‘To me, my brothers!’ he cried, and raw lightning leapt around him.
They answered the summons, shrugging off the last slivers of void-lightning, forming up into phalanxes of gold. Rain streamed down their armour, and yet did not diminish it — amid a fallen world, they shone like furnaces sent to burn away the corruption and salvage what little remained.
Calanax roared again, his mighty lungs hurling smoke and boiling rain far out across the battlefield. The dracoth reared up, yearning to charge into the depths of the host set before them. Vandus held him back for a little longer, scanning across the landscape, deferring back the charge until he had determined the shape of the battle.
Amid the seething mass of crimson-armoured warriors, some were greater than others. He saw a mighty champion striding through the heart of the horde bearing a brass sigil of the Fallen Gods. He saw a bare-headed beastmaster flailing at the bloodied back of a massive creature, his eyes lit with a feral ecstasy. That one would be the first to reach him, and so Vandus silently marked him for the contest.
And yet, they were not the greatest of the army’s masters. There was another, perched high on a cliff-edge to the south, standing alone before a narrow cleft in the rock. Even from so far away, Vandus could sense the overabundance of power, throbbing like a wound in reality. He was the master of this horde, and by his will alone did it go to war. Even as battle called him, Vandus found it hard to pull his eyes from the dark champion.
For an instant, he saw an image from another age — a village, burning, swamped with warriors whose armour was much like those he faced now. He saw a young warrior — blond, grizzled, cut by a hundred wounds — racing to face a warlord with a twin-bladed axe.
And for the first time in forgotten ages, he remembered his name.
Blackfist. Vendell Blackfist.
Across the gulf between them, the skull-helmed lord lowered his axe, directing it straight at him. Vandus felt the impact of that cold malice, striking him like a physical blow. Old mortal emotions raced through his mind, ones he had believed to be long scoured clean.
And yet, he had been Reforged. Those dreams had been torn away, and could never be recovered. All that remained was vengeance, the cleansing burn of sacred fire, the retribution of the long ages.
‘To arms!’ roared Vandus, holding his warhammer aloft and shifting as the dracoth bucked beneath him. ‘Now comes the hour! Strike them down where they march, and may the vengeance of the God-King guide you!’
With a massed roar of acclamation, the Stormhost broke as one into the charge, serried in gold and sky-blue, poised to crash into the vanguard of the enemy with all the fury of the Celestial Realm unleashed.
Anactos, lord of the Skyhost, swept high into the air, releasing a shout of joy as he powered upwards. His Prosecutors came with him, stretching their pinions and glorying in the release of long-held energy.
All around them, the tempest surged. The winds were violent, tugging them one way and the other, ever-threatening to dash them against the rocks below. After the first exuberant surge, they stayed close to the earth, gliding just high enough to survey the battlefield that sprawled away below them.
The Gate was to the south, less than half a mile distant. Already its base was overrun with the warriors of Chaos, unwitting as to its purpose but knowing a bastion where they saw one. Ionus had led his Retributors towards them, and soon battle would be joined around the massive foundations.
More columns of lightning slammed down, releasing the last of the void-sent Prosecutors from their glimmering domes. There were so few of them — they were like scarce points of starlight across the face of eternal night. Set against the monsters that now lumbered and crashed towards them, the vanguard looked painfully fragile.
Anactos laughed freely. His wings snapped back hard, pushing him back up into the heights. To test his skills against such a storm made his spirits sing. The Celestial Realm had been a paradise, one in which even the lowliest towers were crowned with circlets of jewels, but this was another thing entirely. The danger of it thrilled him, just as it did all his swift-winged bothers.
He heard Lord Vandus issue the command to advance, and watched as the Liberators fell into their battle formations. The last few of Anactos’s own troops broke free of their crystalline cocoons, racing to join his aerial vanguard.
‘Faster, and yet faster!’ Anactos urged, addressing his Prosecutors as they wheeled about him. ‘The portal awaits — you know your task!’
With a clap of wings, the Skyhost swung around and swept down low, streaking across the battlefield and towards the empty archway.
For Ionus, there was no rush of combat joy. He had emerged from the storm’s wrath with the same chill disdain as he had ever felt for it. The fires and the lightning meant nothing to him, for they were all fleeting shadows set beside the dread craft that gave him his strength.
Already the shouts of the battle-frenzied were rising in volume. The blood of both sides ran hot, frothing in the veins of every man who bore a blade. It was mere chatter to Ionus, who always spoke in a whisper and whose glance alone reflected nothing but infinite silence.
Following Vandus’s command, he trudged down the slope towards the Gate’s foundations. The ruins of great edifices stretched away on either side, lain low by forgotten wars. He cared little for them, either — the Realm of Fire had never been his domain. Duty alone had brought him to this battle, a duty forged when the God-King had delved down into the uttermost depths of the Amethyst Realm and snatched him away from his destined oblivion. One night, if the fates allowed, he would return to those moonlit vaults, to where the skies were untroubled by suns and where the spirits of the ever-slain dwelt in their perpetual shadow.
Until then, he would lend the Stormhost his subtle powers, commanding the very laws that bound souls to flesh. Not for him a golden warhammer, but instead a reliquary of bone, one that channelled the esoteric forces of Shyish itself.
The Retributors who accompanied him were warriors after his own heart — grim, steadfast, not given to the recklessness of the Prosecutors nor the bravado of the Liberators. They would stand firm against the yammering progeny of nightmares for as long as but one of them drew breath, forming a line of gold that ringed the feet of the portal. His task was to hold the base of the Gate, enduring the horde were kept from its precincts until all was accomplished. Vandus would drive onwards, hoping to gouge a wedge into the centre of the horde and engage its champions, while the Cryptborn would maintain the cordon around the portal. It was a task after his cold heart — reckless valour had little appeal, whereas endurance meant everything.
Already the front ranks of the enemy were loping towards them, their shock fading as the storm raged unabated above, goaded by their whip-wielding slavemasters and propelled by their own blood-fury.
Ionus watched them come, cracking no smile under his deathmask helm. He remembered the oaths he had sworn, as old and hard as the grave, binding him to the service of the one who held the promise of liberation for his beloved lands of shadow.
As the first of them drew within range, the Cryptborn held his bone-sigil aloft in both hands, feeling the cold sigh of unnatural winds curl around its length.
‘Unto death,’ he whispered, and advanced into the maw of hate.