Archaon: Lord of Chaos

by Rob Sanders

  Archaon ran on. He could not afford to stop. The blade edge of the huge axe had been sharpened on the Blood God’s flinty heart. It hungered for Archaon’s blood. In the dull reflection of the bronze blade the Chaos warrior had died a thousand times – cleaved clean in half, smashed to oblivion in a fountain of skull and splintered bone, his head whooshed from his body in a glorious splatter of trailing gore. Each flesh-mulching, spine-shearing, blood-storming ordeal of a death Archaon had avoided by the skin of his imperilled soul. The daemon was an indefatigable force of fury with an abyssal appetite for destruction. And impossibly, Archaon was tiring it. Even such an abominate entity had limitations. The inferno that burned with twice the ferocity could only afford to burn half as long and through an endless series of frustrations, in which the great daemon had smashed the skull archipelago to splinters, Archaon had slowed the monstrosity with its own hate-fuelled exertions.

  Crunching to a halt in the skulls, Archaon came to a stop. He was no less exhausted. His mind hurt with split-second evasions and strategies. His legs burned from running. His arms from swimming. His chest from breathing, rising up and down as he stood still on the island. He turned and ran straight back at the storming daemon blasting its way through bone and blood. The abomination was far from spent. It was surprised by Archaon’s changing tactic, however, and its arms swung with the infernal burn of an eternity of last efforts.

  Archaon skidded down across the skulls. The axe descended with fury and savage precision. For the ghost of a moment, Archaon saw his blade-cleaved body – split-splattered from temple to toe – in the bronze reflection of the blade. The axe missed, sending skulls rocketing away in all directions. As the great daemon brought up the weapon it found that Archaon was gone. The abominate entity tore its horned head around this way and that. It kicked at the skull shore with is colossal hoof. It peered at the bloody shallows with its tiny, rage-crackling eyes. It looked about at the gore-misted darkness above. Archaon was nowhere. The great daemon unleashed an abyss-trembling roar. The thing had never known such affliction.

  Archaon slid down from the pitted bronze of the axe haft. As the blade had buried itself in the skull mound, the Chaos warrior had clutched the thick haft and travelled back with it above the island of bone. As the colossal daemon searched and bellowed, Archaon leapt for the chains and spikes rearing from the embedded plate of the monster’s back, riding out the abomination’s hellish fury. There Archaon waited. And waited. He held tight to the armoured spikes as the beast went mad, cleaving the dark realm of its nightmare existence to ruin.

  Then, as the thing seemed to have no more monstrous rage to give, Archaon hauled himself up the beast’s hunched red back and boxed it in a ragged ear. The response was bloodcurdling and instantaneous. The great daemon was insane with its own ire. It swung its colossal axe about it, trying to butcher its tiny foe – who seemed insultingly close yet impossible to hit. As Archaon clambered back and forth through the back spikes, the bronze axe smashed and sparked off the embedded armour. Archaon felt the fury of the blade pass by and hung one-handed from a spike as the axe blade bit deep into the daemon’s own back. The monstrosity didn’t seem to even notice. Pulling himself back up, Archaon held on tight as the abomination stamped through the bloody shallows to shake him free. Archaon would not be unseated, however, riding the great daemon like one of the lost monstrosities of his horde. Again the axe blade came. Again and again. Smashing spikes from the daemon’s back and visiting monstrous wounds on itself in the dwindling fires of its fury.

  Finally. With the huge bronze axe still buried in its hunched and mutilated back, the Blood God’s greater daemon crashed forward into the skulls of a partially demolished island. Archaon rode up and down on the daemon’s exertions. The beast was done. It had visited a monstrous fury upon itself and inflicted grievous wounds no being was meant to survive. It crawled up the shore before falling on its muscle-bound arms and the length of its extinguished whip.

  Leaping down from the monster’s back, Archaon grabbed the tapering end of the whip and heaved it up and around the daemon’s monstrously thick neck. All the while the devastated abomination watched him through the scorched orb of a single eye – the other having burst from its frenzied efforts to acquire the Chaos warlord. Sliding the tip of the whip beneath the great daemon’s neck, Archaon created an improvised noose. Grabbing the weapon with both hands, Archaon heaved. He heaved for all he was and was going to be. The great Bloodthirster could barely heave its decimated red carcass from the beach of bone but managed to claw at the whip cutting across its throat.

  Now it was Archaon’s turn to bellow and roar. He hauled at the whip, the muscles of his arms and chest bulging, his bones braced to break. He strained for his survival. For victory. For destiny. As the great daemon breathed its last, its own skull crashing to the shore and its claws falling limply away, Archaon released the whip. He fell backwards into skulls and the blood that lapped up the shore. As he breathed, ached, found his way back from the insanity of his trials, the hellfire about the archipelago died. All was darkness. The clink of skulls and the slosh of blood faded away.

  Torches suddenly whooshed to fiery life. Archaon squinted. He was in the depths of the shrine. The First Shrine of Chaos. A place of terrible evil that had scorched the stone black with its malevolent significance. That had damned the dwarfs of Karak Zhul to destruction. That had been the site of man’s first fall to darkness. It was here that the Ruinous Powers had first bestowed their blessings on the first mortal pledged to Chaos. A dread, primordial savage of strength and cunning, who had earned immortality and a place at the Dark Gods’ side as the first daemon prince.

  Archaon got to his feet. He had completed the Ruinous trials as he had begun them. Decked in the hell-forged plate of Morkar, with the Slayer of Kings hanging from his belt in its scabbard and the Eye of Sheerian bleeding its balelight from his horned helm. Before him, in the tiny chamber, was a black, stone throne – cracked and ancient – the carved symbols and sigils of the Chaos Pantheon all but worn away by time. The torches crackled either side of the throne. In it sat a skeleton. A former mighty champion of Chaos. The bones of the warlord were warped and spiked with the fell gifts of the gods. On his head sat a simple band of black gold, with its eight points stabbing inwards through the champion’s skull. The Crown of Domination. Treasure of the Ruinous Powers, bequeathed to the Everchosen of Chaos and Lord of the End Times to come. Archaon paused for a moment before its reverence and the dread memory of his predecessor.

  Archaon clenched a gauntlet and smashed the skull, with all the unceremonious force he could muster. Shaking embedded fragments of bone from the Crown of Domination, Archaon admired its dark simplicity. The crowns of kings might be towering, elaborate things encrusted with gems and devoid of significance. The crown of the Everchosen was elegant in its understatement. It was meant for the darkest of warlords – the most apocalyptic of the dread Powers’ warrior champions. Its points were directed inwards, ensuring it could be worn within a helm on the field of battle. It had but one setting at its fore, meant for a single jewel: the Eye of Sheerian with which the crown’s terrible power would be combined.

  Turning, the grit scraping under his boot, Archaon strode from the shrine chamber. A stone door rumbled aside, the dark sigils that adorned it speaking of the End Times to come. Sunlight, bleak but blinding, was admitted to the chamber, smouldering on the malevolence of the black stone. Archaon peered through the searing light to find he was at the foot of the Dreadpeak. He had no idea how long he had been in the mountain. How long he had suffered the trials of the shrine. What had been an eternity to him might only have been minutes, hours or days in the waiting ruin of the world. All he knew was that he had earned the admiration of the Dark Gods and had been rewarded with their treasures. That now he would be crowned their champion of darkness – their Everchosen – worthy to lead the legions of hell and visit their myriad calamities upon the waiting world.
With the Crown of Domination clutched in one gauntlet he ventured outside.

  Chapter XVIII

  ‘It is said that the day was marked in the heavens by a dread omen. The appearance of a great comet that split the sky in two with its passing. A falling star of tails twin that filled the world over which it shone with fear and foreboding.’

  – Urshel, Signs and Wonders

  The Dreadpeak

  The Worlds Edge Mountains

  Sigmarsfest IC 2519

  Archaon stood on the rocky ledge. The tents of his Ruinous army dotted the valleys and mountainsides, about smouldering camp fires. Everywhere there was evidence of a battle fought and won. Dwarf helms and weapons littered the disturbed earth. Mounds of bodies burned, the flames of the fallen – both dwarf and those of the horde – licked at the sky. Archaon’s army had been kept occupied while waiting for him. A dwarf army marching on Karak Zhul, no doubt following some ancient prophecy – as Archaon did – to avenge their mountain kin.

  ‘It seems they arrived too early,’ Archaon said.

  Or thousands of years too late.

  Be’lakor was with him. The shadow of the mountain darkened. The surrounding vegetation withered. Rock creaked and splintered in the dark lord’s presence. Small boulders shattered. Archaon’s fingers drifted to the hilt of his daemonsword.

  Even now, with the world yours to burn, you fear me…

  ‘Take care now, daemon,’ Archaon warned. ‘I fear we have the eyes of the gods on us this day. You are the Harbinger, the Bearer of the Crown, He Who Heralds Conquerors. You have a role to perform in these dark events. The Ruinous Powers are watching. They will not be denied their amusement.’

  Archaon heard calls from the valley floor. Champions and dark knights could see him on the mountainside. Pantheon-pledged warriors dropped bodies they were carrying. Others poured from tents and small camps. Word of his return spread quickly with marauders, bestial champions and dread warriors flooding the area before the Dreadpeak from adjoining valleys. Before long the mountainsides and valleys were swarming with the marauder savages, half-breeds, armoured warriors and dark champions of Archaon’s colossal army – doom, as far as the eye could see. Spiked plate. Horned helms. Murderous weaponry. Banners and standards of flayed flesh and bone, bearing the eight-point star of the Ruinous Pantheon. The symbol of a Chaos undivided. Archaon’s star.

  High above the Ruinous horde, the distant thunder of Archaon’s dread presence rolled through the mountains. Above that, a comet blazed across the firmament, slicing the sky in two: a dark omen of the hell the world had to pay and the calamity to come. Archaon slipped his horned helm from his head. He looked up at the sky and nodded slowly to himself. The comet had a twin tail. Like the comet that appeared the night of Sigmar’s birth. Like the comet that had adorned the blade of the greatsword Terminus – the sigil of his templar order. Another sick joke of the Dark Gods, Archaon decided.

  Archaon saw Eins, Zwei and Vier push through the front ranks of armoured warriors and make their way up the mountainside. The wraith-warriors approached, Zwei leading the daemon steed Dorghar by the reins. The misshapen Vier was helping a figure in furs up the incline. As he moved his warped wing, Archaon could see it was Giselle. She walked with difficulty but aided by Vier just managed the slope. She was a vision of skeletal reproach. The skin of her full and once comely face was stretched over her skull. Without a mouth she could not speak, but her eyes said it all. This was the moment that she – and Father Dagobert – had tried to keep Archaon from. It had taken a century but he had done it, much to Giselle’s soul-hollow misery. The world would burn and it would be Archaon – the once good man, Diederick Kastner – who would strike the spark.

  The Swords of Chaos slowed. The gathered horde fell silent. A monstrous shadow rose up from behind Archaon. The swirling black form of a daemon, bleeding forth from the rock of the cursed mountain. Horned head. A gargoyle’s wings. Cloven claws and slithering tail. A great infernal prince of midnight muscle and daemonic visage. A Ruinous Star sat on his chest – an ancient scar – that like a living altar declared that the Dark Gods were unified behind a single, mortal champion of Chaos. Despite his malevolent majesty, the daemon Be’lakor hung his head like a dog. From the sky above, from the dirt beneath their feet and through the eyes of every pantheon-pledged maniac, warrior and warlord gathered before Archaon, the dread Powers were watching.

  Archaon turned. He looked up at the monstrous form of his puppet master, his father-in-shadow, his daemonic foe. Thrusting both his horned helm and the Crown of Domination at the abomination’s chest, Archaon gave Be’lakor the burning hatred of one eye.

  ‘This is as close as you’re going to get to this, Bearer of the Crown. Savour it,’ Archaon said. ‘Now do your infernal duty, dark prince.’

  A bottomless loathing crackled between the two. Archaon turned and presented himself to his vast horde of darkness. The daemon Be’lakor hesitated – the rage of having to crown another, again – tearing at the muscles of his infernal face. He lifted the Crown of Domination and offered it to the sky. Moving around in a circle, the daemon presented it in eight different directions, each time announcing Archaon’s coronation in a different dark tongue. Archaon only understood the last of the Dark Master’s sullen proclamations.

  I present to you Archaon – Everchosen of Chaos, commander of the legions of hell and undoubted Lord of the End Times.

  He felt the monstrous darkness of the daemon’s touch as he gently lowered the crown onto Archaon’s shaven head. The Chaos warlord felt the eternally burning Mark of Chaos rage through his flesh, about where the crown was intended to sit. Like a mantrap of the soul, the black gold of the crown’s points snapped shut, piercing both ruin-blessed flesh and skull. Archaon roared up at the heavens. The pain was unimaginable. Like barbs through his very being, the points created a horrific nexus at their centre: an oblivion in his mind through which the Ruinous hearts and dark thoughts of all dread things under his banner were his to know. Archaon cast his gaze across the monstrous horde he had amassed. Warriors, butchers and abominates from the world over. As his gaze passed across them he felt the individual darkness of the souls, their fear of him and the gods he represented, the savage expectation of the slaughter and ruin to come. He heard the whisper of betrayal in champions that he knew he must kill. He knew the dark secrets and strategies that would keep such a colossal army – all fighting for a different world ending dread – unified.

  Be’lakor brought the horned helmet of Morkar’s cursed plate down over the Everchosen’s head. The helm sat snugly – as it always had – with the crown slipping slickly into the space crafted to accommodate it. With a sizzle of sorcerous power, the Eye of Sheerian – already ensconced in a setting at the front of the helm – became as one with the Crown of Domination. Although he had not realised it, Archaon was still roaring his soul-shearing agony and jubilation to the sky. The world had become more than just an experience of the moment. Pain. Emptiness. Expectation. Through the Eye of Sheerian, combined with the properties of the fell crown, the world seared into spectral focus. Beyond the blunt appreciation of what was happening to him – the chill air of the mountains, the agony of the metal punctured through his skull, the thousands of eyes on him, their gaze the burden of dark expectation – Archaon now saw more. A ghostly existence of what had been and what would be. He saw the dwarf army butchered by his warriors of Chaos in the valleys mere hours before and he saw the mountains shake and shed grit, scree and bouncing boulders in some calamity shortly to come. Whereas the Eye of Sheerian had shown him secrets great distances away – across ice, ocean and mountain range – combined with the Crown of Domination it could now cast its gaze both forward and back into events that had been and were yet to be. The sensation was a dread knowing, both intoxicating and fearful. Like a man leaning off a cliff, intending to fall, Archaon obeyed an instinct to pull himself back. It would take some time to acclimatise
to the power and overwhelming intensity of the terrible gift and longer to command such abilities. Archaon could think of no better tool, however, to help him usher in the apocalypse than the gift to see the end before it came to pass. With such a dread gaze directed into the days, dread months and dark years to come, Archaon truly had become the Lord of the End Times.

  Archaon’s roar had been joined by thousands of others. As his voice trailed away, the mind-shattering effect of the crown numbing to secrets unthought and a future waiting to be known, Archaon drew the Slayer of Kings and held the blade up. Beside him Archaon sensed that the mighty Be’lakor had taken to a daemonic knee. Archaon’s horde did the same, bowing their horned helms and slamming armoured knees into the dirt. Prostrate before the Everchosen of Chaos.

  ‘Daemon, begone,’ Archaon hissed at Be’lakor, without even turning his helm. ‘I see you, monster. For the first time I truly see you. Stay out of my past. Make way for my future. Now get out of my sight and never sully my presence with your rank darkness again.’

  Archaon expected some kind of protest. A threat. A warning. A rejoinder of Ruinous wit. The Everchosen of Chaos turned. Be’lakor was gone. The shadows of rocks, boulders and the Dreadpeak itself seemed to recede and lighten. Archaon grunted.

  His Swords of Chaos approached, accompanied by Dorghar and the frail Giselle. Now Be’lakor was gone, he sheathed his daemonsword. Archaon knew what was expected of him. To climb into the saddle. To ride through the roaring jubilation of his colossal host. To lead them out of the desolation of the mountains and into civilised lands of wanton slaughter, flame and darkness. He didn’t need the Crown of Domination to show him that.