Root and Stem

Branches crunched underfoot as Gluttoch staggered backwards. Clad in layers of rusted war-plate and blessed with thick, rancid flesh, it took considerable force to knock a Blightking off balance. Yet the glowing glaive that had punched through the front of his chest and erupted from his back in a spray of gore seemed up to the task. The Blightking let out a retching gurgle as his back slammed against the bark of a great tree. His legs soon gave way, leaving him slumped at the base of the towering oak. Gluttoch’s filth-encrusted cleaver fell from numb fingers, landing with a muted thud and withering the surrounding foliage in a matter of moments.

To venerate the Grandfather was to become intimately familiar with every stage of the great and gruesome cycle. As such, Gluttoch knew well that he was dying. Each breath saw frothing blood dribble from his lips, to join the oozing black viscera leaking from his many wounds.

Gluttoch frowned. He had to say this about his killers – irritants though they were, at least they were persistent.

‘I knew it’d be one of you,’ said the Blightking. His voice was a thick wheeze, followed by a grunt of discomfort as the glaive twisted viciously within him. Calcified intestines cracked open to let fat-bodied maggots wriggle free from within. ‘Always knew it would be one of you. Bless you, but you twiglets are wonderfully single-minded when you want to be.’

‘Silence, bilespawn.’ Even bloated with pestilent blessings as Gluttoch was, the forest spirit holding the glaive would have stood at least as tall as the Blightking. Now, looming over him, the Sylvaneth champion filled his vision. The spirit’s antlered helm could not disguise the loathing that blazed in its eyes. For a few moments, the Blightking watched as the membranous wings sprouting from the insectoid growth upon the Sylvaneth’s back twitched and flexed. ‘Your tongue is rancid. Your mind is a wriggling mass of vermin and pustules. When you speak, naught but poison dribbles from your mouth.’

‘Now, now. Flattery will get you nowhere,’ Gluttoch grunted. Strength fled him with each passing moment, and he did not even try to pull the glaive free. His horned helmet lifted to regard the Sylvaneth, the motion accompanied by a slow and wheezing breath.

Nearby, the last of Gluttoch’s war-cyst were being slaughtered by the forest guardians. Glowing blades carved through rusting armour, while the sharp talons of the lesser tree-kin could rend even the thickest hide when applied in sufficient number. Such had been the fate of poor Lord Blisterswell; what remained of the champion’s face was locked in an open-mouthed expression of torment, sharpened roots poking from his mouth and emerging from an eye socket. The rest of Blisterswell’s body had been torn apart by those same thorned tendrils, his limbs hung from nearby branches like some gory druidic offering. Yet though the bodies of his kin littered the ground, the sickening jade magic of the forestkin saturated the air with life energy. It made Gluttoch most uncomfortable.

‘It won’t change anything, you know,’ the Blightking grumbled. ‘Killing us. You won’t stop the cycle. You can’t halt the deluge covering your green-mother’s lands.’

‘A bold claim,’ said the winged Sylvaneth. He couldn’t tell whether it was male or female, though some quality of its ethereal tone suggested the latter. ‘Once, our conflict was but a series of costly retreats. Now it is a war in true. A war that has bled your kind ragged.’

‘Is that so?’ Gluttoch chuckled. He could feel his swollen tongue lolling out, his words growing slurred. ‘Forgive me, noble spirit, but long have you tried to drive us from Thyria. And yet, here we are. That was before the Great Necromancer unleashed his ghast-screech and burdened you with a thousand other concerns. For every victory you win, a defeat steals its lustre.’

Gluttoch had hoped to inspire some measure of fury in the Sylvaneth and cut short his suffering. The forest spirit remained frustratingly impassive. It leant on its glaive as it moved closer, driving the blade deeper into Gluttoch’s split body.

‘The Hollow Forest is ours. It has always been ours. We will wipe it free of your filth, even if we must hunt you down one by one.’

‘No, you won’t. You may believe that, little twiglet, but you won’t,’ Gluttoch chuckled. The sound soon transformed into a series of retching coughs as a pus-filled lung collapsed. ‘We will not let you. The Maggot-King Glosthrayx, Father of Bilebeasts, he won’t let you. And the Black Oak won’t let you either—’

That got a reaction. Gluttoch’s body jolted as the glaive slid forward almost to the hilt, its blade sinking into the tree he was propped against. A throaty roar escaped Gluttoch as his insides were lacerated. The Sylvaneth leant in closer, its voice a furious whisper.

‘Tell us—’

‘You already know!’ Gluttoch laughed in demented agony. ‘I know you do. I know you hear it on your damnable soul-song. The Black Oak, our rot-child, a gift from Grandfather’s own meadows,’ he sighed. His vision swam, but he steeled himself. He had to deliver one final taunt. ‘It squats at the heart of the Waneglade, feasting on the broken bodies of your kin. Do you know where we found its seedlings?’ A chuckle escaped him in a stream of black bile.

‘They were in a vault. Storm-shrouded and lost. A place your queen-mother’s ally, oh so noble Sigmar, tried to conceal. But we found it,’ from behind his helmet, Gluttoch’s rheumatic eyes focused on his killer. ‘Do you think he recalls what he hid there? Did the mighty Thunderer forget about what he secreted beneath your beloved woods? Or did he remember, and simply not tell Ala—’

Gluttoch’s words died on his tongue as the glaive was yanked free in a shower of brackish gore. He had only a moment to croak and gasp before the sharpened blade thrust forward and speared the Blightking’s skull.

The Arch-Revenant Yamara watched as the body slumped down, blood and pus pumping from the wound torn in its skull. Gore dribbled along the curving edge of her glaive before fizzling away, consumed and purified by the motes of jade magic surrounding her. A low thudding rumbled nearby. Soon it had become the unmistakable refrain of heavy steps, heralding the arrival of something huge and oaken.

‘Did it say a single thing of worth?’

The voice-song of Haaloforn, revered clan-ancient, was clear and direct. Yet Yamara did not answer immediately. She stood near-motionless, aside from the occasional flex of her bonded wings, eyes fixed on the rapidly putrefying corpse of the pox-thing.

‘It said many things,’ she said at last, turning away and looking to the towering Treelord. The War of Life had left its mark upon Haaloforn, as it had them all. Great splintered furrows had been carved across his oaken form, the work of a rotling’s axe. That the Treelord still fought spoke of his determination to punish the Everqueen’s enemies. Yamara would have said that it inspired a furious war-lust within her; then again, most things did. Such was life as a vessel of Alarielle’s resurgent wrath.

‘Little was of value,’ she added, listening to the clicking chirrup of her bonded zephyrspite. ‘But it was adamant in one regard. It claimed that the rot-filth have opened something that the Lord of Heavens tried to keep closed.’

A creaking grunt echoed throughout the war-torn glade. The keening of the forest folk intensified, a mirror to their lord’s own displeasure. Haaloforn’s eyes flashed as he regarded the Arch-Revenant, though it was hard to tell where that anger was directed.

‘Always a new trial. Always a new tragedy. Sometimes…’ the Treelord began, before lapsing into silence for several moments. ‘Sometimes, I wonder if the God-King’s alliance is more trouble than it is worth.’

‘The season changes. The foe changes. The battlefield changes,’ said Yamara, keeping her voice level. She knew that years of loss and woe had left their mark on the Treelord. She could only do her best to direct his fury. ‘The war never does.’

‘Perhaps,’ Haaloforn allowed. He seemed less than convinced. ‘But—’

Haaloforn’s words were silenced by the tremor that swept the glade. It was not so much a physical sensation as it was a spiritual quake, a violent and unnatural perversion of the spirit-song. Yamara staggered back a step, bracing herself with her glaive as her zephyrspite let out a buzz of panic. Around her the forest folk raised their own voices in horror; even the Treelord was forced to brace himself like a great oak in the face of a hurricane. The immediate force of the tremor swiftly passed, but its aftershocks lingered. Arch-Revanant and clan ancient soon looked back to one another. Haaloforn gave a grim nod.

‘Go,’ he commanded. ‘Now.’

Yamara knew what was expected. Her zephyrspite’s wings extended, flapping hard and carrying her aloft. She soared upwards, slipping between boughs and branches, at last emerging into the clear skies of Ghyran. Cool breezes buffeted her as she spread her symbiote wings, hovering there and casting her gaze back and forth.

The tremor in the spirit-song raged still. It took considerable effort for Yamara to calm herself enough to follow it to its source. On the edge of her vision a conflagration was raging; magic ravaged the distant glade, an outpouring of malignant sorcery long held at bay. Yamara felt, rather than saw, a distant tree ignite as a shrieking head of flame careened along the forest paths, the blaze soon catching and spreading.

At the centre of the magical catastrophe, the Arch-Revenant detected something else – something that should not be. It squatted at the heart of the glade, pus-dripping roots delving deep into the realmcrust. The Blightking had not lied. Whatever they had taken from arrogant Sigmar’s vaults, the accursed Nurglites were now using it to crack open the precious earth of Ghyran, spreading their filth and revealing more hidden secrets in the process.

Anger filled Yamara, the urge to hunt and slay in the Everqueen’s name. The glade must be purged before evils were unleashed that the Sylvaneth could not contain. Throwing back her head, the Arch-Revenant let out a shrieking song of war that echoed throughout the Hollow Wood. The hunter-children of Kurnoth were the first to reply in kind, but soon Haaloforn’s own dirge of wrath joined the song, accompanied by the wailing trills of his Household and the forest folk. Like a storm that shook the tangled undergrowth the Sylvaneth surged forth. Gesturing with her glaive, Yamara spearheaded the charge, the air filled with the reverberating buzz of her wings.

Nature’s vengeance would not be denied.

PRODUCED BY GAMES WORKSHOP IN NOTTINGHAM

Root and Stem© Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2019. Root and Stem, 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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