Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

The wind from the manticore’s flight buffeted Thostos as it swooped low. The heavy paws of the monster struck a furrow through the Celestial Vindicators, killing some and scattering many more. Stormbolts chased the flying creature of Chaos. One struck home, causing the beast to howl in rage, but the lord was a skilful rider, and he swept his beast from side to side, dodging all the fire but that single bolt.

Thostos barged his way to the front. As commanded, the Chaos warriors were reforming their own lines, and now the Celestial Vindicators found themselves in isolated groups against a well-organised foe.

‘Match them. Match them! Shieldwall to shieldwall!’ Thostos cried. ‘Shieldwall, then for the gate!’

The Celestial Vindicators locked shields for the third time with supreme discipline, and marched in unison, but a wall of fire sprang up in front of the Chaos warriors, and the Tzeentchian soldiery attacked without fear of reprisal. The flickering pink and golden flames turned hammer and sword, but their own blades stabbed out without hindrance. The manticore swooped overhead again, the sword of its rider taking heads to the left and right. He laughed as he slew. The energies of slain Stormcasts shot upwards, only to be sucked into the castle. Stormbolts burst apart on the firewall, and the Chaos warriors killed and killed.

‘Back, back! Retreat twenty paces. Move!’ called Thostos.

Flawlessly, the Stormcast Eternals went backwards, shields still to their fore, opening a space between themselves and the Chaos warriors. The Tzeentchian host paused for a moment. It was enough.

‘Judicators, aim for the ground!’ shouted Thostos.

As soon as he had spoken, a rain of hissing bolts rose up and fell down. Half fizzed out or exploded upon the magical shield protecting the warriors, while the rest slammed into the metal ground before them. A crackling storm of energy arced across the front of the Chaos warriors’ company, creeping under the fire shield and coursing through the metal-clad warriors behind. They jerked and danced, before collapsing dead and smoking.

The fires guttered out. The laughter of the manticore’s rider turned to screams of anger, and the Stormcast Eternals charged back into their enemy, striking down the few who had survived.

The gates swung shut, but Thostos saw his opening. The walls for a hundred yards either side of the gate had been cleared of warriors. Thostos grinned. The problem with studding a castle wall with skulls, he thought, is that it makes it very easy to climb.

‘To the walls,’ he cried. ‘To the walls!’

Thostos and his followers made a quick ascent, fingers digging into the soft copper of the skulls adorning the walls. Below, more Stormcast Eternals hacked at the walls directly, caving in the skulls that had consumed their comrades, burying their swords into them or ripping them from the walls. Each one destroyed burst with a flash of released magic.

All along the defences the same thing was happening. Thunderbolt crossbows burned whole stretches of the wall bare. Judicators and Prosecutors covered their comrades as they hacked at the fabric of the fortress. Where a skull was ruptured that imprisoned the essence of a Stormcast Eternal, the energy roared upwards, booming with the joy of release.

Thostos hauled himself up the last few feet of the wall, the power invested in his limbs by Sigmar allowing him to climb quickly even in his heavy armour. He vaulted over the crenellations, drawing his weapons again as he landed. Chaos warriors were running along the wallwalk, but too late to stop him. His men were already over, and the clamour of battle erupted along a section of the wall.

‘Force them back!’ he roared. ‘Make room for our brothers!’ Thostos growled with the fierce joy of vengeance. He broke a savage’s jaw with the hilt of his sword and kicked another over the battlements.

Shouts, grunts and the clang of metal. He revelled in it, in the blood, in the struggle and the burn in his muscles. A flash transmuted a Stormcast next to him to a guttering puddle of thick liquid. Two more stopped dead, frozen in place, then melted like hot wax. Another turned into a crystal statue in a puff of purple smoke. Transformed mid run, he toppled from the battlement and shattered on the flagstones of the bailey. Flashes of departing magic struggled for the sky, but the fortress was still consuming the essence of the Bladestorms. Thostos smashed down another warrior, and searched for his quarry.

The sorcerer floated ten yards out from the wall on his golden disc; a tall, gaunt man with long horns. He was much altered from a man’s usual form, a long-serving servant of Chaos. He was chanting wildly, hurling magic that killed Thostos’s warriors. ‘Bring him down!’ he shouted. ‘Kill the sorcerer!’