Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

It was a day of blood, a red dawn as Khul had prophesied.

The sun had dipped and grown cold in the black night by the time the massacre was done.

Khul sank to his knees. He shuddered with every laboured breath, driven to the brink of exhaustion by his reaping. Razors, not air, sawed in and out of his lungs. His heart thundered in a raging tattoo. And though his muscles burned and his limbs ached from the immense tally of the dead, he stood and found himself surrounded by a lake of blood.

Countless barbarian heads floated amidst the gore, but it was the reflection of the portal that caught Khul’s attention.

It began innocuously enough, a bubbling foam that rose to the surface of the crimson pool as the foul slick began to boil. Then there was intense heat and the stench of dying things, of burned metal and offal, the reek of a furnace.

Something stirred within the miasma of blood, a disturbance that formed ripples across the lake. Slowly, inexorably, a horn jutted forth from the congealed blood. It curved into a hook, black as sackcloth and wet like oil.

Khorne’s foot soldier blinked as it became corporeal, rising slowly. Khul saw the chain it had used to gain passage into this realm, and he heard snapping bone as the daemon’s hooves crushed the skulls from the Blood God’s endless battlefield underfoot.

To those untouched by Chaos, the bloodletter would have simply appeared to rise as if the lake was as deep as an ocean. Khul knew it was fathomless and he also knew that no daemon of Khorne could ever manifest in so gentle a fashion. As the summoning required blood and violence, so too did manifestation, and a host of bloodletters had vied for the right to enter the mortal realm. Daemon fought daemon, ensuring a slaughter from which only the strongest could emerge triumphant.

The one before Khul now was the first, therefore it was the mightiest.

The bloodletter was an exemplar of violence given form: bent-back limbed with an elongated snout, and red and iron-hard skin shimmering with heat haze. It bowed, horns dipped in respect but not acquiescence, as its black and hateful eyes regarded the warlord.

‘Are you the one who summoned me?’ it asked in both question and challenge, its resonant voice like metal scraping bone.

Khul nodded, his axe held loosely in his hand.

The bloodletter carried its own weapon. It was forged of no metal known to man or any creature of the Mortal Realms. A hellblade.

‘Then…’ uttered the daemon, as it drank in the slaughter arrayed around it and the offering in blood, ‘…we shall serve.’

The aetheric chains dangling in the pool had no anchor above, but went taut as a horde of bloodletters pulled their bodies forth into reality. Blinking and scenting, their long pink tongues tasted the air. They were not alone.

Hulking metal beasts emerged with them — bloodcrushers, the brass steeds of Khorne. They were no mere mounts; they were monsters. Far larger than any horse, there was something distinctly bullish about them but clad in armour plate stained with the blood of a thousand slain foes. The beasts bayed and growled, smoke exuding from their nostrils, their fell noises metallic and oddly discordant. Even for Khul, it grated on his senses and filled his mind with visions of conquest.

It took only moments for the warlord to have a legion of daemon riders at his command, their dread banners swaying with chained skulls and strips of leathery flesh.

As one, they raised their weapons.

Their leader, one of Khorne’s heralds, saluted with its sword.

‘Name the ones we are to murder,’ it rasped, its blood-cinder breath tainting the breeze.

‘Vendell Blackfist,’ Khul replied, for Khorne had shown him the army that marched on his towers and the one who was leading it. ‘Devour his vassals, but bring him to me so I can cut off his craven head.’

The herald bowed once more, and the bloodcrushers surged southwards. The earth trembled under the stampede of their mounts and red lightning cut ragged strips into the heavens.

‘Now you shall face a storm, Blackfist,’ said Khul.

His deep laughter boomed louder than the thunder.

Chapter Seven Towers of brass

‘How do we breach the tower?’ asked Theodrus, the Retributor’s eagerness for battle obvious. ‘What are your orders, my lord?’

Ionus Cryptborn had mustered his army in a massive gorge, veined with thin streams of lava. The darkness of the night, alloyed to the sulphurous smoke rising from the basin of the flume, was enough to conceal their ranks, but not caustic enough to trouble a Stormcast.

The reflected glow of the lava gave their armour a lambent shine, though not bright enough to give away their position.

‘Patience, paladin,’ Ionus uttered. ‘I learned long ago it pays to be wary when attacking your enemy’s stronghold. And we are not so unscathed as to throw our caution aside.’

A dread aura bled off the brass tower.