Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

However, rather than the pain he’d been expecting, he felt a wash of hot, foul air and heard a familiar guttural roar. He cracked an eye open, and saw Tegrus flying backwards. A shadow fell over him, and he looked up, a smile spreading across his wide, green face.

‘Ah, Tripletongue my beauty, just in time,’ he rumbled, as the maggoth bent towards him, its teeth clicking in concern. It snuffled worriedly at him as he got to his feet, and he patted its scaly skull. ‘Who’s a sweet brute, eh?’ Morbidex said, as he hauled himself back into the saddle.

As Tripletongue rose to its full height, Morbidex took in the battlefield at a glance. What he saw wasn’t good. Wrech’s ambush had gone sour and the Stormcasts were counter-attacking, led by a figure who blazed with holy light. Morbidex shaded his eyes and peered at the figure. That’s the one old Bolathrax was after, he thought, doubtfully. As he watched, nurgling swarms were crushed underfoot, hammers fell, horned heads burst and Nurgle’s tallymen reeled.

Wrech bellowed a command and the remaining plaguebearers belly-flopped into the swamp, digging into the muck and disappearing from sight.

‘Well, that tears it,’ Morbidex murmured as he sat up in his saddle. He slapped Tripletongue on the head. ‘Time to go, my lad.’ The maggoth rumbled assent and turned, smashing a tree out of its path as it dived deeper into the swamp, moving as quickly as its thick legs could carry him.

No sense remaining to fight all on his lonesome. Grandfather didn’t favour fools, despite his sentimentality. He hunched forward in his saddle, urging his mount to greater speed. Have to fall back, get to the Gelid Gush and make a final stand, Morbidex thought. That was where they were going. It was the only place of value in the immediate vicinity.

He twitched his head abruptly, trying to dislodge the flies that were gathering about his face. Wait — flies? His eyes widened as the flies suddenly rose from his flesh, and swirled about in a cloud, coalescing into a familiar face.

‘Going somewhere, Twiceborn?’ Ethrac Glott asked, in a voice made from the droning of a hundred flies. ‘I could have sworn we asked you to handle these invaders…’

‘Our ambush was ambushed,’ Morbidex said, unapologetically. ‘Forest spites got the nurglings all riled up. The Stormcasts interrupted a very satisfying drubbing, if you want my opinion.’

‘Did I ask for it?’

‘Well… no.’

‘Then what makes you think I would?’

‘A sense of unbridled optimism,’ Morbidex said. He glanced over his shoulder, but saw nothing. No pursuit appeared to be forthcoming. ‘What now, Glott?’

‘Bloab Rotspawned and Orghotts Daemonspew are making for the Gelid Gush. Join them, Twiceborn…’ Ethrac hissed. ‘It is time for Grandfather Nurgle’s children to go to war.’

Chapter Eight The ruins of Arborea

Lord-Celestant Gardus pushed through the veil of vines, and gazed at the faded glory of the fallen city of Arborea. The treetop city was a thing of flowing curves and soft angles, of great stones held aloft by the thick branches and boles of an immense elder tree, perhaps grown from a seed of the Oak of Ages Past itself. The latter was visible in the distance, its broken shape jutting across the pale green sky. He could just make out the pale swathe of foulness that was their destination on the horizon.

He repressed a shudder as he stared at that foulness.

Help us, Garradan… help us, the ghosts murmured in the back of his head. They had been whispering to him since he had reeled out of that mad garden and back into the Mortal Realms, aflame with white fire. They had clung to him, like the tatters of his warcloak, as he had waded into the fray between the sylvaneth and the skaven in the Glade of Horned Growths. He had instinctively sought out his foes, and ruined any who sought to bar his path, seeing not ratkin but the barbarians who had murdered the man he had been, in another time, another place.

Help us… Garradan, help us…

‘Quiet.’ He squeezed his eyes shut, forcing the voices back into the cage of his memories. When they had at last fallen silent he strode forward, following the scampering forms of the forest spites the Stormcasts had rescued from Nurgle’s followers a few days before. The colourful spirits swirled about him for a moment, clicking and murmuring in their strange tongue, before they faded, like reflections on water. Where they went, he could not say, and did not like to guess.