The Trial of the Chosen

Guy Haley

Under purple skies flickering with far-away storms brooded a vast desert the horizon could not contain.

Its sands appeared coarse, greyish in colour, but closer inspection revealed them not to be sand at all, but crushed bone. In some of the smaller pieces the delicate lattice of desiccated marrow was visible, clinging to sharp-edged shards. The larger fragments were recognisable as the knobbed heads of femurs or curved portions of skull, like pebbles and stones. Few people ever saw the desert and fewer still lived to tell the tale. The realm of Shyish abounds with lands that do not take kindly to the presence of the living. The Bone Sands were among them.

Unlike in a mortal desert, there were no traces of any living creature; no mummified plants awaiting the next rain, no tracks in the rough sand to hint at small creatures eking out a life. There was bone, and more bone, and nothing else, for league after league until the purple sky and grey sand touched at the edge of sight.

But the Bone Sands were not quite empty.

At the very centre was a monumental archway. Though huge, it cast no shadow in the directionless gloom. Two giant plinths stood either side, as tall as towers, their sides covered in bas reliefs depicting the bloodless wars of the dead, still crisp after aeons in the changeless desert. Atop the plinths waited a pair of giant necrosphinxes, facing each other across the broken bones cluttering the ground. The statues were massive beasts of stone and metal with men’s torsos atop lions’ bodies, barbed scorpions’ tails, outstretched wings and twin blade shields on their arms. The statues held their bladed limbs forward to point at one another, forming a lesser arch under which a traveller had to pass on entering or exiting the greater.

The sphinxes were huge, but the gate was bigger. Stacked vertebrae threaded onto green copper rods made the posts of the archway, curving together like monstrous tusks. The bones at the base of the columns were the size of buildings. Those at the apex were tiny, stolen from dead animals of the fields and hedgerows of distant lands. Many of the bones had crumbled. The left column leaned a little because of this erosion, but the structure held and the distortion robbed the edifice of none of its power.

The desert around the gate had a vital tension entirely lacking from the rest. The feeling of magic was strong there, and perhaps it was for this reason that the arch was surrounded by generous heaps of skeletons. All lay face down, their outstretched arms reaching for the arch. They were piled around the base of the plinths, and cluttered the span of the gateway three deep. Examples of all the strange races of the Eight Realms could be found, for all things that die find their way to the underworlds of Shyish in the end.

Pitted weapons were tangled with bones. Brittle cloth was draped over fleshless limbs, ready to vanish into threads and dust at the slightest touch of the desert’s rare winds. Banners were planted in the ground, leaning drunkenly, all colour leached from their blazons. Shields of every conceivable kind hid their designs under the bones of their bearers.

A thing walked out of thin air, growing from ethereality to solidity in the space of five long steps. It was a curious creature, with arms and legs so thin it should not have had the strength to move, but it walked with energetic purpose, its staff clacking down onto the bones with every decisive step. Its long cloak of fluttering eyes stirred the dust into lazy whorls that settled slowly.

This was the Many-Eyed Servant, agent of Tzeentch, but now unwilling vassal of Archaon.

It came to a halt fifty yards before the arch. The aura surrounding everything there – bones, gate and guardians – revealed itself to the sorcerer’s supernatural vision as a deep purple. Very rarely was one colour of magic so clearly presented, and the sorcerer stopped to admire its patterns. The creature remained in contemplation until the weight of its enslavement became palpable, invisible chains of sorcery binding it to the Everchosen’s will. The Many-Eyed Servant became uncomfortable. Archaon saw all, and he was impatient. If the Many-Eyed Servant was not swift, it would be punished.

The Many-Eyed Servant set to work. With keen magesight it pinpointed the parts of the gate that had to be charged with magic. This realmgate had long been dormant, locked and barred by parties unknown through the long centuries of the Age of Chaos.

The Many-Eyed Servant gripped its staff with reedy fingers and raised it over its hoe-shaped head. The line of eyes that crested its face closed in concentration. It began to chant.

It was a powerful sorcerer, and so its magic took effect rapidly. Power blazed from the ends of its staff in braided torrents that unfurled into individual tendrils of lightning, each striking at the gate columns’ vertebrae. They skittered about, probing for the points the Many-Eyed Servant’s magic required. Finding them, the lightning rooted itself in the bone, joining gate to sorcerer. The space between was quickly filled with jumping, arcing currents of yellow, blue and purple. The gateway vertebrae shifted on their copper supports, flexing like trees in a storm. Hidden runes carved into the bone revealed themselves in blazing colours.

The gate glimmered, the air framed by the arch growing thick with light, blurring the vista behind it, then turning opaque.

The Many-Eyed Servant cried out in pain from the magic coursing through it and in exhilaration of its mastery over the energy. Slamming its staff down, it uttered a deafening word of power. The lightning ceased. A blast of energy emanated from the base of the staff, sending a shock wave out across the plain that whipped up an expanding circle of dust and sent it racing towards every horizon. The Bone Sands moaned, a sound akin to the last breath expelled from the lungs of a corpse.

The staff remained embedded in the bony ground, quivering with potency. The Many-Eyed Servant lifted its hands, placed them back to back, and pushed them wide as if it were parting a curtain.

With a silken tearing sound, the realmgate opened onto another world. Some difference in the atmospheres caused an imbalance in the wind, and a gust of tomb-dry air blasted out from the desert, exchanged for the brief, moist scents of leaf mould and animals. The Many-Eyed Servant looked through onto a broad rise of forested mountains somewhere in the realm of Ghur. Men knelt on the other side, two hundred huge killers warped by the power of Khorne, a pair of chained khorgoraths in their midst. The Bloodslaves had been praying to their god to open the way, but as the gate opened they stood. They hefted their weapons and looked suspiciously through into the world beyond. The slaughterpriest Orto, the blood warrior Skull, Danavan Vuul the bloodstoker and the taciturn skullgrinder Kordos, smith of Khorne, who rarely deigned to speak to mortal men, all looked on. These were the leaders of the Bloodslaves, and they gathered around their lord, Ushkar Mir, another silent killer, although unlike Kordos his silence was not by choice. Mir was taller than a man ever should be, massively muscled, his burn-scarred head bound with a tight ring of brass that covered his eyes. The runes stamped into the band were dark for the moment.

‘The way is open! Khorne gives to those who take! Onwards to battle,’ shouted their priest. The Many-Eyed Servant winced at his bellowing. So obnoxious, the priests of Khorne. It pained the sorcerer to make use of such crude pawns.

Ignorant of the sorcerer that had opened the way, Orto lifted his double-handed axe in one fist and pointed it into the bone desert.

The Bloodslaves moved forward with a rattling of armour. They stank of blood and sweat, their beards were stiff with gore, and their filed teeth were yellow. Eyes wild with rage and desperation looked right at the Many-Eyed Servant, but they did not see it. The Many-Eyed Servant was visible only to those it allowed to see.

Mir rumbled a soundless warning and held his hand up. His men stopped.

‘See, my lord!’ said Skull eagerly. His blood-and-blue marbled face was full of triumph. One day this warrior might be a danger, thought the Many-Eyed Servant, but that was a concern for another time. ‘Why do we wait? Khorne has provided!’

Ushkar Mir stared into the Realm of Death. In his head the call of Archaon rang loud. The Many-Eyed Servant could hear it too. For each of the champions it was different; for Mir it was the brazen blare of harsh trumpets and the cries of angry daemons.

The Bloodslaves looked to Ushkar Mir expectantly. For five minutes he stood, before moving without warning straight towards the gate. The Bloodslaves followed unhesitatingly.

They stepped from lush turf to dusty plain in a single step, leaving one realm for another, their boots crunching on shattered bones as they passed into Shyish.

‘Is this the land of Khorne?’ asked one. He kicked a skull from the shoulders of a skeleton. ‘There are many skulls here.’

The khorgoraths sniffed at the bones, but quickly withdrew and mewled. Crumbling bone had no interest for them, and they were hungry.

To the Many-Eyed Servant, the Bloodslaves’ disappointment was obvious. They were wary. This was not the warrior’s welcome they expected Archaon to lavish on them.

‘No,’ growled Orto. ‘Fool! This is Shyish, the Realm of Death. These are bones stolen by the Lord of Death from the Lord of Fury. This is an unholy place.’

‘But where in Shyish?’ asked Skull thoughtfully.

‘Who knows?’ said Orto. His nostrils flared, sniffing at the wind. ‘Shyish is a million underworlds, with ten deaths for every mortal in each.’ He snorted and spat bloody phlegm onto the bones. ‘Khorne will rule it all. It is his right. This is the start.’

Such confidence, such naivety, thought the Many-Eyed Servant.

It was then that the sorcerer chose to be seen, although not in its favoured form. It drew the shape of another over its being and manifested. The champion’s test had begun.

A stirring of dust fifty feet from the gate caught Skull’s eye. He patted Mir’s massive bicep and pointed as the disturbance grew to a tiny whirlwind. Mir looked with his Khorne-given blindsight and saw fragments of bone leaping up from the ground. To Mir’s eyeless vision, the maelstrom was surrounded by flickering fires of magic. He growled and drew the axes Bloodspite and Skullthief. They howled, eager to prove themselves against weakling sorcery.

The whirl of dust grew until a column writhed before Mir. Then it abruptly stilled, what little fragments were carried on its currents pattering to the floor. In its stead stood the skeleton of a man, garbed in the ancient panoply of war, a spiked helmet on its skull, a visor covering its face and ragged robes about its legs. A dull steel sword hung at its side.

Skull took a step. Orto moved forward, axe up. Mir stayed them with the flats of his axes.

The skeletal warrior lifted up its hands to its head and removed the helm, revealing a bony face set with five eye sockets. In each one a lidless eye glistened.

‘What is this?’ asked Skull. He loosened his sword in his scabbard. The Bloodslaves drew around their leader, fear tainting their divine fury.

‘Ushkar Mir hears the call of the Grand Marshal of Ruin!’ pronounced Orto. ‘He comes to serve him!’

The skeleton remained silent.

‘Who are you?’ said Skull. ‘Answer, or I will add your malformed head to Khorne’s bone piles.’

‘It is a test,’ growled Kordos, speaking for the first time in weeks. ‘One does not walk into the camp of Archaon. Mir must prove himself worthy.’

‘Where is he? What do you know of Archaon?’ demanded Skull. But Kordos said no more.

‘Ushkar Mir is worthy,’ said Orto. He clacked his sharpened teeth at the skeleton in challenge.

‘None are worthy until they have proven themselves,’ said Danavan Vuul. ‘A simple truth.’

‘Pah! Let us cut this corpse thing down,’ said Orto. ‘Let us gather fresh skulls for Khorne. Who cares for the glory of Archaon, when Khorne’s hunger is never sated?’

‘Khorne’s fires are not what Mir desires,’ said Skull.

Orto looked at Mir uncertainly. He was still not comfortable with Mir’s blasphemous desire to challenge Khorne, and yet his might was undisputable, as was Khorne’s favour of him.

‘Kordos spoke of tests. Who will set them?’ asked Skull. ‘This creature?’

‘Khorne sets all tests for Mir,’ said Orto.

‘Archaon serves all the four powers,’ said Vuul. ‘We must be wary.’

‘A test of the gods then,’ said Skull. ‘Four in number.’

‘We should attack! Kill it again.’ Orto advanced. Mir motioned again for him to hold. Orto did so reluctantly.

That will be the way, thought Mir. The creature sports many eyes, as did the herald I saw in the sky. He struggled to keep his thoughts straight against the rage of Khorne. The red haze in him thickened daily. He must not forget who he was. Four tests it would be – one for each of the gods. To serve Archaon will aid me, he thought. I will brave these tests. No matter the outcome, there will be bloodletting, and that will take me closer toward my vengeance.

Mir nodded to the skeleton. It inclined its head in response.

‘Mir has accepted the challenge,’ said Orto. ‘Praise be to Khorne.’

‘Stand ready!’ said Skull. He drew his sword and the warriors of the Bloodslaves raised their weapons in response.

Ushkar Mir saw. In his blindsight he saw a dread purple glow creeping across the desert ground, gathering about the skeletons lying there. It was strongest around the great statues guarding the gate.

The first test begins, he thought.

A creak of metal, so loud in that endless silence, made the Bloodslaves start.

The purple light of death magic was strong enough now to be seen by mortal eyes, glowing from every skull. Suddenly the Bloodslaves began slashing downward, smashing bony hands that were stretching out to grasp their ankles and stamping ancient skulls to fragments.

A great host of the dead was clambering up all around them. A bloodreaver went down, bellowing out glory to Khorne as he was torn to pieces by raking fingers.

The worst was yet to come. Mir pointed and growled a warning. The eyes of the necrosphinxes glared with amethyst magic. With the grinding of stone muscles, they turned their heads to look upon the trespassers. At their awakening, the skeletal warriors presented arms, adopting attack positions. The dust of ages poured off the statues as they stepped down from their plinths, revealing skin of black stone and the dull bronze of their mighty weapons. The ring of dead warriors surrounding the Bloodslaves parted noisily to let the sphinxes through, closing ranks once the beasts had trodden heavily past. The Bloodslaves waited uncertainly, brandishing their axes and cursing the silent dead.

Mir did not wait for the attack. Roaring loudly, he shoved his way through his own men and ploughed into the skeleton horde.

‘Skulls! Skulls for Khorne!’ yelled Orto, and the Bloodslaves followed their master.

Sightless eyes tracked axe swings. Skeletons dodged and parried with all the alacrity of the living. This was the Realm of Death, and its servants were strong there. The Bloodslaves roared out their cries to Khorne, but the skeletons fought soundlessly, having no voices with which to speak. They moved mechanically fast, their ancient weapons ringing from dark iron, bones clacking a rapid tattoo.

The Bloodslaves split, each of them heading into a different part of the undead army – all save Skull, who was ever by Mir’s side. Orto went at the head of a phalanx of blood warriors, sweeping his giant axe through brittle ribcages. Kordos strode on alone, his flaming anvil roaring through the air on its chains as he swung it around his head. Every pass decimated the skeletons, shattering them into burning flinders of bone.

Mir made straight for the sphinxes and attacked one head on while the other ploughed into the body of his warband. Though huge and fashioned from stone, they too moved quickly, slicing their arm-blades through the air at such speed that they blurred. The wind of their passing stirred Mir’s fire-scorched hair. He leaned backward, barely evading the cutting edge. Mir swung Skullthief at the living statue’s leg, seeking to cripple it, but the great blade attached to its left fist swept the blow aside and its scorpion tail stabbed down, the gems on it glowing with evil magic.

Mir dodged the sting, and the tail smashed into the carpet of bones on the ground. He swung Bloodspite around with all his considerable might. The daemon axe crashed through the enchanted stone of the tail. The tip came away, and the tail whipped back. The face of the sphinx was an expressionless mask, but it reared up in response to the wound. Its broad lion’s feet pawed at the air before stamping down in an attempt to crush the life from the Chaos warlord. He spun aside, axes whipping round. Bloodspite shrilled in excitement as it bit a chunk of onyx from the left foreleg. Cracks spread from the impact. Mir followed with a hit from Skullthief, and the cracks widened. Splinters of stone sprayed outward and the leg came free, falling to the ground and smashing more of the bones there. The sphinx staggered back, its remaining forepaw thumping down heavily. It limped around on three legs, the veins of minerals in its shattered limb bleeding magic.

Mir attacked again. Deflecting the axe unbalanced the sphinx, and Mir leapt high over the construct’s sweeping blades, twisting his back and body to clear them by inches. He landed on the other side. The crippled necrosphinx staggered around, but Ushkar Mir was already clambering up the decorative bronze-work studding its hide. The creature’s human torso twisted around, but it could not bring its arms, bound as they were into its blades, to bear on Mir.

Howling madly, Mir drew both axes back to his right and swung them together at the creature’s neck. Their supernatural blades cut through the bronze like paper, and clove deep into the stone.

The necrosphinx went rigid and its head toppled from its shoulders. Mir leapt from its back as it fell over onto its side, now only a defaced statue, metal bending and stone limbs cracking free as it crashed down.

The second necrosphinx was in the thick of Mir’s warriors. They attacked from all sides, their weapons marking its smoothly polished hide with chalky scratches, but they could not bring it down. Seeing an opening, Vuul whipped the khorgoraths into the attack. Both took long, deep wounds from the animated statue’s blades, but they did not fall. Driven to greater heights of fury by the bloodstoker’s expert goading, they grappled with the sphinx, holding its arms in place while the rest of the warband laid about it with their weapons. Orto hacked at its back leg, taking chips from the stone with his two-handed axe.

One of the khorgoraths roared, wrenching off the blades from the construct’s stone arm with a squeal of rending metal. The sphinx lashed out with its fist, slashing the khorgorath’s hide with the twisted remnants of its weapon. The khorgorath bit down hard, shattering its own teeth on the arm, but crushing stone nevertheless, and the arm came away.

Mir moved in for the kill, pounding through the swirling melee. He smashed into the side of the necrosphinx, battering at its side with his daemon axes. He howled as his rage was stoked higher by Khorne and the runes in his punishment band burned. Stone chips flew and cracks ran all over the statue’s sides. His followers joined him, jabbing weapons into the crevices Bloodspite and Skullthief had opened up and levering them wider.

Vuul goaded the khorgoraths, manoeuvring one into position on the far side of the statue to Mir while the other hung off the sphinx’s remaining arm. The poisonous tail of the necrosphinx stabbed down, the bronze barb plunging deep into the khorgorath’s back. The crystal bulb on the tail pulsed, and the poison drained away, pumping into the twisted Khornate beast. Bellowing, the khorgorath raised its fists and pummelled at the statue’s back, ripping open its own skin on spined armour as it tore it from its mounts, exposing the fixing pins beneath. Three times the khorgorath’s fists pounded down, each blow weaker than the last. Mir and the Bloodslaves hacked away at the living stone on the other side. Then the khorgorath’s fists descended a final time, and the statue shattered into two pieces joined only by twisted trails of wire.

Its unnatural life left it instantly.

Around the gate the battle was nearly done. The last few skeletons fell under heavy axe blades. Silence returned to the Bone Sands.

The five-eyed skeleton alone remained. Its glistening eyeballs rolled in their sockets in different directions as it took in the aftermath of battle.

Skull leaned panting on his sword hilt not far from Mir. ‘The first test. Fury for Khorne. What is the nature of the second?’

The skeleton raised one hand and pointed. Whether north, east, west or south had any meaning in this realm was unknown to the Bloodslaves, but the purple glow of the sky was brighter in that direction.

The skeleton herald collapsed into the bone carpeting the floor.

Skull turned over its head with a foot, revealing five eye sockets full of dripping ooze. ‘I don’t trust this,’ he said.

Mir grunted. A soft wind whispered over newly shattered bone. Behind him, the poisoned khorgorath was choking out its last painful breaths. The other plodded around the field, stuffing dry skulls into its maw and lowing mournfully, perhaps for the lack of meat to savour, perhaps in sadness for its companion.

‘Ushkar Mir brings us victory!’ shouted Orto. His loud voice was immediately swallowed by the dry vastness of the desert, and the slaughterpriest looked dismayed for a moment.

‘A hard victory,’ said Vuul. He looked at the dying beast. With a last rattling moan, it expired.

Many Bloodslaves had died on the march to the gate. Two dozen at least had fallen to ancient blades here. There had been two thousand Bloodslaves only months ago. Less than a tenth remained.

‘Mir leads us. What does Mir command?’ asked Skull.

Ushkar Mir grunted and pointed with his chin to the lighter patch of sky.

‘Onward, then,’ said Skull. He plucked his sword from the dry earth, and sheathed it. ‘More skulls await, though precious little blood in this dusty place.’

If a sun shone over the Bone Sands, it was forever hidden by louring clouds. There was a day and a night of sorts, but the cycle played inconstantly. A day might last ten hours, or one. The land never grew any brighter than when they had first arrived, and the nights were utterly black, starless and frigid. The Bloodslaves’ lips blued and they shivered in the chill. They had nothing to burn and nothing to hunt. Each man carried only scanty provisions. There was no change to the relentless landscape. Horizons receded before their march to reveal yet more endless flat land, its featurelessness broken only by isolated skulls or ribcages that had escaped the attentions of time.

All save Kordos felt the punishments of thirst and hunger. The skullgrinder was sustained by the unholy fires of his chained altar.

By the end of the third day, their meat and drink had been exhausted.

The Bloodslaves’ confident march became halting. They dragged their weapons through the dust, leaving wavering trails behind them.

On the fifth night, the Bloodslaves fell on the weakest among them.

Darkness came suddenly. They huddled together as close as they dared as the temperature plummeted. Some instinct took a sole bloodreaver away from the rest. One too many hungry glances in his direction, maybe. He sat crosslegged, his hands on his weapons, but he could not defeat sleep. He had had no rest for days. No power can keep man from rest forever, unless he is highly favoured by the Four.

Three men attacked as soon as the drowsy bloodreaver’s head nodded onto his chest. He was up quickly at the sound of their approach. He desperately dispatched one of his attackers, but if he had hoped that this provision of unlooked for meat would save his life, he had been mistaken. He had been marked for death, and in that realm death did not relent.

Skull, Vuul, Mir, Orto and Kordos watched as the bloodreaver was killed. The warrior’s axe halted a blow aimed overhand for the crown of his head, but he had nothing to stop the knife that one of his erstwhile comrades plunged up under his ribs, piercing his heart. He fell dead instantly – a mercy. The Bloodslaves were not above eating their victims alive.

‘Fresh meat!’ rumbled Orto. The brassiness of his god-voice was diminished by thirst, and the desert was quicker to steal it the further they went into it.

‘Aye,’ said Skull. ‘We eat, but there are fewer of us.’

‘The weak perish,’ hissed Vuul. His lips dripped at thought of the feast. He wiped them on the back of his arm.

‘That they do,’ said Skull. ‘But there can only be one who is strongest. Do we devour each other until he remains, then starves himself?’ He half drew his sword, then slammed it back into its scabbard.

The rest of the band gathered around the corpses of the bloodreaver and his felled killer. They waited, glassy-eyed with hunger, as the bodies were stripped. Two skullreapers hoisted the slain bloodreaver up by his ankles. A third crouched and slit the throat. Life fluid drained from the cut neck, splattering on the dust.

‘Meat for us, blood for Khorne,’ said Orto, his voice growing stronger at the sight of the blood.

‘Meat! Khorne provides!’ responded the others.

They cut their dead comrade’s head free.

‘Skulls for Khorne!’ shouted Orto.

‘Skulls! Skulls! Skulls!’ howled the others.

‘No,’ a voice boomed across the desert. The Bloodslaves looked around fearfully.

‘Look!’ cried one. He pointed at the ground, and they all stepped back. Where the blood wetted the bone dust it bubbled and hissed.

They readied their weapons. A figure rose from the ground, slathered in blood at first, but the fluid froze and cracked away to reveal a greenly glowing phantom within. Its ghostly eyes were blank orbs and its face bore no expression, but its mouth jerked to a will not its own.

‘This land belongs to Lord Nagash. All who perish are his,’ spoke the phantom.

Spectres arose from the ground all around the Bloodslaves and flew over to spiral around the first, making a terrible shrieking that had the Bloodslaves clapping their hands over their ears.

‘No!’ shouted Orto. ‘These skulls are Khorne’s! Begone!’

Three skullreapers lunged for the spirit. Their twin blades slashed the air, cutting nothing. The spirits moved around them like weeds disturbed in water, swirling about but never snagging. Their eyes grew brighter and they shrieked, diving down on the Bloodslaves. Their touch was death. Ethereal claws slid into chests and men’s eyes bulged as their hearts stopped. The Bloodslaves were brave and fired by the righteous wrath of Khorne, but against a foe that no weapon could touch they began to waver. The remaining khorgorath moaned, batting at the untouchable spirits as their hands caressed its warped flesh, leaving blackened trails of necrotic tissue in their wake. One swooped low, scooping up the half-flayed head of the slain bloodreaver, and started to retreat.

Mir had no fear of the spirit host. His men drew strength from his example, forming up as best they could around him as he strode into the thick of the spirits. Skullthief and Bloodspite hissed through the air. The daemons within whined at the touch of the dead, for they were of fire and hate and the coldness of the grave was unpleasant to them, but Mir forced them to strike. Wherever the axes fell, the spirits dissipated into shreds of vapour that were sucked screaming into the blades. They tried to flee, what little was left of their mortal souls terrified of the deathbringer’s axes, but they all fell to Mir and were consumed. He pursued the last, that which had stolen the skull of the bloodreaver, and hewed it from the air. Orto plucked the head from the dust and brandished it triumphantly.

Only the first phantom remained. It turned doleful white eyes on the deathbringer. Once again, its mouth seemed puppeted by some distant, malign entity.

‘You shall suffer for this insult. These are the lands of death!’

With a mighty cry it departed, shooting skyward as a pillar of green light. Where it hit the clouds above there was a flaring, and a single peal of thunder boomed across the sky. It echoed across the desert for an age.

‘Khorne’s meat! Khorne’s blood!’ shouted Orto.

There were many corpses now, thanks to the spirits’ attack.

‘We feast! To victory! To Mir!’ bellowed Orto.

‘Ushkar Mir! Khorne! Blood and flesh!’ The Bloodslaves cheered and drew their knives, advancing hungrily on their dead.

From nowhere, a sudden wind blew, dry but laden with the scent of slow putrefaction, whipping hair into eyes and choking the men with whirling dust. The Bloodslaves’ looks of anticipation turned to horror and woe, for the corpses withered in front of their eyes. Skin turned grey and flesh wizened. Lips drew back in hideous black grins. The bodies of the fallen dried to husks in an instant. Their skeletons collapsed to the ground where they fell into brittle pieces, as ancient in appearance as the bones they joined. Most were reduced to a powder that was carried away by the fell wind.

A few corpses held together, scraps of dried flesh adhering to their bones. Two bloodreavers, one desperate in his hunger, the other disdainful of the magic of the dead, tore off strips of this matter. It was tough, leathery as jerky. They worked their mouths on it hard, the hungry man fearful, the other laughing in his boldness.

They died choking on the flesh of their fallen brethren. Black lines ran over their skin, a map of corruption depicted by tainted veins. They fell, fingers scrabbling at the ground.

The Bloodslaves watched nervously. The wind did not return, and the bodies remained whole, but they did not eat these last casualties. Nor did they attempt to slaughter one of their own again. The servants of Khorne had learned wary respect for Nagash’s domain.

‘Onward,’ croaked Skull.

The Bloodslaves’ ranks thinned further as they succumbed to thirst. At first those falling listlessly were the weaker bloodreavers, but it was not long before the blood warriors started to drop, then even the mighty skullreapers, whose Khorne-given might availed them not against the harshness of the desert. Still the Bloodslaves followed Mir, who was fixed single-mindedly on the call of Archaon. Always it sounded in his ears, sometimes so faint he had to strain to hear it, at other times blaring so loudly in the night that all his followers heard it. Orto exhorted them to go on, while Skull whispered terror into their ears. Kordos said nothing.

One pale morning, the last khorgorath left them. As the Bloodslaves twitched awake from dreams of corpse banquets, the beast consumed the skulls of four warriors dead of thirst in the night. Ordinarily the creature would have continued its snuffling after fresh skulls to devour, whimpering at the endless pain that dogged it. Not this time.

The last skull eaten, the khorgorath stood erect, head held high and eyes wide. It came out of some stupor, for it gazed around the warband as if seeing it for the first time. It took up the chains that hobbled it in paws that had mutated into snapping mouths. Weighing them for a moment, it tugged hard, then wrenched, until it had split them asunder.

‘The beast!’ hissed Skull, kicking the bloodstoker, Vuul. ‘It is loose! Use your whip! Do something!’

Vuul looked up, startled.

‘Catch it!’ roared Orto. ‘Stop it from escaping!’

Several warriors advanced on it, grabbing at its manacles, but the khorgorath was indifferent to their efforts. It walked away, dragging the men that would not let go behind it and swatting at those who attempted to bar its progress.

Ushkar Mir reached for his axes, but the pudgy, calloused hands of Danavan Vuul stopped him.

‘No my lord, it cannot be stopped,’ he said. ‘Orto! Skull! Do not stand in its way.’

The others faltered, looking to Mir. Mir nodded that they should obey. The men got out of the beast’s path.

‘It has eaten its fill of skulls,’ explained Vuul. ‘Now it must return to the Lord Khorne and vomit them at his feet. Later it will return to the Mortal Realms. Maybe it will come back to us, maybe not.’

‘Let us hope,’ said Skull, rejoining his lord.

Orto stood at the edge of the crowd and watched the khorgorath go, then his long, mutated legs brought him back to the side of the deathbringer and bloodstoker. ‘It is true. It is the sacrament of beasts. As we smash skulls upon Kordos’ anvil, or stack them into cairns so that they might be taken up by Khorne, the khorgorath has its own way of honouring the Blood God.’

‘You should have prevented it from feasting!’ said Skull. ‘That is a sore loss.’

Vuul shrugged. ‘I kept watch upon it and my whip kept it from consuming too many skulls. Who else took upon themselves this duty? I am no beastmaster. If it is time for it to depart, then that is as Khorne wishes. The khorgoraths are his creatures.’

‘It is the will of Khorne,’ agreed Orto. ‘Do not question it.’

They watched the Khorgorath plod away from the warband. The desert air was clear, and even after they took up their march again in the opposite direction, the khorgorath could be seen as a dark shape far away, until a flash of fiery light carried it away from the Bone Sands and the realm of Shyish.

‘It is still a sore loss,’ spat Skull.

The twelfth day came. Armoured corpses marked the Bloodslaves’ trail as far as the horizon, lonely metal islands in the bone dust. Above, the clouds cleared a little, finally revealing glimpses of a dim, purple sun. When it shone, the desert turned violet and made their eyes ache. There was no change to the desert until Skull stopped and raised his hand to shield his eyes against the glaring sky. He caught Mir’s wrist.

‘My lord! Look!’

Some distance away there was an irregularity on the horizon. The Bloodslaves picked up their pace, staggering and half dead though they were, desperate for something other than ceaseless dust and bone to look upon.

Giant stone skulls were set in a circle facing outward. The spaces between them were tangled with a thicket of black-leaved thorns. As they grew nearer, the tell-tale glint of water shone.

‘An oasis!’ they cried. ‘Water!’

They jogged toward the oasis, many abandoning their weapons and throwing themselves at the bushes to get at the pool they guarded. Thumb-sized spikes of wood tore at their skin as they fought their way through. Others, more circumspect, hacked at the branches with axe and sword.

Mir marched up and swung Bloodspite at the bush.

‘I am no woodsman’s axe, to cut back the weeds!’ protested the weapon. ‘I am the chosen killer of Khorne!’

Down Bloodspite came anyway, forced to do Mir’s will. Where it cut into the tangle, the thorn bushes curled back, shrinking away like paper from fire. In a moment, the way was clear and the Bloodslaves were through. A silver-grey pool awaited, as still as a mirror. Mir’s men bounced from his back as they struggled past him, throwing themselves at the water. Mir watched them.

‘Stop! Stop!’ shouted Orto, his commanding voice ruined by thirst. He went to the men and pulled them from the water’s edge, but those there did not heed him and drank deeply. ‘This land is cursed!’

The men started to cry out. Those not yet at the water backed away cautiously as several of their comrades were afflicted by wracking pain. They splashed around in the water, crying for mercy and gripping at their heads.

Flesh convulsed and warped, limbs withered, and new ones sprang in profusion from backs bent into fantastical shapes. One man screamed as his bones tore themselves from his skin, the bloody skeleton running laughing into the desert, leaving the man’s soft parts behind as a heaving mess. Another lit up with blue flames that did not consume him as they burned, and the bloodreaver writhed and screamed until Orto cut off his head. The rest mutated rapidly, dying as their hearts gave out under the strain.

Orto pointed into the oily water. Green light pulsed in the depths.

‘Warpstone. This oasis is poisoned.’

There was a crack of thunder and a smell of brimstone. Over the water the messenger of Archaon appeared.

It was the same being as before, but in a different form, one assembled from other remains. The eyes were the same, nestling moistly in a skull ten thousand years dry, but the skull was different, as were the clothes and the rest.

‘New bones for our examiner,’ croaked Skull. ‘Why does it show itself now? Is it another test?’

‘I say Mir has completed three,’ said Orto. ‘Fury for Khorne, endurance for Nurgle,’ he looked at the shivering remains of the mutated Bloodslaves, ‘and restraint for the Dark Prince.’

‘You guess. These tests could go on forever,’ said Vuul.

Skull scowled at him. ‘You were vocal in your support for Lord Ushkar Mir.’

‘That was then, this is now. This gambit offers no reward. The call of Archaon could be false.’

‘It is not false.’ Skull pointed back at the desert. ‘If you are unhappy, leave. My lord is ready for the fourth test,’ said Skull.

‘Then what is it?’ snapped Vuul.

The skeleton responded by pointing to the water.

Now Skull felt doubt. ‘No, no! The water offers only death.’ He drew his sword and waved it at Archaon’s herald.

The skeleton gestured and the sword flew from Skull’s hand. Another gesture stayed his attack, freezing him in place, and a third lifted him into the air. Skull made a strangled noise.

‘Maybe, maybe,’ murmured Orto. ‘To drink deeply of this oasis is to die as you have seen. But to take one drop – could it bring power, visions, wisdom?’

‘It will kill him,’ said Vuul.

‘I drink of the slaughtergruel. That is deadly, if one is unworthy. Mir is worthy.’ Orto addressed Ushkar Mir. ‘You, Ushkar Mir, must face this trial and triumph, or the way to Archaon will be closed to you and we will all die.’

‘How can you know?’ said Vuul.

‘Khorne whispers in my ear. He must drink but a single drop!’

‘It is his choice, not yours, slaughterpriest. What will Lord Mir do?’ asked Vuul.

Orto grunted. ‘Cowardice is not Khorne’s way!’

Ushkar Mir was already kneeling by the pool. He extended one huge finger to the surface, and touched the water. The mirror surface broke but slightly, rings of ripples chasing each other and fading fast.

Skull fell to the ground with a clatter.

‘I do not see we have much choice,’ he said.

‘Nevertheless, it is our lord’s choice,’ said Orto. ‘It is not ours. He is the chosen of Khorne!’ He held his axe aloft in his hand and the remaining Bloodslaves fell to their knees.

Raising the finger to his exposed teeth, Ushkar Mir looked at the herald of Archaon. Its five eyes stared back.

‘But one drop!’ warned Orto.

Mir extended his crimson tongue, and licked the tip of his finger.

Immediately, the world went black.

Ushkar Mir fell through darkness. Wind rushed past him, but even its roaring could not subdue the far-away bellows of Khorne, demanding more blood and war. The call of Archaon he heard also, a trumpet blast that went on and on, unvarying in pitch and volume.

Then it was over and he was upon solid ground. Rain hammered off his head. It revived him, washed the dust from him. He licked at it, running his tongue over his arms and his chin to catch the moisture and moaned at the relief it brought from days of thirst. Noise of a different sort came to his ears – the sounds of battle. A wall of rough stone met his hands, and he scrabbled at it ineffectually. Shakily, he got to his feet, alarmed at the weakness in him, but it quickly passed. His sight returned and he found himself leaning upon a parapet looking down into a cauldron of war. Daemons and mortal followers of Khorne seethed around the base of mighty city walls, as numerous as ants.

Towering bloodthirsters whipped on lesser daemons and humans alike as they pushed at the bases of brass siege towers, two hundred feet tall. There were dozens of towers, absurd in scale. They should not have moved at all. But Chaos has no respect for the natural laws of Mortal Realms, and move they did. Gargants and other, less recognisable things strained in harnesses at the towers’ fronts. As Mir watched, one was speared by nine long bolts hurled by war machines from the wall, and fell howling. It did not matter. Its traces were cut, its body hauled aside by dog-faced beastmen, and the siege tower ground forward. The towers moved slowly, but were indomitable. Boulders rattled off their thick plating. The fire from magical artillery fizzled harmlessly from their spell wards. Every hit that was turned aside marked another dozen feet moved toward the wall.

Lightning boomed in stormy skies. The churning clouds were black, patterned with bright blue lightning. The wall on which Mir stood was deserted by the living, and choked with the dead. Proud knights and humble soldiers lay contorted in the positions of final agony, commoner and lord intertwined. Death holds no regard for rank.

The rain pouring out of the gargoyle spouts set into the wall’s outer face was coloured red with blood washed from the wall-walk. Mir knew, remembered, that soon the skies would send down not water but blood. A great tear would open in the very stuff of the realm, and the kingdom of Khorne would send forth its mightiest daemon legion. Already three of the five bastions he could see from his position had fallen, and the wall was riven with cracks. It would not be long now.

He looked again on the last day of Mir, and his last hours as a mortal.

‘I should kill you where you stand, traitor,’ said a voice behind him.

Mir turned suddenly, taken unawares for the first time in decades.

A tall, powerfully built man stood there. He wore a lamellae coat of iron plates enamelled red and gold, and a tall helmet with a horse hair plume. In his hands he held twin axes of blue steel.

‘And yet why do I not?’ asked the man curiously.

Ushkar Mir gaped, the rain running into his lipless mouth.

‘Ushkar Mir,’ he said, discovering to his amazement that he could speak once more. The words were clumsy, his lack of lips hindering his ability to talk, although less than it should. The man before him was Mir as he had been, before that terrible choice. A choice that, the Mir of the future realised, must soon be made again.

‘That I am. General of this city, and until hours ago bearer of its last hopes. But hope has deserted me.’ He looked hard at Mir. ‘How came you here to the top of this wall? None of the Blood God’s servants have surmounted it alive. Are you an assassin, come to kill me before the final attack? I did not think that your lord’s way, but then, we have irked him for some time.’ He smiled sorrowfully. ‘Tell me, before I kill you, what is your name?’

‘Ushkar Mir,’ said the future Ushkar Mir.

The Mir of the past shifted back in alarm. ‘What?’ He searched Mir’s face for any recognisable feature. ‘That may be so. I have fought too long against the madness of Chaos to discount anything. That time is not free from the perversion of the Four surprises me not at all. But if it is the case, then I am much changed.’

‘Khorne,’ said Mir. ‘He... Argh!’

This latest test was the worst of all. Pain attacked Mir from every angle. His punishment band glowed with heat, his heart thudded with anger fit to burst, his blinded eyes ached. Worst was the pain in his soul. All the rest was imposed from without, but this pain came from deep within and tormented him mercilessly.

‘Look at you grovel. How could I become such a thing? No doubt I am offered the choice of the Dark Feast.’

Mir nodded.

‘And I fail?’ said the Mir of the past.

‘Not failure!’ gasped Mir. He pitted his will against his punishment band, pushing back the heat. He managed with effort, a feat he had not accomplished before. Perhaps this was some effect of his journey through time, or perhaps he was strengthened by the presence of his purer self.

‘Revenge?’ said the Mir of the past.

Mir nodded. ‘I fight in his wars, but I have but one goal. I will stand before him and spit in his face, and bury my axes in his head.’

The Mir of the past laughed. ‘That does sound like me.’ His laughter deserted him. ‘How many innocents have you slaughtered to further your vengeance?’

‘Thousands,’ said Mir. ‘They would have died anyway, and for ignoble ends. There is nothing good left. Better a quick death for the weak. After Mir falls, there is only Chaos. Revenge is all there is.’

‘Revenge that can never be achieved!’ said Mir of the past. ‘They say Khorne is as tall as a mountain and as mighty as the sun! Nothing can fight him. No man or daemon can kill the Blood God.’

‘Gods die,’ said Mir.

‘By the hand of the likes of us?’ Mir frowned. ‘Impossible. The realms are large and not all the free people will fall. I still harbour hopes of that. Better to kill as many of these filth as I can, and die with honour.’

‘I once thought so, but all kingdoms fall, one by one,’ said the Mir of the future bitterly. ‘To serve Chaos is your only chance at survival, and the only path to revenge.’ He shook his head. ‘This cannot be. This is an illusion. I have not been as you are for five hundred years.’

The Mir of the past silently contemplated their situation. ‘If it is an illusion, then you are the illusion, not I – one last torture before I die. The Chaos Gods are boundless in their cruelty.’ But then he closed his eyes. ‘No. This is real. I feel it.’

The Mir of the future felt it too. He felt his memories change. He recalled this meeting from the other side, many years ago. Within a minute, he could not remember ever having not recalled it.

They watched as magical fire shot in a giant plume to engulf one of the towers, burning so hot the metal of its superstructure glowed red and ignited. Screams of pain and outrage sounded from that quarter, as showers of burning brass mingled with the rain fell among the warriors of Khorne.

‘If you are myself from some distant time, tell me what befalls me,’ said the Mir of the past. ‘How do I go from this to you.’

‘In but a short time, the rain will turn to blood. The Lord of Skulls will open the gates to his own realm, and the worst of his hellish legions will come out. The city will fall. You will fight every step of the way while everything you care for and love is destroyed. Finally, in despair you will be taken, alive, at the steps of the Old Palace, and given the choice by Korghos Khul himself.’

‘You said yes to this choice.’

‘With my voice I did. With my heart, I did not,’ said Mir. ‘I say no every day. Khorne took my voice for defying him. He put this band upon me to torment me. But I amuse him, I think. He keeps me alive. That will be his mistake.’

The Mir of the past looked at his twisted future in disgust. ‘Then I thank you for showing me the consequences of revenge. I shall make sure to choose differently.’

‘No!’ shouted Mir. But his earlier self had brought his axes up with blurring speed. Mir’s arm was cut deep.

‘Stop! Wait!’ he shouted.

‘I will slay you first. You have become what I most fear, all for a coward’s moment of weakness. Death is preferable to this.’

The steel axes came at Mir’s head. But the Mir of the past stopped suddenly, his eyes wide with surprise. His axes fell from nerveless hands.

Mir of the future wrenched Skullthief out of his earlier self’s chest. The Mir of old had been a mighty hero, but the Mir of the Bloodslaves was blessed by Khorne. No normal man could best him.

‘No!’ screamed Ushkar Mir. ‘No!’

Then a most curious thing happened. A lightning bolt smote the wall-walk where Ushkar Mir had died. The Mir of the future was thrown back, dazed. When he recovered his wits, his earlier self had gone.

Ushkar Mir had no time to ponder this new development. The first of the siege towers hit the wall. Its brazen drawbridge clashed down onto the parapet and the warriors of the Blood God streamed across.

Very well, if his earlier self was not here to fight, then Mir would take his place. Mir ran forward to engage them, to spill their blood again and try vainly to save his home. But the wall dissolved beneath his feet, and the battle’s noise vanished. He wheeled his arms as he fell back into blackness, helplessly falling.

Ushkar Mir’s body convulsed. He sat bolt upright, coughing hard. Black sludge poured from his mouth. When he reached his hand up to wipe it away his arm twinged with pain. Looking down, he saw the gash inflicted by the Ushkar Mir of the past, and marvelled at it.

‘You have succeeded,’ said a voice from the sky. The skeleton fell apart, splashing into the pool. The sky wobbled, and a huge skull set with five eyes shimmered into being in the heavens. The sky convulsed again, and the daemon-thing that Mir had seen in the Bloodbloom Fields revealed itself to all the Bloodslaves.

‘The way is open!’ said the Many-Eyed Servant. Its voice sounded loudly, from everywhere, and the Bloodslaves shrank back from it. ‘I judge you worthy. Go to Archaon and submit your pledge. The final decision rests with him. You will find him elsewhere in Shyish. Beware, for others come also.’

‘Do we fight them?’ shouted Skull.

‘That is up to Mir,’ said the herald.

The vision, Mir tried to say. Was it real? All that came from his mouth was animal moaning. The herald understood.

‘All choices carry consequences, Ushkar Mir. Choose wisely!’

A crackle of magic ran from horizon to horizon. The bushes withered to nothing and the pool was sucked away into the ground, leaving no trace of its existence. The skulls pulled themselves under the ground. Endless desert once again greeted the Bloodslaves, and they wailed in despair.

‘A trick!’ hissed Vuul.

‘Wait,’ said Orto.

A light shone over the place where the pool had been. A bright star as large as a fist flared into being before Mir’s face, rays of hard light stabbing out from it. The desert wavered through its light. The star burst outwards. A shower of sparkling motes hit the ground and a way opened up.

The Bloodslaves looked through the portal and saw a new land where a kinder sun shone. Dark against the horizon was a range of low hills covered in sere grasses. The tiny dots of birds wheeled in the sky. It was arid, but a paradise in comparison to the Bone Sands. Warm wind blew through the gate.

The horns of Archaon blared again. Ushkar Mir stood. He probed the wound he had taken in his vision, uncertain what it meant. Was what had happened real or illusory, or both?

Skull sniffed at the wind. ‘I smell decay.’

Orto pointed through the gate. On the faraway hills a line of marching figures went along a ridge. The faint strains of cheerful music reached their ears along with the foetid reek.

‘The servants of pestilence. Filth-eaters,’ said Orto.

‘The others the herald spoke of,’ said Vuul.

‘Some. There will be more,’ said Orto. ‘We will slay them all.’

Mir was not listening. He put the vision from his mind. There was only blood and skulls, and the distant possibility of vengeance. Nothing else mattered.

He sheathed his axes, and set out towards his destiny.

About the Author

Guy Haley is the author of the Space Marine Battles novel Death of Integrity, the Warhammer 40,000 novels Valedor and Baneblade, and the novellas The Eternal Crusader, The Last Days of Ector and Broken Sword, for Damocles. His enthusiasm for all things greenskin has also led him to pen the eponymous Warhammer novel Skarsnik, as well as the End Times novel The Rise of the Horned Rat. He lives in Yorkshire with his wife and son.

The storm breaks as the Stormcast Eternals go into battle for the first time. Read the first book set in the Age of Sigmar.

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Published in Great Britain in 2015 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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