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?’