Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

Kruk cocked his head. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Fool-fool,’ Skuralanx hissed. ‘You came here looking for the lost Liber, and so did he. But while you suffer here, he nears your goal. Poor Kruk… perhaps I should have let you die in Putris Bog…’

‘No-no- no !’ Kruk shrilled. ‘I will kill-kill Vretch myself, yes-yes. Where is he?’

The verminlord pointed a talon downwards. ‘In the belly of the beast, Kruk. You must leave, go to the Setaen Palisades. The sooner the better. You must get me that Liber Pestilent before Vretch gets his claws on it.’

‘But the barbicans…’ Kruk began.

‘Squeelch will hold them,’ Skuralanx said, looking at Squeelch, who cowered back. ‘Won’t you, Squeelch?’ he hissed, even as his form twisted and shrank into a wisp of shadow and vanished from sight.

‘Yes-yes, to hear is to obey, O most merciful of potentates,’ Squeelch chittered. As he said it, he wondered whether he should have taken the chance to shove Kruk over the edge after all.

Oxtl-Kor sniffed the air and growled. The Oldblood could smell the rat-stink on the air. It pervaded this place, and drove him to distraction. It grew stronger the closer they drew to the Dorsal Barbicans. They would have been there already, had they not been forced to slow their pace to accommodate their allies.

He sniffed, inhaling the scent of celestial lightning and the world-that-was. The Stormcasts wore the flesh of a broken dream, as if it belonged to them alone. He licked his muzzle angrily. Were it not for Great Lord Kurkori’s command, he would not have countenanced his warriors to march beside them. They were not worthy to fight alongside the Dreaming Constellation — they were but pale ghosts, newborn and unaware.

Irritated by the smells and sounds, Oxtl-Kor rubbed his snout. He was covered in a latticework of scars, each one a page in his history since the final beginning and the first ending. Sometimes, in the red moments between the his master’s call and the triumphal dissolution which saw him returned to the calm and quiet of Azyr, the Oldblood wondered where he had gained them all. It seemed to him that he’d had some for longer than he had been alive.

There were scars on his mind as well as his body. Gaps in his memory, where his thoughts grew thin and faded, and when he became frustrated by them, only the death of his foes could sate him. The Oldblood longed to deal death to the vermin, to feel their flesh tear between his jaws, the hot rush of their blood sliding down his throat. That was his part in the Great Lord’s dream. He was the savage longing of his master made flesh. He was Kurkori’s rage, and he was content only when killing. Sawtooth grumbled in seeming agreement, and Oxtl-Kor patted the carnosaur’s thick neck.

Sawtooth, like his master, was covered in the scars of battle. He was a mighty beast, with jaws capable of crushing stone and a hide as thick as the celestite armour Oxtl-Kor wore. Together, they were virtually unstoppable. Around him, the cold ones ridden by his saurus knights easily kept pace with the loping carnosaur. More animalistic than their riders, the cold ones were foul-tempered and vicious, but possessed the same instinctual hatred for the stuff of Chaos as did the rest of the seraphon. Like Sawtooth, they had no need for sustenance, but they desired the flesh and blood of their foes regardless.

Oxtl-Kor gazed with pride at the ranks of saurus warriors advancing in Sawtooth’s shadow, their stardrake icons held aloft. They were a scarred and scaly instrument of war, understanding well the ebb and flow of the eternal battle. Their rage, like his, was tempered by an instinctive adherence to order. The order of the stars, the order of spheres, of the sacred mathematics of being crafted and nurtured by the Starmasters and the Great Drake.

He glanced back at the Dreaming Seer, slumbering peacefully on his floating palanquin. Time and celestial tide had taken their toll on the Great Masters, the Oldblood knew. But some, like Great Lord Kurkori, yet remained. They slept, their minds elsewhere, contemplating more important matters. And Oxtl-Kor was determined to see that the slann continued to sleep undisturbed.

He flexed his sunbolt gauntlet, studying the star-forged celestite that shrouded his talon. He did not understand the secrets of its working, only how to employ it. At a gesture, he could unleash a flash of celestial fire which would sear flesh and soul alike. Another gift of the slann to their most loyal servants.

The wind shifted, bringing with it the stink of the falling pox-rain. Sawtooth, angry, reared and unleashed a thunderous roar. Oxtl-Kor lifted his spear and added his voice to that of the carnosaur.

The skaven would hear. They would know that the wrath of Kurkori, and of the seraphon, was sweeping down on them.

They would know that the end of their dark dream was near.

Poisonous fumes stretched through the streets, reducing iron-hard setae to sagging masses of smoking glop. The bodies of mortals and skaven lay everywhere in heaps and piles, victims of the pox-rain rising from the Dorsal Barbicans. The street squelched underfoot as Zephacleas led his chamber towards the barbicans. Things were growing ever more foul the closer they drew to their goal. If they didn’t manage to destroy the skaven weapons, the city — and the worm it was built upon — would surely perish.

He looked up, scanning the toxin-filled sky. Mantius and his Prosecutors were scouting the area ahead, their crackling wings searing a path through the befouled air. While their assault on the Dorsal Barbicans had failed, they’d managed to keep the skaven from venturing too far from the fortress. Three times the ratkin had massed to attack since the arrival of the seraphon, and three times the Knight-Venator and his sky-hunters had broken them from afar.

Now, what few skaven remained outside the protective ramparts of the Dorsal Barbicans were in hiding, likely hoping the combined host of Stormcast Eternals and seraphon would pass them by. They’d have to be hunted down and harried from their foul lairs after Shu’gohl had been freed, but first the skaven warrens around the Dorsal Barbicans and the distant Setaen Palisades would have to be destroyed. The vermin could not be allowed to hold such places, or destroy them as they were even now attempting to do.

The skaven were levelling the city all around the barbicans in an effort to impede the progress of their foes and prevent them from reaching the walls. Nonetheless, many of the setae towers were still standing — full of skaven, but still standing. They were connected to the walls by the strange, swaying bristle-bridges. If they could get to the walls without having to fight their way through the barbicans they could silence the catapults quickly. And once the Dorsal Barbicans had been freed from skaven control, they could push forward towards the anterior sections of the worm-city, including the Setaen Palisades. Hopefully there are survivors there yet, he thought.

A sudden roar shook the tainted air. He glanced up as the shadow of the great reptile and its rider fell over him, and the echoes of its roar faded. It was a truly imposing creature, and its rider was equally fearsome. Oxtl-Kor was the seraphon’s name, or perhaps his title. Zephacleas wasn’t entirely sure which, and the creature didn’t seem in a hurry to explain it to him. Indeed, the creature — the ‘Oldblood’, as the skink Starseer, Takatakk, called him — seemed unhappy with the current state of affairs. Or so Zephacleas judged — he’d communicated nothing either way.

None of the seraphon save for the Starseer had spoken, or shown any inclination in that regard. Indeed, other than Takatakk and the hulking creature called Sutok, most seemed content to ignore the Stormcast warriors marching alongside them.