Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

‘I am near-close, yes-yes, Mightiest of Mightiness,’ he chittered. His heart thudded in his chest, and his ears echoed with the dull scrape of scales over stone. He fought against the urge to squirt the musk of fear. From the smell, his followers had not been victorious in that regard. A number of plague monks had sought safety on the struts and framework of the shafts, while others stared at the Conglomeration, frozen in huddled masses.

‘Near? Then where is my pox, Vretch?’ Skuralanx growled. ‘Do you hear the thunder? Do you hear the serpent’s hiss? They are coming, Vretch — only the pox can stop them. Where is it? Where?’

‘O— Olgu’gohl, the Squirming Sea, O savage scurrying one,’ Vretch squealed. He sank to his haunches and lifted his head, instinctively baring his throat to his master. ‘It is below — far below! Through the Gut-shafts, most insidious one,’ Vretch chittered in what he hoped was a placatory fashion. ‘They will take me — take us! Us! — to that which we seek. I go now, below.’

‘Hrrryes, below,’ Skuralanx grunted. The quivering bulk grew still, but the hell-spark eyes remained fixed. ‘Run, Vretch. Scurry-fast, quick-quick… the old serpent is on your trail, looking to snap you up. Only once all of the Great Plagues are gathered can the Horned Rat hurl his other aspects aside and become the Great Witherer Ascendant. Only then can he bite through the throat of the old serpent, and silence its hisses for good. And Skuralanx shall be the one who brings that final victory about,’ Skuralanx hissed. ‘Find me that Liber, Vretch.’

The Conglomeration fell silent, and its gazes again became dull. It squirmed and gibbered as Vretch gestured for his assistants to roll it back onto its palanquin.

‘Yes,’ Vretch muttered. ‘But not Skuralanx, no-no. Only Vretch.’ He warily jabbed the insensate bulk and then looked around at the hunched and cowering shapes of his followers. ‘Well? Pick it up, you fools. We have wasted enough time! The Squirming Sea awaits!’

The Dorsal Barbicans were a hive of activity. Skaven ran to and fro, congregations jostling for space behind the stone ramparts or within the towers. At the highest point of the worm-spanning fortress, the Archfumigant of the Congregation of Fumes was being treated for his sadly non-fatal injuries. Squeelch watched as Kruk stripped the filthy bandage from his maimed limb. A pale steam rose from the wound — the mark of the enemy’s magic. It burned the flesh free of blessed diseases. Squeelch’s lice-ridden flesh crawled at the thought. He had worked very hard on his collection of skin diseases. He stepped back, putting another claw’s length between himself and Kruk.

‘Star-devils,’ Kruk snapped, his good eye wide with fury. ‘We were betrayed! Betrayed!’

Squeelch refrained from asking the obvious question. Instead, he nodded jerkily. ‘Yes-yes. But what now, O Hardy Scion of the Horned Rat?’

‘Nowww?’ Kruk growled. ‘Now, you summon a warpflame, fool-fool!’ The plague priest reached out with his good claw and caught a handful of Squeelch’s robes. ‘Quick-quick, or I will eat your heart.’

He extended his bloody stump. Squeelch pulled himself free and gestured over the chunk of warpstone lashed to the top of his staff. The green stone began to glow with a sickly light, and he felt the ticks in his ears grow agitated in response. An oily flame blossomed from the facets of the warpstone and he held it out.

Kruk thrust his ruined claw into the flames and hissed in mingled pain and fury. ‘Get me the censer, quick-fast,’ he snarled, as he withdrew the smouldering stump. Skug lurched forward, holding a makeshift gauntlet. It slid over Kruk’s stump with a click, as the warpstone-infused nails within immediately pierced the charred flesh and spread like cancerous roots. Kruk shrieked in pain and bashed a nearby censer bearer on the skull with his new limb, killing the unlucky skaven instantly. Squeelch flinched, glad that it wasn’t him. Skug tittered phlegmatically and shook his chains.

Squeelch hated the censer bearer with a passion. The leader of the Reeking Choir was as foul a watch-dog as Kruk could hope for. He was certain Skug harboured his own schemes and desires, but for now, the boil-encrusted brute seemed content to ward Kruk against any harm that might befall him, whether from without or within. Squeelch looked away from the operation, and studied the defences he’d laboured so long over.

The Dorsal Barbicans were heavily manned. The bulk of the congregation’s laity now guarded the walls, clutching their weapons in anticipation of the confrontation to come. Censer bearers from the Reeking Choir moved among them, filling the air with pungent smoke and wailing out the thirty-nine Bubonic Hymns. Some few stragglers scurried across the setae bridges from the outer towers, seeking shelter within the barbicans.