WHISPERS BY LOONLIGHT

Snaggit, Loontenant of the High Gobbapalooza, breathed deeply of the spore-choked air. He willed himself down a rickety series of wooden platform-steps, towards the cavern’s basin and the dense colony of tall and swaying fungi that filled it. Passing the troggoths guarding the Realmgate’s other side had already taxed the grot’s courage, the chance to flaunt his authority wasted on the dim-witted big ’uns. And that was all before entering the fungal asylum itself.

If Snaggit was honest, he hadn’t really wanted this task. He’d rather have been back in the realm of the dead ’uns. The Bone’ead tribes enjoyed slapping white paint across their faces and capering about with long bones strapped to their backs to form the legs of some arachnid-grot hybrid, which the Loontenant had never quite understood. Yet King Skragrott had always seemed satisfied with the mischief Snaggit made alongside them. The Loonking’s summons, however, had been unequivocal.

Snaggit, my lad, you’s the only one I can trust wiv this, Skragrott had said. I needs ya ta go an’ gets this prophecy fer me. Da Bad Moon ’imself told me dat.

And that had been that. You didn’t argue with the Bad Moon, after all.

Snaggit hadn’t been given directions. Trying to memorise the asylum’s layout was futile; the mushrooms moved. The whole strange sub-realm did. ‘Navigating’ here meant hoping you found where you were going before anything found you.

Fungi stalks crunched underfoot, forming brief breaks in the living carpet before sprouting back to life. In the rare breaks from the screaming that filled the bleak oubliettes of the asylum, the only sound was Snaggit’s own shuddering breath – that, and the whispering. Always the whispering. Those prophets and scryers captured from across the Mortal Realms and rendered into new forms of fungal life by the Loonking’s Moon Onna Stikk rarely did anything else. Listening to the cacophony invited madness, as the grot-creatures who spent their existence tending to the ‘inmates’ proved. Now it seemed worse than ever, louder and somehow even more insistent.

Hurrying onwards, his breaths turning to multihued mould that persisted briefly in the air, Snaggit left the mushroom field and entered the dark mouth of a cave tunnel.

He slowed as a fungus-keepa scuttled overhead from a crack in the tunnel’s roof. Recognising through some uncanny sixth sense that it was being watched, the once-grot paused. Snaggit swallowed, clasping tighter the jagged shard of loonstone that served as both blade and light-source as the creature twisted to look down upon him. It was more mushroom than grot now, peering at him with eyes mounted on long stalks like those of a slugfungus. Pulsating organic growths had spread all over its face and brow in a grim exaggeration of the Loonking’s crown. They sprouted through the creature’s skull, distorting it under the guise of parasitic ‘blessings’.

The attendant cackled, swiftly skittering away into another fissure. With a shiver Snaggit realised that it hadn’t been alone. More of the half-glimpsed grot-things were hurrying between the stalks of mushroom seers or along the walls as the scryshooms’ wailing undulated. Something had them agitated, the Loontenant realised. Something had happened to rile up the twisted prophets, something that had charged the entire asylum with a febrile energy.

Perhaps this was why Skragrott had sent him. Perhaps the Loonking had simply wanted to see whether he’d come back.

His momentary unwariness was enough to court disaster. Snaggit didn’t even have time to shriek as his throat was constricted by creeping tendrils of stragglenekk fungus, slithering from the clammy ceiling to snare their next meal. The grot’s eyes almost popped from his skull, legs flailing wildly. Thrashing manically Snaggit managed to free an arm, swinging his blade to hack through the choking curtain of fungus. More indigo fingers descended to replace them, secreting acidic juices that sizzled against his skin to begin ingesting him.

‘Snaggit…’

The stragglenekk retreated as swiftly as it had come, dropping the grot unceremoniously. Snaggit writhed and coughed, nursing new welts where the fungus had eaten at him. It was an effort to open his eyes, the Loontenant managing it only as the dreamlike voice called to him again nearby. From the tunnel wall sprouted a pale scryshroom. It looked like it had been planted there for some time, though Snaggit was sure that it was the first time he’d seen it. Instinctively, the grot knew that this was what he’d been sent to find.

Clutching his loonblade tight once more, and trying to avoid looking at the distinctly aelven face upon the mushroom’s twisted stalk, Snaggit ignored the mildew rapidly forming across his squig-leather boots as he warily shuffled closer. All the while the face upon the stalk babbled and drooled silently, swollen tongue lolling out. Eventually it did speak, though, the words soft and almost musical.

‘Across the void aetheric,

Under light of crooked moons,

The heavenly vaults break open,

To reveal their greatest boons.’

‘The dead and the damned search the darkness,

Making war with the hateful light,

But the Clammy Hand reaches out o’er all,

Seeking treasures of the Bad Moon’s might!’

The scryshroom’s face fell slack, its tongue flapping pathetically before that too grew still. Once more Snaggit found himself alone, with only the faint screams of fungus seers and his own heavy breathing for company.

Even Snaggit, possessed only of a base cunning, recognised a warning and an opportunity when he heard it. Skragrott would be most grateful for news of these ‘treasures’ ripe for the taking across the realms, as well as the warning of the surface-dwelling gits being on the move. The Gloomspite was calling once more. And beyond that, the promised Everdank, that sweet and sacred gloaming-age where moist and clammy shadows swallowed all.

Snaggit couldn’t help but grin. Perhaps he and the Bone’eads would be bringing in the Everdank sooner than he’d expected.

PRODUCED BY GAMES WORKSHOP IN NOTTINGHAM

Whispers by Loonlight © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2019. Whispers by Loonlight, Forbidden Power, GW, Games Workshop, Warhammer, Stormcast Eternals, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world. All Rights Reserved.

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