Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

Memories bubbled and slipped from Thostos, a fleeting impression of darkness and snatching hands tearing at his spirit. He was moving fast and lost in the light. The pain was so great it overcame the universe. An ocean of agony, deeper than time. He could not recall his name. He remembered… Where? A land of giant beasts, a castle in a country considered civilised. A kind father, a good life.

He remembered its end. Blood and death and pain for those he loved.

He smelled the ruin of it, thick and cloying, and he gasped. No air came into his lungs, only energy, raw and crackling. He had no lungs. Something convulsed. There was no body. Was it his soul?

Caeran. Was that his name?

Something twitched in the stormlight, a zygote that split and divided rapidly.

A woman’s face. His mother? An aunt? He did not recognise them, but the sight of them brought the need for vengeance.

A man’s face, crowned with a circle of red gold. Dead. Consumed. He raged at the thought, and the need for revenge gripped him more tightly. In the wash of light, delicate bones rapidly thickened, became a hand bare of flesh, a hand that clenched. He felt muscles grow, the strands of their fibres wrapping around one another. More bones erupted from the stuff of magic, caging organs that inflated wetly. A skull crept over a newly sprouted brain.

The pain worsened.

There was another castle, where he had another name. A land of metal. A horned man.

So much pain! He thrashed, trailing streamers of raw nerves that sparked excruciatingly.

The process quickened, but in truth the duration could have been months or seconds. Thostos had no frame of reference for time, only the pain. All he knew was that the sequence of growth increased in pace. Skin, hair, teeth, nails. Or something like them, something that had their semblance, but that lacked their solidity.

Agony seized his skull as a new face grew over it, twin pits of pain where fresh eyes budded.

He could not bear it.

Time ceased. He was elsewhere. A castle of stone, hung with dreadful fruits. A castle of metal, bursting under the strain of stolen magic.

A castle that hid a great prize…

‘Thostos!’

His God-King called to him.

‘Thostos!’

His king.

‘Thostos Bladestorm!’

Thostos, was that his name? Yes. The name given to him by the God-King, the lord of light. Sigmar’s gift, a new name for a new life. Had there been another?

A man, a woman. A burning castle. Vengeance. Memories of that time slipped away, became blurred, and were lost to him forever.

He was Thostos. Thostos Bladestorm of the Celestial Vindicators. There was no other, not any longer. Guilt persisted, a leftover of another world, cool and unyielding as a diamond, that was all he had left.

Never again would he fail.

Another light replaced the first, softer, soul-cleansing. It rinsed him through and through, and he let out a sharp breath as the last vestiges of his pain slipped from him.

‘Stand, Thostos Bladestorm!’ Words of gentle thunder. The memory of the pain was wiped away.

The light dimmed, resolving itself into the shape of a great man, a god. Sigmar Heldenhammer, seated in the throne of Azyr. Thostos knew his face better than he knew his own. Tall and regal, majesty manifest, a man clad in the light of godhood. Thostos blinked. He held up his hand in wonder to eyes that smarted in their newness. His hand, armoured in its celestial turquoise, whole and unharmed.

‘We shall kneel no more,’ said Sigmar. He gestured, encouraging Thostos to rise.

The Lord-Celestant of the Bladestorms stood on legs that felt insubstantial, as if his armour were all that gave them shape. There was strength there; he did not shake or fall, but it did not feel like it was his. It was loaned to him from elsewhere. Or stolen.

‘Your Reforging is complete,’ said Sigmar.

Thostos recognised where he was: in the throne room of Sigmar, a hall suited to the God-King’s majesty. Others stood behind Thostos, lesser beings than Sigmar though great in their way, the Lord-Celestants of a dozen stormhosts.

How had he come to be there? He had no memory of entering this room, or of kneeling. He remembered… he remembered metal…

‘Now tell me of Chamon,’ prompted the God-King.

There was an eagerness to Sigmar. He was triumphant. What did he expect Thostos to say? What had he done?

Thostos swallowed. His throat felt different. His limbs buzzed with magic. What had happened to him?

‘There was…’ he began. His words sounded hollow in his ears. ‘There was a fortress of magic. We breached its walls, only to die in a burst of unlight that was fought by a greater light.’

Sigmar leaned forward. ‘Speak to me of this greater light.’

There was more, there was… death. Dark lands, a covetous presence thwarted. He had died. There was a chill in his heart that had not been there before. He had lost something. He remembered clawing, skeletal hands and shuddered.