Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

Spurring Calanax, Vandus charged into the warbands that Khul had allied against them. He struck down a red-skinned daemon that had leapt to tear out his throat. Another bloodletter disappeared beneath Calanax’s claws. A third was ripped in half by the dracoth’s jaws.

Vandus whirled Heldensen around his head in a punishing arc. In the hands of the Lord-Celestant, it was a twin-tailed comet smiting everything that dared to step into its path. As gouts of lightning spewed from Calanax’s mouth and Heldensen slew without cessation, Vandus began to feel invincible.

Ever since his vision, the one where Khul had placed his head upon the pyre of skulls, Vandus had felt a power growing within him. Destiny had brought him to this place, to this moment. It was a fate determined not just by gods, but by his own indomitable will and sense of purpose. It stretched back through time, to before all of this, to before the Direbrand tribe and the dreaded age of Chaos. It went further and further, a legacy that began before time itself.

Vandus knew not how this was possible, or even what it meant, but he was certain it would be he who ended Khul’s reign. At last, he realised why Sigmar had chosen him, why he had been the vanguard.

This knowledge filled him with glorious purpose.

‘We are the storm!’ he roared, Heldensen held aloft and crackling with power. ‘Bringers of retribution and light. Reforged by Sigmar to reclaim these lands in his name and restore order. I am the lightning!’

The Hammerhands roared in answer. ‘Azyr!’

But the road to the Gate of Wrath was long and choked with the lost and the damned, an unholy Chaos warhorde without end.

‘Righteousness versus damnation,’ Vandus murmured to himself, his gaze alighting on the grim archway that led to Khorne’s own realm. ‘One must break before the end.’

Vandus had not seen the danger. So intent was the Lord-Celestant on reaching the Gate of Wrath that he had become oblivious to the true threat in their midst. But Ionus saw it, and he knew what it portended.

As he began to marshal his powers, he cried out and let the magic of the celestial carry the strength of his voice like a thunderhead.

‘Lord Vandus!’ he cried, his deathly voice echoing across the battlefield so that all in gold turned to heed him. Ionus gestured with his hammer. ‘Atop the pyramid!’

The beast’s skull exploded against Heldensen’s might, and as its lumbering body fell Vandus looked up to see the Red Pyramid. Close now, it throbbed like an angry wound and stirred feelings of wrath in the Lord-Celestant. Between it and the Gate of Wrath, he felt the unholy presence of Khorne.

But it wasn’t this that had caused the Lord-Relictor to cry out. Vandus saw it now, through the battling warriors — he saw the figure clambering up the rugged flank of the pyramid, a mountain of skulls dedicated to Khorne. The daemonic hound scrambling by Khul’s side was but one of the gifts the Lord of Skulls had bestowed upon his champion. The dread axe he bore was another. At least one further boon remained but it was neither beast nor blade, Vandus realised. No trinket, but metamorphosis.

Ascension.

As Khul climbed, moving with certain strength and an eager fervour, Vandus saw the offering the warlord planned to give.

A golden helm, blood still drooling from the severed neck of the head inside it.

‘Jactos…’

Grief and anger struck Vandus like a double-edged sword.

The vision disproven, but the prophecy about to be fulfilled.

‘I must stop him now.’

But an endless swathe of red stood in Vandus’s way and he had not the lightning forged wings of a Prosecutor to bear him over it.

Chapter eleven Servants of the gods

Hell and fury raged across the Brimstone Peninsula as two gods fought for supremacy. Their struggle rent the land and sky as blood boiled up from the earth and lightning struck down from the heavens.

Wading through the hosts of Chaos, ever closing on his Lord-Celestant’s side, Ionus Cryptborn had never seen such destruction. As well as the Hammers of Sigmar, he saw the distant banners of the Lions of Sigmar and the Anvils of the Heldenhammer. Truly, this was a conflict like no other.

Despite the presence of the other chambers, all hope rested with Vandus. He was the one, chosen by Sigmar to launch his crusade of liberation. It had to be him. But even the Hammerhand himself, with all the gifts that Sigmar had bestowed upon him, could not reach Khul in time.

As if the mindless beasts and frenzied tribesmen who had allied themselves to the warlord’s banner knew of the import of this moment, a vast horde impeded Vandus.

A retinue of Prosecutors had seen the danger, but as they flew towards the grim ziggurat of skulls beyond it, gouts of scalding steam engulfed them, spewing from the maw of the gate and sending the heralds tumbling earthward. They crashed to the foot of the Red Pyramid, where an eager rabble of bloodreavers cut them down before they could rise.