by Various
As a floating island cast the wardwood in shadow, a giant, trailing root grasped him. Lifted clear of the battlefield, Shaddock snatched his sword from the carcass of the defeated daemon. Sheathing the weapon, the Spirit of Durthu allowed the root to draw him up towards the Skyforests of Jynnt.
With the sylvaneth of Aspengard rescued, the islands rose up through the filth and back into the glory of the sun’s rays, leaving the hordes of Nurgle behind. Kurnoth Hunters extended their talons down to haul Shaddock and the dryads of Arkenwood up over the precipice, welcoming them to their glade. The Skyforest bustled with the spirits of Jynnt, Aspengard, the Arkenwood and other spoiled lands. The ancient felt Ardaneth and Laurelwort beside him.
‘I am Shaddock,’ he said. ‘Wardwood of Athelwyrd, former counsellor and glade-guardian to the Radiant Queen. I humbly present myself, with the refugees of the Arkenwood, as a true servant of the Everqueen and request a meeting with the presiding ancient of the Skyforest.’
‘Your request is denied,’ a voice replied from the ironwoods. It was the imperious rumble of thunder. It was the playful splash of the stream. It was the calm breeze through the leaves and the fury of a forest fire – all as one. Dryads, Hunters and ironwoods parted to admit Alarielle, Everqueen of the sylvaneth and all Ghyran, riding high on a gargantuan wardroth beetle.
Shaddock went down on one knee, bowing his head. He came to understand how Alarielle’s song had led him to the battlefield but not to the Everqueen herself. She had been drifting high above on the islands of the Skyforest. Like the wardwood, the spirits of Aspengard and the Arkenwood knelt also.
‘There is no presiding ancient here,’ Alarielle told the Spirit of Durthu. ‘Only a queen – with a request of her own. That an old friend can forgive her foolishness and take his rightful place by her side once more, as wise counsellor and as glade-guardian. The time of the Splintering is at an end and the war for Ghyran begins. What say you, my wardwood?’
Shaddock sagged. Then, the weight of his trials and travels was lifted from his shoulders. He rose before Alarielle, to bathe in her glory and her love for all living things.
‘My queen calls,’ Shaddock said, ‘and her subject obeys.’
Wrathspring
Gav Thorpe
Something noisome carried on the wind. The reek was born of blood and rotten offal and rodent droppings. It was a harbinger, the vanguard of a thoroughly loathsome tide. Not just the air carried the taint. The Wrathwaters knew what was coming. Even the springsfed surge churning down from the peaks of the White Stair could not clear the pollution from the winding waterways and rising pools. The trees drew in their roots, sickened by the presence of the corruption. Fish lay gut-to-sky, rotting amongst withered leaves and decaying rushes.
In the heartwaters below the rivers and lakes, deeper than the delving of millennia-old trees, the miasma of decay spread through the veins of the forests. The font of wyldmagic – the essence of life, the meltwater of souls – thickened into sluggish swells, bloated and bubble-ridden like a stream choked with noxious gasses and rank sludge.
Diraceth, Leafmaster of Clan Arleath, felt all of these changes – upon his bark, in his sap, on the tips of his taproots. The cloying, stifling Chaos taint was like a fungus on his spirit, leeching his essence, spreading fibrous tendrils through the lands of the Wrathwaters into every part of him.
It was hard to rouse himself, even with the strength of the long-awaited blooming forcing rivulets of life energy into his body. All of the worldwood sickened – it was folly to believe that the Wrathwaters could hold out. Better to succumb, to give up the last clinging vestige of life. Oblivion was preferable to further torture, the never-ending gnawing of soul and strength.
‘Lord!’ Callicaith, the branchwych, had climbed into his upper limbs and was dragging her wood talons against his rough bark – insistent but not painful, nor deep enough to draw sap. Her heartsong was an agitated twittering like the alarm of a bird. On her shoulder, a glimmersilk grub twitched with agitation. ‘Lord Diraceth! The ratmen, they come at last. They come for the lamentiri!’
He opened deep green eyes and looked at the slender tree maiden.
‘The soulpod groves?’ His voice was sonorous, as deep as the earth into which his roots ran. He quivered at the thought. Diraceth’s drooping branches scattered leaves onto the surface of the lake. Around him the bloodwillows responded, straightening their trunks, pulling up ruddy-leafed limbs.
Beyond his copse, other spirits were answering the growing strength of the clan-song. His fellow treelords rumbled echoes in their diminishing slumber. Sylvaneth warriors stirred in the dappled gloom at the water’s edge. Polished wood and firestone of bared blades caught the scant sunlight, scattering glints like water droplets.
‘No more pestilence, no more sickness,’ Callicaith continued. ‘Ratmen with blades, with spears. Creatures we can fight. Creatures we can kill!’
The thought brought Diraceth further from his slumber, drawing up an influx of the essence of Ghyran, the magic of the Realm of Life streaming through his sap.
‘A poor move,’ he growled. He let his roots fall away and drew up a foot. ‘Skaven, always impatient. Another hundred seasons and we would be quite beyond resistance.’
‘There are many, lord.’
‘There always are, my glade-daughter.’ Diraceth levered his other foot out of the sodden lakeside bank and took a step, his sap continuing to rise. It felt good to move again. ‘Rouse the clan. We go to war!’
The wailing of trees competed with the deafening chitter of rats. Arboreal screeches and thrashing leaves beset the river glades of the Wrathwaters as the skaven advanced within a bank of burning mist. Tainted by warpstone, the deathfog of Pestilens scorched leaves and blistered bark. Droplets of warp-touched acid settled on the pools and meres, sinking slowly into the waters with greenish trails.
Diraceth waited, ignoring the pulses of pain that ran through him from the wickedly deep cut across his trunk – a wound that still seeped with the corrupted taint from the blade of the plague priest that had struck him. He wept streams of thick sap, the agony of his body nothing compared to the injuries inflicted upon his domains. The treelord ancient could feel a shudder of misery throbbing through the pools and rivers every time the filth-ridden missiles of the catapults crashed through the canopy. A dozen of the accursed engines had pounded the last scraps of territory for two days, littering the banks and water with heaps of steaming, disease-ridden offal and corrupting shards of warpstone.
Most of the trees were dead, and the rest had retreated with the sylvaneth. Beyond the painfully slender ring of forest sheltering Clan Arleath, the Wrathwaters had been turned into a steaming mire, a wasteland of sucking marsh and drifting, suffocating clouds.
They waited, the last Wrathwater scions of Glade Winterleaf. They waited without hope. At their backs lay the lifepool, the last vestige of their home. Heartseeds covered the surface, but the replenishing waters did not rouse the spirits within. The taint of the skaven came before them, quelling the life force that sustained the lake of the sacred grove. Even more faintly luminescent heartseeds gleamed beyond the perimeter of the clan’s remaining realm – lost in the fog, overrun by the skaven, beyond reclaiming by the branchwyches.
As the last of the warp-wounded trees succumbed to the deadly miasma, the Wrathwaters fell silent. The impenetrable mists surrounded the dell, obscuring everything beyond a bowshot of the water’s edge, revealing only dim silhouettes of trees bowing beneath the effect of the toxic cloud, curling like parched leaves. Diraceth shifted, sensing that something approached through the mist.
Drums. Slow-beating drums. The death fog muted the sound, every percussive rumble seeming to come from all directions. The distant crack of catapults had stopped too. Diraceth could hear the rustling of his glade-daughters and the creak of the other treefolk as they shifted, turning to and fro to watch the closing mists.
‘We die here,’ the Leafmaster told his glade-kin. He looked down at Callicaith. Like all of them, the branchwych bore the injuries of furious battle against the Chaos ratmen. Her leaf-limbs were snapped, her arms scored by deep marks from notched, rusted blades. ‘On the shore of our life-grove, we fight to the last. No more retreats. Without our soulpods, there can be no Clan Arleath.’
The sap in his veins felt clammy and cold. The last of the Wrathwaters were succumbing to the encroachment of Pestilens. Diraceth could feel it like claws dragging at his spirit, trying to pull him down into the ground to suffocate him.
‘There!’ hissed Callicaith, pointing a talon towards the fog.
Others were calling out, indicating a growing darkness in the mists, the approach of the plague monks. Along with the sombre beat of the drums drifted the sound of feet splashing through the swamp.
Screeches split the air a few moments before individual shapes solidified and burst from the fog bank. Fanatics bearing fog-spouting censers sprinted towards the line of sylvaneth, faces flecked with saliva, thick tongues lolling, eyes wild. They swung their censer-maces in wide arcs, surrounding themselves with wreathing spirals of poisonous fumes.
Diraceth let his will flow back into the sustaining pool. He pushed his essence out into the remnants of the Wrathwaters, tapping into what little life magic remained. He felt a reciprocal force, as the Wrathwaters themselves sought a response to the invaders.
‘’Tis the last time your feet shall sully these lands, children of the Horned Rat!’ bellowed Diraceth, letting his rage flow free in a torrent of magic.
The ground beneath the onrushing censer bearers erupted with the Leafmaster’s power. Tiny rootlets sprang into full-grown rushes that speared up through the skaven, spitting them as surely as any lance strike. Grasses with blades like swords slashed through others, turning ragged robes and flesh to red tatters, gizzards hanging like blossoms on the tips of their rapidly growing stalks.
The spattering of running feet heralded the final rush of the plague monks. Hooded and robed, the ratmen advanced out of the fog bank, rank after rank of snarling, spitting vermin. With them, they brought a great wheeled altar, on which was hung a giant censer of burning warpstone. The fumes from this infernal engine streamed over the coming horde, roiling and bubbling with a life of their own.
The sylvaneth did not wait for the skaven to charge, but counter-attacked at a signal from their lord. Dryads and tree-revenants fell upon the Chaos vermin with sweeping branches and shredding claws, their war-song like the cawing of crows and shriek of hunting hawks. The plague monks fought with serrated daggers and warpstone-tipped staffs, their own cries every bit as strident as the calls of Clan Arleath.
The greater treefolk, Diraceth’s glade-cousins, were about to move forwards to support their smaller kin but the Leafmaster halted their long strides. Callicaith glanced up at him, feeling it too. The Leafmaster pointed into the fog.
‘Await, kin of the glades! Do you feel its presence? A greater darkness comes upon us this eve.’
As he spoke, the sensation grew stronger. It was like a deeper pit in the darkness that was the Pestilens horde. The magic of Ghyran swirled as it approached, turned away like dead leaves before a gale, scattering and burning at its touch.
In the fog, something as large as Diraceth loomed through the withered remains of the trees. The Leafmaster drew in all the life magic that he could, expelling it as storm of sharp, glittering kernels that parted the encroaching deathfog.
As the miasma billowed back, it revealed the daemonic master of the skaven.
A crown of curling, twisted horns framed its huge, rattish head. Its tail was like a barbed whip longer than it was tall, tipped with rusted blades. Pink-grey flesh was draped in a ragged brown tunic, over which sat overlapping plates of serrated oil-black armour. A helm with long cheek-guards protected its skull. A huge book hung on its waist, chained to a thick belt of hide, and an unnatural breeze fluttered the pages, spilling forth seeping tendrils of sorcerous mist. The dark magic of the grimoire was like a heavy weight in Diraceth’s thoughts, an artefact of corruption and decay wholly anathema to the Leafmaster and the life-giving magic that had given birth to him.
Bellowing wordless hatred for the greater daemon, the Leafmaster’s tree-cousins stomped forth, whipping lacerating limbs against the Verminlord’s armour, thrusting penetrating branches towards its flesh.
The creature reeled back, allowing more of its underlings to stream forwards, hurling themselves at the treelords and tree-revenants. While the arboreal giants crushed these attackers beneath root-splayed feet and pulverised them with hammering fists, the rat-daemon belched forth a noxious cloud of vile fumes. The treefolk retreated from this poisonous mist, their bark withering and drying at its touch, blighted sap erupting from widening skin-cracks and splitting knotholes. At the touch of the sorcerous fumes, their leaves shrivelled to blackened wisps. Low moans of pain made the earth shake.
All around the ancient, the song of his kin was falling in volume, as spirit after spirit fell silent. He tried to rouse them with bass urgings of his own, infusing them with his renewed desire to fight.
Snarling, glittering spites erupted from Diraceth’s canopy as he stormed forwards, surrounding him with a whirling shield of biting, spitting spirits. He hardened his limbs into lance-points and drew his arm back, ready to strike.
The daemon creature turned, as swift as any of its rapacious minions, its tail whipping around Diraceth’s arm. The two titanic beings braced against each other, pulling, each trying to tear the limb from their foe.
Fog swirled and lightning crackled around the daemon’s free hand. It coalesced into a four-tined spear. Stepping closer, allowing Diraceth to drag it forwards, the greater daemon of the Horned Rat plunged the weapon into the trunk of the Leafmaster, the points opening up the wound already marking his bark.
Chaos power flared through the injury, a thousand tiny bites engulfing Diraceth. He lashed out, throwing dagger-needles into the face of his foe. Ripping the spear free with a spray of golden sap, the skaven-beast stepped back, its tail unwrapping from Diraceth’s arm.
The treelord ancient staggered away, life fluid spurting in thick fountains from the gash in his torso. He thrust a hand into the wound, growing branch-fingers to bind it together. The ancient felt the burn of the Chaos magic, tiny flecks of corrupted rust burrowing through his exposed heartwood.
Even as he stumbled and almost fell, Diraceth let forth a retort. Vines burst from the broken ground at the monster’s feet, snaking around its legs, seeking its throat and eyes.
The Verminlord took a step closer, spear raised for the kill. Diraceth looked up into its red eyes, undaunted by its horrific majesty.
The Verminlord hesitated.
As it was about to strike the blow, it shifted, cocking its head to one side. A moment later a breeze rippled through Diraceth’s leaves. Fresh, restorative. The fogs were swirling, becoming ragged tufts on the gusts of a new wind. The darkness beyond was diminishing, overpowered by a burgeoning yellow gleam.
Sunlight.
Warmth touched Diraceth. The heat of the sun. The power of Ghyran.
With it came a new spirit-song. It was like nothing he could remember, swelling up from the heartrock of the ground and cascading down from the sky, melodic and subtle, but dramatic and discordant all at once. Fuelled anew, the wound in his chest sealed by the magical touch, the Leafmaster surged to his feet. His hands crooked into wicked blades as he advanced towards his enemy with renewed purpose.
The daemon thrust its spear into one of its own followers, spitting the mewling plague monk upon the points. Sorcerous lightning crackled again, forming an arc that pulled the skaven apart, its scattered body forming a swirling circle of green fog that flickered with Chaos power. Through the miasma Diraceth felt a yawning chasm, a deep shaft that dropped away between the phy
sical realms.
The daemon stepped into the fresh gnawhole with a last look at the Leafmaster. Though its expression was impossible to read, the spear thrust towards the ancient was a clear threat – this would not be their last encounter.
With a wet sucking noise the portal closed, the remnants of the sacrificed plague monk splashing to the mulch-covered ground.
Diraceth’s attention was drawn back to the strange sunrise. The fogs were almost completely dissipated now, taking on more of the cast of mountain lake mists at dawn.
The plague monks felt it too, and having been abandoned by their immortal master did not take flight but threw themselves upon the sylvaneth with frenetic desperation.
Where the gold light touched, the Wrathwaters responded. The blackened, withered morass burst into renewed life, saplings and bushes springing forth from the groundwaters, blossoming into full growth as Diraceth watched.
The rush of magic flowed around and over and beneath him, through air and water and ground. Heartseeds thought lost in the mire crackled with energy amongst the fronds and strands of fresh growth. He heard the tremulous strains of their nascent soul-songs quivering into life, ready to grow into fresh generations of sylvaneth.
Behind him the waters of the lifepool glimmered with the magic of birth. Sylvaneth souls that had long been repressed by the noxious flow of skaven corruption suddenly burst into full bloom, brought to fruition by the influx of life essence. Out of the heartseeds his clan had salvaged from the incessant skaven encroachment burst forth a fresh surge of dryads, branchwraiths and tree-revenants. These newborns splashed out of the waters, their birth-songs tainted by rage and bloodthirst, and they fell upon the skaven with vengeful cries and haunting moans.