Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

Several of his monks glanced back at him, but not for long. He exposed his teeth in a grimace of chastisement, feeling the blisters on his muzzle pull tight as he did so. The worms moved within him. Their agitation grew as he neared their source, like metal filings drawn to a lodestone. Some plagues were like that, he knew. The Chattering Pox or the Glopsome Surge both grew in potency the closer one drew to their epicentre.

Vretch had studied the ways of a thousand plagues — he had taken samples from Nurgle’s Wyrdroot as it hollowed out the treekin of the Jade Kingdoms, and helped the Wailing Chill pass between the Doldrum Heights and Rigvale’s Run. But few were as horrible as the one his magics now kept at bay. He’d already coughed up part of what he suspected was his liver, and his flesh was peeling away in sheets.

Why had Skuralanx done this to him? Unless… yes. Yes, perfidy, of course. The daemon had no more use for him, and had decided to dispose of him, whatever its promises to the contrary. He growled softly in anger. That he had been planning to do something similar only made it worse. Another shiver of pain wracked him. The sea heaved as the worm shuddered, torn by its own pain. The air shivered with the sound of its agony, and, as if in sympathy, the worms within him twitched abominably. Vretch bit back a shriek of pain.

He didn’t dare show weakness, not now. It was all he could do to keep from spurting the musk of fear. His long-dead nerve endings had spasmed to life, and a foul-smelling ichor beaded on his flesh.

‘O great Horned Rat, watch over your most pathetic and beset of children. Have I not served thee faithfully, O Ruiner and Wrecker? Watch over me, as you watched over me in the Glade of Horned Growths, O most blessed planter of poxes,’ he murmured, clutching his tail to his chest. He made to chew it, when he noticed that the blisters had spread there as well. He flung it down with a grunt.

The rafts eased forward by the light of the warp torches, through the steaming current. They passed beneath broken archways curtained with shrouds of half-digested matter. Things roared in the darkness, and he restrained himself from hurling a fiery pox towards the source of the noise. Somehow, he knew that using his magics would only aggravate his condition. If he wanted to survive long enough to find the Liber Pestilent and rid himself of the worms growing within him, he had to save his strength.

The raft thumped over a submerged stone, nearly knocking him from his claws. ‘Careful, fools,’ he shrilled. Incensed, he flung out his claw, and a plague monk collapsed, wreathed in green flame, his flesh going necrotic beneath his disintegrating rags. A tremor ran through Vretch and he sat back, wheezing. ‘Careful… careful…’ he whispered, staring balefully at his followers. There weren’t many, now.

One of his remaining rafts had vanished somewhere along the slow crawl of the worm’s gullet. The other had been caught in a gastric riptide and sunk. Those plague monks who’d managed to survive the swim now overburdened his last, precious craft. He contemplated booting a few of them over the side to lighten the load, but decided against it. His display of temper would keep them in line well enough, and there were likely dangers aplenty in this place. He could hear unseen things moving through the shadowed vaults and broken turrets.

He could also smell the pungent ichor of the worm. Black, writhing shapes dripped from the broken walls and plopped into the water like raindrops. Some squirmed purposely through the water towards the raft and he barked a warning. Heaving himself to his feet, he stumbled to the side of the raft and jabbed the tip of his staff into the water. The shard of warpstone flared once and the water boiled with an ugly heat. Worms crisped and sank out of sight. As they did so, the ones growing within him became frenzied.

‘Follow the worms,’ he croaked.

His monks poled the raft deeper into the tangled ruin. They followed the trail of his pain along the winding eddy until they reached a massive bole of stone and mossy soil. It had been compacted into an unmoving bubo of dirt, perched awkwardly in the water. Broken bones, half-dissolved and intertwined with millions of thick-bodied black worms, floated in a sump of tarry ichor at its base. A winding stair of stone rose from the murk, and Vretch led his remaining monks up its unstable length. The pain was concentrated in his belly now. It had become a pulsing black heat, filling him snout to tail. A strange fluid spattered on the stones where he trod, and worms rose from it.

‘Do not let them touch you,’ he said. ‘You are not worthy to receive their blessings.’ And, he thought, I may need some of you alive before this is over. He hacked and coughed into his sleeve. Worms squirmed in his robes and wriggled out of his pores as he tried to concentrate on the Thirty-Nine Rancid Mantras.