A tremor passed through the Flaywilds. It was too faint for notice, even to the Druids of Craebmhorg, yet it passed through every leaf and vine, every stone, every drop of water. It was the twitching of a spider’s web. It was a clarion call for those that could hear it.
It spoke in a tongue that preceded language itself.
Invaders.
Path 1—The War-Trod Trail
Battle over the Seven Stomach Pits
The War-Trod Trail may have been the most open of the routes into the Flaywilds’ heart, but it was no road. It was a scar, left from the titanic battles between the Maw-Mother and the Carrion Star. At the Seven Stomach Pits, their disemboweled organs had eaten away the earth, leaving seven vast wounds whose depths still boiled with stomach acids that refused to die. The Womb-Gut Butchers called them holy.
Every chain bridge creaked over a cauldron of mutating bile. Entire villages hung suspended upon colossal iron links. At the bottom of every pit, malformed horrors clawed endlessly from bubbling heaps of discarded flesh, birthed only to be chained, worshipped, or devoured.
Until the day those villages burned. The Druids of Craebmhorg launched their assault, claiming the life of a Maw-Wife to showcase their dominance over the heretics. To take their vassals as their own and strengthen their hold over the Flaywilds. And that was only the beginning.
Arkorga Blackrune drove his axe through the ribcage of the second Maw-Wife before she had finished bellowing her challenge.
The hulking ogor prophetess staggered backwards across a swaying bridge, her gut-plate splitting apart beneath the enchanted blow. Around her, the Goroans of Craebmhorg fought with brutal precision while volleys of poisoned bolts from hidden Kruleboyz stitched through the hanging settlement.
One by one, the ogor bodyguards toppled into the acid below. The Maw-Wife spat blood and curses before another axe stroke severed her neck.
The Druids raised the grotesque trophy high.
Two heads now belonged to Craebmhorg.
***
Across the neighbouring pit, thunder rolled despite the clear skies. The ClaimStalker Mercenaries burst from the tree line like an avalanche of steel, heavy riders smashing through timber barricades. Across another bridge, the monstrous beasts of the Howling Flock trampled abominations and rival ogors alike. Their assault shattered an entire suspended village before the defenders could organize.
Mugg Timbercrook was the one to corner the Maw-Wife upon a damaged chain bridge, demanding the unnatural wretch tell him where to find the treacherous monster his Flock pursued. She simply laughed through broken tusks, even as he killed her, consumed by the Great Maw’s hunter and its hatred of the Chaos pretenders.
The Starfall Devils claimed their first Maw-Wife head.
Far below, bewildered duardin slaves stared as soldiers bearing unfamiliar banners cut through their chains instead of their throats.
For many, it was the first act of mercy they had seen in years.
***
By midday, every stomach pit had become its own war.
Charles Vogt's Freeguild companies fought disciplined ranks against Runn's stampeding troggoths while Womb-Gut Butchers crashed into both armies without distinction.
The battle was utter chaos.
Blackpowder smoke.
Acidic mist.
Chains swinging all around.
Sir Blightmere slipped unseen through the carnage, his rusted blade meeting the Maw-Wife’s cleaver in combat. Soon, another head would be claimed for Craebmhorg, and he would learn more of what interfered with the natural cycle of decay—
A thunderous broadside interrupted the thought.
An Arkanaut Frigate dove through the canopy, its guns blasting enemies off of walkways. Grappling lines shot outward as the Kintsugi Axeband hurled themselves into the melee.
Rognir Fireheart crashed directly into Sir Blightmere.
Steel and flame met rust and rot.
The Fyreslayer roared as the plague-ridden blade carved a festering wound across his shoulder, but answered with an axe blow that drove the Nurglite into retreat. The slayers turned their attention to the wounded Maw-Wife, knowing time was of the essence. Around them Runn's troggoths finally smashed through the exhausted Freeguild lines, scattering them and their liberated duardin.
The Kintsugi withdrew under relentless pressure, but not before the wounded Rognir claimed the Maw-Wife's severed head.
The Devils had stolen another victory.
Two heads each.
***
The fifth battle took place in the shadows.
Shadow Warriors lured another Maw-Wife from her suspended throne while Umbra Squad's rifles hammered shot after shot into the massive tyrant. Still she advanced, every bullet only enraging her further. The Twilight Dagger's commander leapt for the killing blow, only for a dancing spear to intercept the strike.
Faelas laughed.
Sorcerous shadows blossomed as the Scions of the Bleeding Wild emerged from nowhere, Kurnothi arrows raining death through the startled ranks of the Starfall Devils. Before the Maw-Wife could recover, Faelas’ spear drove through her heart.
Umbra Squad covered the Twilight Dagger’s retreat, paying forward old debts with disciplined volleys, but fresh cavalry thundered from the forest. The Waiting Frenzy split their fire, putting free guilders down with poisoned arrows and scything blows.
With both groups pinned and unable to aid one another, the Devils were forced to abandon the Pit.
Three heads now flew beneath Craebmhorg's banners.
Only two Maw-Wives remained.
***
The sixth Pit became a battlefield worthy of legend.
The largest forces of both sides collided in a violent clash. The familiar charge of the Caengan Exiles and Sundrake’s Promise was seen again, but this time disrupted by the brass and bone traps of Khornate hunters. The Devils were joined by large numbers of freed duardin slaves, armed by their fellows, that cut down their Womb-Gut slavers and threw themselves against Craebmhorg’s lines. But without the devastating cavalry charge to soften them… the House of the Eclipse rained deadly gunfire down from their entrenched mountainous position, while Sylektos’ bonereapers held the line, turning the fallen into new fortifications of bone while sloughing the meat into the Maw Cauldrons to breed new monstrosities.
Those abominations clawed their way up the sides of the Stomach Pit, threatening to disrupt the disciplined formations of the advancing War-Pilgrims and other Free Guilders that held the Devils’ lines. But the monsters were kept at bay by Duke Tartufo’s halfling cooks, the industrious folk scurrying under foot to pour scalding mushroom soup onto any spawn that neared.
The tides turned as the “Gargant’s Bane” cogfort arrived with its characteristic charge, plowing through Craebmhorg’s defenders to blast away at Eclipsian gunners. Ghouls swarmed from the cogfort to rush the enemy lines, forcing Röguk and Brenin Rhodri to lead their forces into direct combat to ensure Craebmhorg’s lines held. The Devils committed more of their forces into that melee, looking to break the enemy line and overrun the entrenched gunners… just as Craebmhorg hoped.
The mountain shook and All’vit rose from the ground where he’d been buried, the mega-gargant-sized trogg crashing into the enemy’s lines, bringing the Eclipse’s heavy guns into the heart of the Devils. While the Mountainstride and his garrison exchanged fire with the “Gargant’s Bane”, Yotaqel and Grungolt tore at the monster’s legs with their carnosaur and magmadrake, bringing him down to a knee. And with the enemy’s forces fully committed, the Devils’ sent in their reserves.
The Expeditionary Force of Thermodon and their newly liberated bonesplitterz allies flanked Craebmhorg’s forces, pinning them in place with the cogfort “Kapros” and the tribe’s Rogue Idol. The two heavies had been hurled across the Pit with great magical rituals in a bold flanking strategy that put Craebmhorg on the backfoot. With the enemy’s lines faltering, the Ghoul King Orlando Lovell broke through and tore apart the Maw-Wife at the heart of the Pit, leaving little evidence behind aside from the trauma scarred onto all the witnesses.
Casualties were high on both sides of the bloody battle, with many of the freed Duardin slaves killed and fed into the cauldrons they once slaved over, but the Devils claimed the sixth Maw-Wife head.
Three each.
One remained to decide the fate of the region.
***
Silence settled over the final pit, the eerie un-quiet that follows hours of slaughter.
Bodies carpeted the bridges.
Entire villages burned upon their chains.
The last Maw-Wife waited. She was enormous, towering over even the largest tyrants, her armour fashioned from titan bones and daemon-hide.
Across the bridge approached Chax of the Talons of Quetzl.
The Sunblood spoke no challenge, he simply charged and the final duel of the Seven Stomach Pits began.
Each strike shook the chains.
Discipline against brutality.
Then cruel, silken laughter drifted across the battlefield.
The scent of their battle drew a third party into the mix: Syn’Exyn, Twinborn of Slaanesh. And sadistic agility mixed with discipline and might to form a volatile mix that would determine the fate of the Seven Stomach Pits. While Syn’Exyn hurled taunts and the Maw-Wife spat curses, Chax fought in silence. But the daemon could sense the Sunblood’s pleasure at their battle, pushing his limits and testing himself against the greatest threats.
The daemon danced between crushing blows, carving bright lines across the Sunblood's scales before twisting aside from the Maw-Wife's colossal falchion. Chax advanced without hesitation, every movement measured despite blood pouring from fresh wounds.
Syn'Exyn smiled wider.
At first the daemon had sought only amusement.
But there was something intoxicating about the saurus.
Every perfectly controlled strike concealed exhilaration.
Every successful defence pushed him harder.
The sensation fascinated the daemon.
The Maw-Wife spat in disgust, summoning the horrors below.
Fresh abominations climbed from the acid, throwing themselves upon both duelists.
The interruption earned only contempt.Chax crushed monsters beneath his shield. Syn'Exyn pirouetted through the swarm, severing limbs with almost playful irritation. Together they butchered every creature. But it left them exposed.
The Maw-Wife lunged and her barbed falchion stripped daemonic flesh from bone before ripping scale and muscle from the Sunblood's ribs.
Both staggered.
Syn'Exyn looked at the blood, then back at the ogor. Tasted how Chax’s battle high had soured at the interference, that their duel was spoiled.
"You ruined it," the daemon hissed as they moved with quicksilver grace and speed.
The Maw-Wife simply froze in disbelief. Slowly, impossibly, her body opened from chest to groin. Entrails sprayed into the boiling pit below and Syn'Exyn danced beneath the crimson rain.
For one glorious heartbeat, she exulted in removing the irritant. But with the next, disappointment filled her: with the Maw-Wife dead and the battle lost, Chax withdrew from their duel, and the battlefield.
It was all over.
Three Maw-Wives had fallen to the Starfall Devils.
Four to Craebmhorg.
Above the burning Seven Stomach Pits, the Starfall Devils withdrew as the battle turned against them. As Craebmhorg took vassals from the weakening grip of the Womb-Gut Butchers, and roared their bloody triumph into the Flaywild’s crimson skies. While it would take time to properly incorporate those vassals into the Druid’s ranks, they would prove helpful in the final push across the War-Trod Trail, and into the Temple of Radiance.
Druids of Craebmhorg—Minor Victory
Starfall Devils—Defeat
Path 2—The Wyrmtongue River
The Battle of the Pyramid of Itzl
The gutter runner Vassqik padded swiftly and silently across the long, low limb of the mangrove tree. The rustle of leaves in his passage was no doubt lost amidst the noises of the swamp, and the dip of the branch into the turgid waters left barely a ripple across its surface. He had trained for days in the ways of the assassins of the Clans Eshin, and was hand-picked for his skills in stealth and infiltration. He was a shadow, a figment, a ghost on the wind-
A guttural howl split the heavy air, and Vassqik threw himself flat against the branch. It hooped and growled, the low sound reverberating in his skull, and he instantly thought of the horrific gheists that were said to prowl this stinking lagoon. He thought of gaunt, freakish human faces with hollow eyes and broad gaping mouths, of their icy hands reaching up to grab at him and pluck his soul away so that he would never feel the Horned Rat’s glorious presence. He expected at any moment to feel cold fire across his skin, yet as the sound whooped to a close, he remained whole. Cautiously, he raised his paws off his eyes and peered around.
There, at the end of the branch, sat four …. things watching him. They might have been monkeys once, twisted by the magics seeping out across the jungle, or they could have been daemons aping the forms of the local creatures, he did not know. They were an unnatural pink and blue beneath coarse black hair, all teeth and neck with odd numbers of spinley limbs. One of them inhaled, the great sack on its neck inflating like an electric blue toad, before it let out another whooping howl. Then, their job seemingly done, the four creatures as one leapt out into the low branches and swung up into the canopy.
The gutter runner cowered for another long moment, carefully counting up to fifty, then counting down again before cautiously raising his head and looking around. When Vassqik was sure the threat was gone, he silently sat up on the branch and checked the heavy tube he carried. Of course, it had not been cowardice that caused him to take cover, no-no. He was protecting his charge, the whole mission he had been hand-picked for. He was to scout ahead to the fallen Pyramid of Itzl and watch for the Devils and the Druids. When they arrived and spent all their strength killing each other, as they no doubt would, he would send up the flare he carried, letting the Grand Flagship of the Morfiend flotilla know it was time to spring their attack. It was a plan of such exquisite genius that he had spent most of the past few hours trying to think of ways to take credit for it himself. As he dusted himself off, however, Vassqik couldn’t quite shake the feeling that something was wrong. He was fairly sure he should have seen the enemy by now.
Three low, wet thuds sounded in quick succession, and Vassqik looked down at the trio of long, barded boltheads that had sprouted from his chest. The tube slid from his gasp, and he silently collapsed back down to the branch.
In the shadows at the water’s edge, Gobber and his boys quietly reloaded their killbows. They had prowled up and down the lagoon, silently killing the Morfeind scouts, more at home in the mire than the skaven and deadly accurate with their shots. Each wore a talisman of Lethisian design. Gobber felt his unnaturally warm to the touch, and hoped that meant it was working. He eyed the tube the fallen skaven had dropped, caught in the mangrove branches, and watched it slowly fall into the water.
Vassqik coughed wetly, his limbs stiffening and eyes glazing over. Then, he felt the hands. Rising from out of the mire, ghostly pale, the arms reached up to the low hanging branch he lay on. Gently, like an icy caress, they took hold of the dying skaven and carried him down into the black waters.
***
Power coursed down the sides of the Pyramid of Itzl, crawling across it like emerald serpents. It leapt from broken statuary and shattered stairs where the crash had left the temple a ruin. It sprang from the mouths of stone idols in aetheric fire, washing down the slopes against the invaders. It splashed across the shields of the Graywater expeditionaries, who turned it aside and continued to hew into the screaming cultists of the Nagendra’valla.
Whatever truce had held between the snake cultists and the Starfall Devils in the days leading up to the attack on the Morfiend drydocks had vanished. As soon as the Nagendra’valla seized the pyramid, they turned its frightful powers against anyone that would come near. Daemonic snakes poured from the temple’s walls. Cultists stood upon its steps, sending sorcerous bolts and poisoned javelins down in waves. Yet it was not enough.
The Starfall Devils attacked with force, striking through the territory of the Craebmhorg to reach the temple first. They had prepared for a brutal, grinding battle through the enemy lands, yet found nothing but the hollow rattle of empty bones hanging from the trees. The Druids were gone, vanished into the mists. Unopposed, the Devils struck the Pyramid with the full force of the cultists’ betrayal. The Cleavermaw peppered its sides with cannonfire, sending shards of metal and stone scything through the defenders. Soldiers from the Graywater Expeditionary Force and the Corvid Eye leapt from the ship’s deck onto the Pyramid’s lower levels, swords hacking through scales and bone alike. They stormed the stairs, cultists falling around them as the Monsta-killaz covered their ascent with storms of jagged bolts, until they stood at last before the summit temple and the High Priest of the Nagendra’valla.
Weathered and thin, like the ironroot trees of the mangrove mire themselves, the High Priest stood amidst the swirling energies of the cult’s magics. A snakeskin cloak snapped around him in the magical winds, shining reflected gold in the occult lights. He was lost to the world, his eyes fixed on some distant point beyond mortal sight as the old magics channeled through him. A gaggle of lesser priests were arrayed around him in some hidden geometry, chanting an underchorus to the words that flowed from the old man. Even as they watched, the Devils could see the life draining from these subordinates, their essence being pulled into ritual. Nor were they alone. A score of guards stood between the Devils and their charge. Heavily armoured in layers of jade scale, they wore cowls that flared out like the heads of cobras and carried strange crescent-bladed polearms or heavy warbows whose arrows dripped with agonizing promise.
For a long moment, the heroes of the Devils and the elite of the cult stared across at each other. The blood of the Nagendra’valla dripped from the expeditionary force’s weapons. Leather creaked as hands tightened on weapon hafts. Both sides tensed, poised to leap, coiled to strike.
Then the Skaven arrived.
***
With a shattering of tree limbs, the Grand Flagship of the Morfiend Warhorde barged into the mire lagoon. It was piloting blindly, a massive python as long as the highest steeples in Hammerhal were tall wrapped around the ship’s command tower. The ship’s great paddle wheels spun wildly, thrashing at the water and whipping it into a murky froth. Skaven fought across its decks, crude blades and fighting claws chopping down into the wave of serpents that washed across it. Finally free of the grasping mangroves, the ship lurched forward, sending those on deck stumbling and an errant blast of warplightning carving deep into the forest. The flagship was picking up speed.
***
Krane staggered back under the assault of the Cult Guardians, her shield battered and hanging by a strap. They were unnaturally fast with their crescent-bladed polearms, striking from every angle at once and leaving nothing for defense, trusting in their scale armour and the will of their eldritch patron. They had met the Devils head on, and were holding their ground. They were few, but were fresher, having not just fought up the sides of the stepped pyramid, and held the higher ground on the summit temple’s dias. Still, she thought deflecting another lightning-fast strike, they were not winning. If the Devils, her own Graywater Expeditionary forces, could just weather this initial assault, they would turn back the tide. Each cultist that fell could not be replaced, each loss blunting them further. She had only to hold out. She had only needed time.
So had the Nagendra’valla.
Light flared from the High Priest, his words of power echoing across the stone-roofed temple summit. The other wizards around him wailed and died, their spirits drawn into the ritual’s center. Green light flared outwards, sweeping down the pyramid’s sides and into the river. A shimmer ran up and down the waterway, like the flash of iridescent scales just below the water’s surface, then a rumble shook the room.
A shadow fell across the room, and Krane looked out over the mire. In the distance, a massive shape was rising out of the river. It flashed and gleamed, splitting the light, rising up and up. Krane gasped - it was not something rising out of the river, it was the river itself, rearing back like a colossal serpent. A head made of streaming water and burning green lights turned in the air to look at them. It opened a mouth large enough to swallow the temple whole, and roared like a godbeast awakened. Krane felt the River Serpent’s eyes pass over her to something just beyond. Then, with a splintering crash, the Grand Flagship struck the temple.
The huge warpsteamer pitched to the side, sending skaven crews spilling out over the temple’s steps. Fire scoured their path as the Daemonsmiths of the Carrion Forge unleashed the burning wrath of the god against the serpents, cultists and Devils alike. A hulking creature that might once have been a ogor, twisted now into daemonic serpentine chimera, leapt from the upper decks across the gulf to the summit temple, smashing two of the cult guardians to paste. Khuong Blackfist stood atop the corpse of the great python, hurling explosives out onto the fighting below and laughing manically.
As more and more of the Warhorde poured out onto the temple, the Devils suddenly found themselves pressed on both sides. Outnumbered now, their quarry out of their reach, she knew if they faltered here they could quickly be surrounded and cut off completely. Not that it mattered, she thought looking up at the colossal creature above. The River Serpent’s head wove back and forth in the sky for a moment, its mouth opening to reveal fangs like glaciers, and then it struck.
Krane felt something shoot past her face, raising a thin line of blood. Everything seemed to slow. She saw the warpstone round strike the High Priest in the chest, saw the look of surprise in his suddenly human eyes as he was snapped out of his ecstatic ritual. Then the unstable warpstone round, made to kill gheists and daemons, exploded. The High Priest’s torso disappeared into a mist of red, lost immediately as the River Serpent struck. Its mortal channeler gone, the waters of the river returned to their natural form, raining down across the temple in thunderous sheets. Any that could not find an anchor to their footing, Warhorde and Devil alike, were swept down the temple’s stone sides and into the waiting arms of the gheists in the water below. Amidst the sudden storm, the Devils acted fast, calling a retreat before they could be fully surrounded. Suddenly face to face with the last of the cult guardians, the Warhorde could not give chase, and Khuong could only watch as the surviving Devils escaped out onto the Cleavermaw and away down the rapidly refilling river. He grinned wickedly and clapped a hand on Lurk’s back as the Warlock Engineer chambered another round.
The Devils had withdrawn, to lick their wounds. The Druids have not shown up at all. The Negendra’valla were dead. The river, and the Pyramid of Itzl, belonged to the Warhorde.
Morfiend Warhorde—Minor Victory
Starfall Devils—Minor Defeat
Craebmhorg—Major Defeat
Path 3—The Wyrdspine Mountains
Battle over the Crystal Crowns
High above the Thousand-Horned Heights, upon branches that twisted and intersected like networks of roads, a battle raged that would reshape the Wyrdspine Mountains and its ecosystem for generations to come. Unholy lightning surged from the warp-storms above, striking the Crystal Crown’s six metaliths that floated in a circle around the Wolvergrine wyvern’s last aerie, sometimes striking the various Skaven lightning rods and sometimes joined by similar lightning from below.
Clan Alkremis’ forces advanced across multiple highway branches, anchored by a Doomdozer that lobbed gaseous munitions to poison enemies and provide a smokescreen. Their advance was checked by the efforts of the Arcanum Belatores, whose disciplined Free Guild gallants held the line against advancing storm vermin across multiple branch-ways while hidden gunners and grenadiers enfiladed the enemy from the gnarls of the great bone trees.
Alone, the Arcanum Belatores may not have stood a chance at stemming the tide, but they had the advantage of being covered by the Wolvergrine aerie’s fortifications, which rained cannon-fire down on the advancing Skaven. But more artillery struck out at Morfiend’s forces, lightning cannons concealed in the nooks of trees from the revenge-seeking Clan Gnaw-Shot. Again and again the Alkremis Doomdozer or its defensive lightning rod were damaged by enemy artillery, stalling advances until warlock engineers could get them moving again.
But that left the advancing forces exposed, many falling to their deaths as the branches they stood upon were torn away by heavy fire.
The Morfiend Warhorde’s assault may have ended there, were it not for the Black Bells’ covering fire. The heavy gunline had taken up positions across the Wyrdspine canopy’s heavy branches, jezzail teams picking off entrenched siege crews while warpblasters rained hell on massed enemy formations. They were a deadly enemy at range… but one ill-suited to the dense, tangled jungles of the Flaywilds.
They were harassed on all sides by the Thundering Wolves’ nimble skirmishers, who struck and faded away before the static Skaven force could respond. Only a few Stormfiends stood guard against enemy monsters, and Kaia Wolfkin showed how insufficient they were. She had been the first to tame one of the Wolvergrine wyverns by leaping off a sky-ship and wrestling the wyvern into submission, and now rode it into battle.
The Wolvergrine’s dive was heralded by howling winds mere heartbeats before they struck. One moment a Stormfiend stood watch over the Black Bells and the next it was splattered across its charges, ripped to shreds while Kaia took down another. The wyvern and rider spun to slaughter more Skaven with deadly tail and blade, then launched away before the enemy could strike back.
More Wolvergrines joined the battle, defending their aerie even if they had little love for the Starfall Devils themselves. Each swoop claimed Skaven lives, but the riderless wyverns didn’t understand the dangers they faced. Those that lingered too long were felled by warpfire and poison wind, while others grew predictable and were shot down by warplightning or deadly munitions.
Meanwhile, all the warplightning flying through the air, from the warpstorms and the many Skaven battling below, arced into the Crystal Crown, to lightning rods dragged behind Morfiend hosts… and others hidden in trees. The air grew more and more charged, hair and fur standing on end everywhere when one of the Crown’s metaliths detonated in a shower of energized, crystalline shrapnel that aggressively pruned the branches many used as roads. Skaven, wyverns and more tumbled through the canopy, flesh rent and bones shattering.
And still, that sense of charge remained in the air…
Clan Alkremis advanced inexorably on the aerie itself, the Skaven more than willing to accept countless losses to achieve their goals. They were met by a shocking fortification, the aerie’s bone-wood reshaped with Quaj’xor’s life magic into crennellated walls and fortified siege points that bristled with the guns and cannons of the many Free Guilders that marched with the Starfall Devils.
While the Skaven set up their siege weapons to soften up the fortifications, the Arcanum Belatores and Thundering Wolves continued to harry them, doing what they could to delay the enemy’s plans. Knowing time was against them, Clan Alkremis ordered their Doomdozer to crash through the aerie’s main gate. Gas mortars shelled the defenders and slowed their fire, while gunfire skipped off the Skaven warmachine’s heavy plow.
The 17th Shyishian Expedition’s grenadiers sortied out to slow the deadly warmachine, the shrapnel tearing through rickety cogs and gears almost as easily as flesh and bone. Every time it stopped, Clan Alkremis’ engineers swarmed it. And when they thinned, Krait Stormeye was forced to take the field to keep it moving, his warpvolt gun firing non-stop from the energy the Skaven’s warplightning rod was storing.
Above them, the Crystal Crown adjusted itself to maintain a semblance of symmetry, though the five remaining metaliths dipped lower in the sky. Unholy lightning corruscated across acrid clouds, seeking to tear the delicate metaliths apart, only for more of it to find its way down into the various Skaven devices deployed in force.
Marshall Feuge rallied his Arcanum Belatores for one last assault, driving deep through the Skaven’s ranks to put down the Doomdozer. Krait fought tooth and nail to keep them away, but despite every shot growing in strength, too many of the grenadiers closed in. Explosions boomed all around them, and Krait fell, still firing his warpvolt firearm.
Krait’s last shot connected with one of the metaliths, and it unleashed its full energy through the gun, then through the gun’s connection to the warplightning rod and enruned warpstone core that fueled Clan Alkremis’ assault.
Both metalith and core screeched.
Then detonated.
The screech gave a few in the area enough warning to dive for cover and survive. Though none avoided all of the cursed shrapnel… and Krait in particular would wake with even more warpstone embedded throughout his body.
But the explosion demolished the aerie’s gate, letting the Skaventide flow in. Pulling forces from the scarred fortifications, Torean Tempest and Rævyn Thistlecrow threw themselves into the breach. There they held the line alongside the brave folk of the Corvid Eye and Fallen Comets Freeguilds.
Within the walls of the aerie, another battle took place. One of wits and will, between Wolvergrine and would-be riders. There was danger in trying to tame once-domesticated monsters, and several Starfall Devils’ died to the jaws of an agitated wyvern or fell to their deaths when they couldn’t keep up with its maneuverability.
A less metaphorical battle erupted within those walls as well, as the Blackrats infiltrated the aerie using borrowed grapnel launchers.
Fires and smoke pockmarked the fort as night runners ran amok, killing watchers and spreading chaos. Dozd led his elite kill pack to take out the enemy leaders at the heart of the fortress. Ashenmourne Chorists attempting to tame wyverns fell without a chance to fight back, before Quaj’Xor’s forces swarmed the enemy to defend their fellow guardians of the natural order.
Despite the chaos, Pyhrras Stormsoul saw the enemy coming for him, Lady Serelyth, and Quaj’Xor. But could do nothing about it, as he was locked in a contest of will with one of the wyvern’s alphas. Other Eternals rushed to their defense, staving off the enemy’s advance for scant seconds before returning to the skies of Azyr.
At the sight, the wulfen Eternal pinned the fearsome wyvern with a snarl, securing his dominance over it and its pack. Just in time to defend himself from Dozd’s flurry of throwing stars and sweeping blades. The two dueled for a short time before the wyverns leapt into the fray, forcing Dozd to disengage and hunt more vulnerable, more familiar prey.
But Quaj’Xor’s building anger broke through to the wyvern he was trying to tame, letting him ride it into battle in defense of the Knight of Thorns. A barbed tail tore through ranks of Skaven while the rider’s hook-glaive did the same. Together, they carved a clear space around the Ashenmourne’s leader.
Despite the extra time, Lady Serelyth still couldn’t get the Wolvergrine Patriarch to accept her. Worse, shouts of alarm and more incoming Skaven indicated the Devils’ lines were buckling under the endless tide. More Ashenmourne Chorists died in warpfire and poisonous clouds. Stormvermin advanced on their position, their powerful builds and halberds more than enough to chop through bark and scales.
Fearing for her mission, the Knight of Thorns’ posture shifted into something darker, more predatory. She hissed something and the Choir’s Song changed, the dirge replaced with primordial howling and screaming as the Ashenmourne survivors threw themselves at the enemy with wild abandon. The Patriarch bowed just as the Skaven assassins neared her. Gripping her living-weapon, Lady Serelyth swept Gloamthorn between her and her attackers, giving her allies just enough time to save her.
Kaia Wolfborn dove in, but the Warlord-Knight Rathur intercepted and grounded her wyvern. Rathur would have executed the fallen Wolfborn if Torean Tempest had not intervened, parrying aside the killing stroke. Both bought the newly minted wyvern riders time to mount up and take to the skies.
Dozd was driven back by the ferocity of Pyhrras and his alpha Wolvergrine, forced to withdraw. The other Wolves of Sigmar that had managed the same feat powered through the Skavens’ ranks, tearing them asunder. Quaj’Xor intercepted gunfire from the encroaching Black Bells who intended to take down the Knight of Thorns, while his troops helped turn the tide.
And the Knight of Thorns and her Ashenmourne Choir… flew away, providing only covering fire with heavy bows and branch-twisting magicks. It was clear they were focused on their own Sacred Quest: to use Gloamthorn to put down the dreaded Venothrax for good.
They may even have escaped, were it not for Chief Skraw.
The leader of the Black Bells emerged from the ranks of Skaven, terrified, low on ammo, but committed to the cause. Rushing towards the Ashenmourne leader, cutting through Starfall Devils despite mounting injuries, aiming his pistol at Lady Serelyth’s back and squeezing the trigger.
Torean Tempest batted the weapon aside, and its bullet went wide.
The errant warpstone round struck a Clan Gnaw-Shot warplightning cannon just as it fired, pushing its shot off-course to hit an overcharged metalith near the escaping Ashenmourne Choir. The straining metalith detonated violently, arcing between the Chorists before the giant crystal shards slammed into the aerie like falling meteors.
Quaj’Xor watched the Knight of Thorns careen through the canopy on the back of the dying Patriarch, but could do nothing to save her. In the chaos that ensued, various horns and bugles and drums called for retreat. When the green vapours cleared, the Starfall Devils escaped with a handful of wounded Wolvergrines and just as many eggs. They may have saved the species from extinction, but they would make no difference in the battles to come.
The Morfiend Warhorde emerged from under rubble, debris, and the corpses of fallen allies to absolute ruin. Only three over-worked metaliths remained in the lopsided Crystal Crown to filter energy through. It would take them a lot of time, effort and ingenuity to clean the foundation and build their lightning-farm, but it would eventually make a difference on their final push along the Wyrdspine Mountains toward the Temple of Radiance.
One they had paid dearly for, but had cost their enemies in turn.
Morfiend Warhorde—Pyrrhic Victory (By the Slimmest Margins!)
Starfall Devils—Defeat
Path 4—The Lost City of Bhaal-Irama
The Vault of Broken Chains
Vala stared down in horror.
The Morfiend Warhorde had set up their mining camp at a junction point within the cyclopean halls of the Vault of Broken Chains. Firelight and greasy smoke rose from scores of small cooking fires, filling the hall with a haze that disappeared up into the dark halls of the Lost City above. Haphazard skaven barricades were piled around it, guards lolling about or patrolling in no discernible route or structure. Half concealed in their midst, the camps of the Kardazharr were arrayed in orderly, defensible circles around their small, glowing forges. Hammers rang in the gloom over the low rumble of engines. They were hard at work.
Scattered about the camp were piles of artefacts - vases, scrolls, tools, the black stone statuary that the people of Bhaal-Irama had seemed to favour. Anything the skaven workers found as they cleared away the rubble was simply thrown into a pile. It made Vala’s blood boil, thinking about the flagrant disregard for the history of the site. So much information was being lost to the thoughtless actions of the ratfolk. Yet it was nothing to the monstrosity she was witnessing now.
At the far end of the chamber, the massive iron engine of Barzok Ironvein belched smoke from its daemon engines as it built up power, then began to roll forward into the stone walls of the nearest vault. It was not fast, but it did not need to be. The massive iron beast moved with a slow, grinding inevitability. There was a rumbling of protest, metals screeching under stress and stone fracturing, and then with a flash of failing arcane wards the entire wall came down. No sooner had the wall come down then teams of skaven leapt up on the engine’s sides and opened up their warpfire throwers.
Vala could not see whatever had been within the vault, but she heard its screeching wail and saw the light of the warpfire washing across the mining camp. Fury settled in her stomach like an icy weight. Whatever had been there, chained for centuries, now gone. Notes, books, anything they could learn from this place. Gone.
Turning her back on the crude ‘excavation’, Vala tried to rein in her anger. She did not like working with the Druids - she could feel the clawing madness of their presence at the back of her mind, scratching at her mental barriers - but in this one case she could use their attack to her own ends. She sat up as the noise of the warpfire died down, and waited.
The first sign that there was anything wrong came from the skaven work camps. At numerous smokey fires, skaven slaves began doubling over, retching blood or collapsing. Those unlucky enough to be near any of the warpstone tools or weapons were torn apart in a hideous outburst of mutation, devolving into slavering ratspawn and striking at their fellows. Chittering cries filled the air. Workers stopped to look, and guards ran forward to put down the mutated slaves. It was then that the ghouls chose to attack.
Dropping from the vaulted ceilings, the Druids of Chaebmhorg fell upon the Morfeind mining camp. Pouring over barricades, the ghouls of the Grove Guard cut into the scrambling Carcass soldiers with unrestrained fury. Dozens died as they rushed over the prepared mines and traps of the Kardazharr Labour camps, but for each that did another five filled their ranks. Sporadic gunfire erupted from the Morfiend defenders, but there was little room and less time to bring their arms to bear.
Behind this first rush of ghouls, the full might of the Druids struck. At their head, the mailed fist of the Sinew-speaker, Arbaal Kinflayer and his Red Brotherhood strode into the melee reaping a terrible toll for the Lord of Skulls. With the Knights of the Purulent Keep on one side and the Smokepelt Slakefray on the other, they drove deep into the Skaven and Helsmith camps, seeking to break them against the anvil of Armav’s ghoulish host.
Yet the Morfiend Warhorde was not without champions of its own, and as black inky shadows coalesced around them, the Burning Templars stepped out onto the battlefield. Raising his sword in a high challenge, High Templar Sargon the Avowed launched a furious assault against Arbaal Kinflayer. Daemon-edged blades whirred through the air faster than Vala could watch, yet the two matched each other blow for blow. Arbaal was strong, and felt the blessing of Khorne upon him, yet Sargon was calling upon the magics of Ulgu to drift in and out of the shadows. Evenly matched, these two mortal champions of immortal rivals might have fought on, had it not been for the Sorcerer-King of the Purulent Keep.
Feeling the pangs of his derangement, Valinar drew upon the magics deep in the stone to let loose a monstrous set of slavering, magical jaws. Gnashing and chomping, the spell flew across the battlefield, sending the combatants flying for cover. The magic continued on, through the skaven camp, making a bloody mess of anyone that could not avoid it, until it struck one of the Vault walls. There was a horrendous sound like ice striking a blazing hot surface, then a flare of arcane light as the magical ward and spell ate each other. With a thunderous crash, the door fell open.
A low growl filled the chamber. It was a deep, primal sound, reaching down into the hindbrains of everyone there. Even the ghouls, for just a moment, paused their assault to stare. A heavy, clawed foot stepped out from the darkness. Black scales tinged with deepest red ran up its length. A long head like an adder’s appeared atop a sinewy neck, crested with crimson. It hissed, snapping at the air and looking about. Then, another head broke the shadows beside it, and a third, and more. Filling its wide nostrils with the scent of freshly spilled blood, the hydra roared and charged.
As the chamber broke out into full chaos, Vala leapt from her hiding place and began sprinting across the field. Dodging in and out of the combat, past sprawling ghouls and shattered zharrdron, she cut a path across the battlefield for the other end of the camp. A stormvermin guard appeared before her, raising its halberd, and she threw herself flat as a head of the hydra struck down and consumed it in one bite. Another of the strange mercenaries bedecked in bone tried to block her, but she laid him out with a right hook powered by the pneumatic pistons of her kharadron gauntlet. Then at last, she was at her target - the iron daemonengine. Vaulting up its side, she pressed a blasting charge deep into the inner workings, setting the wires as quickly as she could. The heat of the daemonforge pressed against her back. She could smell hair and skin begin to burn. Just another wire, and then -
Just as she was about to leap free, Vala felt a heavy mailed hand grab the back of her collar and fling her from the side of the engine. She landed hard, and could feel the burned skin split beneath her suit. Struggling to a knee, she saw the zharrdron warrior leap easily down from the engine’s side. He moved fluidly despite the heavy armour, a sign of its quality and his skill, and plucked a warglaive from where it rested. Spinning it around his head, he walked unhurriedly in a half-circle around the kneeling kharadron explorer. The blade flashed and spun in a complex flourish, dancing circles through the air, before it came to rest in an easy ready pose behind him. Grinning cruelly, the warrior spat something in a Zharralid tongue that Vala would not care to translate, then gestured for her to stand up.
There was a sharp crack and the warrior toppled over backwards, his forehead a smoking ruin. Vala lowered the holdout aethershot pistol. With a sign that became a groan of pain, she hauled herself to her feet, and clutching her injuries took off running. A score of heartbeats later, there was a heavy crumping sound, and the blasting charge set within the iron engine exploded.
Ten minutes after the first skaven had fallen to the Unhallowed Union’s parasitic infection, Vala stood at the far entrance to the Vaults looking back over the remains of the battlefield. The survivors of the Warhorde had fled, using the chaos of the hydra’s appearance to make their escape. The shamans Ghastpelt and Thornwalker of the Smokepelt Slakefray stood before the beast, working their magics on it. It would soon be fully in their sway. Where the iron engine lay stricken, vines were rising out of the stonework, wrapping themselves around the cooling metal. Growing and constricting, they would soon pull the ruins of the metal monstrosity down into the earth again. The Druids had taken the camp, and though many of the artefacts remained sealed away in the vaults, they had found power there. It remained to see what they would do with it.
Vala clutched the bundle she carried close, and set off slowly and painfully into the darkness once more.
Druids of Craebmhorg—Minor Victory
Morfiend Warhorde—Defeat
