by Rob Sanders
Peering into the depths, past the madness of the swords, the chimera-haunted caves and dark crevices, Archaon’s darksight picked out a light in the darkness. Although the mountain itself was no more corrupted than the endlessness of the surrounding plain, and a number of ancient swords glowed with the malevolence of time long served to the Ruinous Powers and their champions, there was but one that burned with radiance reserved for a dark blade, a daemonsword – a weapon worthy of the Everchosen of Chaos. A blade that seemed to take pride of place at the bottom of the sword-stabbed pit.
Archaon dare not wait. He was so close. He didn’t even bother with the spiralling trail. Skidding down the steepness of the hollow wall, grasping the mouldering hilts of swords and crumbling hafts of axes, Archaon made his descent. Scree and grit shifted beneath his boots, making the descent a skid and slide as much as a weapon-weaving trudge. Disturbed rocks and small boulders started to bounce beside and from behind the Chaos warlord as Eins, Drei and Prince Ograx followed in their master’s footsteps.
As a large rock over which Archaon had climbed became dislodged, the Chaos warlord skidded to one side – grabbing a pair of swords to stabilise his position on the steep gradient of the descent. The boulder rolled, tumbled, pranged off and over the rusted blades afflicting its path. Accelerating and bouncing, the large rock smashed into the bottom of the pit near the burning balelight of the dread blade.
Archaon felt it immediately. Building beneath his boot. A rumble. A tremble. A tremor. A quake. Soon the entire hollow was shaking with a monstrous force from deep within the mountain. Dust billowed down into the crater. Carpets of dirt, grit and loose rock shifted beneath his feet and flowed like a flood through the fixed forest of blades. Archaon tried to grab the rust-eaten shaft of a spear that protruded from the rock like the skeletal trunk of a petrified tree. The ancient metal of the weapon just disintegrated in his gauntlets, however, and Archaon felt himself lose his footing. Skidding. Grasping. Falling. Tumbling down through the corroded weaponry that was like a spiked wall. Many blades succumbed, becoming clouds of red dust and showering fragments. Some of the finer crafted weapons were age-ravaged to blackness on the surface but still boasted good, strong steel within. These blades surprised Archaon with their resilience. The savagery of their limb-smashing, gut-wrenching impacts. Their insistent refusal to break as Archaon’s armoured form clattered through them.
Hitting the bottom of the pit with a crash of plate, Archaon felt the dying rumble of the quake through his gauntlets. As it died away to a rising silence, grit and dirt still hissed down the slopes and through the blades. Small rocks and boulders bounced off the sword-barbed nest of the hollow, several thudding and shattering against Archaon. Grunting, the Chaos warlord pushed himself up. The rock had become still beneath him. The hollow was a swirling, dust-choked miasma. Behind Archaon, Prince Ograx and his Swords of Chaos completed their messy descent. Archaon held up a finger. He wanted silence. Something wasn’t quite right.
He turned, grit scraping under his boot. There was movement in the murk. Chimeric predators and monstrous fusions were scrambling from their caves. Some clawed their way up and out of the hollow. Others took to the skies with the urgent beating of leathery wings. Archaon looked about. He took in the contours of the mountain hollow. The pit bottom beneath his feet. The strange quaking that had rippled through the rock. As the dust cleared, Archaon felt the bile of a bad feeling climb the back of his throat.
‘This is no mountain,’ he announced to the grit-skittering silence of the hollow.
As he did so, what Archaon had formerly taken for the cragginess of a hooded cave opening suddenly flickered to life. As dirt and dislodged scree rained from it, an armoured lid rose like the great stone door of an ancient temple and Archaon and his hench-warriors were suddenly caught in the gold maelstrom of a colossal, reptilian eye. At its heart was a chasmic sliver of black – the pupil of the eye unfocused and unseeing. The Chaos warriors froze as they were bathed in golden doom, remaining still as the craggy lid made its dozy descent.
Archaon risked another glance about the hollow. Much of the centuries-accumulated dust and claw-scraped rock that had sat atop the colossal creature had fallen away in the rumbling quake of the titanic creature’s disturbed movements. It was still difficult to make out through the fog of dust and the fact that Archaon was standing right in the middle of this madness. He could make out the half-buried features of a gargantuan and monstrous face. A single tusk rising like a peak of its own from a cavern-closed mouth. The winding, hollow-hugging twist of a head-sprouting horn.
The thing was impossibly huge – even for the Wastes. Like a sleeping god-monster, the fat mountain that the Chaos warriors had climbed was the abomination’s slumber-curled body – its form buried in the dust and corruption of the Wastes, whipped up about it on the backs of perverse winds, twisters and Gate-flowing gales. Like some animal, it had scraped itself a colossal hollow in the rock and earth of the storm-plagued plain, raining the warp-baked material down on itself as it settled, curling itself up in the shape of a fat mountain. The hollow or crater in which Archaon and his hench-warriors were standing was the pit created at the heart of the curled beast.
The stone seemed half fossilised to the colossal creature’s skin. Clefts and hollows created by the titan’s curled body created the caves and shelter overhangs of which the chimera of the plain had made such good use. Archaon could now see the true flesh of the beast. A ridge running across the monstrosity’s half-hidden face was in fact one of its colossal legs. What Archaon had taken for the smooth surface of a great boulder, was in fact a gargantuan claw resting across the beast’s nose. The talon-foot to which the scything claw belonged had shaken loose the encrusted dust, dirt and petrified rock that had encased it to reveal the gargantuan scales, like those of a dragon. This was no dragon, however. The horns, the tusk, the scales and the dark face of the monster reminded Archaon of creatures he had fought the last time he had crossed the Wastes. Ancient abominations that were a ground-shaking, storm-bathing fusion of dragon and ogre. Mountainous titans of muscle and darkness-pledged savagery from the waist up, curse-blessed with the legs, bodies and tails of dragons.
The oldest, largest and most monstrous of their kind were called shaggoths, and Archaon had faced one such monster during the lost years of his wanderings – as a marauding warrior of Chaos – when the Wastes still had the making of him. The beast had carved up the landscape with its colossal storm-forged axes, decimating a full half of Archaon’s warband and the warbands of scores of other warriors similarly fighting for their survival. The creature had almost been the end of him, but Archaon had prevailed. This monster was something else. Impossibly huge. God-tremblingly powerful. Something beyond ancient. Perhaps one of the forefathers of the abominate race. Archaon looked about at the midnight sheen of scale and the storm-scorched skin of the monstrosity’s face… Krakanrok the Black.
Archaon looked across the rust-stained surface of the hollow. Krakanrok the Black. Unimaginably old and huge. All but immortal. A mountain of lightning-lashed flesh, pierced with the blades of a thousand dead warriors – the rusting steel such an insignificance to the monster that each one was like a speck of dust on a knight’s suit of armour. Krakanrok did not care… But Archaon did. Stabbed into the petrified rock and sable flesh of the monstrosity’s face was an ancient blade that through Archaon’s eyes burned with the dark light of ruin. The benighted orb of its pommel. The age-tarnished upturns of its crossguard, giving the stone-sheathed sword the appearance of hate-bared fangs. The Chaos half-star in which the broadness of the blade was set. The eternity-encrusted rakes and sweeping gullets of the sword’s warped serrations. This was the Slayer of Kings – of that Archaon had no doubt. It sat an abomination-blinding distance below the monster’s closed eye, almost covered by the claw of the creature’s taloned foot that rested across its nose.
Archaon couldn’t believe what he was going to do. He
could not defeat such an abominate ancient of the world with steel alone. It would be like trying to destroy a mountain, which Krakanrok had almost become. Archaon had fought for every treasure of Chaos he had so far claimed. This was not a test of steel, he decided. This was a test of nerve. Like the shimmering shadows of the Swords and Prince Ograx, snarling in silence, Archaon stood transfixed by the heart-stabbing shock of their doomed predicament. Swallowing down his dread with the bile burning the back of his throat, Archaon willed his limbs to move.
Treading lightly on the gravel, Archaon approached the impossible monster. He turned to the wraith-warriors behind him but he dare not speak for fear of waking the beast and attracting its apocalyptic attentions. Archaon pointed at the sky. Eins nodded and the two shadow-smeared warriors unfolded their wings. If Krakanrok the Black did wake, Archaon intended the winged warriors to get them off the mountain as soon as possible. To Prince Ograx, Archaon gestured towards the colossal claw, indicating with an upward motion of his armoured palms that they gently lift the thing.
The half-breed was all muscle and living metal. He stretched his neck from side to side to indicate that he was ready, but the expression of his fiend’s face was one of horror and uncertainty. He may have been a daemonbreed. He may have conquered the bestial hordes of the southern continent and walked the Realms of Chaos with Archaon, his master. He had never faced something so unimaginably colossal, its mountainous flesh quaking with raw power and calamitous possibility.
As the pair slid their hands beneath the claw and slowly – so slowly – lifted it from the abominate’s face, Archaon felt his arms burn. He felt his bones groan. His cursed plate rattled with the effort. Ograx fared better. The prince was built like a horned barbarian from the waist up, while his cloven feet and the brazen brawn of his legs solidified below him into the unbreakable stillness of a statue. The Blood God’s indomitability burned up through his veins, while the daemonic strength of his father gifted Ograx with the ability to take the titanic weight of the claw alone. Whether in service to his master or driven by the monstrous pride of the prince – an advertisement of his power and an unsubtle warning to Archaon – Ograx lifted the claw off the Chaos warlord’s gauntlets. The mounds upon mounds of muscle that globed on the prince’s arms began to tremble. The fruits of exertion began to bead about his horns and drip from his cheeks.
Archaon nodded to Prince Ograx and the half-breed nodded back his insistence that he could hold up the claw. Archaon was about to venture forth when he saw that lifting the weight above his head and the muscle-rippling demands of the task had burst one of the flayed-flesh straps holding Ograx’s bronzed breastplate in place. The primitive piece of plate bore the rough-carved sigil of the Blood God and was more for decoration than anything else, swamped as it was by the wall of brawn that was the half-breed’s chest. As the plate dangled away from the trembling demands of the prince’s flesh, Archaon could see that there was another symbol burned into the flesh beneath. A searing star that seemed to scar eternal. A symbol that Archaon had seen before. On the unkillable champion at the top of the world. On the living shadows of warrior-servants long past that Archaon had fought in the Forsaken Fortress. On the Dark Master’s own monstrous chest. The Ruinous Star of the Herald. The Dark Star of Be’lakor.
Archaon stopped and stared at the betrayal that burned in his champion’s flesh. A creature whose bestial nature and infernal heritage Archaon had long despised. A half-breed who had disappointed and impressed him in equal measure. A warrior that Archaon had placed at the head of his horde all the same and employed as his brutal enforcer. Prince Ograx – a shadow placed pawn of the Dark Master. A blunt tool with a deft purpose. The creature’s mindless violence putting it beyond the shadowy veil of suspicion. A traitor-beast slipped unsuspectingly into Archaon’s brutal trust.
Perhaps Ograx had been Be’lakor’s long before they met on the field of battle. Perhaps the daemon had worked the prince’s infernal father or claimed Ograx in the eternity of madness between the Chaos Gates. Perhaps the Dark Master had recruited Ograx to his cause the day before they set off for the mountain. Archaon would never know.
The glazed quiver of the prince’s own eyes came down from the claw he was holding above his head. Archaon had not moved and this had attracted the half-fiend’s attention, knowing not how long he could bear the weight on his own. When he found Archaon staring at the exposed sigil on his chest, Ograx glared at him. The fiend’s face was a mask of contortions. Archaon didn’t care. Whether Ograx had been placed by Be’lakor to ensure success in Archaon’s quest or whether the prince was waiting for the right time to murder him and claim his dark treasures for himself was irrelevant. He would have been or would be the Dark Master’s willing puppet.
Archaon knew he had a battle coming. Another desperate fight against the monstrous Ograx, this time to the death. At that moment, standing on the cusp of calamity, there was nothing to be done: no words or blows to be exchanged. They were caught in the dire nature of their circumstances.
Archaon took several steps towards the abominate face of Krakanrok the Black. Watching the craggy lid for any signs that it might rise on the golden sun of the titan’s gaze, the Chaos warlord reached out his gauntlet. The huge blade had spent a Waste-warped eternity buried in the fearful flesh of living catastrophe. It hungered to be held once more. To be wielded by one who could end the world with its talents. Dust fell from its two-handed hilt. Its crossguard rattled. Spidery cracks felt their way through the petrification of its pommel-orb. Its broad blade seemed to shift slightly in its sheath of flesh and stone, edging fitfully towards Archaon’s outstretched fingers.
As Archaon felt the ghost of a quake beneath his boots, he grabbed hold of the blade’s hilt. Like some kind of horrific infant, the weapon seemed to be soothed by the action and the rattling subsided. With it the monstrous intention of movement died in the flesh upon which Archaon was standing. While the daemonblade seemed soothed by the black-hearted touch of a warrior of Chaos such as Archaon and the dread violence he intended with the weapon, Archaon felt something himself in the ancient blade. The horrific thing seemed to grip back – as though the sword wielded him as much as he intended to wield it. Archaon closed his eyes for a moment and enjoyed the bloody passions that raced through his heart. He fell through visions of slaughter. Tidal waves of blood crashed over him. Death and its dealing became his only desire.
Gripping the sword, Archaon’s gauntlet creaked about the age-ravaged hilt. He felt as if he could pulverise the ancient metal in his hand. Archaon forced his eyes open. He breathed deep and wished a cold calm down through his being. The monstrous being in the blade would not have its bloody way with his soul. The Slayer of Kings would be his, not him the goreslave of U’zuhl the Skulltaker. With a snarl, the danger of his circumstances returned. Krakanrok the Black. Prince Ograx. The fifth treasure of Chaos.
Tensing his arm, Archaon pulled the daemonblade from where it had sat for centuries – buried in rock and abominate flesh. The stone sheath refused to release its prize at first but with some teeth-gritted insistence, Archaon felt the blade rumble from its resting place. With a murderous thrill that shot through his soul like a battlefield victory, Archaon held the Slayer of Kings up to the sky. To his relief, there had been no reaction from the monster-mountain upon which he was standing. The ancient wound inflicted by such a weapon – even a daemonblade – would have been nothing to the father of the dragon ogre race, whose flesh and scale were as ageless as they were immortal, whose mighty soul would have been a lightning storm eternal.
Archaon admired the blade. It was encrusted with age, like a thing fossilised and primordial. Even through the petrified rock and solidified wyrdstone, Archaon could feel its power. They would forge a mighty partnership. He would feed the blade what it desired – the soulfire of warrior victims, taken from them in the hot doom of defeat. The Slayer of Kings, in turn, would serve the Everchosen of Chaos once more. It wou
ld be Archaon’s ambassador of darkness. The everlasting darkness he would bring to foes defeated and the apocalyptic end he would visit upon the world. As he held the crooks and crags of the magnificent blade to the sky and considered the horrific daemonic force enslaved in steel, he thought of his soul-pledged promise to Z’guhl, the Skullreaper, the Herald of Hate, the Crimson Doom. How Archaon had promised to set the blade’s daemon free not only to honour his compact with Z’guhl but also so Z’guhl could honour his compact with his infernal brother. Archaon smiled behind the skull-plate of his helm.
‘I will set you free, mighty daemon,’ Archaon said, half to himself. ‘Slayer in steel. Spiller of blood. Feaster of souls. Fury of the razor’s edge… But not today.’
The sword’s reaction was instantaneous. Like a rage building, the hilt grew hot through Archaon’s gauntlet. It trembled in his grip. Cracks felt their way through the petrified stone and encrustation before suddenly – with a forge flash and the whoosh of a freshly stoked furnace – the material exploded. Archaon turned his helm and was showered with shards of wyrdstone and fragments of rock that pranged off his plate. When he turned back, he found the wonder of the daemonblade in his hand. The Slayer of Kings. The rage that coursed through the steel prison of the blade bathed Archaon in its hellish radiance. The barbs and curves of the blade’s cutting edge glowed almost to transparency, while the Chaos half-star crackled furiously with the infernal energies and bindings that held U’zuhl, the Skulltaker of Khorne in service to the blade and the blade in service to the warrior brave enough to inflict its rage upon the world. The steel fangs of the crossguard, thirsting for blood. The hilt that burned in the hand. The pommel-orb, whose smooth, dark crystal writhed with the baleful yellow fury of U’zuhl’s eye, looking down on Archaon with abyssal hatred. Then he heard it. Like a blade ringing off another, Archaon heard the daemonsword’s steel sing. He felt the sword throb and its blade resonate. The terrible sound built, filling Archaon’s heart with a ghostly dread and turning his stomach. As the daemon’s sufferings built to a steel shriek – its eternal thirst for blood, its bottomless hunger for souls, its infernal fury to be free – Archaon understood the danger that they were all in.