Graham McNeill - Sons of Ellyrion

This is a dark age, a bloody age, an age of daemons and ofsorcery. It is an age of battle and death, and of the worlds ending. Amidst allof the fire, flame and fury it is a time, too, of mighty heroes, of bold deeds and great courage.

At the heart of the Old World sprawls the Empire, the largestand most powerful of the human realms. Known for its engineers, sorcerers, traders and soldiers, it is a land of great mountains, mighty rivers, dark forests and vast cities. And from his throne in Altdorf reigns the Emperor Karl-Franz, sacred descendant of the founder of these lands, Sigmar, and wielder of his magical warhammer.

But these are far from civilised times. Across the length andbreadth of the Old World, from the knightly palaces of Bretonnia to ice-bound Kislev in the far north, come rumblings of war. In the towering Worlds EdgeMountains, the orc tribes are gathering for another assault. Bandits and renegades harry the wild southern lands of the Border Princes. There are rumours of rat-things, the skaven, emerging from the sewers and swamps across the land. And from the northern wildernesses there is the ever-present threat of Chaos, of daemons and beastmen corrupted by the foul powers of the Dark Gods. As the time of battle draws ever near, the Empire needs heroes like never before.

Ulthuan was weeping.

Waterfalls and wailing rivers carried its tears to the sea. The clouds gathered in solemn thunderheads and the wind howled its sorrow through the air, which hung torpid and heavy over even its most carefree inhabitants. Not since the days of the Sundering, when brother had slain brother and a race favoured by the gods turned on one another, had the realm of the elves known such grief.

The skies above the mist-shrouded island faded to black, the sun unwilling to bear witness to such horror. Only the shimmering emerald orb of the Chaos moon dared show its face on such a night, but the clouds over Ulthuan hid the torment of its inhabitants from such a leering gaze.

Ulthuans brightest and most beauteous star had been tornfrom the heavens, and that grief was for her people alone.

The masked statues upon the Shrine of Asuryan wept blood from their hidden eyes, and the waters around Tor Elyr broke and seethed with anger, shattering crystal bridges that had stood for thousands of years. Roaring waves heaved the surface of the Inner Sea, capsizing the few silver-hulled ships that plied its waters and dragging sorrowful mariners down to their doom.

The lands of the Inner Kingdoms, golden realms of eternal summer, knew at last the touch of winter as cold winds blew from the north and ignoble rains battered the balmy plains. Magical sprites, capricious things of glittering mischief, transformed in an instant, their mischief turned to spite, playfulness to malice. The forests of Chrace echoed with the sound of enraged beasts, and lone hunters abroad in the shadowed depths sought the sanctuary of caves or tall trees.

Towering breakers battered the rocky coastline of Cothique as the ocean surged with fury, desperate to spill over the land. Within the Gaen Vale, the mountain of the crone maiden rumbled as though ancient geological faults tore open, and black smoke clawed from its summit. From Sapherian villas and the coastal mansions of Yvresse, to the rocky, cliff-top towers of Tiranoc and palaces of such beauty that they may only be told of in song, the land of the elves knew pain and sorrow.

The great statues of the Everqueen and the Phoenix King that stood sentinel over the mighty port of Lothern trembled upon their mighty footings. The light of a thousand torches illuminated Lothern, but the marbled Everqueen remained shrouded in the deepest shadows, and all who looked upon the regal features of the Phoenix King saw the stern and unflinching countenance crack, like the carven track of a single tear.

Ulthuans warriors, mages, poets and peacemakers alike weptwith their magical home. That shared woe passed from the elves to the land, and from the land to the air. And as Ulthuan mourned, it spread on the winds of magic throughout the world until even distant kin in ports as far away as Tor Elithis breathed in the sorrow of the Everqueens fate.

The distant asrai of Athel Loren grieved with their long lost brothers and sisters, the slumbering Orion and fey queen Ariel dipping the branches of their forest home in shared anguish. Though the paths of the asur and asrai had taken very different turns through the ages of the world, their shared heritage was still a bright thread of connection between them.

Even the crude and unsophisticated race of man felt something amiss in the world. Childrenwho alone of the race of men retain their senseof wonderwoke from troubled dreams with a scream on their lips, and thoseforced to pass the long watches of the night in wakefulness felt the touch of the grave draw ever closer. Dramatists and dreamers felt an aspect of beauty pass from the world, while those whose lives had been touched by the asur in some way felt an unreasoning grief they could not explain when the suns raysonce again illuminated a world that seemed just a little less bright than before.

If the dwarfs of the mountain holds felt anything of these events, none could say, for elf and dwarf had long since lost any love for the other.

Only the fallen elves of Naggaroth revelled in this time of suffering. As drops of blood fell to the loamy earth of Avelorn, cold laughter echoed from the crooked towers of the druchiis accursed cities of dark iron andbloodstained stone.

Leading his army of invasion against the gates of Lothern, the Witch King himself, greatest and most hated son of Ulthuan, bellowed with laughter astride his midnight-skinned drake perched atop the Glittering Lighthouse. The ocean boomed and crashed far below him, but his mirth drowned the noise of the furious water.

In her gaudy pavilion of debaucheries before the embattled Eagle Gate, Morathi the Hag Sorceress whipped her devotees into bloody paroxysms of opiate-fuelled madness before bathing in a cauldron of their hot blood.

The myriad voices of the world spoke with a million voices in a million ears, subtly different every time, but all singing the same lament.

Alarielle, the Everqueen of Avelorn, was dead.

Eldain saw Caelir stab the Everqueen, yet still could notbelieve what his own eyes were telling him. Hed known his brothers purpose incoming to Avelorn, but to see it enacted was worse than he could ever have imagined. Though it was over in an instant, Eldain saw everything, from the tiniest detail to the full panorama of the murderous deed. Alone of all those in the garlanded arbour, it seemed that he must bear witness to the full horror of events as they unfolded.

Was this his punishment for being the treacherous architect of this assassination, to see every detail and feel every nuance of the bloody deed?

He saw the black sheath of Caelirs dagger crumble away,blown by perfume-scented winds like cinders from a dead fire. The blade itself, dulled by old blood and reeking of ancient murders, crossed the all too short distance between Caelirs fist and the Everqueens chest. Yet though he had cometo Avelorn on a mission of murder, Caelirs face was not the face of anassassin, but that of a horrified witness.