Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

Dolorugus looked up at the last instant, as Aetius hurled himself aside. As he rolled away, he thought he heard the Chaos champion laugh. Then the bells struck home, and smashed through the floor and into the waters below. They carried Count Dolorugus with them into the black depths of Verdant Bay.

As the echoes of the bells’ final tolling faded, Aetius hauled himself to his feet. He looked at Felyndael as he recovered his hammer. ‘I thought you had abandoned me.’ The tree-revenant didn’t look at him.

‘We must go.’

As they hurried towards the doors, the reeds crawled and split beneath their feet. Everywhere Aetius looked, the basilica was beginning to unravel. Outside, Solus was waiting for him, with the remaining Stormcasts. There was no sign of the other tree-revenants. ‘Our allies?’ Aetius asked, fighting to be heard over the creaking and groaning of the city.

‘They’re gone,’ Solus said, casting a wary glance at Felyndael. ‘They vanished as soon as that light did. Left us to clean up.’ He looked around. ‘So much for garrisoning this place. The streets are coming undone and the buildings are unwinding like so much thread. What happened?’

‘Victory. I’m just not certain as to whose. What of our foes?’ Aetius asked.

Solus shook his head. ‘Gone. Dead or else fled, once the unlucky ones started slipping through the holes in the streets. The whole city is sinking.’

‘Whatever magic was holding it together has been lost,’ Aetius said, looking at Felyndael. The tree-revenant nodded.

‘Go,’ Felyndael said. ‘The city has served its purpose. It will sleep now, until its season comes again. You must not be here when it does.’

‘You heard him. Rally the others. We need to make it back to the quays before we join the Rotbringers in the lagoon,’ Aetius said, gripping Solus by the shoulder. As the Judicator-Prime turned away, Aetius looked at Felyndael. ‘That light… What was it?’

Felyndael said nothing. Aetius sighed. ‘Next time, perhaps, you will simply tell us,’ Aetius said, softly. Felyndael looked at him, his expression impenetrable. Aetius held out his hand. ‘But you have my thanks for coming back, Felyndael of the Heartwood.’

Felyndael looked down at his hand. The sylvaneth’s deceptively delicate features split in a small smile. ‘And you have mine, Aetius Shieldborn,’ he said as he clasped the Stormcast’s armoured forearm. A moment later he was gone, leaving Aetius standing alone.

‘Next time,’ he said to himself. Then, as the Basilica of Reeds unravelled and Gramin came undone, Aetius Shieldborn hurried to join his warriors.

Robbie MacNiven Heartwood

The Realm of Life had become a place of death.

Blood and bark, iron and earth, the glade shook with the fury of battle. At its centre a warband of Rotbringers had turned at bay, their tight cohorts of rusting plate armour and sagging, rotten flesh split apart by nature’s wrath.

Nellas the Harvester, branchwych of House Il’leath, swung her greenwood scythe in a hissing upward arc, parrying the blightking’s stroke. The hulking Rotbringer leant into the blow, trying to use his bulk to force Nellas’ guard down. The sylvaneth was dwarfed by the warrior, but she stood her ground, willowy limbs invested with the strength of the Wyldwood’s deepest roots. Bark creaked and the scythe shuddered in her grip as she held the blightking in place, while from the trees all around the sylvaneth poured. The whole forest keened with the battle-song of the Wargrove; the encroachment of the Great Corruptor’s minions into Brocélann would not be tolerated.

The bittergrub that coiled among Nellas’ branches saw its opening. It darted forward and locked its mandibles around the upper thigh of the Rotbringer, slicing through corroded plate and neatly snipping a hamstring. The blightking grunted and went down on one knee. The bittergrub held on.

Nellas leant back to give herself room, and plied her scythe in a great arc. There was a crunch, and the warrior’s cyclopean helmet thumped to the ground, a jet of pus-like ichor pattering across the glade’s trampled grass.

Nellas was pushing past the decapitated corpse before it had even slumped, her bittergrub wrapping around her once more. The Rotbringer champion was ahead, bellowing vile curses as he swung a great, rusting mace at Thaark. The treelord ancient’s own household revenants were struggling to reach him, locked in a grinding melee with the Chaos lord’s bodyguard. Nellas shrieked with fury as she saw the Rotbringer’s blow thump home into Thaark’s thigh, splintering wood and splattering thick amber bloodsap. The head of House Il’leath tore into the champion’s flesh in response, his great talons splitting armour and spilling rancid guts, but to no avail. The Rotbringer’s wounds regenerated as soon as they were made, the obese armoured body bound together by more than mere mortal willpower.