Tears of a God, Wrath of the Storm

Sigmar stared solemnly into the blazing sky of Azyr, admiring the blue wisps of the ethereal heavens the god-king resided in. Many times, he had entertained himself within the highest peak of his own chambers, retiring, for just one moment, from the eternal duties as a divine.

The weight of his divinity was heavy for the god-king. His responsibilities were great, the hopes and fears of an entire people waying on his shoulders. The zealots pestered for his will, the nobles and courtiers wished him to hear their petitions and pleas. The common man prayed to him, while his soldiers waited for orders. Even for a god, it drew tiresome, but high above the celestial city of Azyrheim, here he could rest for the briefest of moments, one of the highest peaks within the city. Secluded, the god-king could retire for just a moment from his position, within his open hall decorated by fine Azyrite gold and carvings.

Sigmar sighed, stepping forward across the open hallway which was flanked on either sides by great stone pillars, names and lettering carved into their faces with rough stony sculptures standing above the gray cubes.

He stared at the first stony slab, the first in the hallway that reached upward. The god-king set his shimmering hand onto the stone, brushing over the carved letterings.

He looked up toward the crude sculpture. The face of a raging warrior wielding a mighty ax, a thick white wolf pelt and beard on display, stood in detail before him.

"Forgive me, Ulric," Sigmar whispered. The face of the long-dead god stared back at him, echoing the wolf-god's boisterous nature.

Sigmar moved to the next statue, one more running his hands over the smooth stone. The sculpture was that of a woman in a long dress, holding a sickle in one hand a long leaf in the other, motherly and protective.

"Forgive me, Rhya." Sigmar said softly.

He continued forward in such a manner, running his divine fingers over the fallen sculptures of the dead gods, moving down the short hallway, saying their names in turn.

"Forgive me, Taal. Forgive me Morr. Forgive me Manann"

Soon, the depictions grew more abstract, statues of the notable fallen, the long-lost and the long-forgotten by all except Sigmar himself. He could not let himself forget their names, their meaning, nor their sacrifices.

He came to the last one, a simple image of a faceless family, huddling around each other for protection, their forms vague but still discernible. The inscription was similarly simple: THE NAMELESS FALLEN.

It was a morbid hallway of reflection, the dead forever greeting Sigmar. The forgotten only remembered by the god-king, a reminder of sacrifice or the failures he had made over his many eons of immortal life. Usually he was no so melonchalic when walking through it, but today was a truly melancholic day.

The god-king stared down at his hands. It glowed with the blue light of Azyr, the magical Wind of the Heavens, an integral part of his being. He was Sigmar Heldenhammer, Ascended god of civilization and progress, the patron deity of Men, the Lord of the Realm of Azyr. He was the Thunderer, the Man-God, The Great Roaring One, Chaosbane, Zagh-Mar, and a thousand other titles. But it was not always so. He thought back, past ages of time, before the forming of the Pantheon of Order, before his arrival within the Mortal Realms, into the World-That-Was, and even stretching into the primeval times of his own planet. Further he stretched his mind, back to when he had no divine gift, no heavenly spark and essence. Once, he was a man, mortal, fallible, and human.

He stared at his divine hands, something far more than the mortal he was so many lifetimes ago. In his godly power, Sigmar could break mountains, wield thunder and lightning within his fingers, gods and godly beasts.

But once he was a man. Once he could only rely on his human strength to cut wood and wield blades, to fight his enemies with bare hands. Once he was simply the son of a chieftain, a man and moral like any other. Free to live and love and fight, free from the shackles of immortality, the duty of godhood, the eternal begging of his name and invocation of his aid by mortals.

He remembered the difficulties of mortal life, the great trials he endured to build his empire, and his dream he had when he was but a man. A great man, perhaps, but a man nonetheless.

Sigmar reached the very end of the hall, climbing up a small series of stairs, where an open balcony lay. It opened over the city of Azyrheim, with the heavenly colors of Azyr striking above him. There, in the center of a small pool, was a simple headstone, with a single name marked on it. He reached out, and for the first time in a very long time, choked on his words. And he remembered, far back to the end of his human life.

The cathedral of evergreen trees was a shimmering winter garden of glistening icicles and stillness. Walking paths he had not taken in years, he made his way to a peaceful hollow where weeping willows drooped with the weight of snow and ice on their branches. A gurgling waterfall spilled into a wide pool, and a simple headstone was set at its edge.

He touched the headstone and looked to the east.

'Soon, my love,' said Sigmar. 'Soon'.

"Ravenna"

He said her name with great solemness and lowered his head.

He had never wished for divinity, never sought it out. The greatest fate he had hoped for was to be reunited with his love in the afterlife, proud of the empire he had built. But now the man was gone, shackled by the coils of immortality and divine energy that coalesced through his being.

Now he was a god, might and magnificent, but its burden was heavy. The luxury of freedom was forever out of reach. His godly strength was always required against the great foes of his vision, his dream formed long ago.

"If anyone can do it, you can," she said, stepping forward and taking his hand. "Just promise me one thing."

"Anything."

"Be careful," she said. "You don't know what I'm going to ask."

"That doesn't matter," said Sigmar. "Your wish is my command."

She reached up with her free hand and stroked his cheek. "You are sweet."

"I mean it," said Sigmar. "Ask and I will promise."

"Then promise me that the wars will end someday," said Ravenna, looking him straight in the eye. "When you have achieved all you set out to do, put down your weapons and leave it all behind."

"I promise," he said without hesitation.

All his failures sprang among him. His dream, the dream inspired by his love, had never come to pass. His empire, built with so much blood and toil, collapsed, despite the very best efforts of the greatest heroes it could inspire. His world was cracked and destroyed, even when he fought the hardest at the ending of the world. He thought he could rebuild, restore a new world in the lands he found himself, mend old wounds and craft a pantheon devoted to the ideals of justice and order. But he failed his people, his naivety to the threat of Chaos allowing it to manifest once more, despoil his lands. His rage and blindness had already cost him his hammer and his worlds.

Screams echoed in his ears, not from lost memories, but of the present. His final failure. Azyrheim was locked off, the great portals sealed shut and Azyr closed to the predations of Chaos. All of it was necessary, just as the order for the purges. Sigmar knew his zealous servants would complete the task, but innocents would undoubtedly be caught in the crossfire as well. It was the unfortunate nature of such things, and their wails marked the final piece of his shame, the man who called himself god-king.

The agony of his impossible failure battered the mind of the god, and Sigmar Heldenhammer, founder of the Empire, Incarnate of Heaven, God of Order and Justice, God-King of the Pantheon of Order, and Wielder of Ghal Maraz, broke down into tears. His head was bowed in shame, and his hand placed on the tombstone of the only woman he ever truly loved. Small droplets of shining lights flowed from his cheeks and splattered the ground, as he wept quietly at the top of Azyr.

And then, like a hideous ghost, he heard a soft laughter, growing in fervor. It rang beyond the physical realm, with different voices heard from the distance. One was mad and cackling, a cacophony of odd voices blending together into an uncomfortable symphony of revelry. Another was guttural, as if sharp swords gained voices and bellowed with thunderous humor. Another voice rang out, gleeful with age but choked, an elder chortling to himself. One was more distinct that the others, squeaking in vile malice, sounding like a million rats twitching with humor. And even quieter than all the others, he could the laugh of a perverse being who knew no boundaries, laughing. Laughing at him.

Sigmar's tears stopped, as the god-king's fists clenched, lighting ringing around their tips. They were mocking him. His sorrow gave way to anger, his wrath pointed towards the dark monsters that were the source of all his woe. The rage of the tempest boiled around him, his eyes glowing with electricity as the storm waited to be unleashed in rage.

But he calmed himself. The barbarian warrior spirit still lived within him, but Sigmar could no longer be that man. He was a man no more, but a god-king, and his brashness had already cost him dearly. The loss of Ghal Maraz, almost a piece of Sigmar's body, was lost because of such an attitude. Instead, he looked upward sternly, cool anger blazing in his eyes. He could not see anything by the glowing aura of the realm of Azyr. But Sigmar knew they were watching. And laughing in daemonic delight.

Coldly, with a grating bitterness, he began to speak.

"I will have my reckoning," his voice thundered, speaking to the sky above him, "Even you are not beyond suffering. For too long have you tormented mortals in your cruel games. But I will have my vengeance, for all who have been lost, for the fallen gods, for the realms spoiled by your wretched taint, for the dream that has never been fulfilled! Hide in your warped realities you wretches! Whether it takes a thousand thousand ages, there will be a reckoning! The realms will be scoured, the pantheon will be restored, and the hope of my dream, and the dream of countless more, will endure. The blood of innocents and the heroic are on my hands for failing them, in the world you destroyed and the realms you ruin now. But I will fail them no longer!"

He stepped forward, fists clenched,

"There will be a reckoning, and on that day we will break into your own homes, and you will truly know the true wrath of a universe's suffering. You think yourselves untouchable in your domains, eternal and immortal? Hide there, you cowards. I will return, and I will bring the wrath of the storm to the lands blighted by your touch. We will restore what was lost, rebuild anew, clean your corruption from the realms. Battle by battle, day by day, age by age, we will repair these Mortal Realms, and then we will come for you! Whether it takes a thousand ages of war, we will never stop our fight. I defied you as a man, and I defy you as a god to my last moments of oblivion, and so do the endless more you have wronged. Even if I am lost to your vile predations and succumb to the void, other brave souls will follow in my stead and challenge you, and one day we will come for you, in your homes! A millions daemons will not protect you from the wrath that will come, the anger of a universe of souls who have suffered too long under your tyranny!"

He ended his speech nostrils flaring as he breathed out. He paused and collected his thoughts, turning to look at the hallway of statues and carvings.

"This I swear in the name of the dead gods, the fallen heroes, and worlds you have destroyed. Beware the wrath of the storm, for it will come again."

And with that, Sigmar turned his back to the laughing of thirsting gods and ruinous powers and began to stride away. His mourning of the past was over. Now, he prepared for war.

A/N

The inspiration for the story came from thinking about Sigmar, and how he must feel being a mortal turned into a god, and how he must have felt after shutting off Azyr from the rest of the Mortal Realms. I imaged he had some sort of secluded area to be free from the constant strain of being a god-king, full of mementoes to fallen champions and deities from Sigmar's past, a reminder for him to keep going.

This particular story is set right after Sigmar gives the orders to being a massive purge of Azyrheim, cleaning out any Chaos corruption and infestation in order to begin preparing for the eventual reclamation of the Mortal Realms.

Concerning Ravenna, someone on the Warhammer Fantasy/Age of Sigmar General Thread (whew, that's a mouthful) basically summarized it, so I'll just put the quote here:

"For any who haven't read this trilogy, Sigmar's first and only mortal love was a woman named Ravenna, from Reikdorf. Early on in their lives, Ravenna was murdered by her brother, who also tried to kill Sigmar (as he blamed Sigmar for his twin brother's death in battle). Sigmar, distraught, buried her and pledged that from then on, the land of the Empire would be his only love. This was not entirely true in the physical sense- much later on Sigmar was blackmailed into sex to seal a treaty by the female chieftain of the Asoborns - but it was certainly true in an emotional sense. Sigmar never married, and seemed to spend the rest of his life being faithful to his dead wife."

Since Sigmar ascended to godhood, and the Chaos gods destroyed the World-That-Was and ate most of the souls of the living and dead, I made the assumption that Ravenna was among them, or at least is lost forever, leaving Sigmar forever at a loss for his love, and thus all the more tragic but determined to fight against Chaos.

I've also copied the quotations from the Sigmar book trilogy, although I have not read it.

As always, any comments, critiques, and helpful criticism are welcome.