Archaon: Lord of Chaos (Warhammer Fantasy) by Rob Sanders

Author:Rob Sanders [Sanders, Rob]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2015-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter IX

‘There is beyond this eternity another. An existence all of its own. It is dark as the mortal mind is dark, deep as the mortal heart is deep. This realm is sustained by the self. It is a spiritual plane made up of the thoughts and feelings, needs and beliefs of all the knowing races – the highborn and the low things that walk the world, with aims of it being their own. It gives back in the form of energies that leak into our world and are harnessed by the gifted in the form of magic and its many refractions. Entities beyond understanding inhabit this dark realm of spiritual energy, this sea of soulfire. They are the behemoths and great monsters of the depths, although our seven seas together are but a teardrop in the dry, dark ocean of the beyond. There they endure, drunk on power, bitter with impotence – curdling in the malefic nightmare of their own existence.’

– Caledor Dragontamer, Prophecies of Despair

The Gatelands

The Southern Wastes

Horns Harrowing: Season of the Raw

Although Archaon’s army was only blazing a single trail of destruction through the crowded citadels and infernal palaces surrounding the collapsed Chaos gate, daemon lords and princes throughout the Gatelands knew of his presence. It had been many hundreds of years since a half-breed host had unified in such numbers in the darkness of the Wastes to attack the dread palaces of the mighty, in the Gatelands of infernal royalty, where some of the greatest daemons of the Chaos gods ruled. When they learned that it was a man-thing from the north at the head of the bestial horde, rather than one of their own savage kind, this interested the denizens of the Gatelands even more. Not an immortal, an infernal or diabolical being crafted of the gods – but a weakling mortal; nothing more than a plaything of the gods.

First came challenges. Territorial warnings. Assassination attempts by creatures that had been dreamcrafted of murderous desire, singular of lethal purpose. The unleashing of titans that strode across walls and stomped their monstrous way through the castle courtyards and palace grounds of their daemonic foes. The mobilisation of infernal hosts, swarming through the wretched narrows and bone-jutting trails weaving between the vaulting walls of infernal palaces. Lank-limbed horrors and fountains of warping flesh that filled cramped walkways with lurid flame. Great fanged slugs that rotted their way through fortress walls on carpets of plague-ridden slime. Soul-thirsty slayers of red flesh and twisted horn. Packs of flightless shrikes, hunting, tearing and savaging on all fours, wearing spiked collars in the fashion of eight-pointed stars.

When Archaon and his horde weren’t fighting their way through monstrosities between the royal residences of daemon princes and hellish dukes, they were mounting assaults on the palaces themselves. The palace of Sybarith the Forgotten had walls that seemed never-ending. When Archaon ordered an assault on the palace he almost lost half of his host to the endless debaucheries inside. Forgetting themselves, and the Chaos warlord they fought for, half-breeds – intoxicated by what they saw – had to be dragged away.

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