Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

His warriors bellowed with him, and they plunged through the miasma like a mailed fist. Overhead, thunder rumbled as Seker called down the storm. Zephacleas held his breath against the choking odour and brought his hammer down on a skaven. Warblades slashed out, chopping through censers and chains and hairy limbs as the Liberators tore through the foe. A steady, cleansing rain began to fall, soothing the hurts of those few Stormcast Eternals who’d been wounded and dispersing the murk. As one, the remaining skaven broke and ran for the tallest of the towers which occupied the palisades.

‘They’re fleeing,’ Zephacleas said, as Seker joined him. Before the Lord-Relictor could respond, a shadow fell over them both.

‘We… chase,’ Sutok growled, slamming his war-mace against his shield. Saurus warriors stood arrayed behind the Sunblood, whose massive form was streaked with blood and worse things. The seraphon bobbed his scarred head. ‘Chase?’ he rumbled.

Zephacleas laughed. ‘We chase,’ he said.

Together, the seraphon and Stormcast Eternals forged after the retreating skaven. If they were allowed to hide, to dig in, they might never be rooted out.

Unfortunately, by the time Zephacleas and the others began a thorough search, it seemed that they had done just that. Besides a few skaven cowering on the lower levels, or trying to escape through what Zephacleas suspected were privy holes, the rest seemed to have vanished. Nevertheless, they continued the search, hunting through pillared chambers and warren-like halls, rising ever higher as they went. The stairs carved from the condensed hair wound ever upwards in a tight, claustrophobic coil. Zephacleas understood why the skaven had gravitated to the towers — the creatures preferred cramped space and dark shadows.

Accompanied by the shouts of more successful hunters, the roars of eager seraphon, and the squeals of dying skaven, Zephacleas and the others ascended to the summit of the tower. There were no doors here, only a wide open, circular chamber. The room was enormous — despite the great windows which lined its walls, the upper reaches were lost in shadow. It had been abandoned in a hurry. Empty cauldrons, piles of books and rotting bodies lay everywhere.

‘I’ve seen this before. Remember that foul warren in the Ghurdish Heights?’ Zephacleas murmured. Beside him, Sutok sniffed the air warily and glanced at the skink, Takatakk.

‘Indeed,’ Seker said. ‘A plague-womb. The vermin have been busy.’ The skaven — some of them, at least — were brewers of pox and plague second only to the foul followers of Nurgle. They delighted in rot and decay, and spread pestilences with fiendish glee. The Astral Templars had seen similar horrors in the Jade Kingdoms as well. ‘We must burn this place, when the battle is won. We cannot allow whatever horrors they have brewed here to spread.’

‘It may be too late for that, Lord-Relictor,’ Zephacleas said. He peered into one of the gibbets. The man inside was dead, though his journey to the underworld had not been easy. He wore the strange segmented armour of a city militia-man over his ragged and torn robes. It was dark, and composed of scales shed from the worm’s hide. Pale, like all folk of the Crawling City, his flesh was covered in bruises, blisters, burns and more besides, including a number of fleshy pus-filled growths. Despite these, his form looked somehow… shrunken, as if whatever vitality he’d once possessed had been drained into the bulging abscesses. Zephacleas tapped the gibbet with his hammer, turning it slowly.

As it twisted on its chain, he examined the body more closely. ‘Gravewalker, what caused these growths? It looks like the work of no disease I recognise,’ he called, glancing at the others. Seker turned, and cursed.

‘Zephacleas, get away from it,’ the Lord-Relictor snarled.

Zephacleas heard a hiss, and turned, just in time to see the first abscess split open. A stinking yellow gas spewed from the ruptured flesh, and he smashed the gibbet aside. The Lord-Celestant backed away. ‘Get clear of the cages,’ he roared. A moment later, a thin lash of suppurating flesh shot from the twitching body and struck at him. More tendrils erupted from the abscesses, thrashing about wildly enough to set the gibbet to spinning.

Cries of horror and disgust filled the chamber as the bodies in each gibbet flowered and burst, allowing the putrescent horrors within to emerge — they were akin to the foul, strangling vines of the Fangwood in the Ghurdish Heights, but horribly afflicted by some pestilence which made the ever-coiling fronds weep a strange, musky pus.

Rusty metal bent and buckled as the things within the gibbets fought to get free. A foul miasma rose from the monstrous blossoms which bloomed on the writhing tendrils, filling the air. ‘Back, back,’ Seker shouted. ‘All of you, back!’