Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

But soon, none of that would matter. Soon, nothing would be able to stop him. Vretch would rise, and the Mortal Realms would fall.

Tokl watched as the vermin lowered themselves into the bubbling river. When he was certain they’d left no watchers behind, he dropped from the wall. The rest of his cohort did the same, moving in perfect unison. Nimble and clever, the band of chameleon skinks had pursued the skaven down the pulsing length of the fleshy shaft, and they would pursue them further still, until the Great Lord Kurkori commanded otherwise.

Such was their function. Tokl and his warriors were the unseen instruments of the slann’s will, the forgotten moments of the Great Dream. Their scales mimicked the hue of their surroundings as they stalked their prey, and the whisper of their celestite blowpipes was all but inaudible. They existed within the shadows, where the light of Azyr did not always reach, invisible, at times, even to the eyes of their fellow seraphon. But so too were they invisible to the servants of the Dark Gods. They were the Unseen Correctors, and they set broken dreams to rights at their master’s command.

Tokl licked his bulging eyes, trying to attune them to the humid interior of the worm. The lingering traces of warp-smoke stung him, and he longed for the open air. His cohort chirped in alarm as the worm convulsed and the shaft shuddered about them. He heard the panicked squeals of the skaven as they fought to keep their rafts from turning over.

He did not know why the vermin had come down here, and it was not his function to ask. It did not matter. The vermin hunted, and they would be hunted in their turn.

The worm shuddered again. The great creature was in agony. Monstrous as it was, it deserved better than to be eaten away from the inside out by the scuttling rat-vermin. But Great Lord Kurkori had decreed that such would not happen here, and Tokl and his cohort would do their part to see that it didn’t.

Tokl chirped and gestured. ‘Move. Swift. Silent,’ he chirped. They would scale the walls of the great worm’s intestine and hide among its folds and creases as they shadowed the vermin.

‘Attack?’ one of the others asked, head cocked.

‘No,’ Tokl chirruped. ‘We keep our distance.’ The sickening fumes rising from the cauldrons mounted on the rafts would kill a skink as easily as whatever predators lurked in the great worm’s stomach. They would follow their quarry at a distance, and strike when the time was right. When Takatakk commanded.

They were guided by the will of the Dreaming Seer, and they would not fail.

The wind had turned, and the stink of melting setae washed over the Dorsal Barbicans. The streets and furrows before the barbicans were covered in steaming, bubbling sludge. The great worm thrashed in continual agony, setting the barbicans to shuddering. Skaven lined the walls, chanting the Thirty-three Rapturous Hymns to the Third Great Plague as they swayed amidst the thick smoke emitted by the censers of the Reeking Choir. The plagueclaws continued to hurl their frothy projectiles, filling the streets of the Crawling City with poisonous smog. And as they launched, Squeelch worked steadily to brew new plague-slop for them to toss into the city.

‘Load-load,’ he chittered as he stirred the mixture in the pox-cauldron before him with his staff. ‘Faster, fools, faster!’

His crews hurriedly ladled the brew into the plagueclaws, scratching at their sloughing flesh as they worked. His assistants were stationed before similar cauldrons up and down the barbicans, using the recipes he had taught them to prepare ever more powerful mixtures. Plague monks staggered towards him, dragging baskets full of shrieking rats. Squeelch stepped back, allowing them to dunk the baskets in the cauldron.

The baskets were then dragged to the buckets of the plagueclaws, where they would be hurled into the city. Some of the rats would endure the landing and scurry forth to spread sickness. They were hardy creatures, as befitting creations of the Horned Rat, and were easily capable of surviving long-distance, high-speed travel, especially when bolstered by a healthy mixture of plague-broth. It was an old tactic, a traditional tactic. Squeelch had learned it from his master, and his master before him, before murdering them both with a tainted bowl of fish heads. He sighed happily as he hawked a huge glob of phlegm into the pox-cauldron and continued to stir the soupy mixture.

He took a cursory sniff, and instantly his lungs filled with a cloying weight. He hacked in satisfaction, pounding on his chest. One of the crew-skaven, overcome, toppled forward face-first into the cauldron. At his gesture, the others stuffed the body into the thick soup. He jabbed at the still-twitching carcass with his staff. It would add to the potency.

This was a good brew. One of his best yet, he thought. His sores tingled in pride as he filched his snuff-bag from within his robes and stuffed a talon in it. The powdered warpstone within was mixed with dried pus scraped from the bodies of plague victims, and something vaguely sweet. He stuffed his powder-coated talon into his mouth. Green sparks danced behind his eyes, and he felt as if he could out-think a hundred rivals.

Sniffing, Squeelch stared at Kruk’s broad back, and wondered whether he could shove him over the edge of the rampart before Skug reacted. He lifted his staff from the cauldron, considering. One good poke, yes-yes, and much-dead Kruk, he thought. It was glaringly obvious to his superior intellect that even Kruk couldn’t survive such a fall.

Kruk might not even mind. It was how he’d taken control of the Congregation of Fumes in the first place, after all. And the title of Archfumigant had passed through at least a dozen claws before Kruk had pitched old Frekt into a toad dragon’s mouth at the Guttering Fen. No, Kruk wouldn’t mind. He was a traditionalist at heart.

Kruk turned, his good eye narrowing, as if he’d read Squeelch’s mind.

Maybe not yet, Squeelch thought, trying to look as if he hadn’t just been contemplating assassinating his superior. ‘Why has Vretch not attacked yet?’ Kruk demanded.

Squeelch blinked. ‘What, O most potent of poxes?’

‘Why… hasn’t… Vretch… attacked, ’ Kruk growled, thrusting his muzzle towards Squeelch. ‘We are distracted. I would have attacked. You would have attacked. Why has Vretch not attacked?’

‘Prudence, O most pestilential of priests?’

‘Prrrudence, squealer? Is that what you call it?’ Skug rasped.

Squeelch glared at the censer bearer. He was about to snarl a reply, when Kruk grunted.

‘Whatever you call it, it is an itch in the back of my mind,’ the plague priest said, glaring towards the ever-present lightning storm which swirled over the worm’s head. ‘But I will not give him the pleasure of abandoning this place, no-no. Vretch wants the Libraria Vurmis. He will come — he must .’ Kruk smacked his censer into his palm.

So that was it. Squeelch had wondered why Kruk had seemed so bent on defending the Dorsal Barbicans. He almost pitied the brute. Vretch no longer needed the library or its contents, for Squeelch had given him the pick of its bounty already.

‘Vretch is not attacking because he is more cunning than that,’ a deep voice growled. Squeelch looked up and saw the muscular shape of Skuralanx crouched atop the closest plagueclaw. When the daemon had arrived, Squeelch couldn’t say — the creature moved more silently than a shadow, appearing and disappearing at will.

The verminlord glared down at them. ‘Vretch is counting on you to occupy the foe, while he accomplishes his goal.’

Kruk growled wordlessly. Skuralanx chittered in amusement. ‘You’re a fool, Kruk. Your enemies approach through your pox-rain, and your true foe goes to accomplish what you could not,’ the daemon said.