Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

Outside of the ring of stones, sylvaneth dryads burst from the trees with eerie shrieks to fall upon the Stormcast Eternals. Warriors died in blazes of blue light, and Grymn cursed as he tried to pull himself to his feet. A talon of bark and thorn tore through his midsection, and he found himself wrenched into the air. He clutched at the talon with blood-slick fingers, fighting to free himself despite the agony. He turned his head, and saw a lithe figure of vines and wood untwine itself from about the trunk of an elder oak. With a hiss, the creature tore its hand free of him, and let him fall to the ground. It stepped towards him, as he tried to crawl reach for his fallen halberd. He heard Tallon screeching in rage, and men screaming.

Through blurring vision, he saw Gardus racing towards him, and heard the Lord-Celestant shouting. He saw the creature that had stabbed him unleash strangling vines upon Tegrus and his Prosecutors as they swooped to the attack. Pain thrummed through him, and his limbs felt like lead. His hand flopped to the blood-soaked soil, a mere fingerbreadth from his halberd. He fought to reach out, to grab it, to no avail.

A trap, he thought blearily.

And then Lorrus Grymn knew no more.

‘Shields!’ Gardus roared. ‘Use your shields. No blades. These are not our enemies.’ He charged towards the creature that had wounded Grymn, bulling aside the shrieking dryads that tried to intercept him. Grymn’s gryph-hound loped at his side. Why is this happening? he thought. The being crouched over Grymn was the Lady of Vines. He recognized the branchwraith from the Glade of Horned Growths; it was she who had saved him from his wounds, and whispered answers to his questions. It was she who had seen to his return to his Stormhost.

‘Why are you doing this?’ he called out.

Behind him, he heard the sound of his Stormcasts striving to defend themselves from the sylvaneth pouring out of the forest on all sides. As the men died and the sky was filled with blue light, he bolted into the ring of menhirs.

The branchwraith shrieked and lashed out at Tegrus and his Prosecutors as they dived at her, trying to draw her away from the limp form of the Lord-Castellant. As Gardus drew close, she spun and lashed out at him with a thorny tendril. Tallon leapt, catching hold of the vine in his beak before it could reach Gardus. The gryph-hound held on, even as the branchwraith swung him through the air, trying to dislodge him.

Gardus caught another vine as it slashed at him, and wrapped it around his forearm. ‘Lady, heed me,’ he cried, trying to catch the creature’s attention. ‘Why are you doing this? How have we offended you? Why has it come to this?’

The creature’s blazing green eyes met his, and the Lady of Vines stretched out a gnarled hand and pointed, trembling with rage, towards the other side of the vale. Gardus turned, his heart sinking, as he heard the blare of grotesque horns and the thud of war drums. ‘No,’ he whispered. ‘Oh no…’

Pouring down the opposite valley wall was a wave of feculent fluid, and knee-deep in it were horde upon horde of Chaos worshippers, of every size and description. It was as if every follower of Nurgle in Ghyran had come to this place in answer to some powerful call — there were goat-headed beastmen, scurrying skaven and fat-bellied daemons, and at their head a lumpen giant, upon whose shoulders sat two gesticulating champions of the plague god. As Gardus watched in growing horror, the vanguard of the plague-legion smashed headlong into the dryads spilling from the trees.

‘We led them here,’ Gardus said hollowly. It was the only way the lost and the damned could have found their way to this place. He turned back to the Lady of Vines, but no words came to his lips as he looked up into the grief-twisted features of the branchwraith.

‘Yes, son of Azyr.’

Gardus turned as all about the menhir glade the trees shook down to their roots. As one, the dryads sank to their knees and the air grew still and heavy. Every loose leaf, twig, and branch in the glade was caught up in a whirlwind that carried them towards the trees and as they moved, Gardus thought he saw a shape coalescing within them. Not human, not quite, but something else… something older, and at once as vast as the Hidden Vale and as small as the flowers that sprouted in its wake. As the whirlwind struck them and dissipated, the trees twisted towards one another, entwining their branches together, weaving twig and leaf to form a female face — a face Gardus recognized, though he had never seen it before, save in murals and bas-reliefs.

‘Alarielle,’ he whispered.

Burning jade eyes met his own, and a voice as powerful as a summer storm, as piercing as the whisper of a thousand winds, spoke.

‘You have led the enemy to my sanctuary, Gardus of Azyr. Whatever your reasons, I have awakened from my dreams of more pleasant times. Athelwyrd is invaded. This day the armies of Azyr and Ghyran must fight together, or we will surely die apart,’ the Radiant Queen said, her words carried by creaking branches and rustling leaves. ‘Whatever I once desired, now only sad necessity remains — fight, my children. Fight, sons of the storm. Fight …’

Her voice rose to a keening wail, shaking the menhirs and causing Gardus to clutch at his ears. As the trees returned to their previous positions and the echoes of her voice faded, a wash of emerald light flooded the glade.

Grymn groaned as the Lady of Vines stepped back. Gardus looked down and saw, to his amazement, that the other man’s wounds had been healed. Grymn looked up at him.

‘I’m not dead,’ he said, as he grabbed his halberd and levered himself up. The Lady of Vines strode past them, stalking towards the battle, her thorny tendrils lashing in fury.

‘Not yet,’ Gardus said. ‘But the day is not yet done.’ He gestured to the Nurgle army. More had arrived in the moments since Alarielle’s words. As the deluge of filth spilled into the Hidden Vale, the dire fug that followed the plague-worshippers swept along the valley floor, corrupting vast swathes of lush vegetation. Pox-afflicted skaven scurried through the dying undergrowth, the smoking censers they whirled above their cowled heads only adding to the foulness in the air. When dryads moved to bar their path, they were smashed to smoking flinders.

As he and Grymn headed to join their men, Gardus heard Morbus chanting. The Lord-Relictor’s voice rose up, and the cloudscape of Athelwyrd seemed to respond as he invoked the energies of the tempest. The gathering storm fought against the noxious plague-clouds, and each ebbed and swelled in turn. The boom of thunder echoed down the valley, shaking the combatants to their bones and causing the great trees that covered the slopes to tremble down to their very roots.

‘Gather as many men as you can. Form a shieldwall around the glade,’ Gardus said, as he backhanded a squealing skaven with his hammer. ‘You must be the rock that this foul sea cannot wear down.’

‘What about you?’ Grymn said, chopping down on a plaguebearer. He spun his weapon in a circle, cutting down a second daemon.

‘I intend to take the battle to the enemy,’ Gardus said. He drove his sword through a snarling beastman’s gut. More of the goat-headed creatures charged towards him as the sickly rainclouds overhead thickened and fat, black raindrops began to fall. Gardus swung his hammer in a wide arc, splintering bones and crushing skulls. He heard Grymn bellowing orders behind him, and he smiled grimly. Stand fast, my friend. Be the shield, and I shall be the sword. He moved forward at a trot, dispatching any creature that sought to bar his path.

Across the vale, warriors clashed. Wooden-clawed dryads slaughtered skaven and beastmen alike as looming treelords strode into battle with earthshaking strides. Hallowed Knights, Astral Templars and Guardians of the Firmament fought back to back against the innumerable hordes surrounding them. Gardus smashed the skull of a plaguebearer and caught sight of Zephacleas standing over the body of a fallen treelord, defending the sylvaneth against its attackers. He saw Ultrades and his paladins fighting their way towards Morbus, who drew lightning down from the boiling skies and sent it crackling into the massed ranks of plaguebearers which stumbled towards him.