by Rob Sanders
‘There certainly won’t have been if you don’t issue my wishes, my instructions, nay my commands to this brute.’
At Sheerian’s words, Ograx roared his protestations. Beyond the fire, horns turned and the ears of beastfiends twitched at the confrontation. The hands of the Swords of Chaos edged closer to the wing-sheathes of their weapons. Sheerian held out his skeletal hands to calm the beast.
‘He, he,’ the sorcerer stammered, ‘he says he attacked the palace to reclaim what belonged to Archaon, chosen of the Chaos gods but that if Archaon, chosen of the Chaos gods, had not wandered into the Wastes, hordeless and without words, then perhaps his harlot and her attendants would have been safe.’
Archaon savagely shrugged off the shaman, his broken arm splinted across the plate of his chest, the black fur of a tight sling holding it in place.
‘Harlot?’ Archaon barked at the Blood God’s champion. ‘I should have left her in charge. I think you are right, Great One. They were not safe with you at the head of this horde, your heifer’s mind addled with the lust for blood.’
As Sheerian translated his master’s fury, Ograx stepped forward, its hooves scratching at the frozen dirt. The beast could barely wrap its thick tongue about its ire.
‘Or yours,’ the aged sorcerer told Archaon, translating the best he could, ‘buried in the fell flesh of that heretic woman.’
Ograx the Great spat at Archaon’s feet. The warlord watched the head of the skull-axe come up. The strain of daemongut and the creak of ivory cut through the confrontation. Beside Ograx, the huntsman Jharkill had drawn its colossal tusk bow and held the spear-like length of an arrow to the bestial champion’s horned head. The whisper of bone blades being torn from wing-sheathes followed.
‘If he does that again,’ Archaon commanded darkly, ‘shoot him.’
Ograx quaked. The beaten plate strapped across his chest rose and fell with the exertion of keeping the creature’s fury in check. About it, the ogre’s arrow trembled, the Swords of Chaos closed with their blades of bone and Archaon glowered – injured, unarmed and uncaring, confident that he could kill the beastfiend champion with a single bare hand, if required. Worst of all, the warlord’s cutting words had lit wildfires of doubt that would spread through the horde. Hulking beastfiends and warrior half-breeds who had brought dark honour to the Ruinous Powers in battle under Ograx’s savage command now reared to full height. Where before such monsters would have fought for the Great One, now they smelled blood and the chance to lead Archaon’s horde for themselves. The bestial prince lowered his horned head. It was as much of an acknowledgement or apology as Archaon was going to get.
‘Great One,’ Archaon said, his words translated into dark tongue by Sheerian, ‘you lead the horde in my name still.’ Archaon grunted; with the fires of possibility and greed stoked in the savage hearts of the beastfiend horde, he knew not for how long. Ograx nodded his brute understanding and lowered his horned head further in furious appreciation. As he turned to leave, Archaon’s barbed words stopped the creature. ‘However, beastling prince, think not to be left in sole command of my dread army again.’
Ograx the Great fought back his fury and with difficulty turned, as though Archaon’s words were holding him there. He looked up the colossal shaft of the arrow at Jharkill, who with some hesitation of his own, began to lower his weapon. With that the beastfiend champion’s hooves stomped away. Away from the burn of remonstration and through the barging shoulders and silent, standing hostility of a warherd that, moments before, he had commanded without question.
Archaon turned his attention to the monstrous ogre, who lowered his brute bow and unstrung his arrow. The thing’s dead twin still sat in his chest, its face fixed in a mask of death and the oily, black poison that Jharkill used on his arrowheads still leaking down the ogre’s huge belly. Archaon snapped the tinny fingers of his gauntlet and Sheerian brought forth the heavy shaman’s staff that the huntsman used to control the monsters of the menagerie. It jangled with the charms hanging from its cross bar as the sorcerer laid it down on the ground before Archaon. Jharkill came forth, holding his tusk bow in the hand of his huge, muscle-bound arm while its atrophied opposite stroked the face of the dead twin. Kneeling before Archaon, Jharkill lowered his head.
‘I am Archaon,’ the Chaos warlord told the malformed ogre. As he spoke, Sheerian translated his words into another dialect of dark tongue. Something still savage but more sophisticated than the beastspeak of Ograx the Great and his half-breeds. ‘Chosen of the Ruinous Gods, bearer of their gifts and taker of their treasures. Darkness willing, I shall be the Everchosen of Chaos. Lord of the End Times. Herald of the Apocalypse. In my expanding horde the weak are sacrificed and the strong are spared – to sacrifice themselves to my will. That is why the beastlord you had in your sights still lives. His strength is my strength. His talents enhance my own. I would ask no less of you, Jharkill of the Gatelands. Serve me as you served your last master.’
Jharkill’s words rumbled up from inside him like an earthquake and Sheerian translated them.
‘I am yours, Chosen one,’ Jharkill said. ‘For I have seen with my own eyes the favour bestowed on you by the Dark Gods of this land. How may I serve your dreadship?’
Archaon nodded slowly.
‘I would ask of you no more than your previous daemon lord,’ Archaon said simply.
‘You wish to collect beasts?’
‘I do.’
‘But you freed the monsters of my lord’s menagerie,’ Jharkill said, confused. He was a skilled hunter and gifted in the primitive arts of charmongery. He was not much of a thinker. Archaon forgave him this failing. The warlord didn’t need thinkers. Warriors who spent their time in thought rather than in slaughterous service were not to be trusted. Archaon had fallen foul of such dangers before.
‘You mistake me, huntsman,’ Archaon told him. ‘Your master was a despicable tyrant who revelled in the suffering of his caged slaves. I have no such ambitions. I require no palace or menagerie to encircle it. I am no liberator either. The monstrous things of the world should not be kept in cages and captives should have their freedom. Freedom has its price, master huntsman, as you yourself know; these monstrosities you catch and enslave to your will should be free to serve me. They should be free to exercise their devastating talents – to butcher and destroy as they were born to do – and they should do it as part of my growing horde of beasts.’
‘You wish me to catch the creatures you set free?’ the malformed ogre rumbled.
‘And bind them to your will, as you charmed them before,’ Archaon told him, ‘so that such monsters can rain down destruction on my enemies at my command. Can you do this for me, huntsman?’
Jharkill shouldered his huge bow and picked up his shaman’s staff, rearing to his full hunchbacked height.
‘As I am,’ the creature said, ‘they shall be. Yours, my master.’
Archaon smiled behind the leering skull of his horned helm.
‘Good…’ he hissed.
‘It will take some time, my master,’ Jharkill warned him. With Lord Agrammon’s palace aflame and the menagerie a twisted ruin, the monsters of the daemon’s collection had fled across the Gatelands to their freedom.
‘I want only the strongest,’ Archaon instructed, ‘the most savage and talented of their kind. My horde is no place for the weak – even if they are born to monstrosity. I need things that can march with my bestial army, fly above it or range ahead of it to report dangers to come. I need giants, the scaled serpents of the sky, things fleet of foot that track and savage, daemonbreeds and destroyers, like the abominate thing that did for your former master.’
‘They shall be yours to command,’ Jharkill assured him.
‘Hand pick prisoner long-snouts and half-breeds from my horde for your work,’ Archaon told it, ‘and take as many wagons as you need. I tire of this dread place. My army marches once
more for the top of the world.’
‘We are heading north, my lord?’ Sheerian asked as Jharkill backed respectfully away from his new master. The sorcerer’s cracked voice betrayed a relief that was difficult to mask. Archaon knew that the Tzeentchian longed for the complexity and sophistication of more civilised lands. Compared to the frozen, barbarian darkness of the southern continent, storm-racked and swarming with beastfiends, daemons and monsters, the Northern Wastes were positively urbane. The Shadowlands at the top of the world were ruled by men and their weak-minded desires. Warring tribes. God-pledged marauders. Soul-selling sorcerers. Warbands without number, fighting for Chaos warriors – the greatest of which led vast armies of the lost and damned at the pleasure of the Ruinous Powers. It was a place of possibility, where the servants of the Great Changer could fully deploy their talents.
‘We are heading south,’ Archaon told the sorcerer.
‘But, my lord–’ Sheerian began.
‘The horde will march on the Gatelands and the daemons who built their palaces on the rim of their great master’s otherworldly realm. We shall take the fight to these infernal princes and swell our ranks with recruits from the unslain. Jharkill will bring me monsters and you will be our guide as we pass through what is left of the Great Gate.’
Archaon felt the heads turn across the camp, ears prick and hearts leap. A shocked Sheerian tried to find the words.
‘My lord, I–’
‘Serve at the pleasure of Archaon, Chosen of the gods?’ the Chaos warlord said.
‘Of course, but the Gate–’
‘It is open, this Gate, is it not?’
‘Yes, my lord,’ the sorcerer said. ‘It floods the world with madness and power, spilling unchecked and unfiltered from the monstrous beyond.’
‘And I mean to take my horde through that gate and into–’ Archaon began.
‘You mean to enter the Realm of Chaos?’ Sheerian marvelled with horror.
‘I do, sorcerer,’ Archaon said. ‘And you shall guide me.’
‘To where, master?’ Sheerian asked.
‘To the top of the world,’ Archaon said. ‘There was a Great Gate here. There was a Great Gate there. Would it not be madness for two such gateways – the only ones of their demolished kind – not to be connected?’
‘It would be madness, master,’ Khezula Sheerian said, but the sorcerer was no longer talking about dark realms and the portals that led to them. ‘My lord, I’m not sure I can be of service to you in this matter.’
‘You have been to this place, sorcerer,’ Archaon put to him, ‘this realm, this otherworldly plane where dreams are reality, the Dark Gods cower and monstrous forces shape the madness about them. Before you were summoned to this wretched flesh, you knew this nightmare realm.’
‘I did, my lord,’ Sheerian said, ‘and I would not recommend a return. This place you speak of is less a place than a feeling, a knowing – fear, if fear had a shape. It is a stormy silence or the darkness of the depths. A thing to be experienced. A horror to be lived. A hell of ever-changing torments. A claustrophobic vastness. An endless intimacy, shared with your nightmares. Great intelligences exist in this void, things that came into being at the heart of soul-driven storms. Things born of dreads and desires. Things that long for a form of flesh in which to experience this world beyond their own.’
‘Things like you,’ Archaon accused.
‘Things like the Yien-Ya-Long,’ Sheerian warned, ‘like Agrammon and Be’lakor – the shadow that haunts you here already. Like the Powers of ruin you scorn and serve.’
‘When these things,’ Archaon pressed the sorcerer, ‘things like you, enter my world – the world that is mine to destroy – you assume the mortality and weakness of flesh. Does it not stand to reason…’
‘The Realm of Chaos is no place to demand of reason, my lord,’ Sheerian said fearfully.
‘…that our mortality and the fell souls that drive us will assume a similar form on this benighted plane? Something temporary. Something else.’
‘The place you speak of is a thing beyond words – beyond expectations. Your pledges and promises will have no meaning in an existence beyond your own,’ Sheerian said.
‘I am the cold fire that burns about my soul,’ Archaon said. ‘I suspect the dark radiance of such dark need will light our path – whatever form it might take – in this dread realm. The fires of my ambition will light our way, sorcerer, and you will guide us by that light.’
‘My lord, I implore you,’ Sheerian begged, ‘I do not know the way. I know not if such a way exists. There are no ways through the Realm of Chaos. No one has ever done this before.’
‘Then we shall be both the first,’ Archaon told the sorcerer, ‘and the last. This Realm of Chaos and the monstrous things that inhabit it – fed by the otherworldly presence of our hopes, dreams and fears – will be no more. I am Archaon, Lord of the End Times. An end to all. An end to everything that deigns to exist – in this world or any other. You will guide me and my horde through this inconstant realm, sorcerer, to the remains of the Great Gate at the top of the world, or you will find us wretched beings from that plane of damnations who can. Do you understand?’
‘I do, my lord,’ Sheerian told his master, and the sorcerer slunk away to dwell on their doom.
As he left, Archaon noticed another miserable creature. Gorst had finally caught up with the horde. The flagellant jangled in his chains, his charms and his head-cage, edging towards the nearby fire and the raucous beastfiends gathered about it like some emaciated scavenger, hoping to snatch some scrap of roasted meat or the marrow from an abandoned bone. Archaon grunted. Gorst would have, indeed had followed him to the ends of the world. He wondered if the mad man would be so ready to do so if he had any conception of where they were going.
Archaon got up from the wagon, leaving Giselle to horrors relived in the darkness both beneath her furs and behind the closing of her eyes. The daemon Dorghar trotted forth and Archaon climbed up into the armoured saddle. Eins came forward to receive his master’s instructions.
‘Have Prince Ograx get the horde on the move,’ Archaon told the Sword of Chaos. ‘Our doom awaits beyond the infernal palaces of the mighty.’ Archaon turned Dorghar about. The Chaos warlord intended to lead the monstrous army from the front. He pointed at Gorst. ‘And make sure that wretch eats his fill before we move on.’ Eins nodded in silent obedience and Dorghar raced off to the south. South towards the Gatelands. Towards the crowded ring of crooked towers, palaces and daemonic fortresses that the bottom of the world wore like a crown about the amaranthine blaze of the collapsed Chaos gate. Towards the Chaos warlord’s destiny and doom.
Chapter VIII
‘This is the first of the tellings. The first narrative. It was the time of before. Before the plagues of vermin and the warm-bloods. When the world was young and the creators held the realms in order. It was an age of promise and great works. The creators drew their power from a realm impossible. A spiritual plane in defiance of reason. A darkling sea through which they walked, a path unknown in a beyond not of their making. This realm was troubled by malign beings and the creators’ passage through that realm became troubled also. The pathways crumbled, and the gateways connecting this existence and that collapsed. The known and the unknown merged. The true paths became poisoned by the presence of things undreamed of. Abyssal forces. False creators. New-born calamities. Fears given shape.’
– Astromancer Tempac-Zhul, The Annal-Inscriptions
of the Great Catastrophe
The Gatelands
The Southern Wastes
Horns Harrowing: Season of the Ravening
Archaon could not claim to have brought war to the Gatelands. There daemonic armies clashed, slaughters were undertaken and things died for their rancid masters with perpetual fervour. The palaces of infernal royalty were in a constant state of being ransacked and rebui
lt. Fortresses had been under siege for centuries, while towers toppled only for others to rise like colossal stone weeds from the churning earth. Every kind of infernal aberration possible seemed to hold a miserable patch of aethyr-baked ground. Greater daemons of the Chaos Powers had been questionably rewarded for their eternal service. Daemon lords kept mad court in palatial grandeur, while dark princes fought from dread fortresses, forever pledged to destruction to earn their infernal heritage. Creatures of every description and perversity haunted the smoking ruins of the Gatelands, while otherworldy beasts, half-breeds and armies of lesser daemons fought battles without end in efforts to earn their masters’ attentions.
So close to the collapsed gate and the roaring torrent of unreality blasting forth from the existential breach, the very nature of normality was under constant threat. The land beneath the boot, the stone and metal of infernal palaces and the maelstrom of the heavens was in a state of monstrous flux. What could be seen, heard, smelt, tasted and touched could not be trusted. The warped landscape about the polar rift, and the nightmarish architectural achievements sprouting busily about it, smeared into one another. Daemons, their fortresses and the spawn hordes that fought for them dreamed away to spectral shades. Ghostly palaces overlapped, existing over one another in the crowded madness of the Gateland interior. Daemon lords and hellbound princes existing in the same place at different times, the wraith-like lambency of their presence like an infernal afterthought. Bathed in the perpetual blaze of the beyond, fires of flux and flame whipped through the competing canopy of roofs, domes and towers. Warpquakes shook the lands about the dread gate, opening up glowing fissures, swallowing armies, shaking fortresses to their crumbling foundations and collapsing towers in sky-rocketing plumes of dust.
Archaon rode into the insanity of the Gatelands at the head of his growing horde. His bestial ranks had been swelled by Lord Agrammon’s surrendering Slaaneshi long-snouts, while Jharkill was as good as his barbarian word in rapidly recapturing many savage Chaos creatures and monsters formerly housed in the daemonic menagerie. Tracking them through the tumultuous Gatelands, shooting them, drugging them with his evil unguents and enslaving them to his will with primitive charms and shamanic bindings, Jharkill had freakish titans, monstrous spawn, winged and warped serpents, chimeric predators and exotic abominations obediently fall into line.