Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

Before he could get his feet under him, the creature had caught him up. The verminlord slammed Mantius down hard enough to splinter the top of the cage. It jerked the dazed warrior up by his ankle and smashed him against it again, before flinging him off. Mantius hit the ground and lay still, breathing heavily, trying to make his limbs work.

The battering he’d taken had crumpled his armour and cracked his bones. Every breath brought a new spasm of pain, and his bow was lost. Arrows lay scattered across the ground where they’d spilled from his quiver. He caught sight of the glowing head of the star-fated arrow, and reached for it. One chance, he thought.

The courtyard was in chaos — mortals wielding improvised weapons fought desperately against the skaven, as winged shadows swooped overhead, thunderbolts in their hands. The ground shuddered beneath the tramp of marching feet. The Beast-bane had come at last, but too late, too slow. Mantius knew, with a sickening certainty, what was called for. What he had to do. Nock and loose, he thought.

‘Now, you die, storm-thing,’ the verminlord hissed as it stalked towards him. Mantius groaned and dragged himself towards the arrow. He caught hold of it, even as the verminlord grabbed the back of his head.

The creature wrenched him into the air, but the Knight-Venator twisted in its grip, lashing out with the star-fated arrow. The tip caught the verminlord in the eye socket, and exploded in a blaze of incandescent light. The creature dropped him and shrieked, clutching at its head. Its filthy mane was aflame, and the bone of its muzzle warped and deformed as if from a great heat. Mantius rose to his feet and scanned around for his bow.

Pain flared through him and he staggered. He looked down, and saw that a bloody, smoke-wreathed claw had erupted through the front of his chest-plate. A thick spew of steam rose from the wound, and he couldn’t draw breath. As he was lifted from his feet, he clutched clumsily at the claw with fingers that had gone numb.

‘You… hurt me, ’ the daemon hissed. It ripped its claw free in a burst of smoke. Its forearm was aflame, but it caught hold of his head in both claws regardless. Its wormy muscles bunched, and the ache in the Knight-Venator’s head grew worse, as did the pain in his limbs. Mantius had just enough strength left to spit in the beast’s remaining eye, before it snapped his neck. The pain flared, growing into an all-consuming incandescence.

And then, he felt nothing… nothing, save the storm.

Vretch coughed and stared up at the tangled network of shattered rock and withered roots which rose from the Squirming Sea. The Geistmaw warren had spread deep below the ancient fortress for which it was named, but that had not saved it from Shu’gohl’s hunger. It had been scooped up and crushed into the remains of the ruin, making a mangled reef of jutting towers and crumbling hummocks.

‘Quick-quick, we must find a way within — hurry, fools, hurry-hurry!’ he chittered, gesticulating weakly with his staff.

That small exertion had him breathing heavily. He could feel things moving, growing within him. Swelling with hideous hunger, eating away at his insides. He was dying — Skuralanx had killed him. He hunched forward against his staff, a whine escaping his mouth as his insides twisted, and fleshy blisters on his arms and back throbbed. In the light, he could see tiny, dark shapes squirming within the opalescent swellings. Worms, black worms, the kind which had drawn him here. A plague unlike any other, a plague which spread with every popped blister, moving faster than wildfire.

It was almost beautiful — indeed, he had often thought so, when experimenting upon his captives. But now he was starting to see the downside. ‘Not me, no-no,’ he snivelled.

Several of his monks glanced back at him, but not for long. He exposed his teeth in a grimace of chastisement, feeling the blisters on his muzzle pull tight as he did so. The worms moved within him. Their agitation grew as he neared their source, like metal filings drawn to a lodestone. Some plagues were like that, he knew. The Chattering Pox or the Glopsome Surge both grew in potency the closer one drew to their epicentre.

Vretch had studied the ways of a thousand plagues — he had taken samples from Nurgle’s Wyrdroot as it hollowed out the treekin of the Jade Kingdoms, and helped the Wailing Chill pass between the Doldrum Heights and Rigvale’s Run. But few were as horrible as the one his magics now kept at bay. He’d already coughed up part of what he suspected was his liver, and his flesh was peeling away in sheets.

Why had Skuralanx done this to him? Unless… yes. Yes, perfidy, of course. The daemon had no more use for him, and had decided to dispose of him, whatever its promises to the contrary. He growled softly in anger. That he had been planning to do something similar only made it worse. Another shiver of pain wracked him. The sea heaved as the worm shuddered, torn by its own pain. The air shivered with the sound of its agony, and, as if in sympathy, the worms within him twitched abominably. Vretch bit back a shriek of pain.

He didn’t dare show weakness, not now. It was all he could do to keep from spurting the musk of fear. His long-dead nerve endings had spasmed to life, and a foul-smelling ichor beaded on his flesh.

‘O great Horned Rat, watch over your most pathetic and beset of children. Have I not served thee faithfully, O Ruiner and Wrecker? Watch over me, as you watched over me in the Glade of Horned Growths, O most blessed planter of poxes,’ he murmured, clutching his tail to his chest. He made to chew it, when he noticed that the blisters had spread there as well. He flung it down with a grunt.

The rafts eased forward by the light of the warp torches, through the steaming current. They passed beneath broken archways curtained with shrouds of half-digested matter. Things roared in the darkness, and he restrained himself from hurling a fiery pox towards the source of the noise. Somehow, he knew that using his magics would only aggravate his condition. If he wanted to survive long enough to find the Liber Pestilent and rid himself of the worms growing within him, he had to save his strength.

The raft thumped over a submerged stone, nearly knocking him from his claws. ‘Careful, fools,’ he shrilled. Incensed, he flung out his claw, and a plague monk collapsed, wreathed in green flame, his flesh going necrotic beneath his disintegrating rags. A tremor ran through Vretch and he sat back, wheezing. ‘Careful… careful…’ he whispered, staring balefully at his followers. There weren’t many, now.

One of his remaining rafts had vanished somewhere along the slow crawl of the worm’s gullet. The other had been caught in a gastric riptide and sunk. Those plague monks who’d managed to survive the swim now overburdened his last, precious craft. He contemplated booting a few of them over the side to lighten the load, but decided against it. His display of temper would keep them in line well enough, and there were likely dangers aplenty in this place. He could hear unseen things moving through the shadowed vaults and broken turrets.

He could also smell the pungent ichor of the worm. Black, writhing shapes dripped from the broken walls and plopped into the water like raindrops. Some squirmed purposely through the water towards the raft and he barked a warning. Heaving himself to his feet, he stumbled to the side of the raft and jabbed the tip of his staff into the water. The shard of warpstone flared once and the water boiled with an ugly heat. Worms crisped and sank out of sight. As they did so, the ones growing within him became frenzied.

‘Follow the worms,’ he croaked.