by C. L. Werner
Huld angled away from Makvar and Thagmok, instead soaring towards the icon bearer. Soon he was out of Neferata’s sight, and likewise beyond Nagash’s vision. Through his Mortarch, the Great Necromancer again focussed upon the contest between the Lord-Celestant and the gorelord.
Makvar was a study in discipline and tactics, resisting the bloodthirsty rage the mere presence of Thagmok aroused in his mind. The Bloodking was a savage contrast, hurling himself against his foe in frenzied bursts of violence, hacking away at him in a brutal expression of insanity. The double-headed axe pounded against Makvar’s armour, crumpling the sigmarite plates, smashing them out of shape. Only the swiftness of his parries denied Thagmok the force to rip through his armour, but Makvar knew the gorelord had stolen the momentum from him. He was on the defensive, simply trying to hold the enemy back.
While the skullreapers dared not intervene in the fray, the same restraint had no claim upon Vogun. The Lord-Castellant was able to blunt the ferocity of the flesh hound with his warding lantern, providing him with all the advantage he needed to vanquish his foe and send the daemonic dog howling back into the domain of Khorne. The contest hadn’t left him unmarked, however, and a stream of blood flowed from the grisly bite the hound had delivered to his shoulder. The injury left his arm sagging at his side, but Vogun wouldn’t desert Makvar.
The Lord-Castellant’s halberd came whipping around, crunching down into Thagmok’s arm. The weird crimson plates ruptured under the sigmarite blade, molten blood gushing from the gouged metal. Vogun was momentarily blinded by the escaping steam. As he shielded his eyes, the Bloodking turned on him, driving his hideous axe into the Anvil’s side. There was a rending, shrieking sound like the shredding of metal, and a jagged fissure rimmed in scarlet opened around Vogun. A kick of Thagmok’s boot sent the wounded Stormcast plunging through the rift.
Makvar howled in outrage and rushed at Thagmok. The gorelord turned to meet him, laughing as he gloated over the Lord-Celestant’s abandonment of discipline. He caught the descending runeblade between the blades of his axe, turning the weapon around so that he could draw the Anvil closer to him. ‘I have sent your friend to Hungry Khorne,’ he snarled. ‘Let my axe taste your blood, and I will do the same to you.’
Thagmok kicked out with his boot, smashing his foot into Makvar’s knee. The Stormcast staggered but refused to fall, even when the Bloodking repeated the assault. The continued defiance of his opponent seemed to both amuse and infuriate the gorelord. He was confident of the outcome of their struggle, yet irritated that he should squander so much time on a single foe.
A dying scream rang out, crisp and sharp above the din of battle. Huld climbed into the air, the immense icon of Khorne clenched in his hands, the lifeblood of its owner splashed across his armour. With a gesture of contempt, he swung the icon downwards, sending it to crash among the skullreapers.
The warding effect was broken. The protection Khorne had bestowed upon Thagmok’s entourage was gone.
From the walls of Nachtsreik, a black storm billowed outwards. A spectral tempest, a hurricane of phantoms and ghosts that roared across all in its path. Congregations of skaven vanished in the consuming darkness, their squeals of terror lost in the wailing surge. Tribes of bloodreapers were torn to ribbons as ethereal claws slashed their flesh. Spilling across the cavern, rolling in like a tide of death, the hurricane swept onwards, driving towards the heart of the Bloodbound horde.
There was no fear in Thagmok as he turned to face the oncoming storm. While his skullreapers broke and fled, he stood his ground. Raising his axe high, he shouted his resolve at the Lord of Death. ‘Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows!’
Out from the raging fury of spectres, the skeletal figure of Nagash emerged. The Great Necromancer gripped the Mortis Blade in his bony claw, one of the black stones pressed close against its hilt. The fleshless face loomed over Thagmok, the pitiless depths of eye sockets piercing the skull-helm the Bloodking wore. With a howl of fury, the gorelord charged at Nagash. The Mortis Blade crashed against the Chaos lord’s axe, ripping it from his fingers.
‘There will be no blood,’ Nagash hissed at his foe. Viciously, he drove his black sword into Thagmok’s breast, tearing through ribs, heart and lungs. Into the dying gorelord’s mind, he projected a final thought. You are no longer Khorne’s. Now you belong to me. The Great Necromancer felt the tremor of Thagmok’s spirit coursing through his sword, drawn down into the glassy stone.
‘Such is the fate of all who oppose Nagash,’ the Lord of Death declared, his words booming like thunder across the cavern.
The skaven needed no further prompting to hasten their flight, but some of the Bloodbound were too lost to their frenzied bloodlust to quit the field. Nagash sent his spirit hosts roaring about the battlefield to crush them. Dead, they would be of use to him. Alive, they were simply an obstacle.
Nagash turned away from Thagmok’s corpse. There would be time enough to claim it later. For now, he was more concerned with the Stormcasts. He found both Makvar and Huld kneeling beside a ravaged carcass, the remains of Torn the gryph-hound. It seemed Vogun had cut the carcass loose before he was drawn down into Khorne’s hells.
Makvar looked up at the Great Necromancer. ‘It was our comrade’s desire that we take Torn away with us.’
‘Do as you like,’ Nagash pronounced. He gestured at the carnage-strewn cavern around them. ‘There is carrion enough here to build the legions we need to retake Gothizzar.’ He nodded to Makvar, acknowledging the unspoken question that was on his lips. ‘Yes, the Realm of Death will fight beside you for the Allpoints. The Anvils of the Heldenhammer have proven their quality. I am satisfied that together we may make Archaon Evercursed suffer for his manifold atrocities.’
The surviving Stormcasts followed their skeletal guide through the black vaults beneath Nachtsreik. Though they had lost many brothers in the struggle, Makvar felt they could all take pride that their perseverance had brought them at length to victory. They had secured the alliance with the Realm of Death. The undead legions of Nagash himself would now rally to Sigmar’s cause. To the already mighty array of forces the God-King had mustered to attack the Allpoints, now could be added the terrifying creations of the Great Necromancer.
Yes, they had cause to take pride in their accomplishment, but as he led his warriors through the labyrinth, hastening towards the realmgate buried deep beneath Mannfred’s fortress, Makvar couldn’t quiet his own misgivings. He felt they had made a true ally of Neferata, or at least as close as the vampire queen could come to friendship. At the same time, Mannfred had proven himself a dire enemy, filled with thoughts of revenge for the Hallowed Knights expelling him from the Realm of Beasts. Though the vampire had fled from his master, Makvar worried the Mortarch would find a way to crawl back into Nagash’s confidence. From all they had seen, the Lord of Death set great store in the power and council of his Mortarchs.
Then there were their missing comrades. Brannok hadn’t returned from chasing Mannfred. Kreimnar echoed the sentiment that either the Knight-Heraldor would succeed in his hunt or else his spirit would return to Sigmaron, but for some reason, Makvar couldn’t shake a feeling of unease regarding Brannok.
Vogun’s fate was even more disturbing. Makvar patted the carcass of Torn tied to Gojin’s saddle. The Lord-Castellant had been hurled into the realm of Khorne itself. The thought of him wounded and alone in such a hellish domain…
Makvar chided himself for these worries. There was enough to occupy his mind. He had to focus on the battle ahead, the titanic conflict that would be fought for control of the Allpoints. Worries about his missing companions were secondary to the greater needs of the war. Just as their reservations about the dark powers and fell deeds of Nagash and his undead had to be set aside, so too did his concerns for Brannok and Vogun.
Now, there was only the call to battle. A call every Stormcast Eternal was bound to answer.
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nbsp; Epilogue
Thunder boomed as Lord-Celestant Makvar brought his hammer smashing down into the bird-like helm of a Chaos champion. Lightning flashed as his sword hacked through the furred shoulder of a goat-headed gor. His dracoth’s jaws fell open, spewing a crackling bolt of electricity into the advancing mob of howling barbarians that turned a half dozen of them into steaming corpses. ‘For Sigmar God-King! We are the Anvil upon which the foe shall break!’
All around him, the black-armoured Anvils of the Heldenhammer took up Makvar’s cry. Stolid ranks of Liberators tightened their shield wall, filling in the gaps left by comrades cut down by the press of foes that surged all around them. Volleys from Judicator bows rained down on the charging masses of monsters, mutants and madmen. Fusillades from boltstorm crossbows slaughtered entire warbands, strewing the ground with misshapen bodies. Overhead, winged Prosecutors dived down into armoured Chaos knights, hurling their stormcall javelins at the cavalry with explosive effect. Knight-Azyros Huld swooped around the Prosecutors, using his celestial beacon to fend off the grotesque, manta-like daemons that slithered through the eldritch half-night that yawned above the All-gate of Gothizzar.
‘The filth of Archaon will drown us in their blood,’ Lord-Relictor Kreimnar called to Makvar. He thrust his relic-weapon to the sky for what seemed the thousandth time, calling down still another shower of divine retribution that came searing down into a herd of capering pink-skinned daemons. The undulating pack of horrors exploded into vivid flashes of swirling energy, some vanquished entirely by the fury of the lightning, others tearing themselves apart to reform into smaller, blue-skinned abominations. Pink and blue, the surviving horrors raised a discordant ululation of gibbering fury, rushing still faster towards the embattled Stormcasts.
‘We will hold,’ Makvar shouted back to Kreimnar. Gojin reared back, the dracoth’s claws stamping down on the body of a mutated Chaos champion, crushing the man’s armour beneath his reptilian bulk. The stink of the treacle that oozed from the smashed body was too sweet to bear any kinship to human blood.
Makvar looked across what was a vast ocean of conflict. Everywhere his gaze fell, he saw the horned helms and bestial heads of enemy warriors. The diseased hulks of gigantic maggoths, their heads reduced to masses of wormy growths, their limbs swollen with rotten gasses and putrid bile, lumbered through tribes of plague-ridden marauders as they gleefully sought to close upon the Stormcasts. Raging slaughterbrutes hurled their monstrous mass against shield walls, ripping and tearing with their savage claws and lashing tails. Armoured chosen of Chaos hacked at Paladins with their corrupt swords and arcane axes. Towering gargants cast immense boulders across the field, pulverising entire retinues of Judicators. Daemonic chariots drawn by insect-headed steeds ploughed into ranks of Liberators, the lascivious charioteers slashing at them with snapping claws and stinging whips. In the coruscating skies, daemonic flies and slavering chimeras fought against radiant-winged Prosecutors.
Makvar’s runeblade hacked through the arm of a howling chosen, hurling the warrior’s body back onto the weapons of his comrades. Not for the first time, the Lord-Celestant cast an anxious look at the dark portal that glowered behind the Anvils. The gateway back to Nagash’s underworld. It was from here that the armies of the Great Necromancer were meant to inject themselves into the battle. With every passing moment, Makvar felt doubt swell within him that they even would.
The legions of the undead could turn the tide against Archaon’s forces. The deathly magics of Nagash and his Mortarchs would overwhelm the wearied Chaos sorcerers and their daemonic masters. The horrible beasts that soared over the battlefield would be slaughtered by the terrorgheists and zombie dragons reanimated by the black arts of the Realm of Death.
The Lord-Celestant was reluctant to accept that they had been betrayed, that the Great Necromancer’s armies weren’t coming. As though guessing his commander’s mind, Kreimnar cried back to him his own words. ‘We will hold.’
Makvar turned his face from Gothizzar for the last time. He glared at the enormity of Archaon’s horde. The outrage blazing inside him transformed itself into a steely defiance. ‘We will do more than hold!’ he shouted. ‘We will win!’
Spurring Gojin forwards, Makvar led his Stormcasts into the teeming hosts of Chaos. It would take much enemy blood to blot out his failure to bring Nagash to the battlefield. He vowed he would make good the debt before he fell.
Cyclopean in its enormity, the gargantuan cavern was so immense that it could have swallowed both Nulahmia and Mephitt and still felt like an empty wasteland. In all Nagash’s underworlds, there was no vault so vast as that of Nekroheim. The dead of entire civilizations had surrendered their bones to form the walls and ceiling of the sprawling expanse. Legions of ghost-wisps glowed from the sockets of the skulls that stared from the skeletal surroundings, filling the cavern with an eerie green luminescence that magnified rather than dispelled the shadows that stretched across the black, rocky floor.
Nagash enjoyed the awed silence that held Neferata as she gazed upon his endeavour for the first time. Her astonishment would swell beyond proportion when she discovered the purpose of it all. He had crafted his Mortarchs to be the mightiest of his undead, demigods to serve as extensions of his own power, yet they had their limitations. Despite the countless lifetimes of existence their deathless state had given them, they still thought with a mortal-taint dulling their minds. Even the ever-loyal Arkhan the Black suffered from this handicap, though he at least had the wisdom to recognise it and seek to overcome it through unwavering fealty.
The Lord of Death walked beside Neferata as they advanced deeper into the cavern towards the megalithic structure being raised by an army of skeletons. It was nearly complete now, its outlines unmistakable. A gigantic pyramid, half a mile wide at its base and almost a quarter mile tall once its capstone was set into place. The moment for that event had yet to arrive, however. But it would be soon. Very soon.
‘A Black Pyramid,’ Neferata said in a voice that was little more than a whisper. The Black Pyramids had been the centres of Nagash’s power, wellsprings from which he could draw the energies of Shyish and the death-force exuding from all the Mortal Realms. By and large, they had been razed by Archaon’s forces in the War of Bones, only fragments of them rescued. The Obelisk of Black had been one such sliver. So too had been the black stones with which Mannfred surrounded his sepulchre and the monoliths that had been revered by the pharaohs of Mephitt. Across the Realm of Death, deathmages and necromancers, corpsemasters and vampires, kings and priests had secreted the sorcerous rubble from the Black Pyramids, unknowingly preserving and protecting them until the Lord of Death had need of them once more.
‘Not a Black Pyramid,’ Nagash corrected the vampire queen. ‘The Black Pyramid. This is the crowning glory of my long seclusion, the result of centuries of study and experiment. It is grander in scale than any that has come before it. As its size has been magnified, so too have its arcane affinities.’ He raised his claw and waved it across the expanse of the towering structure. ‘This will do more than simply feed and replenish my power. It will extend it. Expand it. Allow my magic to reach into places previously denied to it.’
Nagash reached within his robe and drew forth a sliver of translucent black stone. It was one of the shards from Mannfred’s tomb, but Neferata could at once see that it was changed. There was a strange energy bound within it. It took her a moment to understand. When he saw that she did, the Great Necromancer nodded. ‘Yes, the spirit of the sorceress Molchinte. One who bore the brand of Tzeentch upon flesh and soul. Something that should have been beyond my power to claim.’
‘But no longer, my Master?’ Neferata asked.
‘Anything that holds or held the essence of death within it is again mine to claim,’ Nagash declared. A ghoulish laugh rattled through the fleshless god. ‘Yes, even Sigmar’s storm-knights,’ he answered the question Neferata dared not ask. He turned from
her, pointing his staff at a trio of figures walking towards them from the shadows. The presence of Arkhan came as no surprise to Neferata, but the liche-king’s companion did. Mannfred von Carstein.
As he approached, Mannfred bowed in contrition to the Lord of Death. Like Nagash, he produced a sliver of black, glassy stone. ‘The storm-knight’s spirit couldn’t be held,’ he said.
Neferata turned back towards Nagash. ‘You set him against the Stormcasts? You permitted it? What if his comrades should learn what has befallen their companion? What will become of our alliance with Sigmar?’
‘There will be no alliance,’ Arkhan stated. ‘The legions promised to Makvar are needed here to speed the construction of the pyramid.’
‘But if Archaon retains his hold upon the Allpoints–’ Neferata started to object. Nagash silenced her with a wave of his hand.
‘A victory for the hordes of Chaos would serve against me,’ Nagash said. ‘But I would gain nothing if Sigmar were to be triumphant. A stalemate serves me best. To prolong the war. To draw out the struggle.’
Neferata shook her head. ‘I don’t understand. The Realm of Death would be liberated. The hordes of Chaos would be expelled from your domain.’
A fell light blazed in the pits of Nagash’s skull. ‘Your ambitions are still those of flesh, my lovely Neferata.’ He turned and stared at Mannfred. ‘Even your scheming and plotting is limited. You do not aspire to the desires of a god!’
Nagash raised the sliver of stone in his hand, pointing it at the growing pyramid. ‘The whole structure will be given a facing of these stones. The debris of its predecessors will become its skin, feeding into a grand reservoir of dark magic. I will use that power to claim the spirits of all who perish in the Realm of Death – whatever god thinks to keep them from me.’