Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

‘Whatever you like. You keep your side of the bargain, we’ll keep ours.’ Golgunnir sniffed. ‘There’s something else too.’

‘Oh?’

‘An ambassador. He should be here, about… now.’

Golgunnir looked skywards and took three steps back.

With a rush of wings, a huge warrior in gleaming gold armour slammed into the ground before Ulgathern, as shocking as a lightning strike. Wings of brilliant white light dazzled the Runefather, then were extinguished, the mechanisms that had projected them folding upon the warrior’s back.

A stern-faced war-mask looked down on him. Ulgathern-Grimnir was sure this was a human male. He had never seen one so big who was not in the service of the four powers, but the energy that crackled around him was not of Chaos, he was sure of that.

‘Hail, Runefather! I am Seldor, Knight-Azyros of the Hammers of Sigmar. I come to you with tidings of hope,’ said the angelic warrior. ‘The gates to Azyr are reopened. The stormhosts march. Sigmar returns to free the realms from the tyranny of the Dark Gods.

‘The war against Chaos has begun, and we seek allies.’

Skuralanx the Scurrying Dark, the Cunning Shadow, servant of the Great Corruptor, verminlord and blessed child of the Horned Rat, crept on stealthy hooves through the dead temple towards its central chamber. The daemon’s massive frame was heavily muscled beneath his mangy hide, and his bifurcated tail lashed in equal parts annoyance and excitement as he ducked his many-horned, fleshless skull beneath a cracked archway.

He crawled, skulked, scurried and slunk through the shadows cast by the eternal lightning-storm which swirled about the cracked domes and shattered towers. Writhing streaks of lightning cascaded down broken statues or struck the pockmarked plazas of the temple-complex. The sky above was a knot of painful, shimmering cobalt clouds, and the daemon avoided the sight of it as much as possible.

The mortals who had built this place called it the Sahg’gohl — the Storm-Crown of the City-Worm. A fitting name, Skuralanx thought, for a place where the air stank of iron and the elemental heat of Azyr. Within the domed central chamber was a door to that realm, and it wept forever in fury. Perhaps that explained the lightning. Skuralanx didn’t know and didn’t particularly care. Such doorways could be twisted out of shape and off-path with ridiculous ease, if one knew the trick of it.

But that was not his purpose here. Not yet at any rate. He was no brutish Warbringer or treacherous Warpseer, looking to conquer for conquest’s sake. No, he was a child of the Great Witherer, born of blessed foulness and blighted shadows, and his was a higher calling. The Eater of All Things was in turmoil, roiling with conflicting desires which could only be assuaged by that which Skuralanx sought — or rather, by that which his servants sought on his behalf.

One of the Thirteen Great Plagues was here. He was certain of it. Hidden away from the eyes of mortals and daemons alike. Skuralanx had followed its trail from the Jade Kingdoms of Ghyran to the rime-encrusted tarnholds of the fallen duchies of Shyish, and now, at last, here, to the Ghurlands and a city built on the broad, ever-undulating back of a colossal worm.

And he had not come alone, no-no. Skuralanx was a craftsman, and like all craftsmen, he possessed many tools. Two had come to the city-worm at his command, though neither knew that the other served him. The skaven of the Red Bubo Procession and the Congregation of Fumes, drawn from the Clans Pestilens, had risen at his order and drowned the inhabitants of the city in a foetid tide of pox and pestilence. Led by their quarrelsome plague priests, the two congregations had burst from the body of the worm, ringing their doom-gongs and spreading noxious death wherever they scurried.

It had been a thing of beauty and horror in equal measure. A civilization, millennia old, ruined in a fortnight by the teeming, pestilent hordes that scurried forth at his behest. Even better, his chittering servants were now hard at work making this place fit for the children of the Horned Rat. Soon, this city, which had once belonged to the man-things, would instead be home to the Clans Pestilens. And Skuralanx would rule over them — whichever ones managed to survive, that is. He played no favourites and was content to allow them the freedom to murder one another with vicious abandon.

As long as one or the other found that which he desired, he cared nothing for their fate. They were in competition, and every setback and victory spurred them on to greater heights of cunning, just as he’d planned. Live or die, his triumph was assured. One of them would find the Liber and bring it to him.

Had he wished, he could easily have sought out the object of his desire himself. Indeed, there were some among his kin-rivals who would have done just that. But Skuralanx was patient. And besides, what was the point of having minions if one didn’t let them serve? Had not the Horned Rat spawned his children to serve him, after all?

Snickering, the verminlord leapt onto the shoulder of Sigmar. Or his statue, at least. Stern, bearded, unforgiving, the massive sculpture of the man-thing god glared out over the chamber where once his followers had gathered in worship. The chamber glowed with an unpleasant radiance. The glow emanated from the vast iron hatch composed of intersecting plates and set into the base of the statue’s plinth. Lightning dripped from it, crawling across the walls and floor in crackling sheets. It filled the air and made his hide prickle.

The interlocking plates had been designed to be opened only in the proper order. Skuralanx had no doubt that his cunning would prove equal to the task, when the need arose. At but a touch, he would wrench the realmgate open and twist it back upon itself, turning the way to the Jade Kingdoms and the maggot-infested warrens his minions called home. Plague congregations and clawbands without number awaited but the merest whisper of his voice, for his schemes and the tools with which he enacted them were infinite.

Beyond the chamber, through the shattered walls, Skuralanx could see the wide, pillar-lined causeway which connected the ruined temple to the rest of the city.

‘Blind, so blind, yes-yes,’ the daemon hissed, carving filthy runes into the statue’s cheek. He had come here every day for weeks to do so, because it amused him, and the statue’s face was all but swallowed up by the daemonic graffiti. ‘Can’t see what’s right in front of him, oh no. Blind god, broken god, dead god.’

He looked up past the lightning to the amber skies of the Ghurlands, where strange birds flew and worse things besides. ‘Soon, all of the gods will be dead, yes. Only one left, only the strongest, the stealthiest, the most brilliant of gods, yes-yes… all dead, and we will ascend in their place.’

They would rise and flourish, spreading decay across the Eight Realms. Yes, and more besides. All realms, all worlds, all peoples would fall. All would rot, never to be renewed. From out of this glorious corruption, new life would swell, but not mortal life, not man-thing life or hated duardin, no-no — only skaven life. Only the faithful skaven-life — no place for the unbelievers. All things would die.

And Shu’gohl, the Crawling City, would be the first.

The air smelled of worm. Not an unpleasant smell, by the standards of Vretch of the Red Bubo, but not altogether pleasing either. It was a coarse, acrid odour which clung tenaciously to everything here, living or otherwise. It filled the sprawling city of looming towers and swaying bridges which the skaven of the Clans Pestilens had, for the most part, occupied. It was even, regrettably, in his fur. It overlaid his natural pungency, subsuming the unique tang of his many and varied blessings, drowning them in worm-stink.