—<TWENTY-THREE>—

The End of All Things

Every step was a battle, each yard he drew nearer to the necromancer a struggle against his mortal inclination to flee this abomination. The summit of the hill was wreathed in spirits in black, ghostly revenants of lost souls doomed to attend upon Nagash from now until the end of all things. Sigmar felt the dead light of Nagash roam across his body, learning in a heartbeat how he had grown and was now edging his way to the grave.

A black miasma swirled around the base of the hill, isolating him from the mortal world beyond, and Sigmar felt his flesh recoil from the vile presence of the immortal necromancer. His armour creaked in the frozen air and webs of frost spread across his breastplate and shoulder guards. Ghal-Maraz was his only warmth, the language beaten into its haft by master runesmiths glowing with fierce light beneath his grip. Sigmar held tight to its warmth, for the crown at his brow felt like an ever-tightening fist of ice.

Though it could not touch him, the crown’s assault on his mind was undiminished, taunting him for the sake of spite and hatred. Nagash’s form seemed to stretch up into the darkness as Sigmar drew near, the necromancer’s body growing larger and more imposing as though empowered by the very nearness of his crown.

Armoured in eldritch plates of enchanted black iron, Nagash was easily twice the height of Sigmar. His bones were suffused with a venomous green light, every crack and imperfection in his armour lambent with an internal fire that came from ancient magic woven from the myriad winds blowing from the far north. His staff was a slender length of shimmering darkness, like entwined snakes, and his sword was at least as tall as Sigmar. Cold blue flames licked along its length and it radiated a chill that touched Sigmar deep in his bones.

Nagash stared down at him, and Sigmar fought against that dread gaze, feeling his limbs fill with ice water and lead. Twin orbs of deathly green fire stared at Sigmar, eyes that had seen the world before men had walked the lands he now ruled. Thousands of years separated them, an ocean of time that Sigmar found impossible to comprehend. He could no more imagine the world of such long ago days as he could imagine the Empire in thousands of years to come.

I will show you…

The voice was like continents colliding, a deathly cadence that owed nothing to an actual voice. It was the sound of death itself. Sigmar staggered as he saw a land of forests and mountains, its people divided and the world in turmoil. Blood stained every rock, and the glint of iron weapons was everywhere. Armies of such size as to defy imagination marched all across this land, destroying everything in their path without mercy.

Bodies lay gutted by the roadside, men, women and children. Still-living captives were bound to stakes and left for the animals to devour. Sigmar saw slaughter and blood everywhere, hacked up corpses and bodies burned alive in their homes. He wept to see such destruction visited upon his people and his anger built as he sought the source of this debauchery. His gaze fell upon an army marching to a city at the confluence of many rivers. Colourful banners fluttered overhead, and the soldiers were clad in equally gaudy uniforms.

They marched in disciplined ranks, singing songs of martial pride, and Sigmar wept to see that this was no army of monsters, beasts of the undead. These were men. Worse, they were men of the Empire.

Look closer…

Though he knew it was what Nagash wanted, Sigmar could not help himself. He saw the army’s banners were decorated with skulls and laurels, crossed spears and spread-winged eagles. And upon all of them were stitched scrolls, each bearing a single word.

Sigmar.

These were warriors who fought in his name. They carried weapons of unusual design, wooden staves like the thunder bows of the dwarfs, and wagons bearing unfamiliar war machines drew up the rear of the marching column. Two metal behemoths followed the supply wagons, lumbering contraptions on iron-rimmed wheels that belched steam and black smoke from square fireboxes at their rear.

This is the world you have created. This is blood that will be spilled in your name. Is it not better to leave this world and let the race of man fall into decline? Your species resurgent is one that lives only for destruction and uncertainty. It knows no other way. The dead do not squabble as this land’s rulers do. The dead do not fight one another. The dead have no desires, no petty jealousies or ambitions. A world of the dead is a world at peace…

Sigmar fought against the necromancer’s words, understanding that their battle would be fought in the realm of the spirit as well as that of the flesh. He closed his eyes, willing this vision away, knowing that Nagash would seek to defeat him with lies cloaked in truths.

“This may be a true vision of the future Empire,” hissed Sigmar. “But a world of death is a world of stagnation, without the change that makes it worthwhile. What you call uncertainty, I call life itself.”

He fought down his revulsion at this vision and opened his eyes, no longer seeing the bleak vision of an Empire at war with itself, but the spirit-haunted hillside where a being of ultimate darkness opposed him.

“Show me what you will,” said Sigmar, planting his standard in the soft earth and raising Ghal-Maraz over his shoulder. “This ends with me destroying you.”

So be it.

Nagash’s sword swept down and Sigmar lifted Ghal-Maraz to block. Blue fire seared out from the impact and Sigmar’s arms almost froze with the blow. He rolled aside as the sword slashed out again, catching him on the edge of his pauldron and lifting him from his feet. The iron froze in an instant, cracking apart in a rain of icy splinters as he landed. Cold blood streamed from Sigmar’s shoulder as Nagash slipped through the air, fast as a winter squall. His sword cut into Sigmar’s breastplate, shattering it like a pane of glass and piercing his chest with icy splinters.

Sigmar rolled away before the blade could penetrate deeper, swinging Ghal-Maraz around to deflect yet another swift riposte. The necromancer’s staff slashed down and arcing bolts of lightning leapt up from the ground. Sigmar screamed in pain as the energies enveloped him, burning his flesh with cold fire. Though it had been his bane through the entire battle, the crown now came to his aid. Its power was purest evil, but it was utterly directed in its ability to resist sorcery. Nagash’s withering energy was drawn into the crown, and Sigmar felt its rage to be so abused as the searing fire vanished.

Nagash’s leering skull face, too monstrous and enormous to ever have been human, swept down and Sigmar threw himself to the side as black, corrosive breath gusted from the necromancer’s jaws. The hillside withered and died beneath its touch and Nagash spun around with his staff and sword raised to destroy the foolish mortal opposing him.

The necromancer’s sword swung low and Sigmar leapt over it, bringing his hammer around to block a slashing blow of the staff to his body. Once again, the impact was enormous, and Sigmar knew he could not keep this up for much longer. He spun inside the necromancer’s reach, but Nagash was fast and slid out of range of his strike.

Sigmar leapt towards Nagash, and the necromancer lowered his staff to block the wild blow. Ghal-Maraz slammed into the entwined snakes and the runic power of the dwarfs blazed as it met the unnatural sorcery of Nehekhara. Sigmar poured every fibre of his hatred into the blow and Nagash’s staff broke apart with a screaming howl of released magic. Nagash reeled from its destruction, and Sigmar saw the hand that had carried it was a shimmering metal, its surface like a silver mirror with oil smeared across it.

Nagash drew himself up to his full height, the black smoke swirling around his lower reaches spinning like an inverted whirlwind. The force of it drove Sigmar back, billowing around him and throwing up grit and sand from the summit of the hill. The hellish wind dispersed the shrieking spirits from the air, hurling them away and revealing the battle in all its horror.

See the fate of all flesh and know despair!

The land between the city and the low hill was a charnel house of blood and destruction. As Sigmar’s eyes had seen into the hearts of his people the night before the battle, so now Nagash showed him the battle he had led them to. Sigmar’s plan was simple, ride through the centre of the undead army and slay the necromancer. He had known that many would die to keep the dead from Reikdorf, but to see the scale of that bloodshed was shattering.

Sigmar was no stranger to battle and death. He had seen friends and loved ones slain over the course of his life, and knew the grim cost of sending men to war. He knew that his orders would see women widowed, children orphaned and lovers forever parted. He knew all this, yet to see it happening all around him, all at once, was a supreme horror.

The thousands who were fighting on this day were dying in droves. Their initial successes against the army of the dead were meaningless as the cadavers and ruined corpses rose to their feet once again. Those who had fallen in battle now returned to tear at their former sword brothers, and what had once been a magnificent host was now reduced to a few pitiful bands of survivors fighting for their last moments of life.

Even if Sigmar triumphed and slew Nagash, this day would live in infamy as a day of death and woe. There would be too many dead for it to be otherwise. Sigmar heard grating laughter as Nagash revelled in this cavalcade of slaughter. The Empire’s dead would be new acolytes for his host, enslaved to reduce this world to a barren, empty wasteland.

Amid the fighting in the south, Sigmar saw Freya and Maedbh leading their children back towards Reikdorf. A multitude of skeletons climbing the walls and wading into the city via the corpse-choked river which blocked their route to safety. Unberogen and Asoborns led by a baying, blood-covered youngster defended them within a fragile shieldwall, but with dead wolves and flesh-hungry corpses closing in on them, they had minutes of life left at best.

Nagash cruelly drew his gaze onwards, and in the centre of the battlefield, Sigmar saw Teon and the Great Hall Guard enveloped by a horde of freshly-risen dead as they rode for Reikdorf’s gates. Alfgeir slumped against Teon, barely conscious and near death. It broke Sigmar’s heart to see the grievous wound his old friend had suffered.

Yet Nagash was not done with him.

Onwards his gaze was drawn, and Sigmar saw a host of black knights riding south towards the city, followed by hundreds of dead warriors marching in perfect lockstep. Shambling corpses in their thousands followed them, a ravening horde set to devour the living. A ring of dwarfs led by Master Alaric hacked at a fallen giant in red armour, their weapons cutting the monster apart piece by piece. It struggled as they fought it, though its body was ruined as though from a thousand heavy impacts. A wrecked machine lay on its side as a tall warrior with a heavy forge hammer stood over a fallen man in the leather apron of a blacksmith.

Sigmar recognised Master Govannon and Bysen, but pale-bellied flesheaters surrounded them. No matter how powerful Bysen’s swings of the forge hammer, he would not be able to stop his father from being eaten alive. Sigmar heard the howling of many wolves and despair touched his heart to hear this choir of Ulric’s chosen lamenting the death of so many brave warriors.

You see… ? This is what flesh entails. Suffering. Bloodshed. Misery. Why would you seek to perpetuate this horror? What creature in my service knows fear, pain or desire? The legions of the dead want for nothing, care for nothing, love nothing. End your foolish resistance and you will be a king of death, a master of the world at my side. You will be my greatest champion and together we will end the suffering of this world!

Sigmar dropped to his knees, as the pain and anguish of every living soul upon the battlefield washed over him. What manner of man could allow such suffering? What sane individual could wish such pain on a life? To strangle a babe as it was born would be a kindness, and to end the plague of the living on this world would be an act of mercy. Sigmar’s tears flowed freely and he looked up into the hungry eyes of Nagash as he loomed over him. The metallic hand reached out to him, the sharpened fingertips like silver claws as they reached for the crown.

In that moment, the sound of wolves echoed from the treeline of the northern hills, an ululating chorus that swept over the battlefield. Sigmar felt that sound lift him and fill his mind with a cold wind that had its source in the northern forests. This was a cry born in the forgotten places of ice and snow where the wolves of Ulric made their lairs. He understood that this was no lament for the fallen, but a savage affirmation of life. A war shout and cry of defiance all in one.

Sigmar rolled away from Nagash’s outstretched hand, looking to the north as tens of thousands of howling men streamed over the hillside. There were few of them warriors, most dressed in rags and bearing spiked chains, spinning flails, scythes, burning brands and clanging hand bells. Blood-smeared and screaming incoherently, they had the look of madmen, a host of armed lunatics in search of a battle.

Amongst them rode two warriors in red armour and wolf-pelt cloaks. One carried a rippling banner of crimson and white, and Sigmar’s heart leapt as he recognised the banner of the White Wolves.

“Redwane!” cried Sigmar, even as he realised that neither rider was the fiery warrior who commanded that elite band of horsemen. His eyes were drawn to two warriors at the forefront of this motley band of ragged madmen. Both were bearded and wore muddy tunics that were torn and stained with old blood. These men looked on the verge of death, yet charged with the ferocity of ten berserkers, seemingly oblivious to the many wounds they had cut into their own flesh. One man was unknown to him, but the other was as familiar as his own reflection. It was Redwane, but the man Sigmar had known was gone, submerged within a tortured madness that banished all thoughts of pain and fear of death.

The host of madmen struck the army of the dead and rolled right over them, crashing them beneath their bare feet and tearing them apart with their makeshift weapons. On they came in an unending tide, men and women gathered from all across the Empire, seduced by doom-laden preachings until the host that had set out from Middenheim had swollen to become this irresistible tide of crazed fanaticism.

Following behind this screaming host came painted warriors in mail shirts who marched beneath the banner of Count Otwin. Perhaps a thousand of the Berserker King’s warriors came over the hills, following the deranged army led by Redwane and his unknown companion. They bayed with the voices of wolves and to see them coming to his aid gave Sigmar the strength he needed to face the necromancer.

Nagash drew himself up to his full, terrifying height, his fury at this turn of events spreading from the hillside and empowering his army with fresh hate for the living. The northern flank of the dead collapsed, smashed aside by the army of madmen and Thuringians, yet there was still a virtually inexhaustible supply of rotting flesh to replace those the mortals destroyed.

Sigmar swept Ghal-Maraz around, and faced the necromancer for the last time. The crown blazed with silver light at his brow, exerting every last scrap of its power to weaken him and drain his ability to resist. As Sigmar listened to the howling of wolves, he knew it could not touch him. It had kept him safe from Nagash’s magic, allowed him to smash through the ranks of the dead without pause, but now it was time to be rid of it.

He tore the crown from his brow and held it up towards Nagash.

“You want this?” he bellowed, and Nagash turned his gaze upon him. Such desire and obsession. Such aching need and devotion. Nothing else mattered to Nagash, not the defeat of Sigmar’s army, not the destruction of all living things. Nothing was more important to the necromancer than this crown. Sigmar saw how much its power meant to Nagash and understood Eoforth’s last message to him completely.

“You want this?” repeated Sigmar. “Then have it!”

He threw the crown onto the withered grass of the hillside and raised Ghal-Maraz to smash it asunder with one, all-powerful blow.

Nagash bellowed in horrified anger and reached for the crown with outstretched fingers, all thoughts save taking back his crown driven from his mind. Nothing else mattered, and it was the moment Sigmar had been awaiting since this fight had begun.

He leapt towards the necromancer, bringing Ghal-Maraz around in a thunderous overhead sweep. The mighty hammer of the dwarfs smashed into Nagash’s cuirass, breaking it into a thousand shards and powering into his chest. Green fire flared from the impact and ribs fused with dark magic thousands of years before shattered like ice as Sigmar drove his hammer into the heart of the necromancer’s being.

Sigmar howled with the wolves and screamed his hatred of Nagash as the runic script on the hammer’s haft shone with the purest light. Runes he had not even known existed flared to life on the hammer’s head, filling Nagash’s hollow existence with fiery beams of light and searing his immortal essence from within.

The necromancer shrieked as his ancient sorcery fought to resist the powerful magic of the dwarfs. Forces too titanic to be understood by mortals battled within his body, easily capable of laying waste to this entire land. Sigmar held onto Ghal-Maraz as the star-iron of its head burned brighter than the sun and its grip burned his hands with its ancient fire.

“I will end you!” roared Sigmar, thrusting the hammer deeper into Nagash’s body.

The necromancer gave one last shriek of horror, and his body exploded in a wash of black light and frozen fire. Dark magic and immortal energies flared upwards from his destruction like a volcanic eruption.

And the sky filled with ashes and grief.

With Nagash’s destruction, the army of the dead melted away like woodsmoke on a windy day. Warriors of bone dropped their swords and collapsed as their spirits were freed to pass on to their final rest. Undead wolves that had, moments before, been howling for blood, fell to dissolution as the magic binding their bodies to the world of mortals was undone. Spirits shrieked as their ethereal forms were drawn back to the tombs that held them, and the shambling corpses raised from their graves now slumped to the ground, reduced to nothing more than dead meat for crows.

The binding will of Nagash was absolute, and no creature that walked, drifted or flew within his host had power of its own to maintain its existence. As the necromancer’s power bled away, the dead ceased their attacks on the living and returned to the realm that had first claim upon their souls. Morr’s gates opened to receive them, and as each violated spirit was freed from the necromancer’s iron clutches, a wave of euphoria swept over the battlefield.

Weeping men and women laughed and danced as the threat of death was lifted. They cried tears of joy, and hugged one another tight. The nearness of death had reawakened every mortal heart’s appreciation of the gift of life. Though that would fade in time, for now it was a glorious moment that would never be forgotten.

Nor was Nagash’s influence confined to the dead at Reikdorf, for the black strands of his web of control stretched all across the Empire. The dead at Marburg dropped to the ground as the will driving them over the citadel walls faded into nothingness, while those clawing their way into Middenheim fell from the causeway and tumbled from the sheer sides of the Fauschlag Rock. The Udose watched in amazement as the dead ceased their attacks into their hidden valleys and crumbled to dust around the walls of Conn Carsten’s clifftop fortress.

Count Aloysis stood atop the ramparts of Hochergig and waved a Cherusen banner as the dead melted away from his walls, while Count Krugar rode through the gates of Taalahim in triumph. In the eastern reaches of the Empire, Count Adelhard rallied his warriors in a krug around the Bechahorst, a spire of dark stone in the northern marches of his lands, and drank koumiss to toast the end of this fight.

The lands of the south were silent, for their people were already dead. Alone among the southern tribal homelands, the Merogens had endured. Count Henroth led his warriors from within their great castles of stone, blinking in the new light and disbelieving that such a miracle could have saved his people.

Nagash’s legions were no more, and the living had endured.

The long dark night of the dead was over.

Khaled al-Muntasir climbed to the top of the hillside, his bones aching and his flesh scoured by the incomprehensible destruction of Nagash. The vampire’s armour was in tatters, his white cloak torn and burned by the fire that had threatened to consume him. The necromancer’s doom had threatened to drag him to destruction as well, but his blood was of a higher calibre than that of the ancient priest king of Nehekhara.

Siggurd crawled by his side, the newly-sired vampire’s body wracked with pain. The Asoborns had almost destroyed him, and in his weakened state, his immortal flesh had all but succumbed to the same destruction as had vanquished the army of the dead. Only his superior pedigree had saved him, but it would take dozens of bodies’ worth of blood to restore him. His whimpering cries were repugnant to Khaled al-Muntasir’s ears, but he was of his blood and could not be abandoned to the savage mercies of the mortals.

Nothing lived on the hillside, every blade of grass withered and every inch of soil barren. His footsteps left prints in ashen sand as he climbed to the top, where he saw the architect of the necromancer’s demise.

Sigmar stood with his back to Khaled al-Muntasir, his softly glowing hammer at his side and the crown of Nagash lying at his feet. The crown shone with a dull light, and Khaled al-Muntasir wondered what glories he might achieve were he to take it. The Emperor’s flesh was a mass of bruised blood, frostburn and suffering. The vampire licked his lips, seeing that the mortal was at the very end of his endurance. Easy meat.

“You have destroyed that which could not be destroyed,” said Khaled al-Muntasir.

“I told you that you were not welcome in my lands,” said Sigmar, without turning. “I told you that I would kill you if I saw you again.”

“An empty threat,” said the vampire, taking a step towards Sigmar. Siggurd moaned in hunger and pain, the smell of blood drawing his broken gaze.

“Is it?” said Sigmar, turning to face him. “Test it, and I will send you to join your master.”

“You are weak,” said the vampire. “Spent. I could kill you and drink your blood before you could raise a hand to stop me. The crown will be mine and all you have achieved here will have been for nothing.”

“Then come at me,” said Sigmar, lifting Ghal-Maraz.

Khaled al-Muntasir laughed, but the sound died in his throat as he saw the hatred in Sigmar’s eyes. There was strength and power there beyond anything men should know, a cold fire that came not from mortal realms, but from a place long forsaken that did not belong on this world. Its winter fire hailed from a place of gods and monsters, a realm of power beyond imagining and where the laws of nature held no sway. All this power and more burned in Sigmar’s eyes, though he knew it not.

In that instant of connection, Khaled al-Muntasir knew that if he took another step his undying existence would be ended. For the first time since he had awoken as an immortal blood drinker, Khaled al-Muntasir knew the meaning of fear. His limbs trembled. The thought of oblivion and the bleak emptiness that awaited him robbed him of all his courage.

Siggurd pawed at the ground, desperate for blood and unable to comprehend why his master hesitated to end this upstart mortal. His senses dulled and broken by his pain, Siggurd could not feel the terrible danger Sigmar represented to him and all his kind. The Emperor’s hate of the blood drinkers was a force all of its own, a force that transcended time and all notions of mortality.

Khaled al-Muntasir backed away from Sigmar, dragging the wretched vampire count he had sired back down the hillside. Terror of Sigmar’s inner power burned into their damned souls with unending torment as his voice chased them from the battlefield.

“Hear now the word of Sigmar Heldenhammer,” shouted the Emperor. “I curse you and all your kind to be my enemies for all time!”

The vampires fled into the shadows.

Sigmar watched the vampires run, thankful that his killing boast had not been put to the test. His body was a mass of pain, his heart heavy with the mourning yet to come, and his soul was sickened to see what might yet become of his beloved Empire. The air around him was thick with foetid vapours, unclean fumes that lingered in the wake of the necromancer’s destruction. Yet even as he waited, a fresh wind was building, blowing from the west with clean air and the promise of new beginnings.

He took a deep breath, savouring the sweetness of that air. It had been so long since he had tasted air untainted with the ashen reek of grave dust and death that he had almost forgotten what it was like. Freed from the necromancer’s magic, the land was already beginning to heal, purging the foulness of dark magic from its soil and wind.

Soon the desolation of Nagash would be little more than a memory, for the world was more resilient than people knew. It would outlast mankind, and its mountains, forests and rivers would see them dead and buried before it would even blink. Mortals were a flicker in the life of this world, yet even that was worth holding onto.

Sigmar opened his eyes as he saw a host of men and women gathering around the desolate hillside, warriors from his army, people from his city and allies from across the land. They were weeping tears of hope and mourning, loss and relief.

The battle was over and they were alive.

Sigmar dropped to one knee before his people, giving homage to them as they had given homage to him. The sky above the battlefield began to lighten as the perpetual twilight of Nagash was banished. Its sullen gloom had gripped the Empire for so long that its people had forgotten the feel of sunlight on their skin. Its radiance spread across the land, a bounteous illumination that banished evil to the shadows and chased away the darkness.

Sigmar smiled and turned his face to the sun.

“People of the Empire,” he said. “A new day is upon us.”