Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

He knew, with every fibre of his keen and matchless intellect, that the forgotten clan of Geistmaw had discovered the secret of one of the Great Plagues and brewed it, only to be subsumed by the worm before they could unleash it. How long must it have taken for the poisonous atmosphere of the lost warren to spread through Shu’gohl’s stomach-sea? A hundred years? A thousand? Only to be expelled at last in the worm’s wake, to poison the land where it squirmed. Such was the potency of the Great Plagues that they remained dangerous even centuries after their brewing.

He traced a page with his claw, following the route those long-dead mapmakers had taken. Most of what the worm ate passed through its digestive tract. But some things became lodged in the flows and eddies of Olgu’gohl, there to become a permanent fixture of this ill-lit realm. The Geistmaw warren was one such thing. Once, it had occupied the remains of a man-thing fortress of the same name; now both fortress and warren hung suspended from the worm’s stomach-lining over a natural eddy in the digestive fluid.

It would not be easy to reach, but reach it he would. He was too close to fail now. He peered over the lip of the precipice, down into the digestive waters below. He turned back to his followers and raised his staff. ‘Hurry,’ he snapped. ‘Lower the raft-platforms, quick-quick.’

His procession devolved into a flurry of activity as skaven dragged the rafts forward. The wide, scoop-shaped platforms had been made from ichor-hardened setae and scale prised from the worm’s back. They would resist the acidic waters of the Squirming Sea, as would the oars woven from similarly hardened setae-strands — or so his assistants swore. The oar-skaven were clad in thick, heavy robes designed to resist even the most virulent pox-brews, and wore goggles and cowls to protect their faces. Vretch had his own goggles and congratulated himself for thinking of them — the stinging steam rising from the gut-juices of Shu’gohl would have blinded even one as inured to pain as himself.

His followers dragged the rafts to the edge as others clambered down the fatty cliff below to create a living chain by which the rafts could be passed from one set of claws to the next. The rafts were lowered one after another without incident, and sat waiting in the bubbling stream below. Then, and only then, were Vretch’s books and the Conglomeration lowered to occupy the largest of the rafts. His pox-cauldrons and plague-urns were scattered about the rest — their contents would smoke and spew, keeping any potential predators at bay. The Horned Rat alone knew what sort of monstrosities lurked in Shu’gohl’s gullet.

But soon, none of that would matter. Soon, nothing would be able to stop him. Vretch would rise, and the Mortal Realms would fall.

Tokl watched as the vermin lowered themselves into the bubbling river. When he was certain they’d left no watchers behind, he dropped from the wall. The rest of his cohort did the same, moving in perfect unison. Nimble and clever, the band of chameleon skinks had pursued the skaven down the pulsing length of the fleshy shaft, and they would pursue them further still, until the Great Lord Kurkori commanded otherwise.

Such was their function. Tokl and his warriors were the unseen instruments of the slann’s will, the forgotten moments of the Great Dream. Their scales mimicked the hue of their surroundings as they stalked their prey, and the whisper of their celestite blowpipes was all but inaudible. They existed within the shadows, where the light of Azyr did not always reach, invisible, at times, even to the eyes of their fellow seraphon. But so too were they invisible to the servants of the Dark Gods. They were the Unseen Correctors, and they set broken dreams to rights at their master’s command.

Tokl licked his bulging eyes, trying to attune them to the humid interior of the worm. The lingering traces of warp-smoke stung him, and he longed for the open air. His cohort chirped in alarm as the worm convulsed and the shaft shuddered about them. He heard the panicked squeals of the skaven as they fought to keep their rafts from turning over.

He did not know why the vermin had come down here, and it was not his function to ask. It did not matter. The vermin hunted, and they would be hunted in their turn.

The worm shuddered again. The great creature was in agony. Monstrous as it was, it deserved better than to be eaten away from the inside out by the scuttling rat-vermin. But Great Lord Kurkori had decreed that such would not happen here, and Tokl and his cohort would do their part to see that it didn’t.

Tokl chirped and gestured. ‘Move. Swift. Silent,’ he chirped. They would scale the walls of the great worm’s intestine and hide among its folds and creases as they shadowed the vermin.

‘Attack?’ one of the others asked, head cocked.