened, once again succumbing to the damp haze of an unnatural mist. Using a brass eyeglass, Eisenkramer peered down before passing the device to the templar. Even without the glass, the knight could see the crumbling black stone of a fat, round keep at the head of the valley.

  ‘That’s Rathskorn?’ Horrwitz asked.

  ‘What’s left of it,’ Rhaanoc told him. ‘It may not look like much but its walls are thick and have stood not only the ravage of time but also everything the Wastes have thrown at it.’

  ‘Even the abominate Archaon?’ Eisenkramer put to him.

  ‘The Wastes are ever changing,’ the warrior replied. ‘You trust what you know. Archaon favours the keep.’

  ‘He’ll be there?’

  ‘He’ll be there,’ Rhaanoc confirmed.

  Horrwitz couldn’t see much activity on the walls of the derelict keep. He turned the eyeglass on the open ground before it. He could see shapes and silhouettes moving in the miasma and sickly mist. A host moving on the keep, intending to assault the thick stone of its walls. There were savage marauders, responding to threats and orders. Mounted warriors of Chaos riding up the flanks. Champions of the host in conference with sorcerers beneath shredded banners.

  ‘Who are they?’ Horrwitz asked.

  ‘Their banners betray them,’ the turncoat said, peering down at the ominous symbol on the warband’s standard. Three filthy circles had been stained into the mildewed cloth, forming the wings and body of a fat, black fly. ‘It is the host of Lebrus Wormshroud, favoured of the great Lord of Decay.’ Rhaanoc nodded at the plague knights Horrwitz had expertly despatched. ‘The diseased belong to him.’

  ‘He lays siege to the abominate Archaon?’ Eisenkramer asked.

  ‘There can only be one chosen of the Ruinous Powers,’ the marauder told them. ‘One Everchosen of Chaos. There are few champions in these parts who do not lay claim to such a title.’

  ‘The competition must be eliminated,’ Horrwitz said, prompting Rhaanoc to nod in agreement.

  ‘Indeed.’

  Horrwitz turned to the Witch Hunter General. ‘This could work for us.’

  ‘I’m listening,’ Eisenkramer hissed absently. Horrwitz nodded. The pair of them had come so far in search of Archaon, and now that he was close, now that they had him cornered, the Sigmarites could almost taste the prospect of victory. Horrwitz looked back down the eyeglass at the valley floor swarming with the Chao
s host and the ancient fortitude of the keep’s great, rusted portcullis.

  ‘Tell me there’s another way in,’ the templar put to Rhaanoc. When the warrior said nothing, Horrwitz pulled his eye from the lens and gave him a stony gaze.

  ‘Perhaps his mouth is dry,’ Eisenkramer threatened. ‘I have water. Sweet and pure.’

  ‘Tell me,’ Horrwitz implored. He would spare them all the time wasted and sheer wretchedness of unnecessary torture.

  ‘For my sins,’ the miserable turncoat told him, ‘I’ll do more than tell you. I’ll show you.’

  ‘Where is he?’ Eisenkramer roared.

  Horrwitz swung his lantern about this way and that, his templar blade glinting with the meagre light it offered. Dust stung his eyes and his nose was fixed in a perpetual wrinkle at the stench. The dark bowels of the keep were thick with the stench of the grave. ‘Where’s my prisoner?’ the witch hunter seethed.

  Horrwitz didn’t know. The warrior had made his way underground, leading the Sigmarites into a crooked subterranean cave system. As warrior priests and witch hunters lit torches and lanterns to light the way, Rhaanoc had plunged on through the darkness along a route Horrwitz assumed he must know well, a secret way into the keep. An entrance Archaon used to enter the ruins and routinely usurp whatever beastmen or warbands were settled there. With every twist and turn the prisoner’s shattered plate had caught on outcrops, crannies and narrowings, prompting from him grunts of pain.

  Finally the rough, jagged tunnel worming its way through the valleyside gave way to collapsed passageways. The stone was ancient and crumbling but essentially angular, betraying the architectural flourishes of dark siegecraft. It was there and then, under the crushing weight of the tumbledown keep, that the turncoat disappeared. He became one with the darkness. It could have been an accident. It could have been by design. Horrwitz couldn’t tell. He had almost lost his way several times himself, taking a turn left through some demolished opening when the passage led right. He had almost vanished like Rhaanoc, except down one of the rubble-strewn shafts that seemed to gape open at his feet. Eisenkramer would not be placated, however.