by Various
The Evergreen was under attack. What had once been Thaark’s budding soulpod was now a sinkhole, a black pit from which the filth of Chaos welled and poured. Plaguebearers were already limping and staggering through the Evergreen, chanting and muttering darkly to themselves as they hacked at the groves surrounding the Kingstree with rusty blades. The nurglings that accompanied them gnawed on roots or gleefully ripped down saplings, destroying future sylvaneth generations before they had even had a chance to bud. Around the clearing, great swarms of fat flies buzzed, breeding and hatching in a frenzy of infestation.
Worst of all was the thing at the Evergreen’s centre. Skathis had taken on physical form, a tall, emaciated, one-eyed daemon who now sat languidly above the sinkhole, reclining amongst the roots of the Kingstree as though they were his throne. Maggots longer than Nellas’ forebranches squirmed and writhed across the great oak’s bark, seeking to burrow in and defile its core. As the branchwych laid eyes on him, Skathis spread both skeletal arms, his long face split by a warm grin.
‘Welcome home, Nellas,’ the daemon boomed, his voice unnaturally deep and vibrant for such a wasted frame. ‘Good Boughmaster Thaark told me all about you before I consumed the last of him. How joyous it is to finally meet you!’
Shrieking, Nellas flung herself at the nearest plaguebearer. It was attempting to uproot a briarthorn soulpod with both hands, seemingly numb to the gashes the plant was leaving in its diseased skin. It was too slow to avoid Nellas as she sliced its head from its shoulders. Its daemonic form exploded into a great cloud of flies.
Nellas surged on, even the pain of her wound momentarily burned away by the rage that blazed through her bark. She disembowelled a second plaguebearer, then a third, Skathis’ merry laughter ringing around her all the while.
‘Curse you, maggotkin!’ she screamed, a single swing of her scythe eviscerating a clutch of squirming nurglings. ‘Die!’
‘Not before you, Nellas,’ Skathis chuckled, pointing one long, bony finger at her. ‘Not before you.’
Around the branchwych, the Tallyband closed.
‘Drycha’s curse,’ Du’gath spat as he looked down into the Evergreen. ‘We’re too late.’
‘It was the lifeseed,’ Brak said. ‘Not the branchwych. The disease was in what she planted, not her wound.’
‘We must help her,’ another of the spite-revenants added. ‘If we wait for the Wargrove to muster, the heartglade will already have fallen.’
Du’gath was moving. He burst from the treeline into the Evergreen like an icy gale, fangs bared and talons out. Keening their own cold war-song, the Outcasts followed.
Nellas plied her scythe, the harvester come home. One monstrosity after another fell, their corroded blades no match for her greenwood, their daemonic bodies disintegrating with every strike. But still they came, on and on, as inevitable as time’s decaying grip, and Skathis laughed all the harder. Nellas had barely managed to take a dozen paces towards him, and with every passing moment the sinkhole between them grew larger, and more filth hauled itself up from the depths. The Kingstree had started to bow slightly as the hole reached its roots. The ancient oak’s throaty song of pain and fear drove Nellas into an even more violent fury.
So busy was she with hacking and slashing, swinging and slicing, that she didn’t notice the press of rotting bodies easing around her. It was only when a clawed hand caught the downward stroke of a rusting sword meant for her upper branches that she realised she was no longer alone. With a contemptuous twist, Du’gath snapped the plaguebearer’s blade and tore the leprous daemon limb from limb.
There was no time for a greeting, much less for explanations. Nellas pressed forward, screeching at the woodland around her to rise up and strike down the violators of the heartglade. To her left and right, the spite-revenants ripped into the Tallyband, their features twisted with hideous fury, the same rage that now gave Nellas strength. For a moment, Skathis’ laughter faltered.
‘Slow yourself, dear Nellas,’ the daemonic herald said, weaving a complex pattern in the air before him. ‘That wound in your side looks like it may be infected.’
Pain, worse than any she had ever felt, speared through the branchwych. Her limbs seized up and her scythe slipped from her fingers. In a daze she fell to her knees, discoloured bloodsap oozing from her wound. Du’gath stood over her, driving back a trio of plaguebearers with a savage swipe of his talons.
‘We won’t reach the Kingstree in time,’ the Outcast called back to her. ‘We’re too few!’
Nellas couldn’t reply. The taint Skathis had planted in her side drove out all else, its agony threatening to eclipse her own spirit-song and cut her off from the strength of the Wyldwood. A single melody remained connected with hers, entwining itself with her thoughts. It refused to let her go. Through the haze, she recognised its voice. It was a bittergrub. It had been born, hatching pure and unblemished from the nearby beech tree. It lived, and with it came hope, sure as the first buds among the snows.
Nellas closed her eyes, seeking to focus through the pain. She could not save Brocélann alone. She could not even save it with the strongbranch fury of the likes of Du’gath and his Outcasts. But Brocélann could save itself. She only had to show it how.
She began to sing. It was not the terrible battle-cant of sharpened bark-claws and crushing roots, nor did it possess the violent beat of the fury that motivated the sylvaneth when they saw their sacred enclaves defiled. It was something deeper, something even more primal, a rhythm only the branchwyches, with their instinctive connection to all the creatures of the Wyldwood, could access. It spoke of shared lives and shared fates, of the bonds forged in the changing of Ghyran’s natural cycles. It was directed not at the noble houses, nor the Forest Folk, or any of her forest spirits. It was sung to the smaller creatures, dedicated to the multitude of tiny, vibrant souls that called Brocélann home. They were all the Everqueen’s children, as worthy as the most gnarled treelord ancient, and the death of the Wyldwood spelt their doom as assuredly as it did that of the sylvaneth.
Nellas heard it first as a hum, a counterpoint to the infernal buzzing of the flies that choked the air around her. She continued to sing, her voice rising and becoming stronger as the hum grew. Pain flared once more as Skathis sought to silence her. She ignored it now. Her spirit was no longer wholly bound to her body, but rose above the fighting to direct the Wyldwood’s salvation. Skathis had stopped laughing altogether.
From the trees the spites came. They were a cloud, a nebulous, darting, roiling swarm that shrieked with a rage as potent as their branchwych’s. They struck the flies first. The Great Corruptor’s emissaries, countless as they seemed, were squashed or snapped up, or had their buzzing wings ripped off. The spites engulfed the whole of the Evergreen in a multihued blizzard, poking out plaguebearers’ eyes and bursting nurglings like little pus sacks.
Nellas unleashed them on Skathis Rot. The herald of Nurgle wailed first with rage and then fear as the cloud descended upon him. The spites picked the bark of the Kingstree clean, plucking off and crushing each and every loathsome maggot that sought to defile the venerable oak. Then they set upon Skathis, ten thousand little limbs raking and pulling at his flesh, gnawing at his eye, slicing and slashing with little claws.
‘You cannot stop me now!’ the daemon wailed, flailing ineffectually with his gaunt limbs. ‘You are too late! A thricepox curse on each and every one of you! Grandfather take your miserable little souls!’
The daemon screamed all the louder as a spite lanced his eye with a long sliver of living wood. He staggered forwards and lost his footing on the edge of the sinkhole, teetering for balance. With a concerted heave, the swarm of spites tipped him. The daemon bellowed as he plummeted over the edge, knocking a clutch of plaguebearers back down into the pit even as they sought to climb up out of it.
As the daemon fell, the Evergreen resounded with the call of hunting horns. Nella
s, still engulfed in the breaks and eddies of the spites’ great spirit-song, was only dimly aware of a furious roar. It was one the forest hadn’t heard in a very long time, and it was enough to make the roots beneath her quiver. From the trees around the glade the Forest Folk poured, twisted with their war aspect, and at the fore of their vengeful tide came Gillehad. The stooped treelord ancient roared once more.
The sound was echoed by the battle cries of tree-revenants as they too emerged into the heartglade. Striding in their midst were Bitterbough and Thenuil, talons bared and branches firm. The Tallyband broke before their thunderous blows, diseased forms flickering and turning insubstantial as they were banished back to their master’s blighted realm.
Nellas felt the grasp on her spirit-song waver and break. Her voice faltered. Her mind returned to her body, dragged down by exhaustion and pain. Her wound, she realised, was killing her. Du’gath still stood over her, roots planted and immovable, his bark scored and slashed in dozens of places by daemonic blades. She remained on her knees, bent and broken. She felt her consciousness slipping, the song of the Wyldwood suddenly distant and muffled. She could feel something crawling among her branches and gnawing at her bark. Memories of diseased worms and maggots made her shudder. Her thoughts finally slipped away, and her song faded into nothingness.
It was the singing of her new companion that woke her.
Her bittergrub was coiled on her breast, watching her with beady eyes. She stretched out a limb to let the creature run along her branches, and was surprised to notice the absence of a shock of pain for the first time in what felt like many seasons.
Tentatively, she shifted her body so she could look down at her side.
Her wound was healing. The flow of bloodsap had finally been stemmed, and tender greenwood had now replaced the rotten bark. She realised abruptly that the final sensation she’d felt before her spirit-song had faded was the bittergrub eating away at the diseased bark, freeing her body from the Great Corruptor’s foul grasp. It had saved her life, and with it possibly the future of Brocélann.
‘Your new grub would not leave you,’ Du’gath said, looming over her. ‘It gnawed away the rotting wood and gave your wound a chance to reknit.’
Wordlessly, Nellas thanked the creature, letting it scuttle appreciatively up one limb and nestle among her boughs.
‘I thought about cutting it in half,’ Du’gath said coldly. ‘But I trust the spites more than I trust you, Harvester. May you serve them well.’
‘Branchwych,’ boomed the venerable tones of Gillehad. The treelord ancient was striding across the Evergreen towards Nellas, who rose to meet him with the assistance of her scythe. She looked around as she did so. The heartglade was scattered with the dead wood of fallen sylvaneth, and the swiftly decomposing filth of the Tallyband, but of the sinkhole that had nearly consumed the Kingstree there was no sign. Soulpods had been ripped up or brutally slashed, and lifeseeds lost forever. But the Evergreen stood, and with it the future of the Wyldwood remained secure. For now.
‘You are healing, I see,’ Gillehad noted. ‘Thoaken has been beset with worry. We all have. We sensed your spirit travelling the realmroot to Mer’thorn.’
‘I beg forgiveness from the conclave,’ Nellas said, voice firm. ‘But I would have done it again if need be. It was necessary, for the good of all Brocélann.’
‘And in doing so you undoubtedly saved the entire Wyldwood,’ Gillehad replied. ‘By the time we were aware of what was afoot, it was almost too late.’
‘I would have made little difference if it weren’t for the Outcasts,’ Nellas continued. She turned to gesture towards Du’gath, before realising the spite-revenant and his sinister kin had vanished.
‘They do what they can, as do we all,’ Gillehad said slowly, casting his wizened gaze across the treeline. ‘There can be no bystanders in the war against the blight. Noble houses and Forest Folk, spites and Outcasts, we are all a part of the great Wargrove.’
‘I will tend to the soulpods until I have sisters again,’ Nellas said. ‘Once they have been fully instructed in their duties as branchwyches, I will travel the realmroots to all the remaining Wyldwoods of the Jade Kingdoms. They must be warned not to make the same mistakes we made. They must be told to examine all things, especially where it concerns their heartglades. The rot that festers from within may yet prove more deadly than that which gnaws from without. Thaark’s passing must not have been in vain.’
‘True words, Nellas,’ Gillehad agreed. ‘I wish all the seasons’ blessings upon such a task.’
‘Many thanks. Now, with the greatest respect, venerable lord, I must be about my duties.’
‘Yes, of course.’
Nellas bowed again, hefted her scythe, and began the harvest afresh. She sang as she made her way slowly through the Evergreen, a recital of both triumph and sorrow, the intertwining roots that ran through everything. It had always been so, the branchwych mused as she worked. And it would always be so, long after she and all she had ever planted had returned to the ground.
The seasons changed, but Ghyran endured.
The Splintered
Rob Sanders
The realm was dying.
Diseased. The myriad lands of Ghyran were like the gangrenous limbs of one great body, cut off from the spirit paths, heartglades and roots of Alarielle’s Realm of Life.
The taint of Chaos had spread across the skies, over the mightiest mountains and through forests that had once stretched forever. Nurgle, the Lord of Decay, walked the lands in the guise of plague-touched hordes, daemons and the contagions that swirled about their rank presence. His indomitable armies marched everywhere, and wretched death went with them. Ghyran swelled, pulsed and wept with Nurgle’s magnificence – he was father to all rancid misfortune.
Amongst the sickness and suffering the sylvaneth endured. As spirits of the forests and wild places, they were a hardy people. Their displeasure could be heard in the hiss of the rain. Their fury was the thunder of the storm and the quake of the mountains.
These noble guardians of life had survived the mortal tribes that had tried to claim the untameable tracts for their own, and the hordes of orruks that had swept through the lands with axe and flame. And they survived still. Hidden in plain sight, Forest Folk were the trees and boulders, the vines and tangled roots of ancient woodland. The magics of life and land disguised their knotted forms and numbers. Many marshalled the strength of their glades against the bringers of rot, while others fought a guerrilla war in the shadows. They were the creaking of branches in the night and the rustling of things unseen through the undergrowth. They slit the throats of warriors bloated with plague, and entangled sorcerers in their thorny brush, dragging the polluted servants of Nurgle off to silent deaths.
Through the bubble of corruption and the groans of the dying, something else could be heard. While the taint and suffering was great, a spirit-song – light with hope – rose above the browning canopies. It soared above the clouds of flies and echoed through root-lined caverns. The dull senses of Nurgle’s Tallybands were deaf to the song, but the sap and sinew of the sylvaneth rang with its beauty. It was Alarielle’s song. The Queen of the Radiant Wood was calling to them.
To some, the song carried with it an invigorating sustenance, a fortification against the illness sweeping through their boughs and branches. For others it was a choral announcement, resounding from the heads of flowers, from the swirls and knots in trees and depths of forest grottos. Something to give them hope: a song of solace and unity. As it carried across the never-ending reaches of Ghyran, it grew to a sonorous boom. It was a trumpeting call to war in the Everqueen’s name, one that even Great Shaddock heard, hundreds of years into hibernation and slumber, deep within the Arkenwood.
Shaddock was a towering totem of ironwood and stone, indistinguishable from the trees around him. A Spirit of Durthu, he was a being of age-earned wisdom.
His golden sap flowed with nobility while his bole creaked with formidable power. His thick bark, like the surface of a cocoon, had sheltered him from the concerns of the realm, both large and small. He had slept away the Greater Upheavals and the Season of Storms. He had slumbered through the invasion of orruks from the Skullfang tribe. When the Queen of the Radiant Wood sang, however, something stirred deep within Shaddock’s soul. The fires of his ardour were stoked to amber brilliance and lit up the Arkenwood, drawing the Forest Folk and their enemies down upon him.
Great Shaddock, Wardwood of Athelwyrd – wise counsel and glade-guardian of the Everqueen – hear me.
Golden soul-light flickered within Shaddock’s eyes and mouth.
Spirit of Durthu, hear me. There isn’t much time.
Shaddock could see. It was night. The blurriness of centuries in slumber began to fade, and the Arkenwood took shape around the ancient. Instead of the mighty trees of the forest, vaulting for the clear sky, he found bark dripping with a veneer of filth and trunks leaning drunkenly over. Criss-crossing each other through the forest depths, the trees of the Arkenwood were suffering some great affliction. Leaves fell from the canopy in a constant shower, forming a carpet on the surface of foetid waters that had risen about the trunks and throughout the woodland. The once-proud Arkenwood was a veritable mangrove, with root systems rotting beneath the surface of the swamp.
‘To whom do I speak?’ Shaddock said. His voice emanated from the very depths of his being. While his face remained unmoved, words laden with age and wisdom rumbled from the sylvaneth.
‘I am Ardaneth,’ a voice returned, like a melodious breeze through the treetops. ‘Priestess of the Arkenwood and branchwraith to the people that once called this forest home.’
Shaddock saw her. The priestess was a spirit of lithe limbs and smooth wood. Roots snaked down her body from her head, writhing and entwining ceaselessly. Standing up to her knees in the filth that flooded the forest, she sketched a bow with talons of rough bark.
