Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

‘Do you know what we are?’ he asked.

The woman stared at him blankly. He might as well have asked her how best to compass the moon. She had known in her life nothing but the theology of Dark Gods, and the name of Sigmar had never been uttered in a mortal’s hearing. The sigils he bore on his armour were as esoteric to her as the icons of Chaos were to him.

Seeing her confusion, he reached up and lifted his helm from his head. For the first time, she beheld him as he truly was. There was immediate recognition there, for although Vandus was an Eternal, changed and augmented by the powers of the Celestial Realm, his features were still those of a man.

‘We are salvation,’ he told her. ‘We are the end to pain and the beginning of hope. While one of us draws breath, you will never be hunted again. We are the warriors of Sigmar, and this is the dawn of his Age.’

Some of what he said made no sense to her, but the tone of his words clearly struck home, for a line of tears ran down her grimy cheek. For an instant, Vandus was reminded of the old image, the one he had cherished even in the midst of the lamplit halls of Sigmaron.

When she had smiled, he remembered, her dark eyes had held the light of stars.

He might have pressed Kalja further then. Perhaps, if the fates had allowed it, he would have discovered that she was some scion of a tribe he had known, maybe of even the Direbrands themselves. He almost asked her, for her defiant face was so similar, so redolent of the one he had known.

But the question died on his lips. He had passed the test amid the fires of war, and would not tread that path again. It mattered not where this human came from, nor what blood ran in her veins — she was a daughter of Sigmar, and her survival alone was surety that the return to the Realms was not made in vain.

‘Then,’ she asked, looking unsteady on her feet, ‘are the wars over?’

A desperate hope was burning in her brown eyes, one that vied with exhaustion. She had been taken to the very edge of extinction, as had all her people, though Cryptborn assured him she would survive.

Vandus would have loved to have told her that they were over, but here, in this place, at the first reunion between those who had been left and those who had returned, she deserved the truth.

‘When all is accomplished, they will be,’ he said. ‘From this day forth, every last tithe of strength will be spent to reconquer what was lost, and to hold it, and to rebuild anew.’

Then his faint smile faded, for he could still smell the ashes of burning, and knew that the bloodshed of the past night was but a foretaste of what was to come, in this and every other Mortal Realm.

‘But for now,’ he said, never letting his eyes leave hers, ‘I tell you truly, they are only just beginning.’

War storm

Nick Kyme Borne by the Storm

Chapter One God-forged

The bolt struck Vandus Hammerhand like a spear flung from the heavens. First there was light, a searing luminescence so bright it eclipsed all sense of being and self. Then pain brought him back with white daggers of pure agony. Heat, fury, and the drumbeat of immortal vigour rushing through his veins reached a crescendo so loud it turned into deafening silence.

Then peace, a feeling of true solace and quietude.

Vandus would come to learn it was always this way. This is what it meant to be born of the storm and borne by the storm.

Reforged, wrought anew. Brought back. This is what it was to be eternal. But as with all such godlike deeds, this apotheosis did not come without a price.

Before…

After defeating Korghos Khul, the Hammerhands went north.

Though the Goretide were scattered, their ranks would swell again. The war against the dominion of Chaos was far from over, but Sigmar’s Stormcasts had won a great victory at the Gate of Azyr. Now that momentum had to be seized upon were it to mean anything.

And so the Hammerhands went northward.

Thousands clad in unalloyed sigmarite crossed the Igneous Delta. Liberators bloodstained and begrimed by war marched with grandhammers slung across the burnished plate of their shoulder guards. Dour Retributors strode in grim silence, their massive lightning hammers held firm across their chests. Above the infantry, retinues of unearthly Prosecutors had taken wing and soared across the blighted sky. At the clarion sound of the warrior-heralds’ war horns, their masked brethren below would close ranks and raise shields, knowing an enemy horde approached.

There had been many enemies, for the Igneous Delta and its surrounding lands were overrun by those bound in blood to Khorne.

It would fall to other Stormcast Eternals to hold the realmgate they had opened to Azyr. At least now they had a foothold at the Brimstone Peninsula, something to defend. But the vanguard could not rest. They had to forge on, despite the lead in their limbs.