Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

‘Plain for you to see.’ Thostos took in the clean lines of the carving, unsoftened by time and unmarked by violence. ‘There is no taste of Chaos here at all. Even if the damned had not found it, I would have expected this place to be the lair of a beast. But there is no sign, past or present. It is as if it has been hidden for centuries. It is almost as if we were meant to find it.’

‘That is what Lord-Relictor Cryden suggests, in fact, my lord. That the duardin hid this place from the enemies of their god Grungni…’ began Eldroc.

‘But not from his allies,’ concluded Thostos. His sigmarite armour rattled quietly as he walked the length of the gate and back.

‘There is more, Lord-Celestant.’ Eldroc nodded to the men guarding the gate. One went to the far side of the chamber. It was so wide it took him a minute to run the distance. Once there he raised his hammer and tapped at the stone.

‘Are we to become miners, Eldroc?’ asked Thostos.

‘Watch,’ said Eldroc. He signalled the men by the gate. They placed their hands into the mouth cavities of two of the smaller figures in the frieze.

The ground rumbled. A low hum followed. The runes upon the gate burned brightly blue.

The rock chamber flickered. One moment the Stormcasts were within a giant cavern, the next they stood upon a platform set into the open mountainside. All around them were stout ruins. Where the far chamber wall had been, a wide road led down from the Silverway, passing over several landings and sweeping flights of stairs as it descended. Then the bare rocky slopes many hundreds of yards in all directions wavered and vanished. In their stead a duardin town followed the road down the mountain. To the left and right, a vista covering all the vale of Anvrok was open to the Stormcast Eternals. Warm sun basked Thostos’s face. The only element that remained unchanged was the hidden path by which he had come to the Silverway. It still came out of the stone by the gate, its entrance dark in the sun.

‘Now that is impressive,’ Thostos said, sweeping his gaze over the view. ‘Such art! I have never heard of an illusion so great in scope to hide a whole city, excepting Sigmar’s cloak about Azyr.’

‘The city is desolate, abandoned like all the rest,’ said Perun. ‘Disappointingly so.’

‘You have a point,’ conceded Thostos. The buildings had been hidden from prying eyes, but unlike the gate had suffered the effects of time and weather. Many were surrounded by skirts of detritus cracked by frost and the sun’s heat on the walls. Roofs had fallen in. Windows were eyeless holes that the wind blew mournfully through.

‘If the duardin intended us to find this, why can we not find them?’ asked Eldroc.

The men stared at the gate a moment.

‘Does it work?’ asked Thostos. ‘Is the way still open?’

Lord-Castellant Eldroc raised a hand. A herald of their chamber stepped from the knot of Stormcast Eternals at Eldroc’s back, his bearing proud, detached, his heavy helmet tucked under one arm. The mechanisms of his wings were folded, the feathers of light extinguished. He announced himself, his voice sonorous and clean and somewhat hollow behind the warmask, like the voices of all the reforged.

‘Prosecutor-Prime Martius the Swift, of the Skyblood Angelos Conclave.’

‘Speak, Martius,’ said Thostos.

‘I have returned to Sigmaron upon this road, my lord. It works exactly as our lord Sigmar said it should. Beyond the arch is a tunnel, fair made and well-dressed in stone. As one follows this, the cold of the utterdark gathers about the traveller, until all is black and freezing as the dark before time. Then there is a second arch, like the gate before us but twice as finely wrought. This entrance here is not the gate, but the path to the Silverway. Blackness and starlight wait beyond, but I trusted the word of our God-King and stepped out into the void, uttering six of the names of Azyr as I did so. And lo! A road of silver rose up beneath my feet, and stretched on, shining as with the light of the pure moons of Azyr. Five steps I took upon this endless road, finding myself in the Gardens of Celerity, nigh to the road leading to Sigmaron. The legends do not speak falsely.’

‘There was no way back through the realmgate that you exited?’

‘None. It closed behind me without trace. I was taken there, and left. I returned by Sigmar’s own hand.’

‘And there is nothing untowards upon the road?’

‘It is pure and unsullied. No trace of Chaos’s mark upon it.’

‘Then the key part of our crusade is concluded.’ Thostos laughed. In truth, he, Eldroc and the others of the Bladestorms wished for vengeance before success. ‘Sigmar will see this as a great triumph.’

‘Indeed he does,’ said Eldroc. ‘A part of the Stormhost has been ordered to return to Azyr.’

Thostos raised his eyebrows at his Lord-Castellant questioningly. ‘And?’