Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

The Stormcast Eternals passed through the devastated gates of Elixia. The towers had wilted, the metal sagging from the effects of some great heat. Slicks of solidified metal still puddled the floor under coatings of dirt. The highway past the gates was increasingly choked with debris. The destruction was random. Entire buildings stood untouched next to piles of scrap creaking in the wind. Everywhere the transmuting effects of Tzeentch’s magic could be seen.

They passed a street where every building had been upended and set upon its roof, then another where the buildings had been miniaturised, and sat in the centre of a field of glass under whose clouded surface strange shapes swam. One street had been peeled up from its foundations, the materials fashioned into hideous and giant figures whose static postures silently changed when unobserved. There was a square full of statues of salt, whose lumpen nature could not hide the fact that they were citizens of the city transformed as they fled. Immobile faces screamed from walls. A fountain ran incongruously in a dry plaza, spurting out a mixture of quicksilver and blood. Hysterical voices sounded from empty halls.

The Stormcasts ignored it all. They had been made to fight Chaos, and Chaos held no fear for them. They spoke little as they entered the city, and were entirely silent as they penetrated deep within and approached the dread fortress. Their hands gripped weapons tightly, eager for vengeance. Wordlessly they reached the inner boulevard of the city and split, Thostos heading straight forward, the other Lord-Celestants heading right and left. The rumble of their footsteps was the only sound they made.

The Celestial Vindicators converged on the fortress. Thostos looked to the clouds racing overhead and prayed silently to Sigmar that he would intercede in time.

And then, suddenly, the city stopped.

‘Halt!’ Thostos called. A lone trumpet winded in the desolation, a lonely, sorrowful sound.

Before them was a wide space from which the buildings had been cleared, three bow shots across, a deadly, open ground that had no scrap of shelter to offer besiegers. Doubtless the metal there had been scavenged and had helped create the monstrous fort, but more than a simple razing had taken place. The surface was smooth, covered in rippled swirls. In the pattern were shadowy outlines suggestive of foundations. On the other side of this killing zone of pure metal was Thostos’s goal, the eastern gate of the fortress. It reared high, the foot of the wall blending with the ground as if grown from it. Spikes covering huge metal plates wrought with icons of Tzeentch and Chaos studded the walls, every angle reinforced with brass and steel. The walls came to a point, one of eight triangles, the east gate a massive gaping maw of bronze set into the base of the tower that rose from the angle of the walls. But it was the skulls that arrested the sight. Hundreds of thousands of them covered the surface of the fortifications. In the shadows cast by the clouds they appeared to shift their gaze, looking about them.

More trumpets sounded. Other brotherhoods emerged from the jagged line delimiting the city ruins from the killing space.

‘I see no one, Lord-Celestant,’ said Perun. ‘Atop the walls there is not a single defender. None moved to intercept us while we were vulnerable in the ruins. Perhaps it is deserted?’

Thostos scanned the parapet. He could see no sign of defenders himself. No sound came from within. Silk pennants on the battlements moved in the wind and the place was quiet enough so that their rippling was clearly audible.

‘They are there. They wait for us. We will smite them, but we must be wary, lest this is some trick of the Great Changer’s.’

‘And if it is, my lord?’

‘We will smite them anyway.’

Sunlight glinted from the fort’s metals one last time. A storm darkness fell. Black clouds gathered over the castle.

Thunder rumbled. Drops of rain plinked off Thostos’s armour.

‘Charge!’ he roared.

At the command of the Lord-Celestant Thostos Bladestorm, the Stormcast Eternals ran from the shattered city that surrounded the castle with a mighty roar.

Thunder joined its voice to the blowing of trumpets and demands for vengeance. Hundreds of armoured feet made a rumble that outmatched the storm. Ruined buildings shook. Streets that had been silent for centuries echoed to the pounding of feet.

The first lightning strike smashed down.

‘Stand ready!’ shouted Thostos. ‘Form battle lines. Heraldors, call down our brothers!’

The first ranks of Liberators slammed their shields down a stone’s throw away from the walls, locking them to one another to make a metal fortress of their own. Judicators ranged themselves behind them, raising their bows in the shelter of the shieldwall. ‘Take aim!’ yelled Thostos.

On top of the wall, horned helmets appeared, in pairs and handfuls then by the dozen, until the whole rampart was a mass of Chaos warriors. But the Judicators did not shoot at them.