Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

‘No,’ the Lord-Celestant grunted. They’d seen a flash of celestial lightning spear upwards from within the palisades as they breached the lower gates. Stormcast Eternals did not truly die, but the thought that any foe had sent the Far-killer back to Sigmaron was almost inconceivable. ‘Keep to your task, brother — as he would, were he here. Ho, Duras, come help Thetaleas get the rest of these cages open.’ As the Liberator-Prime moved to obey, Zephacleas stepped into the battle-line of Stormcasts arrayed between the cages and the bloody melee going on in the courtyard. The seraphon had fallen on the skaven in a frenzy, and the ratkin were fighting like the cornered rats they resembled.

‘We should have the last of the cages open in a moment,’ Zephacleas said. He glanced at Seker, who was standing nearby. ‘We’ll advance then, but slowly. Drive the foe back.’

‘Most fled the moment the huntsmen arrived,’ Seker said, gesturing upwards with his staff. A retinue of Prosecutors swooped overhead, herding a group of the former prisoners back behind the Stormcast line. The mortals had been fighting the skaven when they first arrived. Many had died from their wounds or the illness which burned in them, but some yet remained. And these he was determined to defend.

‘Is that the last of them?’ he said.

‘Aye,’ Seker said. ‘Shall we proceed, Lord-Celestant?’

‘I shall take the vanguard,’ Zephacleas growled.

‘Naturally,’ the Lord-Relictor murmured.

Zephacleas ignored him and stepped forward. The skaven were distracted and scattered. There was only one true knot of resistance left — a band of smoke-wreathed skaven, whirling censers. No seraphon could get near them, so thick was the miasma surrounding them.

‘Duras, you and your warriors follow me. Seker, summon a storm, wash that miasma from the air. The rest of you, advance slowly — keep your shields locked, let no vermin get past you, and no mortal come to harm,’ the Lord-Celestant roared out. ‘With me, brothers… there’s red work yet to be done.’

As he started towards the knot of ratmen, he began to pick up speed, slamming his weapons together as he went. Duras and his warriors followed him, clashing their warblades. The harsh, scraping rhythm rose over the sound of the fray. Skaven fled before their approach.

‘Death,’ Zephacleas shouted.

‘Ruin,’ Duras and the others growled.

‘Death to the dealers of death,’ Zephacleas bellowed. ‘Ruin to the bringers of ruin.’

His warriors bellowed with him, and they plunged through the miasma like a mailed fist. Overhead, thunder rumbled as Seker called down the storm. Zephacleas held his breath against the choking odour and brought his hammer down on a skaven. Warblades slashed out, chopping through censers and chains and hairy limbs as the Liberators tore through the foe. A steady, cleansing rain began to fall, soothing the hurts of those few Stormcast Eternals who’d been wounded and dispersing the murk. As one, the remaining skaven broke and ran for the tallest of the towers which occupied the palisades.

‘They’re fleeing,’ Zephacleas said, as Seker joined him. Before the Lord-Relictor could respond, a shadow fell over them both.

‘We… chase,’ Sutok growled, slamming his war-mace against his shield. Saurus warriors stood arrayed behind the Sunblood, whose massive form was streaked with blood and worse things. The seraphon bobbed his scarred head. ‘Chase?’ he rumbled.

Zephacleas laughed. ‘We chase,’ he said.

Together, the seraphon and Stormcast Eternals forged after the retreating skaven. If they were allowed to hide, to dig in, they might never be rooted out.

Unfortunately, by the time Zephacleas and the others began a thorough search, it seemed that they had done just that. Besides a few skaven cowering on the lower levels, or trying to escape through what Zephacleas suspected were privy holes, the rest seemed to have vanished. Nevertheless, they continued the search, hunting through pillared chambers and warren-like halls, rising ever higher as they went. The stairs carved from the condensed hair wound ever upwards in a tight, claustrophobic coil. Zephacleas understood why the skaven had gravitated to the towers — the creatures preferred cramped space and dark shadows.

Accompanied by the shouts of more successful hunters, the roars of eager seraphon, and the squeals of dying skaven, Zephacleas and the others ascended to the summit of the tower. There were no doors here, only a wide open, circular chamber. The room was enormous — despite the great windows which lined its walls, the upper reaches were lost in shadow. It had been abandoned in a hurry. Empty cauldrons, piles of books and rotting bodies lay everywhere.

‘I’ve seen this before. Remember that foul warren in the Ghurdish Heights?’ Zephacleas murmured. Beside him, Sutok sniffed the air warily and glanced at the skink, Takatakk.

‘Indeed,’ Seker said. ‘A plague-womb. The vermin have been busy.’ The skaven — some of them, at least — were brewers of pox and plague second only to the foul followers of Nurgle. They delighted in rot and decay, and spread pestilences with fiendish glee. The Astral Templars had seen similar horrors in the Jade Kingdoms as well. ‘We must burn this place, when the battle is won. We cannot allow whatever horrors they have brewed here to spread.’

‘It may be too late for that, Lord-Relictor,’ Zephacleas said. He peered into one of the gibbets. The man inside was dead, though his journey to the underworld had not been easy. He wore the strange segmented armour of a city militia-man over his ragged and torn robes. It was dark, and composed of scales shed from the worm’s hide. Pale, like all folk of the Crawling City, his flesh was covered in bruises, blisters, burns and more besides, including a number of fleshy pus-filled growths. Despite these, his form looked somehow… shrunken, as if whatever vitality he’d once possessed had been drained into the bulging abscesses. Zephacleas tapped the gibbet with his hammer, turning it slowly.

As it twisted on its chain, he examined the body more closely. ‘Gravewalker, what caused these growths? It looks like the work of no disease I recognise,’ he called, glancing at the others. Seker turned, and cursed.

‘Zephacleas, get away from it,’ the Lord-Relictor snarled.

Zephacleas heard a hiss, and turned, just in time to see the first abscess split open. A stinking yellow gas spewed from the ruptured flesh, and he smashed the gibbet aside. The Lord-Celestant backed away. ‘Get clear of the cages,’ he roared. A moment later, a thin lash of suppurating flesh shot from the twitching body and struck at him. More tendrils erupted from the abscesses, thrashing about wildly enough to set the gibbet to spinning.

Cries of horror and disgust filled the chamber as the bodies in each gibbet flowered and burst, allowing the putrescent horrors within to emerge — they were akin to the foul, strangling vines of the Fangwood in the Ghurdish Heights, but horribly afflicted by some pestilence which made the ever-coiling fronds weep a strange, musky pus.

Rusty metal bent and buckled as the things within the gibbets fought to get free. A foul miasma rose from the monstrous blossoms which bloomed on the writhing tendrils, filling the air. ‘Back, back,’ Seker shouted. ‘All of you, back!’

Zephacleas turned to join his warriors when something snagged his throat from behind. One of vines, he realised, as it tightened about his neck. It contracted, as if seeking to reel him in, and more of them ensnared his wrists and chest. He roared in fury and fought against their pull. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that he was not alone in his predicament. Several of the warriors who’d accompanied him were caught as well. Liberators slashed at the tendrils, trying to free their fellows, but the squirming appendages simply regenerated.