Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

Kruk’s followers caught his arms and dragged him back. Satisfied, Skuralanx turned back to the plaza. The blight had spread, and the worm’s thrashing grew worse. Across the plaza, the massive reptile stalked into view. Its rider thrust out a golden gauntlet and unleashed a burst of blinding energy in the verminlord’s direction.

Skuralanx ducked the blast and bounded forward, plaguereapers held low. He leapt over the bubbling ichor, racing across the thrashing bodies of the beasts and their dying riders. The giant reptile roared and lunged, jaws wide, as it caught sight of him. Skuralanx dove aside, narrowly avoiding the beast. He rolled to his hooves and sprang between the monster reptile’s legs. His blades slashed out, slicing easily through the monster’s tendons. The wounds turned black and gangrenous.

The great beast toppled forward with a despairing shriek. Skuralanx deftly avoided its pain-wracked thrashing, and drove a blade into one rolling eye. The orb burst with a hiss and the giant reptile shrieked again, its jaws savaging the air. It squirmed across the dissolving plaza, snapping blindly. Skuralanx sprang onto its skull and raced towards the dying beast’s rider. He slashed out, hoping to kill the seraphon before it could free itself.

He wasn’t fast enough. The seraphon roared as it rolled from the saddle. It bobbed to its feet, spear whirling about its head as its mount thrashed its last. It slashed out with the spear, driving Skuralanx back. The daemon backed away, plaguereapers raised. The spear stank of dark places, where no light fell save for the cold flicker of stars. It was a deathly thing, capable of harming even one of his preeminent might.

The star-devil’s snarl pounded at Skuralanx’s brain like the moan of a dying sun. Everything about it, the way it moved, the way it smelled, offended him — it was a thing of wrongness, opaque and hideously solid in a fluid universe. A voice within him wailed in terror, and he fought the urge to seek safety in the shadows. The creature snarled again and surged forward with sinuous grace, its every move causing the air to hum.

The deadly spear thrust forward again, and despite his speed it glanced off his skull. The blade burned him where it touched, and chunks of bone and hair blackened and fell away from him as he staggered back. He slashed wildly at his opponent, and just managed to hook the haft of the spear. He tore the weapon from the star-devil’s grip and kicked it in the belly, knocking it backwards.

The creature leapt on him a moment later, its gauntlet crackling with painful energies. Skuralanx shrieked as his flesh smouldered. He drove an elbow into his foe’s scaly snout and thrust one of his plaguereapers between the plates of its armour. Teeth snapped shut perilously close to his jugular, and Skuralanx shrilled. He clawed desperately at his foe, rolling back and forth across the ground. The seraphon’s tail looped around him, trying to break his bones.

Even as he fought, Skuralanx felt a hideous, fearful weight settle within him — this confrontation was merely the echo of a million-million other conflicts, raging back to the beginning of time. It had been fought again and again, between the servants of the rat and the serpent. Prey and predator, locked in an unending cycle. No matter how deeply the Horned Rat might dig his burrows into the soft soil of all that was, the serpent inevitably found him. And even as the rat-god feared the Devouring Serpent, so too did those shards of him which were the verminlords fear their opposite numbers.

Skuralanx clawed at the ground, fighting the panic which gnawed at him. Strong jaws snapped at his throat. He rolled over, trying to shove the creature off him. It pushed its gauntlet towards his snout, the crackling energies singing his whiskers. The creature’s yellow eyes widened suddenly, and it reared back with an agonised roar.

The seraphon fell away from him, its own spear jutting from its back. Skuralanx looked up and saw Kruk backing away, his claw still smoking from where he’d touched the star-forged weapon. ‘You live, yes-yes?’ he chittered. ‘Kruk has saved you, Skuralanx, yes he has.’ His good eye blazed with fanatical fervour as he gazed at the dying seraphon. ‘Kruk could not abandon you, O most holy of holies. Whatever you commanded…’

Skuralanx gazed at the plague priest. ‘You mean it,’ he muttered. ‘You actually mean it.’ Wonder of wonders — an honest skaven. Kruk was utterly mad.

The plague priest rubbed his burnt claw against his filthy robes. ‘Filthy star-devil,’ he gurgled, gazing down at the thing’s dissolving form. He shuffled back as the creature’s blood pooled on the floor. It cleansed the ground as it spread and Kruk hissed in repulsion. ‘Your nests will rot untended, when the Horned Rat ascends to his proper place. And Kruk will be there to feast on them, yes-yes.’

He looked at Skuralanx. Before he could speak, the verminlord rose to his full height.

‘Go back to your congregation, fool. They require your guidance. You must get to the Setaen Palisades, quick-quick. I will see to any further pursuit. Go!’ he snarled.

It would not do to let Kruk realise how close Skuralanx had come to being defeated, until his intervention. Kruk eyed him for a moment, and then scampered away.

Skuralanx shook his head. Yes, Kruk would be a fine figurehead, when victory had been achieved, but until then… he stiffened, sniffing the air. He turned to see his blight steaming away as the last of the trapped seraphon finally succumbed. Their blood and flesh shimmered as it dissolved and he stepped back, scalp bristling with an inexplicable fear.

The bubbling ichors were burnt away by the blinding light as the corrupting magics were cleansed from the worm’s flesh. Skuralanx turned and saw that the same was happening around the dissipating carcass of the star-devil as well, and its fallen mount. The light swelled, rising up, and he felt the grime-stiffened hairs of his mane sizzle as a terrible cleansing heat stretched out towards him. With a hiss, he leapt for the shadows.

Mantius Far-killer swooped over the Crawling City, sickened by what he saw. The skaven had left a trail of destruction from the Dorsal Barbicans to the outskirts of the Setaen Palisades. The streets between the tall bristle-towers were full of toxic smog and pits eaten away in the worm’s flesh, thick with bubbling pox-waters. The worm’s convulsions were growing worse as it twisted first one way and then the next, as if trying to shed its abused flesh.

Shu’gohl was strong, befitting a creature that had lived for uncounted centuries on the open steppes of Ghur. But the great worm was approaching its limits, he suspected. He looked towards its head, where the eternal lightning storm shimmered. The storm acted as the great worm’s eyes in some manner, Mantius suspected, allowing it to know where it was crawling. Whatever its purpose, the storm also marked the site of the Sahg’gohl. He could almost make out the tiers and shattered minarets of the ancient temple.

The loremasters of Sigmaron spoke of a calamity, in the early days of the Age of Chaos, when some hell-sent beast had attacked Shu’gohl on its unending travels. The great worm had almost died then, and the ancient temple-crown which clung to its head had been destroyed, its priests killed to a man.

But Shu’gohl had survived, and the Crawling City had survived, even as the folk of Azyr had done. Chaos surges wild, but it cannot drown us all, he thought, his earlier bitterness forgotten. It was one of Zephacleas’ favourite sayings, and was always punctuated by a bellow of laughter. His Lord-Celestant was capable of great mirth, for all that he was an implacable warrior. But there was a fatalistic streak to his commander as well — a surety of death. The only surety Mantius possessed was that of finding his mark when he loosed an arrow.