Soul Wars

Chapter four Chamber of the Broken World

When everything began to shake, Tonst fumbled at the control valves of his aether-endrin and let it carry him back out of the shipwreck, towards his tiny, one-duardin aether-hauler. His elbows scraped against the edges of the hole in the hull of the wreck as he floated free.

The remains of the Arkanaut Frigate hung awkwardly in the air, its endrin still functioning despite the massive amount of damage the vessel had endured. There was no way to tell what had happened, nor did he particularly care. That it was here, and still might hold something of value, was enough.

He’d tracked the derelict south, just past the Chimera Isles, following the air currents to where it had at last become snared in the tangle-clouds. What was left of the crew was still scattered about, in messy fashion, and whatever cargo they’d been hauling was rela­tively intact. Or so he hoped.

Tonst was a salvager by trade, and he had the certificates to prove it. That they were forgeries mattered not at all, so long as they had the golden stamp of Barak-Urbaz. He’d paid a hefty price for that stamp, but not so much as he would have paid for the real thing. Paper was paper. And salvage was salvage.

But he forgot all about what treasures the wreck might contain as he emerged and saw that the sky was crawling. ‘Grombrindal’s bones,’ he muttered, watching as the sky’s lustre was hidden beneath an amethyst shroud. The pressure gauges and valves that dotted his suit began to spin crazily, and his beard bristled in unease.

He’d thought it was just the ship settling, but instead it seemed as if the skies themselves were convulsing. He gritted his teeth and tried to compensate for the rising wind. If he weren’t careful, he might be blown into the side of the wreck, or worse, carried out over the mountains, away from his own vessel. The aether-endrin on his back had seen better decades, and would only keep him aloft for a few hours at a time.

As he watched, the purple haze filled the sky, staining the clouds and erasing the stars above. The wind rose to a brittle shriek, and he felt a chill in his thick limbs despite his suit’s insulation. It sounded as if the stars were screaming, somewhere out of sight. ‘Get a hold of yourself,’ he muttered, trying to ignore the sense of trepidation that filled him. ‘Are you a beardling, to be frightened of the sky?’

Resolutely, he turned away, angling himself to float back into the hull. He extricated his anchor from his harness and hooked the edge of the gap. Carefully, he began to reel out the chain. The sky continued to quake, but the wreck seemed sturdy enough. At worst, its endrin would finally fail. If that happened, he would simply release his anchor and float free through one of the great rents in the deck above.

A fine layer of frost crystals covered everything in the hull, crates and corpses alike. He set down gently, bracing himself for the deck to fall away. When it didn’t, he took a step. Frost crunched beneath his boots as he made his way deeper into the hold. The sun-stones mounted on his harness flickered to life, casting a soft radiance over the contents of the hold. Dozens of broken crates and shattered casks were revealed.

The wind keened through the wreck, causing scraps of paper and wood to tumble about. Things clattered in the dark, and the deck swayed beneath his feet. He started as the deck dipped and a body slid into view. The crewman had been gutted, his suit ripped open and his torso hollowed out. Frozen blood covered the carcass, and Tonst couldn’t tell what had made the wounds. He swallowed, uneasy.

It wasn’t likely that whatever had done this was still around. There were cloud-barnacles on the broken planks and no sign of tracks in the frost. Even so, he paused, listening. He’d heard stories about grot raiders, creeping down from the great spore clouds that blossomed in the dark above the highest peaks to set ambushes in floating wrecks.

But all he heard now was the creaking of the rigging. Through the gaps in the deck above, he caught flashes of amethyst light, cascading upwards. He squinted. Was there something up there, hidden by that glow? And where was it coming from? It looked like no atmospheric distortion he’d ever seen. The information might be of value to–

Thump.

Tonst tensed. ‘Just a crate,’ he muttered.

Thump. Thump.

He cursed softly and let his lights play across the opposite side of the hold. In the gloom, something moved. A soft sound – a groan? – ­echoed. ‘A survivor?’ he said, his voice loud in the quiet. He approached the place the sound had come from, moving quickly. A survivor could be bad for business – or exceptionally good, if they were from a sufficiently wealthy family.

‘Anyone alive down here?’ he called, hesitantly. ‘If so, I claim salvage rights as per artycle eight, point three…’

Another groan. Followed by a fumbling sound. He closed in on it, wondering if it was just the wind making a fool of him. His lights fell across another corpse. He stopped. The dead duardin’s boots had twitched. Tonst sighed. A survivor, and a poor one, to judge by his gear’s lack of ornamentation. ‘Just my luck. Well, come on then. Let’s see you, you wanaz…’

Tonst reached down, and the crewman caught at his wrist. The wounded duardin lurched up, helm crumpled, revealing frost-blackened features. Eyes like misted glass glared sightlessly at him, as teeth champed mindlessly. He jerked back, yelling, as the duardin – not wounded but dead, he realised, dead and moving! – thrashed in pursuit.

The corpse of the crewman flopped towards him, making gabbling noises that sounded more like a beast than a duardin. Tonst backed away, reaching for his cutter. Something hissed from behind him, and he turned awkwardly, hampered by his endrin. Another crewman crouched atop one of the few intact crates in un-duardin-like fashion. Broken limbs quivered as the corpse crept closer. It lunged, groaning.

‘No,’ Tonst snarled, snatching his cutter from its sheath and sweeping it out. His blade sank into the corpse’s chest with a wet crunch, and snagged there. He twisted a control valve and slid away from the stumbling corpse, as others nearby began to twitch and moan. Hands flailed at his boots as he hurtled back the way he’d come, anchor chain clanking in his wake. He caught it up as he half ran, half hopped towards the gap in the hull. The wreck was shaking worse than before, as if it might tear itself to pieces at any moment. Dead crewmen rose around him, lurching into view as he fled.

He had to get out. Out, out, out!

He exploded out of the wreck, trying to reel in the anchor. Cold hands groped, catching hold of it. The chain stretched taut. Tonst was jerked to an unsteady halt. He snarled curses as he twisted in place, endrin straining. He flailed at the release catch for the chain, but the sudden halt had jammed it. The chain trembled. He tried to angle himself to see what was happening. When he did, his flailing became more desperate.

He was still trying to release the chain when they dragged him back.

The Chamber of the Broken World occupied the aleph of the Sigmarabulum – the point from which the entirety of the ring, and Mallus itself, could be seen. It sat atop a great tower on the edge of the ring’s inner curve, facing the world-that-was. The Tower of Apogee was said to have been the first part of the Sigmarabulum to be constructed, the seed from which the rest of the ring had grown.

Smaller towers, connected by hundreds of walkways, spread out around it. Lightning played about the great pylons that crowned each of them, and ran like water down their sides. These were the soul-mills: the storehouses of the slain. Often, fallen Stormcasts could not be immediately reforged – whether due to the sheer number of deaths or some more esoteric reason – and so their souls were instead drawn into the soul-mills, where they waited, unformed, but not necessarily unaware.

He could hear the towers shaking with the agonised fury of innumerable souls as he and Tyros climbed the steps of the Tower of Apogee. ‘The soul-mills are active, more than I have ever seen,’ he said.

‘Count yourself lucky in that regard.’ Tyros steadfastly ignored both the shuddering towers and the muted cries that came from them. Despite being reduced to raw soul-stuff, the dead could still scream, and their wails were audible throughout the Sigmarabulum.

‘Something is going on – a new push into enemy territory?’

Tyros grunted. ‘There is always a new push. Something is always going on. We are at war, brother. We fight on multiple fronts, in multiple realms, and every victory is bought at the price of our brothers’ souls.’ He sighed. ‘But such is the way of it – much is demanded of those to whom much is given.’

Balthas could think of no fitting reply. He turned away from the soul-mills, leaving them to shake and scream as they would. Instead, he took in the tower before him. As ever, its scale staggered him. The wide, slabbed steps, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, spilled down the sides and back of the tower.

This cascade was broken at regular intervals by great porticos and enormous doorways. These were overlooked by high, semi-enclosed archways, where heavy artillery pieces known as celestar ballistae sat, ready to repel anyone foolish enough to attack the tower. Devised by the war-engineers of the Conclave of the Thunderbolt, the lightning-infused bolts they launched could punch through even the strongest shield, or the scaly hides of the star-born monstrosities that occasionally slunk down from the outer dark.

When they reached the uppermost portico, where the entrance to the chamber lay, two great clockwork gargants, made from gold and brass, stood to either side of an immense pair of double doors, covered in celestial carvings far beyond the skill of any mortal hand.

The two false gargants had been fashioned after the appearance of two of the ancient lords of that race, humbled aeons before by Sigmar. The Twin Kings, Mog and Gamog, had served for centuries as Sigmar’s shield-bearers in penance for their defiance. Both had been slain in those final days before the Gates of Azyr had been sealed, leading their tribes into the safety of Azyr’s mountains. Now, their death-masks adorned two great automatons, crafted by the Six Smiths in honour of the fallen brutes.

As one, the pair moved to admit the lords-arcanum into the halls beyond. The air shivered with the screech of the massive hinges, and the thunderous whirring of the gargant’s gear-driven limbs as they hauled the doors open. Censers hung from the archway rotated in the sudden breeze, casting lazy comets of sweet-smelling smoke across the air.

The entry hall beyond the doors was enormous. It stretched beneath a curved roof, decorated with a faded mural depicting celestial phenomena. Great pillars of marble upheld the roof, and at the opposite end of the hall, two huge statues stood to either side of a set of massive double doors. The statues resembled Stormcast Eternals, if highly idealised, and were crouched and bent beneath the weight of the roof above.

An immense, contiguous bas-relief occupied the walls to either side of them. Among the many thousands of intricately carved figures, Balthas saw not just warriors, but delvers and masons, farmers, harpers and smiths. Not all of them human, but duardin, aelf and others. He spotted a looming gargant and the shuffling lines of the dead, as well. It was as if some unknown craftsman had attempted to capture the soul of the realms – the very stuff of life – in stone. A memory of a golden age, now long past, but preserved for all time.

Mosaics, crafted from innumerable small, polished stones, covered the floor. These depicted discrete stories rather than the vast sweep of history. Stylised moments of heroism and wonder, like Templesen’s stand at Archiba, or the last charge of the Skyblood clans. Balthas, as ever, found himself distracted by the mosaics. More than once, he fell out of step with Tyros and lagged behind to better study one of the images.

After the fifth such momentary delay, Tyros turned. ‘Much as we all might wish, death does not stop so you can look at pictures, brother.’

‘I am well aware of that, Tyros,’ Balthas said, hurrying to catch up with his fellow lord-arcanum. ‘But one must make the time, on occasion, else we lose sight of where we’ve come from. The finer details, as you said, yourself.’

Tyros snorted. ‘A fancy way of saying you’re easily distracted today.’

Balthas glared at him. Tyros had little patience for anything that didn’t produce immediate results. He relied on faith and instinct to guide him, where Balthas preferred a more considered approach. ‘Sometimes I wonder why we are friends, Tyros.’

Tyros looked at him askance. ‘We’re friends?’

Before Balthas could reply, they reached the massive double doors that led to the Chamber of the Broken World and the Anvil of Apotheosis. A cohort of Retributors, comprised of warriors from several different Stormhosts, stood sentinel before the doors, beneath the great statues.

The honour of guarding the Chamber of the Broken World was much vied for among the champions of Sigmar. Only the greatest warriors of the paladin conclaves, as determined by the Trials of Culmination, were allowed to stand sentry here, for twelve days and nights, before they surrendered their places to the next cohort.

One of the Retributors, clad in the maroon-and-ivory war-plate of the Celestial Warbringers, stepped forwards, one hand extended, his lightning hammer over his shoulder. ‘Hold. Who approaches the Chamber of the Broken World?’ As he spoke, the others spread out behind him, their hammers held at the ready. ‘Speak and be judged.’

Balthas struck the ground with the ferrule of his staff. ‘I, Balthas Arum of the Grave Brethren, seek entrance so that I might take up my duly appointed post.’ Lightning crackled about the head of the staff. ‘Will you bar my path?’

From far above, he heard a dim rumble. Without looking up, he knew that the eyes of the two statues were glowing with a sapphire radiance. The Retributors were only the most obvious of the Anvil’s defences. There were protective runes and mystic wards woven into every surface, invisible to the naked eye. If he were not who he claimed to be, the consequences would be severe.

Balthas felt a moment of subtle pressure, and then the rumble faded as the two great doors swung slowly open. ‘Enter, lord-arcanum,’ the Retributor rumbled, and stepped aside. He glanced at Tyros and nodded. ‘Tyros.’

‘Kandaras,’ Tyros said, as he followed Balthas, who shook his head.

‘We have the rites of announcement for a reason, Tyros.’

‘Waste of time. We wouldn’t be here, if we weren’t us.’ Tyros gestured to the statues. ‘Besides, they would know, rites or no rites.’

Balthas grunted. ‘Still…’

Tyros clapped him on the shoulder-plate. ‘Relax, brother. No reason to borrow trouble. The hard part is still to come.’

Balthas’ second in command, Miska, was waiting for them when they arrived. She stood, frowning, in the doorway, her rod of office braced as if to bar their way. The mage-sacristan was tall and slim, with pale, hard features and hair the colour of molten silver. Like Balthas, she was a gifted stormcaller, able to draw down the wrath of the heavens upon her foes. More, she knew the celestial melodies that could calm the spirits of storm and sky, and could sing a wrathful soul to peaceful slumber.

‘You found him, then. Good.’ Even now, after shedding her mortal life, the mage-sacristan spoke with the faintest of accents. Some rough-hewn dialect that rasped against Balthas’ attentions like a whetstone. She studied him with her usual expression of cool reproach. ‘You are late, my lord.’

‘I am well aware, Miska. There is no need to remind me.’

‘It is my hope that by reminding you, you will cease to dawdle among forgotten stories and dusty tomes.’ She spoke bluntly. ‘You are needed here.’

‘So I am told.’ He said it sternly, striving to remind her solely by his tone of who was in charge. She smiled widely, seemingly pleased.

‘Good, then. We will not need to tell you again.’

‘Until we do,’ Tyros murmured. Balthas glared at him, but Miska ignored the other lord-arcanum’s comment. Balthas knew that as far as she was concerned, Tyros was incidental to proceedings. He was of a different host and thus someone else’s responsibility. Tyros clapped a friendly hand on Balthas’ shoulder and strode away, leaving him to his duties. The Hallowed Knight had his own chamber to see to.

Miska watched him go, and then said, ‘The aether is in an uproar.’

Balthas nodded, though he’d felt nothing. While the aether held no secrets from him, Miska was attuned to it on an almost instinctive level. If she felt that something was wrong, it likely was. ‘Today will be bad, I think,’ she continued quietly. ‘Be wary, brother.’

‘I am always wary, sister.’

Together, they entered the great, pillared hall, where the Anvil of Apotheosis lay. The Chamber of the Broken World was immense, as befitted its purpose. The roof was a dome of dark glass, wrought from the sands of the Caelum Desert. It was divided into three Tiers of Trial – at the bottom of the chamber was the Forge Eternal, where the fires of creation were kept stoked by the celestial automata of the Six Smiths. Above that were the Cairns of Tempering, seven great stones plucked from the volcanic surface of Mallus by Grungni himself. And at the apex was the Anvil of Apotheosis.

The ensorcelled altar was a massive slab of pure sigmarite, wrenched from the core of Mallus by Sigmar’s own hands. It still smouldered with the heat of the world’s dying, and the air around it pulsed with the faint echoes of another time and place. It sat atop a dais fashioned in the shape of the High Star.

Each tier of the chamber was an assemblage of gargantuan clockwork platforms, perpetually moving in a slow, all but imperceptible fashion around the central core upon which the Anvil rested. They were the gears in some great mechanism of gold and glass, a machine crafted to refine souls and make them weapons.

The thought was not a pleasant one. Balthas thought of the soul-mills, and knew that the gods at their most callous often regarded mortal lives as little more than raw materials. Things to be changed, broken down and reassembled in a more pleasing or useful shape. Even Sigmar was not above crafting awful wonders in his drive to defeat the Ruinous Powers. He looked around. Mage-sacristans, clad in the heraldry of diverse Stormhosts, were taking up their assigned posts around the Anvil of Apotheosis. The mage-sacristans surrounded the dais in a wide ring, each taking a position analogous to one of Sigendil’s twelve points.

Behind them knelt a wider circle of Celestors – warrior-mages, second only to the mage-sacristans. Duellists without equal, the Celestors wielded tempest blade and stormstave with deadly skill. They drew down the wrath of the storm not to strike their enemies, but to empower themselves. They knelt, blades and staves flat on the floor beside them, ready to aid the mage-sacristans, should it become necessary.

One of the Celestors, in the black and gold of the Anvils of the Heldenhammer, rose to meet them. ‘My lord Balthas, we were worried the Grand Library had claimed you for its own,’ he called out, as he removed his helmet and tucked it under his arm. ‘I knew you’d fight your way out eventually, though. I even composed a few verses, commemorating your victory. Do you wish to hear them?’

‘Your confidence is heartening to hear, Helios,’ Balthas said, somewhat sourly. Helios Starbane was lithe and graceful, even in his armour and robes. There were some who whispered that the swordsman had not been forged of mortal stock, but something rarer. Studying his lean, otherworldly features, Balthas could almost credit the rumours. ‘But I must decline. There are more important matters to attend to.’

‘Impossible,’ Helios said. ‘Poetry is writ in our very substance. What are we but motes of the divine, songs of heaven and loss, wrenched loose and encased in wrath and sigmarite?’

Miska shook her head. ‘Enough. Now is not the time for poetry, Helios.’

‘I disagree. When better than now? Where better than here?’

Miska looked at Helios, her face set in a disapproving expression. ‘Remember your place, swordsman.’

Helios bowed his head, respectfully contrite. ‘My place is at your side, as ever, mage-sacristan. Where you go, I follow. What you command, I fulfil.’

Miska snorted and gestured. ‘Go and take your place, then.’ Helios laughed softly and straightened, pulling on his helmet as he did so. Miska looked at Balthas. ‘The same goes for you, lord-arcanum. Your place is above. Your brothers await on the observation platform.’ She hesitated. ‘Remember what I said, Balthas.’

Balthas frowned. ‘I will, sister. But see to yourself.’

She gave a terse nod and turned away to take up her place with the other mage-sacristans. Balthas watched her for a moment, thinking about her warning. In truth, he’d felt ill at ease all day. As if something were coming, and he wasn’t prepared. He looked at the Anvil and saw that it was growing white-hot.

As one, the mage-sacristans raised their staves. With a single voice, they cried out a word in a language dead for uncounted aeons, that of the twelve lost tribes of Mallus. The word shivered on the air, and the temperature dropped precipitously. Then, the ferrule of every staff struck the floor with a sound like a meteor strike. As the echoes of that crash reverberated outwards, an answering thunder rumbled, somewhere far above.

Balthas stepped back as azure lightning, freed from the soul-mills, speared down from the glass dome overhead. It struck the Anvil and burst, spilling over the sides and trickling through the tiers. The glare of the impact cast long shadows, and Balthas was forced to look away, his vision filled with sparks.

The apotheosis had begun.