Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

Nellas passed over it in silence, using her scythe as a crutch. The wound in her side still throbbed. It would heal in time, when she had an opportunity to rest in the Evergreen and channel the forest’s healing song. Until then she pressed on. She had a duty to perform.

One by one, she harvested the lifeseeds of her fallen kin. As a branchwych it was her most vital task, a part of the ever-turning cycles of the Wyldwood. From the day she had sprouted from her soulpod many seasons ago, Nellas had served House Il’leath as one of its harvesters, plying her scythe and carrying each and every lifeseed fallen, in peace or in war, back to Brocélann’s heartglade — the Evergreen. Amidst a reaping of death she was a sower of life, of tender branches and new shoots.

As she went, Nellas hummed a new song. She sensed other little voices joining in, one by one, answering her lilting call. She spoke to them as allies and as friends, not with orders, as she would have her fellow sylvaneth clansfolk. And one by one they answered her. They came buzzing, fluttering or leaping from the surrounding Wyldwood, dozens of tiny forest spirits that gathered around her, their bodies glittering with fey light. They had come to show their respect to the ones who guarded their homes. They had come to bear away the fallen.

Every time Nellas plucked a lifeseed from the dead wood before her, one of the spites flitting around her would retrieve it, ready to carry it with the branchwych to its resting place in the Evergreen. The creatures did so in silence, their playful jostling and bickering suppressed for the moment by the gravity of their task.

Near the far edge of the clearing Nellas paused, her flock of spites going still around her. She had been one of three. Her sisters, Llanae and Sylanna, had completed Il’leath’s triumvirate of branchwyches. Between them the trio had reaped the echoharvest of the lamentiri, the sylvaneth spirit-songs, and ensured the continuing existence of the Wyldwood of Brocélann since Thaark had been a sapling. But no more. Nellas found Llanae and Sylanna side by side, bark broken and lifeless, their bittergrubs crushed alongside them. She had sensed them fall during the fighting, had heard their battle-song cut short, but in the fury and desperation of the glade’s killing she hadn’t had time to mourn. Now, as a pair of little spites reverently received their lifeseeds, Nellas felt the ache of their felling keener than the wound still burning in her side.

It had been a grim day for Brocélann. By the time Nellas had passed over the whole glade, the sun was sinking below the treetops and the air was thick with attendant spites. The urge to dig her roots in and rest was almost overwhelming, but she resisted. She was now the only one capable of seeing so many lifeseeds replanted. As the Forest Folk set about piling the Rotbringer corpses for burning, she made her way to the Evergreen.

It was a long walk, through hidden vales and along the high paths of Brocélann’s wooded uplands. Few outside the noble houses travelled such routes, fewer still at so late an hour. As she went, her way lit by the light of her buzzing companions, Nellas felt the ancient forest sigh and creak in sympathy around her. The whole of Brocélann had suffered, the loss of so many venerable sylvaneth sending an undertone of pain through the Wyldwood’s spirit-song. Nellas could still feel the shared agony in every rustle and moan of the forest around her.

By the time she arrived at the outskirts of the Evergreen, darkness had fallen. The woodland was restless, still distressed by the violation it had suffered. Things darted past Nellas, their shapes insubstantial in the dark. She felt the beat of wings as a woodland owl soared overhead, hunting. The killing, Nellas reflected, was never done. Around her she felt the ever-present song of the Wyldwood waver, as though the chorus had become suddenly doubtful. A colder, more cutting note entered the recital.

‘Stop.’ The command seemed to breathe from the trees themselves. Nellas halted, grip tightening around her scythe’s haft. There were few creatures capable of taking a sylvaneth by surprise in her own woods. None of them meant her well.

Shapes melted from the shadows beneath the surrounding boughs, taking physical form seemingly only with great reluctance. They were sylvaneth, but they possessed none of the graceful bearing of the Noble Spirits Nellas was used to communing with. Their outlines were jagged and sharp, their trunks stooped, features twisted with fang-filled disdain. They blocked the path ahead, pressing in on the branchwych from all sides. The song of the woodland grew colder still around them.

Spite-revenants, she thought. Outcasts. Nature’s most merciless aspect given form and thought.

‘You go no further,’ one of the malevolent spirits said. He was big, bristling with jagged fir needles, his eyes glowing a bitter, icy blue in the creaking darkness. ‘You are not welcome here.’