Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

The plague priest rose with a screech and floundered for shore. He hauled himself out of the bubbling liquid, and gave himself a shake. The vast gullet of the worm rose up around him, blocking out the hateful sky and shrouding everything in a pleasing, humid darkness.

Holding his maimed claw to his chest, he sniffed the air. Everything stank of worm and lightning, though that was no surprise. He heard thunder echoing down from above, and something told him that Skuralanx would not be coming for him.

The thought was not displeasing, all things considered. The daemon had used him, and abandoned him when it had achieved its goal. And it had paid for its temerity, as had the duplicitous Vretch and the treacherous Squeelch. Betrayers and fools all, they had paid the price for attempting to bar Kruk from his destiny.

Despite the pain of his wounds, he tittered in satisfaction. His survival was proof enough that his fate was already written. The Horned Rat had gouged Kruk a place in his schemes, and he was protected from the vagaries of fate.

‘Protected, yes-yes,’ he mumbled, squinting into the dark. As the pain faded, his vision improved. Even with one eye, he could see the tumbled slabs of mould-covered soil and rock that rose up around him. His robes had been burnt to shreds, and most of his body had been charred into hairlessness, but all of his limbs were working.

He heard a soft scrape and turned. Something speared towards him, razor maw spread wide. He caught it just behind its jaws with his good claw and hacked at its squirming length with the jagged remains of his censer. When its struggles had weakened sufficiently, he took a wary bite out of the worm-thing’s glistening flesh. The dark slime which coated it burned as it slid down his gullet. It tasted… odd. But Kruk was not one to turn his nose up at a meal, no-no. As he tore more flesh from his prey, he looked around.

The bones of skaven, orruks and man-things alike filled the sump, and among them squirmed a nest of black, glistening worms, all smaller than the one he held. Too, worms curled about splintered ribs and filled the burst skulls of fresher skaven corpses — Vretch’s followers, he guessed. The air was thick with the stink of disease and Kruk’s sensitive nose wrinkled as he sucked in a lungful. He dipped his broken censer into the frothy ichor that dripped from the worm-nests onto the ground and lifted it to his snout. As the liquid slopped from the ruined gauntlet, it solidified into a writhing mass of wriggling shapes. Kruk chittered in pleasure as he dumped the worms back into the ichor.

Vretch had been wrong. Worse than wrong — Vretch had been foolish. He had thought that the answer was in a book. But it wasn’t, and had never been. Whatever plague this was, whatever its name or source, it had never been written down. Not yet anyway.

Kruk looked around, examining the ruined latticework of stone and dirt and sludge with a considering eye as he chewed another chunk of worm. He knew the old stories of Geistmaw, and suspected that Vretch had as well. He had come searching for this place to find its secrets and, true to form, walked away with the wrong one. Kruk tapped his broken censer against the walls. Yes-yes, this had once been a fine warren, before the worm had swallowed it up.

And it might be so again, in time. A perfect lair, hidden in the belly of a great beast, away from the prying eyes of daemons and star-devils alike. There would be survivors above, both from among his followers and Vretch’s… enough, at least, to start with. In time, more would come. They would burrow down, seeking safety, and Kruk would be waiting for them. He looked down at the squirming shapes floating in the ichor and licked his muzzle in satisfaction. Yes-yes, more would come, and a new warren would rise, down in the dark.

The Congregation of Fumes was dead.

Long live the Congregation of the Worm.

The rotling roared out a challenge and Felyndael, Guardian of the Waning Light, turned to meet it. They always sought to challenge him. It was not bravery, he thought, so much as hunger. Hunger for challenge, hunger for conquest… hunger for death. They were like the roots of a blighted tree, still stretching for nourishment even though the trunk was dead. They belonged dead, but could not die. He gestured contemptuously, and the rotling lumbered towards him.

Around him, his fellow tree-revenants fought with other rotlings, leaping and slashing among the clumsy plague-lovers. Scarred Caradrael bisected a bloated warrior from crown to groin as lithe Yvael cut the sagging throats of three with a single blow. Daemonic ichor splashed across the wondrous curved structures of the reed-city of Gramin as the rotlings stumbled and died beneath the blades of his twenty-strong kin-band.

Felyndael felt a surge of satisfaction as his warriors fought with their customary flowing grace. They flickered in and out of sight, lunging and striking at their opponents from every direction at once. They were veterans of the withering years, and could easily dispatch three times their number in open combat.

He turned his attention back to his challenger as the brute, bulbous and clad in stinking furs and pitted metal, came at him in a clumsy rush, roaring out the name of its foul god. It seared the air with its murk. An axe swept down, and Moonsorrow rose to meet it. The ancient blade hummed with strength and struck with the force of an avalanche. The jagged blade of the axe shivered apart. The rotling reeled back, pustule-dotted jaw working in shock beneath the rim of its foetid helmet. Flabby paws waved in hapless defiance as Felyndael darted forwards, quick as the wind.

Moonsorrow screamed in joy as it pierced the noisome bulk. Flesh, muscle and bone parted like smoke before the bite of the sword. The rotling hunched forward with a shrill wheeze, clawing helplessly at Felyndael’s bark-clad arms. Wriggling worms spilled from its mouth and pattered to the ground as its stinking ichor gushed from the wound.

Ably done, noble one, Yvael thought, her compliment pulsing through Felyndael’s mind as he pulled Moonsorrow free of the rotling’s cancerous body. He let the creature sag to the ground and looked around.

I am not alone in that, my sister, Felyndael thought. Around him, his tree-revenants finished off the last of the dead thing’s companions, killing the bellowing brutes with graceful savagery. The rotlings had become separated from the flow of the horde now occupying the circular streets of Gramin, and thus were easy prey for him and his kin-band as they erupted from the spirit paths close to the heart of the city.

The reed-city was as much a thing of Ghyran as Felyndael and his warriors. Alarielle’s magics had constructed it in ages past. She had drawn up the reeds that grew thick and wild in the shallows of Verdant Bay and woven them together into a great metropolis of canals, bridges and high, sweeping arches, spreading outwards from the Basilica of Reeds at Gramin’s heart. All as a gift for the mortals who had sworn to care for that which she had entrusted to them in ages past — a clutch of slumbering soulpods.

It was a duty that the citizens of Gramin had upheld until the final days of the withering years, when the rotlings had come from the sea. Their plague ships had clustered like maggots along the shore, befouling the green waters of the lagoon, kept pure until then by the budding soulpods. The raiders swept through the city with fire and axe, killing or enslaving all who inhabited it.

Felyndael’s grip on his sword tightened at the thought. Though they had not been of his soil, the mortals had been caretakers, even as the sylvaneth were. They had not deserved such a fate, and he wished that he had been there. Perhaps— no. The season was done, and the cycle continued. Though his heartwood cried out for vengeance for the atrocities of the past, his task now was more important than simple slaughter.