Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

He looked down at the skink. ‘Then let us ensure that it is indeed a good dream, my friend. I am Zephacleas, Lord-Celestant of the Beast-bane, servant of Sigmar,’ he said.

The skink stared up at him. It blinked, and said nothing. Then, ‘Takatakk. I am Takatakk. Starpriest to the Dreaming Constellation, servant of Kurkori.’ It looked up at him, expression inhuman and unreadable. ‘We have come to fight beside you, dream-of-Sigmar.’

CHAPTER FOUR Into the Depths

Vretch strode down through the pleasingly noxious murk of the Gut-shaft. The incline was raw and infected. It sloshed pleasantly beneath his claws as he used his staff to test the route ahead. The shaft was a steep slope of shuddering meat, shot through with webs of veins and throbbing runnels full of what passed for the worm’s blood. Ichor dripped from the walls and ceiling of the shaft, and curtains of torn fat and muscle flapped wetly in the breeze which had followed the skaven down.

It was the most comfortable he’d felt since he’d first led his procession up through the gnawholes and onto the surface of the worm. The fleshy tunnel reminded him of the cramped and crooked corridors of Blight City, full of the comforting smells of rot and skaven — if somewhat more perilous, on the whole.

More than once since he’d begun his expedition, the scoured walls of the worm’s pores had expanded to envelop an unwary plague monk. Shu’gohl’s thrashing had grown worse since they’d started their descent. He wondered whether it had anything to do with the stink of pox-sludge which drifted from the dorsal area of the city.

Kruk was up to something. Nothing intelligent, obviously. No, Kruk was a fool and prone to foolish things. Vretch was tempted to bite his own tail in frustration at the other plague priest’s disagreeable antics. Even at a remove, occupied by battle with the storm-things and the star-devils, his rival was causing him difficulties. Then, it had always been that way.

Kruk was a natural disaster looking for a place to happen. If Squeelch didn’t act soon to put Kruk out of his misery, Kruk might kill the worm before Vretch had found what he was looking for, and that could prove disastrous. Who knew how Shu’gohl’s death might affect its internal regions? Things could shift or dissolve, carrying the object of his quest further out of reach. And that would be disastrous — Skuralanx might even blame Vretch for the delay, and punish him accordingly. He shuddered.

As he did so, he caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye. A flickering shadow. He glanced back, but saw only the shadows of his followers, cast by the light of the warpstone torches they carried. Unconsciously, he hugged the Mappo Vurmio to his chest. A trick of the light, he thought.

Despite the worm’s convulsions, they reached the bottom of the shaft with little real difficulty, and most of his procession intact. It wasn’t that far, through the layers of flesh and muscle. The shaft flowered into a wide lump of fatty tissue, which jutted over what he believed to be Shu’gohl’s intestinal tract.

A foul wind rose up out of the dark and washed over him, carrying with it, the sound of… squirming. He smelled ichor and something else, something bilious and musky all at once. ‘Quick-hurl a torch, fast-fast,’ he said. One of his plague monks scuttled forward and threw a warpstone torch into the darkness, briefly illuminating the immensity below.

In that glimpse, Vretch saw that the Squirming Sea was well-named. It was a narrow sea of digestive juices running lengthwise along the worm’s body, broken at points by steaming reefs composed of uncountable squirming worms — whether these were parasites, or offspring, Vretch couldn’t say. In the distance, he could just make out the shapes of broken spires and crumbled towers, rising from the bubbling waters. It was said that whole man-thing fortresses had been swallowed by Shu’gohl on its eternal crawling. And more than just fortresses — encampments of orruks and even the warrens of skaven had been drawn into the worm’s belly.

It was one of the latter he had come to find: the lost warren of Geistmaw. It was an innocuous little den, inhabited by a clan of old. They had perished to a skaven, but had not been forgotten. He opened the Mappo Vurmio and flipped through its stiff pages. Those ancient cartographers had discovered the remains of the warren and its unfortunate inhabitants. And after they had mapped it, they had died one by one from a strange sickness — a sickness, according to their peculiar man-thing scratching, much like that which had drawn him here in the first place. Vretch licked his snout in anticipation.