Across the vale, warriors clashed. Wooden-clawed dryads slaughtered skaven and beastmen alike as looming treelords strode into battle with earthshaking strides. Hallowed Knights, Astral Templars and Guardians of the Firmament fought back to back against the innumerable hordes surrounding them. Gardus smashed the skull of a plaguebearer and caught sight of Zephacleas standing over the body of a fallen treelord, defending the sylvaneth against its attackers. He saw Ultrades and his paladins fighting their way towards Morbus, who drew lightning down from the boiling skies and sent it crackling into the massed ranks of plaguebearers which stumbled towards him.
‘Only the faithful,’ Gardus shouted, forcing his voice to carry over the clangour of battle. His men responded in kind, and Gardus fought all the harder. He would not fail. ‘Only the faithful,’ he cried again, crushing cyclopean heads with every swing of his hammer. White flames crackled across his weapons and armour as he stormed through the bloody melee, gathering his warriors about him. ‘Fight, brothers! Fight in Sigmar’s name! Fight–’
‘Gardus,’ a horribly familiar voice thundered, interrupting him. He whirled, smashing aside an armoured warrior. No, he thought, filled with a sudden loathing.
‘Gardus,’ the voice called again, and Gardus looked up as something immense rolled down into the valley like a giant boulder, scattering daemons and Stormcasts alike as it hurtled across the field through the driving rain. When it stopped, the shape rose to its full, towering height, a flail made from the skulls of giants whirling about its antlered head.
‘I know you are here. Did you think you could escape Bolathrax?’ the greater daemon roared, smashing Stormcasts aside. ‘Where are you, Gardus? Where are you, Garradan? Face me, unless you plan to flee again.’ Bolathrax paused, eyes widening as he caught sight of Gardus. ‘Ah, there you are,’ he burbled and started towards the Lord-Celestant, flail whirling and plaguesword drawn.
Gardus stared at the Great Unclean One. He snapped out of it a moment before the greater daemon struck the ground perilously close to him. He was knocked sprawling by the impact. Gardus rolled aside as the weapon slammed down again. ‘Stop squirming,’ Bolathrax gurgled as he waddled in pursuit. ‘You led the Grandfather’s legions here, and I’m obliged to make your death quick.’
Gardus flung himself aside. He crashed into a fallen oak, and hauled himself over it. Between the rain and the confusion of battle, the daemon lost sight of him, and he had a moment to catch his breath. Quickly he took stock of the battle. He saw with some relief that Grymn had managed to organize a shieldwall, and that Morbus and the others were fighting their way towards it.
Hold fast, brothers, he thought. We might still be able to preserve this place…
Bolathrax’s flail crashed down, shattering the oak. The force of the blow sent Gardus sliding through the muck.
‘Found you,’ Bolathrax roared gleefully.
Gardus rolled to his feet, and lunged. Hammer and blade both found their mark and bounced off the daemon’s rubbery flesh. Bolathrax laughed and thrust his blade down. The Stormcast stepped aside, and the great sword slammed into the muck. He spun, set his foot onto the flat of the rusty sword and ran up its length. Bolathrax gaped as the Lord-Celestant leapt towards him. The daemon jerked his head back, but too late, and Gardus’ sword pierced the creature’s bulging eye.
Bolathrax shrieked and swiped his flail about his head blindly. Gardus was caught by the pox-hardened skulls and sent flying. He smashed into a standing stone and flopped into the muck, weapons lost, body a mass of pain. As he tried to push himself up, one of Bolathrax’s splayed feet came down on his back. Gardus cried out, as his spine cracked and a tidal wave of agony washed through him. The skull flail came down a moment later, and one of his legs was reduced to a red ruin, pulverised by the blow.
‘No more running, Garradan,’ Bolathrax grunted, as he looked down at Gardus. ‘Pain is but a door to experience, as the Grandfather says. It does wonders for the soul. Just ask Torglug the Despised. We made a man of him. I wonder what we shall make of you, when you have suffered enough, eh?’ The Great Unclean One reached down and snatched Gardus up by his remaining ankle. Gardus couldn’t breathe. He clutched weakly at the air, reaching for weapons that were not there.
The ghosts had gathered beneath him, and were staring up with mournful gazes. They did not speak, but they did not need to. Gardus coughed, and felt his shattered ribs dig into the soft places within him.
‘I shall put you somewhere safe, until you are ready to be reborn,’ Bolathrax chortled, as he reached down and lifted his belly folds wide, exposing the swirling vortex within him. ‘What do you say to that, eh?’
Gardus stared at the vortex – a black maw of horror, as deep and as dark as the spaces between the stars. His mouth was dry, but he forced the words out regardless.
‘Only the faithful,’ he croaked. Bolathrax began to laugh.
Gardus closed his eyes.
Chapter Sixteen
The Sainted Eye
Tegrus hurtled through the smog-choked air, his hammers catching a bullgor across the skull with a thunderous crack. The beastman toppled over as Tegrus swooped past on wings of light. He rolled through the air, aiming himself towards the beastmen skidding down the scree of the valley wall. The creatures were charging towards the forest of glowing trees from which the arboreal citadels rose, axes raised.
‘Lord-Castellant,’ he cried, searching for Grymn. ‘We must…’ He trailed off as he saw the shieldwall of the Hallowed Knights momentarily buckle beneath the weight of the enemy, before it stiffened once more. He saw the Lord-Castellant amidst his brethren, exhorting them to greater effort as plaguebearers swarmed them. There would be no help from that quarter. Up to me, then, he thought.
Tegrus folded his arms to his sides and sped across the valley, leaving dust and deafened foes in his wake. His retinue of Prosecutors followed, though none were able to match his speed. But even he was too slow. Sap sprayed like blood as the bestigors and bullgors hacked away at the ancient forest. Tegrus dropped into their midst a moment later, crushing a bestigor’s head as he landed. He whirled, catching another in its mouth, silencing it mid-roar.
He saw one of his Prosecutors pulled from the air by a bullgor and broken over the monster’s knee. Another was brought low by a bestigor axe, and hacked to pieces as he writhed in the muck.
‘No!’ Tegrus snarled, as he brought his hammers down on another beastman, smashing the squalling creature to the ground. He saw a horde of skaven clad in rotting robes scuttling between the legs of the larger beastmen. They too began to hack and slash at the ancient trees.
‘Keep them back,’ he cried, before he realised that he was alone. The last of his warriors had fallen, throttled by a bullgor. The creature joined the Stormcast it had killed a moment later as Tegrus sent his hammer ploughing into its bestial skull.
More and more of the creatures pelted past him, heading for the trees. It was like trying to fight the tide. For every one he killed, it seemed two more slipped through. As he drove his hammer into the gut of a bestigor, crushing the creature’s ribs, he heard an ethereal screech. It sawed through his skull, causing his teeth to twitch in his jaw and his head to ache. All around him, beastmen stumbled, clutching at their heads. Whatever he’d felt, they had felt it worse. He reacted swiftly, lashing out with his hammers, shattering kneecaps and spines. He flung himself into the air as a light grew amidst the carnage. Beastmen staggered away as the light blossomed into the shape of a woman. No, Tegrus realised; not a woman.
Alarielle, the Radiant Queen herself had at last joined the battle. She was a thing of light and mist, of leaves and splintered wood, her shape at once that of a woman and something greater and more terrible. She was air and water, fire and earth. She was the summer rain, and the rage of the hurricane. And she was angry.
A bullgor rushed towards her, bellowing, and a hand, limned in emerald light, s
napped out to catch the creature by its throat. Alarielle lifted the beastman and snapped its neck with merciless ease, cowing the enemy around her. Skaven and bestigor alike began to edge away, their terror of the Radiant Queen obvious. She dropped the twitching body of the bullgor to the ground, where it immediately began to convulse. Green buds burst from the corpse, twisting up towards Alarielle’s hand. She threaded her fingers through the coiling shoots and came away with a handful of glittering seeds.
Without a word, she took the seeds in her hands and cast them away. In a single heartbeat, a hundred new green shoots burst from the ground. As they rose, they swelled and thickened, growing swiftly, becoming massive. The great bulbs on the end of each split with a sound like water slapping metal to reveal a cavernous maw. As one, the great plants snapped up their prey – skaven and beastman alike – and broke their bones to powder.
As he swooped past the twisting plants, Tegrus saw a strange shape lope suddenly from the depths of the smog that clung to the ground. A verminlord. The monstrous rat-daemon plucked a shrieking grey seer from the ground as it sprinted through the ranks of the ratmen. Tegrus flew after it, hoping that he would be in time to prevent whatever malign scheme the daemon had in mind. Whatever else happened, he would not allow the Radiant Queen to come to harm.
The verminlord sprang from the fallen body of a bullgor to one of the half-toppled trees, and dropped the grey seer to the ground beneath it. It hissed and snarled at the cowering skaven in the language of their vile kind and pointed one of its cruel blades towards the oblivious Radiant Queen as she tore a herd of bullgor to shreds with crackling magics. The grey seer pushed itself upright and hesitantly extended a shaking paw towards Alarielle. The air around it pulsed wetly, and a terrible light flickered in its eyes as it began a stuttering incantation.
Tegrus sped forward, faster than he’d ever flown. His wings blazed with all the fury of the storm, and his body ached with the force of his dive. Sigmar guide my flight, he thought as he plummeted towards the grey seer.
The creature’s fur stood on end, and its eyes glowed green as its outstretched claw started to tremble violently. Black smoke rose from the skaven’s pores as if it were being consumed by whatever energies it was summoning forth. Tegrus twisted through the air as a beam of unclean light shot from the skaven’s claw towards the Radiant Queen.
‘Only the faithful,’ Tegrus murmured, and swooped into the path of the beam, hammers crossed. The energies tore at him as they splashed across his armour, causing the god-forged sigmarite to bubble and melt. The light from his wings grew brighter and brighter as he plunged on through the beam. His hammers blackened and began to crumble in his hands, but he did not stop, or veer away. It was too late for that now. It was too late for anything except taking his foe down into death with him.
Tegrus screamed as he streaked towards the grey seer. He could feel his body warping and changing within his armour. Bones cracked and reshaped themselves into new and horrible forms as his flesh burned. But still he hurtled on and even as his hammers dissolved into nothing, he struck the grey seer full on.
The rat-thing exploded into swirling ash and streamers of green fire, its final, forlorn squeal cut short by the impact. Tegrus hit the ground a moment later, wreathed in smoke, his body contorted in agony as it continued its forced metamorphosis. His wings flickered and grew dull as new flesh squeezed out between the seams of his ruptured armour. Feathers of lightning were replaced by useless pinions of leather and bone, which flapped limply. His body shuddered as his spine split and grew, and his lungs shrank in his chest, forcing him to fight for every breath. His newly shaped bones had been shattered by his landing, and he could only thrash in pain as something monstrous approached him, tail lashing in anger.
‘Fool-fool,’ the monstrous verminlord hissed, glaring down at him. ‘You dare pit yourself against the will of Vermalanx, man-thing?’ The creature raised one of the heavy, curved blades it carried. Before it could strike, however, a tendril of emerald energy struck it full in the chest. The rat-daemon reared back and screeched in pain. A moment later it was plucked into the air. Through pain-dimmed eyes, Tegrus saw Alarielle stride forward, cloaked in ash and feathers, her inhuman visage sorrowful.
‘Who is the fool here, little mouse?’ Alarielle said, her voice causing the air to throb. The verminlord howled as it fought to break free of her magics, but to no avail. Alarielle reached up and flicked a silver acorn into the rat-daemon’s slavering maw. Instantly, green shoots burst through the creature’s form in great profusion. The daemon screamed in agony as the shoots flourished into branches and then boughs, before it was ripped apart in a stink of sulphurous musk. Tegrus coughed and tried to speak, but only managed a strangled screech. He reached up to her, with a hand that was more claw than anything else, and she nodded in understanding.
‘Be at peace,’ the Radiant Queen said, as her aura became blinding. ‘Sleep now, and forevermore, son of Sigmar.’ The light grew until it enveloped Tegrus, and he felt a moment of pain and then…
Nothing.
Chapter Seventeen
The drowning of the vale
‘No,’ Grymn snarled, as he watched the Great Unclean One pluck Gardus from the mud. ‘No, not again.’ He glanced at Morbus, and the Lord-Relictor looked away. Lightning snarled from his reliquary over and over, hammering into the daemons that pressed them. This is what you saw, Grymn realised. They had been wrong, before. This, then, had been Gardus’ doom, and they might as well have escorted him to it.
He turned back to Gardus, and saw the greater daemon pry open its belly to reveal a nightmare maw within its flesh. The creature made as if to drop the limp form of the Lord-Celestant into the black abyss of his gut, and Grymn knew then what he must do. He dropped his halberd and spun to snatch a nearby Judicator’s thunderbolt crossbow from his hands. He whirled back and took aim.
Damn you, Gardus, he thought, we shall not lose you a second time – not like this. He fired. The bolt sizzled gold through the rain, and struck true. Gardus thrashed as the bolt tore through the back of his neck. There was a blaze of blue light, and the greater daemon howled as azure flames wreathed his paw. Gardus vanished, lost to the Hallowed Knights once more. But not forever. Grymn, heartsick with guilt, shoved the crossbow back into its owner’s hands, and glared at Morbus.
‘It had to be done,’ he snapped. ‘It was the only way to save him.’
‘We will join him soon enough,’ Morbus rasped, as he set his reliquary and gestured with his hammer. The Great Unclean One had turned towards them, smoke rising from his form, as if sensing that they had had some part in the disappearance of his prey. As he lurched towards them, his followers redoubled their efforts to break the hastily formed shieldwall. Beasts and ratkin hurled themselves at the Liberators. The Stormcasts were holding them back, but only barely.
‘Maybe so,’ Grymn said. ‘But I’ll not do so in shame.’ Tegrus was nowhere to be seen, and what few Prosecutors were in sight were locked in battle with the plague drones that buzzed through the rain-choked air above. Zephacleas and Ultrades had formed their own shieldwalls, and were being pressed as hard as the Hallowed Knights. The rain was falling faster and harder with every passing moment, and the foul waters lapped at their shins. But they would stand firm, whatever fate awaited them.
‘Who will be redeemed?’ Grymn cried, raising his halberd high.
‘Only the faithful,’ the nearby Hallowed Knights replied.
‘Who will stand until the world cracks open?’
‘Only the faithful!’
‘Who will honour the Steel Soul, and fight in his name?’
‘Only the faithful!’ came the reply.
Grymn lifted his halberd.
‘Make ready to charge,’ he shouted. ‘We shall meet them head on, and show them how Stormcasts fight.’ No more the shield. Now, I will be the sword, until we meet again in the Gladitorium, Gardus, h
e thought. At his next word, weapons were raised and shields lowered. But before he could utter the command to charge, the enemy abruptly began to fall back.
A green light spread over the Stormcasts, rising from the ring of menhirs behind them. An ethereal screech suddenly echoed across the vale, causing even the Great Unclean One to pause in consternation. Grymn turned, and saw a glowing manifestation stalk through the ranks of the Hallowed Knights.
‘Alarielle,’ Morbus said. ‘The Radiant Queen has come at last.’
‘Why now?’ Grymn hissed. ‘Why not before, when Gardus…’ He trailed off as Alarielle’s eyes met his, and he looked away, unable to bear the torment he saw there. She was not mad, not quite, but there was nothing human, nothing mortal in that gaze.
Men stepped aside as Alarielle moved past them with an eerie grace, her robes whipping about her as if she were the eye of a storm. Leaves and shattered branches swirled about her, and her long, golden hair flowed in her wake as she stepped across the glistening surface of the water. Impossibly thin, and as pale as ice, she resembled nothing so much as a marble statue gifted with life, and her eyes blazed with a power far beyond anything Grymn had ever witnessed.
‘What is she?’ he whispered.
‘Life,’ Morbus said. ‘In all of its fury and power.’
Alarielle pursued the retreating forces of the Nurgle worshippers with slow, stately steps. Where the end of her staff fell, the water turned cool and clear, and ravaged vegetation sprouted green and lush once more. Any daemon so foolish enough as to move towards her, rather than away, was reduced to swirling ash in the blink of an eye.
‘This place is not yours,’ she said, gazing at the Great Unclean One. Her voice rang out, as clear as a bell, as loud as thunder. Daemons quailed back, and the sylvaneth began to shriek and howl. ‘I ceded my realm to you, but I shall not cede this place.’
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