His last living sight was of blood warriors clustered around him, their axes raised and their faces twisted in hatred and mockery.
He grinned bloodily at them. ‘By Sigmar, your breed is ugly,’ he rasped.
Then the blades fell.
The time had come, and Ionus could not longer remain behind his brothers. The Retributors had fought beyond even the stringent standards expected of them, defying exhaustion to hold the precarious cordon against an enemy that knew no fear and lived only for carnage. Despite all their heroism, a third of their number had been dragged down, too far away to be revived by the Cryptborn, their bodies hacked apart by the vengeful mobs. The survivors had been driven back steadily up the wide stairs leading to the portal itself, and there was now nowhere left to go.
Sensing the climax of their labours, Ionus at last joined them on the front line. He took up his reliquary in both hands and swung it like a mace, bludgeoning and thudding it into the oncoming ranks.
But that was not the only weapon in his arsenal — his arts gave him the power to restore life, but also to leech it away. With a dry hiss, Ionus released the storm-spirits from the reliquary’s heart, and crackles of bone-white lightning shot from the tempest above.
The lightning scored down, raking across the oncoming blood warriors and shrivelling them within their armour. Wherever the shafts hit, the warriors of Chaos were burned to death amid the dazzling electric flames, their skin crisping and smoking as it was seared from within. They twitched like marionettes before collapsing, smouldering amid their red-hot battle-plate.
That bought them a moment’s respite but it could not last. The warriors of the horde surged back into contact, their mania undimmed by their losses — indeed, the more of them that were killed, the more their enthusiasm for violence was stoked.
As Ionus fought on, he felt the first pangs of weariness in his arms. Another Retributor fell, disembowelled by a sickening swipe from a cleaver, and the line of defence teetered on the brink. As the passage of the stairway was gradually lost, Ionus caught sight of the great crimson-armoured champion, the one who had summoned the Realm of Chaos with his icon. He prepared himself, ready for the contest that would decide the final fate of the Gate’s defence.
But the icon-bearer did not engage. Instead, he hurled his axe high up into the heavens, its twin-bladed head spinning in a whirl of thrown blood droplets. Ionus followed its path, watching with horror as the weapon struck Anactos Skyhelm in the back, crippling the Prosecutor-Lord and sending him crashing to earth.
If that were all, then Ionus would have felt the grief for his loss and turned back to the fight, knowing the peril they were in. But Anactos, with his final living act, had sent a storm-blast into the very heart of the Gate’s pulsating mouth. Ionus watched it fly towards the target, streaking like a falling star.
When it hit, the impact was unlike the others — the entire expanse of emptiness blew apart like glass, shattering into a thousand shards. A massive secondary explosion blew out from the epicentre, tearing away the world’s storm in a riot of unleashed gold and white.
The shockwave was incredible, racing out like a tidal surge and felling all in its path. Prosecutors were ripped from the skies and tossed like gulls in the storm. Webs of gold shot across the ancient stonework, illuminating the eyes of the giants that held the arch aloft, and the runes crackled with new fires of argent.
Ionus reeled, driven to his knees by the gale, but somehow remained in place to watch the event for which so much had been sacrificed.
‘Hold fast, warriors of Azyr!’ he commanded, his grave-dry voice raising at last. ‘This is the hour!’
As he spoke, the raging tempest within the arch’s ambit exploded. The runes shattered, throwing slivers of red-hot stone high into the gale. Whole beams and buttresses crumbled, and the stairways and towers were thrown down. The rain blew outwards, sent flying from the detonation’s locus and hurled out wide across the raging fields of war.
In the midst of it all, the Gate itself changed. Old stonework crumbled and cracked, revealing a structure of purest ivory beneath. The faces of the statues were fully exposed, the patina of ages seared away, their serene faces once more gazing out over the Realm of Fire. A gale surged under the arch, driving out the last of the corrupted flames and replacing them with an inferno of gold.
And then, through the archway itself, sent hurtling into the heart of the tempest by arcs of cerulean lightning, came the Legions of Azyr at last. Rank after rank of Liberators materialised on the battlefield, sent through the ancient ways between the worlds and allowed passage by the unsealed Gate. Whole warbands of Prosecutors soared under the archway before riding high on the eddying winds, their hammers already glowing white. In their wake marched the Retributors, hastening to the aid of their surviving brothers on the great stair.
Despite himself, Ionus could not help cracking a dry smile of vindication. This was why they had dared the passage of the void, and it was for this that the labour of long ages had been expended.
The Gate was open. It would never be closed again. The Realmswar, so long in abeyance, had begun once more.
‘And so begins the time of vengeance!’ the Cryptborn declaimed, holding his reliquary aloft and releasing cold fires from its casket. ‘Now march, my brothers, and bring death to the enemy!’
Chapter Seven
When it happened, even Khul paused in his rampage. He felt the stormwind tear past, and saw the red flames of Khorne extinguished. The Gate’s portal blew apart and the besieging warriors were driven from its edge, replaced just moments later by a whole new army — ten times the number he had faced just a moment before, with more arriving all the time.
He gazed out at their sheer perfection. They were arrayed just as the others in a shimmering display of gold and cobalt, each of them bearing the hammer sigil on their peerless armour-plate. If they had been a formidable foe before, they were now truly daunting, a test for the greatest of all the Realms.
At that, Korghos Khul let slip a harsh laugh of pure pleasure. The Blood God had blessed him beyond measure. The long years of boredom and futility were forgotten in an instant, replaced by the fervour that only came from mortal danger.
His host felt likewise, and their war-cries reached a new pitch of feverish intensity. This is what they lived for. This was the glorious gift of the one who sat on the Brass Throne. No worthy enemy could blunt their fury, for their only fear was to be surrounded by weakness and decay. The return of the Celestial Legions was as welcome to his kind as the return of a great and noble ally, for it presaged nothing but eternal combat, the one thing that victory had deprived them of.
For all that, Khul quickly saw that the conquest of the Gate was doomed now. The lightning-chased Legions were swiftly reinforcing it, driving Skullbrand’s forces back down the slope and out on to the plains. The greater prize still remained, though — the beast rider yet lived, and was reaping a bloody swath through all that stood before him. There was no sign of Vekh, and the khorgorath was long gone. Other mighty beasts of the horde were being assailed by whole companies of Celestial knights, and the shape of the entire battle now hung in the balance.
It was only as Khul watched the helm-crested captain fight his way into the heart of the horde that the last of his long-discarded memories came rushing back. The Direbrands — that was what they had been called — the last of the great peoples to resist, the ones he had fought for a generation to subdue. Their chief’s name had been Blackfist, his very hands charred by the fires of battle but still able to carry the warhammer that had ever been his weapon.