Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

Rakh powered up the slope. He saw movement against the wall ahead — weapons being lifted, shadows moving. If he had not been in such agony he might have laughed, for such preparations would not help those who cowered behind the wall. The rest of the bloodreaver pack came with him towards the summit, hissing curses, knowing that the mortals had nowhere else to go and no longer bothering with stealth.

At last, there would be proper killing. At last, the gouges and the hooks would be twisted in deep, and there would be fresh meat dragged back for the master to pick over.

A great crack of thunder broke the skies in twain, and Rakh staggered. He looked up, his face spattered with rain, and noticed for the first time just what had happened to the sky. A vast circle had formed over the summits of the three towers. Like a vortex of storm-seas, it turned with gathering force. The lightning was incessant now, twisting and forking and mutating the night sky into a riot of cobwebbed silver.

Something about that display terrified him. It was like looking into Khul’s pitiless face, only with a different kind of fear — a harder fear, a colder fear.

Rakh shrank back. He couldn’t take his new eyes off the light, which was reaching a flickering crescendo. The rain bounced from the rock, driven into scouring flurries by the wind. Everything was glistening, flashing and burning.

He started to fall back, to slide down the slope. The impulsion given to him by Khul was giving way, replaced by a different dread.

Another crack, and this time the earth beneath him shuddered. Rock plates thrust upwards, tilting to expose rivers of seething fire beneath. The arch of the Gate swelled into flames that coursed over the naked stone, burning blue like marsh gas.

Then he was running, haring back the way he had come. This was no natural storm, it was some conflagration of the daemonic, sent from the pits of madness to swallow them all. The entire landscape was shifting, knocked from its roots by the elemental violence of the heavens. Rakh crashed to his knees, losing his axe in the fall.

He felt a sudden heat. It swelled through the rain, vaporising it and making the air thick with steam. He cried out, but his voice was lost in the greater explosion of primeval forces.

It was as if the world itself were being ripped apart and forged anew — light was everywhere, eye-searing and white hot. For an instant Rakh thought he was being burned alive, but just as suddenly as it had come, the blaze blew itself out.

He looked up, shaking uncontrollably. For a moment he saw nothing, his vision hazy from the flash of light.

And then he saw what the storm had brought.

Khul led his army through the cleft just as the storm reached its height. It had been far too narrow for his armoured horde, so he had exerted his power, calling out words of eternal resonance and raising his axe-blade into the eldritch night.

His god had answered, shaking the earth and remaking it around them. The sides of the cleft shuddered, cracked and were smashed into rubble, exploding in a rain of flying stone shards. The boom of it echoed out across the plain beyond, and the great expanse opened up before them, the path bludgeoned clear as if swept aside by mighty hands.

Khul bellowed with laughter, feeling the sharp pleasure of the power at his command. Even the stone beneath his feet obeyed the will of his dark patron — it would not be long now before the final gift was bestowed and he joined the legions of eternal slaughter.

His warriors surged forward, crying out his name in fell voices.

‘Khul! Khul! Khul!’ they chanted, breaking into a run, unshackling their axes from great chains looped about their armour and swinging the curse-darkened metal in clenched fists. With the crack of barbed whips and the bellows of the warband leaders, the great mass of fighters broke out from the confines of the parched valley, poured through the demolished gap between the cliffs, and looked out over the plain of ruins beyond.

Khul was at the apex of the charge with Grizzlemaw loping at his feet, and was the first to witness the deep veins of magic unleashed in the skies above him. An actinic tempest rampaged across the Gate’s apex, and the colossal energies reverberated through his every muscle. Fell storms had been summoned in the past, some by his own command, but never like this one. Even the rain tasted different — icy, gritty, as if filled with tiny diamonds.

His ravaged old heart beat harder. Some great sorcery was at play here, of a kind he had never encountered before. Grizzlemaw sensed the battle-rage stirring and barked furiously.

‘Advance!’ Khul thundered, exhilarated by what he was seeing, hearing, smelling.