Gloomspite - Andy Clark

by Warhammer

  ‘There’s something in there,’ replied Romilla, and Aelyn could see the priest was struggling too. ‘Some fungal obscenity. It grew out of the regent militant’s body and just kept growing. It filled half the feasting hall by the time I got out of there.’

  ‘Then we must be quick, before–’

  Aelyn’s words died in her throat as there came a splintering of glass and a groan of metal from part way up the palace’s frontage. She looked up in time to see the epic stained glass representation of Selvador’s youthful triumph split down the middle. The glass heaved outwards, then shattered and fell in a razored rain. Aelyn spun and shielded her eyes, feeling jagged shards nick her skin as they fell around her. When she looked back, a pulsating mass of purple and grey fungus was pushing out through the window, crumbling the stonework around it as it went. She dropped her gaze to the main entrance in time to see that same grotesque mass of rubbery mushroom-flesh pushing its way up the entrance hall. It packed the entire space, crushing statues, furniture, paintings and anything else in its path. Whipping coils of mycelium burst from its surface every few seconds, slapping wetly against walls, floor and ceiling and digging in before pulsating, growing rapidly thicker until they became fresh fungal tendrils to drag the mass forwards.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked, then cursed as another fungal growth split the skin of her neck. She plucked it away quickly.

  ‘I know only that it burst from Selvador’s body and it hasn’t stopped growing since,’ said Romilla.

  ‘If it doesn’t stop soon, I imagine the entire city may be in trouble,’ gasped Bartiman. ‘And this light doesn’t exactly seem deleterious to fungal growth.’

  ‘The light,’ exclaimed Borik suddenly. ‘We’ve got to get out of its light. It’ll send us mad.’

  ‘What in the names of the realms are you talking about?’ asked Bartiman.

  ‘You just have to trust me,’ said Borik urgently. ‘I know I’m right.’

  Aelyn turned to ask him if he knew what this was, but a splintering crash from the palace dragged her attention back.

  ‘Aelyn, we can’t go in there now, it’s too late,’ urged Romilla as the fungal wall ploughed up the hallway fast as a man could walk. It was almost at the entrance. Aelyn cursed in frustration. Romilla was right. Her bow, Borik’s cannon, Hendrick’s hammer – all gone, vanished under that mindless mass of revolting flesh.

  Still the moon leered above them, still its foul light bathed the square. The infected burst from other palace exits and sprinted off across the square. A few dutiful guards ran to intercept. Others simply ran. Fungi sprouted in thick outcroppings all around them. Screams rose from across the city and alarm bells tolled, sounding to Aelyn as though they floated from every district in Draconium.

  ‘Borik, you say we need to get out of this light? We fall back to the inner gate, take shelter in its shadow and take stock.’

  Aelyn turned, hoping they would follow her, and set off with her remaining knife clutched tight. Crossing the square seemed to take a nightmarishly long time, exposed to the unblinking stare of the celestial monster above, her gaze darting back and forth trying to track the spore-sickened where they dashed to and fro, attacking everything they saw. Fresh cries rose, as the horrors smashed through the windows of mansions near the square and plunged into Sigmarite shrines to where terrified feastgoers and other Holyheart residents had fled.

  Aelyn plunged into the shadowed tunnel that led through the city’s inner wall, almost slipping on slime-slick cobbles. Above, on the wall’s ramparts, militia-militant were milling and crying out, plucking fungi from their flesh and yelling in panic for orders. She knew the Swords couldn’t remain in this tunnel for long in case they were trapped when the militia inevitably took it upon themselves to close the gates. However, it was shelter from the putrid moonlight at least, and she felt a blessed relief the moment she was away from those awful eyes.

  Her companions joined her, breathing hard. They stared at her with wild eyes.

  ‘Is Hendrick dead?’ she asked Romilla at once.

  ‘Yes, I told you that,’ she replied.

  ‘No. I mean is he dead?’ repeated Aelyn. Romilla sighed and nodded, her shoulders slumping as she understood.

  ‘I gave him Sigmar’s mercy.’

  ‘Then you did the best you could for our friend,’ said Aelyn. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Your best would’ve been not letting him get killed, uh?’ spat Olt. Romilla turned with a face like thunder, but Aelyn raised a hand.

  ‘Not now.’ Her voice was hard as tempered iron. ‘Borik, you said this wasn’t Chaos. What is it, then? What do you know?’

  ‘Sky-sailor’s tales, is all I thought they were,’ he said, shaking his head.

  ‘Evidently, they’re rather more,’ grizzled Bartiman, who was pale and sweating from the pain of his wound.

  ‘They call it the Bad Moon,’ said Borik slowly. ‘It’s a dark omen, the very worst. They say its light brings madness and death, that it smothers the heavens and brings night everlasting, and that it calls the blackcaps up from the bowels of the earth upon a tide of squirming terrors.’

  ‘The Moonshadow brings death,’ repeated Eleanora again, counting rapidly on her fingers. ‘I need to get my tools. And my bombs. From the inn.’

  ‘The Bad Moon? The tales of Grobi-the-blackcap? Borik, these are children’s rhymes, folklore,’ exclaimed Bartiman. ‘“Get ye to sleep little one, and close your eyes up tight, lest blackcap comes a-calling and you see the Bad Moon’s light.” It’s an Azyrite nursery rhyme!’

  ‘My people aren’t given to the flights of fancy yours indulge in,’ growled Borik, looking for a moment as though he might shrug the injured wizard off to stand or fall on his own. ‘I heard tell of the light that draws fungus from flesh and iron, like dawn rains in the forest. Does that sound familiar?’

  ‘Blessedly, that at least seems to have ceased,’ said Romilla with a shudder of revulsion.

  ‘Only what it touches,’ said Eleanora, fumbling a half-built gadget out of one of her many pockets and rotating it in her hands.

  ‘What’s that, my dear?’ asked Romilla.

  Eleanora shook her head, frowning, but Aelyn felt a surge of realisation at her words.

  ‘She’s right. It has stopped since we ducked into this tunnel. No more… fungi…’ she grimaced in distaste.

  ‘And none sprouting within the tunnel’s shadow,’ said Romilla.

  ‘Plenty outside though, eh?’ said Olt, gesturing to the cobbles directly outside the tunnel entrance. Wherever the pale light reached, the cobbles were slick with mucal moisture, and outcroppings of purple-capped mushrooms were pushing up between them. Nearby lay the body of a fallen feastgoer, fungi swelling up from his fine garb, sprouting out of the walking cane that had spilled from his nerveless fingers – even growing in profusion across his face and the palms of both hands.

  ‘So, we stay out of that light as much as we can,’ said Bartiman. ‘Fine. I’ll accept that much. Even the most far-fetched tales have a grain of truth to them. But what is this? What does it mean? And what in the name of the Land of Endings are we meant to do about it?’

  Before Aelyn could answer, there came a cry from the battlements above. For a moment she feared the inner gates were about to shut. Instead, she heard the percussion of talons and wheels upon the cobbles. An instant later, a carriage was careering down the tunnel towards them from the city end, the gnarlkyd that pulled it hissing frantically. The coachman saw the Swords of Sigmar standing in his path and shouted a frantic command, drawing his team to a halt just a few feet from where Aelyn stood.

  The aelf had a moment to take in the fungi sprouting from the carriage’s chassis, the scrapes and cracks on its bodywork and the look of barely-controlled terror in the coachman’s eyes. Then one of the doors opened. Two watchmen hopped down, pistols drawn and immediately levelled at the
Swords. After them came Captain Morthan, who had a bloody cut down one cheek and the beginnings of a black eye.

  ‘Coachman, what–’ she stopped when she saw them, and her expression became stony. ‘You,’ she said. ‘Why is it that wherever I turn to find trouble in this city, there you are? What in the name of Sigmar’s hammer happened? Are the rumours true, is Selvador dead?’

  ‘He is,’ said Aelyn.

  ‘How?’ demanded Morthan, marching up to them. ‘You were tasked with protecting him.’ More watchmen climbed from the coach behind her and formed up in a menacing group at her back. Aelyn sensed her comrades subtly shifting postures, tightening their grip on what meagre weapons they held.

  ‘Poison, we think,’ she replied. ‘He gave a toast, then immediately afterwards began coughing up spores that in turn have begun the spread of some terrible plague.’

  ‘There’s madness and panic in the streets,’ said Morthan. ‘Mindless, insane rioting in Docksflow and Marketsway and Sigmar knows where else. And damn me for a fool if I don’t see your bloody Moonshadow now, eh? What in the hells is that thing in the sky? Tell me now, truthfully – did you have something to do with all this? Have I allowed the architects of this doom into my city? Because if it is so, I will execute you all where you stand.’

  ‘You can’t seriously think this has anything to do with us?’ exclaimed Romilla, her tone incredulous.

  ‘Where is Sergeant Saul?’ asked Morthan, ignoring her. ‘I’d have the truth of this from him.’

  ‘He’s dead,’ said Aelyn, and felt something splinter inside her as the words made it real.

  Morthan stopped and stared harder at them, seeming for the first time to see their wounds and their dismayed expressions. She paused, took a breath, then continued in a slightly calmer tone.

  ‘How did he die?’

  ‘The same spore sickness that claimed so many others at the feast,’ said Romilla. ‘I gave him Sigmar’s grace.’

  ‘I am truly sorry to hear that, he seemed a good man,’ said Morthan.

  ‘He was better than he knew,’ replied Aelyn. There followed a moment’s uncomfortable silence, in which screaming voices and tolling bells could be heard echoing over the city. Aelyn felt the tunnel shudder as another pressure wave rolled across Draconium. Mortar dust drizzled down from above, the tunnel creaked and her head spun.

  ‘Do you know what this is? Is this what Hendrick’s brother warned of?’ asked Morthan.

  Swiftly, they told her what little they knew.

  ‘The Bad Moon?’ asked Morthan incredulously. ‘Grobi-the-blackcap and squiggling-squirms and all that?’

  ‘There are monsters all over the realms, why not these?’ asked Aelyn. ‘And can you deny the evidence of your own eyes filling the sky?’ She was surprised to find she believed Borik’s tale without a great deal of effort. In her experience, most myths and fairy tales bore a seed of truth in the Mortal Realms; more often than not the reality of that seed was ghastlier than any tale could be.

  She could see Helena Morthan struggling with the idea, but as she’d said, it was hard to deny your own eyes.

  ‘Whatever we’re dealing with, we need to control the situation and restore order swiftly,’ said the captain, falling back on what she knew best. ‘I’ve got the watch spreading out across the city to maintain order, but I’ve no idea where half of my men and women even are right now. It’s anarchy. There are rioters in the streets, we’ve had reports of insects spilling up from the sewers and attacking people, and now you tell me there’s a sickness spreading and something growing in the palace.’

  ‘Public unrest can wait,’ said Romilla. ‘You haven’t seen what the infected can do, how quickly their sickness spreads. And whatever that thing in the palace is, last we saw it was outgrowing the damned walls! Those have to be our priorities.’

  Her words were punctuated by the groan and crash of masonry falling.

  ‘That came from the palace,’ said Olt, sounding rattled.

  ‘Sigmar, how do you stop something like that?’ said Romilla.

  ‘What about the militia?’ asked Borik.

  ‘Arch-Lector Hessam Kayl should be massing their strength in Fountains Square,’ replied Morthan. ‘That’s standard procedure in the event of a threat to the city itself. He’ll march them out from there to restore order, using whatever force is necessary.’

  ‘They’d be no use to us anyway – an army could assail that growth all day and it would simply roll over them,’ said Romilla.

  ‘Fire,’ said Olt. ‘The gods of plants and nature, they fear the deities of the volcano and the inferno.’ He touched fingers to his heart then his throat reverently.

  ‘The notion has merit, but where would we get a fierce enough blaze to kill something that vast and fecund?’ asked Bartiman. ‘No, the city is going to be overrun by spore-sickened and fungus, you mark my words. We need to get out of here now.’

  ‘The Kazlag and Gephryn third type brimspark fuel bowser has a contained volume of over three thousand measures of liquid fuel held at a pressure of one point two parts to the unit,’ said Eleanora as though reciting from an engineer’s manual. ‘The fuel itself is refined from crushed bellicosite and magma-oil, and must be fed through a triple-filtration control nozzle before it reaches the brazier in order to prevent compound flaring and uncontrolled detonation. Were the Kazlag and Gephryn third type brimspark fuel bowser to be pierced by an incendiary projectile or secondary explosive component, even assuming a two-thirds load due to persistent use over a period of no less than six hours at this point, the detonation would be the equivalent of in the region of ten thousand aqshels of force and heat.’

  Eleanora subsided, becoming aware that everyone was staring at her in silence.

  ‘What?’ asked Morthan.

  ‘Oh, you damned genius, El!’ exclaimed Romilla. ‘The mummers, their…’ she flapped a hand. ‘Their braziers and the fuel wagon thing powering them. She means that, don’t you Eleanora?’

  ‘Would that be sufficient, if we blew it up?’ asked Bartiman.

  Eleanora nodded, counting hurriedly on her fingers.

  ‘All well and good, but we’ve only got pistols, and I couldn’t guarantee even my piece would pierce through the hull of that tank,’ growled Borik.

  Eleanora rummaged in a pocket and produced a pair of compact devices that looked to Aelyn like banded metal eggs, each flat on one side and with several cogs and wires visible through gaps in its surface.

  ‘One of these would affix to the Kazlag and Gephryn third type brimspark fuel bowser and detonate with sufficient force to rupture the tank,’ she said. ‘They have lodestone clamp mechanisms here, look. That will attach it. And each has a timer for remote operation.’

  ‘You took bombs to the feast with you?’ exclaimed Captain Morthan, aghast.

  ‘They’re the best ones I’ve made,’ said Eleanora, as though explaining something simple to a child.

  ‘That’s hardly a comfort!’ said Morthan.

  ‘Not the time,’ said Bartiman as they heard another groan and a crash. Screams echoed from the direction of the palace. Footsteps slapped on cobbles, and from above them they heard bowstrings hiss.

  ‘Eleanora, show Borik how those bombs work, then you, Romilla and Bartiman go back to the Drake’s Crown and get the rest of our gear,’ said Aelyn. ‘We can’t keep fighting the infected with daggers. Borik, Olt – we’re going to affix one of the bombs to the fuel tank and get it into the path of that fungal… thing.’

  ‘Why not both?’ asked Borik.

  ‘Save one just in case the first doesn’t work,’ said Aelyn.

  ‘I’ve got to run around with a pair of bombs in my arse pocket?’ asked Borik dubiously. ‘Are you mad? No!’

  ‘It’s that or let this whole city get buried by that… thing,’ said Romilla. ‘Even you’re not that heartless, Borik.’<
br />
  The duardin muttered something about her being surprised but he slipped the device into a pocket on his leather undersuit all the same.

  ‘We’ll help you,’ said Captain Morthan, shooting Eleanora one last hard look. ‘Then you and your people are to rally on Fountains Square and join the muster. They’ll have use for warriors of your unusual talents.’

  ‘We’re charging you extra for this,’ said Borik.

  ‘Considering the situation, escaping with your lives should be payment enough, don’t you think?’ replied Captain Morthan, scowling.

  Eleanora went over the workings of the bomb with Borik. As she did so, and while Captain Morthan issued quick orders to her watchmen, Aelyn slid up to the end of the tunnel and peered back into the square. What she saw made her heart lurch in her chest.

  The palace was a crumbling ruin, walls and windows bulging outwards grotesquely. In places, sections of masonry had already collapsed or windows shattered, and from within spilled pulsating fungal growths so purple they were almost black. They were digging into the mushroom-festooned cobbles of the square, squirming blindly over the fallen bodies of feastgoers, palace guards and infected alike. Aelyn found her gaze drawn skywards, towards the ghastly spectre that hung above the city, and she flinched as she realised that its expression had changed subtly. Surely features wrought from mountainous stone couldn’t change – and yet she was sure they had. The Bad Moon grinned ghoulishly, and she almost felt it was waiting for something.

  As though the thought had brought it, the ground shuddered beneath her feet.

  ‘Another shockwave,’ gasped Bartiman, teeth gritted as Romilla did what she could to patch up his wounded shoulder.

  ‘No, that was something else,’ said Aelyn. ‘Something from below. We need to move quickly, now!’

  The ground shuddered again, and across the square she saw a drain cover fly into the air like a cork from a bottle of spice-wine. Aelyn grimaced as something black and undulating flowed up out of the ragged hole it left. Insects, she realised: thousands of squirming, ­scuttling beetles and millipedes and realms knew what else.