War storm, p.6
War Storm, page 6
It became a scrum, brutal and attritional. The front ranks on each side quickly enmeshed as vigour and momentum took individual combatants deeper into their enemy’s formation. In truth, the Bloodbound had none, just a mob of bellowing and frenzied killers.
Whereas the blood warriors fought with fury and abandon, the Retributors embraced discipline and determination, fighting as one. Their lightning hammers rose and fell with relentless efficiency, crushing skulls and splitting the hefty war-plate of their enemies. Even as the barbarians died, they fought on, driven by rage, but the paladins were thorough and smote their enemies until there was little left but mangled remains.
Slowly, painstakingly, the Retributors reformed their ranks and began to push towards the tower.
‘Into them!’ roared Cryptborn, smashing a blood warrior aside with his relic hammer. ‘Do not relent!’
He raised his reliquary staff and a bolt of lightning crackled forth, destroying a slew of enemies.
‘As one, as one!’ cried Cryptborn, a wash of gore spraying across his skull-mask. He briefly caught sight of Theodrus urging his retinue forward. ‘Theodrus! Hold them. Hold them back.’
Pausing between hammer swings, Theodrus turned at the sound of his name, nodded and brought his men into order.
His paladins slowly formed the hammer, an offensive formation intended to blunt an opponent’s attack against a wedge of armour, many ranks thick, before pushing through with a narrow but even deeper column. To the Prosecutors whirling and pitching above, it would resemble a hammer, hence the name.
At the thought of the heralds, Ionus looked up.
Sturmannon’s retinue harried the tower ramparts, darting beneath hurled blades and spears, before sweeping in to unleash their celestial hammers. As agile as they were, not all the Prosecutors succeeded and heralds fell from the sky, burning like comets with wings ablaze.
Spears of light arced heavenward before they even struck the ground.
Scowling, Cryptborn pushed on into the fray. His eyes met those of Theodrus.
Pure as pools of azure, they shone with devotion but burned with vengeance. Theodrus raised his hammer aloft.
‘For Sigmar and Azyr!’
A roar came in answer from the swell of sweating, grunting, blood-slick warriors. A huge figure barrelled into the fight. He was more of a beast than a man, with a thick neck and broad shoulders. In one meaty fist he clenched a jagged-bladed axe, notched from splitting bone. In the other hand, he had an immense totem, pulsing with evil light. Furnace heat bled from the icon, the skull-image of Khorne resplendent in its anti-glory. He was the demagogue, a chain of skulls festooned about his neck denoting his rank, and crimson war-plate crested with spikes – the rage-maker.
‘Bloodsecrator…’ breathed Ionus Cryptborn.
He was the one from the battle for the Gates of Azyr. He had proclaimed his name to his Blood God, beseeching his favour. And he had received it, a most terrible boon that brought a rain of blood and blinding fury to anyone it touched: Khorne’s realm, manifest in reality.
‘Threx Skullbrand,’ said Cryptborn.
Heaving his own warriors aside, Skullbrand buried his axe in a Prosecutor who had swooped in to engage him.
The herald’s breastplate split, a ragged red cleft between the parted metal. He gaped, clutching crackling air before his hammers could form. Skullbrand finished him with a savage headbutt and grimaced as another flash of light soared heavenward.
‘Kill him!’ shouted Cryptborn, knowing what would happen next as he battered through the throng to reach the bloodsecrator. ‘Bring him down!’
Another Prosecutor arced towards the bloodsecrator, angling sharply, intent on avenging his comrade. A third flew swiftly after him, clenching a pair of crackling hammers.
The first died when he was caught by the throat. With the Prosecutor choking in his grasp, Skullbrand ripped off the gilded arch of his wings. Each crackled before its light ebbed to shivering corposant. The herald’s neck was broken with a savage twist, his lifeless body like a hurled spear as it struck his chasing comrade. He fell.
Skullbrand slew this one too, slamming a hobnailed boot on the Prosecutor’s chest to hold him down before an axe in the warrior’s emotionless mask ended his suffering.
Theodrus and his paladins had smashed a path clear, and Ionus burst through the enemy ranks and charged.
As Skullbrand met the eye of the Lord-Relictor, the bloodsecrator grinned. He knew it was too late for anyone to stop him.
With a triumphant roar, he rammed the icon of Khorne into the blood-soaked earth.
The stench of foetid blood rose high in the gorge, tainting the air. A storm of wrath burst from the icon, throwing Ionus off his feet.
A knot of paladins rushed to their Lord-Relictor, as a horde of Khornate bloodreavers spilled into the gap between the bloodsecrator and his foes.
Ionus cursed as he got to his feet.
‘Close ranks,’ he snarled, and could only glare at the hulking blood-priest.
You and I shall meet soon, he promised.
For now, the battle continued. The Stormcasts were in the ascendancy but it was far from over.
The crimson rain began again, driving the Bloodbound into fits of apoplexy. Soon the paladins were hard-pressed again, and the baleful roar of distant daemons in a realm of carnage seemed close and at hand.
The unsettling taint of Khorne’s own domain and the frenzy it evoked in his followers were merely opening acts to what followed…
It began as thunder, a deep rumble that came through the earth, rather than the sky.
A cloud of dust arose, barely visible in the darkness… Then an army resolved, roving along the night-black horizon. Moonlight glinted off their armoured barding.
‘Cavalry?’ growled Theodrus, in a brief moment’s respite.
Around him, the two forces clashed fiercely.
‘No mortal kind,’ rasped Ionus. ‘Those aren’t horses, nor are their riders knights. At least, not of flesh and blood. I–’ he began, before violently convulsing. At first, he thought it might be the effects of the icon, trying to turn his mind to reckless hate. But as the chill swept through his marrow, turning his bones to ice, he knew it was something else.
Something old, and from the past. From before, when he had been someone else.
The brass tower faded, becoming as incorporeal as smoke. The faces of his fellow Stormcasts froze in dark ice.
‘No, not now. Not this!’
Even as his mind was wrenched away, Ionus could hear the oncoming stampede of the bloodcrushers until even that bled away to sepulchral silence.
He opened his eyes, not realising he had closed them, and found he was standing in a long hall of cold, grey stone. Dust motes trickled from the ceiling in an endless, sad rain.
Darkness, abject and all pervasive, blinded Ionus to much of his surroundings. He imagined mausoleums, the slow creak of rotting wood, bones and earth as chill as winter frost.
He knew this place, for he had been here before in another life. The Deep Barrows – one of the many underworlds of Shyish, the Realm of Death.
‘Why am I here?’ he asked of the dark.
His own voice echoed back like a taunt.
‘Answer me!’
A tithe is owed. A tithe shall be given.
The same words returned, haunting and ageless as before.
A soul for a soul.
A malign intelligence regarded Ionus from the shadows, though he could scarcely perceive it. The only thing he could discern was a vague silhouette, and two piercing orbs of baleful green. Neither leavened the dark. Instead, they drank in the light.
You defied me once before, Eonid ven Denst, uttered the voice. It was the sound of depthless winter, of ancient wisdom beyond comprehension. It was entropy and the slow return to order. It was death incarnate.
Ionus’s reply carried some steel. ‘It has been a long time since I was known as Eonid ven Denst.’
A dry rasp like the whispering of thousands of corpses issued from the darkness.
Laughter, Ionus realised. He was being mocked.
A tithe is owed. A tithe shall be given, the voice repeated, though the shadow of its owner remained unmoving.
A soul for a soul.
Eldritch light flared into being, sculpted into the resemblance of a woman.
The shadow moved, leaning forward on its throne as Ionus cried out and reached for his wife. His sigmarite-clad fingers began to erode and rust before he could touch her, the grace Sigmar had given him undone in an instant.
It took just moments to reduce Ionus Cryptborn, Lord-Relictor and Stormcast Eternal to Eonid ven Denst, Amethyst Prince.
The simulacrum of ven Denst’s wife writhed in agony, her mouth open in a silent scream that he could only hear in his memories.
‘Please!’ begged ven Denst, his pale face awash with tears. He could feel her now, but as his skin gently brushed against hers she began to wither and decay. ‘Please…’ His voice, once so strong and formidable, became a whimper. ‘Please…’
Ven Denst sank to his knees, with only a pile of ashen remains in his grasp.
He looked up to face his tormenter. Only darkness looked back, but it was well beyond pity or compassion.
‘You promised me that you would keep her. That we would be reunited in death.’
With eternal life comes eternal pain. You should not have defied me. I remember everything. I remember the Days of Shattered Bone.
Ven Denst let the ash fall and rose to stand before his accuser. He felt his former strength returning. A gauntleted fist, not the hand of an Amethyst Prince, clutched his relic-hammer. He was Ionus Cryptborn again.
A last thought struck Ionus, of Vandus on his knees, besieged by Chaos, and a dark champion looming over him with a ready axe. It was the prophecy as Vandus had described it.
A tithe is owed. A tithe shall be given.
A soul for a soul.
‘Release me,’ uttered Cryptborn, then bellowed when no answer came. ‘Release me!’
He slammed down his reliquary staff and a great flash of light blinded him.
As it faded, he heard voices and smelled blood, the reek of hot metal and sulphur.
A retinue of paladins surrounded Ionus, fending off a horde of attackers. Theodrus led them, an unyielding bulwark of sigmarite against an ocean of fury.
‘Lord-Relictor…’ His mask could not hide the concern in his voice.
Ionus raised a hand to show he was all right. ‘Where are the daemons?’ he asked, still groggy but rising to his feet.
Theodrus did not need to answer, as the thunderous charge of the bloodcrushers hit.
A spearthrust of daemonic cavalry burst right into the heart of the Stormcasts’ ranks. Ionus could only watch as his battle formation was breached in several places at once. The beasts the daemons rode were truly monstrous. Warriors were crushed under iron hooves, gored by horns or torn apart with savage teeth.
Lightning cracks tore apart the darkness.
‘Hold them!’ roared Ionus as he felt the line roll and turn as men were slain. ‘Reform as one!’
A Retributor flailed, spitted. A knot of his comrades rushed in and smashed the steed apart with their hammers, but it was hard going. As well as proving incredibly strong, the daemonic beasts were nearly impermeable to all but the most determined of attacks.
After being so close to victory, now the Stormcast Eternals were firmly on the back foot and assailed from all sides.
As their numbers diminished, the Prosecutors could only harry the edges of the enemy’s ranks. Any that came too close to the bloodcrushers were cut down, Ionus ordered them back so as not to sell their lives cheaply.
The hammer formation of the paladins had become a circle, with all its warriors facing outwards and fighting almost innumerable foes. It was the task for which Sigmar had made them, but Ionus knew his chamber’s martial strength was finite. He began to see the wisdom of striking for the Gate of Wrath and denying Chaos its endless hosts.
‘Together,’ he roared again. ‘As one, brothers. As one!’
Theodrus bellowed in unison with his Lord-Relictor, chanting the names of the fallen and hurling them like curses at his enemies. He dragged a red-skinned daemon off its steed, first pummelling the rider and then breaking the beast apart.
Others were not so successful.
Ionus saw a clutch of Retributors brought down by half a dozen of the daemons. Some were cut apart by hell-forged blades, others were simply crushed to death. None survived, and the line shrank further.
Inwardly, Ionus groaned. They had been winning. Now it was beginning to unravel. He had lost sight of Skullbrand, but still felt the presence of the bloodsecrator. The red rain stained his armour, and robbed it of its lustre. Thunder rolled across the heavens again, but it was the voice of the Blood God, not the Lord of Storms. It began to wear upon him, slowly eroding his will.
A clutch of Stormcasts, Theodrus amongst them, flew back into the rear ranks. A massive daemonic steed and its rider ploughed in after them. The head of the beast snapped left and right, reaping limbs.
Only Ionus stood before it as it reared up onto its hindquarters.
As it crashed down, the sheer force of it almost took Ionus off his feet. In the end, he staggered, and barely parried a blow that rang against the haft of his relic-hammer. He felt his shoulder jar painfully, and grimaced behind his skull-mask.
Summoning the storm, he sent a bolt of arc lightning into the beast. Fearsome tendrils of crackling celestial magic coursed over its metal hide, but did little more than enrage it.
The rider swung again, and Ionus batted the blow away with his hammer. He countered by smashing the beast’s foreleg and, with some relief, saw the armour crack and its ichorous essence flow from the wound.
Stamping and snorting, the frenzied beast tried to crush him, but another paladin got in its way and fell instead. Ionus quickly moved closer so he was harder for it to see. Snarling and baying on the beast’s haunches, the rider had to fight to stay mounted.
Ionus struck again, another blow against the foreleg. This time the armour split apart, and viscous black lifeblood gushed forth as the daemon steed bellowed in pain. A third blow crippled it and the beast sank down sharply, pitching its rider forward and onto the ground where Theodrus crushed it with his hammer.
At the same time, Ionus rammed the hilt of his reliquary staff into the beast’s eye and drove it deep. He called upon the storm again, the bolt lancing down from a blood-red sky. No armour could protect the daemon steed now, sundered by Sigmar’s holy wrath.
‘We are failing, Lord-Relictor,’ uttered Theodrus breathlessly.
Blood warriors and bloodreavers clamoured for battle, hacking with furious abandon. Scattered amongst their swollen ranks were khorgoraths and even larger beasts now that the tower had given up its entire garrison.
‘Don’t give in to despair, Theodrus,’ Ionus told him.
But as the blood-rain anointed the Stormcasts in hellish red, Ionus knew they could not last much longer. He felt the presence of the tower sapping his strength as more fell beneath the armies of the Blood God.
A long shadow stretched out from the unholy tower. It fell across the Khornate host as if their lord had his eye upon them and granted them his favour.
Ionus looked to the tower, then to his foes. He saw a chance for salvation.
‘Praise Sigmar…’ he whispered, before he spoke to his brothers.
‘Theodrus, hold them off. Keep them at bay for as long as you can.’
Ionus left the fighting rank, the others closing the gap as he retreated into the depths of the Stormcasts’ slowly diminishing throng. Once there, the paladins encircled him and forged a small patch of earth in which the Lord-Relictor could pray.
On his knees, the reliquary staff in both hands, Ionus beseeched the Lord of Storms. His voice was a mere rasp in the tumult, but he fought to make it heard. Again, he invoked Sigmar and closed his mind to the savage imprecations trying to unnerve him.
He clutched the staff tighter, and shut out the din of battle around him.
‘Lord Sigmar, hear me…’ he prayed. ‘Bring forth your lightning, and allow me to be its vessel.’
A low rumble broke across the sky, not the hollow clamouring of daemons this time but the righteous voice of a God-King stirred to anger. It began slow, a distant flash to part the blood-red cloud, the wind rising to cleanse the air.
Ionus prayed harder, his fingers clenched so ardently that his knuckles ached.
‘Sigmar…’ he rasped, and felt another presence upon his shoulder – one that gave him strength. ‘Sigmar!’
A column of coruscating lightning roared from the heavens, so pure and bright that no servant of Chaos could bear look upon it. Daemons screamed in agony, whilst the mortal followers shielded their eyes. It hit the ground at the tower’s footings, blackening the earth. Not even a god-sent bolt could have smote Khorne’s monument outright, but Ionus had discerned its weakness. Where the lightning struck, fissures tore through the ground until it was wrenched apart.
An ominous cracking sounded, emanating from the tower. Brass squealed as it lurched against its own weight, leaning ponderously towards the chasm that had now formed beneath it. Seizing the chance, Theodrus and the Retributors who had fought through the throng of enemies slammed their hammers into the lurching footings of the tower.
Still blinded from the god-lightning, the host of Khorne was slow to react as the tower capitulated and came crashing down on them.
A huge pall of dirt and debris spilled up and outwards, as a great clangour of sundered metal resounded across the battlefield. In a single stroke, Ionus had tipped the scales of the fight. Bodies of mortals and daemons alike were crushed by the cursed stone of the tower, their limbs reduced to a mangled ruin. The foul stink of sulphur tainted the air as the bloodcrushers were banished, but it was the screams of the Bloodbound that lingered longest. Those that were left looked on aghast at what had become of their warhost and the magic of the storm-priest who had struck down the tower.
Whereas the blood warriors fought with fury and abandon, the Retributors embraced discipline and determination, fighting as one. Their lightning hammers rose and fell with relentless efficiency, crushing skulls and splitting the hefty war-plate of their enemies. Even as the barbarians died, they fought on, driven by rage, but the paladins were thorough and smote their enemies until there was little left but mangled remains.
Slowly, painstakingly, the Retributors reformed their ranks and began to push towards the tower.
‘Into them!’ roared Cryptborn, smashing a blood warrior aside with his relic hammer. ‘Do not relent!’
He raised his reliquary staff and a bolt of lightning crackled forth, destroying a slew of enemies.
‘As one, as one!’ cried Cryptborn, a wash of gore spraying across his skull-mask. He briefly caught sight of Theodrus urging his retinue forward. ‘Theodrus! Hold them. Hold them back.’
Pausing between hammer swings, Theodrus turned at the sound of his name, nodded and brought his men into order.
His paladins slowly formed the hammer, an offensive formation intended to blunt an opponent’s attack against a wedge of armour, many ranks thick, before pushing through with a narrow but even deeper column. To the Prosecutors whirling and pitching above, it would resemble a hammer, hence the name.
At the thought of the heralds, Ionus looked up.
Sturmannon’s retinue harried the tower ramparts, darting beneath hurled blades and spears, before sweeping in to unleash their celestial hammers. As agile as they were, not all the Prosecutors succeeded and heralds fell from the sky, burning like comets with wings ablaze.
Spears of light arced heavenward before they even struck the ground.
Scowling, Cryptborn pushed on into the fray. His eyes met those of Theodrus.
Pure as pools of azure, they shone with devotion but burned with vengeance. Theodrus raised his hammer aloft.
‘For Sigmar and Azyr!’
A roar came in answer from the swell of sweating, grunting, blood-slick warriors. A huge figure barrelled into the fight. He was more of a beast than a man, with a thick neck and broad shoulders. In one meaty fist he clenched a jagged-bladed axe, notched from splitting bone. In the other hand, he had an immense totem, pulsing with evil light. Furnace heat bled from the icon, the skull-image of Khorne resplendent in its anti-glory. He was the demagogue, a chain of skulls festooned about his neck denoting his rank, and crimson war-plate crested with spikes – the rage-maker.
‘Bloodsecrator…’ breathed Ionus Cryptborn.
He was the one from the battle for the Gates of Azyr. He had proclaimed his name to his Blood God, beseeching his favour. And he had received it, a most terrible boon that brought a rain of blood and blinding fury to anyone it touched: Khorne’s realm, manifest in reality.
‘Threx Skullbrand,’ said Cryptborn.
Heaving his own warriors aside, Skullbrand buried his axe in a Prosecutor who had swooped in to engage him.
The herald’s breastplate split, a ragged red cleft between the parted metal. He gaped, clutching crackling air before his hammers could form. Skullbrand finished him with a savage headbutt and grimaced as another flash of light soared heavenward.
‘Kill him!’ shouted Cryptborn, knowing what would happen next as he battered through the throng to reach the bloodsecrator. ‘Bring him down!’
Another Prosecutor arced towards the bloodsecrator, angling sharply, intent on avenging his comrade. A third flew swiftly after him, clenching a pair of crackling hammers.
The first died when he was caught by the throat. With the Prosecutor choking in his grasp, Skullbrand ripped off the gilded arch of his wings. Each crackled before its light ebbed to shivering corposant. The herald’s neck was broken with a savage twist, his lifeless body like a hurled spear as it struck his chasing comrade. He fell.
Skullbrand slew this one too, slamming a hobnailed boot on the Prosecutor’s chest to hold him down before an axe in the warrior’s emotionless mask ended his suffering.
Theodrus and his paladins had smashed a path clear, and Ionus burst through the enemy ranks and charged.
As Skullbrand met the eye of the Lord-Relictor, the bloodsecrator grinned. He knew it was too late for anyone to stop him.
With a triumphant roar, he rammed the icon of Khorne into the blood-soaked earth.
The stench of foetid blood rose high in the gorge, tainting the air. A storm of wrath burst from the icon, throwing Ionus off his feet.
A knot of paladins rushed to their Lord-Relictor, as a horde of Khornate bloodreavers spilled into the gap between the bloodsecrator and his foes.
Ionus cursed as he got to his feet.
‘Close ranks,’ he snarled, and could only glare at the hulking blood-priest.
You and I shall meet soon, he promised.
For now, the battle continued. The Stormcasts were in the ascendancy but it was far from over.
The crimson rain began again, driving the Bloodbound into fits of apoplexy. Soon the paladins were hard-pressed again, and the baleful roar of distant daemons in a realm of carnage seemed close and at hand.
The unsettling taint of Khorne’s own domain and the frenzy it evoked in his followers were merely opening acts to what followed…
It began as thunder, a deep rumble that came through the earth, rather than the sky.
A cloud of dust arose, barely visible in the darkness… Then an army resolved, roving along the night-black horizon. Moonlight glinted off their armoured barding.
‘Cavalry?’ growled Theodrus, in a brief moment’s respite.
Around him, the two forces clashed fiercely.
‘No mortal kind,’ rasped Ionus. ‘Those aren’t horses, nor are their riders knights. At least, not of flesh and blood. I–’ he began, before violently convulsing. At first, he thought it might be the effects of the icon, trying to turn his mind to reckless hate. But as the chill swept through his marrow, turning his bones to ice, he knew it was something else.
Something old, and from the past. From before, when he had been someone else.
The brass tower faded, becoming as incorporeal as smoke. The faces of his fellow Stormcasts froze in dark ice.
‘No, not now. Not this!’
Even as his mind was wrenched away, Ionus could hear the oncoming stampede of the bloodcrushers until even that bled away to sepulchral silence.
He opened his eyes, not realising he had closed them, and found he was standing in a long hall of cold, grey stone. Dust motes trickled from the ceiling in an endless, sad rain.
Darkness, abject and all pervasive, blinded Ionus to much of his surroundings. He imagined mausoleums, the slow creak of rotting wood, bones and earth as chill as winter frost.
He knew this place, for he had been here before in another life. The Deep Barrows – one of the many underworlds of Shyish, the Realm of Death.
‘Why am I here?’ he asked of the dark.
His own voice echoed back like a taunt.
‘Answer me!’
A tithe is owed. A tithe shall be given.
The same words returned, haunting and ageless as before.
A soul for a soul.
A malign intelligence regarded Ionus from the shadows, though he could scarcely perceive it. The only thing he could discern was a vague silhouette, and two piercing orbs of baleful green. Neither leavened the dark. Instead, they drank in the light.
You defied me once before, Eonid ven Denst, uttered the voice. It was the sound of depthless winter, of ancient wisdom beyond comprehension. It was entropy and the slow return to order. It was death incarnate.
Ionus’s reply carried some steel. ‘It has been a long time since I was known as Eonid ven Denst.’
A dry rasp like the whispering of thousands of corpses issued from the darkness.
Laughter, Ionus realised. He was being mocked.
A tithe is owed. A tithe shall be given, the voice repeated, though the shadow of its owner remained unmoving.
A soul for a soul.
Eldritch light flared into being, sculpted into the resemblance of a woman.
The shadow moved, leaning forward on its throne as Ionus cried out and reached for his wife. His sigmarite-clad fingers began to erode and rust before he could touch her, the grace Sigmar had given him undone in an instant.
It took just moments to reduce Ionus Cryptborn, Lord-Relictor and Stormcast Eternal to Eonid ven Denst, Amethyst Prince.
The simulacrum of ven Denst’s wife writhed in agony, her mouth open in a silent scream that he could only hear in his memories.
‘Please!’ begged ven Denst, his pale face awash with tears. He could feel her now, but as his skin gently brushed against hers she began to wither and decay. ‘Please…’ His voice, once so strong and formidable, became a whimper. ‘Please…’
Ven Denst sank to his knees, with only a pile of ashen remains in his grasp.
He looked up to face his tormenter. Only darkness looked back, but it was well beyond pity or compassion.
‘You promised me that you would keep her. That we would be reunited in death.’
With eternal life comes eternal pain. You should not have defied me. I remember everything. I remember the Days of Shattered Bone.
Ven Denst let the ash fall and rose to stand before his accuser. He felt his former strength returning. A gauntleted fist, not the hand of an Amethyst Prince, clutched his relic-hammer. He was Ionus Cryptborn again.
A last thought struck Ionus, of Vandus on his knees, besieged by Chaos, and a dark champion looming over him with a ready axe. It was the prophecy as Vandus had described it.
A tithe is owed. A tithe shall be given.
A soul for a soul.
‘Release me,’ uttered Cryptborn, then bellowed when no answer came. ‘Release me!’
He slammed down his reliquary staff and a great flash of light blinded him.
As it faded, he heard voices and smelled blood, the reek of hot metal and sulphur.
A retinue of paladins surrounded Ionus, fending off a horde of attackers. Theodrus led them, an unyielding bulwark of sigmarite against an ocean of fury.
‘Lord-Relictor…’ His mask could not hide the concern in his voice.
Ionus raised a hand to show he was all right. ‘Where are the daemons?’ he asked, still groggy but rising to his feet.
Theodrus did not need to answer, as the thunderous charge of the bloodcrushers hit.
A spearthrust of daemonic cavalry burst right into the heart of the Stormcasts’ ranks. Ionus could only watch as his battle formation was breached in several places at once. The beasts the daemons rode were truly monstrous. Warriors were crushed under iron hooves, gored by horns or torn apart with savage teeth.
Lightning cracks tore apart the darkness.
‘Hold them!’ roared Ionus as he felt the line roll and turn as men were slain. ‘Reform as one!’
A Retributor flailed, spitted. A knot of his comrades rushed in and smashed the steed apart with their hammers, but it was hard going. As well as proving incredibly strong, the daemonic beasts were nearly impermeable to all but the most determined of attacks.
After being so close to victory, now the Stormcast Eternals were firmly on the back foot and assailed from all sides.
As their numbers diminished, the Prosecutors could only harry the edges of the enemy’s ranks. Any that came too close to the bloodcrushers were cut down, Ionus ordered them back so as not to sell their lives cheaply.
The hammer formation of the paladins had become a circle, with all its warriors facing outwards and fighting almost innumerable foes. It was the task for which Sigmar had made them, but Ionus knew his chamber’s martial strength was finite. He began to see the wisdom of striking for the Gate of Wrath and denying Chaos its endless hosts.
‘Together,’ he roared again. ‘As one, brothers. As one!’
Theodrus bellowed in unison with his Lord-Relictor, chanting the names of the fallen and hurling them like curses at his enemies. He dragged a red-skinned daemon off its steed, first pummelling the rider and then breaking the beast apart.
Others were not so successful.
Ionus saw a clutch of Retributors brought down by half a dozen of the daemons. Some were cut apart by hell-forged blades, others were simply crushed to death. None survived, and the line shrank further.
Inwardly, Ionus groaned. They had been winning. Now it was beginning to unravel. He had lost sight of Skullbrand, but still felt the presence of the bloodsecrator. The red rain stained his armour, and robbed it of its lustre. Thunder rolled across the heavens again, but it was the voice of the Blood God, not the Lord of Storms. It began to wear upon him, slowly eroding his will.
A clutch of Stormcasts, Theodrus amongst them, flew back into the rear ranks. A massive daemonic steed and its rider ploughed in after them. The head of the beast snapped left and right, reaping limbs.
Only Ionus stood before it as it reared up onto its hindquarters.
As it crashed down, the sheer force of it almost took Ionus off his feet. In the end, he staggered, and barely parried a blow that rang against the haft of his relic-hammer. He felt his shoulder jar painfully, and grimaced behind his skull-mask.
Summoning the storm, he sent a bolt of arc lightning into the beast. Fearsome tendrils of crackling celestial magic coursed over its metal hide, but did little more than enrage it.
The rider swung again, and Ionus batted the blow away with his hammer. He countered by smashing the beast’s foreleg and, with some relief, saw the armour crack and its ichorous essence flow from the wound.
Stamping and snorting, the frenzied beast tried to crush him, but another paladin got in its way and fell instead. Ionus quickly moved closer so he was harder for it to see. Snarling and baying on the beast’s haunches, the rider had to fight to stay mounted.
Ionus struck again, another blow against the foreleg. This time the armour split apart, and viscous black lifeblood gushed forth as the daemon steed bellowed in pain. A third blow crippled it and the beast sank down sharply, pitching its rider forward and onto the ground where Theodrus crushed it with his hammer.
At the same time, Ionus rammed the hilt of his reliquary staff into the beast’s eye and drove it deep. He called upon the storm again, the bolt lancing down from a blood-red sky. No armour could protect the daemon steed now, sundered by Sigmar’s holy wrath.
‘We are failing, Lord-Relictor,’ uttered Theodrus breathlessly.
Blood warriors and bloodreavers clamoured for battle, hacking with furious abandon. Scattered amongst their swollen ranks were khorgoraths and even larger beasts now that the tower had given up its entire garrison.
‘Don’t give in to despair, Theodrus,’ Ionus told him.
But as the blood-rain anointed the Stormcasts in hellish red, Ionus knew they could not last much longer. He felt the presence of the tower sapping his strength as more fell beneath the armies of the Blood God.
A long shadow stretched out from the unholy tower. It fell across the Khornate host as if their lord had his eye upon them and granted them his favour.
Ionus looked to the tower, then to his foes. He saw a chance for salvation.
‘Praise Sigmar…’ he whispered, before he spoke to his brothers.
‘Theodrus, hold them off. Keep them at bay for as long as you can.’
Ionus left the fighting rank, the others closing the gap as he retreated into the depths of the Stormcasts’ slowly diminishing throng. Once there, the paladins encircled him and forged a small patch of earth in which the Lord-Relictor could pray.
On his knees, the reliquary staff in both hands, Ionus beseeched the Lord of Storms. His voice was a mere rasp in the tumult, but he fought to make it heard. Again, he invoked Sigmar and closed his mind to the savage imprecations trying to unnerve him.
He clutched the staff tighter, and shut out the din of battle around him.
‘Lord Sigmar, hear me…’ he prayed. ‘Bring forth your lightning, and allow me to be its vessel.’
A low rumble broke across the sky, not the hollow clamouring of daemons this time but the righteous voice of a God-King stirred to anger. It began slow, a distant flash to part the blood-red cloud, the wind rising to cleanse the air.
Ionus prayed harder, his fingers clenched so ardently that his knuckles ached.
‘Sigmar…’ he rasped, and felt another presence upon his shoulder – one that gave him strength. ‘Sigmar!’
A column of coruscating lightning roared from the heavens, so pure and bright that no servant of Chaos could bear look upon it. Daemons screamed in agony, whilst the mortal followers shielded their eyes. It hit the ground at the tower’s footings, blackening the earth. Not even a god-sent bolt could have smote Khorne’s monument outright, but Ionus had discerned its weakness. Where the lightning struck, fissures tore through the ground until it was wrenched apart.
An ominous cracking sounded, emanating from the tower. Brass squealed as it lurched against its own weight, leaning ponderously towards the chasm that had now formed beneath it. Seizing the chance, Theodrus and the Retributors who had fought through the throng of enemies slammed their hammers into the lurching footings of the tower.
Still blinded from the god-lightning, the host of Khorne was slow to react as the tower capitulated and came crashing down on them.
A huge pall of dirt and debris spilled up and outwards, as a great clangour of sundered metal resounded across the battlefield. In a single stroke, Ionus had tipped the scales of the fight. Bodies of mortals and daemons alike were crushed by the cursed stone of the tower, their limbs reduced to a mangled ruin. The foul stink of sulphur tainted the air as the bloodcrushers were banished, but it was the screams of the Bloodbound that lingered longest. Those that were left looked on aghast at what had become of their warhost and the magic of the storm-priest who had struck down the tower.
