Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

Khul might have stayed to witness what Skullbrand was doing, always gladdened to see the scions of the great Throne heed the call of a mortal soul, but in the midst of the struggle he had no leisure to stand idly by. He could already see that, incredibly, Vekh and his khorgorath were being battered by the beast-riding warrior. Despite the numbers set against them, the body of golden knights was holding its own, even pushing deeper into the ranks of his own army. They fought with a blend of speed and skill that far exceeded the brutal excesses of his own troops. For too long the blood warriors had fought only the weak and the terrified — it had made them flabby and careless.

Khul snarled as he marched down through the ranks of his horde, obsessed now with bringing down the helm-crested knight before any other might claim the kill. For so many ages he had been searching for a champion whose skull would crown the uncompleted Red Pyramid, his great paean to the God of Battles, and now at last he had it before him — an immortal, clearly; one possessed of the power to command the lightning and whose valour in arms exceeded even the heroes of the forgotten past.

But then Khul halted in his rampage, struck by the same realisation that had assailed him on the clifftop. He suddenly remembered the destruction of that last tribe. He remembered putting their villages to the fire, sweeping across their lands with the force of a whirlwind. None of them had ever submitted save through death. The bloodreavers had never turned one, and the ranks of his blood warriors had never been bolstered by them. Every fight against them, no matter how one-sided, had been turned into a brutal contest of wills, something that had made his savage heart swell with satisfaction.

This was the same. Though these warriors fought in the finest battle-plate, they were cast in the same mould. The beastrider in particular — he was exactly the same, not in his regal appearance but in the sheer tenacity of his bearing.

There had been lightning that night, too. There had been bolts from the heavens that had burned through his horde and nearly turned them back from the final conquest. And then, right at the end, the great warrior — who had defied him and spat curses into his face and readied himself for a duel he could not possibly win — was gone, his place taken by charred earth and the stray crackles of celestial discharge.

Grizzlemaw whined, eager to take up the hunt again, straining on his iron leash. Perhaps the hell-hound recognised something too, and his every muscle twitched with desperation to rend and maim.

‘I know not how you have returned,’ growled Khul, swinging his axe-blade to clear a path through his own battle-incensed horde, ‘but I shall discover it before this night ends, and rip the truth from your shrivelled soul.’

Skullbrand had not welcomed the order from his lord. He had been primed to wade into the attack on the warriors below the gate, already relishing the cut of his axe-blade against their pristine battle-plate. Summoning the world beyond took time, and every moment he spent away from the slaughter made his soul ache.

The ground below him was now ankle-deep in blood, and his boots squelched through it as if through a mire. Most of it had come from of his own kind, it was true, but it mattered not from where the blood flowed.

He raised his standard high and more bronze flames licked up against it, drawn from the fevered storm around him. Every death fuelled the vortex, tearing at the barriers between the world of the senses and the deeper vaults of unreason below.

Those of the horde closest to him, at least those not utterly blinded by their battle-rage, let slip shouts of excitement as they saw the bronze flames leap, and the assault against the enemy redoubled in ferocity. Skullbrand slammed his battle-standard down into the earth. He pushed with such force that the bannerpole sunk in two feet deep, carving through the blood-rich soil with ease.

As soon as it was anchored, the magic leapt from it like steam from a geyser. Skullbrand cried out — eight times, each one a different curse, all of them summoning the Realm of Chaos to the mortal plane.

A column of bronze fire jetted out from the standard’s tip, searing out into the wild night and rivalling the silver lightning thrown by the angels. The earth beneath began to boil, making the blood-slicks bubble and steam. Old charred plates were thrust aside by a new landscape of hot brass, burnished by the seething sea of blood and spreading out from Threx’s position like a breaking wave.

The very air itself screamed, and the rock below cracked. Amid the racing howl of unearthly winds, the Realm of Chaos burst into reality, shoving aside that which had existed before and replacing it with its own writhing pillars of madness.