Wardens of the Everqueen

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  ~ THE AGE OF SIGMAR ~

  THE GATES OF AZYR

  An Age of Sigmar novella

  ~ THE REALMGATE WARS ~

  WAR STORM

  An Age of Sigmar anthology

  GHAL MARAZ

  An Age of Sigmar anthology

  ~ THE BLACK RIFT OF KLAXUS ~

  PART ONE: ASSAULT ON THE MANDRAKE BASTION

  PART TWO: IN THE WALLS OF URYX

  PART THREE: THE GNAWING GATE

  PART FOUR: SIX PILLARS

  ~ THE CALL OF ARCHAON ~

  PART ONE: BENEATH THE BLACK THUMB

  PART TWO: EYE OF THE STORM

  PART THREE: THE SOLACE OF RAGE

  PART FOUR: KNIGHT OF CORRUPTION

  PART FIVE: THE TRIAL OF THE CHOSEN

  PART SIX: IN THE LANDS OF THE BLIND

  PART SEVEN: BLOOD AND PLAGUE

  PART EIGHT: SEE NO EVIL

  From the maelstrom of a sundered world, the Eight Realms were born. The formless and the divine exploded into life.

  Strange, new worlds appeared in the firmament, each one gilded with spirits, gods and men. Noblest of the gods was Sigmar. For years beyond reckoning he illuminated the realms, wreathed in light and majesty as he carved out his reign. His strength was the power of thunder. His wisdom was infinite. Mortal and immortal alike kneeled before his lofty throne. Great empires rose and, for a while, treachery was banished. Sigmar claimed the land and sky as his own and ruled over a glorious age of myth.

  But cruelty is tenacious. As had been foreseen, the great alliance of gods and men tore itself apart. Myth and legend crumbled into Chaos. Darkness flooded the realms. Torture, slavery and fear replaced the glory that came before. Sigmar turned his back on the mortal kingdoms, disgusted by their fate. He fixed his gaze instead on the remains of the world he had lost long ago, brooding over its charred core, searching endlessly for a sign of hope. And then, in the dark heat of his rage, he caught a glimpse of something magnificent. He pictured a weapon born of the heavens. A beacon powerful enough to pierce the endless night. An army hewn from everything he had lost.

  Sigmar set his artisans to work and for long ages they toiled, striving to harness the power of the stars. As Sigmar’s great work neared completion, he turned back to the realms and saw that the dominion of Chaos was almost complete. The hour for vengeance had come. Finally, with lightning blazing across his brow, he stepped forth to unleash his creations.

  The Age of Sigmar had begun.

  Chapter One

  The groaning roar of the arboreal colossus rippled through the ravaged wood. Braying beasts and howling marauders fell silent as the primal fury of the sound came smashing down upon them. It was a rage beyond flesh and bone, a hate at once elemental and remorseless, the last tremendous defiance left in a land violated and despoiled. Warriors who had mocked the defiance of mortal nations, who had butchered entire kingdoms without remorse, now felt dread quiver through their hearts. Almost before they recognised what they were doing, the vanguard of the horde began to fall back, to shrink away from the ferocious bellow and the giant that gave it voice. That roar held within it the wrath of all the victims that had withered on their blades, the curse of vengeance unsatisfied.

  The secret vale of Athelwyrd was dying. Its glades had been trampled by boot and hoof, its forests gashed and torn by axe and claw, its meadows scorched by the fires of sorcery. Once pristine streams of crystal water had been transformed into trickles of diseased muck, as black and rancid as the souls of the rampaging invaders. In all the realm of Ghyran there had been no place better hidden, better protected than Athelwyrd, but now even this sanctuary had been discovered. This fortress would fall to the conquerors, but while the rest of the vale was even now being ravaged by the invaders, here alone did one last foe rise to oppose them.

  Huge and ancient, the enormous tree-creature lumbered out from the depths of the wood. It stood five times the height of a man, its branch-like arms ending in gigantic talons of blade-sharp bark. Its face was a cluster of knotholes that pitted the creature’s trunk, a sylvan glow shining deep within their depths. The mouth was a jagged gash lined with fang-like splinters, groans of enraged anguish rumbling continuously from within. Roots still clotted with the rich dark soil of Athelwyrd dragged behind pillar-like legs as the creature surged towards the massed invaders.

  For only a moment did terror hold the horde back, for fear of the treelord couldn’t eclipse the greater fear that infected each of the invaders: fear of the infernal god they served and the remorseless warlord who bore that god’s noxious blessings. The sylvaneth colossus could, in the end, only kill them. Plaguefather Nurgle could do far worse, and through his mortal general, such retribution would be swift in coming.

  Bellowing their own war cries, the legions of decay turned upon the wooden hulk. All across the realm of Ghyran, the diseased hosts of Nurgle had erupted like a plague, ravaging the Jade Kingdoms and despoiling the once vibrant and fecund forests. Step by step, blow by blow, they were transforming the land into a new garden of disease and corruption for their obscene master, but none of those innumerable conflicts could match the duty that had been entrusted to the invaders of Athelwyrd. To them had been bestowed the honour of claiming for their god the prize he desired most keenly. Success would increase their unholy vitality and grant them leprous boons beyond measure; failure would result in shame and endless suffering.

  So it was that human warriors in corroded armour and with blades pitted by rust and verdigris flung themselves at the hulking treelord. Bestial gors, their mangy fur peppered with grisly rashes and cancerous blisters, sprang upon the creature with axes of bone and flint. Wizened daemons with leprous eyes and oozing sores prowled towards their foe with blackened swords of raw corruption.

  The glow in the pits of the treelord’s face burned with even sharper malignance. Again the creaking groan rumbled through the forest. The forest spirit brought its immense feet crashing down, the trailing roots stabbing into the earth, sinking down to bind it to the ground it defended. Charging foes came howling towards it, weapons raised for the kill.

  A sweep of the treelord’s great claw hurled the broken bodies of half a dozen pox-ridden warriors into the air. A downward swipe of its fist burst an advancing plaguebearer like a pimple, the daemon’s foul essence spattering across a herd of beastmen, sizzling against their fur and flesh. A bloated gor, its diseased body swathed in strips of mail and patches of steel plate, was caught in the forest spirit’s hand and raised high into the air. The treelord tightened its grip and crushed the creature to bloody paste.

  Scores of invaders were smashed and crushed by the treelord, their corpses heaped around its feet. The attack faltered, warriors drawing back as they wondered whether the death before them was worse than that threatened by their pestilent god. The tribal marauders snarled obscenities at their foe, jeering at the monster, steeling themselves for another attack. The beastmen growled and snapped at one another, trying to force the weakest among them to engage the enemy. The daemons gibbered and muttered, distracted by the fresh corruption spreading through the glade and by the timidity of their mortal allies.

  One of the tribal chieftains charged forwards, hubris emboldening him where others quailed. He was mighty in the councils of their warlord, honoured for his ruthlessness and ferocity, and his abject devotion to the decayed glories of Nurgle. For all of this, a single glare from the treelord’s glowing eyes sent the man cringing away in fright, retreating back into the diseased mob.

  An awed hush fell across the putrid leg
ion, beasts and men, mortals and daemons falling silent as a grotesque figure pushed his way through their ranks – a huge warrior, his belly swollen with rot and putrescence, a gigantic axe with a blackened blade clenched in his scarred hands. A massive pauldron guarded his left shoulder, through which a clutch of immense bony spines had erupted from his flesh and through the corroded steel. The warrior’s face was locked inside a horned helm, only the eye-slots marring the smooth mask. There were three of these, spaced in the triangular pattern of the fly-rune, the diseased emblem of Nurgle himself. From each of the openings, a blemished eye glowered at the hesitant marauders.

  A violent, cough-like cry bubbled up from the horned helm. Without further warning, the huge fighter brought his axe swinging around. The blackened blade sheared the arm off the chieftain who had retreated, pitching the maimed barbarian to the earth. Before the man could even scream, the wound he’d been dealt was a blackened mass of necrotic tissue, the sorcerous pollution of the axe rushing through his veins to infest the rest of his body. Those around the man drew back, gazing at his agonies with a mixture of horror and awe. They glanced from the dying chieftain to the one who’d struck him down with the same regard, for this was no mere champion of the Dark Gods, but the chosen of Nurgle, the warlord who had been granted the distinction of laying waste to Athelwyrd. This was Torglug the Despised.

  Brandishing his axe, Torglug advanced alone towards the treelord. He nodded his horned head towards the writhing body of the chieftain he’d cut down.

  ‘This is being the fate of my enemies.’ Torglug’s voiced seeped from behind his helm. ‘Being through cowardice or defiance, I am sparing none who are opposing me. Be looking upon your destruction, vine-blood, and knowing despair!’

  The treelord reared back, its roots still fastened deep in the earth. From the depths of its mighty frame there sounded a cachinnation of primordial hate. The claws tipping its hands appeared to lengthen, darkening into black thorns. The sylvan glow of its eyes blazed ever brighter.

  Torglug wasted no more threats upon the monster. His words had been for the benefit of his warriors, a reminder to them that he was the chosen of Nurgle. A warning to them all of what it meant to be the favoured champion of the Crow God.

  Storming towards his hulking foe, Torglug brought his axe cracking around in a double-handed strike. He caught the treelord’s claw, shearing through the oaken talon in a spray of splinters and sap. His foe flinched back, more in surprise than pain, stunned that the weapon could inflict such damage. It was only when the severed stump of its claw began to change, began to turn a ghoulish grey, that a moan of suffering rippled through the treelord. Its glowing eyes stared at the ghastly discolouration, watching as it began to spread. Mould, virulent and rapacious as any fever, now infested the creature’s bark.

  The treelord’s wail of pain turned to a creaking snarl of fury. Whipping around, it brought its other hand hurtling towards Torglug, intent upon smashing the warlord into the ground. Exhibiting an agility that belied his bloated bulk, Torglug dived under the plummeting hand, rolling past the creature’s guard. As he came out of his roll, he brought his grisly axe chopping into the treelord’s leg, tearing a great chunk from the pillar-like limb and delivering a second infection of mould even greater than that infesting the creature’s hand. The grey contagion spread rapidly through the mutilated leg, crawling upwards and outwards with ferocious speed.

  The tree-creature tried to swing around, to withdraw its roots and smash Torglug flat, but the treelord’s crippled leg remained fast, only its left limb obeying. Unbalanced, it teetered for a moment. It was the only moment Torglug allowed it. Charging into the paralysed hulk, he hacked away at its free leg, gouging deep cuts into the trunk where it joined the supporting limb. The grey mould exploded across the colossal sylvaneth with each blow, sinking deeper and deeper into the heartwood beneath the bark. As the infection intensified, the trunk became rotten and brittle, each attack wreaking greater and greater havoc.

  A cough of laughter escaped Torglug as the creature’s leg gave out beneath it. The huge treelord crashed to the ground, its momentum tearing its frozen leg from the earth, roots and all. The exultant warlord leaped atop the trunk, hacking away with vicious, vindictive blows of his axe. As he chopped away, gibbering daemon-spawn capered out from the ranks of his legion to gnaw at slivers of heartwood and lap up the sap oozing from the treelord’s wounds. Torglug allowed the hideous, toad-like atrocities their sport. Nurglings were minuscule echoes of the Grandfather, cast in the dreaded god’s image. Even Nurgle’s chosen warlord would not deny the mites. The rest of his warriors, however, knew better than to intrude upon his triumph.

  Triumph? The word had a bitter taste for Torglug. As delicious as it was to feel the ancient sylvaneth withering beneath his boots, as much as he savoured the agonies of the treelord as mould and disease gnawed away at its essence, he knew that this wasn’t triumph. This was only a delay, an interlude standing between him and true victory.

  Torglug watched the glow gradually fade from the pits of the treelord’s face. How much more satisfying it was to watch these creatures die than the armoured warriors of Azyr. When penetrating the illusions that concealed Athelwyrd, Torglug’s legion had been opposed by a great company of the lightning-men. There was no satisfaction smiting such foes, no delicious transition from the suffering of life to the decay of death. The moment the spark was extinguished, they simply vanished in a blaze of blue lightning. It left Torglug bitter to be cheated of his pleasures. Strange and eerie as they were, at least the wooden creatures of the Jade Kingdoms were real enough to suffer for him while they died.

  The last ember faded from the treelord, its spirit finally extinguished by the contagion Torglug’s axe had brought to it. The warlord stared down into its empty face, then brought his boot stomping down again and again into the rotten bark, obliterating the visage utterly. He turned and glared at his waiting legion. All through their march across Athelwyrd they had been drawn into petty battles with the sylvaneth and the lightning-men, meaningless conflicts that delayed them while the real prize threatened to slip out of their reach.

  He wouldn’t let that happen. Torglug had fought too long and hard, had endured too much to fail now. It was his horde that had found the vale of Athelwyrd, his warriors who had penetrated into the refuge of their enemy. Victory, true victory, was within their grasp. The enemy had fled – all the protections that had guarded her for so long were falling away. She was in retreat, nothing more than hunted prey. The great prize Nurgle had coveted for so long would soon be rendered up to him.

  When the Everqueen, Alarielle, was given to Nurgle, Torglug would transcend the limitations of mortality. He would be free of the frailties of flesh. He would become eternal, a prince of the Grandfather’s blighted empire.

  Torglug thrust his axe outwards, pointing it towards the copse from which the treelord had emerged.

  ‘She is escaped!’ he shouted to his warriors. ‘Be upforming! We are marching and bringing Grandfather Nurgle a mighty prize! You are finding her or Torglug is teaching you all what it is to despair!’

  The warlord’s eyes gleamed with murderous ambition as he watched packs of beastkin and barbarians rush into the woods. They would find the trail. Whatever the sylvaneth threw at them, his troops would find their trail.

  It was only a matter of time.

  Amber light streamed through the soaring canopy, stabbing earthwards through a maze of silvery branches and alabaster leaves. Flowers endowed with the vibrant lustre of emerald and sapphire blossomed from a cascade of hanging vines and spiralling creepers. Great strands of coruscating moss spilled from ancient boughs, alight with faerie brilliance and fey luminance. The groans and creaks of swaying trees melded into a harmonious melody, a sussuration that throbbed through both flesh and soul. The rich loamy smell of fertile soil flowed into the enticing fragrance of petal and bloom. The very air was filled with a warm a
doration, a celebration of vitality and the shifting cadence of life itself.

  Through this marvellous landscape, a great exodus trod an ancient path. A vast throng of tree-like beings flocked to a trail none had set eyes upon before but which each knew deep within its heartwood. Smaller figures shared the path, armoured shapes mightier yet not dissimilar to those of men. Fewer in number, they kept apart from the tree-creatures, sharing their journey but not their confidence. The Hallowed Knights, one of Sigmar’s great Stormhosts, had shared many of the ordeals endured by the tree-like sylvaneth, but they were still not wholly accepted by their uncanny companions.

  Lord-Castellant Lorrus Grymn’s fingers tightened about the grip of his halberd, every muscle in his body growing tense as he spun to confront the faint blur of motion he’d caught out of the corner of his eye. With eerie silence, the bushes on the edge of the path were shifting aside, pulling themselves out of the way of the creature trying to move past them. He caught himself before moving to intercept the inhuman shape that suddenly emerged. The spindly figure, its head crowned by a crest of leafy branches, fixed him with its weirdly luminous eyes before striding off down the path.

  ‘I sympathise with you, commander.’ Grymn turned to find Angstun beside him, the sheen of the halo that circled the Knight-Vexillor’s helm dulled by the shadow of the forest canopy overhead. ‘It is hard to think of something so cold and inhuman as friendly.’

  Grymn watched as the sylvaneth joined several similar beings marching along the forest trail. There were hundreds of the tree-like creatures in the procession, some much larger than the one that had just surprised the Lord-Castellant. Every moment brought another out from the forest and onto the path. They moved with a chilling silence, passing without a trace across the wooded trail. Though he sensed no threat from them, Grymn couldn’t shake an impression of restrained hostility smouldering within them.

  ‘They are our allies,’ Grymn corrected Angstun. ‘Do not mistake them for friends. If not for our common foe, I don’t know that they would suffer us to be among them.’ He looked ahead, his gaze fixing upon a brilliant light shining far down the path. ‘Certainly we wouldn’t be permitted so near to their queen. Emissaries from Azyr were turned from her court even after the plaguehosts breached the realmgates and descended upon Ghyran. No, they travel a different road than we can follow. For a space, that road may lead in the same direction, but that is all we share.’