Vretch had studied the ways of a thousand plagues — he had taken samples from Nurgle’s Wyrdroot as it hollowed out the treekin of the Jade Kingdoms, and helped the Wailing Chill pass between the Doldrum Heights and Rigvale’s Run. But few were as horrible as the one his magics now kept at bay. He’d already coughed up part of what he suspected was his liver, and his flesh was peeling away in sheets.
Why had Skuralanx done this to him? Unless… yes. Yes, perfidy, of course. The daemon had no more use for him, and had decided to dispose of him, whatever its promises to the contrary. He growled softly in anger. That he had been planning to do something similar only made it worse. Another shiver of pain wracked him. The sea heaved as the worm shuddered, torn by its own pain. The air shivered with the sound of its agony, and, as if in sympathy, the worms within him twitched abominably. Vretch bit back a shriek of pain.
He didn’t dare show weakness, not now. It was all he could do to keep from spurting the musk of fear. His long-dead nerve endings had spasmed to life, and a foul-smelling ichor beaded on his flesh.
‘O great Horned Rat, watch over your most pathetic and beset of children. Have I not served thee faithfully, O Ruiner and Wrecker? Watch over me, as you watched over me in the Glade of Horned Growths, O most blessed planter of poxes,’ he murmured, clutching his tail to his chest. He made to chew it, when he noticed that the blisters had spread there as well. He flung it down with a grunt.
The rafts eased forward by the light of the warp torches, through the steaming current. They passed beneath broken archways curtained with shrouds of half-digested matter. Things roared in the darkness, and he restrained himself from hurling a fiery pox towards the source of the noise. Somehow, he knew that using his magics would only aggravate his condition. If he wanted to survive long enough to find the Liber Pestilent and rid himself of the worms growing within him, he had to save his strength.
The raft thumped over a submerged stone, nearly knocking him from his claws. ‘Careful, fools,’ he shrilled. Incensed, he flung out his claw, and a plague monk collapsed, wreathed in green flame, his flesh going necrotic beneath his disintegrating rags. A tremor ran through Vretch and he sat back, wheezing. ‘Careful… careful…’ he whispered, staring balefully at his followers. There weren’t many, now.
One of his remaining rafts had vanished somewhere along the slow crawl of the worm’s gullet. The other had been caught in a gastric riptide and sunk. Those plague monks who’d managed to survive the swim now overburdened his last, precious craft. He contemplated booting a few of them over the side to lighten the load, but decided against it. His display of temper would keep them in line well enough, and there were likely dangers aplenty in this place. He could hear unseen things moving through the shadowed vaults and broken turrets.
He could also smell the pungent ichor of the worm. Black, writhing shapes dripped from the broken walls and plopped into the water like raindrops. Some squirmed purposely through the water towards the raft and he barked a warning. Heaving himself to his feet, he stumbled to the side of the raft and jabbed the tip of his staff into the water. The shard of warpstone flared once and the water boiled with an ugly heat. Worms crisped and sank out of sight. As they did so, the ones growing within him became frenzied.
‘Follow the worms,’ he croaked.
His monks poled the raft deeper into the tangled ruin. They followed the trail of his pain along the winding eddy until they reached a massive bole of stone and mossy soil. It had been compacted into an unmoving bubo of dirt, perched awkwardly in the water. Broken bones, half-dissolved and intertwined with millions of thick-bodied black worms, floated in a sump of tarry ichor at its base. A winding stair of stone rose from the murk, and Vretch led his remaining monks up its unstable length. The pain was concentrated in his belly now. It had become a pulsing black heat, filling him snout to tail. A strange fluid spattered on the stones where he trod, and worms rose from it.
‘Do not let them touch you,’ he said. ‘You are not worthy to receive their blessings.’ And, he thought, I may need some of you alive before this is over. He hacked and coughed into his sleeve. Worms squirmed in his robes and wriggled out of his pores as he tried to concentrate on the Thirty-Nine Rancid Mantras.
At the top of the steps was a chamber. A buckled section of stone floor, gummed to its walls by a mortar of filth and sour meat, spread out before him. There were piles of broken bones everywhere, swaddled in rotting rags — the remains of a hundred or more skaven, long dead. The dried husks of worms lay scattered about in heaps. Familiar graffiti marred the walls and the signs of the Three Horns had been scratched into the floor. Shattered cauldrons lay everywhere, and their contents had spread tackily across the loose stones of the floor, to drip down into the sump below. From the scene, Vretch deduced that the Geistmaw clan — for these remains were theirs, of that he was certain — had been in the process of brewing the worm-pox when Geistmaw fell to Shu’gohl’s hunger.
‘It must be here, it must,’ he hissed. In a sudden frenzy, he began to smash aside bones with his staff. ‘Well? Don’t just stand there, fools! Help me look-find the Liber! Now-now,’ he snarled, glaring at his followers.
They scrambled to obey immediately. Plague monks flung aside bones and lifted broken cauldrons, tore at loose stones and ripped up fallen shrouds. So hurriedly did they set about their business that the air was soon filled with the clangour of the bells they wore. Vretch watched for a moment, his head and belly throbbing with agony. Then he turned, raising his staff high. He summoned a flicker of light into the warpstone. ‘Sssseek,’ he muttered. Motes of sickly light spilled from the facets of the stone and darted about the chamber.
There was always the chance it wasn’t here. That it had been swept away, lost to the dark. But this was the source of the worm-plague. If they’d had one of the lost Libers, it would have been here, somewhere. Skuralanx was certain of it, and by extension, so was Vretch. Whatever else he might be — traitor, deceiver, assassin — he was no fool. It had to be here somewhere, it had to be. Heart thudding, panic growing, Vretch swept his staff about wildly, trying to illuminate the whole chamber.
All at once, something glinted, reflecting the light of his staff. ‘There!’ he snarled. He lurched forward, robes flapping. He shouldered aside two of his followers and stabbed the end of his staff down, through the bones and rubbish.
Clink.
He fell forward, clawing at the refuse with his free claw until he found it. It was not a book, nor a tome, a grimoire or parchment, as he’d expected. It was, instead, a set of square golden plaques, with holes punched along one side, bound together by thick coils of some sort of vine, unlike any he had ever seen. He made to snatch up the plaques, but they were glued to the floor by ichor and mould. They felt warm, as if they hadn’t been lying in the dark for hundreds of years. Vretch hissed in frustration and pried at them, to no avail. The other skaven shuffled forward, as if to help, and he snarled at them in warning. ‘Back,’ he snapped. ‘Back, fools — this is mine-mine!’
As they scuttled back, he braced himself over the plaques. They were shrouded in the same sticky worm-ichor that covered the walls and floor. He grunted and set his foot-claws, tail lashing. Pain-riddled muscles strained and his head began to pound. His eyes bulged and worms spilled from ruptured blisters.