Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

Zephacleas followed his gesture and wrenched one of the shattered bookshelves up, revealing a broken shape beneath. The mortal was clad in the tattered remnants of battered scale armour and yellowish robes. His face was a mass of bruises and infected wounds marked his arm and bare flesh. His eyes were gone, leaving behind only ruined, raw sockets. Zephacleas tossed the rest of the shelves aside but hesitated. The mortal was dying. His chest heaved as he sucked in a rattling breath. Was I this fragile, once, he thought?

‘Leave him where he is,’ the Lord-Relictor murmured. ‘His spirit will not linger long and there is no reason to cause him any further agony by moving him.’

Zephacleas examined the dying man. He was dressed in the same fashion as the corpses strewn about the library. The mortal gazed sightlessly up at him. Broken fingers thumped uselessly against his sigmarite as the dying man reached for him. ‘W-we held the Libraria until— until the last,’ the mortal wheezed. ‘C-could hold it n-no longer. T-too many of them. Came in their thousands, burrowing up through the g-great worm’s flesh…’ He began to cough, and Zephacleas knelt. The mortal’s ruined hand passed across the contours of his war-helm. ‘S-Sigmar,’ the dying man hissed. ‘We… we waited for you to come… we prayed… we…’ A spasm ran through him.

Zephacleas wanted to speak, to deliver words of comfort, but none came to mind. What was there to say? Is this how it was to be? Did they exist only to avenge those already fallen? He pushed the thought aside, and focused on the matter at hand. ‘Where did they go? Where have the skaven fled?’ he murmured.

‘Th-through the Scar-roads,’ the man muttered. ‘O-only we knew of those roads. The daemon t-told them to… the daemon…’ He caught hold of Zephacleas’ armour with surprising strength. ‘We prayed,’ he hissed. Another spasm tore through him, and he went still. Zephacleas bowed his head. He heard the other Stormcasts gather around. The Lord-Relictor began to murmur the Incantation for the Fallen.

Zephacleas rose to his feet. The seraphon were watching them silently. He met the inscrutable gaze of Takatakk, and wondered if the Starpriest understood or cared what he had witnessed. The skink communicated nothing either way.

‘Whatever road they’ve taken, we know where they’re going,’ he said, after a moment. ‘We march for the Setaen Palisades.’

CHAPTER SIX Soul of the Hunter

Fires burned within the Dorsal Barbicans. Mortal men and women, newly freed and healed by the magics of the Stormcast Eternals, carried fire and blade into the dark, cleansing the ancient fortress of those lingering packs of skaven. Takatakk watched them from the dome of the Libraria Vurmis. The mortal inhabitants of the Crawling City glowed with a pale amber light, and he could trace their lifelines back along the solid orange river of Shu’gohl’s existence. That river stretched back to the birth of the realm and forward, into the misty reaches of the future. Strands of infection threaded through that thick skein of existence — the lives of the vermin. Those strands grew thicker and then faded abruptly as they intersected with the cerulean threads of Azyr.

Takatakk nodded to himself, satisfied that things were progressing as Great Lord Kurkori had foreseen. Shu’gohl’s progress towards its ultimate end would continue unhindered. What part the great leviathan would play in those distant, yet-undreamed events, Takatakk did not know, but the Dreaming Constellation would see that it was around to do so.

Down below, the Stormcast Eternals made ready to march. They glowed with a flickering radiance that Takatakk found comforting, though strange. It was akin to the light which flared through the seraphon, and yet not — weaker, perhaps. The Stormcasts were yet merely memories-to-be, rather than memories-of-what-was. In time, perhaps, they would become as one with the light of Azyr — things of pure order, even as the seraphon were. But for now…

He heard the bellow of Zephacleas’ laughter, and thought, just for an instant, about the inevitable and the inexorable. Claws scraped on stone and he turned. Oxtl-Kor stood behind him. ‘They are too slow,’ the Oldblood growled. ‘The vermin will escape us.’

Takatakk cocked his head. ‘Great Lord Kurkori says—’

‘I know what he says, Starpriest,’ the Oldblood rumbled. He tapped his skull with a claw. ‘I hear his words in my blood as well as you. I will not fail. The stink of the vermin-spoor is strong, and Sawtooth’s belly is empty.’ He looked at their master, reclining on his throne. ‘His wishes are many, and all must be fulfilled, even the least of them. I follow the Dreaming Seer’s design, even as you do.’