Knowledge of that sacrifice was one of the few things that made the reforging process bearable. It made Balthas wonder why any would resist it, even unconsciously. He watched a bolt of azure lighting scream down, to strike the Anvil. It spilled over the sides, dripping down into the lowest tier and the Forge Eternal. Light blazed up from below, where the Six Smiths laboured. The duardin demigods were only rarely seen away from their forges, and few Stormcasts were allowed there. Balthas had never even heard them referred to as individuals, only as a group.
The chamber shuddered slightly, as the hammers of the Six Smiths struck as one. The raw soul-stuff was hammered into shape, stripped free of the trappings of its demise and made ready for rebirth. The newly wrought souls were sifted upwards, into the Cairns of Tempering, where they endured seven times seven trials.
The nature of these trials was a mystery, even to the lords-arcanum of the Sacrosanct Chambers. Grungni had devised the trials, with the aid of Sigmar, to test the strength of a chosen soul. A part of Balthas yearned to know what his own trials had been like, but a greater, wiser part thought it better that he did not.
Once a soul had passed through the Cairns of Tempering, they were ready to be reforged and made flesh and blood once more. They rose upwards, through the shifting tiers of the tower, until they returned to the Anvil of Apotheosis, where the mage-sacristans waited.
Down below, a soul erupted from the Anvil, rising above it in a crackling halo of lightning and starlight. Silence fell as the lords-arcanum watched. Balthas stepped to the edge of the platform, intrigued despite himself. Though he had witnessed the rites of reforging many times, they remained fascinating.
To his storm-sight, all souls were marked by a residue of the last realm they’d been in. This one was stained with a dark purple miasma, which clung to it despite the trials it had endured. The Realm of Death. He felt a flicker of unease. Something was wrong with the soul’s aura – as if more than just its flesh had been injured.
The fires of creation roared upwards from the Anvil, engulfing the soul. It began to scream, and in the twisting flames, Balthas saw the memories of the warrior it had once been. Most were scenes from the warrior’s final moments, but others were of a more personal nature – tattered recollections from a mortal life. The faces of kith and kin, the smell of walled gardens and the rustle of branches in a sea-wind, rising from the fire, like smoke. The pieces of who they had been, before they had been burdened with glorious purpose.
Miska and the other mage-sacristans began to sing. Their voices split, overlapped and wound back, each singer a choir unto themselves. The chamber resonated with the song of the spheres, and the desperate thrashing of the soul calmed. There was a crash of twelve thunders, and something dark formed upon the altar. The soul contracted as motes grew within it, spreading outwards, like oil on water.
Balthas watched as a new body was formed from a seed of starlight and lightning. A web of newborn veins and nerve endings sprouted within the coruscating shell of energy, spreading outwards through the man-shape. Pieces of bone blossomed, spread and lengthened, as vestigial organs swelled to maturity.
Through it all, the mage-sacristans sang the song of creation, their voices serving to shape the being before them. The soul began to writhe as it was clothed once more in flesh, and the pain of rebirth became more visceral – blood suddenly pumped through darkening arteries, as coils of intestine grew and slabs of muscle and fat sheathed bone.
As newly grown lungs inflated for the first time, a scream of rebirth burst from the mouth of the reforged warrior. For a moment, he stood upon the altar, wreathed in smoke. Then, as the echoes of his scream faded, he toppled. Celestors raced forwards, to drag the insensate warrior away. Even as they hauled him clear, the air above the altar was crackling anew. Another soul, another splash of half-formed images forming and burning away, as Balthas watched. Some of those memories would be lost forever.
To be reforged upon the Anvil was as traumatic an experience as it was transcendent. As the soul was broken down and rebuilt, it could lose part of itself in the process. Sometimes this loss was but a small thing – a memory, a name – other times, it was more drastic a sacrifice. Warriors came back… changed. Still loyal, still powerful, but lacking something.
But even that was not the worst that could happen. Balthas’ grip on his staff tightened, and he closed his eyes, hearing again the screams of those souls that had succumbed to the elemental fury of the Anvil. Some souls inevitably resisted the process to the point that they, perhaps mercifully, simply ceased to exist. They rejoined the Great Tempest, where hopefully they might find some measure of peace. But others were too strong to die quietly. They were the reason the lords-arcanum stood on watch, high above the Anvil.
‘I am the blade at my brother’s neck,’ Balthas said softly, as he watched memories turn to ash. Why would anyone resist rebirth, on behalf of such brief flickers of recollection? It seemed as strange to him now as it had the first time he had witnessed a reforging. He saw the brief flicker of the warrior’s final moments. Something pale, without form or feature, reached out of the dark. Something dead. Another soul, bound in a shroud of purple, cast upwards from–
‘Shyish.’
Balthas stiffened as, behind him, a familiar voice spoke. Slowly, he turned. As he did so, he saw that Tyros and the others were kneeling. He felt a pang of annoyance, as he realised he had been so engrossed that he had failed to notice the newcomer’s arrival. An inexcusable lapse, in one trained to notice the smallest flaw in the aether.
‘My lord Sigmar,’ Balthas said, as he sank to one knee, head bowed. ‘My apologies. I was lost in contemplation.’
‘Do not apologise, Balthas. There are worse mazes to be lost in.’ Sigmar’s voice was like the crash of the morning tide against the shore. It echoed through the hollow spaces and made Balthas’ very marrow grow warm.
The God-King stood before him, arrayed in golden war-plate. The air twisted about him, as if the realm were not quite able to bear his weight. He stood half a head higher than the tallest of his warriors, and there was an elemental strength to him – as if he were the raw fury of the storm, given solid form. But his presence was not merely physical. Sigmar’s immensity stretched beyond the boundaries of the corporeal, into spheres beyond the sight of mortal men. He was the cold gaze of the moon and the warm laugh of the sun. He was the sound of clashing steel, of avalanches and howling winds.
To one possessing storm-sight, Sigmar appeared as a shard of the firmament itself. A being of pure starlight, impossible to look at for long. The God-King was Azyr, given mind and voice. In his merest gesture was the movement of worlds, and in his gaze, the flare of falling stars. Balthas blinked, trying to ignore what lay behind the mask of broad, too-human features. The face of a man aeons dead, out of whom a god had emerged.
‘Rise, lords-arcanum. If you are not worthy of standing in my presence, then none who serve me are.’ Sigmar gestured, and Balthas and the others stood, some more slowly than others. It seemed wrong somehow, not to kneel before the one who had made them. But the God-King had little patience for such niceties.
‘We did not expect to see you here, my lord,’ Knossus said. ‘You honour us.’
‘Do I? Some might disagree. What about you?’ Sigmar looked down at Balthas, and he found himself at a loss for words. ‘Do I honour you?’