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Everqueen – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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EVERQUEEN

by Noah Van Nguyen

GOD! MEAT!
HAKWIT! DEATHLESS!

- Engravings found in Uha Cavernne, near Greywater Fastness.
Translated from RECORD PURGED by edict of the ORDER OF AZYR.
(engravings attributed to vandals)

The chorus of skaven warp-grinders blasting through earth and stone falls silent. The skaventide is close-near. By the time they’re done, Alarielle will be deader than dead, yes-yes. The smoking carcass of an arrogant god-thing, blown to gnawable gobbets by Skryre’s secret warpstone-thing.

Hakwit’s incisors chitter with grubby excitement. His paws tap-dance in heinous need. He has never gnawed god-meat before. But it will perhaps be easy?

Perhaps. One bite, live forever.

The indecency makes him squeal. All Hakwit’s ever wanted is to live longer – maybe long enough to stand in the back during assaults instead of out front.

Now he stands to live forever. Soon he’ll get his taste.

Moulder’s great rat ogors and hideous stormfiends groan with witless anger. Their tiny brains are scrambled and mutated, but their weaponised limbs and grafted armour are a reassuring presence. Behind them heave Hakwit’s brood: untold thousands of Verminus clanrats surrounded by sneering stormvermin there only to goad them forward. The clanrat clawpacks pile up the walls, gulping deeply of the urine-reeking air. For many, this will be their last smell of home. Hakwit will not be among them.

The final layers of earth crumble away. The old light of Ghyran streams through widening gaps in the wall. The others rise up, fool-rats, into a hysterical storm of Queekish chittering. The tree-things will never see them coming. They are not tricky like skaven. They are not clever.

As soon as the breaches settle, Sylvaneth arrows as long as harpoons crash into the tunnel. Tanglethorn thickets creep out from each javelin, chewing the wounded apart. Moulder monstrosities howl. Verminus clanrats shriek. Then wyldwood roots claw up from the earth, dragging Hakwit’s fellow vermin into war-tilled soil, leaving unsightly piles of rodent flesh half buried, half alive.

Hakwit’s skaventide surges out like a living sea, a teeming blanket of teeth and weapons and mangy fur. Around them are the Grottos of Growth, caves of rebirth which line the foundations of Alarielle’s Verdant Palace.

Hakwit has no choice but to follow the press. He clutches his scrap shield and chipped scimitar like precious meat. More Sylvaneth arrows thump into Hakwit’s clawpack, skewering his brood-rats like lances.

‘They knew!’ Nailteeth squeaks, ducking beside Hakwit. ‘How-how?’

Hakwit, wide-eyed with alarm, cranes his head around for answers. Tree-thing dryads rise like walls around their vanguard, branches interlocked into bristling barriers. Even Moulder-things couldn’t smash through that front, but they’ll trample every last Verminus rodent for a go at it.

Hakwit’s eyes flitter back. Emerald lightning from the skaven’s warpstone cannonry sears overhead. Somewhere, bells toll darkly. Pestilens plague monks dawdle forward in ragged ranks, censers fuming with sick smoke. More clanrats surge out from new tunnels caving open behind them.

Soon these reinforcements will push up against Hakwit’s pack, forcing fool-meat like him into the grinder of battle. The stupid rats in the rear have no idea what they’re doing.

Or maybe they do, and that is why they do it, yes-yes? Fewer rats at the feast means fewer to share Alarielle’s god-meat with. Hakwit, too, is a rodent of ambition.

War-horns blare eerily. Then Hakwit realises they aren’t war-horns at all, but hair-raising hymns. The tree-things sing. They sing while they fight; they sing while they slaughter.

Then oh-no-no-no-no-no. Tree-gargants ahead slam into Hakwit’s line. They glow like summer on fire, hammering into his skaventide. With viridescent flame and swords shimmering with eldritch light, they gut Moulder’s monstrous experiments and pulp Hakwit’s Verminus broodmates under trunk and root. The soil grows muddy with skaven gore.

This is not a battlefield. It is a kill-house. If Hakwit stays, he dies.

Beside him, Nailteeth’s shudder-eyes go steely with resolve. It’s as if the King of Lashes speaks to him, the Great Horned One himself.

‘Ratmen-things!’ Nailteeth screeches, unblinking and mad-eyed. ‘Today-now we eat god-meat! Today-now – we live forever-always!’

Other clanrats in Hakwit’s brood, all fool-meat like Nailteeth, gibber with inexcusable valour. Maybe the King of Lashes really has blessed them. Maybe they really will live forever-always.

More likely, the fool-rats think their numbers will protect them. That even if many other skaven die, they will live.

Hakwit is a venerable three years old. He knows better than to trust anything or anyone but himself. When all is said and done, only clever-rats survive. Survival is a skaven’s only mandate. Survival is a ratman’s greatest strength.

Hakwit cups his paw around his sore-ridden muzzle. ‘I’m with you, Nailteeth! I’m with you! All the way ’til ending-end, yes-yes!’

The other skaven-rats chitter and chant and cheer. ‘God! Meat! God! Meat!’

Idiots. Fools!

Hakwit watches as his brainless brethren press forward against the enraged tree-gargants. If the skaven swarm in, weighing down the tree-gargants’ limbs, maybe they can gnaw through their bark to their heartwood.

Who knows? Maybe they’ll get a few.

Hakwit squeezes to the back of his formation. When he finally pushes free, he drops his shield and scimitar, turns tail and runs.

Skryre’s geniuses name their latest insanity the Gnaw-Bomb. Hakwit’s heard things about it. Rumours. The warpstone warhead uses Shyishan grave-sand as a blighting agent. The arch-warlocks promise it kills gods. They’re certain. So, so certain!

Or, so-so certain. Not positive. It could work; it might not. Good enough prospects by any rat’s measure.

After the great clans got wind of Skryre’s thing, plans were drawn, alliances made and swarms gathered. Even the Lords of Decay interceded. All skavenkind must unite, they decreed, to murder a god, then devour its carrion.

All gods were on the table. The man-things’ Thunder-Smith in Azyr, or the Gloomspite hordes’ sanity-melting moon. The Dark Four were considered then quickly dismissed. The Great Horned One was already greatest of the Chaos Gods, and the Dark Prince had gone and got themself lost. Seeking to kill any of those would be a wasted effort.

Eventually the skaventide’s war council ordained Alarielle their target. Alarielle was the Everqueen of Ghyran, the mother of the tree-things. The goddess of life. Devouring her, the war council reasoned, would grant the skaven the power in her meat. Together, skavenkind would tear the gristle from the Everqueen’s corpse and chew her bones to dust. Together, they would live forever…

Well, assuming they survived the breaking of her palace. Assuming they got a place at the table.

Assuming the Lords of Decay weren’t lying to begin with.

Hakwit squeals with degenerate pleasure and rodent worry as he squeezes through the ranks of another clawpack.

‘Where does he go-run?’ ask the others, familiar muzzles he recognises and loathes. He despises everything about his kind. They’re all out to get him. He’s out to get them, too.

So lying comes easier than breathing. ‘The tree-things run-flee!’ Hakwit says. ‘Just three whiskers more! Go! Fight-kill! We have them on the back paw!’

The fool-rats grow emboldened and surge forward with vim in their paws and avarice in their eyes. They do not realise the earth underpaw is soaked with skaven guts, not cave water. They do not know they march to their deaths.

Fools. Provender of war. But that is the point, no-no? Power means lying through one’s teeth. Power means living longest. Power means piles of broken bodies and strong legs to climb them.

Back in his tunnel, Hakwit sees the rearguard waiting for him. Ranks of hissing stormvermin skewer other ratmen who also fled. The black-furred stormvermin ignore their snivelling pleas, running them through, cutting short their pathetic excuses.

The pack’s fangleader spots Hakwit. His evil eyes twist up. He is a spiteful thing, quivering with vicious hunger. Hakwit hates him already.

‘You there, clanrat!’ the fangleader snarls, lapping up skaven-gore from the flat of his pitted blade. ‘Get over here and report!’

Hakwit breathes a curse and turns tail again, bolting back to battle. Hakwit fears rat-rats more than tree-things. He calls them rat-rats because that’s what they are. Rat-rats butcher their own brood to wet their blades and call themselves strong. They find inventive solutions to problems they themselves invent. They’re brave, with good morale and healthy coats of fur and no dings in their painted, burnished armour. They have first feeding rights after battle. They’re loud on the charge and quiet when clawlords need first-wave meat-fodder. They’re despicable.

Caught between Sylvaneth who will kill him and rat-rats who will do it faster, Hakwit takes the high road. He clambers up the tunnel’s mouth, grasping roots and vines and wormy soil, scurrying up the cave wall. He reaches the top of a promontory overlooking the Grottos of Growth.

A line of tree-revenants stands before him. Behind them is a rippling pool of pristine water that shines with Ghyran’s life-light.

One tree-thing advances, bigger than the others, a glowing arch-revenant with twinkling wings in a skeletal, oaken body. Tree-things remind Hakwit of undead-things. They both have skeletons, they both have ghosts. One is obsessed with life, the other with death. They seem very much the same. To Hakwit, gnawing bone isn’t much different from gnawing wood. Neither is being slain by them.

‘Kill them all,’ the winged revenant says, brandishing its shield like the glowing moon and its glaive like a blade of light. Its haunting voice reminds Hakwit of a gale in summer. His ears lie down on his head.

Three long years he lived. It was a good run. No one can fault him for longevity.

Then a storm of shadows somersaults out from behind Hakwit. Eshin assassins! They must have followed him up the cave wall.

Night runners cartwheel forward into the tree-things’ lines. Punch blades glimmer in gutter runners’ paws. Eshin throwing stars buzz into the tree-things like hornets, thudding into their trunks like nails.

Hakwit’s found himself between a skaven strike force and the Sylvaneth. He’s not about to wait and see who wins. His goal is clear: survive long enough to gnaw on Alarielle’s corpse. Just a bite, just a morsel. Just a taste.

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A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

This eBook edition published in 2021 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Nuala Kinrade.

Everqueen © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2021. Everqueen, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, Warhammer, Warhammer Age of Sigmar, Stormcast Eternals, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
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ISBN: 978-1-80026-731-2

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