by Rob Sanders
Beastfiends of his own horde came at him and the monstrous Dorghar with rough axes consisting of serrated shoulder blades and tusk-embedded femurs. As the daemon mount transformed and Archaon strode towards them they recognised their warlord. The shaggy monsters lowered both their rude, blood-stained weapons and their horned heads.
‘Ograx?’ Archaon called, cutting down a pair of Slaaneshi fiends as they attempted to rush the distracted half-breeds. The beasts began to gabble in their dark tongue and jab filthy claws ahead. Leading Dorghar on through the havoc of bestial battle – the creature having reassumed its form as a nightmarish stallion – Archaon slashed at fleeing fiends and finished foes that still clutched miserably to life in the blood-soaked earth. Walking up through the ruins of a small fortress constructed from tusks, fangs and the broken bones of a daemonic behemoth, Archaon slew with wanton abandon, his heavy blade batting aside spears and thudding down through enemy bodies. Lord Agrammon’s army of bestial slaves jangled with flesh-piercing rings and the hooked chains of their captivity. Armed with barbed spears and crescent shields, their shaven flesh was muscular and oiled, while all they wore were ragged loin cloths and obscene leather masks from which their long snouts protruded. Agrammon’s creatures trumpeted their fearful delight as the soul-scorching torment of Archaon’s blessed steel passed through their flesh.
When Archaon found Ograx, the beast-prince was atop a pile of butchered Slanneshi corpses, blood-drenched in his skins and shrunken skulls. Surrounded by a mob of his hulking southern beasts, the beastfiend champion wheeled about with his skull-head axe, chopping and pounding Lord Agrammon’s slave breeds into the ground. Bipedal nightmares with whipping tongues and hook-taloned claws came at them only for Ograx and his infernal herdkin to knock skulls from snaking heads and screeching predators back into one another. Sweeping this way and that with Terminus, Archaon took the legs out from under one, before lopping the slashing tail from another. Burying the blade in the side of another before Ograx’s axe could reach it, the bestial prince took a moment to shake the blood lust from his horned head and recognise his master. As one of the Slaaneshi seekers tried to raise its head from a butchered mess on the ground, Ograx stepped forward and kicked the skull clean off the daemon with his hooves.
‘Your orders were not to attack until the third day,’ Archaon bawled across the din of battle, turning away just long enough to casually slash a fleeing beastfiend across its shaven back. It trumpeted a screech as its muscular flesh parted like butter. ‘Yet I find my horde fully engaged in an attack on the palace. Why, mongrel prince?’
The hulking half-breed proceeded to wrap his thick, bovine lips around what Archaon assumed to be an explanation, breaking off only to mercilessly butcher and smash the squealing slaves of Lord Agrammon’s palace guard. While Archaon could pick up a little of what Ograx the Great was saying, between the snorting, grunting, garbled words, dark tongue and wanton murder, it was almost impossible to make out what the creature was conveying. Archaon decided to use a language that they both understood well. Bringing Terminus between them, the Sigmarite blade bubbling and spitting with Slaneeshi gore, Archaon rested the blade tip on the slab of one of the prince’s pectoral muscles. ‘Why attack?’ the Chaos warrior put to the creature once more, as simply as he could.
Archaon now realised the danger of having left the horde in Prince Ograx’s clawed hands for as long as he had. One of the monstrous warrior’s bestial brothers stepped forward, rumbling some kind of bare-toothed threat as a bone ring bounced about in his wet snout. A snout that Archaon broke with the pommel of Terminus. As the beastfiend bent over double, clutching its smashed face, Archaon drifted the blade tip of Terminus back down onto the wall of muscle that was Ograx’s chest. The half-breed looked down at the filthy steel and then up at Archaon with the dead eyes of a beast of burden. While Archaon and Ograx stared at one another down the length of the Chaos warrior’s blade, the southern beast with the broken face was set upon by a fiend that dragged the half-breed off to cut up with its claws in another part of the derelict bone palace. More words dribbled from Prince Ograx’s lips. Slow. Thoughtful. Measured. No more comprehensible to the Chaos warrior than those that had proceeded them. Tiring of such activity, Archaon looked about. Hordes of his beastfiends were taking the fight to Agrammon’s slave soldiers and the daemonic horrors that flanked them. Blood and infernal ichor flew. Heads rolled. Beasts were broken.
‘Where’s Sheerian?’ Archaon demanded, looking back at Ograx. ‘Where is that sorcerous wretch?’ Archaon would much rather have the Tzeentchian ancient translate his fury for him. This time the half-breed prince favoured a simple gesture. Bringing his meaty fist up slowly, he moved Archaon’s blade away and extended a single finger, pointing towards the urchin-like outline of Lord Agrammon’s tower palace. ‘In there?’ Archaon put to the creature. Ograx the Great nodded with a barely suppressed snarl. ‘Where are my Swords of Chaos? Where is Giselle?’ Archaon pushed. Ograx kept his finger directed at the palace before moving it down to one of the butchered slaves at the Chaos warrior’s feet. Archaon jabbed his sword at the slave and then offered up his wrists. ‘Prisoner?’ he asked the half-breed. Ograx the Great nodded.
Archaon swore under his breath. It became clear why his horde were fighting. They had not attacked the palace. They had been attacked. A retaliatory action for a perceived assault on the menagerie. Thinking that Archaon’s camped host was responsible for the chaos Archaon alone had visited upon Agrammon’s foetid collection, the daemon lord had despatched his own creatures to deal with the threat. With Sheerian, the Swords and Giselle taken, Ograx was only marching on the palace in order to get them back. Archaon nodded to himself. Unfortunately, Ograx had no idea what to expect upon reaching the inside of the palace’s metal outer wall – how Agrammon’s daemonettes would cut the horde to pieces in the spiralling gauntlet of the menagerie. This would require a different approach, Archaon decided. He would need access to the palace faster than the days and lives it would take for the horde to slaughter its way in. With the main body of Lord Agrammon’s palace guard still within the walls, Ograx and the bestial horde had their part to play in strategically drawing them out.
As the glistening muscular form of a Slaaneshi slave soldier came at them, Archaon turned, cleaving the beastfiend’s head and tapering snout from its shoulders in a left-handed back swing. Sheathing the bloody blade, Archaon picked up the creature’s head, the shock of its sudden death still fixed on its face. Tossing it to Ograx, Archaon pointed to the palace as the great beast had.
‘So many skulls, prince,’ Archaon said, allowing the words to sink in. Even in Archaon’s tongue the hulking half-breed knew the word ‘Skull’. ‘I want them. Take them for me.’
Something approaching a brute smile pulled at the monster’s thick lips. It turned, holding the Slaaneshi beastfiend’s head in one claw and its skull-axe in the other. It roared Archaon’s orders in dark tongue to the high heavens, the horde and the Blood God itself. Archaon felt the effect of such a rallying call. Agrammon’s slave soldiers died faster, heads flew further and gore fountained higher about them.
Leading Dorghar away, Archaon heard the mount snort its derision. The entity was clearly unimpressed. The Chaos warrior patted the steed on the spiked ridge of its snout, knowing the daemon would hate such treatment.
‘We are going in there,’ Archaon told it, indicating the spiky outline of the palace.
The daemon mount snorted its refusal. The Steed of the Apocalypse had been liberated from Lord Agrammon’s horrific menagerie. It had no intention of returning to captivity. Archaon stroked his gauntlet down the creature’s sable back. ‘Show a little backbone, beast. My intention is to free captives, not become one. I have no more appetite for that than you.’
Hauling himself up into the saddle, Archaon dug his heels into the creature’s flanks. Standing still, the steed would not move. ‘Move, damn you,’ the Chaos warrior ordered. Still
the daemon remained still. Archaon felt the beast transform beneath him. Its skin hardened and creaked. Sliding off, Archaon found himself standing before a gargoylesque statue of the mount. Tall. Proud. Terrifying. Made of stone. For the first time, Archaon considered how this might look to both friend and foe. ‘You are embarrassing yourself and what’s more, creature, you are embarrassing me.’ The statue of the steed seemed unmoved by Archaon’s entreaties. ‘We don’t have time for this,’ Archaon told the monster finally, before looking down at the bodies carpeting the crooked courtyard of the bone palace.
Spotting a stone hammer in the clutches of one of his dead beastfiends, Archaon casually knelt down and slipped the rough weapon from its owner’s death grip. Archaon stood up. Still the daemon steed remained resolute, the dark stone of its construction soaking up the balelight of the demolished gate beyond. ‘Last chance,’ Archaon told the mount, his back to it. As a statue, Dorghar offered no kind of response. Not a snort. Not one of its furnace-like hisses. Suddenly swinging the rude hammer around with his left hand, Archaon smashed through the statue’s stony teeth. Before the Chaos warrior’s punishment, the mount’s mouth had been a small cave of sharp stalactites and stalagmites – a daemonic maw crowded with stabbing fangs. As rock sprayed from the steed’s mouth, the stone hide of the creature creaked back to daemonflesh. There was hissing and snorting now. The steed bucked and kicked, its empty mouth chomping feverishly at the air.
Archaon threw the hammer to one side but as he did, the daemon Dorghar stomped through the bodies and bloody earth at him. Stopping just before its master, it leaned in, touching the bone barbs that formed the ridge of its muzzle against Archaon’s helm. Dorghar’s eyes raged like a pair of hellish suns while the infernal fires within the beast hissed, spat and roared from the creature’s mouth. As they did, the light of such fires glowed from the depths of both mouth and nostrils. Silhouetted against such brilliance were new fangs, growing into place and turning the monster’s mouth into a nest of dagger-like teeth. Longer. Sharper. More lethal than before. With the steed’s head against his own, Archaon watched the features of the stallion grow in horror. Skin ruptured to admit bone spikes, the hairs of its mane snaked with a serpent-like ripple while the monster’s brawn bulged, tearing its own black flesh with ugly scars and raw splits. Archaon’s gauntlet was already clasped around Terminus. It would be an awkward draw but the Chaos warrior was confident that he could have the daemon’s stallion-head from its thick neck. ‘Just get me in,’ Archaon offered. ‘Me alone.’
Dorghar seemed to consider. The roar of its furnace-like fires died a little and finally the bone spikes on its head came away from the Chaos warrior’s helm. Releasing his Sigmarite sword, Archaon once more mounted the Steed of the Apocalypse and once more the monster seemed to stall.
‘Don’t,’ Archaon told it, holding his broken arm in close and sending a ripple through the reins using his left hand. Dorghar turned its head to one side and snorted its derision. As it surged away, Archaon nearly left the armoured saddle. The steed might have taken on the form of a black stallion but the power and reflexes beneath Archaon were those of a daemonic monstrosity.
Clutching the saddle between his thighs, Archaon pulled on the reins and drew himself closer to Dorghar’s steaming flesh. At such speed, it was Archaon’s instinct to hold his body down close to the creature’s own, breastplate to back. He had experienced enough of the daemon’s speed on their journey to the Forsaken Fortress and might have punished Dorghar further, but for the fact that he had told the monster that time was a factor. Dorghar weaved in and out of murderous throngs, leaping over tusk-lined palisades and straight through the mess of bone-weave walls.
With ribs and splintered spine raining about them, Archaon and Dorghar thundered across the field of battle. As bloody pools splashed up about the steed’s hoof falls, the half-breeds of Archaon’s horde roared their bestial jubilation. Trampling Slaaneshi slave soldiers and braining beastfiends with its hooves as it leapt and landed, the mount was unstoppable. It batted crescent shields and beastfiends behind them out of its path and into the ranks of compatriot creatures nearby. Spears came at them with savage surprise. It was the first thing Lord Agrammon’s beasts could think to do upon seeing an armoured Chaos warrior and a daemon mount where seconds before brother beasts had been standing. The slave soldiers were not much for pelting such weapons and most went wide or high. The wicked tips of several of the spears glanced off Archaon’s filthy plate while those that did thud into Dorghar’s daemonflesh were soon shaken loose by the creature’s thunderous advance. Moments later they were snapped and splintered beneath its raging hooves.
As Dorghar surged on through the Slaaneshi horde, beastfiends began to part for the daemon’s thunderbolt progress. Trumpeting through their elongated snouts, the half-breeds clutched their crescent shields in close and stepped back behind the presented points of their cruel spears. Guiding the steed this way and that, Archaon pushed Dorghar on across the mulchlands of daemonic decay, through the hollowed nightmare of great palaces in ruin and about the colossal chunks of strange stone that littered the contested lands about the southern polar gate. The once mighty gateway to the beyond, now lying demolished in massive warp-shattered pieces, some long buried beneath the perpetual carnage that raged about the breached portal, some protruding from the twisted landscape, cracked, ancient and encrusted. Some sat in fresh craters like polished, steaming obsidian – unblemished by gore, filth or age – as if they had crashed just moments before. Weaving through the gargantuan wreckage of the Chaos gate, the pieces like standing stones that had toppled and smashed, Dorghar raced on. The steed’s hooves churned up the mud, old blood and bones of the Gatelands in its midnight wake.
The palace of the daemon lord Agrammon grew before them, a towering, serrated silhouette against grim radiance bleed-streaming into the world from the ruptured gateway. The shaven beastfiends of the palace had their own predicaments here. Having freed one of Agrammon’s prize exhibits, Archaon had rocketed into the north on the hunt for his father-in-shadow. The Chaos warrior had not spared a thought for the havoc he had wreaked, thinking – like the daemon Dorghar – never to return to the dread palace and its caged suffering. The stinking menagerie had been Agrammon’s collection of exotic, monstrous freakery for thousands of years. Never before had the silent misery of the inmates been so afflicted by hope. The creatures that Archaon had set free had liberated other monsters. Freeing compatriot specimens from bars, chains and sorcerous charms or simply charging through cages and twisted enclosures in unbridled rage, the beasts had set in motion a chain reaction of escapes. Keeper daemonettes had failed to contain the spreading havoc and now, out on the bone-strewn Wastes upon which Agrammon’s beastfiends marched, all manner of monstrosity was charging to freedom.
Here Archaon found that the beastfiends had little interest in a foe storming towards them. The slave soldiers were running for their lives from chaotic predators that pounced on their fresh flesh. Sickening spawn-things seized them from behind with tentacle, claw and scything limb. Sky-screeching horrors that stretched their ragged wings and fell on the beast guard from great heights with talon and maw. Suddenly the throng of beastfiends parted before the galloping Dorghar’s furious advance, screaming into the broiling heavens as they were swept aside in a tsunami of ichor-slick earth. Some former exhibit of the menagerie – a malformed titan whose hunchbacked torso was afflicted by a multitude of monstrous limbs – shook the ground with the panicked footfalls of its escape. Swinging clubbed fists and the warped deformity of colossal limbs before it, the giant cleared small armies of its former guards and tormentors out of its path. Broken beastfiends flew through the air this way and that before the mindless passage of the terrified brute.
Archaon hauled on the reins. The Chaos warrior had no intention of being smashed to oblivion by the small mountain of twisted flesh and bone. Dorghar would not be stopped, however. The steed increased its speed, turni
ng a palace-storming gallop into a furrow-cutting streak through the Gatelands that left hoof prints of flame behind it. As the giant’s mighty flesh clubs pulverised the shrieking beastfiends before them, Archaon resisted the urge to grab for his sword. Doing so would have taken his hand from the reins and, at this speed, the Chaos warrior thought such an action suicide. Dorghar and Archaon were suddenly hit by the physical force of the malformed giant’s fearful roar. Thinking that it was being attacked, the titan swung back with the bone-spiked boulder of one of its club fists. Archaon felt himself hold onto his breath, waiting for impact. The force of the giant’s fury would likely smash both him and his daemon steed into a skyward stream of gore. The Chaos warrior braced for the horrifying impact – an impact that never came.
Archaon felt the Steed of the Apocalypse change beneath him. No longer was the armoured saddle sitting on the back of a nightmare, black stallion. There was no snorting nor thunder of hooves. Archaon, sitting squarely in the saddle, sailed on a swarm of screeching imps. Dorghar had changed once more, this time assuming the form of a flock of tiny, black furies. A storm of tiny wings, lithe bodies and razored claws, the throng spread out as the giant’s gargantuan fist smashed through the warp-baked earth. As the giant stormed on, grit and congealed ichor raining down about it, the monstrosity had no idea that it had failed to destroy the rider and his steed. Screeching together once more, the imps swarmed beneath the Chaos warrior. Those slave soldiers that had somehow survived the giant’s destructive passage had Dorghar to look forward to. While Archaon sat astride the flock of tiny, shrieking monsters they shredded through Agrammon’s Slaaneshi soldiers.