Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

Ephryx watched the gentler play of the ether over the still, dark valley. There the Silver River glowed softly orange with inner heat in the last dark of the night. Along its dim shores, the shadows danced with the light of Argentine’s fire. The metal magic rising from the river twisted as it encountered an opposing force a hundred feet above the molten stream. Something perturbed the currents of energy; he had to hurry.

A platinum pedestal occupied the centre of the room, baroquely cast. Imps and cockatrices wrestled all over it, their writhings perpetually arrested, their moist eyes tracking the sorcerer around the room. Upon the pedestal was a bowl filled with liquid gold, and it was to this that Ephryx went.

The skies were light with the coming sun, but dawn had not yet broken. He looked towards the end of the vale and into the void to the east. Already the first rays shone from beneath the floating land. The great crucible high in the eastern sky was bathed in its light already, and shone like a second sun. The Argent Falls gleamed bright. The scales of Argentine sparked with orange notes, and the light of his fires were robbed of their brilliance.

Tainted light glanced off the thousands of copper skulls that covered the fortress and lit the grim, bladed facets of the eight great towers and gates. Shadows fell long upon the fortress, shortening as the sick star rose swiftly over the walls. Copper and adamant sparkled. Warmth chased off night’s chill. Then the sun shone through the lone window set in the lowermost portion of the tower. By crystals grown from madness, the light was redirected again into the keep entombed within the tower, then to a cairn hidden within the keep. Through one small gap left in a wall of lead blocks, a single ray of light was allowed to pierce and fall upon the artefact.

The effect was instant and potent.

The tower shuddered. A boiling sphere of magic burst from the stolen prize. The copper skulls drank deeply of the power, their hollow sockets glowing eerily. Ephryx waited in his tower for the bubble to pass through his scrying chamber. The magic arrived from below, passing first over his toes, then up his legs and into his trunk, invigorating his Chaos-twisted flesh and setting his blood racing. The gold in his scrying bowl bubbled, and Ephryx bent eagerly over it. The images presented at the moment of dawn were the clearest, the most truthful.

He was not the only one waiting for the rising sun. In answer to its appearance, light flashed in the sky. Dozens of lightning strikes, thicker than the others, came not from the clouds but through them, stabbing downward from a place that was not of this realm. They emanated from somewhere beyond the Celestial Swirl, that galaxy of lights and stars that turned high in the northern sky. The lightning was white, but Ephryx’s witch-sight showed him pulses of azure that accompanied each strike and sent the currents of Chamon into disarray.

The first bolt split the peak of a mountain to the north-east. Many more pounded into the valley at various points to the north of the Silver River. The first left behind an imposing figure in smooth armour surrounded by a small bodyguard of warriors upon the mountain peak. These surveyed the lands revealed to them, then spread broad wings of blazing energy and took to the heavens. The sky blackened above them, and they flew up into a downfall of rain. The other bolts struck domes of force from the ground, all around the dormant Bright Tor Gate.

As in Ephryx’s dream, the domes faded to nothing, revealing small armies, although these warriors wore armour of deep turquoise, not the gold of the warriors he had perceived in Aqshy. Then the image in the bowl wavered, and Ephryx drew back from the gold, the play of it illuminating the surprise on his face. His expression hardened. With pinched fingers he clicked out a brief rhythm with his nails upon the platinum of the bowl’s stand. He called upon the power of Tzeentch, steadying the image. None could best the arcane power of Ephryx. He willed the minds of these interlopers to open to him; their secrets would be his, their plans laid bare.

He permitted himself a small smile.

The minds of the strangers remained closed. Their images wavered harder.

The sorcerer’s smile evaporated quicker than a soul in a spirit forge. Ephryx looked out of the windows with a scowl. The dawn was passing over the fortress and the ruined city it squatted in. Its light now struck off the Vaulten Mountains, dancing from peak to peak of the Bright Tors, lighting the underside of the storm clouds beneath both. Then it slid down rocky bluffs and steep banks into the great valley of Anvrok to light the Silver River, overpowering the dull glow given off by the hot silver.