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Legends of the Age of Sigmar – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Chapter One

The Crawling City

Skuralanx the Scurrying Dark, the Cunning Shadow, servant of the Great Corruptor, verminlord and blessed child of the Horned Rat, crept on stealthy hooves through the dead temple towards its central chamber. The daemon’s massive frame was heavily muscled beneath his mangy hide, and his bifurcated tail lashed in equal parts annoyance and excitement as he ducked his many-horned, fleshless skull beneath a cracked archway.

He crawled, skulked, scurried and slunk through the shadows cast by the eternal lightning-storm which swirled about the cracked domes and shattered towers. Writhing streaks of lightning cascaded down broken statues or struck the pockmarked plazas of the temple-complex. The sky above was a knot of painful, shimmering cobalt clouds, and the daemon avoided the sight of it as much as possible.

The mortals who had built this place called it the Sahg’gohl – the Storm-Crown of the City-Worm. A fitting name, Skuralanx thought, for a place where the air stank of iron and the elemental heat of Azyr. Within the domed central chamber was a door to that realm, and it wept forever in fury. Perhaps that explained the lightning. Skuralanx didn’t know and didn’t particularly care. Such doorways could be twisted out of shape and off-path with ridiculous ease, if one knew the trick of it.

But that was not his purpose here. Not yet at any rate. He was no brutish Warbringer or treacherous Warpseer, looking to conquer for conquest’s sake. No, he was a child of the Great Witherer, born of blessed foulness and blighted shadows, and his was a higher calling. The Eater of All Things was in turmoil, roiling with conflicting desires which could only be assuaged by that which Skuralanx sought – or rather, by that which his servants sought on his behalf.

One of the Thirteen Great Plagues was here. He was certain of it. Hidden away from the eyes of mortals and daemons alike. Skuralanx had followed its trail from the Jade Kingdoms of Ghyran to the rime-encrusted tarnholds of the fallen duchies of Shyish, and now, at last, here, to the Ghurlands and a city built on the broad, ever-undulating back of a colossal worm.

And he had not come alone, no-no. Skuralanx was a craftsman, and like all craftsmen, he possessed many tools. Two had come to the city-worm at his command, though neither knew that the other served him. The skaven of the Red Bubo Procession and the Congregation of Fumes, drawn from the Clans Pestilens, had risen at his order and drowned the inhabitants of the city in a foetid tide of pox and pestilence. Led by their quarrelsome plague priests, the two congregations had burst from the body of the worm, ringing their doom-gongs and spreading noxious death wherever they scurried.

It had been a thing of beauty and horror in equal measure. A civilization, millennia old, ruined in a fortnight by the teeming, pestilent hordes that scurried forth at his behest. Even better, his chittering servants were now hard at work making this place fit for the children of the Horned Rat. Soon, this city, which had once belonged to the man-things, would instead be home to the Clans Pestilens. And Skuralanx would rule over them – whichever ones managed to survive, that is. He played no favourites and was content to allow them the freedom to murder one another with vicious abandon.

As long as one or the other found that which he desired, he cared nothing for their fate. They were in competition, and every setback and victory spurred them on to greater heights of cunning, just as he’d planned. Live or die, his triumph was assured. One of them would find the Liber and bring it to him.

Had he wished, he could easily have sought out the object of his desire himself. Indeed, there were some among his kin-rivals who would have done just that. But Skuralanx was patient. And besides, what was the point of having minions if one didn’t let them serve? Had not the Horned Rat spawned his children to serve him, after all?

Snickering, the verminlord leapt onto the shoulder of Sigmar. Or his statue, at least. Stern, bearded, unforgiving, the massive sculpture of the man-thing god glared out over the chamber where once his followers had gathered in worship. The chamber glowed with an unpleasant radiance. The glow emanated from the vast iron hatch composed of intersecting plates and set into the base of the statue’s plinth. Lightning dripped from it, crawling across the walls and floor in crackling sheets. It filled the air and made his hide prickle.

The interlocking plates had been designed to be opened only in the proper order. Skuralanx had no doubt that his cunning would prove equal to the task, when the need arose. At but a touch, he would wrench the realmgate open and twist it back upon itself, turning the way to the Jade Kingdoms and the maggot-infested warrens his minions called home. Plague congregations and clawbands without number awaited but the merest whisper of his voice, for his schemes and the tools with which he enacted them were infinite.

Beyond the chamber, through the shattered walls, Skuralanx could see the wide, pillar-lined causeway which connected the ruined temple to the rest of the city.

‘Blind, so blind, yes-yes,’ the daemon hissed, carving filthy runes into the statue’s cheek. He had come here every day for weeks to do so, because it amused him, and the statue’s face was all but swallowed up by the daemonic graffiti. ‘Can’t see what’s right in front of him, oh no. Blind god, broken god, dead god.’

He looked up past the lightning to the amber skies of the Ghurlands, where strange birds flew and worse things besides. ‘Soon, all of the gods will be dead, yes. Only one left, only the strongest, the stealthiest, the most brilliant of gods, yes-yes… all dead, and we will ascend in their place.’

They would rise and flourish, spreading decay across the Eight Realms. Yes, and more besides. All realms, all worlds, all peoples would fall. All would rot, never to be renewed. From out of this glorious corruption, new life would swell, but not mortal life, not man-thing life or hated duardin, no-no – only skaven life. Only the faithful skaven-life – no place for the unbelievers. All things would die.

And Shu’gohl, the Crawling City, would be the first.

The air smelled of worm. Not an unpleasant smell, by the standards of Vretch of the Red Bubo, but not altogether pleasing either. It was a coarse, acrid odour which clung tenaciously to everything here, living or otherwise. It filled the sprawling city of looming towers and swaying bridges which the skaven of the Clans Pestilens had, for the most part, occupied. It was even, regrettably, in his fur. It overlaid his natural pungency, subsuming the unique tang of his many and varied blessings, drowning them in worm-stink.

Chittering in annoyance, he scratched at a ripe blister until it burst, briefly releasing a revivifying aroma of pus and blood into the air. The plague priest’s thin nose twitched as the sickly-sweet smell faded, and was once more replaced by the dry stench of the monstrous enormity known as Shu’gohl, the Crawling City.

The great worm crawled ceaselessly across the Amber Steppes of the Ghurlands. Its segmented form stretched across the grasslands from sunrise to sunset, carrying the city and its people along with it. Shu’gohl crept slowly from horizon to horizon, day after day, devouring all in its path with remorseless hunger. It was not alone in this – to Vretch’s knowledge, there were at least ten of the immense worms remaining in the grasslands, driven to the surface in aeons past by great rains. Someday they might once more descend into the cavernous depths beneath the Amber Steppes, but for now they seemed content to squirm mindlessly across its surface, cracking the earth with their weight.

That suited Vretch just fine. The thought of all that amber-hued sky stretching far above was nothing less than terrifying to most skaven, but Vretch was not most skaven. And in any event, the Setaen Palisades were cramped enough to make any child of the Horned Rat feel at home. The great, bristle-like hairs which rose from the worm’s hide were as hard as stone, and thousands had been hollowed out in ages past to make the tiered towers which rose throughout the city.

Those hairs closest to the eternal lightning storm which wreathed Shu’gohl’s head had been made over into veritable citadels. They rose higher than any other structure in the city, and were connected by a vast network of bridges, nets and heavy palisades made from quarried worm-scale and frayed hairs culled from the worm’s dorsal forests. From the uppermost tiers, which Vretch had claimed for his own, one could see the entirety of the Crawling City. Not that there was much to look at. The man-things knew little of artisanry, preferring to stack stone rather than burrow through it.

His chambers were in the highest tiers of the Setaen Palisades, where the city’s noblest families had once resided. The former inhabitants now swung from makeshift gibbets and iron cages outside his windows, where they could be retrieved at any time he deemed necessary. Sometimes he rattled the chains, just to hear them moan. It had a soothing quality which he had come to appreciate in the weeks since his arrival.

The chamber at the heart of his domain was circular, and mostly open to the elements. The domed roof was supported by intricately carved pillars, and the floor was covered now by the tools of Vretch’s trade – ever-seething pox-cauldrons and bubbling alembics, piles of grimoires and heaps of parchment, and tottering stacks of cages, in which plague-rats and moaning man-things waited for his ministrations. Flayed hides, still dripping and streaked with rot, hung like curtains from the roof, and the signs most sacred to the Horned Rat had been carved onto every available surface. Plague monks clad in ragged robes moved back and forth through the chamber, their scrawny limbs bound in filthy bandages. They worked at various tasks, stirring his cauldrons and refining the battle-plagues they would inflict on the dwindling kernels of resistance within those areas of the Crawling City they controlled.

And then, and only then, it would be Kruk’s turn. Vretch’s claws tightened unconsciously as he thought of his brutal and foolish rival. Kruk, plague priest of Clan Festerlingus, had pursued Vretch to Shu’gohl like a bad smell. Then, that had always been Kruk’s way. Indeed, Vretch could almost admire such single-minded determination, were it not for Kruk’s blasphemous inclinations. Every skaven knows proper buboes are red, Vretch thought, grinding his teeth as the old anger surged through him. Red!

Both plague priests had followed a trail of stories whispered about the campfires of the savages who populated the Amber Steppes, racing to be the first to find their quarry. Vretch’s agents had spied upon the tribes of wild riders and nomads who fled before the approach of Shu’gohl. The worm-city crawled endlessly across the steppes and brought with it a strange plague, which afflicted all those caught in its shadow.

Vretch and his congregation had ascended on the worm, burrowing through its hard flesh and soft tissue to attack the city and its unprepared defenders from within.

Or so they had planned. Vretch ground his teeth in frustration. They had erupted from Shu’gohl’s flesh to find the defenders already occupied with Kruk and his heretical Congregation of Fumes. Now, Kruk held the tailwards section of the city, past the Dorsal Barbicans, though how long he would remain there only the Horned Rat knew.

He and Kruk were both looking for the same thing – the source of the mysterious plague which stalked in Shu’gohl’s wake. It rose from the worm’s ichors and stained the land black. The afflicted man-things grew hollow and rotted away, eaten inside out by burrowing black worms. He’d tested it numerous times since, and found it to be a thing of great beauty. Perhaps it was even one of the Thirteen Great Plagues…

The floor beneath his claws shuddered unexpectedly, and he tensed, clutching at a support pillar. He scuttled to the window and peered out over the expanse of the Crawling City, which sprawled like an unsightly encrustation across Shu’gohl’s broad segments. Its towers and tiers rose and fell with the segments and furrows of the great worm upon whose back it had been erected in millennia past.

Smoke still rose from beyond the distant walls of the Dorsal Barbicans. Kruk’s congregation hard at work, no doubt. Or perhaps something else… Only a few days ago, the skies overhead had grown dark and thunderous, and a harsh rain had fallen. Lightning had struck the great worm, causing it to shudder in agony. The storm clouds had dispersed somewhat as the worm continued its eternal crawl, but they were still there. His whiskers twitched.

The Setaen Palisades themselves rose in staggered levels, starting from a segment of the worm. The upper levels were built around the tops of setae, so that they moved when the worm moved. They had been crafted with care and skill, raised by the hands of eager artisans to house the mighty and wealthy of Shu’gohl. Now, they were steadily being transformed into fields of rot and plague by the hands of their former inhabitants.

How they wept, these weak man-things. How they shrieked and cried, as if they did not understand that all things rotted, all things died. Even the great worms of the Amber Steppes.

He looked down, eyes drawn by the clangour of industry. Far below, his followers oversaw the excavation of the Gut-shafts. Hordes of man-thing slaves, chained with iron and disease, cleared the great pores of flesh and solidified mucus, opening a path into Shu’gohl’s interior. As he watched, a geyser of the worm’s viscous blood spurted up, drowning a dozen slaves, as the Crawling City shuddered again. From somewhere far beyond the storm which wreathed the worm’s head, a throbbing, dolorous groan sounded. Birds rose from the tops of the towers and fled shrieking into the sky.

Soon, Vretch thought, the worm would die and its great hide would slough into bubbling ruin. A great stink would rise from it, choking the sky. It would be beautiful, Vretch thought. Especially if Kruk perished in the meantime.

A garbled moan caused him to turn. His assistants cowered back from the source of the sound, and he could smell the whiff of fear musk rising from them. Vretch chuckled and waved them back. The monks huddled away as Vretch stepped towards the crude plinth which had been built around the largest of his pox-cauldrons.

The Conglomeration was his finest work. A dozen slaves had gone into its creation, their tormented bodies merged through a combination of a hundred different plagues and poxes. Bile, pus and blood from weeping sores and raw wounds had flowed together to harden into stony scabs. The twitching mass of flesh, bone and infection sat astride its plinth and gazed down at Vretch with dull eyes.

‘Vrrretch,’ the thing said, with many mouths.

‘I am here, my most verminous of masters,’ Vretch said. The Conglomeration was an oracle, of sorts. On the rare occasions when it spoke, it did so with the voice of the Great Witherer. Other plague priests looked for their omens in the froth of cauldrons or the guts of boil-afflicted rats, but Vretch had provided the god and his servants a suitable receptacle for their mighty will.

‘You are too slow, Vretch,’ the Conglomeration hissed. The various heads spoke all at once, their individual voices merging into a familiar baritone snarl that shook Vretch to his bones. It was ever thus; his patron spoke with the voice of the Destroyer, the Crawling Entropy, the Eater of All Things… Skuralanx, the Scurrying Dark. One of the mightiest of those verminlords blessed to serve the Horned Rat in his truest aspect – that of the Corruptor. ‘Too slow, too slow. That heretical fool Kruk is ahead of you. Where is my pox, Vretch? Where are my blisters, my buboes, my worm-plagues?’

Vretch thrust a claw beneath his robes and scratched furiously at his greasy fur. Mention of his rival always made him itch. Red buboes, red! he thought. ‘Coming, coming, O mighty Skuralanx,’ he said. ‘I read-study quick-quick, yes? I must learn-know all there is, yes-yes?’ He scanned his chambers – the piles of scrolls, the bubbling cauldrons, the dismembered prisoners. Then, more firmly, he said, ‘Yes.’

The conjoined mass of skaven-flesh gave an impatient growl. Loose limbs flailed and claws smacked the stone floor. Blind eyes rolled in their sockets as froth-stained muzzles snapped in apparent frustration. The whole mass gave the impression that it was about to tear itself apart. Vretch stepped back warily.

‘Are you lying to me, Vretch?’ Skuralanx hissed. ‘What is there to study here? Kruk controls the great library in the Dorsal Barbicans, not you.’

And many thanks for reminding me of that, O most scurvy one, Vretch thought sourly. The Libraria Vurmis, the repository of centuries of knowledge gleaned from the far reaches and diverse kingdoms of Ghur by the scholar-knights who’d founded it, lay in the hands of the one skaven singularly unsuited to possess such a treasure.

‘Much-much, yes,’ he said, gesturing around in what he hoped was a placatory fashion. ‘More than one library in this squirming bastion, O mighty one.’

He hunched forward and swept out a crusty claw, indicating his surroundings. ‘I have found many-much secrets, O Conniving Shadow,’ he said obsequiously. ‘There is a world apart, in the guts of the great worm. One of the missing Libers is there – your most loyal and faithful and devoted servant is certain!’

The blind eyes of the conjoined skaven rolled towards him, as if peering at him in judgement. The bulk swelled and quivered for a moment. Then Skuralanx said, ‘Yessss. Find this world for me, Vretch of Clan Morbidus, and Skuralanx the Cunning shall see that you are rewarded beyond your wildest imaginings.’ Several gnarled claws rose and gestured contemptuously. ‘First, however, you must hurry-quick and send your devotees tailwards. The old enemy has come, riding sky-fire and bringing pain for the Children of the Horned Rat.’

‘The lightning,’ Vretch said. He had seen the storm-things before, at a distance, some months ago. It had been in the Jade Kingdoms, and he twitched as he recalled the gigantic silver-armoured warrior who had slaughtered so many of his fellows in the Glade of Horned Growths. That was where he’d first made Skuralanx’s acquaintance. The Scurrying Dark had filched his broken form from the battlefield, and they had made their bargain in the shadow of the great Blight Oak.

‘Yes,’ Skuralanx murmured, through many mouths. ‘The destroyers of Clan Rikkit, the harrowers of Murgid Fein and Cripple Fang, have come to Shu’gohl.’

‘And you want me to… go towards them, greatest of authorities?’ Vretch asked.

‘Yesss.’

Vretch scrubbed at his muzzle. After a moment, he said, ‘Why, O most scurviest of scurvies?’

‘They will defeat Kruk. Or he will defeat them. But either way, the Libraria Vurmis will be lost to you. You must claim it and all of its wisdom,’ Skuralanx hissed. The Conglomeration grew agitated, and the plinth creaked beneath its weight.

‘But… I already have it, most blemished one,’ Vretch said, peering at the Conglomeration. ‘Access to it, at least.’ He scratched at his chin, dislodging a shower of lice. ‘Yes-yes, all mine – ours! Ours! – most lordliest of lords.’

The blistered muzzles of the Conglomeration turned towards him. The question hung unspoken on the air. Vretch shrunk back, somewhat unnerved by the expressions on its faces. ‘I– I have a claw in Kruk’s camp, my most cunning and wise and beautiful master,’ he said, slyly.

The daemonically possessed mass grew still. Then, as one, the many mouths sighed, ‘Of course you do.’

The smell of blood hung as heavy as dust on the air of the Libraria Vurmis, and it only grew stronger as Kruk dug one blistered talon into the cheek of the man-thing. Squeelch clutched at his ears as the man-thing began to scream again. The cries echoed through the wide, circular chamber and even out along the ramparts of the Dorsal Barbicans, in which the library nestled. Kruk chittered in pleasure and continued with his ministrations, pulling and peeling the human’s abused flesh until bone gleamed through the raw red.

‘Talk-talk, man-thing,’ Kruk gurgled, holding up a gobbet of dripping meat. ‘Talk, or lose more bits, yes-yes.’

Squeelch looked away. He wasn’t particularly squeamish, but between the noise and the smell, he was getting hungry. He gazed about him, taking in the Libraria Vurmis and the bodies which now decorated its floors. In life, they had been something the man-things called Vurmites – an order of holy warriors, devoted to the library and its secrets. In death, most of them had begun the delightful slide into putrescence. Those who were not quite dead yet were chained or nailed to the great curved shelves which occupied the chamber, to await Kruk’s attentions.

Throughout the chamber, the most trusted members of Kruk’s congregation searched the great shelves for anything of interest, or fuel to feed the fires which heated their pox-cauldrons. The plague monks worked under the watchful gazes of Kruk’s personal censer bearers. The deranged fanatics held their spiked, smoke-spewing flails tightly and dribbled quietly, twitching in time to a sound only they could hear.

Squeelch grimaced and turned as the man-thing librarian sagged in his bonds. He moaned softly as his blood spattered across the piles of loose pages and torn parchments which covered the floor. He was the seventh in as many days, and was sadly proving about as useful as the other six. Squeelch could only assume that the weeks of deprivation and torture had rendered them senseless. Either that, or the fact that neither he nor Kruk could speak their language was proving a greater stumbling block than expected. Regardless, Kruk’s frustration was palpable. His scarred tail lashed like a whip as he dug his claws into the dying man’s flesh.

Squeelch cleaned his whiskers nervously, watching as Kruk tore the hapless man-thing apart. The plague priest was a brute, even among the black-furred monstrosities of Clan Festerlingus. He was broad for a skaven, and his heavy robes made him seem all the larger. His cowl was thrown back to reveal a flat, wide skull wrapped in seeping bandages. Kruk was missing his right ear and his left eye, courtesy of a rival plague priest – Vretch, of Clan Morbidus, current occupier of the other half of the Crawling City.

Vretch had tried to obliterate Kruk with a meticulously planned trap. As Squeelch recalled, it had mostly involved certain explosives, procured from the Clans Skryre at what was no doubt great expense, stuffed down the gullet of the man-thing Kruk had selected for his second interrogation. Squeelch recalled this because he had been the one to plant them, at Vretch’s behest. It was always a behest, with Vretch. An imploration, a request, a favour… commands by any other name. Commands that Squeelch was happy enough to follow, as long as it led to his assumption of the Archsquealership of the Congregation of Fumes. Even if Vretch was a heretical Red Bubite. Purple, that’s a proper bubo, Squeelch thought. But still, by clinging to Vretch’s tail, he might rise very far indeed.

Unfortunately for them both, Kruk was sturdier than he looked. Thus, Vretch and poor, put-upon Squeelch would have to find a more effective means of his disposal. Squeelch had considered and subsequently discarded any number of options, from the mundane – a knife in the back – to the noteworthy – many knives, not just in the back – to the extraordinary – more explosives, and in greater quantities, possibly also filled with knives – but no real solution, as yet, had presented itself.

Kruk’s resilience was frustrating. Under his leadership, the Congregation of Fumes had staggered from one massacre to the next, swelling and shrinking with an unfathomable virulence. But such destructive potential was wasted on a creature like Kruk. Even Vretch agreed with that. There were better ways to spread the Great Witherer’s gospel through the Mortal Realms. And Squeelch would do it, with Vretch’s backing. The Congregation of Fumes would stalk at the forefront of Vretch’s procession and reap the benefits of that alliance. Why, together, they might even challenge the great clans themselves…

But all of that was predicated on his removal of Kruk, a task that seemed more difficult with every passing day. Kruk was a monster, and Squeelch doubted that even a direct hit from a plagueclaw catapult would finish the other plague priest off. Two or three, at least, he thought nervously, watching as his superior dismembered his prey. ‘Maybe more,’ he muttered.

‘Wwwhat did you say?’ Kruk hissed, turning to glare at him. ‘What-what? Speak up quick-fast, Squeelch.’ Brown fangs flashed as he stepped towards his lieutenant.

Squeelch shied back, clutching his boil-dotted tail to his chest as he tried to avoid Kruk’s single, madly gleaming eye. ‘Nothing, O most pestiferous one,’ he squeaked. He was beginning to suspect that his bargain with Vretch hadn’t been well thought-out.

‘Lyyyying,’ Kruk crooned, stretching the word out. He reached out a bloody claw and grabbed a handful of Squeelch’s whiskers. Squeelch whined and fought the urge to squirt the musk of fear as Kruk pulled him close. ‘Speak, Squeelch. Or I will tear out your tongue and eat it, yes-yes?’ Kruk’s own tongue slid out to caress his scarred muzzle, as if in anticipation. The plague priest had eaten his last second-in-command, Squeelch recalled.

No, not well thought-out at all, he thought, in growing panic. His hand edged towards the poison-encrusted dagger hidden within his robes. He would only get one chance, if Kruk decided he’d outlived his usefulness.

‘Kruk.’

Kruk released Squeelch and turned, good eye narrowing in consternation.

‘Kruk, Master of the Fumes. Heed me.’

‘Skuralanx,’ Kruk muttered. Squeelch swallowed. The air had taken on an oily tang. He could hear and feel something gnawing its way towards them, through the spaces between moments. His head ached and blisters burst and popped on his flesh as he staggered back, scratching at himself. The flesh of his tail grew hot and he felt as if his stomach might burst. He heard a skittering as of a thousand rats, and then the body on the floor began to wriggle and twitch in a most unseemly fashion.

A great talon rose upwards through the bloody midsection of the dead man, clawing at the air. Then it fell, striking the floor. Clawed fingers spread, and wormy muscles bunched. With a sound like a branch being pulled free of mud, something monstrous hauled itself out of the corpse’s midsection. A narrow head, bare of flesh and topped by massive horns, breached the blood first. Then a second talon. The sound of buzzing flies filled the air, and eyes which glimmered sickeningly fixed unwaveringly on the two plague priests.

Squeelch cowered back, trying to make himself as small as possible. Kruk tensed, his scabrous tail lashing. ‘Greetings, most-high Skuralanx, Cunning Shadow and Mighty Pestilence,’ the burly plague priest said, his good eye narrowed in wariness. ‘To what do I owe this pleasure, O most esteemed patron?’

‘No pleasure, Kruk. Only impatience. Where is my Liber, Kruk? Where is the Great Plague?’ Skuralanx said, blood running down his mangy fur. ‘Have you found it yet?’ Squeelch flinched as the daemon’s voice echoed through his head. Kruk’s daemonic patron was a power unlike any other. He loomed over the two plague priests, and the tips of his great curving horns scraped the domed ceiling of the library. Clouds of flies swarmed about his massive shoulders and lice squirmed in his mangy fur. His cloven hooves drew sparks from the stone floor as he shifted impatiently.

Kruk looked down at the body the verminlord had emerged from, and then up at the daemon. ‘No, O most Scabrous One,’ he said. His shoulders were hunched, and his head held low. Not even Kruk was mad enough to openly challenge a firstborn child of the Horned Rat. ‘The man-things are… stubborn,’ Kruk said.

The daemon’s fleshless jaws clacked in seeming frustration. ‘You hold one of the greatest libraries in this realm, Kruk – have you even thought to search for my book amongst all of these others?’ the daemon hissed, extending a hand to indicate the shelves which surrounded them.

Kruk blinked and looked around. Squeelch tried his best to make himself inconspicuous. As he shied back, the daemon’s gaze fell on him. What might have been amusement flickered in that hellish gaze, and Squeelch froze. He knows, he thought, in growing panic. He knows!

‘Stupid-stupid man-thing books hold no answers worth the name, O horned and hoofed one,’ Kruk said, gesturing dismissively. As he spoke, the ground shuddered and several of the great shelves toppled, spilling their burdens across the floor. Panicked squeals came from outside on the ramparts as Shu’gohl convulsed in what Squeelch suspected was agony. The quakes had been growing stronger, and happening more often. Hundreds of skaven and man-things alike had died, crushed by the twitching segments of the worm as it trembled.

‘Vretch believes that they do,’ Skuralanx said slyly, as he shoved a fallen shelf aside.

‘Vrrretch,’ Kruk growled. Iridescent foam bubbled in the folds of his muzzle. ‘Kill-kill! Tear-bite him, yes-yes!’ the plague priest continued, hunching forward, his bloody claws opening and closing uselessly on the air. ‘Strike him down for me, mighty Skuralanx.’

Skuralanx rose to his full height. ‘Who are you to command me thus, priest? I am the will of the Great Ruiner made manifest. You do my will, little flea,’ the verminlord hissed, his tail lashing in anger. ‘And I say that there are more important matters to attend to than your petty murder-lust. Or even your failure to find my pox…’ The daemon sank to its haunches as Kruk backed away, head bowed.

‘More… important?’ Kruk said, slowly.

‘Lightning-things come, Kruk. More dangerous even than Vretch. You must kill them, quick-quick,’ the verminlord said, stirring the gory remains of the librarian with one of his curved talons.

Squeelch blinked. They’d heard and seen the lightning which struck the outskirts of the city, causing the great worm to heave and thrash. Kruk had dismissed it, and the subsequent reports of fighting in the lower segments of the city. The Congregation of Fumes had spread like a miasma, each individual choir rampaging through a chosen section of the city, killing those who resisted their attacks and capturing those who didn’t.

But that already unsteady flow of chattel had been interrupted. Kruk, with his usual simplicity, had assumed the others had fallen to fighting amongst themselves over some scrap of street or a theological debate, as was their wont. Squeelch’s own congregation had reported sighting strange flying shapes, neither bird nor beast, and the sound of lightning, though the sky was clear. But… lightning-things? He clutched his tail, kneading his sores in agitation.

‘Lightning-things,’ Kruk hissed, his good eye widening in pleasure. ‘Yessss…’

Squeelch tensed. He knew that tone. Kruk was insane – his brain was rotted in his mossy skull. He had a love for bloodshed that outstripped even that of a daemon like Skuralanx.

‘Yes, I shall rip them and break them. I shall fill their pretty armour with maggots,’ said Kruk. He whirled and caught Squeelch by his robes. ‘Get to your plagueclaws, Squeelch. Fill the air with great clouds of pestilence and your lovely poisons – I would fight in the shade.’

‘Beast-bane, follow me,’ Lord-Celestant Zephacleas roared as he crashed through the makeshift stockade. The Astral Templar swept his runeblade and hammer out to either side, smashing timbers and cutting through the thick ropes which held the wall together. Lengths of fossilised hair and wood toppled as the Decimators of his Warrior Chamber joined him in tearing apart the skaven stockade. It took longer than it should have.

The verminous palisades were crude things made from scavenged scrap. The skaven weren’t artisans by any stretch of the word, but their defences had a certain primitive strength regardless. They were built for function rather than form, akin to the Stormcast Eternals themselves.

Zephacleas and his Stormcasts were one amongst many Warrior Chambers sent to the Ghurlands to free the kingdoms and tribal lands of the Amber Steppes from the clutches of Chaos.

Shu’gohl was not the only ambulatory metropolis upon those plains – many of the remaining great worms bore some form of edifice or structure upon their backs, and had done since before the beginning of the Age of Chaos. Isolated and ever-moving, the surging tides of Chaos had swept about them, unnoticed by the vast monstrosities and avoided by the populations who clung to them.

Despite this, some belonged wholly to Chaos now, like Guh’hath, the Brass Bastion, which carried its population of wild-eyed Bloodbound across the steppes in search of slaughter, or Rhu’goss, the Squirming Citadel, its ancient ramparts manned by the soulless crystal automatons of the Tzeentchian sorcerer-king Terpsichore the Unwritten. Others, like Shu’gohl, had seemingly resisted the touch of Chaos for centuries, until the coming of the skaven.

Warriors from the Hallowed Knights and the Lions of Sigmar sought to topple the Hundred Herdstones of Wolf-Crag, even as the Sons of Mallus laid siege to Guh’hath. But to the Beast-bane had fallen the task of freeing the Crawling City from its skittering conquerors and preventing the death of the great worm.

Their orders were to fight their way through the skaven-held regions of the city, all the way to the ruins of the Sahg’gohl – the great temple of Sigmar which had been built by the first inhabitants of the Crawling City. The temple had once contained a realmgate connecting the Crawling City to the Luminous Plain in Azyr, and it would be so once again, once the Crawling City was free of its verminous invaders. The Sahg’gohl clung to the worm’s head like a lightning-wreathed crown, and Zephacleas yearned to see it – to see the glory of such a place restored.

Others might have attacked the Sahg’gohl directly and left the freeing of the city for later – Taros Nine-Strike, the Lord-Castellant of the Beast-bane, for one. But then, Taros put his faith in expedience. Zephacleas favoured a different approach. What good was a temple when the folk who would worship within it were dead?

He bellowed and Liberators stepped forward, using their shields and hammers to wedge apart the broken sections of palisade as the Lord-Celestant led the Decimators into the fray. While the Liberators worked, Judicators fired over their heads, driving back the skaven. The ratmen reeled beneath the sizzling volley, and Zephacleas seized his moment, leading his Paladin retinues forward into the heart of the foe.

The Lord-Celestant was a giant of a man, even among the Stormcasts, and he sang with joy as he wielded hammer and blade. Once, he’d fought simply for food to ensure the survival of his tribe in a land full of monsters. Now, he fought to sweep the Mortal Realms clean of Chaos in all of its forms.

He scanned the interior of the stockade and saw a dozen large, crude cages made from pox-warped bone and disease-toughened ligament. Inside the cages, men, women and children screamed and wept.

Zephacleas growled in anger and took a step towards the cages. A skaven leapt at him from the crumbling stockade, a filth-covered mace clutched in its grimy claws. He spun, smashing it from the air with a blow of his hammer. More of the vermin scuttled forward in a disorganised rabble, flowing around and between the cages, chanting in high-squealing voices and swinging spiked censers with berserk abandon.

‘To me, my brothers – let us show them how the Astral Templars wage war,’ he said, spitting a frenzied rat-monk on his runeblade.

Liberators armed with dual warblades joined Zephacleas and his Decimators in hacking away at the charging skaven. The amethyst-armoured Stormcasts fought as savagely as their Lord-Celestant, as savagely as they had in the Gnarlwood so long ago. But the ratkin were as thick as fleas on the ground and showed no signs of retreat.

‘Thetaleas,’ Zephacleas said, signalling to the Decimator-Prime of a nearby retinue of axemen. ‘Teach them to fear us, as you and your men did in the Gnarlwood.’

‘As you command, Lord-Celestant,’ Thetaleas said, lifting his thunderaxe. ‘I shall give them peace, one strike at a time.’ The Decimators surged forward, away from the other Stormcasts, where they could ply their trade freely. With broad sweeps of their axes they cut a path through the swarming skaven. They hacked down droves of the ratkin, until at last, even the most maddened of the skaven began to fall back before their inexorable advance. The remains of the horde began to scurry away, shrieking.

‘Well done, Thetaleas,’ Zephacleas said, as the last of the skaven vanished through the outer wall of the stockade. ‘Now see to those cages.’ He gestured with his hammer. ‘We’ve only got a few moments before they regroup.’

As one, the Decimators moved to obey, as they had every time before. They had freed captives in a hundred such stockades since arriving on the back of the great worm. Zephacleas joined his warriors in tearing apart the cages.

The folk of the city were not familiar to him, though they might have been descendants of those tribes he’d once fought beside and against. But they were mortal and free of the taint of Chaos, and that was enough. He chopped through the warped bars of a cage and tore apart chains of ligament and muscle.

‘Out, hurry,’ he boomed at the cowering captives. He drove his sword into the ground and extended his hand. ‘Come on, the way is clear.’ The captives stared at him, awed and terrified by the armour-clad giant. Zephacleas grunted in frustration. ‘Out with you,’ he barked.

‘Calm yourself, Zephacleas. They are frightened.’

Zephacleas turned as a figure loomed up behind him. ‘There you are, Gravewalker. Help me with them. We do not have much time.’

‘If you stop shouting, they might be more inclined to listen.’ Like all those who held the post of Lord-Relictor, Seker Gravewalker was a fearsome sight. He was clad in heavy, ornate amethyst armour marked with sigils of death and rebirth. His face was hidden beneath an imposing skull-helm, and the ragged hide of a fire-wyrm hung from one shoulder plate. The beast’s narrow skull was set into the Gravewalker’s reliquary standard, alongside ornaments of gilded bone. A heavy warhammer hung from his belt. He raised his hand, and a crackle of soft lightning played about his fingers. Every mortal eye turned towards him.

‘Go, my children. We come in Sigmar’s name, and strike your foes with his fury. Go, and spread the word to those who yet fight that the God-King has come, and his storm shall sweep your kingdom clean,’ he intoned, his voice swelling to fill the air like the peal of a bell. A man, his flesh bruised and bloody, took a step forward. A woman joined him. Then others, young and old alike, until all were pushing their way free of the cage and fleeing the stockade.

‘I could have done that,’ Zephacleas said, as the last of the captives flowed past him, joining those freed from the other cages. There were places in the city which yet resisted the skaven, isolated enclaves where they might find safety.

‘You have other concerns, my Lord-Celestant. The skaven have regrouped,’ Seker said, drawing his relic hammer from his belt. Zephacleas uprooted his sword and moved towards the rear of the stockade, the Lord-Relictor following close behind.

‘Liberators forward,’ Zephacleas said, as the first of the rat-monks squeezed back through the stockade. The skaven didn’t attack immediately, but their numbers grew by the moment. ‘Lock shields and hold your ground. Gravewalker, get the mortals to safety,’ Zephacleas said. The Lord-Relictor nodded and stepped back, shouting orders to those retinues not already part of the battle-line.

Zephacleas’ pulse quickened at the thought of the battle to come. He could hear the sounds of fighting outside the stockade, as the rest of his chamber defended the newly-freed mortals from harm. The skaven outside were swarming about the stockade, trying to overwhelm the Stormcasts through sheer weight of numbers. But they would fail. Come in your thousands, vermin, we shall not fall, he thought. We held you at the Gates of Dawn, and in the Hidden Vale, and we shall hold you here.

The skaven charged across the stockade, squealing and screeching. A terrible cloud of poison followed them, spewing from the censers of those in the lead. Zephacleas resisted the urge to race to meet them. Judicator retinues loosed volley after volley, at the Lord-Relictor’s command. The crackling bolts tore great holes in the mass of robed and furry bodies, but the creatures did not slow.

‘Stand fast, my brothers. They are but beasts, and we are their bane,’ Zephacleas cried, as he split the skull of a squealing rat-monk. The hooded skaven fell, but it was soon replaced by others. They flung themselves at the thin line of Astral Templars in a screeching, stinking wave of diseased flesh and filthy robes. Their weapons shattered against the sigmarite shields of the Liberators, but they seemed to take no notice of such trivialities.

‘Push them back,’ Zephacleas bellowed. He caught a skaven in the chest with a well-timed kick, crushing the life out of the filthy beast. Liberators and Decimators moved to join him as he stepped out of line. The warriors formed a ragged chain and began to fight their way forward. ‘We are ruin,’ Zephacleas said, lashing out wildly at the skaven.

‘We are destruction,’ the warriors around him responded as they fought. Their savagery matched his, and for a moment, the Lord-Celestant was a mortal again, fighting alongside his clansmen, the heat of battle rising in their veins, their foes falling before them.

‘We are death,’ Zephacleas roared, splitting a cowering rat-monk from skull to tail. ‘Death and ruin! Death to the dealers of death! Ruin to the bringers of ruin!’ His warriors bellowed in reply, their voices mingling, becoming a single fierce note of promise. As far as a war cry went, it was a simple thing, and prone to being bent out of shape when the mood struck him. He did not hold with words forged from iron and prayers set in stone. Let the Hallowed Knights or the Hammers of Sigmar march to a familiar beat, if that gave them comfort. For Zephacleas and his warriors, the song of battle was always different. Yet it served its purpose as well as any hammer or blade.

And at the sound of it, the skaven at last broke. The bloodied remains of the horde streamed away in panic, biting and clawing at one another in their haste to escape. Zephacleas was tempted to pursue them, but he restrained himself. The man he had been would not have hesitated, but that man was dead, and there was more to their mission here than simple slaughter. He raised his sword, signalling for his warriors to fall back and reform their lines.

As Thetaleas and his Decimators moved forward to tear apart the rear wall of the stockade, Zephacleas turned to his Lord-Relictor. ‘Once the stockade is down, we’ll continue the advance along the dorsal thoroughfare. We should reach the Dorsal Barbicans by nightfall.’ He gestured to the distant ridge of ramparts. Streaks of oily green light rose from its length and fell into the city as they watched.

The catapults of the skaven had been firing at those sections of the Crawling City still in the hands of its original occupants, spreading a miasma of corruption and sickness through the streets. Whether the intent was wholesale slaughter or merely to drive the sickened and panic-stricken mortals into the claws of the roaming bands of rat-monks, Zephacleas didn’t know. Whatever the reason, the battery of verminous war engines had to be silenced if they were to free Shu’gohl from the skaven.

‘We’d stand a better chance if you didn’t insist on hurling yourself into the thick of the fray at every opportunity. If you should fall…’ Seker began.

‘I would be reforged anew, and you would lead the Beast-bane in my stead in the meantime,’ Zephacleas said, bluntly. Despite his bravado, the thought was not a pleasant one. Zephacleas had already endured the Reforging. He’d lost his mortality, his memory, and perhaps more besides. What else might he lose, were he forced to endure it again? He thrust the thought aside. ‘Warriors fall in battle, Gravewalker. You know that as well as I. I will not fear the inevitable,’ he said.

‘I do not ask for fear, Lord-Celestant. Merely restraint.’

‘Restraint?’ Zephacleas growled.

‘Some, yes. A modicum of caution, even,’ Seker said, mildly. He turned. ‘The stockades are down, Lord-Celestant. Shall we advance?’

‘Yes,’ Zephacleas said. He spun his hammer in a tight circle. ‘I have the sudden urge to hit something.’

Chapter Two

The Coming of the Star-Devils

Vretch hummed to himself as he made the preparations for his journey. Stacks of tomes, scrolls and parchments, many now weighed down with mould or warped by the wet heat of the pox-cauldrons bubbling away throughout his chamber at the top of the Setaen Palisades, awaited his inspection. Most, if not all, had been smuggled from the Libraria Vurmis by Squeelch – loyal, craven, untrustworthy Squeelch – or captured by his own forces when many of the library’s man-thing guardians had fled towards Shu’gohl’s head. They’d fled right into his clutches.

‘Sought to keep them out of Kruk’s hands, good plan, yes-yes, smart plan,’ he chittered, glancing up at the rusty gibbets which hung from the roof of the chamber. ‘Useful man-things, so useful.’ Things that had once been human crouched or slumped within them, their abscess-covered bodies twitching fitfully as what he’d planted within them grew agitated. Soon, those abscesses would ripen and burst, and his greatest weapons would be unleashed on whichever foe happened to be nearby. He scrubbed his muzzle in satisfaction.

‘Very useful, yes,’ he muttered. The man-things had shown an almost skaven-like cunning and foresight in guarding their knowledge – the most valuable bits of it anyway. The moment Kruk had first set his clumsy claw on the steps of the Libraria Vurmis, they had been scurrying in the opposite direction, fleeing through the Scar-roads – hollows of scar tissue, running beneath the worm’s hide, hidden from the eyes of all but those who knew where to look. They’d fled through those secret tunnels and right into Vretch’s claws, as his forces pushed from the opposite end of the worm. Even better, they’d brought the heart of the library with them: the most ancient texts, crumbling scrolls scoured by peddlers and explorers from the distant shores of the Hollow Sea and the now-lost Citadel of the Midnight Sun.

But those were as nothing next to the true treasure – the Mappo Vurmio, the Map of the Worm. Vretch picked up the ancient cartographical volume and ran his claw over it, chittering in delight. Drawn on hairs cut from the setae of the worm that were woven, pressed and dyed, and protected by a cover made from two of the great beast’s scales, the Mappo Vurmio showed the most direct route to Olgu’gohl, the Squirming Sea, within the belly of the worm. What’s more, it showed the way to what Vretch believed to be the source of the strange pestilence he’d come in search of. Somewhere, deep in the worm’s gut, lay one of the missing Libers Pestilent.

The Clans Pestilens, including Morbidus and Festerlingus, had been searching for the Libers Pestilent and the Great Plagues inscribed within them since time immemorial. Seven had been found, but six yet remained, including the one Vretch believed to be hidden somewhere in the Crawling City – which one it was, he didn’t know, but he desired it all the same.

Each of these mighty tomes contained the secrets of one of the Great Plagues – its ingredients, its effects and the ways and means of its brewing. Wars had been fought over them, and he who possessed all of them would become the vessel by which all non-skaven life would be eradicated from the realms, and all of creation given over into the claws of the Great Witherer. Vretch was determined to be that vessel. Or, at the very least, close behind that vessel, ready to enjoy the benefits of such proximity. Unfortunately, that would never be, if Kruk got to it first.

‘But he will not-never! All mine, all mine,’ he hissed, clutching the map to his scrawny chest. ‘Kruk is nothing, a fool, yes, a blind runt, yes-yes!’ He spun in a circle, lifting the book over his cowled head as he danced about in manic glee. ‘Soon, Vretch shall be the Plague-master and Kruk shall be dead-dead-dead.’

He slowed as he realised his assistants were watching him. He snatched the book to his chest and hissed at them. ‘What are you looking at? Prepare my poxes for the journey. Hurry-quick!’ The plague monks scurried to obey, several of them nearly colliding in the process. Vretch watched them for a moment, tail lashing, before turning back to his collection.

He would need to take some, but could not take them all. Not all, no, but many. He would need them when they reached Olgu’gohl. There were secret places and strange things, in the deeps. Vretch had the uncomfortable suspicion that a skaven could spend years scurrying through the stomach of Shu’gohl, and never find what he was looking for. Still hugging the Mappo Vurmio to his chest, Vretch began to separate the rest of his hoard.

The piles slid and toppled, filling the air with loose sheets of parchment, as Shu’gohl shuddered suddenly. Vretch’s cauldrons wobbled on their tripods, and bilious liquids slopped to the floor, scalding several of his assistants. The gibbets above clattered and twisted in their chains, and the insensate things within them moaned sorrowfully. Vretch cursed and snatched up an armful of books, trying to salvage them from the pox-froth spilling across the floor. The liquid was a dilution of the original pestilence which had brought him to the Crawling City. It had taken him days – and hundreds of man-things – to refine it into something close to the potency of the original pox. ‘Skirk, Putrix! Save the books, fools,’ he squealed.

Two of the plague monks flung themselves between the steaming pestilence-broth and the books. They rolled about in it, soaking it up with their fur and grimy robes. Skirk sat up with a shriek, his flesh melting from his crooked bones. Putrix clawed at the floor, squealing in agony as great boils the size of a skull rose on his flesh and burst, disgorging thousands of squirming worms. The worms melted away as quickly as they’d come, and the two plague monks slumped, rotting quietly, their bodies forming a natural bulwark between broth and books. Vretch peered over them and gestured airily. ‘Clean it up, quick-quick,’ he said to his other attendants. ‘We might be able to get some use out of it yet.’

‘Faster-faster, quick-quick,’ Kruk shrilled, exhorting his followers to greater speed as the Congregation of Fumes flowed squealing and chittering out of the anterior gates of the Dorsal Barbican. He bounded ahead of them, stopping only when they lagged too far behind. The laity of the congregation were made up of plague monks culled from a dozen lesser clans. They sought his patronage and the protection of his mighty procession. Many were willing to die for Kruk and the rest were, at the very least, willing to kill for him.

At their head, and just behind him, came the Reeking Choir, his plague censer bearers, those skaven most devoted to the Effluvial Gospels and to him personally. They swept their great, spike-tipped censers in wide arcs, filling the air with a toxic miasma that inflamed the senses and filled the mouth with froth. They were led by a boil-covered, skull-faced creature named Skug, whose twisted frame was bloated with watery blisters and lesions that wept an ochre pus. Skug’s muzzle had rotted to the bone, but he felt no pain, thanks to the blessed smoke of the many censers which hung from the chains draping his body.

Kruk inhaled a lungful of Skug’s smoke as he burst into a scurry, letting its putrid aroma fill him. His mind swam with images of disease, corruption and death – all of the beauty of the world-to-come. That was the true way of it, the best and most glorious way to worship at the cloven hooves of the most gaseous Great Corruptor. The Horned Rat was the source of and the spewer forth of the Grand Effluvium, those great gastric gases which would sweep over the Mortal Realms and strangle the breath from the unworthy.

And Kruk would be the Archfumigant, the Spreader of Gaseous Blessings, who would squat at the right talon of the Horned Rat for all eternity. The plague priest sucked in another mouthful of smoke, and felt the growing ache in his claws fade. From behind him came the clangour of plague-bells as his followers rang out the call to war.

Soon, every choir, congregation and clawband on the anterior side of the barbicans would follow the ringing of those bells and join him. They would come at his call, or suffer for their absence later. Those who had dared invade his territory would drown in blessed smoke and blood. So demanded Skuralanx and so Kruk would ensure.

It had been truly a sign of the Horned Rat’s favour the day he’d made the acquaintance of the verminlord. The daemon had spoken to him through Skug’s varied collection of boils and lesions, and warned him to flee the warrens beneath Putris Bog before the Stormcast Eternals arrived to lay waste to his allies in Clan Rikkit. He’d led what he could of the congregation, including many from Rikkit who’d abandoned their old loyalties for new, through the sorcerous gnawholes Skuralanx had cut in the skin of the world.

And he’d followed Skuralanx ever since, waging war at the whim of his horned patron. The Congregation of Fumes had sacked the ivory temples of Ghurok-kol, and filled the deep corridors of Iron-Bear Hold with poisonous smoke, slaying three in five of its duardin defenders. They had spread contagion and death across the Ghurlands at Skuralanx’s whispered word.

That the verminlord hadn’t saved him out of the kindness of his heart was not lost on Kruk. That too was in the Effluvial Gospels, and he bore the creature no grudge for its manipulations. After all, he had given Kruk and his congregation a purpose more glorious than any other, and now he had set them at the throats of their foes. And once this battle was done, once the foe was beaten and choking on their own blood, then Kruk could turn his attentions to his true purpose. He would find the Liber that the verminlord said was hidden here and offer it up to mighty Skuralanx, and through him, the Great Corruptor.

As if in fear, the worm-flesh beneath his foot-claws began to convulse. It was as hard as stone normally, but as the great beast trembled in pain, it became pliable and unsteady. Two of the tall setae-structures swayed into one another with a sound like grinding rock, and splinters of the iron-hard bristles rained down upon the Congregation of Fumes. Screeching skaven were crushed between the structures, but Kruk paid their panicked cries no heed.

Overhead, the storm-tossed amber skies were streaked with green, as Squeelch – loyal, fearful Squeelch – saw to the plagueclaws. Kruk was glad that he had not yet had reason to kill the other plague priest – Squeelch was useful, and his cringing was amusing. He also brewed the most magnificent poxes, capable of felling whole tribes of orruks or even a rampaging gargant at the merest whiff. Yes, Kruk would have to learn Squeelch’s secrets before he killed him.

From behind him rose a familiar squealing and creaking. Kruk stopped and turned, his good eye widening in anticipation. A heavy archway of stone, mounted on a precarious assembly of rickety wooden timbers and massive wheels, loomed above the press of his congregation. The archway acted as a frame for an enormous blazing orb of pure filth which swung on rusty chains. A coterie of plague monks, all members of the Reeking Choir, pushed the Plague Furnace forward through the crush of skaven. Some were caught beneath its wheels and pulped, still singing their praises to the Great Corruptor.

It was the war-altar of the Congregation of Fumes, a mobile pulpit from which Kruk could shriek out the blessings and the curses of the Horned Rat. The massive censer which swung from its arch had been doused in rancid warpstone and virulent concoctions and set alight. The fumes which wafted from it drove his followers into a sacred battle-fury.

Plague monks flooded out of the doorways and the side-streets between the towering structures of the city. More of them scuttled across the creaking bridges and woven net-paths which were strung between the wide tiers of the towers, following the summoning knells. Kruk began to chitter the seventh hymn of the Effluvial Gospels as he clambered aboard the creaking Plague Furnace, and Skug joined him. Soon the rest of his followers took up the chant. The sound of their screeching rose high into the air, until it seemed as if the whole world were screaming with them.

The Congregation of Fumes was racing, rapid-quick, to war.

Skuralanx crouched atop the tower of hair, claws dangling between his knees as he observed the goings-on below. Around him rose heavy barrels, meant to collect falling rain and filter it down into the tower below. Somewhere within the tower, he knew, were the fungus farms which had fed the folk of Shu’gohl and now served as breeding grounds for poisonous moulds. Idly, he dug a talon into one of the barrels and let the water spill out to rain down on the foetid tide of skaven flowing through the street below.

The verminlord watched as Kruk led his congregation away from the Dorsal Barbicans and towards the approaching Stormcast Eternals in his usual joyous fashion. To his credit, the one-eyed plague priest was always at the forefront, leading his censer bearers right into the heart of the foe. He was like an unchecked pestilence, reaping a heady toll in the Corruptor’s name.

Vretch, on the other claw, was akin to a more subtle pox, creeping along on mouse-feet. Very, very slow mouse-feet. Skuralanx hissed in momentary annoyance and glanced over his shoulder towards the Setaen Palisades. Of the two of them, he favoured Kruk, if only because the brute was easier to control. But Vretch was closer to their goal.

A good decision, to spare that one’s life, the daemon thought, as he picked at the lice in his matted mane of hair. A good decision to spare both, though for different reasons. And to pit the one against the other had been a masterstroke, worthy of even the Verminking himself. Only through conflict could victory be achieved.

Survival of the fittest. That was the one law, the true law, to which all of the children of the Horned Rat were beholden. Only through struggle could they grow in strength, only through fear of a rival could deviousness be honed to a razor’s edge. They must be strong, in order to survive what was to come. The Age of Chaos was ending. Soon, the Age of the Rat would begin. When all thirteen Great Plagues had been reclaimed, the Mortal Realms would groan in anguish. All man-things would die, no matter what god they served. They would fall and rot, never to rise again. And only the children of the Horned Rat would…

Skuralanx stiffened. The wind had turned. Shu’gohl twisted suddenly, and great clouds of dust rose up over the distant horizons of the worm’s flanks. Skuralanx hesitated, and then glanced upwards. The daemon hated the yawning emptiness of the open skies. When there was only wind on his whiskers, he felt exposed and alone, despite his divine might. There were no shadows to hide in, no defence from that which might swoop down from the wide, hungry sky. Even so, he forced himself to look. The sky above had grown dark with deep ochre storm clouds, and lightning flashed in their depths. He bared his teeth at the clouds and wondered if the man-thing god, Sigmar, was sending more warriors.

But no, this was different. He could feel it in the air. Not the storm, which was unpleasant enough, but something else. The sensation of something approaching, something vast and serpentine, slithering down the long trail of years on his tail. Daemons could not, as a rule, feel fear. Fear was for mortal beings, and Skuralanx had never been mortal. He was a facet of something greater, something mightier than any mortal being, and more cunning than any man-thing god. The Horned Rat contained squealing multitudes. And yet… and yet.

And yet, there it was. That clench of nonexistent muscles, that cold shiver racing from brain to tail, telling him to run, to flee back to the warm and the dark, away from whatever was coming. It was an ancient feeling, reverberating outward from a single moment of pain the origins of which were hidden even from Skuralanx. He thought it must be akin to what a louse might feel, when its host was struck. The part of him that was not just Skuralanx the Cunning, but was a sliver of that elemental malevolence known as the Horned Rat, squealed deep in its lair in the holes between moments. Squealing in fury and something that could only be… fear.

Fear of an old foe, come anew. Fear of a forgotten enemy, newly recalled.

The verminlord hunched forward, digging his claws into his perch, and gnashed his teeth. His tail lashed back and forth, causing his perch to sway slightly. In his mind’s eye, he saw the ragged tatters of broken days, and felt the weight of forgotten moments as scaled shapes glided through jungle shadows. He heard the hiss of a fiery rain striking the steps of squat pyramids. He felt the air grow hot, and saw the sky go dark as the moon came apart and was swallowed by a serpent made of stars and… and… and Skuralanx screeched as he tore his claws free and raised them to the sky. The sky, he thought. The sky!

Like arrows of light, they streaked down through the storm, and the curve of the worm’s back seemed to rise to meet them.

The stars were falling from the sky.

The worm-wind swept down through the setae, bringing with it the iron odour of distant lightning and the stink of open wounds. Shu’gohl shuddered, and stones cracked and shifted. A tiered building tore away from a jutting hair and smashed down across the wide street, filling the air with dust and splinters of stone. The great worm groaned in agony and the air rang with the sound of the beast’s distress.

‘Forget the skaven – this thrashing will be our death,’ Zephacleas growled, as he pressed forward through the roiling surge of dust, his bones reverberating with the echoes of Shu’gohl’s pain. He splashed through steaming rivulets of filthy water as he slashed out, killing a dust-blind skaven. There were hundreds of the creatures fleeing ahead of the advancing Astral Templars, though whether they were running from their foes, or simply trying to escape being crushed by the worm’s paroxysms Zephacleas couldn’t say. ‘This poor brute will crush us before we can save it from the vermin gnawing its innards.’

‘An ignoble death, I agree,’ Seker said. ‘Best we hurry then, eh?’ The Lord-Relictor crushed a stumbling rat-monk. The creature’s filthy hide was riddled with stone slivers and it was screeching in pain even before his hammer touched it.

‘Aye,’ Zephacleas grunted, as he stamped on a wounded skaven’s skull, killing the squalling creature instantly. ‘Care to lend a hand in that regard, Gravewalker – or would you rather watch me do it?’

‘At my Lord-Celestant’s command,’ Seker intoned. He stopped and reared back, arms spread. The air before him twisted and grew bright. Threads of lightning stretched from a central point before him, curling about the head of his hammer and swirling through the fire-wyrm skull set into his reliquary standard. The wind picked up, and the Gravewalker thrust his arms forward. Lightning snarled outward, searing the air free of dust and killing the closest skaven. But as the crackle of the celestial energies faded, the clangour of plague-bells rose to replace it.

‘I think they’re done running,’ Zephacleas growled. ‘Lord-Relictor, see to the battle-line.’

‘And you, Lord-Celestant?’

‘I go to do as I was forged to do, my friend,’ Zephacleas said, clashing runeblade against hammer. ‘I am impatient and have no wish to play the millstone. Thetaleas – to me! Duras, you as well,’ he added, gesturing to a nearby Liberator-Prime. ‘Time to hunt, Bearslayer.’

‘As you command,’ Duras said, striking his warblades together. The Liberator-Prime was almost as fierce as his Lord-Celestant, and had earned his war-name in the Borealis Mountains, after stalking a Chaos-touched crag-bear for seven days before tracking it to its lair and slaying it. Like Thetaleas, he too had been at the Gnarlwood, and learned its lessons well.

As we all did, Zephacleas thought, as he led his chosen warriors forward towards the approaching skaven. Four Warrior Chambers of Astral Templars had entered the Gnarlwood of Ghur and cleansed it, despite heavy losses. It was where the Beast-bane had earned their title, in blood and fire. There too they had learned that no shield wall, no matter how strong, could last indefinitely; that no defence was impregnable, and no foe unbreakable. And, perhaps most importantly of all, that the best defence was a good offence.

His warriors spread out around him as they ran. They would bloody the enemy before they reached the shield wall – that was the Beast-bane way. The skaven boiled into sight, flooding the street in a chittering horde, and the Stormcasts raced to meet them in a loose line. Zephacleas crushed the first with his hammer, and beheaded the second. To either side of him Thetaleas and Duras led their retinues into the thick of the foe. And as he fought, the world grew soft at the edges and one moment flowed seamlessly into the next.

Sometimes, when his choler was at its height, he thought he was elsewhere, fighting beneath amber skies against savage foes. He felt a drumbeat in his soul, and a deep and abiding sense of something lost. Those were good days, though I can but see them dimly, he thought, as his hammer smashed a leaping skaven from the air. He remembered the smell of cooking fires, and the weight of crude bronze armour. The warmth of his tents in winter, and the voices of his clan – of those closest to him.

His runeblade sung out, smashing through a fuming censer to pierce the brain of its wielder. His clan were dead now, though their descendants might yet survive somewhere on the great northern taigas of the Ghurlands. They are dead, and I am dead – but I fight on, he thought. And while I fight, they live. The thought lent him strength as he turned and drove his hammer down, crushing a frothing skaven. That was the burden of Sigmar’s chosen. Two lives, two souls, forged anew in cosmic flame and clad in star-metal.

The whistle-crack of arrows sounded, causing him to whirl. A rat-monk thudded into the dirt at his feet, three faintly glowing arrows rising from its crooked back. Zephacleas looked up and saw a winged shape swoop towards him, realmhunter’s bow raised in salute.

‘Well timed, Mantius,’ Zephacleas said, raising his hammer in a return salute. ‘Your arrows are as deadly as ever, Far-killer.’

‘As is my duty, Lord-Celestant. Besides, the Gravewalker would be annoyed if you fell so ignobly to such vermin,’ the Knight-Venator called down.

Clad in amethyst and gold, with a crest of purest white rising above his ornate war-helm, the Far-killer was amongst the most lethal of the Beast-bane’s warriors. His arrows had helped to fell the Black Bull of Nordrath and plucked out the single eye of the tyrannical Butcher-king. Where he flew, death followed.

‘As would I, sky-hunter,’ Zephacleas said. He gestured with his sword. ‘Take your retinues high, my friend – and rain death and ruin on our foes.’

‘As you command,’ Mantius said. His great, crackling wings snapped, and he banked left. He rose upwards a moment later, joined by several retinues of Prosecutors. The winged Stormcasts fell smoothly into position behind the Knight-Venator, flying with a precision that did them credit. It served them well a moment later, as the sky was suddenly filled with a barrage of rancid filth.

‘Take cover,’ Zephacleas bellowed. The Stormcast Eternals were in range of the deadly war engines now, if only just. And the skaven appeared to be wasting no time in taking advantage of that fact. A globule of the poisonous slop splashed down, spraying corrosive fluid over the Stormcasts. One of Duras’ Liberators stumbled, choking, and dropped his weapons to claw at his helm. The warrior fell to his knees and toppled forward, his body already vanishing in a slash of azure lightning. Another joined him, and another. ‘Back! All of you, get back!’ Zephacleas shouted.

Thetaleas and the others retreated, giving ground before the sickening impacts. Zephacleas looked up and signalled to the Prosecutors. The winged Stormcasts swept down and hurled their celestial hammers with pinpoint accuracy, creating a wall of explosions between their fellows and the tide of filth which spread towards them.

Zephacleas and the rest of the vanguard retreated. Skaven bearing whirling censers emerged from the smoke, chittering frenziedly as they pursued the Stormcasts. Glowing arrows knocked several of them sprawling and celestial hammers crushed the rest as Mantius and his Prosecutors sped low over the enemy ranks.

‘Far-killer – take out those catapults if you can,’ Zephacleas shouted, as the Stormcast shield wall split to allow the vanguard to retreat. The sigmarite shields slammed back together with a ringing crash as the first of the skaven reached them. High above, Mantius saluted and swooped upwards.

Zephacleas turned his attentions back to the battle at hand, confident that the Knight-Venator would accomplish his task. Skaven were spilling out of the setae towers, scrambling down the swaying structures towards the battle unfolding below. ‘Thetaleas, bolster the left flank,’ he commanded. ‘Duras, take the right – we must do this the slow way.’

As his warriors hastened to obey, Zephacleas scanned the area – crude barricades and filth-pits covered the street, signs of skaven habitation. The mortal inhabitants of the city had long since abandoned these ways to the invaders, leaving behind only mouldering corpses dangling in curse-gibbets or heaped in the filth-pits to rot and become the fertile soil for new plagues and poxes.

The streets of the Crawling City changed shape constantly as the worm moved, making the towers and walls on its back shift position, forcing the Stormcast Eternals to rely on their winged brethren to guide them. The only unchanging routes were those which stretched between the uppermost tiers of the tallest setae. Woven from worm-hairs and sealed with ichor, they bent and swayed with the movements of the worm.

Unfortunately, the setae were also full of skaven. They had turned most of the natural structures into stinking warrens, burrowing down deep through them into the worm’s body. Shu’gohl would be dead and the city in ruins by the time the Astral Templars cleared them. But if they could silence the catapults and take the Dorsal Barbicans, they might be able to prevent one of those eventualities at least.

Then we’ll burn their stinking warrens clean, as we did in the Ghurdish Heights, he thought, with savage satisfaction.

The worm heaved, and skaven rained down, tumbling from the swaying towers. Those on the ground didn’t seem unduly bothered, and they pressed on, squealing blasphemous chants. Besides the sheer number of their foe, the Stormcast shield wall was hemmed in by the plague-clouds launched from the verminous catapults. Trying to cut off possible avenues of retreat, Zephacleas thought, watching as the right flank of the shield wall shifted slightly to avoid the breeze-borne clouds of contagion which spread slowly across the battlefield.

Even worse was the creaking war engine which loomed over the centre of the skaven horde, expelling a foetid murk from the massive censer swinging from its arch. He’d seen similar war-machines during the battle for the Gates of Dawn, and in the plague-burrows of the Ghurdish Heights. The smoke from its censer drove skaven into a frenzy, but could melt the flesh from a warrior’s bones. A skaven rat-priest stood atop the pulpit mounted on the front, shrieking in what might have been fury.

Swirling clouds of flies filled the air, flowing towards the Stormcasts as the rat-priest gestured. As the solid wave of insects swept over the shield wall, they clustered at the eye and mouth slits of the Liberators’ helms, smothering their heads and blinding them. Warriors staggered and the line began to come apart. They recovered almost instantly, but the skaven took full advantage of the momentary lapse. Skaven censer bearers lurched forward, shoving aside the other rat-monks in their haste to reach the shield wall.

A smoking censer crashed down, knocking a Liberator from his feet. It was a massive sphere of black iron, almost as large as the skaven which wielded it. The creature, clad in rotting robes, slammed a taloned paw down on the shield of the fallen Stormcast, pinning the warrior in place as it swung its weapon up for a second blow.

Zephacleas charged towards it, bulling aside several smaller vermin. He slammed into the skaven and sent it sprawling. More of its censer-wielding brethren swung at him, and the fuming spheres struck his armour with hollow clangs. The air became thick and foul, and he coughed, trying to clear his lungs even as he whirled his sigmarite war-cloak out. The runic enchantment woven into the cloak activated, and dozens of small hammers hurtled into the packed ranks of the enemy, killing many of the ratkin and driving the rest back.

‘On your feet, Arcos,’ Zephacleas said, as he parried the smoking censer with a blow from his hammer. As the Liberator clambered upright, Zephacleas defended him from the skaven. With hammer and blade he drove them back again, and again they hurled themselves forward, yellow froth dripping from their scabrous muzzles. ‘Get in line – force them back, brothers, force them back,’ he said.

Zephacleas glanced around, ‘Gravewalker! We are on the verge of being overwhelmed. We need to drive these beasts back,’ he called, as the shield wall began to reform itself with a crash of metal.

‘Aye, my Lord-Celestant,’ the Lord-Relictor said, bringing the sigmarite ferrule of his staff down on a skaven’s skull. He set his staff and began to chant, his sonorous voice echoing out above the clamour of battle. The air began to smell of hot iron, and the fire-wyrm skull on Seker’s staff glowed with a sapphire light.

Before his prayer could reach its crescendo, the sky flared a deep cobalt.

‘I didn’t know you could do that,’ Zephacleas said, as the light grew more intense. It was not painful to look upon, though the skaven didn’t seem to agree. They edged back, screeching and chittering in a growing frenzy. Even the clangour of their bells had fallen silent.

‘It is not me,’ Seker said, in a hushed voice. ‘It is the light of Azyr. The breath of the very stars themselves. But it does not burn here by Sigmar’s will – something else invokes it.’ The Lord-Relictor sounded… shaken, as if he found it hard to comprehend what was happening.

‘Whatever it is, I’m not letting this opportunity pass us by. Beast-bane, forward–’ Zephacleas began, but Seker stopped him.

‘No, look,’ the Lord-Relictor said, extending his staff towards the light.

It swelled, growing brighter by the moment. Scores of skaven were incinerated by the celestial radiance, and the rest crowded back from it. Their flesh steamed and burned as they fought with one another to escape the light. It was as if some force had plucked a star from the firmament and dropped it onto the Crawling City. Shu’gohl roared, and the ground shook as the worm reared, casting the shadow of its head across the lower sections of the city. The light filled the streets, rising above the tallest tower before fading to reveal something that was neither Stormcast nor skaven.

‘Sigmar’s light – it is one of the Starmasters,’ Seker said, as the blue haze faded and the thing was revealed fully. ‘The seraphon have come.’

‘That’s a seraphon?’ Zephacleas said, staring at the new arrival. Its massive frame was squat and vaguely batrachian in appearance. It sat hunched atop a graven throne which was clustered with thick vines and brightly hued blossoms unlike any he’d ever seen before. The throne hovered above the street, surrounded by the same flickering azure radiance which illuminated its occupant. Heavy-lidded, half-shut eyes flickered, and a wide mouth opened in what might have been a sigh. A long arm rose and gestured. The air reverberated with a forceful silence. The dust stirred, and in the skies above, heretofore unseen stars flickered strangely.

Something crawled up the back of the throne and perched at its summit. It wore thin, pale robes and a cloak of feathers over its scaly shape, and its narrow skull was topped by a vibrant crest. It clutched a golden staff in its claws, and as Zephacleas watched, it extended the staff towards the skaven. The occupant of the throne gestured lazily, and the air before it was suddenly suffused with radiance. A spiralling nimbus of light grew and spread, and the air trembled with the sound of bestial roars and hisses.

A moment later, rank upon rank of reptilian warriors emerged from the glowing nimbus and moved towards the skaven. They advanced shoulder to shoulder, bearing exotic weapons and armour which gleamed with a fiery radiance. Even as they tore into the skaven, their ranks split to disgorge a pack of monstrous reptiles ridden by saurian warriors. At the head of these scaly riders was an even larger monstrosity, such as Zephacleas had never seen save in half-formed memories of deep jungle crevasses and bellowing shapes which hunted for man and beast alike. The great beast bore another of the scaled seraphon on its back and both rider and mount roared in fury as they tore through the skaven like a sword through flesh.

Taken aback by the sudden appearance of this new threat, the skaven could muster no defence. Their horde crumbled in on itself, as the more fanatical fought and the more prudent attempted to flee. From atop the war engine, the skaven priest chittered imprecations at its followers, but to no avail.

Zephacleas clashed his weapons together. ‘They’re distracted. Gravewalker, keep herding them towards the newcomers – if the seraphon want to slaughter vermin, let’s oblige them. Beast-bane, forward!’ he said, raising his sword and signalling the shield wall to advance. The Lord-Relictor shouted something, but Zephacleas was already moving.

The Astral Templars forced the confused skaven back, herding them towards the advancing seraphon. ‘Thetaleas, with me,’ Zephacleas said, calling out to the Decimator-Prime. ‘I intend to turn that war engine of theirs into kindling.’

Alongside the Decimators, Zephacleas began to carve himself a path towards the skaven catapult. But as they drew near, it seemed as if others had the same idea. At the urging of its scaly rider, the monstrous reptile broke into a ground-shaking run, followed by the rest of the mounted seraphon. The great beast rammed the war engine, knocking it over. The machine crashed down on its side, crushing any skaven too slow to get out of the way and spilling the priest and its bodyguards to the ground.

The rat-priest was on its feet in a moment, whirling to face the first of the smaller saurian knights as its mount scrambled over the fallen war engine. A crackling burst of sickly green energy erupted from the rat-priest’s claw. Great sores opened all over the scaly forms of both rider and mount. Jaws gaped in a silent shriek and a shimmering light burst from yawning wounds, as both vanished in a flare of starlight.

The rat-priest chittered and swung its claw towards another of the seraphon. Zephacleas charged forward, knocking the creature’s guards sprawling. As it turned towards him, its single eye widening, his runeblade swept down, removing its glowing claw. It screeched in agony and staggered back amongst its fellows, where the Lord-Celestant lost sight of it. The other rat-monks surged backwards in a wave of foulness, carrying their leader with them.

The saurian riders moved to pursue them, their scales glittering like starlight. Zephacleas and the others held their ground as the seraphon swept past them in silence. He killed a foam-jawed skaven and then was left with nothing to do but watch as the reptilian beings drove the skaven back or butchered them where they stood. The ratkin retreated, scurrying down side-streets and up the sides of the towering setae, vanishing almost as quickly as they’d arrived. The great reptile crouched over the remains of the war engine, roaring in triumph.

‘Zephacleas–’ Seker began, as he joined Zephacleas. Steam rose from the Lord-Relictor’s armour, and Zephacleas could smell the iron tang of celestial lightning.

The Lord-Celestant shook his head, still watching the carnosaur and its rider. The saurian warrior was a battle-scarred creature clad in golden armour. It clutched a spear in one talon and bore a golden gauntlet on the other.

‘We need to reform the lines, before they finish with the vermin. I don’t want to be caught out in the open, if they decide to turn on us after.’

‘They won’t,’ the Lord-Relictor said, softly.

‘How do you know?’

‘The Moon Monks of Hysh say that they are the children of Dracothion, spawned by his breath in the Age of Myth. They say that the Great Drake’s hatred of Chaos burns like a star in the heart of each seraphon,’ Seker said.

‘They say – don’t they also say that they usually vanish, when the battle’s been won?’ Zephacleas asked, watching the ranks of scaled warriors move with enviable meticulousness. Stormcast Eternals were drilled past the point of perfection, but the seraphon arrayed themselves with inhuman precision, as if they were not individual creatures at all, but rather the components of some greater pattern that was beyond human comprehension.

‘Indeed. Which implies that the battle has not yet been won,’ Seker said, in reply.

The ranks of the seraphon stood inhumanly still, facing the Stormcast line. Silence fell, broken only by the cry of distant birds and the dull grinding pulse of Shu’gohl’s progress across the steppes. Zephacleas shook his head. ‘What are they waiting for?’

‘Us,’ the Lord-Relictor said. ‘I believe – I feel – that they wish to speak.’

‘Have they ever done that before?’ he asked.

‘Not to my knowledge.’

‘Oh,’ Zephacleas said. ‘I’m not exactly one for diplomacy, Gravewalker.’

‘Speak to them as you spoke to the sylvaneth, in the Jade Kingdoms,’ the Lord-Relictor murmured. ‘Someone must, and you are here. We are here. We are Sigmar’s voice, raised in greeting, and his hand, extended in friendship.’

‘Yes,’ Zephacleas said, doubtfully. ‘Let us hope they don’t bite it off.’ He stepped forward, weapons held low and away from his body. He left the shield wall behind and moved to meet the seraphon as they approached. The Lord-Relictor was right. This was as much their duty as the breaking of chains and the felling of tyrants. Besides, the creatures were between the Stormcasts and the Dorsal Barbicans; best to find out now whether they were allies or obstacles. As he drew close, he could sense the celestial energies radiating from the creatures. It unsettled him in a way he couldn’t explain.

Zephacleas stopped and raised his hammer. ‘In the name of Sigmar, and the Realm Celestial, I bid thee greetings…’

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Fyreslayers first published in 2016.
Skaven Pestilens first published in 2016.
Sylvaneth first published in 2016.
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