Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

Gardus brought his sword down, chopping through the daemon’s thick wrist, freeing the Lord-Relictor in a geyser of foulness. The daemon shrieked and reeled, clutching at his wounded limb. Stormcast and daemon-hand crashed into the water, and Morbus swiftly bulled his way free of the spasmodically twitching hand.

‘Morbus — now!’ Gardus cried as he landed.

Morbus rose, reliquary in both hands, and began to chant. He called out to the tempest, and the tempest answered. Crackling bolts split the skies, swathing Grotesse in sacred lightning. Gardus watched as bolt after bolt struck the staggering monstrosity, even as the daemons around him turned away, eyes seared by the light of Sigmar’s wrath. Pupa Grotesse’s flesh began to smoulder and turn black. Steaming cracks appeared in his body, and the daemon abruptly stiffened, mouth wide in a scream that never came.

There was a deafening bang, and the daemon exploded like a sack of rotting offal left too long in the hot sun. The effect was immediate. The filth and sludge that marked the waters began to clear, turning to ash and crumbling away beneath newly crystalline waters. The clean waters ate at the remaining daemons like acid, dissolving them even as they fought, or tried to flee.

Gardus dipped his hand into the waters as they surged around him, and felt his weaknesses and hurts fade away.

‘It is like the rivers of home,’ Ultrades said in wonder, as Morbus helped him to his feet. He looked at Gardus. ‘Did you know that this would happen?’

‘I had hoped,’ Gardus said. He watched as the last of the daemons were dispatched, and turned, staring out over the river. In the sound of its waters, he thought he could hear a woman’s voice, singing an unfamiliar song. Hesitantly, he placed his palms over the water, trying to feel something, anything that might tell him that he wasn’t simply hearing things. As he peered down, he thought he could see something in the reflection on the water. He looked up as a shadow passed over it. ‘Tegrus, can you see anything?’ he called out as the Prosecutor-Prime swooped overhead.

‘Aye, though it might simply be a trick of the light,’ Tegrus called down, as he circled around. ‘There is an emerald light, where the river’s bed should be.’

Gardus looked at Morbus. ‘Morbus, do you—’

‘He feels it,’ Grymn said, splashing towards them, accompanied by his gryph-hound and Zephacleas. ‘We all do, Gardus. Every one of us.’

The Lord-Castellant looked at him warily. ‘What is it? Who is she? Who is singing?’

Gardus shook his head. ‘You know as well as I, Lorrus. She is the one we have come to find.’ He motioned to the vast shape of the Oak of Ages Past, and the clear, shining waters that now spilled from the cleft in its trunk. ‘There is a reason the enemy had no more luck finding her than we did. She was hiding beneath their very noses, in a place they thought already conquered. She is here,’ he said, voice rising. ‘The gate to Athelwyrd is here. We have found the Hidden Vale.’

Chapter Thirteen Nurgle’s deluge

Torglug shook his head, trying to clear the flies from his ears, as the skaven grey seer chattered obsequiously up at the Glottkin. The creature had summoned them to the banks of the Gelid Gush. At Torglug’s suggestion, the ratkin had been placed on the invaders’ trail, and had pursued the enemy across Rotwater Blight. Their skulking spies had scurried in the wake of every battle, keeping track of the foe’s movements. And now, at last, it seemed the time had come to run their quarry to ground. ‘Storm-things pass into the river,’ the grey seer chittered, gesticulating towards the water. ‘The water… it is the portal!’

As it spoke, there came a sound like a hundred rats gnawing a hundred stones, and the verminlord Vermalanx dropped into reality. The rat-daemon shrieked at his charge, snapping long fangs in obvious agitation. The grey seer shied away from this display, and Torglug wondered what contest was being waged between master and servant. The rats aped men in that way more than any other, always seeking the advantage even over their own kind. The rat-daemon was clearly enraged, and Torglug suspected that the grey seer had been ordered to report the whereabouts of Athelwyrd to Vermalanx first.

Whatever the reason for it, the verminlord’s anger was like the sweetest bile to Torglug, and he extended his axe between the rat-daemon and his servant.

‘You are ceasing this unseemly display, vermin,’ he rasped. ‘We are being allies in this endeavour, and we will be needing every one of us to take the Hidden Vale and its mistress.’

‘If this treacherous rat isn’t simply lying,’ Vermalanx hissed, glaring at the cowering grey seer. ‘If this place is indeed beneath the river.’