Accompanied by the shouts of more successful hunters, the roars of eager seraphon, and the squeals of dying skaven, Zephacleas and the others ascended to the summit of the tower. There were no doors here, only a wide open, circular chamber. The room was enormous — despite the great windows which lined its walls, the upper reaches were lost in shadow. It had been abandoned in a hurry. Empty cauldrons, piles of books and rotting bodies lay everywhere.
‘I’ve seen this before. Remember that foul warren in the Ghurdish Heights?’ Zephacleas murmured. Beside him, Sutok sniffed the air warily and glanced at the skink, Takatakk.
‘Indeed,’ Seker said. ‘A plague-womb. The vermin have been busy.’ The skaven — some of them, at least — were brewers of pox and plague second only to the foul followers of Nurgle. They delighted in rot and decay, and spread pestilences with fiendish glee. The Astral Templars had seen similar horrors in the Jade Kingdoms as well. ‘We must burn this place, when the battle is won. We cannot allow whatever horrors they have brewed here to spread.’
‘It may be too late for that, Lord-Relictor,’ Zephacleas said. He peered into one of the gibbets. The man inside was dead, though his journey to the underworld had not been easy. He wore the strange segmented armour of a city militia-man over his ragged and torn robes. It was dark, and composed of scales shed from the worm’s hide. Pale, like all folk of the Crawling City, his flesh was covered in bruises, blisters, burns and more besides, including a number of fleshy pus-filled growths. Despite these, his form looked somehow… shrunken, as if whatever vitality he’d once possessed had been drained into the bulging abscesses. Zephacleas tapped the gibbet with his hammer, turning it slowly.
As it twisted on its chain, he examined the body more closely. ‘Gravewalker, what caused these growths? It looks like the work of no disease I recognise,’ he called, glancing at the others. Seker turned, and cursed.
‘Zephacleas, get away from it,’ the Lord-Relictor snarled.
Zephacleas heard a hiss, and turned, just in time to see the first abscess split open. A stinking yellow gas spewed from the ruptured flesh, and he smashed the gibbet aside. The Lord-Celestant backed away. ‘Get clear of the cages,’ he roared. A moment later, a thin lash of suppurating flesh shot from the twitching body and struck at him. More tendrils erupted from the abscesses, thrashing about wildly enough to set the gibbet to spinning.
Cries of horror and disgust filled the chamber as the bodies in each gibbet flowered and burst, allowing the putrescent horrors within to emerge — they were akin to the foul, strangling vines of the Fangwood in the Ghurdish Heights, but horribly afflicted by some pestilence which made the ever-coiling fronds weep a strange, musky pus.
Rusty metal bent and buckled as the things within the gibbets fought to get free. A foul miasma rose from the monstrous blossoms which bloomed on the writhing tendrils, filling the air. ‘Back, back,’ Seker shouted. ‘All of you, back!’
Zephacleas turned to join his warriors when something snagged his throat from behind. One of vines, he realised, as it tightened about his neck. It contracted, as if seeking to reel him in, and more of them ensnared his wrists and chest. He roared in fury and fought against their pull. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that he was not alone in his predicament. Several of the warriors who’d accompanied him were caught as well. Liberators slashed at the tendrils, trying to free their fellows, but the squirming appendages simply regenerated.
The seraphon were attempting to aid their allies. He saw Sutok slam his great mace down on a gibbet, nearly ripping it from its chain. The writhing mass inside launched its vines at the Sunblood, trying to snag him. Sutok roared and slashed at them. Zephacleas turned slowly, fighting against the strength of the vines that held him. He heard a shrill voice chitter in amusement, somewhere far above.
Chains rattled and robes flapped. The chamber was dark, but with a single chirp, Takatakk filled it with a soft blue light. Dozens of skaven clung to the chains of the spinning, thrashing gibbets, glaring down at the invaders. At a shrilled command, they descended en masse, leaping first to attack those Stormcasts who were caught by the tendrils.
A disgusting-looking skaven, wrapped in stinking rags and rattling chains, scurried down towards Zephacleas, whirling its censers wildly. The ratman darted across the straining lengths of tendril towards him. It squealed at him in obvious challenge.
Zephacleas heaved his body to the side, jolting the skaven from its claws and sending it tumbling to the ground. The gibbet creaked on its chain as he twisted it, and the tendrils trembled. Hissing ichor seeped from them to spatter his armour. He set his feet and slowly, achingly, pulled his arms back until, one by one, the tendrils snapped. Freed, he lurched backwards to avoid the ratman’s whirling censers. Across the chamber, his warriors and the seraphon had engaged the other skaven.
The censer bearer drove him back in a swirling cloud of poisonous fumes. Zephacleas held his breath, knowing that to inhale one lungful of the reeking smoke was to die. As the whirring censers slashed down at him again, he thrust his sword out and twisted, snagging the chains. He tore them from their owner’s claws with a single heave and caught the off-balance skaven with a blow that crushed its bandaged skull.
As it fell to the floor, twitching in its death-throes, Zephacleas turned to see that the writhing shapes in the gibbets were beginning to pull themselves free. Split tendrils reformed or sprouted anew as the musk of the blossoms thickened. Strands of fleshy matter shot towards the pillars and roof. Blotches of foulness spread wherever they touched. He started chopping through the questing tendrils.
He caught Seker’s attention. ‘Gravewalker — call down the lightning. Purge this place in fire and storm.’
The Lord-Relictor didn’t hesitate. His voice roared out, strong and clear, and the air in the chamber grew thick and sharp. Bits of paper and loose debris were caught up by the dervish winds that seemed to emanate outward from him. Lightning coalesced around his reliquary staff as he lifted it in both hands.
As tendrils surged towards him from the arboreal abominations, he slammed the ferrule of his staff down, and lightning erupted from it, immolating everything in the chamber save the Stormcasts and their seraphon allies. Skaven stumbled out of the conflagration, screeching in agony. They were swiftly put out of their misery.
Zephacleas nodded in satisfaction. ‘Death and ruin,’ he murmured.
CHAPTER NINE
The Sahg’gohl
Deep within the ruins of Geistmaw, Vretch reacted with all of the instinctive savagery of his race. He lunged forward, throat swelling as he belched forth a cloud of noxious mist. The creatures nearest him crumpled as the cloud enveloped them. Shimmering scales turned dull and began to drop off their frames as, one by one, they fell into the darkness below. Mist trailing from between his clenched teeth, Vretch whirled on his perch of stone, the susurrus of the worms loud in his head.
A reptile sprang towards him, and he caught the seraphon by the throat before it could land a blow with the barbed dart in its talon. It struggled for a moment, trying to break his grip, and he glared at it. ‘You think to kill me? Me?’ he hissed. The lizard twisted about in his grip and sank needle-like teeth into his arm. Vretch shrieked and dashed the creature’s head against the ground.
Darts sprouted from his back and shoulders. He staggered. A trick — a distraction to get him to turn his back. Whatever celestial poison was in the darts was as nothing next to the toxins already running riot through his system, but it still burned like fire. Screeching continuously, heedless of his condition, he lashed out with his magics. More darts sank into his rotting flesh, but he was too far gone to feel them.