Archaon: Lord of Chaos

by Rob Sanders

  Archaon risked a glance behind him. He narrowed the gaze of an eye he knew wasn’t there. He blinked the mind-scalding glare of the realm’s tumultuous blackness from his darksight. Concentrating through the cacophony of distractions and the sense that not one, but a hundred different dread intelligences were in turn watching him through the darkness, Archaon saw his horde. The Eye of Sheerian, glowing with the intensity of the otherworldy energies all about it, helped Archaon see through the infernal void.

  Casting a gaze down the spiked flanks of the daemon steed Dorghar, Archaon could see Khezula Sheerian, his furs gathered about him and eyes cloudy with a Ruinous glaze. The Swords of Chaos marched beside him, the scarred membranes of their wings long healed. The still figure of Vier held the reins of the bone wagon behind them, the vehicle dragged along by a pair of monstrous black elks. Within the wagon, Archaon could only guess the torments or invulnerabilities being endured by Giselle – her faith making her either an anathema to the spirit stalkers of the realm or a soulprize over which to be fought. Ograx the Great led the colossal, winding cavalcade of beastfiends that made up Archaon’s half-breed horde, as well as wagons and beast-dragged siege engines crafted from bone.

  Beyond the bestial multitudes, Archaon saw Jharkill the huntsman, the hunchbacked ogre still clutching his shaman’s staff that jangled with his primitive charms. Following obediently in line were the caged chimeric predators that Archaon favoured releasing as a first wave attack, and the twisted titans and lumbering abominates that he saved as shock troops to break opposing armies. Peering further still, alone in the darkness some way behind the last of Jharkill’s miserable monsters, Archaon could see Gorst, stumbling through the oblivion. The flagellant dragged his chains behind him and stared like a wide-eyed lunatic out through the bars of his head-cage. All in the train were silent as the grave, from beastfiend to monstrosity to madman. No one wanted to attract any more attention from the abyssal murk than the light from their wretched half-souls was already doing. The sorcerer was quietest of all. Slowing – or at least what Archaon thought was slowing – the Chaos warlord and his steed drifted in line with the mottled ancient. How many times before he had done the self same thing asking the same questions, Archaon could not know. Something felt hauntingly familiar about the impulse and it occurred to Archaon, as it had occurred to him the thousands of times before, that the pair were routinely carrying out the same insanity over and over again.

  ‘Sorcerer,’ Archaon said, drawing the twitch of a response from the daemon. ‘Where are we? Your master speaks.’

  Sheerian didn’t answer at first, the sorcerer seeming to overcome – like Archaon – some monstrous attempt to steal his soul.

  ‘My master never stops speaking,’ the Tzeentchian cackled cryptically. ‘Where are we? Where your damned path has taken us, my lord. The invisible empire. To the depths of hells everlasting. To the cradle of darkness – the birthplace of daemons and the storm-racked sovereignty of the Dark Gods. Everywhere. Nowhere. Anywhere.’

  ‘Speak sanity, sorcerer,’ Archaon said. He was barely holding onto his own.

  ‘You seek sanity,’ Sheerian marvelled maniacally, ‘…in… this… place?’

  ‘I seek the Great Northern Gate,’ Archaon told him, his bold words sounding hollow as they were swallowed by the dark, abyssal emptiness about them. ‘I seek the mortal realm to which we belong. I seek a way out of this infernal place. You are a thing of this darkness. Guide us.’

  ‘Here,’ babbled the ancient, ‘there, neverwhere. How can a daemon of this world or the next claim to have been anywhere in a place with no landmarks or features? Can a man who has stood on the sandy shore know his way across the deserts of the ocean bottom? Does feeling the breeze on his face equip him to find his way through all storms? We are lost and we are damned, my lord. We are slaves to the darkness. Accept it and allow yourself to become one with the madness of this place. Eternity will find some use for you – eventually – as it did me.’

  The sorcerer’s uselessness appalled Archaon and the Chaos warlord found himself reaching for the hilt of his sword. Khezula Sheerian heard the hiss of a weapon being drawn but the sorcerer didn’t even turn to face his lord.

  ‘Steel is not steel, in this place,’ the sorcerer told him.

  Archaon found himself looking down at the blade he had drawn. Sheerian was right. Killing him would not achieve anything – even if he could. He looked at his reflection in the dull steel of the hell-forged blade. He wasn’t even surprised when he found none. Instead the blade saw straight through him to show Archaon the ghastly entities that had emerged from the oblivion behind him. Angling the blade around, Archaon saw that by slowing and calling out demands of his sorcerer he had drawn hundreds, perhaps thousands of soul-famished entities down on himself. As he turned the blade, his heart thudded at the monstrous abominations emerging from the darkness. Things of indescribable horror and abyssal appetite.

  Archaon thought on the madness the sorcerer had spoken. His inability to guide them and his insistence that Archaon allow himself to become one with the madness of the realm. The Chosen of the Chaos gods knew that he had to do something. For all he knew they had been wandering the aethyric expanse of oblivion forever. The damned cycle had to be broken. He had to escape this limitless prison and cast off the chains of eternal damnation. He knew he could not do it alone but to call upon assistance from his Ruinous sponsors would prove his unsuitability to be their champion. He would be the Everchosen of Chaos exactly because he hadn’t ever begged of their mercy. Archaon would still need a guide to find his way free of their diabolical realm.

  Lifting up his gauntlet and sword, Archaon presented himself to the horde of daemonic entities swirling and swarming about him in the darkness.

  ‘A share of my soul,’ Archaon roared at them, the passion and fury of his announcement blazing like a distant city aflame through the daemon-haunted infernity, ‘to the fell thing that can show me – and those that belong to me – the hell out of this dread place.’

  ‘Master, no…’ Sheerian said. Eins, Zwei and Drei surged forward, reaching for bone blades.

  Archaon braced himself but some horrid thing shot out of the swarming shadows with such violent force that it surprised even him. Like a comet of churning hatred, the entity trailed a bloody miasma as it blasted into the Chaos warlord. This time Archaon didn’t fight it. He didn’t resist. He allowed the thing to be one with him.

  For a moment he felt paralysed. His gauntlet opened and his sword dropped from his hand, falling through the darkness at his feet. He remained in that position for a few moments more, with his arms outstretched and chest braced, as though lightning were passing down his spine. Archaon’s plate burned across his chest where the monstrous entity had hit him. Finally, looking down, he found Morkar’s armour frosted with otherworldly crystals. As he relaxed he scraped at the sizzling residue with an armoured finger.

  ‘My lord?’ Sheerian asked fearfully. The Swords of Chaos had surrounded him, their weapons facing inwards. No one knew quite what to do.

  Archaon slid down onto his knees and hunched over. It was the most awful sensation. An existence that was not all his own. A wretched intimacy of thought. A heart beat horribly, filling Archaon with darkness and desires not just of his own but also of those belonging to a denizen of the deep. The core of his being was suddenly flooded with violence. A fury, hot and pure filled him. A primordial need to inflict harm. Other entities were flying at him. The daemon that had beaten them to his soul was fighting the monstrous evils to protect its prize. Beings that hungered for him tried to tear the entity from Archaon’s living essence but the savage being that had him in its talons would not give up its infernal territory. Like a pack of wild dogs over a carcass, the daemons fought, roaring, hissing and spitting until one by one the monstrosities relented and sunk back into the darkness.

  Finally alone with the entity that now wore his soul
like a mantle, Archaon tried to slow the hammering of his heart. The beast that breathed with him was a storm that would not be calmed. Archaon roared as he had never done before. His pain was beyond the flesh. The creature tore at his very soul. His existential agony echoed through the raging void, taking with it flocks of scavenger daemons who fed on the rich honesty of his torment. He felt the withering corruption of the thing spread through what was left of his being. The daemon’s maleficence twisted through him, turning his veins to ragged black roots and filling them with a liquid obsidian filth that passed for blood. As it reached his chest, the ichor strangled his heart with constricting rage. It scorched to blackness within his body, searing and spitting with the furious heat of the daemon inside him.

  Archaon’s roar narrowed to a scream.

  Monstrous claws grew through his boots, while the black bone of stabbing dagger-like talons thrust out of the tips of his gauntlets. Spikes erupted from his spine, tearing up through his plate, furs and cloak like the dorsal fins of an ocean predator. Red spines ruptured up out of his armour, the cracks working their way between them filled with molten brass bled from beneath. The cooling metal steamed, forming the damned sigils of the Blood God. Legs snapped horribly beneath him as his knees assumed the digitigrade orientation of a daemon monstrosity. Pushing his helm from his head, Archaon’s shrieking trailed off. Screaming didn’t seem enough to express the agony afflicting his imagined body and soul. Since he was no longer solely in control of the lungs that had been filling the void with his suffering, there was little he could do.

  The Swords of Chaos brought up their weapons in unison, while the sorcerer Sheerian came forward and picked up Archaon’s helmet. Sheerian and Eins exchanged a glance of helpless alarm.

  ‘My lord?’ Sheerian asked, but the transformation was not complete.

  Throwing his head forward, Archaon endured the bone-cracking agony of a skull growing out of the back of his own. As his head elongated, two monstrous horns erupted from his temples, willowing to blackness. When Archaon brought his face up it was a mess. Spikes puncturing through the flesh had carved his face up into an infernal mask. Blood from the wounds had stained it a Ruinous red and a nest of fangs had worked their way out of his jaw to create a monstrous maw. Above it his eyes burned to cruel brilliance.

  ‘Archaon!’ the sorcerer Sheerian called, fearing that he had lost his master to some hideous daemon of the abyss. Archaon tried to stand on his new legs, but heaved. Vomiting forth a stream of gore into the darkness at his clawed feet, the torrent was followed by a black, blood-slick tongue that flopped out of the daggered maw like a dead serpent. The malign presence looked out from the Chaos warlord’s afflicted flesh. It stared at the Swords of Chaos with their bone swords ready, and the sorcerer clutching the helm of his master.

  Archaon? the thing seethed through the oblivion. There is no one of that name here.

  ‘Do you have a name, monster? Thing that corrupts my flesh and pollutes my soul with its bloody darkness.’

  I… am… Z’guhl.

  ‘Z’guhl?’

  Z’guhl, the Skullreaper. Z’guhl of the Brazen Brethren. Z’guhl, the Left Fist of Khorne. Z’guhl, Blessed of Blood. Z’guhl, the Crimson Doom. Z’guhl the Deathbringer. Z’guhl, the Herald of All Hate.

  ‘You have altogether too many titles, daemon.’

  And you none at all, man-thing.

  ‘Not for long, daemon.’

  An eternity, if I so choose – slave-soul of mine.

  ‘The Blood God’s servants prize the present moment. They have not the patience for eternities. I promised you a share of my soul, you double-dealing fiend. I’ll torment you from what I have left, blood beast of the void. How do you feel about sharing eternity with me, Z’guhl of the Hesitant Heart? Z’guhl of the Mortal Stain? Z’guhl the Soul Plagued? Ask yourself this, monster, are you in possession of my soul or am I in possession of yours?’

  Enough…

  ‘Enough?’

  Enough.

  ‘Like I said – no patience.’

  Watch your words, mortal.

  ‘My name is Archaon and I am Chosen of the Dark Gods – your Almighty Lord of Wrath included.’

  I know what you are. You are he who would be Everchosen. You wear his plate and his treasures. You ride his steed and bear his Mark. You do not, however, carry the Everchosen’s blade.

  ‘His blade… You know of this blade?’

  Intimately, weakling mortal. Intimately.

  ‘Tell me warpling, on the blood that ever drips from your dark lord’s axe, where can I find such a blade?’

  Not here, Archaon. Archaon the Lost. Archaon, the Everbroken. Archaon, Lord of Nothing.

  ‘Tell me, Crimson Doom, or I will be yours. I shall tear you apart, from the inside out. Your spine shall be my sceptre, your black heart shall be my orb and I shall wear your monstrous skull as my crown. Hear me, goremonger. Hear me!’

  Hear you… or help you?

  ‘Help me break free of this place. This doom of everlastings. This otherworldly night of the soul. This prison eternity. The havoc. The pain. The possibility. Help me or be destroyed, wretched thing of a thousand deaths. The choice is that simple.’

  …Perhaps. Perhaps we could help each other. I have sought you out, Archaon. I have stalked your soul across eternity’s expanse and through storms of damnation’s ire. I claim your soul in so much as I might set it free.

  ‘What do you mean, daemon?’

  I mean to guide you from this dread realm, Archaon. I mean to take you to the Gate you seek, where mortals butcher one another for our pleasure in the Battle Everlasting.

  ‘The Great Northern Gate, at the top of the world…’

  Top. Bottom. Up. Down. North. South. These terms have no meaning here. The Gate glows with a lightshow of souls. That is all I know. Mortals gloriously bringing darkness to their fellow doomed. The brief spark of their passing and the insignificance of their offering attracting the Powers of darkness, who feed both off the faith of the fallen and the act of the offering.

  ‘How can I trust the mercy of a blood-slaked fiend, freely given?’

  Nothing is freely given, Archaon. All indulgences have their cost. I ask for a return in iron.

  ‘In iron? You want me to slay for your fell god?’

  All men do, although they know it not. No, Archaon. I would put the sword you seek in your hand, as my Ruinous lord’s bloody blessing on your endeavour. The blade is called the Slayer of Kings and shares its name with the dread entity bound within its daemonic steel.

  ‘An acquaintance of yours, creature?’

  U’zuhl the Skulltaker. U’zuhl the Blooded Wanderer. U’zuhl the Right Fist of Khorne…

  ‘Aye, a brother infernal.’

  I am bound by blood covenants, lies exchanged in the Blood God’s name and oaths black and ancient, to see my brass-borne brother free. Sorceries hold him, his infernal insanity and his fury in a prison of hell-forged steel. Bound there by the coward Vangel – Vangel the Everchosen – the second to bear such a name. Assume the same blood-sworn oaths and covenants as I, Archaon. I shall send you to the Slayer of Kings and you shall send back my brother. You shall promise to free U’zuhl the Slayer from madness and his steel thralldom. So that he might kill for the mighty Khorne once more. To taste the blood he spills rather than watch it drip tauntingly down the walls of his steel prison. To wield and not be wielded. To take skulls and not be the mere instrument of their taking. Agree to this on blood that will once more be yours and I will take you to the gate of your choosing.

  ‘You will teach me the daemonic bindings of such a weapon?’

  I will teach you the sorcery that binds daemon to blade, so that you might undo it and set U’zuhl the Skulltaker free.

  ‘Then I swear on the darkness in my blood, to set your infernal brother at liberty. So, Z’guhl the Skull
reaper, the Crimson Doom, the Herald of all Hate and sharer of my soul… lead on.’

  Chapter XII

  ‘Doomed pilgrims conquer both foes and their fears Fighting north, hearts cursed with unhallowed joy –

  ‘Til they hear the Battle Eternal near and for Dark Gods kill, butcher and destroy.’

  – Xortan Freg, Liber Malefic

  The Battle Eternal

  The Northern Wastes

  Date Unknown

  The fiery flux of damnation reached up around Archaon. The tongues of warp-fuelled flame licked at his plate and the flanks of the daemon steed Dorghar. As the mount trudged through the hellish inferno of the Northern Gate, Archaon turned in the saddle. What once had been tortured thoughts and the dark desire to be free of the daemon-haunted hellstorm was once again flesh. Archaon felt the contraction of muscle as he turned. He felt the strength of his bones and the steady thud of an indomitable heart in his chest, pumping doom-laden blood through his veins. Even the shard of wyrdstone still remained in the socket of his ruined eye with the curse of darksight that went with it. His skin felt the cold of his plate and his once shattered arm now pulsed with the dark need to draw a weapon. Archaon didn’t know whether it had been the warping energies of damnation or simply the length of time they had spent in the Realm of Chaos, but his arm felt long healed. Scooping up the tattered remains of the sling from about his body, the Chaos warlord tossed the shredded material away.

  Behind him he found the horde emerging from the hellfires that raged between one dark plane and another. The Swords of Chaos walked closely behind, with the ancient sorcerer Sheerian hobbling nearby. Vier and Giselle’s wagon heralded a train of others, as well as the bone nightmares of siege engines. Beyond them, through the otherworldy inferno, the Eye of Sheerian allowed Archaon to see Ograx the Great and the half-breed horde of southern beastfiends marching behind their chieftain. Jharkill and the great shadows of his charm-slaved beasts, giants and monstrosities could be seen striding through the gate behind them. It was hard to believe that before passing through the maelstrom-racked portal, Archaon and the trailing multitudes of his bestial army were merely a torrent of darkness, weaving, flowing and streaming through the abominate wraithscape of Chaos and through energies of the world unknown.