by Rob Sanders
A tired lunge, combined with the fervour of frustration, sent the length of Terminus searing through the daemon-crafted plate of another creature. As the daemonette crashed into the shallows, her corpse refused to surrender the templar blade. Letting go and retracting his arm, Archaon narrowly avoided losing it to a murderous downward swing that ended up sending bodily fluids from the shallows fountaining upwards. Stumbling back but trying to keep the shrieking Giselle behind him and out of the path of blades swung with venomous force, Archaon was without weapon. With a daemonette either side of him, this was an intolerable position to remain in. Trying to rush one lesser daemon to reach Terminus, lodged in the corpse behind, only resulted in a serrated blade clanging off the side of his helm, cleaving a groove in the workmanship. An attempt to lurch forward and snatch a sickle sword from the claw-gauntlet of a dead daemonette was partially successful, but without the hilt of the unfamiliar weapon firmly in his grasp, the blade was struck from his grip by the whipping slash of one of his cornering tormentors.
Stamping a wall of water at one as a distraction, Archaon feigned going for the lost blade again. He knew he had to leave Giselle’s side – it was the only way to save them both. Instead of actually going for the blade, Archaon lowered the horns on his helmet and charged. Crashing into the unprepared daemonette, he smashed her back, burying the pauldron of his broken arm in the plate of her belly. He could feel the lesser daemon smashing the pommel of her sickle sword into his back but Archaon charged on like a deranged rhinox, slamming the horrific creature into the chamber wall and impaling her on a set of wicked spikes. Tearing the sickle sword from her dying grasp, Archaon spun around, the gag-inducing waters splashing up about him. Hurling the lighter curved sword, blade over pommel, he buried it in the form of the final daemonette, who had been racing through the shallows at the unarmed Giselle. The wretched creature would have sliced the girl in two if it were not for the flying blade that thudded into her back. The daemon crashed down into the waters before the Sister of Sigmar, who simply stared, stunned, at Archaon. Tearing Terminus from the carcass of the Slaaneshi daemon, Archaon put himself between Giselle and Agrammon’s horrific horde.
Infernal plate clattered as daemonettes clawed at each other to get to the Chaos warrior and his prize. The daemon Agrammon spoke. Its words sizzled on the air. Archaon didn’t understand them but they sounded like a command. The daemonettes parted as their overlord slithered off its throne and wound its way between the creatures. Archaon held out Terminus before him. He ached to wield the weapon with his right arm but the hot agony of the broken limb wouldn’t answer.
‘Come and get it, thing of darkness,’ Archaon told the daemon. ‘I’ll tear through you as I have your wretched handmaidens.’
Agrammon did something horrible with its face that the Chaos warrior took for a smile. Shaking its horns and sending a ripple through its twitching, tentacular appendages, Agrammon reared. Archaon prepared himself for some kind of serpentine attack. He felt Giselle’s slender body against the back of his plate. He flicked his gaze from the horrific daemon lord slithering to full height before him to the waiting horde of daemonettes – monstrosities he knew could destroy both him and Giselle if they abandoned the perversity of their games and rushed them in one go. From the flesh-hungry horde of daemonettes he risked a glance at Jharkill. Jharkill the huntsman. Jharkill the shaman. Jharkill, former keeper of Lord Agrammon’s infernal menagerie. The malformed ogre was now on his knees, held down by chains that had formerly been his to shackle, by long-snout beastfiends that had formerly been his to command. The monster’s hunched back rose and fell with his suffering. As Agrammon towered over him, Archaon grunted. He would have to fight. Only steel would settle this.
Archaon heard a hiss. Fat droplets splattered against his plate. They were not the sticky drizzle that coated everything in the throne room. The armour of Morkar smoked and sizzled at their acidic impact. Archaon took a step back but the daemon Agrammon had spurted a stream of unholy filth from its rearing serpentine form. Archaon was not the intended target of the disgusting attack. The liquid coursed down the blade of the offered Terminus. The liquid spat and steamed as it rolled down the blessed steel of the Sigmarite sword.
‘No…’ Archaon found himself cry out. In a life long forgotten, the blade had belonged to his templar master, Sieur Kastner. It had secured Archaon’s own false future in the hallowed ranks of the Knight of the Twin-Tailed Orb. Through the horror and adventure of his dark quests, the blade had stayed with him – ever faithful to its original calling. In the damned Archaon’s hands, it had destroyed more evil that it could ever have hoped by sitting in Sieur Kastner’s rusty scabbard. Its blessed steel had been a boon in Archaon’s battles against fell warriors, beasts and daemonic monstrosities pledged to the same dark path. Its edge had remained keen and the twin-tailed comet carved into its blade had burned bright as Archaon had fought his way across the globe. It should have been the blade’s honour to cut through the flesh of daemons like Agrammon. Instead the metal of the blade began to dribble and run.
The acidic unguent that Agrammon had sprayed down on the steel was melting it in Archaon’s very grip. As the length of the greatsword dribbled down to a silver stump in the Chaos warrior’s hand, Archaon could hear the daemon lord’s sickly laughter. The daemonettes joined in about their infernal overlord, followed by the unliving exhibits skewered on the bars above. Before long the vaulted throne chamber was filled with the infectious scorn of the diabolical creatures. The silver of liquefied steel swirled in the sickly waters about Archaon’s boots. The Chaos warrior held onto his sword, the sword he had wielded for so long in the service of different gods: so long that it almost felt like a part of him. With a snarl that threatened to break his face, Archaon allowed the sizzling cross guard, hilt and pommel to tumble into the steely waters. It sploshed and hissed to its wretched end. So much of a life lived long ago was gone. Oberon. Dagobert. The Sigmarite sword Terminus. Archaon felt furiously compelled to defend what little remained.
He backed through the grim waters. Through the stinking drizzle. Through the laughter of daemons. Giselle stumbled and grabbed out for him, drawing further diabolical mirth from the monsters. Archaon looked around. Agrammon. The daemonettes. The defeated Jharkill. The thick metal of the hell-forged palace door that would see the monstrosities outside smash themselves to death before it admitted them.
‘Want to make these wretched things pay for what they have done?’ Archaon called across to the ogre huntsman. The daemons laughed harder about them, amused by the prospect of Jharkill, sagging in his shredded flesh, and the unarmed Archaon posing any kind of threat. ‘Monster!’ Archaon roared across at Jharkill, finally drawing the corner of an eye from the defeated creature. ‘This is only over if you want it to be.’ Archaon cast a glance at the huge, metal door that was the entrance to the palace and the thunder behind it.
Agrammon slithered down at Archaon. The daemon was done with the interloper and his delusions. Sharp words slipped from the daemon lord’s lips and a shower of sparks lit the thick gloom of the chamber. An unseen force had slashed up across Archaon’s breastplate and right pauldron, drawing a fountain of light from the metal. Archaon stumbled back and Giselle with him as the girl let out a sudden scream. Archaon held up his good arm and a further blinding flash flared from it. Another sparking surge rained fire from an invisible backslash across Archaon’s chest. Giselle went down in the water and Archaon skidded back through the shallows. The armour of Morkar – First Everchosen of Chaos – would not be breached by the daemon lord’s sorceries.
Agrammon’s face clouded over like the sudden and perverse storms of the Southern Wastes that seemed to come from nowhere. Archaon instinctively knew that the monstrous daemon had finished playing with them. That within dark moments they would be dead. Jharkill, Sheerian and his Swords of Chaos too. In desperation, Archaon used the only weapon he had left. He turned to Giselle and grabbed her arm t
o help her up.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said as he turned and launched the girl at the daemon Agrammon. The infernal creature caught Giselle in its arms. There was an immediate hiss. Daemonflesh steamed from Agrammon’s disgusting form. Like a hand pulling a piece of steel fresh from the furnace, the daemon burned at the girl’s touch. Giselle, who still stung with belief. Who, impossibly, in this benighted place, had hung onto her faith. Whose soul belonged to the God-King and whose flesh was a sacred vessel. Agrammon screamed. The daemon had not known such exquisite torture in this doomed place. The sound of the daemon’s torment howled up through the palace tower. Its coils contracted in agony and then bliss. It dropped Giselle and once more the girl found herself in the water.
Agrammon hissed its frenzied delight at Giselle as her head broke the surface of the shallows. Like an angry snake that had been tormented with a lit torch, Agrammon turned its serpentine horror on Archaon. But Archaon was gone. The Chaos warrior had turned and was running through the shallows, his steps spraying fountains of liquid skyward. The daemonettes between him and the mighty palace door had been as surprised as their infernal master. Many had rushed to their daemon lord’s aid, drawn to the vision of pleasure and pain as Agrammon’s soul came to know the anathema of a believer’s touch. Several nightmarish swordmaidens in their spiked plate tried to check the Chaos warrior’s advance. Archaon ran at them, smashing through their crescent shields. Ducking and weaving between the singing death of their sickle swords, Archaon wrangled with one monstrous maiden, only to grab her wrist and force her blade into turning aside another. An armoured elbow to the fanged face of the creature allowed Archaon the remaining steps he needed to reach the door.
Jharkill, meanwhile, had responded to the Chaos warrior’s cue. Rearing from the shallows and raining the foetid waters from his hulking form, the malformed ogre dragged his neck chains with him, tearing beastfiends from their hooves. Gargantuan steps sent the crests of waves at the startled daemons, drenching their spiked plate. Several swordmaidens attempted to stop the rampaging ogre but found their armoured forms smashed across the throne room or stamped into the shallows.
The palace was suddenly a place of shrieking havoc. Between the sweet agony that was Giselle, the unstoppable force that was Jharkill and Archaon’s slippery escape, the daemon Agrammon was seething. Spitting curses from its black lips, Agrammon slashed deep wounds across the mountainous hunch of Jharkill’s already shredded back. Jharkill roared and fell against the colossal doors. The metal rang with the impact. Archaon felt it through the structure. He got his arm and pauldron under the massive bar sitting across the width of the entrance. Heaving. Pushing. Straining. Archaon fought gravity and the weight of the massive bar. With a final effort – a roar escaping the Chaos warrior’s lungs – Archaon pushed the great bar from its brackets and sent it crashing into the water behind. The booming assault beyond the door had stopped. The monstrosities behind it had felt the impact and had heard the watery clang. With a bellow of pain rather than effort, Jharkill heaved at the metal doors. Falling to his knees, the ogre pushed them open.
A moment passed where nothing seemed to happen. It was almost as though the powerful forces screaming from the breach of the Southern Gate had sunk their claws into reality and dragged time to a stop. The daemonettes gasped in dread and expectation of the horror yet to come. Giselle gagged and whimpered as she knelt in the foul waters, with the swirling maelstrom of the daemon Agrammon’s serpentine body slithering to a stop about her. Dread curses dropped from the creature’s lips in languages dark and ancient. The daemon knew what was going to happen and yet still could not resist breathing in the sweet sting of relief that rolled in through the palace doors. Monstrosities, freaks and prisoners who had spent an eternity suffering the lash at Agrammon’s command and caged for the daemon lord’s pleasure now had the palace in their grasp. The expectation of violence and suffering to come was like a silent storm that rushed in through the open doors. The Slaaneshi daemons groaned and sank down into the water.
Archaon stumbled through the shallows. The horde of creatures outside were as shocked at the door’s opening as the daemons inside. It took a moment for even the most mindless and savage of them to process what was happening. Like Agrammon and its savage kind, Archaon knew what was coming. Running across the entrance, the Chaos warrior leapt at Jharkill, using the momentum of his landing to turn the ogre onto its knees so that the hunched monster collapsed to one side of the entrance, its back against the barbed wall. Archaon was just in time. While the Prince of Pleasure’s daemons were drunk on the sweet wine of retribution, the Blood God’s eye had been drawn to the base, animal fury that drove such creatures to enact such revenge. Feeding the horde of monstrous creatures with mind-splitting ire, it had been the Blood God who had driven such creatures to throw themselves, broken and bloody, at the thick metal of the palace doors. They would not be stopped now. The fury had to find expression in the roaring that followed. In the pulse of violent intent through sinew and muscle and in the coppery taste of blood at the back of the throat.
Archaon ran through the shallows. Through the daemonettes, who stood there like a spiked forest of enraptured statues. Like an avalanche of black rage the monstrosities charged. Things of claw. Predacious fusions of beast and daemon. Spawn, raging with transformative power. Armoured titans of tusk and elemental ferocity. It was mayhem. Archaon dare not spend the seconds to look back. The unstoppable force of the escaped exhibits pushed the draining waters of the throne room before them, driving a stinking surge that caught Archaon in its rolling power.
There were terrible screams. Daemonettes and long-snouts were dying in the most brutal and horrific ways. While the Slaaneshi deviants had enjoyed the expectation, the storm of monstrosities, fired by the presence of the Blood God in their hearts and burning through their veins, had no intention of drawing out their revenge. The beasts found satisfaction only in death – as other escapees had done in the spiralling thoroughfares of the menagerie, savaging their lash-wielding keepers and the trumpeting beastfiends that patrolled their cages. Rank indulgence was soon replaced with the raw richness of blood and death. Behind him Archaon could hear the frenzied tearing of flesh, the snap of backs and bones, skulls crunching and the bellow of monsters raging their way through the butchered ranks. Above, the monstrous exhibits skewered on their bars had stopped moaning. Infested by the rush of retaliatory violence that had swept into the throne room like a crimson deluge, the unliving things were roaring, screeching and hissing their jubilation. As Archaon half waded, half stumbled through waters that were rapidly clouding black and red, his ears burned with the suddenly silenced screams of daemons ended brutally about him.
Skidding down through the blood, sweat and slime, Archaon snatched a sickle sword from a dead daemonette. The vanguard of the furious invasion had caught him. A splashing stampede rolled over him like a force of unnatural nature. Bony limbs and monstrous hooves trampled him down into the waters. As his head came up he felt an infernal radiance pass overhead, like a fireball, and Archaon had to duck back down under the foetid surface to avoid the flames of the dark phoenix that flapped about the throne room, seemingly setting fire to everything.
When Archaon pushed himself up out of the water he found some savage chimeric creature on his armoured back, snapping, clawing and stabbing at him with blade-bone appendages. Another leapt on him from the side, almost knocking him over. The Chaos warrior would have fallen if it wasn’t for some great crested rhinox charging by with its array of twisted horns, knocking him back. One of the beasts was torn away, having been skewered on the rhinox’s horns, while a third suddenly emerged from the shallows, surging at the Chaos warrior’s groin with its skin-flayed maw.
The sickle sword was no replacement for Terminus. While its razored curve had been hell-forged and its twisted serrations designed to inflict horrific damage, it lacked the weight of a truly devastating weapon. Lifting it above his head, Arc
haon brought his left arm down with all the power he could manage – forced to compensate brute strength for the lacking weight of the blade. The chimera died messily enough, the barbed sickle dragging the creature’s entrails from it as Archaon laid into the beast with a second mulching strike.
Archaon didn’t have to worry about the remaining creature. Agrammon had finally come to its diabolical senses and was slithering its coiled length about its throne and spitting the venom of sorcerous words. A water-whipping maelstrom of laceration circled the daemon lord like a whirlwind of unseen blades. Warped predators bounding through the shallows were torn to shreds by the invisible wall, while ungainly titans were skinned alive and had flesh sheared from their bones. The dark phoenix was shredded in a steaming blaze of unnatural flame. The chimera was ripped from Archaon’s back, where it had been savaging his armoured neck. The Chaos warrior, meanwhile, became a staggering fountain of sparks as the flesh-raking force clashed once more with Archaon’s cursed plate.
Through the sparks and the wall of gore circling the daemon Agrammon, Archaon saw Giselle. Agrammon had her inside the fat coils of its serpentine form, while the whip-like tip of its serpentine tail was actually snaked around the girl. The daemon’s flesh was black and steaming where it was in contact with Giselle, but despite the delicious torture of the soul-scorching experience, the monstrous daemon would not be denied its prize.