But back then, just when Khul had thought that combat would at last be joined, the chance had been ripped away from him, lost in a snarl and a snap of lightning. He had raged beyond all reason at the loss, and his fury had lasted for a whole year before slipping into uneasy slumber. Even the Gift of Grizzlemaw, given to him in recognition of the slaughter of Azyr’s last free people, had not compensated, and the Realm of Fire had suffered grievously under his wrath.
Vendell Blackfist.
The more he watched, the more certain he became. Even if all else were cast into the fires of defeat, this was the task for which he had been sent to this place: to take the final Direbrand skull and place it atop the Red Pyramid. Such a sacrifice would guarantee his passage into ever-living service to the Blood God, from whence he would lead the forces of ruin into war across the planes of eternity.
‘Blood for the Blood God!’ Khul thundered, throwing his arms wide and goading those about him into a frothing madness. ‘Skulls for his Throne!’
His horde did not waver. Not one of them turned to flee, for the blood warriors fed on slaughter as a lesser breed gorged on meats. The sight of the swelling ranks of golden warriors was like a drug, and they charged back into the grinder of battle with wild-eyed ecstasy on their scarred faces.
Khul let them go. He gave Skullbrand his head, and expended no energy seeking Vekh. Only one task remained for him, the one that he had been yearning for since the end of the ancient wars and the coming of the long victory.
‘The last of the Direbrands,’ he growled, striding out with Grizzlemaw at his side. ‘By the god who gives me strength, how I have longed for this day to come.’
Vekh watched the arrival of the Legions of Azyr, and his battle-frenzy turned to blackest rage. More clearly than any other, he saw the certain doom of the battle across the plains, and he howled his disbelief into the storm.
The blood warriors about him fell back, their aggression blunted at last by the advance of the lightning-borne. Vekh roared back at the horde, grabbing for their iron collars as they surged past him, ready to hurl them back into the fray, but the numbers were too great — a battle had a momentum to it, a rhythm like the tides, and the swell had been turned.
Skuldrak lumbered away, wailing still as the last flames of Azyr consumed its flesh. Vekh let it go, turning his flails instead on the mortals within range.
‘Back!’ he screamed. ‘Back!’
His whips cracked, snapping like loosed serpents, wrapping around the necks of the craven. Two of those closest to him lost their heads as the coils pulled tight, and others had their flesh lacerated. Hot blood splattered across Vekh’s armour, spurring him further.
He clambered up to higher ground, reaching an outcrop of black rock standing tall amid the boiling hordes. He screamed all the while, his scarred face running with spittle and his eyes blazing.
‘Stand fast, spineless filth!’ he bellowed, hurling the barbed scourge around him in wide arcs. ‘Recover your fury! Recover your rage!’
It should have been impossible for one man, no matter how mighty, to stem that gathering rout, but dread of the bloodstoker had been inculcated into every fighter of the Goretide since the earliest days of the Realms’ corruption. Those that did not die under the agonising lashes were stung back into the only emotion left to them: rage. The first one halted in his charge — a lumbering champion with severed hands clanking from chain-lengths about his neck. He turned, roaring in pain, before setting off back towards the oncoming enemy. Vekh’s whip slashed around again — four more blood warriors remembered their battle-lust, then eight, then a whole company.
‘Tear them apart!’ raved Vekh, driving them back, his arms pumping, his instruments of pain biting in a whirl of black-edged steel. ‘Cut them limb from limb and bathe in the blood that flows! Bring me skulls, enough to rival Khul’s own! Blood! Blood for the Blood God!’
He marched back down from the outcrop, laying about him with every stride. Roars greeted him — the recognition of a whole army. The rot had been stemmed and their kernel of defiance rekindled. They came with him now, chanting death-curses again, revelling in the weals that scored their angry faces and blood-raw backs.
Vekh drove them hard, hunting for any more that dared to pull clear from the field. The fiercest fighting was ahead of him, sundered by a sea of bodies. He had let the beastrider best him, drive off his khorgorath, and that insult could not be borne.
‘Follow me!’ he roared, goading his warriors into a charge. ‘The one who rides the beast! Kill him first, then kill them all!’
Vandus fought with the strength of a man renewed. With the breaking of the portal, a weight lifted from his arms, and Heldensen flew once more with the first vigour of the charge. Calanax pounced, catching blood warriors under his claws and shredding them to ribbons. The Liberators around him pressed the advantage, bolstered now by new warriors arriving at their backs. The horde of the enemy still outnumbered them but the gap had closed, and now the Eternals’ greater strength and skill was beginning to tell.
All of them knew that this was just the first of many Gates that would be opened. The God-King himself had closed them, right at the end of the age of darkness when the Realms were overrun. It had been His final act before the ways of the void were denied, and after that only the Celestial Realm had been preserved intact. Just as the last hope was failing, He had extended his reach into the heart of the losing battles. Those who fought on, even as their deaths were assured, were taken — pulled clear of the killing fields and dragged through the fast-closing portals.
After that, isolated from the Realms amid the spires of Sigmaron, came the agony of the transformation — the long change in which cleansing fire stripped the old life from them and gave them immortality in its stead. They were augmented, made stronger and faster than before. They were given the great warhammers to bear, and gifted armour of sigmarite cast in the purest shade of gold. The Reforging had been accomplished, and Legions of the Stormcast Eternals created.
All this had been done in the knowledge that one day, when enough strength had been assembled, they would each go back, the ways would be made straight again, and the arch through the abyss would be restored. To have failed here in the Realm of Fire would have set all that in ruins. The Fallen Gods would have redoubled their efforts, building new armies of daemons and the corrupted, accelerating their design to plunge every land into the one realm of pure Chaos before any hope of reconquest could be attempted.
The war ahead would be long, surely longer and more painful than any that had come before, but at least that first step had been taken. Vandus knew that other assaults were being launched even now, each across a different portal of the sundered kingdoms. One by one, the God-King’s armies were hammering at the closed doors, and one by one they would all be breached.
The knowledge of that gave him joy of a kind he had not experienced before, not even in the bliss of the Celestial Realm itself. At yet, even as he slew with abandon, pushing the enemy before him in a welter of cracked bone and broken armour, that joy was tempered by a greater realisation.
The face that he still bore in his dreams, the one that had never left him even amid the golden spires of Sigmar’s city, was long gone. Only on his return to the Realm of Fire did he truly understand how many years had passed, and how far sundered he was from the lives of all he had known. There would be no going back to the world he had once striven to save, for it was utterly destroyed, replaced by a living hell of endless violence. As his warhammer scythed around him, bringing destruction to all that stood in its path, Vandus saw that this victory would not give him what he had yearned for. He was conquering for others, those who would come afterwards to repopulate these scoured lands, but not for himself.