Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

A bolt arced down from the heavens and Vandus knew what he must do.

As the flesh hound lunged at him, Vandus smashed his vambrace into its snarling mouth. As it clamped down, he threw his arm out and the hound with it, smashing it into a welter of skulls.

But Khul was already on him, axe swinging as Vandus stepped back again. He felt heat at his shoulder and realised that he had been herded to within a few paces of the Gate of Wrath.

‘Your skull will be mine after all,’ the warlord growled.

The haft of Heldensen rang as Vandus desperately parried the blow. He lashed out, finding strength from anger, but Khul was swift and already within the Lord-Celestant’s guard.

‘You are nothing without your drake,’ Khul sneered, his unbreakable grip around Heldensen’s haft.

Vandus roared, unable to wrench the hammer free. He lunged instead, smashing his head against Khul’s face and splitting the skull mask in two. He saw a glaring, angry visage beneath.

With a sharp twist, Khul disarmed Vandus and threw the hammer aside.

‘I was wrong about you,’ he said, spitting blood and teeth. ‘You are still Vendell Blackfist, doomed to fall by my blade. Die now!’

I am the lightning. The words came back to Vandus, as did the image of the bolt striking down from above. Before Khul could end him and condemn his soul to torment, Vandus leapt from the killing blow to land crouched within a handspan of the Gate of Wrath.

As he rose up, Vandus reached out and gripped the edge of one of the pillars of the gate.

Khul was close, blood-crazed and frothing…

‘I am the lightning,’ whispered Vandus, as he closed his eyes. ‘I am Vandus Hammerhand.’

A crash of thunder sounded overhead.

‘Lord Sigmar, strike thy servant now!’

God-lightning seared from the turbulent sky, an arcing blast so powerful that it shook the earth.

Vandus saw light: a blinding, searing luminescence so bright it eclipsed all sense of being and self. Then he was gone.

Now…

Ionus unshielded his eyes to see the Gate of Wrath utterly destroyed. Nothing remained but steaming, molten rock.

All around it for a hundred paces or more, both Stormcasts and Bloodbound had been thrown off their feet. Tendrils of corposant writhed across their bodies as the storm bolt was slow to dissipate.

There was no sign of Vandus Hammerhand or Calanax. Sigmar had reclaimed them, and in so doing vanquished the realmgate to Khorne’s domain.

A great cheer rose up from the Stormcast Eternals.

‘Azyr! Azyr!’

Only Ionus did not raise his voice. Instead, he watched Khul as he beheld the ruination of his plans. The Red Pyramid collapsed, skulls tumbling from its flanks in an avalanche that spilled amongst the Bloodbound in a flood. In moments it was nothing but a swathe of shattered bone, destroyed, its power broken.

As the warlord bellowed his impotent wrath to the uncaring night, Ionus knew they had struck a telling blow, but the war was not over.

‘Not yet…’ he whispered, as the victorious Stormcasts swept down upon the remnants of the Goretide like a living tempest.

Guy Haley Storm of Blades

CHAPTER ONE The death of a prince

The guilt Thostos Bladestorm felt for spending the last days of his mortal life away from home had never left him. Not through his first Reforging, nor through his second. No number of rebirths could purge such regret from a man’s soul. When the cause was lost to him, the guilt stayed, a distillate of pain. Forever it was his spur, his strength and his weakness.

One last time Thostos relived the moments of his first death as Prince Caeran, in light and pain, when he was reborn at the God-King’s behest.

This is how he remembered it.

Then…

Warm wind sang through the pass of Unnumbered Birds. Scent is the key to memory, and the smell of the place was the last thing that Thostos forgot. In later days, when many lifetimes had passed him by, he would catch a reminder of it and search his broken memories for a full recollection. Alas, he would always be frustrated.

The strongest above all was the sharp smell of the birds themselves. Many nests crowded the cliffs either side of the narrow road, their guano streaking the rocks. There were other, subtler smells beneath that rich stink. The wind ran over the plains to the mountains, all the way from the distant sea. Even in the high mountains there was saltiness upon the wind still. This too Thostos remembered, and the blood and the ash that had come to taint it.

On that last day, the mountains preserved the semblance of peace. There the land seemed as it always had, as wild and free as any place in Amcarsh before the coming of Chaos.