Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

Over the festering mess that had been the Rivenglades, it began to rain. While the ground crunched like a mouldering carpet of leathery flesh and snapping ribs, tiny, pot-bellied daemons began to fall from the sky. The shrieking green creatures had miniature horns and needle-toothed smiles. Shattering against Shaddock’s meandering form, they coated him with a burning ichor that smouldered on his canopy. Lifting an arm before his face, the Spirit of Durthu staggered on, the squelching bodies making the ground slippery underfoot. Through the gloom of his fevered mind, Shaddock saw the suggestion of shelter ahead. Groaning through the torment that wracked his body, he crawled for the woodland ahead.

Under the cover of bare and twisted branches, the Spirit of Durthu took shelter from the shower of daemons. What little light Shaddock had been aware of was now gone. Even his own light burned sickly and low like a dying camp fire. The Wyldwoods about him were packed tight, huddled together in their joint suffering. The woodland creaked and groaned as it attempted to flee the daemon rain.

Shaddock rose and stumbled from trunk to trunk, making his way through the writhing trees. He had no idea where he was going. The song of Alarielle had long been lost to him — its distant beauty drowned out by suffering. Instead of the Everqueen’s sonorous call to war, the wardwood began to hear other voices in the darkness. There were three of them: voices of abyssal woe that were deep, knowing and inescapably evil.

‘Give yourself to me, doomed spirit.’

‘Soak up your suffering. Be one with it. Become the exquisite torment that already wracks your body and mind.’

‘A dark agony lives in you. Embrace it. Unlock its soul-withering potential.’

‘For every living thing there is a season. Let yours be the warm dread between life and death. Revel in the rot.’

‘Let me save you from your suffering. I can make you strong again. Indomitable, and impervious to the pain that is to come.’

‘Affliction is but the beginning. Beyond such misery and anguish is a world of woe — a world that is yours for the taking. Savour it. Draw upon its strength.’

‘The Great Lord of Decay holds sway in both your spirit and your realm. There is no escape. Contagion claims all in the end…’

Shaddock stopped. He grabbed his head, which creaked with the pressure. The last flashes of golden brilliance flared behind the eyes and mouth. Letting go, the Spirit of Durthu looked down at his talon. In the thick bark, burning with a cruel malevolence, was a dark sigil. It had been carved into the wood by the sorcerer leading the sacrifice above the Ebon Tarn. Before Shaddock had crushed him, the sorcerer had afflicted him with his master’s mark. Three wretched circles, conjoined.

‘Yes…’ the daemon said. ‘Your sap belongs to me, forest spirit. As this realm falls to my feculent lord.’

The Spirit of Durthu brought his talon up close to his face. His vision was darkening. His thoughts ran thin. The mark of the daemon glowed with fell power. About it, the bark was soggy and pus-threaded. The ironwood beneath was weak and swollen. Worms riddled the wood while lice swarmed the surface of the thick bark.

The mighty talon moved with sudden violence. It started shaking uncontrollably. The wardwood grabbed the wrist with his other hand. As he held it there, maggot-thick pus dribbled down his fingers.

Shaddock fell to his knees in the darkness. His aeons of wisdom, his warrior’s spirit were beyond him now.

‘Radiant Queen…’ he managed.

‘Your queen cannot save you from me,’ the daemon told him, his every word intensifying the pain within the limb. Shaddock felt the pollution spreading through him.

‘Alarielle…’

‘You are Feytor’s now,’ the daemon told him. ‘A child of the Thrice-Father’s reborn. You thought you could deny me entry to this place, but I am the touch that taints. The wound that seeps. The blade that contaminates. There are a thousand ways into your doomed realm. A thousand acolytes to ensure my entry.’

Shaddock tried to stand. Beyond the taunts of the daemon echoing through his infected being, he could hear friction — the sound of wood being rubbed together. There was light in the darkness. Heat. A terrible brilliance that grew into a crackling blaze. Shaddock recoiled but the flames were everywhere. The Wyldwoods, unable to face the corruption around them, had set light to themselves. Their bare branches raged with cleansing flame. Through the spit and roar of the fires erupting all about Shaddock, he could hear the agony of the tree spirits.

Shielding himself from the heat and billowing cinders, the Spirit of Durthu staggered through the inferno the forest had become. The Wyldwoods had not intended to trap the ancient — they had simply been overwhelmed with dread. Shaddock crashed through briars and tangled branches. Smoke swirled and flames roared about him. His leaves shrivelled and curled up before blowing away. Fires took about his twigs.

At last, Shaddock burst free of the twisted wood. A suffering silhouette against the furious flames, he stumbled on without care or thought. He listened for the Everqueen’s song but could hear nothing. The sky was a poisoned smear of greens, browns and black. All but blind, he was alone in the darkness. He could hear the festering creak of his infected limb. He felt agonies blossom throughout his form, the heralds of spreading corruption. All the while he heard Feytor the Thrice-Father, the daemon’s merry madness reaching through him.

Shaddock did not know how long he had been staggering across the afflicted lands but suddenly the ground wasn’t there anymore. His foot stepped out into nothingness. The wardwood reached out to save himself. His mighty talon was crippled and useless. Hooking the sharp digits of his other hand into crumbling rock, Shaddock slowed his fall. With the weight of his mighty frame hanging off some kind of cliff or precipice, the wardwood tried to hold on. For what remained of his dwindling spirit. For the dying realm. For Alarielle.

He could not, however. Rock came away in his hand, and Shaddock tumbled. Air rushed through his branches and hollows. The ancient waited for oblivion, welcomed it. The impact that would break his hallowed form and end his suffering. Shaddock was not granted his wish, however.

He hit liquid, something soft, thick and disgusting. His mighty form plunged down into the vile warmth of blood and pus. It was a river of diseased filth, swelled by the ichor of the raining daemons. The torrent bubbled and slurped along, with Shaddock’s frame floating on the surface. He crashed into the shattered forms of felled trees, the river crowded with debris from further upstream. His spirit all but extinguished, the wardwood rode out the thick current as it meandered through the valley.

Shaddock was carried by the filth, bumping into logs that formed a tangled dam. He drifted to the slimy bank, where he became beached on the shore. There he lay, caked in blood and pus, smothered in flies. He felt the slime below him squirm with daemonic worms. They bit at the wardwood tentatively before opening their jaws wide to devour his limbs.

Through Feytor the Thrice-Father’s dark chuckle of satisfaction, Shaddock thought he heard a familiar voice.

‘Skewer these sacks of filth,’ Laurelwort called.

All about him, Shaddock felt the fleet footsteps of dryads. The wardwood heard the thud of sharp thorns and talons puncturing daemon flesh. The beasts thrashed and squirmed as Forest Folk descended upon them, stabbing skulls and slitting throats. At first, Shaddock thought that Laurelwort must have abandoned her priestess, but as he heard Ardaneth’s soft commands he knew that the Forest Folk of the Arkenwood had left their sacred glade.