THAT WHICH IS LOST

Khamastus Lightningfist leveled his boltstorm pistol and let fly. Three skeletons were smashed off their feet as the Lord-Aquilor’s crackling bolts punched through their skulls. Fresh Deathrattle warriors stalked over their remains, closing the gap as though it had never been. The undead marched in lockstep, forcing the Hammers of Sigmar to retreat up the rocky headland or be overrun.

Rank upon rank of animated skeletons emerged from the grave-pits around the town of Shaleview. The Vanguard Chamber had been sent to put down a coven of Necromancers who had claimed the settlement as their personal fiefdom. Instead, they found themselves facing the entire population of Shaleview, buried then reanimated as a seemingly endless horde.

‘Sigmar’s throne, there’s thousands!’ said Khamastus.

‘An overwhelming number,’ agreed Elethria Stormlight, shooting her own hail of bolts. The Hunter-Prime fought shoulder-to-shoulder with Khamastus, while the last of her warriors poured fire into the enemy. Around them, the survivors of the Vanguard Chamber added their own bolts to the fusillade. Lightning flashed ferociously as Rangers and Raptors fired again and again, stepping back with steady deliberation, aim never wavering. Skeletons exploded into bone shrapnel, or collapsed with skulls shattered and spines severed.

‘We can’t kill enough,’ said Khamastus, his voice crackling with tension. ‘Sigmar forgive me.’

‘What is there to forgive?’ asked Elethria, blasting the head off another skeleton. ‘None of us knew about the mass graves. The coven turned our ambush against us.’

‘I should have known,’ said Khamastus. ‘Perhaps I did, and something inside me chose to strike regardless.’

He caught her glance, then immediately wished he hadn’t. The two had fought together across a hundred battlefields, and Khamastus had never seen such a look in Elethria’s eye. They’d all heard the whispers, muttered rumours of reforged warriors coming back… changed.

‘Now’s not the time for self-flagellation, Khamastus,’ she said, ejecting the magazine from her weapon and smacking another into place. ‘They’re going to be on top of us any moment.’ She resumed firing, dropping two skeletal assailants several paces out of blade-range.

‘Damnation,’ snarled Khamastus, and thunder rumbled overhead. He glanced about for anything to give his forces an edge. There was nothing; just twenty or so Stormcasts, backing up a rocky headland above churning, slate-grey waves. The waters thrashed to white foam about the rocks below. The clouds boiled overhead, mirroring their fury.

That was when he saw the mist, billowing up from the waters below. Khamastus frowned as the Deathrattle advance slowed. The skeletons’ movements became sluggish, their outlines wavering.

‘They… look like they’re underwater!’ exclaimed Elethria. ‘What in Sigmar’s name…?’

‘Back!’ barked Khamastus, his voice the dry crack of summer lightning. ‘Back up the headland, form a defensive line. Reload.’

The Vanguard responded with commendable speed, disengaging from their mysteriously impeded enemies. Yet even they couldn’t restrain exclamations of surprise and confusion as ethereal shapes slithered around the skeletons, bursting from eye sockets and twining through ribcages.

‘Those are fish, or else my eyes deceive me,’ said Elethria.

‘I see them too,’ said Khamastus as they dashed up the headland. Taking their places in the battle-line, both Stormcasts watched what came next with increasing amazement.

The mists thickened and closed in until the Stormcasts seemed to stand upon an island of stone. The muffled boom of the waves was joined by steady drum beats, pounding as though they floated up from some stygian depth beyond the touch of daylight or warmth. Fast as thought, elongated silhouettes shot from the murk, and huge, eel-like shapes scissored back and forth across the headland. Wherever the creatures struck, skeleton ranks exploded apart with spectacular violence. It took Khamastus several moments to realise that humanoid figures crouched low over the backs of the fast-flowing creatures, and lashed out at the Deathrattle warriors with every pass.

Something huge and dark passed overhead, and Khamastus looked up in time to see a leviathan of the deeps swoop impossibly down upon aetheric currents. Lithe figures rode the howdah upon the monster’s back, and as they passed over the skeleton horde they directed hissing hails of shots into the foe.

‘Warriors, running from the mists!’ cried a Ranger.

‘Where in Azyr are they coming from? There’s no ground there,’ said another.

Yet it was true. Pale-fleshed, clad in strange, flowing armour, the figures dashed into battle and struck at the Deathrattle throng with elongated blades and curved bows.

‘Are they aelves?’ asked Elethria.

‘Something akin,’ said Khamastus. ‘But where are their eyes?’

‘They need none, for they hunt by other senses.’ The sibilant voice carried from amidst the mists, which coiled aside to reveal a regal warrior sitting astride a bizarre aquatic beast. His steed towered over Khamastus, the rider pointedly ignoring the boltstorm pistols now aimed at him.

In his wake walked another figure, robed in flowing greys and greens.

‘Lord-Aquilor Khamastus, the tide’s blessings upon you,’ said the mounted aelven lord.

‘You know me, aelf?’ asked Khamastus. ‘How? What spellcraft is this? How have you come to strike so suddenly from the aether?’

The lord didn’t answer, instead casting a look of irritation at his robed comrade. The second aelf quirked an eyebrow and tilted his head, staring hard at Khamastus.

‘Look not to me, Aemorthis,’ the robed figure said. ‘This is no obfuscation of the Isharann. Some other sorcery has clouded his memory, or else damaged it. He knows us not.’

The aelven lord made a guttural sound that Khamastus took to be annoyance, then shook his head.

‘No matter. The tide turns swift and we must ride upon it lest victory be swept from our gasp. Lord-Aquilor, we are of the Idoneth and we have fought at your side before, by the dictates of the secret alliance between our peoples and your lord Sigmar. Will you stare at us like apparitions of nightmare, or will you fight with us to drive back the dead?’

Khamastus glanced at Elethria, who answered his look with a shrug.

‘Whoever they are, if they were planning to kill us, they had ample chance,’ she said. Khamastus felt the storm’s wrath surge in his chest, and a tight, angry smile stretched itself across his features. Even the knowledge that his memories had been somehow corrupted seemed suddenly unimportant, vanishing behind the gathering thunderheads of his war-lust.

‘The enemy of my enemy…’ he said, and his words crackled with Azyrite force. ‘Alright, Aemorthis of the Idoneth. We will settle matters of identity later. For now, the Hammers of Sigmar are your allies. Let us smash these unliving scum together.’

The aelf lord gave a flowing gesture that Khamastus took for assent, then turned his steed toward the melee down the slope.

‘Hammers of Sigmar,’ roared Lord-Aquilor Khamastus, brandishing his blade. ‘Strike like the storm! For vengeance, and for victory!’

His warriors gave a mighty cry, and surged down the headland into battle. As one, the Stormcast Eternals and the Idoneth smashed into the Deathrattle lines, and raised a blizzard of shattered bones. It would not be for the last time.

PRODUCED BY GAMES WORKSHOP IN NOTTINGHAM

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