Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

Now, though, he struggled to remember exactly why. The great battles were all over. Once he had stood on the causeways of the ancient keeps, roaring his heart out at the mortals sheltered within, daring them to come and fight. And they had, back in those half-forgotten days. Their champions had ridden out to face the darkness, clad in steel plate and bearing two-handed broadswords. He had fought and killed them all, and every moment of it had been a joy. Some had tested him sorely — the old sorcerers, the great knights, the mighty warriors from the savage plains. When those great ones had died, he had felt the loss, and kept their skulls as remembrance.

The oldest of the skulls hung on his belt, drilled fast by chains and bleached white by the passing ages. There had long since been too many to count, so he had heaped them into tributes to his divine patron, pouring libations of blood across the pyres before watching them burn. His strength had grown with every season and new warriors had flocked to his banner, and thus the skull-pyres had multiplied.

The sacrifices pleased the God of Battles, and more gifts began to flow. Victory begat victory. He slaughtered the denizens of Scorched Keep in a week-long orgy of bloodletting, and in the deepest vault of that place he found the axe he now carried, one that could tear at the very fabric between worlds. He bested Skullbrand, the only fighter ever to do so, and so the bloodsecrator duly joined his burgeoning horde.

Khul smiled to himself. Threx was a lunatic. They whispered that he had once fought his way to the burning steps of Khorne’s throne-dais itself, and there had challenged the greatest of Bloodthirsters to single combat before being ripped limb from limb. Amused by this, the Blood God had brought him back, gifting him the standard that summoned the howling madness of Chaos to the mortal plane.

Who could believe such a tale? And yet, there was no doubting the powers of the icon Skullbrand bore — on a hundred battlefields, its arcane veil-tearing had brought the Realm of Khorne screaming into solid reality, just one more weapon in the swollen armoury of the god-favoured.

But now, after all the victories, after all the triumphs, there was precious little joy remaining. The old adversaries were dead, their corpses long trodden into the dust. With every passing year, Aqshy passed more completely into the ambit of the Chaos realm, and all that remained to hunt were the verminous and sick. There were other Lords of War, to be sure, many as powerful as Khul himself, but their deaths were empty deaths, and the wars they fought now were little more than squabbles over ruined spoils. The God of Battles still rejoiced to see the blood flow, but for his servants the ichor was all mingled, and the endless cycle of honour feuds had slowly become a deadening procession.

At the sound of tramping boots, Khul looked up. The main body of his horde was approaching, marching up from the south. Its vanguard filled the valley from side to side, a serried mass of plate-armoured warriors. Banners swayed above the ranks, all bearing the sign of Khorne daubed in red inks on flayed skins. With the fading of the world’s sun, torches had been lit, and their angry light flooded up into the rain-swept sky. In another age, Khul might have foresworn such blatant displays of power, but there had long since ceased to be anything to fear from discovery.

All he feared, in any case, was the possibility of failure. His final skull-pyre, the bone mountain raised above the burning plains and surrounded by towering columns melted from the weapons of the defeated, awaited its summit — a capstone, ripped from a spine of a fighter worthy of the honour. When that was done, surely the last Gift would be bestowed — the ascension into daemonhood and an escape from the dreary procession of earthbound wars. Until then, he was locked in his current state, doomed to prey on the lost and damned for eternity.

Khul roused himself from his torpor. The army would not rest for long in this valley. He would drive them hard through the storm, past the valley’s source and into the unknown country beyond. Perhaps something had survived on the very edges of the world, something that would stand up to him and make him earn his triumph.

Grizzlemaw let slip a whine and paced impatiently. The hound too had been a Gift, given after a battle fought long ago, but one for which Khul had no fond recollection. At times he thought the daemonic creature was little more than a mockery, a reminder of the one soul that had slipped through his fingers, and he hated it as much as he loved it.

‘He hungers,’ observed Skullbrand.

The icon-bearer had remained sullen since the bloodreavers had been let go. Khul reached for Grizzlemaw’s collar and hauled him back close.

‘He always hungers,’ said Khul, massaging the creature’s neck roughly. ‘They were hunting, so let them hunt. I told you: you will have your blood.’