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The Trial of the Chosen

Guy Haley

Under purple skies flickering with far-away storms brooded a vast desert the horizon could not contain.

Its sands appeared coarse, greyish in colour, but closer inspection revealed them not to be sand at all, but crushed bone. In some of the smaller pieces the delicate lattice of desiccated marrow was visible, clinging to sharp-edged shards. The larger fragments were recognisable as the knobbed heads of femurs or curved portions of skull, like pebbles and stones. Few people ever saw the desert and fewer still lived to tell the tale. The realm of Shyish abounds with lands that do not take kindly to the presence of the living. The Bone Sands were among them.

Unlike in a mortal desert, there were no traces of any living creature; no mummified plants awaiting the next rain, no tracks in the rough sand to hint at small creatures eking out a life. There was bone, and more bone, and nothing else, for league after league until the purple sky and grey sand touched at the edge of sight.

But the Bone Sands were not quite empty.

At the very centre was a monumental archway. Though huge, it cast no shadow in the directionless gloom. Two giant plinths stood either side, as tall as towers, their sides covered in bas reliefs depicting the bloodless wars of the dead, still crisp after aeons in the changeless desert. Atop the plinths waited a pair of giant necrosphinxes, facing each other across the broken bones cluttering the ground. The statues were massive beasts of stone and metal with men’s torsos atop lions’ bodies, barbed scorpions’ tails, outstretched wings and twin blade shields on their arms. The statues held their bladed limbs forward to point at one another, forming a lesser arch under which a traveller had to pass on entering or exiting the greater.

The sphinxes were huge, but the gate was bigger. Stacked vertebrae threaded onto green copper rods made the posts of the archway, curving together like monstrous tusks. The bones at the base of the columns were the size of buildings. Those at the apex were tiny, stolen from dead animals of the fields and hedgerows of distant lands. Many of the bones had crumbled. The left column leaned a little because of this erosion, but the structure held and the distortion robbed the edifice of none of its power.

The desert around the gate had a vital tension entirely lacking from the rest. The feeling of magic was strong there, and perhaps it was for this reason that the arch was surrounded by generous heaps of skeletons. All lay face down, their outstretched arms reaching for the arch. They were piled around the base of the plinths, and cluttered the span of the gateway three deep. Examples of all the strange races of the Eight Realms could be found, for all things that die find their way to the underworlds of Shyish in the end.

Pitted weapons were tangled with bones. Brittle cloth was draped over fleshless limbs, ready to vanish into threads and dust at the slightest touch of the desert’s rare winds. Banners were planted in the ground, leaning drunkenly, all colour leached from their blazons. Shields of every conceivable kind hid their designs under the bones of their bearers.

A thing walked out of thin air, growing from ethereality to solidity in the space of five long steps. It was a curious creature, with arms and legs so thin it should not have had the strength to move, but it walked with energetic purpose, its staff clacking down onto the bones with every decisive step. Its long cloak of fluttering eyes stirred the dust into lazy whorls that settled slowly.

This was the Many-Eyed Servant, agent of Tzeentch, but now unwilling vassal of Archaon.

It came to a halt fifty yards before the arch. The aura surrounding everything there – bones, gate and guardians – revealed itself to the sorcerer’s supernatural vision as a deep purple. Very rarely was one colour of magic so clearly presented, and the sorcerer stopped to admire its patterns. The creature remained in contemplation until the weight of its enslavement became palpable, invisible chains of sorcery binding it to the Everchosen’s will. The Many-Eyed Servant became uncomfortable. Archaon saw all, and he was impatient. If the Many-Eyed Servant was not swift, it would be punished.

The Many-Eyed Servant set to work. With keen magesight it pinpointed the parts of the gate that had to be charged with magic. This realmgate had long been dormant, locked and barred by parties unknown through the long centuries of the Age of Chaos.

The Many-Eyed Servant gripped its staff with reedy fingers and raised it over its hoe-shaped head. The line of eyes that crested its face closed in concentration. It began to chant.

It was a powerful sorcerer, and so its magic took effect rapidly. Power blazed from the ends of its staff in braided torrents that unfurled into individual tendrils of lightning, each striking at the gate columns’ vertebrae. They skittered about, probing for the points the Many-Eyed Servant’s magic required. Finding them, the lightning rooted itself in the bone, joining gate to sorcerer. The space between was quickly filled with jumping, arcing currents of yellow, blue and purple. The gateway vertebrae shifted on their copper supports, flexing like trees in a storm. Hidden runes carved into the bone revealed themselves in blazing colours.

The gate glimmered, the air framed by the arch growing thick with light, blurring the vista behind it, then turning opaque.

The Many-Eyed Servant cried out in pain from the magic coursing through it and in exhilaration of its mastery over the energy. Slamming its staff down, it uttered a deafening word of power. The lightning ceased. A blast of energy emanated from the base of the staff, sending a shock wave out across the plain that whipped up an expanding circle of dust and sent it racing towards every horizon. The Bone Sands moaned, a sound akin to the last breath expelled from the lungs of a corpse.

The staff remained embedded in the bony ground, quivering with potency. The Many-Eyed Servant lifted its hands, placed them back to back, and pushed them wide as if it were parting a curtain.

With a silken tearing sound, the realmgate opened onto another world.

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Published in Great Britain in 2015 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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