See No Evil

Rob Sanders

The searing gaze of the Many-Eyed Servant travelled far. Nothing was beyond his regard. He could see an entire people put to the blade and moments later the cavernous emptiness in the heart of the man who had ordered such an atrocity. He saw what the Everchosen could not see, and went where the Everchosen could not be.

Archaon exercised his omnipotence through the black-hearted loyalty of those who were pledged to the Chaos gods. The realms were nothing without the mortal souls infesting them, and souls could be corrupted, bought and bartered. Those wretches already lost to the myriad corruptions of existence found deeper damnation in Archaon’s fell ranks.

The Many-Eyed Servant peered through the storm of a land long sundered. A place the Everchosen’s armies had conquered an age before. A haunted corner of the realms, empty of the people who had existed there – for either they had been assimilated into Archaon’s conquering hordes, or their skulls now made up the bonemeal beaches of the shoreline.

The Many-Eyed Servant’s gaze had passed across this dead place before. There he had seen something that he knew would anger his master and shake the realms with his fury. What the Gaunt Summoner saw was a land retaken by an enemy force. For now the darkness of these craggy fortifications had been scalded away by columns of lightning reaching down from the heavens. From these blazing conduits came the Stormcast Eternals. The God-King’s weapons of war. Sigmar had been busy and so had the forges of the Celestial Realm, crafting immaculate plate, weaponry and souls to wield them.

The Stormcast Eternals appeared on a dead peninsula called Cape Desolation. They took the fortresses lining the hellish coast without raising a weapon, and had clear plans to expand their invasion. They would bring freedom to the people of the darkness beyond the peninsula – the Shatterlands – which the Everchosen had held in his crushing grip for a thousand years.

The Many-Eyed Servant whispered what he seen to his master.

‘There is a light in the darkness, Exalted One.’

‘Light is but a brightness of the moment,’ the Everchosen said, his words burning on the air. ‘The spark of flint. The strike of lightning. It passes. Darkness is forever.’

‘This spark,’ the Many-Eyed Servant said, ‘has started a fire, my lord. A fire from the sky that threatens to rage through the Shatterlands and bring hope to peoples beyond. The God-King’s warriors rain from the heavens and have made landfall. Our bastions along Cape Desolation are theirs.’

‘Sigmar’s warriors,’ Archaon said, ‘in the Shatterlands?’ The Many-Eyed Servant heard both searing outrage and relish in his master’s voice. ‘Its people will come to know the exquisite torment of hope dashed and the terror of lights extinguished.

‘Send word to my warlords, my champions and the fell kings of the surrounding regions. Summon my unholy Varanguard. I shall lead the Knights of Ruin myself in a counter invasion. Those bastions shall be mine again. The God-King’s light shall be banished and his warriors shall flee for the skies. I want Sigmar to know that he will find no purchase in lands forever dedicated to the Chaos gods.’

Peering down through the tumultuous skies of the God-King’s storm, the Many-Eyed Servant could see his master. Riding atop the monster Dorghar – an abominable creature of twin-tail, colossal wings and three terrible heads – Archaon led the way through the holy tempest. With his cloak streaming in the maelstrom and the Slayer of Kings held out in front of him, the Destroyer of Worlds rode out the storm at the head of his fleet.

A thousand dreadships coursing through the crash and squall of a spectral sea, all flying the flag of the Everchosen. The sea was a ghostly swarm of lost souls, the crash of waves and the hiss of the surf the sound of spiritual suffering.

Thrashing with their galley oars and with flayed-flesh sails full of sacrifice-bought winds, the armada surged on towards the black peninsula. Each ship carried hordes of Chaos warriors and Archaon’s own Knights of Ruin – thousands of dark templars, clad in plate of black and gold, utterly committed to the Everchosen’s service and the absolute destruction of his enemies. Among them was a worthy warrior the Many-Eyed Servant recognised from a past trial – the sorcerous warrior they called Orphaeo Zuvius, the Prince of Embers, now a knight in the Everchosen’s service.

The Prince of Embers burned for battle.

Standing on the deck of the dreadship Aftermath – so named for the death and destruction left in its blood-churned wake – Orphaeo Zuvius felt the surge and drift of the vessel through the spectral sea. Crafted from the torched wood of treelord ancients that groaned their suffering still, the landing galley’s black prow cut through the ghostly seas. Riding the swell, he looked to the flesh-sails, filled with the doom-laden winds that took the Everchosen’s armada on towards the skull beaches of Cape Desolation. Bloodreavers scrambled up and down the rigging of raw tendons while masts of braced bone creaked with the weight of wind and sail.

Zuvius made his way across the deck. His plate was black and gold and hell-forged to fit his slender frame. While one pauldron bore the crafted symbol of Archaon, the other had a metal spike. On the spike perched the familiar Mallofax, a reptilian bird of blue feather and black heart. It had been Mallofax that had guided the Prince of Embers down his destined path and into Archaon’s dark service. The wind ruffled the intense blue of the bird’s plumage.

About the main mast the deck was crowded with warriors of Chaos – Varanguard like Zuvius who had proved their worth to the Everchosen. The bloodreaver crew gave such warriors and their monstrous, armoured steeds a wide berth. The planks smouldered where the hooves of the mounted Varanguard held firm to the deck. The ruinous knights bled malevolence and, despite the subtle differences in their appearance and the myriad blessings of their dark gods, all wore the black and gold of their master. He was the Exalted Grand Marshal of the Apocalypse and they were his instruments of doom.

Zuvius mounted his own steed, Hellion. A muscular abomination that seemed mostly horse, Hellion blinked multiple dead eyes that ran the length of its fang-filled snout. Horns erupted from its malformed skull and its transparent hide revealed the ghastly inner workings of the beast’s grotesque body. Hellion’s spiked hooves clopped across the deck. Zuvius’ daemon-forged glaive A’cuitas sat in a saddle sheathe like a spear ready to be drawn in the charge.

Around the prince, warriors of the Varanguard were making preparations. Some were readying weapons and armour. Others were bringing their steeds to heel with vicious tugs on the reins. Some were even mumbling dark prayers to the Ruinous Pantheon, bidding the gods to grant them worthy foes and a merciless victory for their Everchosen.

Nearby, Zuvius saw fellow former acolyte of the Great Changer, Aspa Erezavant. Like him, the prince had forsaken his dread god in favour of service to Archaon. Through the Everchosen, Zuvius had pledged his soul, blade and talents to the unified forces of Chaos. Aspa Erezavant never spoke of such a pledge, however. The Varanguard warrior said nothing. He never did. There was only flesh where his mouth used to be.

Zorn the Brazenfleshed, however, always had something to say. A knight of dread threats and bombast, the Varanguard had once belonged to the Blood God. Now he commanded the Aftermath for the Everchosen, ensuring the vessel – in coordination with others cutting through the souls of the spectral sea – landed their Varanguard and meatshield hordes on the beach.

‘By the fell gods,’ Zorn roared through the storm at the ship’s bloodreaver crew, ‘if you don’t get more flesh to the wind I’ll flay your hides for extra sail!’ He turned to a pair of bloodreavers attending to the rebellious tiller. ‘Hold your course, damn you. And you,’ the Varanguard warrior bellowed at a bloodstoker called Killian, ‘get below decks. More power on the stroke. Take your lash to the oar crews. I want them sitting in a pool of their own blood. The Exalted Grand Marshal demands from them everything they have to give. Gods help the wretch who holds back his best from the Everchosen of Chaos!’

Zuvius watched the Varanguard warrior knock a passing bloodreaver brutally to the deck and then deliver a vicious kick with his armoured boot.

‘Fetch my weapons and my steed!’ Zorn roared at the unfortunate.

‘The Everchosen watches,’ Sarsael Hedra said. ‘The Brazenfleshed bids to be first on the beach for our master’. The Varanguard slipped his helm down over the oily flesh of his handsome face. The warrior’s words were slick with suggestion – insolence even. No one would actually level such an accusation at Hedra, however. He had killed too many in Archaon’s name.

‘I think he just might be,’ Kadence Salivarr said, looking from the saddle out across the ghostly waves at the rest of the fleet. His eyes were bright within his twisted helm. Like Salivarr, Zuvius could see that the Aftermath was pulling ahead.

‘Not if I get there first,’ Sarsael Hedra said, pulling on the reins to line up his fell steed with the ship’s prow. An armoured mountain of filth, Vomitus Grue, shook the deck with the boom of his laughter.

‘The Everchosen watches,’ said another Varanguard warrior through the ranks of mounted knights. Known as the Unslaked, his words were barbed much like his blood-stained blade. ‘He sees all. He hears all. He hears the prattling of his warriors. Witless boasts to calm the nerve and steady the cowardly soul.’

The deck fell silent but for the clop of hooves and scolding tongue of Zorn the Brazenfleshed. The Prince of Embers moved Hellion around, edging the steed ahead of Sarsael Hedra’s own. He licked his lips with a silver tongue.

‘The Varanguard will see the dark will of the Everchosen done,’ Zuvius said, his voice assured and even. ‘Each according to his gifts. We can all trust in that – as the Exalted Grand Marshal puts his trust in his Varanguard.’

Kadence Salivarr nodded his helm slowly at Zuvius. As the storm raged about them and the ship, that seemed to be the end of the matter. The dark templars waited. Waited to disembark, to take the beach and then the bastion beyond for their dark master. If every warrior of the Varanguard did their duty well, each fortress along Cape Desolation would be taken back in the Everchosen’s name. The warriors of the God-King would be naught but the blot of an afterglow on the eye. The Shatterlands beyond the dark peninsula would belong stone and soul to the Chaos powers once more. The Varanguard about the Prince of Embers weren’t wrong though. Archaon and his sorcerous servants would be watching. They always were. Orphaeo Zuvius aimed to give them a sight to see. The Prince of Embers would make it his honour to lead the warriors of the Aftermath in their charge up the beach, behind the Everchosen himself, who would ride on ahead and strike the first terrible blow.

As well as the unhallowed ranks of the Varanguard, the Aftermath carried a small horde of Chaos killers to help take their section of the beach and soak up enemy fire: hulking khorgoraths of the Red Death, Tzeentchian sorcerers of the Glass Spire, and spindle-limbed bloodletters of twisted horn and daemon wrath. The largest contingents were the indomitable plague-bloated warriors of the Rank and Vile, led by a sack of corruption called Bloatus Belch, and the Chaos knights of the Mazarine in their glowing blue plate, directed by a two-faced champion called Vitas and Volitae. Even the Fleshblessed, the Slaaneshi spawn shackled below decks, had their role to play in the battle to come. But they were all nothing to Archaon’s chosen.

A bloodreaver walked past Zuvius with his eyes on the deck. He carried a crude spyglass in his hand for scanning their landing at the beach and the approach to their target fortress, called the Ebon Claw. Unlike Zorn the Brazenfleshed, Zuvius needed no glass. Isolated straggles of blue hair danced in the wind, while the remaining threads of his skin squirmed over the red raw flesh of his face. His silver tongue licked at scorch-smeared lips. The prince’s crow-pecked sockets now contained jewels instead of eyes – sorcerous gemstones, one blue and one pink to honour his former patron. These eyes saw for Archaon now, the labyrinthine facets of the precious stones giving him unparalleled vision.

He could see the spectral sea lapping up along a beachhead of weathered skulls. He took in the Ebon Claw beyond, a craggy edifice of petrified, black stone. Its battlements were razored like flint, while its towers were jagged like the crooked fingers of a grasping talon. Across the phantasmic waves, Zuvius saw other dreadships of the Everchosen’s armada, carrying knights like himself to take the Ebon Claw and all the other enemy-occupied forts along the coast of Cape Desolation.

Zorn had instructed the bloodstoker and his bloodreavers to keep the tiller trained on the lightning stream coursing down through the stormy skies into the Ebon Claw. It was just one of many pillars of searing power that carried the God-King’s warriors and their reinforcements into the bastions that punctuated the peninsula coast.

The dreadships converged on the shoreline. Zuvius could feel the rancid excitement on the air. Below decks, the spawn of the Fleshblessed were whipped to an ecstasy while bloodreaver oarsmen surged the galley towards the beach. The oars of the Aftermath tangled with those of another closing dreadship. Every knight of Chaos in the fleet wanted to be the first to reach the beach and earn the approval of Archaon.

Peering down the coast, however, Zuvius saw that his unhallowed master was busy. He had already reached the peninsula on the back of his monstrous daemon steed. The beast flapped his giant wings and soared across the battlements. While most would flee before the sight of the Everchosen astride his monster as they might a city-razing dragon, Sigmar’s Stormcast Eternals stood like golden statues: cold, implacable and unimpressed. As Dorghar banked, Archaon swept helms and heads from shoulders with the Slayer of Kings. Dorghar stove in towers with his lashing twin-tail and tore away sections of battlement with his great claws, sending Stormcasts raining to the ground.

‘Pass the word,’ Zorn the Brazenfleshed called down the length of the ship. ‘Prepare to disembark and fight for your lives.’

Zuvius heard Bloatus Belch and the Tzeentchian Vitus and Volitae readying their warriors below decks. He knew that the Red Death would barely be able to contain their fury and that the predacious bloodletters would be hissing their anticipation of the kill. The Varanguard would go first, however, for there were no servants of Chaos worthier than Archaon’s dark templars. And among the Varanguard ranks, there would be none as worthy as the Prince of Embers. Zuvius promised both himself and his Exalted Grand Marshal that.

‘The honour is mine,’ Zuvius hissed to himself. He worked Hellion around, lining the beast up for disembarkation. He could hear raised voices beyond.

‘My lord…’ Bloodstoker Killian said.

‘Hold your damned course,’ the Brazenfleshed spat. Zuvius looked down the coastline. Dreadships were taking in sail and stowing oars, coursing through the shallows the rest of the way to the shore. The Aftermath would not take such precautions on the approach. Zorn meant to hit the coastline at ramming speed and ride the galley as far up the skull beach as he could get.

As the vessel coursed through the shallows ahead of the armada, Zuvius saw bloodreavers wind their arms and legs about the rigging. The Chaos warriors below the decks began to chant their bloody expectation, while the ruinous knights settled into their saddles and stirrups, ready to follow the Prince of Embers.

‘For the Everchosen,’ Zuvius roared, kicking his heels into Hellion’s flanks. It was as much a challenge as an announcement. ‘May he and all who follow in his shadow know absolute victory this dark day.’

Standing up in the stirrups, Zuvius urged his steed down the length of the ship. With the steed’s spiked shoes tearing up the deck, the unnaturally swift and strong beast hit a gallop by the time it passed the mast. Dread knights of Chaos watched the prince thunder by, readying their own steeds for impact. Even on Hellion, Zuvius felt the Aftermath shudder as the vessel’s keel bit into bonemeal and then the shattered skulls of the beach. He readied himself for the inevitable. In the contest between the galley and the land, the land would eventually win.

The prince’s timing was perfect. The Aftermath had rammed its way out of the shallows and cut into the skull beach. As the vessel ground to an abrupt stop, the mast let out an excruciating creak and the flesh-sails billowed the other way. Steeds stumbled and bloodreavers were thrown from the rigging. Hellion made his jump just as the full force of the impact struck. Clearing the bulwark, the monstrous steed soared across the skulls. Hitting the beach of shattered bone at a gallop, Zuvius slipped the glaive A’cuitas from its sheath and spun it in his gauntlet. His exalted master had been the first to achieve an enemy kill on the cape. Zuvius would be the second. At his side, keeping pace with the monstrous steed, flew Mallofax.

‘Find me a way in,’ Zuvius said. The bird squawked an acknowledgement before taking to higher altitudes. Looking back, Zuvius saw that only now the other dreadships were slowing in the shallows and lowering their ladders for disembarkation. The Aftermath, however, with her keel torn out and hull well and truly beached, was disgorging her fell cargo. Inspired by the prince’s example, the knights of Archaon’s chosen had followed Zuvius and were riding up behind like a tidal wave of blade, plate and doom.

The khorgoraths of the Red Death hadn’t waited for bloodreavers to open the vessel’s fang-lined boarding-maws. The monstrous creatures of red flesh and fury had smashed their way through the hull and were lumbering up the beach towards the enemy. While the Fleshblessed spawn were unleashed upon the beach and made their mindless approach at unnatural speed, Bloatus Belch and the two-faced Tzeentchian exited the vessel through the holes the khorgoraths had left behind. They led their warriors past the sorcerers of the Glass Spire and out onto the bonemeal. Bloodstoker Killian cracked his whip and blew a horn, prompting the Aftermath’s bloodreaver crew to grab their blades and leave the ship.

Racing towards the Ebon Claw, Zuvius could see the golden shapes of the Stormcast Eternals. The God-King’s warriors had been busy. The black talon of petrified stone was now but a derelict shell. Like the petals of a dead flower, the sharp walls and cragged towers of the fort had given way to new fortifications built within the ruins. About the column of lightning streaming down, new and glorious fortifications had sprung up – domed citadels of silver and gold. Immaculate structures of globed indomitability, at odds with the petrified jaggedness of the surrounding fortifications. It was as though the Ebon Claw suffered some kind of taintless cancer, with towers of metal, light and storm blooming amongst the twisted architecture of the malefic bastion.

Zuvius read the enemy’s defence of the fortress. Archers in glorious plate and their watching lords took position on razor-sharp battlements and looked down on the beach approach through crooked arrow slits. Meanwhile, destroyers in burnished plate collapsed the fortress gateway, turning the entrance into a barricade of smashed rubble with earth-shaking blows from their crackling hammers. Atop towers and derelict ramparts, Stormcasts waited for the Chaos invaders with glaives and great shields, their impassive stillness an invitation to death.

Suddenly everything was gold and bone. Zuvius resisted the urge to haul upon the reins as the beach exploded before him. Hitting the ground and throwing skulls and bone shards into the air with the force of their landing were the warrior-heralds of the God-King. Launching from the walls of the Ebon Claw, armoured warriors had flown down to the shoreline, dropping with the force of a meteorite shower crashing to the ground. Their wings were a spread of lightning blades whilst they clutched a pair of ornate hammers in their gauntleted hands.

Zuvius would not be stopped. Urging Hellion on into the warrior heralds, the prince extended A’cuitas out in front of him like a spear. Zuvius crashed into his foes.

The knight’s glaive punctured its way through a faceplate, impaling the skull of a landing herald. The Prince of Embers allowed himself a flesh-smeared smile. As the weapon skewered the head clean off the armoured warrior, Hellion rammed his horn straight through the breastplate of another and tossed the enemy aside. With the death of each Stormcast, soul-lightning leapt for the sky with a satisfying crack and flash. Battering another Stormcast aside, Hellion turned the warrior into a staggering mess of celestial plate. Allowing the glaive shaft to slide forward in his grasp, Zuvius smashed the heavy metal pommel of the weapon down through the herald’s helm. Braining the warrior with the bulbous counterweight, Zuvius saw another flash of lightning rocket up to the heavens.

Thundering through the heralds’ freshly landed ranks, Zuvius heaved on the reins and turned Hellion about. He would ride them down from behind, pounding their plate into the skull beach with his mount’s hooves.

The warrior-heralds had recovered quickly, however. Having turned to receive the knight’s attack, they threw their celestial hammers head over haft at Zuvius. It was all he could do to lean out of their pulverising path. As one smashed his gauntlet, while another grazed his pauldron. Zuvius didn’t see a hammer flung at the last moment towards his head.

Smashed in the face, Zuvius almost tumbled from the saddle. His skull felt as though it had been split in two and though he fought to stay alert, consciousness started to slip away from him. The prince shook his head. He could not allow himself to fall. He would be butchered by the God-King’s warrior heralds.

Zuvius was suddenly at the eye of a storm of hammer blows. Hellion reared and the prince tried to turn the beast while fending off as many of the strikes as he could. He heard something crack in his side as both plate and bone gave in to the force of a righteous smash. Zuvius grunted. There was nothing his serpentine words or silver tongue could do to get him out of this. Hellion was drowning in a sea of plate, while heralds smashed at Zuvius, attempting to pierce his hell-forged armour and drag him down.

Zuvius briefly entertained the blasphemous notion that he was finished. That his service to the Everchosen would end here on Cape Desolation. Zuvius turned A’cuitas about in his gauntlet and clutched the shaft under one arm. Aiming the pommel at the advancing heralds, the prince unleashed a crackling arc of lightning. The Stormcasts trembled for a second as the sorcerous energies of the daemon-forged glaive coursed through them before exploding in a shower of blood and crackling soulfire, their spiritual essence rocketing for the sky.

Untouched by the arcing bolt, a surviving herald lifted his hammers to pound Zuvius into the bone beach. The prince put his glaive between him and his enemy, deflecting the hammer heads with the shaft. Pulling the glaive back with sudden violence, the prince cut the crowning blade through his enemy’s throat before heaving it back to take the herald’s head off his armoured body.

As the bloody mist cleared, Zuvius saw other newly landed warrior-heralds racing for him, hammers held in both hands. Zuvius felt thunder rolling up the beach. His brothers in corruption had arrived. Riding their monstrous mounts like a black wave crashing up the beach, the knights of the Everchosen’s calling crashed through the God-King’s ranks. While some warrior-heralds managed to land blows on the armoured steeds or knock the warriors of Chaos from their saddles, most succumbed to the earth-trembling charge. Fellspears sheared straight through plate and the blessed flesh within. Daemon-forged swords and great ensorcelled axes chopped down the Stormcasts as the line of steeds passed through, sending columns of lightning arcing for the heavens.

The horde from the Aftermath stormed the beach after their Varanguard, making their way towards Zuvius. The spawn of the Fleshblessed, gibbering with expectation, and the bloodreavers ran ahead of the mob. The Mazarine and the lumbering fury that were the khorgoraths of the Red Death weren’t far behind, with the Glass Spire sorcerers and Bloatus Belch’s Rank and Vile making more sedate progress up the beach. They would all play their part in the horror to come. As a meatshield before the mighty Varanguard or as scavengers devouring the scraps Archaon’s chosen left behind, the horde would find service to the Dark Gods.

As injured warriors tried to get to their feet, more heralds glided across the charging columns of knights to fortify their number. Zuvius turned Hellion about and raced off to join the mounted ranks of the Varanguard, leaving the warrior-heralds to be swamped by butchers, monstrosities and dread swordsmen.

Cape Desolation was a vast shoreline of bone and darkness, swarmed by the Chaos hordes of Archaon’s monstrous army. It was swallowed by the charging ranks of Varanguard, their mounted number shattering the skulls of the beachhead and closing about the twisted forts lining the peninsula. The Everchosen was everywhere, soaring through the storm, setting the monstrous Dorghar on fortification after fortification. As Archaon cut Stormcasts from the ramparts with blazing sweeps of the Slayer of Kings, the daemon mount tore down sigmarite towers erected amongst the razored ruins of Chaos bastions.

To any other mortal in the nine realms, the sight would have shredded their minds and turned their hearts white with terror. Like the fires of doom, the Everchosen and his World Enders had arrived. Suffering and death awaited all in Archaon’s path. The God-King’s Stormcasts were not just any other mortals, however, if they were mortal at all. Crafted of immaculate plate and righteous flesh, the Stormcasts were Sigmar’s cold wrath incarnate. They knew no fear and lived for the sole purpose of driving the scourge of Chaos from the realms.

All along the coast, the beach was lit up by streaming shots of celestial energies. Flights of skybolt arrows blazed up out of the fortresses before dropping back down onto the beach in searing volleys. Lightning blasts created craters in the shattered skulls and blasts were shot through rough arrow slits from boltstorm crossbows. Zuvius rode up through the lines of mounted knights and the blinding storm of celestial energy being visited upon the approach to the Ebon Claw.

‘Damn these armoured curs,’ Sarsael Hedra roared from the saddle as Zuvius pulled level with the dread knight.

‘Hiding behind our walls with their craven weapons,’ Vomitus Grue rumbled from along the line. Aspa Erezavant, who was riding up behind, said nothing. Drawing ahead of the Prince of Embers, Sarsael brought up his warpsteel shield. Riders along the line did the same. Skybolt arrows rained from the sky, stabbing into the beach about the hooves of the knights’ steeds and fizzling to nothing against the surface of their shields.

‘Behind their breastplates they fear us,’ Zuvius roared. ‘Let us be the realisation of that fear in flesh and blood. Let us besmirch these lands once more and send the Stormcasts shrieking back to their God-King.’

‘For the Everch–’ Zorn the Brazenfleshed called, riding up behind them. The red-skinned knight never got to finish his proclamation as both he and his blood-sweating steed disappeared in the blast from a thunderbolt crossbow.

As lightning struck the beach, reaching out from the impact site with spidery arcs of energy, armoured warriors went down. Steeds crashed into the skulls, throwing their Varanguard riders, who died in crackling cages of arcing power.

Zuvius and Sarsael’s steeds jumped the fallen. As Hellion crushed skulls to bone dust on the other side, Zuvius hauled the reins from one side to another, avoiding more sizzling arrows dropping from the sky. The Prince of Embers spat his disgust. The Stormcast Eternals aimed to thin out the Everchosen’s warhordes before they even reached the bastion and mounted their siege. Varanguard were dying. The approach to the fortress was a lightning-scalded killing ground of havoc and confusion. With Zorn the Brazenfleshed and a number of veteran Varanguard dead, the Prince of Embers felt the eyes of the Everchosen on him. Archaon swooped overhead astride his daemon mount, momentarily drawing the lightning storm of fire from the Ebon Claw. Zuvius would not fail his dread master.

‘With me…’ Zuvius started to say to Sarsael Hedra, but the dread knight was dead – a skybolt arrow finding its way around his shield to skewer his horned head.

‘Come on!’ the Prince of Embers called down the line. Savagely digging his boot heels into Hellion’s ghastly flesh, Zuvius drew ahead of the charge. Galloping headlong through the celestial streams, explosions and lightning traps, the ruinous knight led by example. Other warriors in gold and black plate similarly urged their steeds onwards through the tempest of light. In cutting down the amount of time spent on the approach, Zuvius hoped to limit their casualties. It was imperative that the Chaos forces arrived to besiege the forts in unstoppable numbers. With the lightning column blazing down into the Ebon Claw supplying fresh Stormcast Eternals, the Varanguard would have to overwhelm the Stormcasts there and cut off the God-King’s reinforcements.

As the charge entered the deep shadow of the Ebon Claw, the bolts and shafts of celestial energy began to dwindle. With Archaon’s chosen all but to the walls, the angles became too tight for the Stormcast archers. Instead Zuvius felt the arrow storm pass overhead, destined for the advance of Archaon’s hordes making their way up the beach. It was a gauntlet that Bloatus Belch and the Tzeentchian Vitus and Volitae would have to run.

Zuvius slowed Hellion before the petrified black rock of the Ebon Claw’s walls. Above, the magnificent sigmarite towers reached up out of the jagged talon of the fortress’ damned architecture. Zuvius hauled on the reins and had his steed come to a stop on the shattered bone of the beach. As Archaon’s chosen arrived at the fort walls they did the same, drawing their daemon-forged battle-axes and ensorcelled sword blades.

Zuvius heard the flap of wings. Landing on the prince’s pauldron spike in a cascade of cerulean feathers was Mallofax, returned from his reconnaissance. From his singed wing, Zuvius could see that the bird had also suffered the attentions of Stormcast archers.

‘Speak, bird,’ Zuvius said as the creature got its breath back. ‘How many?’

‘Hundreds, at least,’ Mallofax squawked, ‘with reinforcements coming down from the sky.’ Zuvius looked up at the column of lightning blazing out of the heavens into the fortress. It was going to be a problem. The Varanguard would have to find a way to cut it off.

‘Does the host have a commander?’

Mallofax squawked his incredulity. ‘They all look the same to me.’

‘A Stormcast,’ Zuvius pressed the bird, ‘surrounded by banner men, coordinating defences, issuing orders…’

‘Yes,’ the bird said. ‘There’s one sat astride a great reptile.’

‘Where?’

‘The courtyard,’ Mallofax squawked. ‘With the main body of the host.’

Zuvius snarled at the thought of the enemy commander so close beyond the wall.

‘Entry?’ he demanded of the bird.

‘All the entrances have been collapsed,’ Mallofax said, hopping about on the pauldron spike as grit rained from above. ‘There’s no way in.’

‘There’s always a way in,’ the Prince of Embers insisted. He had besieged all manner of fortresses. Not even the Everchosen’s own Varanspire had stopped him.

‘The Stormcast fortifications favour the north and west structures, reinforcing the demolished towers there. The walls are thinner,’ Mallofax said, ‘more dilapidated on the southern side.’

Zuvius nodded his approval, grit pitter-pattering off his plate.

‘Fly,’ he told the bird. ‘Bring the sorcerers and breachers for the walls. We shall need a shield of tainted meat before us as we enter.’

The Ebon Claw blazed with energies launched from the jagged ramparts and Stormcast towers. Mounted Varanguard charged up to the walls, leaving smouldering mounds of corrupt flesh and hell-forged plate in their wake – Knights of Ruin and their mounts who had failed to run the blinding gauntlet of the Stormcast archers. With many veteran Varanguard dead on the beach or struggling their way up it, Archaon’s chosen had stalled. They needed an objective. All that faced them, however, was the petrified black stone of the fortress wall.

Zuvius watched the warhorde advance up the beach. While the spawn of the Fleshblessed made a maniacal dash across the open, crossbow-blasted ground and the horrific khorgoraths of the Red Death cared little for the searing streams and explosions, the rest of the horde followed the Glass Spire sorcerers. The Tzeentchians used their unnatural talents to create changes in the landscape about them. Moving their willowy arms and fingers in strange patterns, they caused the skulls of the beach to tremble and part to admit glowing blue shafts of crystal. Creating natural shields for the advancing hordes, the sorcerers strode up the beach with Bloatus Belch’s Rank and Vile, the Mazarine knights and the bloodreaver crew of the Aftermath.

Moving from outcrop to crystalline outcrop, the warhorde made good progress. The bolts and streams of lightning blazing from the Ebon Claw scorched the crushed-bone beach about them. There were casualties across the killing ground, however. Mindless spawn were reduced to charred meat by the eruption of lightning storms. Slow moving members of the Rank and Vile exploded in plague-swollen splendour as streams of celestial energy struck their outliers.

As crystal shuddered up through the skulls to absorb the worst of the lightning storm and the warhorde took advantage of the cover, the surviving warrior-heralds on the beach smashed into the mobs of Chaos warriors. The warhorde was a monster, ravenous for its first taste of slaughter. While the heralds fearlessly ran at the ruinous horde, they were enveloped by corrupt killers and torn apart. Khorgoraths snatched up the Stormcasts, wings and all, and hurled them furiously into the bone-shattering surface of the conjured crystal. The knights of the Mazarine went toe to toe with the warrior-heralds, while bloodreavers slit their throats. Those Stormcasts unfortunate enough to smash their way into the Rank and Vile found a host of implacable foes. Their diseased flesh soaked up all the punishment the God-King’s servants could mete out, all with the rancid smiles of their jovial patron plastered across their pox-marked faces. With the blaze of fallen Stormcasts shooting for the sky, the warhorde made their approach on the fortress.

The Varanguard known as the Unslaked sidled his steed aggressively up against Zuvius’ own. He had seen Zuvius despatch his bird for the hordes following the Varanguard up the skull beach.

‘Zorn would have smashed through that barbican,’ the Unslaked stated.

‘Zorn’s dead,’ Kadence Salivarr called across the storm.

‘The Stormcasts will expect it,’ Zuvius told the Unslaked. ‘While we’re excavating the rubble from that gateway, they’ll rain down destruction upon us. Look,’ Zuvius said, indicating the way in which the Stormcast fortifications had grown up out of the shattered stone of the Ebon Claw. He then pointed at the approaching sorcerers of the Glass Spire and the shafts of crystal they were drawing up through the beachhead. ‘There will be losses beneath the barbican. There will be no siege. We shall create our own entrance. Large enough to admit a meatshield and our mounted ranks. We shall rush the Stormcasts from within.’ Zuvius saw Vomitus Grue and Aspa Erezavant nod their approval. Salivarr stared at the Unslaked, who seemed to rage within his helmet.

As a storm of celestial energy blazed from the ramparts, something else dropped down from the battlements. Before the Unslaked could respond, towering Stormcasts in ornate armour landed about the knights and their steeds. Dropping down from the castle walls, the Stormcasts carried massive battle hammers that seethed with celestial power. A huge warrior landing with assuredness next to Zuvius brought his colossal hammer down on Hellion’s back with a blaze of power. The steed almost buckled, staggering away from the Stormcast warrior. As Zuvius recovered his balance and hauled Hellion back, the Stormcast turned swiftly on Zuvius.

The prince thrust his glaive at the God-King’s warrior with enough force to skewer a gargant. The Stormcast was swift as well as huge, however, and twisted his ornate helm to one side to avoid the glaive blade. Knocking A’cuitas aside with the shaft of his hammer, the Stormcast spun around and landed a hammer blow on the prince’s leg. Knocked back with Hellion into the unforgiving stone of the fortress wall, Zuvius felt both the wind and all sense knocked out of him. His armour plate was buckled and a pain in his thigh blazed to agonising intensity.

Struggling to see through the pain, Zuvius just got his head out of the way of a hammer blow that stove a hole in the stone of the exterior wall. As Zuvius hauled Hellion away from the wall and the plunging arc of the great hammer, he could see hulking Stormcasts and Archaon’s chosen fighting a ferocious battle along the fort wall. Another huge Stormcast landed nearby, falling into a crouch to absorb the distance of the drop. Zuvius rode up behind him, thrusting the glaive down, stabbing him in the back. Punching the heavy blade through the golden plate, Zuvius feverishly stabbed him twice more before kicking him forward. Crashing faceplate first onto the skull beach, the dead Stormcast turned into a vaulting arc of lightning.

With blood on his teeth and scorch-smeared lips, Zuvius pulled Hellion around. He shot the first Stormcast a contemptuous grin. The towering warrior swung the hammer about him, stepping forward to smash the knight to oblivion. The prince allowed the Stormcast to advance. He kept Hellion moving and jabbed at the warrior with his glaive to keep his attention.

‘Erezavant,’ the prince said finally, ‘just kill him.’

The Stormcast turned to see another of Archaon’s chosen behind him. The dark knight’s eyes said everything. They narrowed, serpent-like, right before the strike. Erezavant already had the broad and smoking blade of his ensorcelled sword up and ready. At Zuvius’ words, Aspa Erezavant swung the cursed weapon and cut the top of the Stormcast’s head off. As the sorcerous smoke cleared, the warrior’s open helm and skull were revealed to the sky.

The Stormcast crashed down onto his knees and fell face forward. By the time the spirit of the God-King’s servant had blazed away, Erezavant was gone – on the bloody trail of another foe.

Turning, Zuvius saw the Varanguard fighting hard against Stormcasts who were dropping down the rough wall from the ramparts. The fighting was bloody. Stormcasts hammered monstrous steeds to death before pulverising their trapped riders with polished, crackling hammers. The dread knights of Archaon fought back, spearing lone Stormcasts or hacking them apart with daemon-forged blades. Vomitus Grue, whose fell blessing was to know no pain, took several blows to the head with a lightning-wreathed hammer. Almost knocked from the saddle, the indomitable warrior leant down to grab the armoured Stormcast by the helm and smashed him repeatedly against the fortress wall.

The battle was turning. The Stormcasts were fearless and powerful but while they were undoubtedly the living weapons of a god, their god was not with them. Archaon, the Exalted Grand Marshal of the Apocalypse and demigod of Chaos, fought side by side with his dread armies. Every damned wretch on that beach simultaneously adored and loathed the Everchosen. He led by example, inspiring his slaves to darkness with monstrous acts of destruction, and through the heart-stopping incentive of fear. Battle-hardened champions, lords of Chaos and abominable daemons dared not fail him and, if asked to, would walk into certain death for Archaon.

‘Come on!’ Zuvius roared back down the beach, riding around to the south wall through throngs of knights and Stormcasts in desperate combat. Kadence Salivarr gave chase, Vomitus Grue and Aspa Erezavant on his heels, and the Unslaked in their wake.

Mallofax had returned. With him he had brought the warhorde: spawn, monstrosities, daemons and men of dark purpose.

As Zuvius and two other ruinous knights carrying fellspears impaled a trapped Stormcast in an excruciating three-way skewer, he saw the Glass Spire sorcerers approach. Ripping A’cuitas out of the unfortunate warrior, the prince left him to the other two warriors.

‘Sorcerers,’ Zuvius called. ‘The Everchosen has need of your wretched talents.’ Salivarr and the Varanguard drew up behind the Prince of Embers.

‘My lord,’ the first of the robed creatures said, his eyes on the ground.

‘The Stormcast have denied us entrance to our own fortress,’ Zuvius said. ‘I want you to create another. I’m assured the wall is thinner and weaker here. Bring forth your creations and split the stone apart.’

‘At once, my lord,’ the Glass Spire sorcerer said, signalling to nearby enchanters with his third arm. Zuvius turned to see the knights of the Everchosen’s calling and the monstrous horde gathering at the south wall of the Ebon Claw.

‘Well,’ Kadence Salivarr said. ‘Tell them.’

Zuvius spat at the beach of skulls.

‘This miserable scrap of land is ours,’ the prince said. He slapped the petrified stone of the wall beside him. ‘This is ours. The realm is ours and all others beyond. Ours by dark right. By right of conquest. Ours for the taking. The warriors of the God-King trespass on unholy ground.’

Zuvius directed the sorcerers of the Glass Spire to work their dread magic. ‘For corruption’s sake, for the coming end, for Almighty Archaon. Bring it down.’

Shafts of blue crystal burst from the wall of the Ebon Claw. The columns of crystal sheared away sections of the wall. Working their way through the rock like a wedge, they pulverised the crumbling material in between, creating not only a large, ragged entrance but also crystalline columns to support it.

‘Now!’ Zuvius roared.

Bloatus Belch ordered his Rank and Vile in through the breach. Putrid warriors, green and distended with disease, they wore rusted scraps of plate and mail. Smiling like mad men, the blightkings pushed on.

Archaon’s chosen held back, despite their eagerness to let loose. Such dread warriors could not be wasted on a wall breach. The cankered and inexorable troops of the Great Lord of Decay were perfect for such a duty. Unrelenting, uncaring sacks of rancid filth that would soak up the worst the Stormcasts had to throw at them, a rancid meatshield advancing before the mounted doom of the Varanguard.

Over the wall, Zuvius could hear movement – the trembling of stone beneath boots and the rattle of plate. The breaching of the south wall had been unexpected but the Stormcasts had hundreds of warriors within the fortress ready to respond and repel enemy invaders. As Bloatus Belch allowed the rusty chains of his flail to fall ready from his meaty, green fist, he filed in with his warriors. There was unremitting death and destruction to be had within and the blightlord wanted to be part of it.

As Zuvius heard the clash of Stormcast weaponry on the corrosion-pitted blightblades of Belch’s soldiers, he knew that the Stormcasts intended on destroying the interlopers without mercy and plugging the breach. With countless warriors inside the courtyard surging towards the south wall, the Prince of Embers knew exactly what to do. The khorgoraths of the Red Death had thus far only been unleashed on the last of the hammer-wielding Stormcasts outside of the walls. Now it was time to set them against the packed ranks of hallowed warriors within.

The hulking creatures of the Red Death enlarged the ragged entrance with their muscular bulk. With them Zuvius sent the daemon bloodletters, the fast and rangy killers being the perfect complement to the destructive khorgoraths.

A Mazarine knight and one of the bloodreavers suddenly disappeared in a flash of celestial energy. Arcs of lightning crackled through the tight ranks of Fleshblessed spawn and blightkings. Looking up, Zuvius saw Stormcast archers on the battlements above, aiming bows and crossbows.

‘More,’ Zuvius growled at the Glass Spire sorcerers. ‘And take care of those.’

As the Tzeentchian sorcerers drew on their powers, spikes and shafts of crystal erupted up through the black stone of the fortress. Crystal-braced holes opened up in the wall, while the ramparts above cracked and sheared away, plunging the Stormcast Eternals earthward.

Above, Zuvius felt the mighty beat of Dorghar’s wings as the daemon steed took Archaon swooping overhead. The Varanguard roared their jubilation. The prince took this as a good sign. The Everchosen was departing to visit his monstrous wrath and that of his daemon upon the other bastions. He was leaving the Ebon Claw in the hands of his Varanguard, having seen them breach its walls.

It was time. The Varanguard needed to overwhelm the defenders with a single, decisive action. They had not landed their hordes and taken the beach to be target practice for the Stormcasts. The enemy held fortified positions and could afford to wait them out. Besides, within the fortress the enemy would think twice about loosing into their own lines.

Archaon was watching. Expecting. Zuvius felt the dark energy about him. It was the seething desire of the Varanguard to see their warlord’s will be done.

‘For the Everchosen!’ the Prince of Embers roared across the ranks.

Archaon’s chosen stormed the breach, clutching monstrous spears, warpsteel shields and hell-forged blades that smoked with murderous expectation.

The air was thick with lung-shredding dust. With A’cuitas held ready for the thrust, Zuvius charged through the breach. Within the fortress, Zuvius saw that crystalline shafts had ripped up through the foundations, burying nearby Stormcasts in rubble.

The Ebon Claw was a pit of unrelenting slaughter. Death waited but moments away for all fighting within its walls. There were Stormcast Eternals everywhere – their plate almost blinding as it reflected the light storm funnelling down from the sky and into the scorched ground of the courtyard. Crackling silhouettes ventured forth from the lightning column, becoming searing realisations as their boots touched stone. It became clear to Zuvius that the God-King’s hallowed warriors had no intention of giving up the fortress. It was carnage – with Stormcasts and warriors of Chaos barely having room to raise their weapons.

As Zuvius rode through the wreckage, hammers came crackling up at the prince’s head. Leaning out of their path, Zuvius evaded them, allowing them to pulverise the petrified stone. The prince cut two of the Stormcasts down. A third leapt into his path, swinging a blazing mace. Zuvius pulled back on the reins. He drew Hellion out of the way of the bludgeoning, angular edges of the weapon before kicking the Stormcast back at the wall. The precarious stone above his foe came loose and buried the celestial warrior while the Prince of Embers dug his heels into his steed’s side, prompting the beast to surge on.

From rock dust Zuvius entered a haze of blood, cooked in the air by the passage of skybolts shot down into the courtyard from the battlements. The prince had been wrong about the Stormcast archers. Confident in their aim, they were unafraid to fire into the seething melee below with the furious energy of their lightning bows.

Zuvius scanned the brutality and bloodshed. Stormcast warriors with mighty warblades were hacking at the Knights Mazarine, battering them back with their sigmarite shields, while the khorgoraths of the Red Death snatched up the golden warriors and tore off their heads. Bloatus Belch was dead, a Stormcast hammer still buried in his plague-swollen corpulence. His Rank and Vile advanced still, soaking up the God-King’s wrath. As hammers knocked sprays of flies from their mouths, stove in ribcages and splattered pus-ridden limbs, the blightkings fought on. They relentlessly hacked and stabbed with their diseased blades, the smiles of Grandfather Nurgle on their maggot-eaten faces.

The Glass Spire sorcerers were held high above the rabble, impaled on the long blades of Stormcast glaives, the last of their number bringing down ramparts and stone stairwells with their crystal blooms to reveal the polished metal of Stormcast towers and fortifications.

Bloodstoker Killian and his bloodreavers, however, hopelessly outclassed by divine warriors in full celestial plate, were fighting rabidly. Driven on by the lash, they rolled fearlessly under the lumbering weaponry of the Stormcasts, despite suffering continuous losses. They came at their foes in gorethirsty throngs: gouging throats, plunging reaverblades into backs and feverishly stabbing Stormcasts in the sides of their helms.

Zuvius caught sight of the Fleshblessed. The monstrous spawn swarmed over the golden paladins like a plague of deranged spiders. Putting their extra limbs to good work, they prized plate from the warriors and tore out throats, hearts and entrails. For their part, the paladins wielded mighty axes that lopped limbs and heads from the wretched spawn. Above the din of clashing blades and battle, the Fleshblessed took their grotesque talents to the ramparts. Leaping from paladin to wall, the abominations clawed, hauled and swung their way up the ramshackle architecture of the fortress. Latching onto Stormcast archers, the plague of spawn tore warriors from their footings. As the Stormcasts crashed down onto the battlements and then fell the distance to the crowded courtyard, the Fleshblessed suffered shafts of celestial energy and crossbow blasts. Those who survived leapt for the armoured archers and began tearing at heads and limbs.

A rogue shaft of celestial energy from a skybolt bow caught Zuvius in the back, causing the prince to snarl his pain. As a hammer landed a glancing blow on his pauldron, knocking him to one side, Zuvius clasped his glaive in one gauntlet and against his arm. Flinging the glaive around in a furious arc from the saddle, the Prince of Embers cut the Stormcast in half.

There was polished plate everywhere. Weapons clashing. Blades thrusting for the kill. Hammers decapitating Chaos invaders. Tzeentchian knights fought side by side with bloated blightkings. Bloodreaver savages died in their droves amongst Slaaneshi spawn thrashing their lives away to defend them. Love and fear of the Everchosen in equal measure pushed the warhorde on to feats of suicidal valour. No-one wanted to be left alive, should the invasion of Cape Desolation be a failure. Not at the mercy of the Everchosen’s boundless wrath.

Through the hordes emerged Archaon’s chosen. Pale reflections of the Everchosen himself in their dark plate, they were almost the opposite of the Stormcast Eternals.

The Varanguard fought like tempests of black-hearted vengeance. Charging through the Chaos ranks and into the enemy with the cold confidence of warriors undefeated, they thrust their fellspears through throats. They battered Stormcasts to smashed armour and bloody pulp with their warpsteel shields. They hacked limbs and immaculate helms from shoulders with tight and ruthless strikes of their daemon-forged blades.

Turning Hellion amongst the mayhem and desperation of battle, Zuvius raised A’cuitas to stab and blast the God-King’s warriors out of his path. Shrugging off glancing blows of polished blades and the sparks of lightning hammers, the prince heaved his steed around to find his weapon raised at other Varanguard. Aspa Erezavant said nothing. Kadence Salivarr spoke for both of them.

‘Hold, brother,’ the knight called, knocking aside the disciplined thrust of a Stormcast glaive. Zuvius could hear the rancid boom of Vomitus Grue’s laughter through the clash of blades as he watched the plague-ridden warrior almost spear one of his own kind.

‘This isn’t working,’ the Unslaked said, riding up between them. ‘As fast as we send these craven filth back to their weakling god, more of them arrive.’

Cutting a Stormcast’s head from his shoulders with an elegant sweep of his blade, Salivarr nodded his agreement.

‘We need to kill all that we can,’ Zuvius answered. He gestured to the column of lightning blazing down into the fort, before bringing A’cuitas brutally down through an attacking herald. ‘But more will follow, while that conduit remains open. Find and destroy their lords. No doubt they hold the key to such sky-rending sorcery. Spread the word. Let us justify the Everchosen’s faith.’

As Zuvius and the Knights of Ruin took the fight deeper into the courtyard, the sky lit up with souls rocketing for the heavens. As the Stormcasts disappeared in blazes of lightning, Zuvius found their comrades to be undaunted.

Seizing a glaive blade that had sliced into his side, Zuvius held the Stormcast who wielded it steady. The prince’s grimace of pain turned into a triumphant snarl as an enraged khorgorath of the Red Death bit the golden warrior’s head off, only to have his prey disappear in a flash of lightning. This seemed to infuriate the khorgorath even more – the thing already stuck with the quivering shafts of spears and glaives. The monster swept the advancing line of Stormcasts aside before settling upon one to beat into the courtyard floor.

‘Feast!’ Zuvius commanded a nearby horde of bloodletters. At the Varanguard’s command they jumped onto the remaining Stormcasts, who were swinging their glaives at the Prince of Embers. The rangy daemons tore at heads and plunged their brazen blades into metal then flesh. ‘Blood for the Blood God…’ Zuvius said in mock gratitude.

The prince’s jubilation was short lived. Although the horde seemed to be soaking up the worst of the Stormcasts’ punishment and Archaon’s Varanguard were intent on cutting a path of bloody death through the enemy, the celestial warriors still came. Reinforced by the lightning column, it was only a matter of time before the battle turned in the God-King’s favour. The forces of the Everchosen had thrown hordes in their entirety at the fortifications along Cape Desolation. With the ability to replenish their warriors within the walls, however, the Stormcasts had the advantage. The day would be theirs unless the dark warriors could even the odds.

Looking up through the bloody mist of the crowded courtyard, Zuvius saw Stormcast reinforcements take their positions. The derelict ramparts of black stone, speared by the silver and gold of sigmarite towers erected through the fort, were crowded with the God-King’s warriors. Silhouetted against the blazing column of lightning, the prince saw a Stormcast lord riding a reptilian beast giving orders to a skull-helmed warrior. Zuvius calculated that his only chance to destroy the conduit was to kill the lord.

‘Varanguard,’ Zuvius called to Archaon’s chosen. ‘There upon the battlements. Let’s take our fight to a foe deserving of our hell-forged steel.’

Zuvius saw Vomitus Grue headbutt a paladin in the faceplate and toss him to the Rank and Vile before urging his powerful steed up the rubble of the south wall. Like Grue, other knights in their plate of black and blood-splattered gold finished their present foes before making for the battlements.

Zuvius saw the Unslaked mount the shattered steps of a half-demolished stairwell. He fought through the axe-wielding Stormcasts holding it from the Knights Mazarine. Meanwhile, Kadence Salivarr’s elegant monstrosity leapt up through the ruin of the south wall, bounding and balancing from purchase to precarious purchase. All the while, the Varanguard warrior stabbed and slashed his blade through surrounding Stormcasts.

The Prince of Embers grunted his derision. Zuvius would be damned anew before offering up such a prize to his brothers in darkness. As he saw an opportunity to reach the battlements ahead of them he raced away, only to be suddenly torn backwards.

A Stormcast hammer had struck him in the shoulder, puncturing the pauldron and hooking him back. Tensing his thighs about the saddle and clinging to the reins, Zuvius held on. As the pull of the hammer hauled him and the steed around, the immaculate gauntlet of a Stormcast smashed him across the face. Zuvius reeled. His face was already a mess but now his nose was broken and blood-splattered.

‘Unholy wretch,’ the Stormcast said through the mirrored finish of a glistening helm. His words crackled like the divine metal of the Stormcast weaponry. Swiping again at Zuvius, the celestial warrior cracked his cheekbone and ripped the thin flesh of his face where the ornate gauntlet caught him. ‘The spawn of corruption. You are a thing of evil.’

‘Indeed I am,’ Zuvius snarled before being savagely hammered in the jaw by the Stormcast’s righteous fist. Blood and teeth went flying, tapping and spattering against the glorious pauldron of a nearby paladin.

‘The God-King comes to claim what is his,’ the Stormcast snarled. ‘Soul, stone and sky. All belong to Sigmar. Do you hear me, creature?’

As the skull-helmed warrior rushed to attack once more, the Prince of Embers was ready. Clutching his glaive close to its crowning blade, the knight used the momentum of the next savage tug to thrust A’cuitas down into the Stormcast’s chest. Zuvius pulled him close and watched as blood streamed from the mouth slit of the skull helm. Zuvius thrust again with the glaive, down through the diaphragm and into the gut. The prince felt his foe tense with every plunge.

‘Yes,’ Zuvius told him. ‘I hear you.’

Zuvius ripped the glaive out of the warrior. The Stormcast staggered back, a bloody hole in his chest that cascaded gore down his beautiful suit of armour. The prince pulled the hammer from his ruined pauldron and dropped it on the ground with disgust. He didn’t like the feel of the celestial weapon.

‘Hear this,’ Zuvius spat. ‘Now I go to ensure that your God-King forfeits his claim.’

Leaving the Stormcast to waver and stagger in his last moments of life, Zuvius rode across the courtyard. Barging Stormcast and warhorde warriors aside with Hellion’s armoured flanks, the prince used the shaft of his glaive to smash a lunging Stormcast aside. As another took a swing at him with his grandblade, Zuvius leant down out of its devastating path. Jabbing the blade of A’cuitas through his faceplate, Zuvius rammed the glaive home in the warrior’s skull. Leaving a trail of vaulting lightning storms in his wake, Zuvius reached the other side of the courtyard.

Jabbing his armoured heels into Hellion’s sides, Zuvius prompted the beast to leap up onto a collapsed section of wall, then from the back of a mortally wounded khorgorath, who roared its blood-gurgling defiance. As lightning shafts scorched the stone about him, the Prince of Embers thrust his glaive up into an armoured archer who fell forwards into the courtyard. Urging Hellion on, Zuvius risked the scrabble up the twisted architecture of the wall. A monstrous leap demolished the structure below. As Zuvius held out his glaive to balance, Hellion’s hooves reached the battlements and carried the knight to stable ground.

At last, the Prince of Embers saw the Stormcast lord. He was backed up onto the steps of a gold, sigmarite citadel. The crowning tower was the tallest of the God-King’s fortifications.

His reptilian mount wore extravagant gold plate like its master. Zuvius was sure that he was the leader of the warriors fighting for the Ebon Claw. He was not alone in that assumption. While the armoured bodies of Archaon’s chosen lay about the battlements where the Stormcast lord and his beast had slain them, the Unslaked, Vomitus Grue and Kadence Salivarr still lived, and they had surrounded him.

Zuvius promised himself that victory would not be theirs. Pushing Hellion on, Zuvius raced for the tower. Leaping the razor-edged crenulations between battlements, he dodged several shield-bearing warriors of the God-King. Hellion cleared a section of wall demolished by a mace-swinging Stormcast just moments before and leapt the opportunistic gladius sweeps of others desperate to put themselves between the Varanguard and their lord. As Hellion leapt back down onto the battlements, Zuvius thrust his glaive through two of the Stormcasts. As their swords clattered to the floor, Zuvius ripped A’cuitas free. With lightning souls erupting about him, the Prince of Embers drove his armoured steed on towards the tower.

Everything hurt. Every twist and turn was agony. Every muscle screamed for respite. But Zuvius would not relent.

As Zuvius reached the ruined tower at last, Vomitus Grue died. The pestilent knight had felt no pain when the great hammer of the Stormcast lord smashed him aside. He had felt nothing as the reptilian beast breathed storm-lightning into his pox-scarred face. Zuvius didn’t know if Grue had felt the beast’s jaws tear his head off and spit it into the courtyard below, but it didn’t matter. The body followed moments after.

Kadence Salivarr and the Unslaked tried to take the Stormcast lord together. With their daemon-forged blades a deathtrap of cleaving and thrusting lethality, the Stormcast reared his beast and smashed the blades aside with the crackling power of his colossal hammer. The lord kicked the Unslaked’s bloody mount back while breaking the back of Salivarr’s beast with a downswing of his mighty weapon.

The reptilian mount backed up the tower steps and leapt clear over the two knights, bounding about them to get into a better position.

As a warrior-herald landed nearby to come to his lord’s aid, Zuvius skewered the Stormcast and kicked in his faceplate, sending him toppling over the sharp battlements. The Unslaked attacked next, and tried to unseat the Stormcast lord. Instead, his horned helm was smashed to brain-dribbling scrap by the Stormcast’s hammer. Kadence Salivarr tried to bring his infamous bladework to bear, but was felled by the thunderbolt blast of a crossbow bolt in the back.

As the smoking shell of the dark knight crumpled before the Stormcast lord, Zuvius drove at him. The Stormcast hauled on his mount’s reins and pointed the head of his hammer at the Varanguard before him.

‘No,’ the Prince of Embers told him. ‘It shall be you to taste oblivion.’

Such words seemed to provoke something in the Stormcast lord. Digging his heels into the scaly flanks of his steed, he urged the beast on.

Zuvius roared his defiance at the Stormcast who stood up in the saddle, his hammer aloft. Hellion wanted to charge but Zuvius kept the reins tight in his armoured grasp as he turned the shaft of A’cuitas about in his other hand.

As the Stormcast lord charged, Zuvius pointed the pommel of A’cuitas at the ground. The metal eye opened and a blaze of dark lightning scorched the stone battlements, turning them from black to a glowing red, melting the stone in the Stormcast’s path. As the reptile’s claws met the molten stone they sank, before becoming trapped as the stone cooled to glass. The beast’s momentum suddenly arrested, it threw its rider from the saddle and over its head.

As the Stormcast lord hit the battlement floor face first and skidded to a halt before Zuvius, Hellion bridled. The golden warrior’s hammer skimmed across the stone and fell into the courtyard. The Stormcast rolled over. Zuvius held the point of his glaive over his scuffed helm.

‘Unworthy,’ Zuvius told him, before stabbing down. A lightning storm raged about him as the Stormcast lord died.

The reptilian beast roared its grief and anger at Zuvius, straining to tear its legs free. It opened its jaws wide to unleash its lightning at Archaon’s chosen.

‘Enough,’ Zuvius told it before spearing it through the mouth.

Zuvius urged Hellion to the edge of the battlement. He looked down into the courtyard. He waited. The warhorde fought on against the Stormcast defenders, while other knights arrived behind them, too late to take their part in the glory and destruction of the celestial lord. Among them was Aspa Erezavant, the silent killer whose blade dripped with gore. The battle had turned. While the wretched warriors of Chaos had to step through a carpet of their own dead, the Stormcasts were being backed up to the column of lightning.

The prince’s smeared lips curled. The celestial lord was dead but the column went on burning and with it came endless reinforcements.

He had been wrong.

Zuvius furiously looked across the battle, across the golden paladins fighting for their God-King and the living corruption attempting to destroy them. He saw the Stormcast Eternal who had been speaking to the Stormcast lord earlier. The indomitable warrior was still alive and deep in prayer.

‘You…’ Zuvius said. He realised this warrior must be controlling the column of light. He lifted A’cuitas up like a spear, took aim and threw it. The Stormcast looked up just as his comrades tried to warn him. The glaive squealed down through the skull-helmed warrior’s armour, impaling him to the ground and silencing his prayer.

As the skull-helmed warrior became a coruscation of surging, spiritual energy blazing for the skies, the column of lightning stuttered and disappeared, leaving only burnt air and a sharp afterglow. Zuvius had severed the conduit. The Stormcasts remaining were as indomitable as ever but the tide had turned. The forces of Chaos fell upon them in droves as the followers of Archaon butchered their way to a crude victory.

The Prince of Embers heard the flap of wings. It was Mallofax, returned after the worst of the fighting. The bird rested on Zuvius’ ruined shoulder guard.

‘You saw?’

‘I saw, my lord,’ the bird squawked.

‘The Stormcast in the skull helm?’

‘Aye, master.’

‘Then fly to the other fortresses, to the other hordes,’ said Zuvius. ‘Tell our Varanguard brothers how to sever the storm. Tell them how the God-King’s warriors can be defeated and driven from this miserable land.’

With the beating of wings, Mallofax peeled off into the sky. Orphaeo Zuvius leant back in the saddle. With his injuries, he almost fell. Aspa Erezavant nodded at him before urging his steed back down the ruined steps leading from the battlements.

Zuvius looked down into the courtyard and to a victory declared in blood and lightning. The Ebon Claw was theirs.

Weary, Zuvius had one more thing he needed to see. He steered Hellion up the glorious steps of the sigmarite tower, to the highest part of the Ebon Claw, and stared out across the dark peninsula. Cape Desolation belonged to the Everchosen. The columns of lightning connecting each of the fortresses were being snuffed out like the flames of distant candles. He could hear cheering, sorcerous chanting and the screams of the dying. They all came together in an unholy cacophony.

Zuvius felt a ravenous pride eat away at him as he looked out across the Varanguard swarming the conquered peninsula. He felt part of something abominable and powerful. He had been a warrior, pledged to Chaos. An acolyte of dread Tzeentch. A blind man leading the blind, without true purpose. Alone among wretches, he had become complacent. Content in personal damnation.

He understood that he would never know the meaninglessness of spawndom or the monstrous powers gifted by the Great Changer. He was not the one but the one among many. Only in service to the Everchosen of Chaos had the Prince of Embers come to know the true power of damnation. Damnation of all for all. The harnessed strength of corruption, the glorious darkness of a fell blade wielded by the greatest of their kind. Archaon was a dire warlord who united not only the Varanguard behind him, but all servants of the Dark Gods as he stormed through the victim realms.

A dark silhouette in the rising dust, the Prince of Embers could see his master. Archaon. A horned shadow in his monstrous plate, his daemonsword and runeshield held in tight as he prepared to take once more to the air. The daemon steed launched into the sky, extending the great expanse of his wings. While Sigmar’s tempest continued to rage across distant skies, over Cape Desolation all was still.

Orphaeo Zuvius watched the Everchosen and his daemon steed fly high over the Ebon Claw. Gliding on Dorghar’s powerful wings, Archaon steered the monster towards the dark lands beyond. Zuvius nodded to himself. There would be more fighting. More killing to come. The arrival of the God-King’s Stormcast Eternals would have given people living beyond the peninsula hope – hope for a realm without the tyranny of a ruinous overlord like Archaon. As the Prince of Embers took up his glaive and turned Hellion back down the steps, he came to realise that hope was a truly terrible thing.

About the Author

Rob Sanders is the author of The Serpent Beneath, a novella that appeared in the New York Times bestselling Horus Heresy anthology The Primarchs. His other Black Library credits include the Warhammer 40,000 titles Adeptus Mechanicus: Skitarius and Tech-Priest, Legion of the Damned, Atlas Infernal and Redemption Corps and the audio drama The Path Forsaken. He has also written the Warhammer Archaon duology, Everchosen and Lord of Chaos along with many Quick Reads for the Horus Heresy and Warhammer 40,000. He lives in the city of Lincoln, UK.

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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