by Rob Sanders
Vier helped Giselle up to Archaon before backing away. The girl was a skeletal horror – like a wight that haunted the tomb of Archaon’s old life. She sank into her furs, the slightness of her emaciated body susceptible to the cold. Long, bony fingers pulled the furs about her. Her jaw moved under the skin stretched across her skull, as though she wanted to say something. Archaon took her skeletal hand in his gauntlet and said it for her.
‘Still think I can be saved?’ he said, his words a whisper and his humour dark.
Giselle leaned in, holding her fragile form close to the Everchosen’s armoured form. He was like a monstrous statue hewn of apocalyptic promise, while she was a deathly echo of the past, so slight and wasted that the rising wind itself would have felled her. The storms that accompanied Archaon everywhere crashed thunder through the skies. Giselle brought her head up next to his, as if to whisper something into the side of his helm.
‘Save you?’ the girl eternal hissed. ‘Who do you think damned you in the first place?’
After everything that Archaon had seen, all the horror he had experienced, he didn’t think it was possible to be shocked. The girl’s voice – a rasping, suggestive shadow of what it had been – sent a bolt of lightning through the emptiness of the Everchosen’s dark heart. Grabbing her by the furs that sat on her sharp shoulders, Archaon pushed Giselle away. The girl’s eyes had bleached to an oblivion of blackness and a wretched mouth had stretched itself through the stringy flesh beneath her nose.
‘No,’ was all the Everchosen could manage.
Excruciating pain once more cut through his side. Looking down, Archaon could see that Giselle had stabbed him. Blinking the shock from his mind, he recognised the dagger. It was a savage thing, both blade and hilt crafted beautifully from the claw of a daemon. Be’lakor’s claw. The claw Archaon had chopped from the Dark Master’s hand and claimed for his own. Giselle had taken it from him and been busy in her starvation and infirmity. She had slipped it straight through the hole where the shard of sword had punctured the plate. Straight into the agonising sheath created by the old wound.
Giselle was laughing. Girl. Withered hag. Daemon. She was all these things at once. Horrifying and alluring in equal measure, like an abominate daemon of Slaanesh. The girl’s scorn cut through him. Clutching his side, Archaon tried to focus through the black torment tearing through his flesh where the daemonic dagger sat. Through the Eye of Sheerian he saw the real Giselle. With heart-stopping horror, Archaon felt his way through a century of haunting suspicions and spectral realisations.
It had been Giselle who had brought the Liber Caelestior – The Celestine Book of Divination – to him in the first place. Who with the cruellest weapons of all – pity, trust and even love – had helped to damn him. Had kept him on the dark path, even when she seemed to want to drag him from it. The burn of her touch, her purity, was a torment Archaon had visited upon himself, some part of him wanting to believe. Some part of him desiring a saviour. Desiring a way back. For him, Giselle had been a thread he had unravelled as he wandered the benighted labyrinth of his doom. Through his feelings for her, Archaon fooled himself into feeling as though he always had some kind of way back. At least the strength to end himself before he became an end to all else. Such honesty scorched his Ruinous flesh and lit a fire in the darkness of his mind.
Archaon looked from Giselle to the dagger hilt and back to the girl. The girl who while the world turned, while the champions of Chaos lived and died and Archaon spent a century seeking his doom, had remained ever young. Ever Giselle the girl he had saved from the beastmen in the forest. Ever Giselle, the Sigmarite sister. Even after their time in the Realm of Chaos had changed them, Giselle’s affliction should have been her end decades before. Only some living lie, some daemon-thing existing within the dark consecration of Archaon’s presence could exist as such. As a skeletal horror bereft of lips. Of words. The daemon had words for him now and they proceeded in the voice of the girl he had known.
‘Save me, Archaon, save me,’ she cackled in mockery. Then her voice changed, searing with the bottomless hate of the abyss: ‘Archaon… save yourself!’
The Everchosen grabbed Giselle’s furs and tore them away. As they ripped and parted, the daemon’s foul carcass was revealed. A wasted cage of stretched skin and sharp ribs. On her chest, protruding proudly through the emaciation, Archaon could see a mark, a sigil in protruding bone. The Ruinous Star. The star of the Dark Master. The Mark of Be’lakor. The same one that Archaon had found on Gangryss, on Ograx the Great, on the Curseling and the living shadows of the Forsaken Fortress. On Be’lakor himself.
‘Kiss me, Archaon,’ Giselle taunted, her infernal laughter everywhere as the abomination leaned in with her ragged mouth.
Archaon grabbed the daemon dagger and heaved at the Ruinous blade. The Everchosen roared his agony and fury to the gods. Moving his gauntlet to the Slayer of Kings, Archaon drew the daemonsword. It blazed from its scabbard, already glowing with hate for the Slaaneshi daemon. Giselle’s cackling died on the wind as the Slayer of Kings passed through her – scorching her furs to ash and smashing her bones to furious oblivion.
As what remained of Giselle bounced and clattered down the mountainside, Archaon doubled over. The Swords of Chaos had already drawn their bone blades but seemed as shocked and confused by the rapid turn of events as Archaon himself. The colossal horde looked on with bloodthirst and wonder, assuming that the Everchosen of Chaos was putting on some kind of brutal, sacrificial display of merciless power.
The searing torment of the wound and the daemonic claw embedded in his flesh became something else. Darkness flooded from the blade, filling him with helplessness and woe. His black heart pumped to a pause while some dread presence deep inside him strangled his soul. It was Be’lakor. The Dark Master had made his play. Archaon had tried to bind the daemon prince to a blade of iron. Be’lakor had used one made from his own flesh, however, to invade Archaon’s own. To breach the walls of Archaon’s plate and storm the spiritual fortress of his soul. The Dark Master was winning. By the gods, he was winning.
Archaon suddenly reared and roared, the Slayer of Kings rattling in his gauntlet. He tried to talk to the daemon possessing his body, mind and being but only found his threats and entreaties bounced back at him through the black oblivion creeping up through him. He was drowning in Be’lakor. The Dark Master – who was bound by dark decree to be the Bearer and not the wearer of the Crown of Domination – had achieved both. Now Archaon was the Everchosen of Chaos, Be’lakor would assume his son-in-shadow’s flesh, be the darkness that wore the crown and lead the legions of hell across the face of the world as he had done before.
Archaon started to say something but it was Be’lakor’s savage words that passed his lips.
‘Die!’ he roared. Archaon swung the Slayer of Kings – aware of his devastating movements but not in control of them. He demolished Zwei with the daemonblade. The misshapen Vier went to turn the Slayer of Kings aside with his crooked bone blade but Be’lakor swung back with Archaon’s clenched gauntlet and knocked the wraith-warrior’s head from his hunched shoulders. Eins slashed the daemonblade away once, twice… even a third time. Be’lakor was just playing with the Sword of Chaos, however. Lunging forward with unstoppable ease, Be’lakor rammed the daemonsword straight through the chest of the wraith-warrior, steaming its darkness away to nothing.
The Everchosen stood there for a moment. Still. Not thrashing. Not bellowing.
‘Flesh of my flesh,’ Be’lakor said with Archaon’s lips. ‘I am yours and you are mine. Soon your soul will be but a forgotten blemish on my own–’
Archaon roared. The mountains rang with his fury. The warriors of Chaos pledged to Archaon’s doom lifted their heads. Morkar’s ancient plate trembled. The darkness fighting within slowed to a soul-pulverising stop.
Be’lakor was not the first daemon Archaon had fought for his soul. Thunder tore through
the heavens above. Archaon reached up and lightning jagged down through the skies to his fingertips.
As Archaon’s roar echoed away and a grim silence descended, the Everchosen’s plate smoked. With slow, agonising movements, Archaon lowered his hand. With some effort he pulled his boots, one then the other, from the glass about him. Sand, grit and rock had fused to obsidian as the lightning strike passed down through Archaon and into the cursed mountain. Turning, the Chaos warlord saw that his shadow had similarly been melted into the mountainside – except it wasn’t his shadow. It was the monstrous outline of Be’lakor. Stepping back, Archaon turned the Slayer of Kings in one hand. The obsidian outline began to steam and bubble. The black glass melted. One claw, then another, reached out of the liquid. Be’lakor’s horned head broke the surface and Archaon watched as the daemon prince climbed up out of the rock of the Dreadpeak.
Do you know what yo–
‘I’ve spent a century listening to your monstrous self-pity, Be’lakor,’ Archaon spat, his words almost cracking under the intensity of the hatred with which he spoke them. ‘And eternities trying to escape it. This world has seen your time, abominate. Now it will see mine. You will never be the Everchosen of Chaos – for my reign will be dark, bloody and short, and this world ends with me. And when it does, daemon – with no damned followers, lost warriors or innocent girls to worship you or do your bidding – so will you…’
Be’lakor seethed with dark rage and abyssal frustration. The air crackled and spat about him like a midnight forge. The daemon prince reached out. His shadow sword rose up from the pool of obsidian from which he’d ascended. Taking the monstrous length of the weapon in his claws, the Dark Master levelled the blistering shadow of the blade at Archaon.
‘Die…’ The daemon proclaimed once more.
‘You first,’ the Everchosen of Chaos told his father-in-shadow.
The sword of shadow and the Slayer of Kings clashed. Each impact echoed through the mountains. Sparks of unnatural energy blasted from the blades as mortal and daemon prince tested each other once again. The shadow blade that seethed darkness one moment and nothing the next. The Slayer of Kings, which raged to blistering brightness as the prison blade sang with the daemon’s desire to maim, cleave and kill. Archaon held himself to one side, covering his wound and the dagger still skewered through him. Every movement was a muscle-shredding agony that the daemon prince attempted to exploit.
Towering above Archaon, the Dark Master was still the monstrous, elemental force, swinging his blade with ancient skill and the power of oblivion. Archaon no longer moved through the split-second evasions and desperate attacks that had been his only defence in the Forsaken Fortress. Archaon fought not like a father’s son or a master’s puppet. He was the Everchosen of Chaos. The world quaked beneath his boots. Archaon fought like he had never fought before. Everything he had ever learned. Every success. Every failure. It all fell into place as the Everchosen expertly turned Be’lakor’s blade aside – swinging, stabbing, cleaving, back-slashing and smashing his way across the side of the mountain.
As the titanic battle raged up the Dreadpeak, dislodging tumbling boulders and cleaving away entire shelves of cursed rock, thunder shook the heavens. Lightning slashed at the rock about the pair and Archaon’s horde moved up through the valleys to watch them – champions ordering those warriors willing to assist their warlord back to the Ruinous ranks. For Archaon there were no more monstrous lunges, only to cut through the sizzling shadow of Be’lakor’s insubstantial form. The Eye revealed strategies to the Everchosen moments ahead of time, prompting Archaon to abandon such futile attacks in favour of those with a greater chance of success. The Dark Master felt the change in his shadow-son immediately. Tested by the Dark Gods and awarded the boon of their powerful gifts, Archaon as mortal champion was a match for the daemon prince – much to Be’lakor’s fury.
The huge daemon wheeled about, his tail and wings angling furiously to aid balance while at the same time tearing through the air as weapons of their own. Archaon leapt the monster’s slashing tail while jumping between rocks and smashing down through the defensive presentation of the solidified sword of shadow. Archaon passed the streaming glow of the daemon weapon about him and from hand to hand, slashing aside the daemon prince’s furious attacks and cutting nicks in the membrane of his great wings.
Archaon rolled as Be’lakor’s cloven claw stamped an impact crater into the rock where Archaon had been standing moments before. The Everchosen buried the daemonblade in the cursed stone of the mountain, cutting away stony ledges and sending the daemon prince slip-sliding down the slope in a small rockslide of scree and boulders. Archaon ran, skidded and jumped down the mountainside at his infernal father. A leaping chop of the Slayer of Kings, with enough force to split an oak, was met by the shadow blade and turned aside by Be’lakor. Pushing Archaon back at the mountainside, the Dark Master smashed his broad blade at Archaon, dislodging the stone above and sections of rockface that almost buried the Everchosen.
The Dreadpeak shook with the monstrous battle, the mountain smashed by otherworldy blades and the supernatural power of the exalted warlord and the daemon prince. While most of the time both Archaon and Be’lakor were seconds away from being skewered or sliced in half, some raging assaults were more furious than others. When Archaon lost his footing, Be’lakor stabbed the shadow sword under the Everchosen’s arm and into rock. Archaon brought the Slayer of Kings up immediately, the daemonblade passing through the insubstantiality of Be’lakor’s blade and up past the daemon’s face. Sparking off the dark glory of his horns, the daemon prince was surprised for a moment before landing a brutal kick in Archaon’s armoured midriff and driving the embedded claw-dagger in further.
Landing nearby, Archaon allowed himself to skid away down a sheer slope, landing at the bottom and rolling over in agony. Be’lakor swooped down on his great wings; the Everchosen reared and launched into a blistering attack, which backed the Dark Master out onto a treacherous cliff.
As the battle raged and the mountains shook, the heavens began to darken. Night fell with the twin-tailed comet streaking high overhead and the dread moons rising over the Worlds Edge. The torches of Archaon’s monstrous horde moved like a rash through the valleys, circling the Dreadpeak and following the battle around.
As the night wore on and both mortal champion and daemon prince began to tire, the world felt the abominate gaze of the Ruinous Powers. The mountains glowed with a Ruinous hue while vegetation withered on the mountainsides. The dwarfs, greenskins and ratmen of the range hid in the tunnels and holds while those unlucky enough to be travelling the passes and high trails turned rabid with the murderous appetites of the Dark Gods.
Be’lakor’s outlandish bladework – accompanied by his slashing tail and slicing wings – became slower but more determined. Archaon, slowed by his grievous wound and his mortal limitations, had to abandon the more adventurous ripostes and athletic evasions, in favour of savage lunges and decapitating backswings with the daemon-fuelled Slayer. Like pugilists at the end of a bout, the pair’s attempts to land a murderous blow became laboured, but the monstrous sword swings more powerful. With their blades showering black sparks off each other, glancing plate and the mountain, huge sections of rockface rumbled, cracked and tumbled down the Dreadpeak. On several occasions, curious throngs of Chaos warriors, getting too close to the action, were buried in such rockfalls and gorge-burying slides.
Be’lakor swung his sword of sizzling shadow with monstrous force, sending Archaon skidding across the scree of the mountainside before the Everchosen ran back at him, launching from a boulder and smashing his blade down on the daemon. Archaon swung the Slayer of Kings down on Be’lakor again and again, each time the daemon prince taking shelter behind the defensive offering of his blade. The furious onslaught cracked the cliff beneath the Dark Master’s cloven claws and sent him tumbling down into the valley amongst the thunder of falling rock.
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br /> Archaon allowed himself a moment to catch his breath, his plate rattling with the rise and fall of his chest. He knew his best chance of beating Be’lakor was to reach the valley floor fast. In the ghoulish moonlight, Archaon felt the eye of the Dark Gods – the monstrous pantheon – eager to know if their dread choice in Archaon had been deserved. Half skidding, half running down the mountainside, Archaon made his way for the scree-filled valley. His heart leapt as he saw colossal pieces of rock at the bottom of the collapsed cliff, with Be’lakor’s black tail twitching below a titanic piece. Archaon ran about the huge boulder, the Slayer of Kings held high. If the daemon prince was trapped, Archaon intended to butcher the monster where he lay. He knew in his dark heart that Be’lakor would do the same. As the Everchosen sidled around, the furnace glow of his daemonblade revealed that Be’lakor had torn himself from the twitching remnant of his tail. The Eye of Sheerian showed the frenzied daemon prince come out from behind another colossal piece of rock just in time for Archaon to get the Slayer of Kings between him and the daemon prince’s monstrous swing.
Archaon left the ground. He hit the rockface of a mountain across the valley with supernatural force, shattering the rock. Archaon shook his horned helm and tried to extricate himself from the crater in the sheer mountainside. Be’lakor was an abominate shadow, pounding across the valley in great strides. Shaking himself free and with U’zuhl blazing with reproach in the steel prison of his blade, Archaon ran at his daemonic foe. Archaon bellowed and war-cried. The Dark Master roared with inhuman might. It looked as though the two might quake the Worlds Edge Mountain range with the monstrous impact of their blades.
Guided by the Eye of Sheerian and what Be’lakor intended to do, Archaon skidded down through the moss and scree of the valley floor. As Be’lakor turned Archaon threw himself immediately at the daemon. The pair rolled with the momentum, with the Dark Master’s stump of a tail thrashing and his wings tearing across the sharp rocks. Archaon sat astride the daemon, smashing him again and again in the face with his sword-clenched fist. Be’lakor grabbed Archaon in a bear hug and pulled the Everchosen to him with all of his infernal might, worming the black dagger in Archaon’s side agonisingly through his insides.