Age of Sigmar: Call of Archaon Page 5
Zuvius closed his eyes against the bloodstorm. Behind them and in the blackness of his lids, the Many-Eyed found light and the roar of flame. The prince’s past was never far from his thoughts – an appalling vision of death and destruction that formed a dark stillness within the madman. It was the eye of a storm, a vision from an age long ago, before Zuvius and his warband were the twisted things they had become. A memory that would not be forgotten, floating to the surface of Zuvius’ mind to sicken and be enjoyed.
Night. The walled city of Stormhaven, ablaze. The tower tops writhed in unnatural blue flame. The people screamed for their lives and then their deaths. The king was dead. Long live the king! The household guard stumbled from the north gate, the only one that was open. The others had been locked shut from the outside. People died like animals behind them, barging and clawing – swallowed by the blue flame. Sir Abriel and his men hacked and coughed, the power of change already finding its way inside them.
With them was Orphaeo – youngest son of the king and the only surviving member of House Zuvius. Surviving – but only just. He too had received the touch of change. Licked by the furious flames, Orphaeo was horribly burned. His face. His head. His hands. He did not cry out in pain. He was calm. The red raw muscles of his face remained uncontorted. He gave the order. Sir Abriel and his soot-smeared knights could not believe what they were hearing.
‘Seal the gate,’ the prince told them, stumbling away from Stormhaven’s mighty walls. There was disbelief, disagreement, dissention even. But Orphaeo Zuvius was now the king and his will was absolute. Burying their doubts, the knights sealed the towering north gate, trapping the screaming innocents inside. They hoped that their liege had a good reason for acting so.
He did.
Ascending the nearby foothills, Zuvius turned to watch his city burn. A city loyal to the God-King, whose walls had stood against storm and ruinous savagery for generations. The prince felt the heat of the fire on his blistering face. He fancied this to be the satisfaction of the Great Changer, bathing him in the warmth of approval. It was a feeling that his face would not allow him to forget.
Mallofax circled the roaring, spitting firestorm of the burning city, the sapphire flames reaching for the heavens. He swooped in to land on Zuvius’ shoulder. Abriel hated the prince’s pet but the dread spectacle of Stormhaven ablaze meant that he barely noticed the scaly, feathered thing. If he had known that it had been Mallofax that was responsible for Stormhaven’s fall, he would have cut the bird out of the air with a swing of his longsword. For it was Mallofax, flying over the walls and arriving one day on the prince’s balcony, that had spoken of such horror to Orphaeo Zuvius, that had taught the prince the secrets of sorcery, the arts of manipulation and the power of change. That, as Tzeentch’s emissary, had empowered Zuvius to turn brother against brother, son against father and the people against their king, all culminating in riot and treachery, atrocity and flame.
Sir Abriel and the household guard gathered about their young king. He was not their king, however. He was no one’s king. He was forever the Prince of Embers – heir to the glowing ashes of a razed kingdom.
Zuvius watched the palace towers fall. He watched his own topple, falling like a mighty felled tree through the flames. Its tower top smashed into the city walls before the prince, knocking brick and stone from the defences. Zuvius stood transfixed. The bright blue fires within the city lit up a symbol rent into the wall.
‘What is that?’ the Prince of Embers demanded. Mallofax twitched his head and turned a glassy eye towards the damaged wall. The bird squawked. Through the soul-curdling sounds Zuvius heard the familiar’s dark words.
‘’Tis the mark of the Everchosen,’ Mallofax told him. ‘An invitation.’
‘To what?’
‘The Exalted Grand Marshal calls,’ the bird squawked. ‘The Architect made you but Archaon will break you. You are to be forged anew, Zuvius, like I taught you. Listen to the screams. Look into the fire. Tell me what you see.’
Zuvius watched as the blue inferno flared up through the damaged wall, reaching for the battlements. In the lick and flicker of azure brilliance, the Prince of Embers saw a far off place take form.
‘I see a storm within a storm,’ he said to Mallofax. He squinted at the blaze.
‘And?’
‘Rising from it is a landform, sculpted by the storm,’ Zuvius said. ‘A mesa, shaped like a great anvil, with a path leading up to it.’
‘The Beaten Path,’ Mallofax told him. ‘Your mettle is to be tested there, for the Everchosen selects only the best warriors of Chaos for his inner circle of death and dread.’
Zuvius nodded to himself. ‘You know this place?’
‘Of course,’ the bird said. ‘The storms you speak of rage across a distant wilderness called the Blasted Plain.’
The Prince of Embers jerked his shoulder, prompting the familiar to once again take flight.
‘Then lead on,’ Zuvius said. ‘It would not be wise to keep the Everchosen of Chaos waiting.’
The Blasted Plain was living up to its name. Orphaeo Zuvius put one foot in front of another, forcing his way on through the streaming haze of crimson. There was nothing there but a maelstrom of everlasting gales and the blood of those claimed by the storm. The prince’s hair and robe skirts twisted and tangled in the wind, while Mallofax’s plumage was a constant ruffle. More miserable still was the twisted thing that had been Sir Abriel, and what remained of the Hexenguard and the sorcerers of the Unseeing who followed.
They had reason to feel misery. They had been wandering through the bloodstorm for weeks. Their cloaks and robes were in tatters and their plate scratched and dented. With only the beady eye of the bird Mallofax to guide them and the nods of his beak to indicate their heading, Zuvius and his warband moved from squall to squall. The storms that tormented the Blasted Plain were filled with whirls and eddies. In places, the Tzeentchians were drenched in fat droplets of gore that rained down from a crimson sky, while in others the gales and tempests turned the blood to a diluted smear. Exposure was not the only danger in the perpetual storm. Whirlwinds snatched up shrieking sorcerers of the Unseeing, lifting them into oblivion, while on the rocky expanse, sudden gusts lifted grit and pebble from the ground, blasting them through the Hexenguard like grapeshot from a cannon.
The Prince of Embers left a trail of corpses in his wake. What had been an army of Chaos knights and witchbreeds was now a warband numbering fewer than forty dark souls – still a potent force, but the trials of time, the perversities of the weather and enemy encounters had taken their toll.
He did not regret his decision to brave the Blasted Plain in search of the Beaten Path. He had been chosen. Those knights and sorcerers who had fallen had been unworthy of the Everchosen, and unworthy of him. Zuvius was to be tested. What kind of prospect would he be if he couldn’t even reach the site that had been chosen for his trial? Zuvius pushed on through the bloodstorm. He could not allow it to defeat him.
Still, the depleted ranks of Zuvius’ grand warband did not bode well for the challenges he knew to be ahead. He would have to supplement his numbers with lost wretches looking for direction and dark purpose. Fools were never in shortage. The Prince of Embers would give them purpose and they would give their lives in service of his destiny.
The Chaos champion heard Sir Abriel call something unintelligible through the storm. It was all the twisted knight was capable of now, beyond the devastating reach of his bladework. Peering at him through the bloody curtain of rain, Zuvius saw that Sir Abriel was pointing off to their right with the freakishly long fingers of his warped gauntlet. Following the direction the finger indicated, Zuvius squinted at the outline of tents in the distance – some kind of encampment in the wilderness.
‘Food. Water. Shelter?’ Zuvius said, shaking Mallofax on the glaive.
‘Death?’ the bird returned. Zuvius looked around. Afte
r weeks out on the Blasted Plain he honestly thought his warband wouldn’t care.
‘We’re more than a match for a few nomads,’ the Prince of Embers hissed, almost insulted at the insinuation of their vulnerability. Recent encounters and the toll of the storm had depleted his numbers but the Hexenguard and the Unseeing were more than capable of bringing horror and death to a tribe of wind-worshipping savages. Zuvius lurched through the storm in the direction of the camp.
‘Onwards,’ he called. With warped appreciation, the knights and sorcerers of the warband followed their master.
Zuvius pulled back the thick flaps of stitched flesh. Inside, the huge tent was a structure of giant bones. It was like stepping inside a giant ribcage. Torches flickered smokily. Zuvius immediately got the impression of many bodies – no doubt the tribesmen and savages he had been warned about. As Mallofax had predicted, the place stank of old blood and death.
The Prince of Embers stepped forward with confidence, allowing the Hexenguard and his sorcerers in. Regardless of the horrors they could inflict, the Unseeing did not make for an intimidating sight. The twisted knights, however, in their ghastly plate and glowing sigils, would be more than enough to startle the tribesmen. Then they would come to know that warriors of the Ruinous Powers were among them and that the sight of these doom-laden forms would be their last.
As Zuvius blinked blood from his eyes and adjusted to the gloom, he came to realise that he was not standing among scrawny nomads. Instead of wind-worshippers, the tent was filled wall to wall with muscle. Red flesh and scar-markings confirmed Zuvius’ fears. They were not the first warband to take shelter in the tribesmen’s tents. Barbaric servants of the Blood God had beaten them to it. Looking down, the Prince of Embers saw that he was standing in the splattered remains of its previous occupants.
Casting a gaze across the tent, Zuvius made a quiet estimate of his rivals’ strength. It was a veritable warband, all armed to the teeth, with perhaps more in the other tents. Zuvius had nothing approaching their number. A ripple of brute surprise passed through the barbarians, followed instantly by snarls and the wrinkle of lips. Muscles twitched to tautness and weapons scraped as they were snatched from the tent floor. Zuvius saw bloodreavers of the Goresworn, obvious from their decorative scarring. Other savages he recognised from their brazen cuisses and greaves, rattling beneath the broad red musculature of their chests. They were the wrathmongers of Khorne, blessed with the unyielding fury of their Ruinous god.
A stitch-faced chieftain and a wrathmonger closed on the Tzeentchians. The chieftain drew wicked blades from a selection of leather sheathes, holding them like talons in his gore-stained hands. The master of the wrathmongers, wearing the fanged skull of some daemon creature as a helmet, dragged the blood-rusted chain of a flail behind him, ready to yank it forward and hurl the hammer head attached to the length.
‘Fight or flee?’ Mallofax shrieked, flapping his wings and hovering above Zuvius and his warband. When the champion of Tzeentch didn’t answer, the familiar repeated, ‘Fight or flee?’
‘Neither,’ the Prince of Embers said. The Tzeentchian didn’t move. He made the effort not to straighten and his glaive remained upright in his hand like a walking staff. He didn’t want to provoke the savage disciples of Khorne any more than he already had by simply being there. At the same time, he wanted to present the calm front of a champion too powerful to be threatened by warriors of the Blood God, even in such number.
‘Mine,’ the chieftain hissed.
‘The scraps, perhaps,’ the wrathmonger rumbled.
Sorcerous sigils burned bright on the plate of the Hexenguard as the ghastly knights formed up in front of their prince with their notched longswords and battered shields.
‘Stand down,’ Zuvius said, his tone perverse and playful. Sir Abriel was unsure. He issued some kind of question from the hole in his face that he used as a mouth. The chieftain and the wrathmonger advanced, their men drawn up behind them.
Zuvius’ eyes moved beyond the furious warband. Rising from a throne of stained skulls – the nomads’, the prince presumed – was a champion larger still. A deathbringer, an exalted champion of the Blood God. Though he had been a man once, Khorne had blessed his chosen with hulking brawn. The warband leader was a veritable wall of muscle. The teeth of great beasts jangled on sinew necklaces while a pair of bull’s horns erupted from his malformed skull. His hands were encased in bone weapons – pronged gougers that extended like a pair of claws. On his back, he carried a battle-axe, the blade of which was as broad as the champion himself.
‘Hold,’ the monstrous champion said. His voice was deep, like some bottomless trench reaching down into the bowels of the realm. His dogs of war stopped in their tracks, as if they had been yanked back on a running chain. The Goresworn came to a halt at the champion’s command. They parted to let the deathbringer through.
Zuvius could see the champion’s mind at work – which was something to be said of such savages. A hardening of the eyes. A tautness in the lips. Zuvius reasoned that the deathbringer had probably fought just about everything that lived and breathed on these plains. He had faced the sorcerous servants of the Great Changer before. Unlike his lieutenants, he was cautious. Wisely so, Zuvius agreed.
‘What are you doing here on the Blasted Plain?’ the warrior called across the tent. ‘Speak fast and true or the bloodreavers here will smash your bones for the marrow inside. The wrathmongers will simply kill you out of spite. At my order, your blood will join that of the storm, in honour of mighty Khorne.’
Zuvius felt the eyes of all on him. The barbarians were aching for the violence to come.
‘That would be ill advised,’ the prince told him, playing for time. Zuvius’ mind whirled. The Khornate savages within the tent would swamp them. Others, responding instinctively to the sounds of battle, would come up behind the Tzeentchian warband. It would be a slaughter, standing on the blood and bones of a previous one. Zuvius tasted the air with his silver tongue. Swords and sorcery couldn’t take him where he needed to go. He would have to rely on one of his other god-given talents. ‘For then you would not hear what I have to say.’
‘And why would the great Skargan Fell-of-Heart need to hear the lies of filth witchbreed like you?’ the Goresworn chieftain hissed, looking back at his master.
‘Because even if only half of what I tell him comes to pass,’ Zuvius said, ‘then his ascension will be assured.’
‘What ascension?’ Skargan rumbled.
‘The Everchosen calls for you, mighty one,’ the Prince of Embers lied.
‘Almighty Archaon?’
‘Aye, my lord,’ Zuvius said. ‘The Exalted Grand Marshal of the Apocalypse asks only for the greatest warriors of the age, and he has called for you.’
‘I’ll cut that lying tongue out of your mouth, Tzeentchian,’ the chieftain promised.
‘Kraal, son of Zhufgor, let the sorcerer speak,’ Skargan Fell-of-Heart said. The bloodreavers seethed about their chieftain while the wrathmongers foamed at their snaggle-toothed mouths. ‘How came you by this knowledge?’
‘A vision, my lord,’ Zuvius said.
‘Visions and enchantments,’ Kraal, son of Zhufgor, spat in disgust.
The deathbringer’s mouth curled into a snarl. He nodded his great horned head. A member of the Goresworn stepped up behind his chieftain, slipping his reaver blade beneath Kraal’s chin. In a moment it was over. Zuvius felt the speckle of warm blood across the sensitive flesh of his face. The chieftain dropped and his killer stepped forward.
‘Voark, son of Kraal,’ the deathbringer said, ‘the Goresworn is yours.’
Voark nodded his murderous appreciation.
‘Sorcerer: speak.’
‘I saw a vision in the flames of a burning city, exalted one,’ Zuvius said. ‘Skargan Fell-of-Heart, wearing the sigil of the Everchosen. The Exalted Grand Marshal of the Apocalypse is
gathering his troops, deathbringer. Khorne knows you belong among them.’
Skargan narrowed the bloody orbs of his eyes at Zuvius.
‘Your sorceries will not work on me,’ he told the prince, tapping the talon-tip of a gouger against his bronze collar. ‘The Blood God will not allow it.’
Zuvius nodded. He had seen such artefacts on Khornate champions before – the Blood God was eager to protect his butchers from the manipulations of magic. But the Tzeentchian did not need such powers.
‘Come between the Ender of Worlds and his chosen?’ Zuvius said. ‘Not me, deathbringer. Not for all the dark glory in the realms. I know my place – in this, as in all things. I am merely the messenger.’
Skargan Fell-of-Heart looked to Voark, son of Kraal.
‘Tell me more of your vision, sorcerer,’ the deathbringer commanded.
‘You must walk the Beaten Path, exalted one,’ Zuvius said, ‘to a place of testing – so that the Everchosen may judge if he chose wisely.’
‘A battle?’ Skargan said with a gory glint in his eye.
‘I suspect, my lord.’
‘You know this path?’
‘I do,’ the Prince of Embers said. ‘And I have seen you walk it to glory.’
‘What do you get out of this, sorcerous mongrel?’ the deathbringer spat. Zuvius thought on the question.
‘Nothing, mighty champion,’ the prince told him. ‘But I cannot deny destiny or the will of the Everchosen.’
Skargan scowled. Zuvius could see that the monstrous warrior didn’t believe him. The prince watched as a flicker of doubt crossed the warlord’s features. To disbelieve a servant of Tzeentch was one thing – common sense even – but to defy the will of the Everchosen of Chaos was something else entirely.