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Anvils of the Heldenhammer: The Ancients – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Chapter One

In the shadow of Deific Mons

Stygxx, Shyish

Knight-Incantor Tivrain Greymantle’s meditation shattered like a glass bottle dropped on a flagstone floor. In an explosive instant, all of the focus she had mustered, all of the power and vigour she had gathered, all of the peace and singularity of purpose she had manifested – all were blasted, and she was yanked back to reality, to the present, to a state of unpreparedness, with the violence of a hammer blow.

Her body trembled beneath her plate armour. She gulped air, as though she’d been drowning. Tiny beads of sweat pebbled her face.

Once again, he’d found her. And when he found her, the rest were not far behind.

Tivrain, he cried in the dark. Tivrain!

Her name. A familiar voice.

Then, more voices – strangers, disembodied spirits of telepathic prayers, she could not say.

Always the same. First, one voice, crying out for her. Then, more voices, following in concert. The voices gave way to a flood of disjointed thoughts and memories. They assailed her, pummelling her like a rockfall, like bloody rain, like a massive oceanic wave looming above her before crashing down.

And always, the chorus of voices and the storm of images and memories coalesced, at the last instant, into a single repeated phrase – in one voice, in all the voices.

End this, they said, a lamenting plea, a solemn command.

End this.

End this, Tivrain!

And then, pummelled, assailed, she was forced from her meditation – or sleep – and woke in a panic, all those disparate thoughts and impressions swirling and colliding in her fevered consciousness, her awareness of what was hers and what was theirs completely erased.

I cannot go on like this, Tivrain thought, closing her eyes, willing herself to find calm again. These assaults, these invasions – they destroy the resolution and calm I require to call the storm.

Tivrain blinked. The camp around her was a hive of activity. Knight-Heraldors blew their horns as dracolines strained against their reins and gryph-hounds stamped and swung their low aquiline heads from side to side. A conclave of Liberators knelt in the ashy soil, led in prayer by Knight-Arcanum Tarros. Glaive-wielding Protectors and hammer-bearing Retributors marched to and fro, leaving casual gatherings of chosen comrades to fall in with their units ahead of the coming assault.

In the distance, Tivrain heard the strident crackle of celestial lightning. Turning, she saw flashing lights beyond the hoary, twisted treeline – a small unit of winged Knights-Venator and bow-wielding Judicators showering the enemy with bolts and arrows to prepare them for the ground troops’ charge, no doubt.

Suddenly, in answer to the boltstorms, wyrdflame leapt high into the bruise-dark sky, evidence of foul and powerful magic at work. Thunder pealed in the storm clouds above and the regolith beneath Tivrain’s feet shuddered.

The disciples of Tzeentch were dug in deep. They wouldn’t be torn from their redoubt without a savage fight.

Tivrain! he had called in the abyss. Tivrain!

I’ve no time for that now, she thought. The battle’s begun.

And then, as if to reinforce the need of that stranger in the darkness of her own mind, Tivrain heard her name called in the waking world, rising from somewhere in the milling crowds of armoured Stormcasts surrounding her.

‘Tivrain Greymantle! Knight-Incantor Tivrain Greymantle!’

The voice belonged to Ordys Stormwall.

The time had come.

Still trembling beneath her night-black sigmarite plate, yet clammy with sweat, Tivrain rose from where she knelt, took up her Incantor’s staff and her bandolier of spirit flasks, then assured herself that her armour’s straps and tracings were well adjusted and snug with a series of routine tugs. As she did so, the face of the caller in her mind bloomed out of the shadowy recesses of memory.

Pyrath Redflame.

She froze there, hands upon her weapons and armour.

End this.

‘Who?’ Tivrain said aloud to herself, staring at the spiked crest of her Incantor’s staff, as though the implement itself could answer her. ‘Who? Who are they?’

A heavy hand fell upon her pauldroned shoulder. Ordys Stormwall now stood beside her, studying Tivrain with hard eyes in a stone-set, dark-skinned face. Geometric patterns in tones of azure and copper crawled over the crest of her shaven pate, an ancient tribal tattoo worn in deference to a mortal origin that Ordys herself could barely remember.

‘The Sacrosanct need their stormcaller,’ the Protector-Prime said. ‘The attack began sooner than planned.’

Tivrain nodded. She wasn’t ready, but time had run out.

‘Lead the way,’ she told Ordys.

To any witness regarding them, the two women might have appeared to be roughly the same age – old enough to be experienced, even jaded, yet young enough to each retain a haunting, muted sort of beauty. Yet, so far as Tivrain was concerned, Ordys Stormwall was her elder, her calm demeanour and adamant will, born out of centuries of combat, death and Reforging, making her both a fierce combatant and a protective, even maternal, spirit. There was no brother or sister in the Anvils of the Heldenhammer that Tivrain Greymantle would sooner trust with her life – or her secrets.

‘How long since we last spoke?’ Tivrain asked as Ordys led her through the eager chaos of the many conclaves hastily falling into formation around them. ‘I lost track of time.’

‘I’ve been away from you for only a quarter-hour,’ Ordys said, using her long stormstrike glaive to gently open a path through the gathering formations jostling in the small clearing. ‘Our enemies sensed the presence of our scouts before we had the opportunity to call the Sacrosanct to the front line.’

Tivrain nodded. She supposed that should come as no surprise. Just as the disciples of Tzeentch could not hope to keep this hitherto unknown realmgate unknown indefinitely, the Stormcast Eternals could not hope to remain stealthy and unseen when one of their primary offensive weapons was shock and awe.

Ahead and above them, beyond the treeline, blue-tinged wyrdflame spat skyward in a rising font. The magical column cast strange shadows against the low-lying clouds and drew the eyes of every Stormcast in Tivrain’s field of vision.

Suddenly, an unbidden thought exploded in Tivrain’s mind, twisting and tearing like an enemy’s barbed blade.

Soldiers, screaming, agonised as rippling waves of cerulean magic engulfed them, twisted them, transformed them–

Tivrain was instantly on her knees. That poisonous thought, an invasive memory not her own, had lanced through her mind’s eye with stunning force. For an instant, her vision had gone black, that terrible scene the only thing she could see, the breaking, twisting bones and sinews of the soldiers’ suffering the only feelings that felt real or true.

‘Tivrain?’ Ordys asked, kneeling beside her. ‘By Sigmar, what’s come over–’

Tivrain tightened her grip on her Incantor’s staff.

‘Stay your hand,’ she hissed, willing the vision – and its attendant pains – from her as she levered herself back to her feet.

‘What was it?’ Ordys asked.

‘Nothing,’ Tivrain lied. ‘Lead on.’

Ordys did as bade, but Tivrain knew she would not hold her tongue long.

‘Something’s gnawing at you,’ Ordys said, her stride never slowing as she pressed through a tight group of Liberators.

‘Is it so obvious?’ Tivrain asked.

Ordys smiled subtly.

‘Only to those with eyes to see,’ the Protector-Prime said, glancing sideways at Tivrain. ‘The visions again?’

Tivrain nodded. There was no use hiding the truth from Ordys – she’d ferret it out, whether it was freely offered or not.

‘They’ve grown more frequent,’ Tivrain said. ‘More intense and more varied. I hear voices sometimes. At other times, alien thoughts assail me. They’re intense, overwhelming, like sudden avalanches in my mind.’

She withheld the fact that she sometimes saw figures that she knew were not there, unfamiliar Stormcasts standing among her comrades, haunting dark corners, following her when she walked a long, lonely passage in the Grand Necropolis.

‘These voices,’ Ordys began, ‘can you understand what they say?’

Tivrain looked to her long-time friend. ‘They know my name, Ordys. But more often than not, it’s him…’

‘The one called Redflame?’

Tivrain nodded. There was no need to elaborate. She had confided her suspicions to Ordys on more than one occasion, ever since her first, brief encounter with Pyrath Redflame during a joint Heldenhammer operation in Aqshy, decades before.

‘Chamber Command should hear of this,’ Ordys said firmly. ‘Of import or not, you require guidance.’

And perhaps, she seemed to silently suggest, an exorcism.

‘I offered a written petition just yesterday,’ Tivrain said. ‘We shall see what they have to say.’

And whether it is anything that I want to hear.

Tivrain had first seen Lord-Castellant Pyrath Redflame at a distance, his tousled red hair looking like a crown of fire above his chiselled, pale face, exhorting a unit of Castigators, Protectors and Liberators to hold a buckling line against a roiling Chainrasp Horde and an onrushing charge of mounted Dreadblade Harrows. It had only been a brief instant, Pyrath standing upon a toppled stone obelisk, bearing his warding lantern high so that all could see its beatific light under the storm-wracked sky, but that brief instant had penetrated Tivrain to the core. Both then, in the moment, and now, in memory, she could barely compare the feeling she’d felt to any other she’d known in her long, storied lifetime.

It was not merely fascination, nor curiosity or admiration – though it was, in some sense, all three at once. It could not be called infatuation, either. No… it was something far more mysterious and potent, something both subtler and sharper. Recognition? Affinity?

It was the sense that Pyrath Redflame, a complete stranger on that day when first Tivrain saw him on the battlefield, was inextricably tied up in the tangled skein of Tivrain’s own long-accumulating destiny.

She had seen him only twice more after that, and spoken to him only once, briefly, about nothing personal or of import. But that strange feeling remained – somehow, in some unutterable way, Pyrath Redflame was connected to Tivrain Greymantle. She simply had no notion as to how, or from when.

Those lingering questions, of who he might be, why he might matter, where that frisson she’d felt might stem from, had led Tivrain to join one of the many tomb lodges well known among the Anvils of the Heldenhammer, the Elegium Aeternum. There, among peers and comrades, Tivrain proclaimed and recorded what little knowledge she had of herself, and sought any other psychic artefacts she might uncover. Now, she had been a member of the Elegium so long that she had been elevated to the office of prime rector – a high priestess of sorts, helping others to dig for and uncover the ruins of their past selves, their lost hopes, their fading memories and slowly dissolving dreams.

If only I could help myself, she thought as they marched under the shadow of the gaunt trees of the ash pine forest before them. What if the visions grow more frequent? More intense? If they interfere with my focus, my ability to call the storm…

In the forest, beyond the treeline, loose convocations of Evocators and Lords-Arcanum awaited the command from their Lord-Veritant. As the swirling maelstrom of extradimensional energies roiled and flashed from the bluffs on the far side of the forest, the lambent light cast shifting, skeletal shadows down through the canopy of leafless trees.

Ordys halted and looked to Tivrain, her expression calm yet grave.

‘We shall speak after,’ the Protector-Prime said, and planted her stormstrike glaive, indicating that she would advance no further. ‘Go, now. They need you.’

Tivrain nodded. ‘Sigmar’s light, old friend.’

‘Sigmar’s light,’ Ordys answered, and donned the heavy black helm that had rested under the crook of one arm. In an instant, all her austere beauty and maternal warmth disappeared – the figure now standing beside Tivrain was a helmed and masked embodiment of Sigmar’s implacable will: faceless, sexless, fearsome, grim.

Tivrain marched on. The sounds of the battle farther ahead, the screams of capering daemons, the exhortations of the forward ranks engaged with the enemy, grew louder with each step.

To Tivrain’s left, a wing of Celestial dracoline-mounted cavalry massed in a clearing, the Evocators in various states of readiness, some in the saddle, others performing last inspections of their mounts’ tack and gear. A pious few knelt upon the ash-coloured loam of the forest, offering final prayers to Sigmar before battle. Their stolid commander sat tall and proud atop his dracoline, pale gaze fixed upon the kaleidoscope of light in the sky. This was Lord-Arcanum Neiros Steinbrech, the leader of their expedition.

‘Is the first wave yours, Lord-Arcanum?’ Tivrain asked.

Steinbrech, a man of glowering aspect whose sapphire eyes seemed to stare through things rather than at them, did not deign to even glance at Tivrain. Instead, his regard remained upon the sky and the rising shadow of Deific Mons in the distance.

‘Nay, Knight-Incantor,’ Steinbrech rasped, voice like a rusty hinge. ‘The first attack is yours, not ours.’

His head slowly swivelled on his neck. He glared down at Tivrain from his saddle. Tivrain felt a shudder move through her. Mortals, she knew, were often frightened or disconcerted by the gaze of a Stormcast, especially the death-haunted gazes of her fellows in the Anvils of the Heldenhammer. But Neiros’ dead, dispassionate stare shook even Tivrain to the core. Though they were allies, comrades-in-arms, she could not help feeling that he bore her some terrible grudge.

Before she could ask another question or affect a quick farewell, they were interrupted.

‘You’re with us, Knight-Incantor.’

Tivrain turned to find an obsidian-armoured Knight-Relictor at her elbow, his relic maul in one gauntleted fist, a burning skull censer in the other. Though the Knight-Relictor’s face was unseen beneath his grim-visaged helm, Tivrain recognised his voice instantly.

‘Well met, Ansonnir,’ she said.

The helmed head nodded. ‘Tivrain.’

She said nothing, but she was happy to find Ansonnir beside her now, as she withered under Steinbrech’s dour appraisal. It was Ansonnir who had invited Tivrain to first assay the rites and rituals of the Elegium lodge, and Ansonnir who had later administered her initiation as rector.

‘More resistance than hoped?’ Tivrain asked.

‘Worse than we feared,’ Ansonnir said. ‘If we keep battering them, we can break through, but time’s running out.’

Tivrain threw a last look at Steinbrech atop his dracoline.

‘We shall see you on the field, Lord-Arcanum.’

‘See to your duty, Knight-Incantor,’ Steinbrech answered darkly. ‘I shall see to mine.’

Tivrain followed Ansonnir forward, towards the far edge of the forest.

The stark, wizened trees surrendered to a steeply declining riverbank leading down to a long-dry riverbed. The riverbed cut through the landscape like a road of sun-bleached stone, disappearing behind a bend on Tivrain’s right, stretching away across the rolling plains to her left. The banks were marked by rocky bluffs, not precisely sheer but not far from it, dangerous to descend or climb.

On the far side lay the lair of the enemy. When dark waters still coursed down this river, the entrenchment on that bank had probably been a small cove, its narrow inlet giving way to a broad harbour, tucked away from the parent river’s swift current. Now, with no water to fill it, the little cove had become a shallow canyon of sorts, with the old inlet providing the only narrow entryway.

In other words, a perfect defensive position – protected, sheltered, nigh on impossible to penetrate without massive loss of life.

There were Judicators dug in down on the riverbed, hurling skybolt arrows and boltstorm crossbow bolts while a small clutch of hammer- and blade-wielding Liberators hugged the far bluffs, sheltering while their comrades’ ranged weapons sought to keep the enemy pinned down and – with luck – open a gap through which the Liberators could advance.

Deep within the little cove-turned-canyon, half obscured by roiling dust clouds and swirling columns of black smoke, the realmgate bled a stuttering luminescence, casting ever-shifting shadows upon the rocky ground.

Tivrain looked to Ansonnir. He nodded in deference.

‘The field is yours, Knight-Incantor,’ the Knight-Relictor said, and took several steps backwards to leave Tivrain alone on the bluff.

Tivrain’s gaze rose skyward. She spread her arms wide, lifting her Incantor’s staff in her right hand.

Without warning, Tivrain’s vision was suddenly overtaken. For a brief, terrifying instant, shadow and gloom swallowed the expansive vista before her.

She was bound in a cocoon of some sort, a great spider’s web stretching above and around her.

She felt a deep, savage pain – a pain not of the body but of the heart and mind. Impotent rage. Pleas for release. Embittered despair.

Release us, a chorus of voices whispered in the darkness. End this.

A panic rose in Tivrain – her own, rooted in the present.

‘No,’ she said, willing the visions away. I have work to do. Leave me be!

The cocoon seemed to constrict around her. Her armour buckled. Her joints screamed, then–

The vision dissolved. Tivrain concentrated upon the shadow-stained clouds in the sky above them, focusing her energies, extending her adamant will through empty air. Bright light began to emanate from her wide eyes, as did crackling skeins of energy as Tivrain half sang, half muttered incantations to focus her spellcraft, to forge the sympathy necessary to manifest Sigmar’s power in the skies overhead.

The ominous Shyishan clouds began to shift and coalesce. Phantasmal worms wriggled through the strata, stirring the air. Then, inexorably, the clouds began to shift on an unseen axis. They turned slowly at first, but little by little, they gained speed. They swirled, their nucleus collapsing towards an invisible centre, darkening, solidifying, transmogrifying into a great skybound wheel. Shuddering web-works of blue-white lightning flashed in the bellies of the turning clouds, gathering both speed and intensity.

The air grew heavy, unstable. The winds increased. Ragged columns of lightning bloomed and slashed downwards from the centre of the maelstrom, singeing the air. A lonely tree at the edge of the forest took a direct hit, bleeding smoke and sparks. Down in the riverbed, the tongues of lightning continued to flash, stabbing serpent-like into the earth itself, leaving still-glowing trees of sky-glass and trails of smoke in their wake.

Tivrain continued to chant her martial incantations, the energies of her body, mind and heart focused by the lens of her Incantor staff’s headpiece. And as she chanted and held her staff aloft, those energies leapt skyward, yoking the clouds, bridling the wind, whipping the thunder into submission.

She was not creating a storm so much as perfecting one, creating idealised local conditions for the manifestation of Sigmar’s incarnate power.

Up and down the treeline, above the riverbed, Evocators as well as Knights- and Lords-Arcanum followed Tivrain’s lead, muttering the same dirge-like prayers to Sigmar, chaining their separate wills and energies into an enormous magical circuit, summoning their master’s fearsome elemental power to smite the enemies of innocence. As their incantations rose in concert, they coalesced into a single thunderous voice that met in the air above them.

The mighty storm built, quickening, struggling to be loosed, like a team of horses champing at the bit, eager to feel the sting of the whip and let their fleet limbs fly.

Tivrain lowered her eyes, focusing now upon their adversaries entrenched on the far side of the riverbed. Their combined might was gathered, its bottled intensity no longer bearable.

Tivrain swept down the crested headpiece of her staff, drawing a straight line in the air between the storm clouds above and the small canyon cut into the opposite bank. Intertwined blades of lightning slashed scythe-like out of the sky, a murderous elemental force bombarding the little canyon in a few short, violent instants. The roiling pyres of wyrdflame and latent magical energies visible above the canyon walls were subsumed by the white-hot light of Sigmar’s tempestuous wrath. Loosed energies crackled and screamed inside the canyon, branching and ricocheting, throwing up showers of sparks and swirling tendrils of smoke. For an interminable moment, the box canyon was alight, a crucible of storm energies and pure terror, raw elemental power colliding with malign, Chaotic intent.

Then, the lightning blinked out of existence, spent. Only fire and smoke remained. All within the canyon – mortal acolyte, twisted Kairic mage, Horror or Screamer – were silent and still, dead or stunned by the onslaught.

Like an artillery bombardment in advance of a field charge, the storm had done its work – to thin the enemy ranks, to weaken and disrupt their defence and open the way for a direct assault. As Tivrain watched the last, flickering bolts of lightning expend their energies in the canyon, she heard Heraldors’ trumpets peal, echoing up and down the length of the riverbed.

Below, every entrenched Judicator and Liberator broke from cover and charged towards the narrow, smoke-enshrouded cut in the opposite bank, the only entrance to the enemy’s position.

Tivrain felt the bluffs beneath her feet trembling – the vibrations of a cavalry charge. An instant later, Lord-Arcanum Neiros Steinbrech’s dracoline-mounted Evocators burst from the forest at Tivrain’s back and bounded en masse down towards their target. As they charged to meet the enemy, Tivrain saw webs of lightning forking down from the darkened skies above, seeming to bless, at random, the stormblades and hammer-heads of Neiros’ black riders as they thundered towards the canyon on the far side. Their weapons glowed blue-white in the twilight, beacons of hope for the innocent, portents of doom for the servants of darkness.

Tivrain was just about to charge down into the riverbed when, from the far bank, a great quadrupedal beast exploded from the canyon entrance, its enormous black form smashing into the armoured Liberators who had charged the enemy’s position. The roiling, sputtering orb of Chaos magic hovering above the beast’s bent back and its betentacled maw made its provenance instantly clear.

‘Mutalith!’ Ansonnir spat, once more at Tivrain’s side.

‘Hurry!’ Tivrain said, and led the way down the slope. ‘That beast’s foul magic will destroy anyone too close to it!’

Seconds later, Tivrain was on the riverbed, charging over the open ground that separated her from the heavy fighting on the far side. Ahead, she saw several of the Liberators closest to the Vortex Beast fall to their knees, seized by rending agony as the creature’s latent magic began to twist and rearrange their bodies and bones inside their armour. She heard screams, saw Stormcasts clawing at their helms and writhing as their human forms began to boil and bend and remake themselves in slow, torturous mutations.

The second wave of Liberators, not subject to the mutations, were ruined by a different sort of magic. Instead of being twisted and remade, they stumbled about, suddenly disoriented and forgetful as their minds were clouded and they lost all memory of the reason for their attack, or their ultimate aims. Many of those losing their focus were then crushed or torn to pieces by the massive claws of the Mutalith as it stomped and swung about among them, laying waste to all in its path. As each of those Stormcasts were crushed or bisected by the rampaging beast, their bodies exploded into bright white lightning that stabbed towards the sky, carrying their broken bodies and armour back to the Anvil of Apotheosis for Reforging. The beast, savage and uncomprehending, seemed to not notice the lightning, even as its limbs were singed and charred by such close contact.

Tivrain, having quickly closed the distance between her and her threatened comrades, was about to summon the storm again, to try and blast the Mutalith to protoplasm before it could slay any more of their soldiers – but suddenly, her vision once again clouded.

She froze, her forward momentum arrested.

The world around her changed.

Aqshy. Anvilgard. Green skies. Sweltering humidity. Sweat on her body. Blood and ichor on her armour.

Storms of arrows. Several protrude from her, buried deep in the exposed joints between her armour plates.

On all sides, fellow Stormcasts fight, bristling with arrows, darts and crossbow bolts, just as she does. Some are caught under foul hunters’ nets. Many are on their knees, on their backs. Not slain, not even dying – paralysed, struggling against a foul poison that works through them, robbing them of movement even as it sharpens their awareness.

It’s doing the same to her.

She falls to her knees, immobilised.

She tries to speak, to cry out, to beg Sigmar’s aid, but her mouth forms no words, her throat makes no sound.

Sinister aelves, everywhere – Daughters of Khaine, Darkling Covenites, Scourge Privateers. They swarm around her and her comrades, closing a deadly circle of engagement, testing their paralysis, their vulnerability, when they find a subject already unmoving.

Inwardly, Tivrain screams, even as her body lies useless–

Someone thrust her aside. A scintillating bolt of foul energy struck the ground where Tivrain had been standing only a breath before.

She was back in the present, her present, the battle still raging ahead of her.

A hundred yards on, a number of Steinbrech’s mounted Evocators had encircled the Mutalith, keeping a safe distance as they hemmed in the monstrosity, showering it with bombardments of arcane lightning, pinning it in place with invisible shields.

Tivrain found Ansonnir at her side. The Knight-Relictor had been the one to thrust her out of the path of that deadly blast of Chaotic magic.

‘You froze,’ he said. ‘I thought it might have been the Mutalith–’

‘I’m recovered now,’ Tivrain said, struggling back to her feet. ‘A moment’s disorientation is all–’

‘Tivrain, you froze where you stood!’ Ansonnir countered. ‘I saw it! If I hadn’t thrown you aside–’

‘You have my thanks!’ Tivrain spat. ‘Now, follow me. There’s no time to waste.’

Dashing across the riverbed, Tivrain saw new eruptions of emerald-green energies within the walls of the canyon. The flashes were followed an instant later by three white-hot pillars of lightning stabbing up into the sky – three more Anvils of the Heldenhammer called home to Azyr. Clearly, their storm bombardment had not destroyed all members of the Tzeentchian coven in the redoubt.

She led on, knowing Ansonnir followed close behind. Steinbrech’s Evocators had the Mutalith pinned, so she gave the beast a wide berth and rushed on towards the mouth of the canyon. Reaching the far side of the riverbed and the narrow inlet, Tivrain scrambled up the short slope, wended a path through the blasted stone barricades that had once guarded its entrance, and charged towards the melee under way within.

Fewer than a dozen Stormcasts had survived the initial charge, Liberators, Judicators and a few lumbering Retributors, but they were engaged with a troupe of Kairic Acolytes and a spell-slinging Magister. Several Tzeentchian Horrors – blue, pink and yellow – circled at the edge of Tivrain’s vision, awaiting moments of distraction in which to ambush the Stormcasts. It appeared to be a stalemate, for their forces had not advanced towards the true object of their struggle.

The realmgate stood, scintillating and bright, near the rear wall of the canyon. It was tall, but not the largest Tivrain had ever seen, bordered by hewn stones supporting a carven lintel. The great space within the borders of the gate – the slash in the fabric of reality through which travel was achieved – glowed malevolently in the twilit canyon, its rippling white glow stuttering, throwing off strange skeins of lightning and showers of brightly coloured sparks.

Tivrain knew what that portended – the static gateway was open here, in Shyish, and at its far end, wherever that might be, but between those two connected planes, a third force pressed at the membrane of the gateway, trying to tunnel through from some adjacent reality.

A capering pink Horror, gibbering and cackling, came bounding towards Tivrain, gouts of unnatural Chaotic fire bursting from its luminescent form.

Tivrain blasted the foul creature with her Incantor’s staff. The arcane bolt tore the Horror to pieces and the creature evaporated into the air before her, as though it had never been there.

‘I’ll clear a path!’ Ansonnir shouted, bolting ahead of Tivrain and raising his relic hammer. As good as his word, the great hammer-head swung, drawing lightning from the sky and crushing all who met its heavy impact with terrifying force. As Ansonnir forged on, Tivrain followed in his wake.

Behind them, they heard the roar of a dracoline. Tivrain dared a glance back in time to see Steinbrech’s Evocators charging into the canyon, crackling stormstaves and shining tempest blades held high as they split their formation and attacked the Tzeentchian defenders on either flank.

Directly before her, through the sputtering glare of the realmgate, Tivrain espied a Magister, arms raised in foul, religious ecstasy as he shouted into the void of the portal itself, summoning something from its tunnel between the realms. Two armoured Curselings, meanwhile, mounted a ferocious defence against both the Stormcast infantry that had first charged into the breach as well as Neiros’ newly arrived cavalry. One Curseling beat back the Stormcast aggressors with his flaming sword, while the other swept her threshing flail. Each twisted warrior hosted the horrifying, telltale form of a Tretchlet daemon homunculus growing half formed from their shoulders.

Ansonnir’s hammer smashed a Kairic Acolyte from his path. A Tzaangor warrior charged out of the press of bodies and weapons, seeking to blindside Ansonnir as he trudged on through the fray.

Tivrain unleashed a bolt of arcane energy at the vulture-headed abomination. The Tzaangor was incinerated in an instant.

They were deep in the midst of the melee now, cutting a swathe with hammer and Incantor’s staff towards their true target ahead. With every step, Tivrain prayed that she would not suffer another fugue – in the midst of the chaos surrounding her, even a moment’s distraction could be fatal.

A shadow loomed in the blindingly lit realmgate, something approaching through the scrim of light, lurching through like a mortal trudging underwater. It had not yet arrived, but it was coming – all that was required was that the Magister continued to howl his fearsome, monstrous chants into the realmgate, to keep it stable enough for its master to break through.

Tivrain knew well what they were witnessing – the realmgate was tainted, and a vile force from the Crystal Labyrinth itself sought to tear through into Shyish and run riot over the Mortal Realms. If they did not silence that Magister before its daemonic master reached the threshold of the gate, they would have a far more formidable opponent to deal with.

One of Tivrain’s nearby armoured brethren exploded in a flash of crackling lightning, his physical and spiritual essence blasted back to Azyr as the sword-wielding Curseling clove him nearly in two. The lightning strike was so sudden, so bright that Tivrain shrank from it, shielding her eyes and muttering a brief prayer for her comrade as his spirit was borne homeward for Reforging. When she opened her eyes again, blinking to chase away the lingering after-image of the lightning, she saw the Curseling lumbering towards her.

She had only an instant to throw up her Incantor’s staff to block the crushing overhand blow of the Curseling’s blade. Her deflection did not deter the twisted mortal, though – his blade rose and fell again and again, each time threatening to knock the Incantor’s staff from Tivrain’s gauntleted hands or split it in two.

She sought Ansonnir, but he was engaged ahead of her, smashing the skulls of several Kairic Acolytes as he also pivoted to keep the other Curseling – the one with the threshing flail – before him and not behind him.

The blue-skinned Tretchlet sprouting up from the blade-wielding Curseling’s left shoulder spat curses in the tongue of Tzeentch, babbling to its host, exhorting it, urging it to send Tivrain back to her God-King with a savage killing blow.

The Curseling drew back its sword for a mighty sideways swing.

Tivrain tore a spirit flask from her belt and cast it against the Curseling’s breastplate.

The spirit flask shattered. In an instant, the Curseling was consumed by a serpentine maelstrom of burning celestial energies. Tivrain stumbled backwards as the Curseling and its Tretchlet were torn to pieces by the angry spirits from the flask. Before her opponent had even succumbed, she once more charged towards the sputtering realmgate. All around her, allies and enemies jostled and lurched, blades and hammers, talons and deadly spells all slashing and flying with abandon.

Tivrain’s thoughts devolved into pure, driving instinct. She shot forward, zigzagging through the fray on an indirect path towards the realmgate and her quarry. From the edges of the fierce melee, Neiros’ Evocators called down the storm, searing and immolating the Horrors and Kairic Acolytes struggling to hold them at bay. Yet, even as the lightning charred the Arcanites’ extremities, even as the wind battered them and the mounted Stormcasts charged and rode them down, the disciples of Tzeentch answered with sly evasions and savage blows. It was as though they had resolved, despite facing imminent death, that they would not be moved.

But Tivrain saw a narrow, unprotected gap allowing her access – with luck and good timing – to the Magister and the realmgate.

She shot through the gap in the Arcanites’ defences, leaving the still-embattled Ansonnir behind her.

Just as she cleared the line and mounted the first step up to the stony platform where the realmgate stood, Tivrain felt a heavy hand on her shoulder. Her forward momentum was violently arrested and she was jerked round, nearly thrown off her feet. The second Curseling, the female, offered a poisonous grin as the Tretchlet blooming half formed from her hunched shoulders blathered and drooled. Before Tivrain could defend herself with staff or spirit flask, the Curseling landed two swift blows with her barbed threshing flail. Tivrain deflected the first strike with her armoured forearm, but the second tore a bloody gash across her right temple and cheek. Blood clotted Tivrain’s vision.

For just an instant, the battle disappeared again. Once more, Tivrain was paralysed and helpless on the streets of Anvilgard, a cackling Dreadspear thrusting his lance between the joints of her armoured breastplate, delighting in the pain he inflicted even as she was helpless to respond.

Fury overtook her and yanked her back into her present. Tivrain thrust her Incantor’s staff high, roaring above the din as she summoned the storm. A blinding skein of lightning crashed down from the heavens, engulfing Tivrain bodily. She felt its energy – pure, divine, destructive – as the world around her was obliterated by brilliant white light. An arm’s length away, her would-be slayer was immolated, blackened to a smoking husk before Tivrain’s eyes. An instant later, the lightning receded and Tivrain, emanating tendrils of smoke and rippling waves of heat, was left staring into the ruined face of the charred Curseling.

The corpse collapsed into ash.

Tivrain looked to the realmgate. A single, long-taloned digit had torn through the shifting veil, straining like a grave-wight clawing to escape its burial shroud.

Ansonnir was once more at Tivrain’s side, relic hammer dripping with foul, Chaotic blood and gobbets of flesh.

‘We have to stop him,’ Tivrain said, indicating the Magister standing before the realmgate, arms upraised. ‘Whatever he’s summoned is about to tear through.’

Without waiting for Ansonnir’s affirmation, she bounded up the stone steps towards the raised dais that emptied into the realmgate.

The Magister turned about to face Tivrain, his twisted, three-eyed face a mask of fury and contempt. His runestaff swung towards her, already spouting vile green wyrdflame that burst forth in a massive, scintillating orb, rocketing straight towards Tivrain and Ansonnir.

Tivrain summoned a magical shield an instant before the wyrdflame engulfed her. She felt the force of the impact behind her shield, but, thank Sigmar, none of the fireball’s transformative magic reached her or her companion.

The moment she lowered the shield, Ansonnir lumbered forward, raising his relic hammer just as the Magister readied his runestaff for another blast. Tivrain was about to unleash a bolt of arcane energy to scramble the Magister’s senses as Ansonnir attacked, but the Knight-Relictor was too swift and sure.

Lightning crackled down from the sky above, engulfing Ansonnir and causing his raised relic hammer to glow with lambent energy. As the Magister shrank from the blinding storm, Ansonnir brought his weapon down.

His strike shattered the Magister’s runestaff. In a gout of wyrdflame, the magical implement exploded beneath the weight of Ansonnir’s relic hammer.

The scrim of light filling the empty portal of the realmgate shimmered and rippled. The thing behind it – tall, winged, only its claws visible as it tried to tear through into the Mortal Realm of Shyish – screamed in protest and threw itself bodily against the barrier.

Before the gate, the Magister stumbled backwards, trying to regroup and put even a few short steps between himself and the two Stormcasts now crowding his ritual space. His pale, taloned hands began to glow and crackle with malign energies.

Tivrain sidestepped Ansonnir and hurled a bolt of arcane energy from her Incantor’s staff.

The Magister was too quick. With a flick of his foul hands, he raised a shield, and Tivrain’s arcane bolt spent itself harmlessly against the invisible barrier.

Beside them, the thing in the realmgate was struggling to tear through. Tivrain saw its vulture-like face and its sharp, grasping talons ripping at the membrane of magical energy that presented a last barrier between it and Shyish. The creature – a Lord of Change, bleeding colourful vapours and flames of foul Tzeentchian magic – was on the very threshold of punching into the Mortal Realms from its prison in the Crystal Labyrinth.

Tivrain needed to oppose the daemon directly, but the Magister that had summoned it was already gathering energy for another attack.

It was the terrifying, earth-shaking sound of a dracoline’s roar that froze the Magister where he stood and stayed his hand for a blessed instant.

Tivrain and Ansonnir turned just in time to see Lord-Arcanum Neiros Steinbrech and his fearsome mount springing up from the ground below, rising high into the air and arcing straight towards the Kairic Magister. As the dracoline reached the apogee of its arc, Steinbrech’s aetherstave rose skyward. In answer, lightning shrieked down into the stave and leapt forth, as surely as a missile loosed from a cannon.

The celestial lightning engulfed the Magister, wracking his twisted body with tremors, searing his flesh. The Magister was still shaking under the weight of the elemental attack when Neiros’ dracoline came crashing down, talons and all, atop the foul mage.

Tivrain, thankful, wasted no time on shock or gratitude. They had to repel the daemon before it passed the realmgate’s threshold.

Tivrain planted herself just a stone’s throw from the Lord of Change now writhing and struggling to tear at the scintillating veil entangling it in the gate itself.

‘I need the force of your prayers, Ansonnir,’ Tivrain said as she pulled her last two spirit flasks from her belt.

Ansonnir needed no more exhortation. He raised his relic hammer before him, holding it aloft like a massive talisman. Without preamble, the Knight-Relictor intoned words of invocation, and the hammer began to glow with a fierce light from within.

Tivrain hurled first one spirit flask at the Lord of Change, then the other. Each exploded with terrific force, and she threw up her arms to protect her face. A brief, terrifying storm of spirit energy engulfed the Lord of Change, forcing the daemon to shrink back into the shelter of the realmgate.

The moment the explosive force of the spirit flasks was spent, Tivrain lifted her voidstorm scroll before her, presenting its rune-covered surface to the Lord of Change and the realmgate. She realised she must look foolish, presenting an opened scroll to a daemon interloper like a warrant for arrest, but no matter – the scroll’s runes and the power they contained would do the work. All that was required was that she stood fast.

The runes upon the voidstorm scroll glowed brightly. Inside the realmgate, the Lord of Change screamed and recoiled, the strange, tearing shroud of energies that it had been clawing through now solidifying against its depredations. Quickly, before Tivrain’s amazed eyes, the veil began to mend itself, and the desperate screams and scratchings of the Lord of Change were hastily swallowed and choked as the tiny foothold it had gained in the Mortal Realms began to shrink.

The air around them shifted, as if the realmgate were suddenly inhaling, trying to draw them all in with a great, heaving breath.

Tivrain stood fast, planting her feet, lowering her head, still holding the voidstorm scroll before her.

Then, without warning, the scroll burst into flaming embers in her gauntleted fist, its power spent. In the same instant, the scintillating space inside the stone frame of the realmgate went dark, subsiding into rippling shadow, like the waters of an underground lake. All evidence of forced entry, whatever malign presence had been tearing at it moments before, evaporated.

A dreadful calm fell upon the canyon. Tivrain took a moment to study the scene around her.

A few of the infantry and cavalry fighting the disciples of Tzeentch were yet engaged, attending to the last, stubborn handful of Kairic Acolytes and Curselings remaining. Apart from those few, however, the enemy camp was now a charnel house – slain daemons, felled Curselings, the immolated Magister crushed beneath the huge paws of Steinbrech’s dracoline… Enemy corpses littered the ground all round them.

Tivrain caught sight of a strange convocation of her fellow Anvils of the Heldenhammer assembled at the edges of the final engagements being fought below. These mixed Stormcasts – warriors and mages, priests and Heraldors – stood gravely still, watching in exhausted silence as their brethren dispatched the last of the belligerents.

Then, only a moment later, Tivrain noticed something strange.

Those Stormcasts who haunted the periphery of the waning battle were not of her Storm Chamber at all. Their night-black armour sported different badges, different symbols and accents, and none of their faces – all visible since they wore no helms – were familiar.

Who are they? Why do they stand there, staring at nothing?

Her silent question was followed by a new revelation.

The silent watchers were not bearing witness to the last throes of the battle.

They all stared at her.

Only then did recognition begin to dawn upon her. Those faces… the small details on their armour indicating their Chamber affiliation…

No. Impossible. They cannot be here, now. They’ve only ever haunted my thoughts, my mind… Now they stand before me!

They were the Stormcasts from her visions. The paralysed and tortured. The prisoners.

Pyrath Redflame stood among them, his stare just as desperate, just as accusatory, as the rest.

Someone was speaking Tivrain’s name, again and again. She felt a heavy hand upon her pauldroned shoulder. She thought it might be Ansonnir, asking if she’d been injured. She could not answer him, though.

Leave me! she cried inwardly. I do not know you! Why do you torment me?

Their accusatory eyes, their ashen, haggard faces, their unnatural stillness and silence – all conspired to fill Tivrain Greymantle with a paralysing dread, a mingled sense of fear and despair, impotent rage, and soul-shattered sorrow that she found impossible to shrug off or recover from.

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2024.
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