by Various
‘You can do more than thank her,’ the Spirit of Durthu said. Ardaneth nodded, looking out across the diseased forest.
‘You are right, of course,’ the priestess said. ‘The Arkenwood is ailing – it will take an eternity of care to undo what has been done. To heal what has been afflicted. To purge, replant and tend.’
‘And what of the next warband or sorcerous coven to lay claim to this land?’ Shaddock asked her. ‘The next daemon to burrow beneath its bark or army to pass beneath its bowers with axe and flame?’
‘We are the spirits of the Arkenwood,’ Ardaneth said. ‘We live, as those that sprang forth before us, to tend the ancient groves of our homeland. We shall defend what remains of this sacred place, as will those that follow. We shall bring it back from the brink, no matter what it takes. I should have expected a denizen of the Arkenwood to understand such a pledge.’
‘I understand it,’ Shaddock said, ‘and honour it. I have great faith in your care and custodianship and am here because of it. But you plant your hopes in rocky ground, priestess. The Arkenwood is lost, the land defiled.’
Ardaneth stared up at the Spirit of Durthu in disbelief before casting her gaze across the diseased forest.
‘I do not believe that,’ the priestess said finally.
‘Only the Everqueen can heal this place,’ Shaddock said, ‘Arkenwood and all. But she needs all of her spirits now. I am her wardwood. She has called to me and I must obey. Come with me and find fresh service in her ranks. Priestess, you are needed.’
Ardaneth looked to the ground. Laurelwort knelt before her.
‘Priestess,’ the branch nymph said. ‘Let the Forest Folk fight for their Everqueen.’
‘And abandon our ancestral home?’ Ardaneth asked. ‘Leave it to sink into the mire, to wither and die?’
‘The Arkenwood is dead already,’ Shaddock told her.
‘My lady–’ Laurelwort began.
‘No,’ Ardaneth said, her words hard like the barbed wood of her bark. ‘I forbid it. The fight is here. Let all dryads stand their ground. Let all the ancient places endure. This invasion, like the fever, shall pass. Even if we can save but one single tree, then our efforts will not be in vain. Let the Queen of the Radiant Wood take glory in that. For from one fruit can great forests grow. The Arkenwood will survive this. I will ensure it.’
Following Laurelwort’s example, the remaining dryads on the rise knelt down before their priestess. Shaddock nodded slowly to himself.
‘Your loyalty and belief do you credit, priestess,’ Shaddock said.
‘As do yours, mighty wardwood,’ Ardaneth told him. ‘May the Everqueen be safe in your hands – as her lands are safe in ours.’
Shaddock sheathed his colossal blade in the tangled roots on his back. Turning with a creak, the wardwood strode down the rise. Wading through the sickening swamp in which the Arkenwood died, he left the Forest Folk there. They knew the spirit-song of Alarielle was calling him on.
Shaddock strode across the festering lands of Ghyran.
Towering above the suffering and blight, the Spirit of Durthu travelled across great expanses, festering forests, dead grasslands, and mountain ranges capped with frozen filth. He crossed foul rivers and strode along the coastlines of deep seas, once full of life. The bright, blossoming green of life unbound was gone. The blue of sea and sky had been drowned in the murk of pollution.
As Shaddock walked on, there seemed no part of the realm he had once known that had not been tainted and transformed. Once, the great lands of Ghyran supported huge, migrating herds and a plethora of mighty predators that stalked them. The air sang with colourful birds and insects. The shallows thrashed with the bounty of fish while the depths boomed with ancient behemoths. Mortal tribes flourished, as did the fleet spirits of the forest, their lords and their ancients, living as one with the land. Even the strange forces of the realm were in tune with Alarielle’s will, creating marvels of nature. Crystal waterfalls, flowing up into the sky. Storms of flowers and seeds. Sky forests floating through the clouds. Cavernous underpeaks reaching down through the earth.
The breathtaking grandeur of Ghyran was now gone, rotted through. The daemons of Nurgle stalked the lands, polluting everything with which they came into contact. The crystal mountains of Quartzendor darkened, shivered and quaked with affliction. The surrounding rivers feeding Lake Serenity had steamed away to nothing in the fevered land, leaving behind crusty beds and channels.
Worst of all for Shaddock was the sight of sylvaneth laid low. The dryads of Winterbirch had been transformed into kindling that hacked, coughed and cackled at his passing. Shaddock found the lowland Wyldwoods of Hanging Forest impassable, the Forest Folk having strangled one another with root and vine. The resulting knot was like a contracted muscle that knew not how to let go. Crossing the wooded peaks of the Realmspine, the Spirit of Durthu struggled across lands laced with Nurgle’s affliction. The caves of the Illythrian Deep had grown sharp, yellowing teeth and babbled madness that infected creatures for leagues around.
In what remained of the Sorreldawn, Shaddock passed amongst the scaly trunks of treelord ancients who wandered blind across the realm, their limbs and branches withered and drooping. He encountered the revenants of the Gloomwood in a terrible state. Blooming with unnatural growths that restricted their movements, the tumorous bark hardened, turning the spirits into warped statues of petrified horror.
Wherever his kin was suffering, he found the servants of the Plague God. With Alarielle’s song lifting him, the wardwood took the wrath of wild places to the abominations in his path.
In the Dell of Gort, warbands of rot-withered knights surrounded Shaddock, chopping the ironwood of his legs with their tarnished blades. The wardwood crushed them into the suppurating ground. About the felled Bronze Willow, Shaddock encountered warriors of insensible fortitude. Emerging from the stumps of toppled bronzewoods, they threw axes blistered with a metallic infection at him. As the blades found their mark, Shaddock stepped between the stumps to skewer the bloated warriors into ground they had defiled with their recent butchery.
In the Darknid Vale, Shaddock found himself set upon by three monstrous maggoths that tried to fasten their lamprey maws onto his ironwood and tear him limb from limb. Hefting a blood-sweating boulder from the valley floor, the Spirit of Durthu crushed the head of one of the beasts. He sank his talons into the belly of another, spilling its foul guts as he tore the wicked claw free. The last maggoth stomped through its companions’ remains, flashing concentric rows of shearing teeth. The ancient drew back his mighty blade and thrust it deep into the thing’s gullet. Holding the creature transfixed, Shaddock waited while it vomited its stinking insides out onto the vale floor before finally falling still.
At the Verdenhold, Shaddock found its walls of thorn and tangled roots writhing in agony. The realmgate it had guarded – the Glimmerfall – had been a rainbow cascade of light and water. Now it was a slurping cataract of blood and pus, swarmed by fat, black flies. Plaguebearers issued forth from the realmgate, wading through the morass of filth before reaching the shore. They found Shaddock there. With savage kicks and sweeps of his long arms, the wardwood cast scores of the daemons back into the swarming gateway. Those that remained began to climb his towering form, trying to use their combined weight to bear him down to the floor. He plucked each one from his branches, dashing them on the ground like rotten fruit.
As the Spirit of Durthu forged on, his progress became a blur. Crossing lands that seemed to rise and fall with laboured breath, Shaddock found himself wandering in a malaise. The thunder of his staggering step took him through a horde of marauding Rotbringers and grotesque sorcerers. His grasping talon missed as often as it found foes, while the bludgeoning stone of his blade carved furrows in the infected earth. Still, Shaddock scattered the spoiling warriors and pulled down an ailing tree on the spell-mouthing sorcerers as he steadied himsel
f.
The ancient felt only worse as he stomped on absently. The ironwood of his arm creaked with inner agonies, and his sap ran hot beneath his bark. The brilliance of his inner fire burned low, while the spilled blood and diseased filth that he wore like a second skin felt like it was finally working its way through his defences.
Over the festering mess that had been the Rivenglades, it began to rain. While the ground crunched like a mouldering carpet of leathery flesh and snapping ribs, tiny, pot-bellied daemons began to fall from the sky. The shrieking green creatures had miniature horns and needle-toothed smiles. Shattering against Shaddock’s meandering form, they coated him with a burning ichor that smouldered on his canopy. Lifting an arm before his face, the Spirit of Durthu staggered on, the squelching bodies making the ground slippery underfoot. Through the gloom of his fevered mind, Shaddock saw the suggestion of shelter ahead. Groaning through the torment that wracked his body, he crawled for the woodland ahead.
Under the cover of bare and twisted branches, the Spirit of Durthu took shelter from the shower of daemons. What little light Shaddock had been aware of was now gone. Even his own light burned sickly and low like a dying camp fire. The Wyldwoods about him were packed tight, huddled together in their joint suffering. The woodland creaked and groaned as it attempted to flee the daemon rain.
Shaddock rose and stumbled from trunk to trunk, making his way through the writhing trees. He had no idea where he was going. The song of Alarielle had long been lost to him – its distant beauty drowned out by suffering. Instead of the Everqueen’s sonorous call to war, the wardwood began to hear other voices in the darkness. There were three of them: voices of abyssal woe that were deep, knowing and inescapably evil.
‘Give yourself to me, doomed spirit.’
‘Soak up your suffering. Be one with it. Become the exquisite torment that already wracks your body and mind.’
‘A dark agony lives in you. Embrace it. Unlock its soul-withering potential.’
‘For every living thing there is a season. Let yours be the warm dread between life and death. Revel in the rot.’
‘Let me save you from your suffering. I can make you strong again. Indomitable, and impervious to the pain that is to come.’
‘Affliction is but the beginning. Beyond such misery and anguish is a world of woe – a world that is yours for the taking. Savour it. Draw upon its strength.’
‘The Great Lord of Decay holds sway in both your spirit and your realm. There is no escape. Contagion claims all in the end…’
Shaddock stopped. He grabbed his head, which creaked with the pressure. The last flashes of golden brilliance flared behind the eyes and mouth. Letting go, the Spirit of Durthu looked down at his talon. In the thick bark, burning with a cruel malevolence, was a dark sigil. It had been carved into the wood by the sorcerer leading the sacrifice above the Ebon Tarn. Before Shaddock had crushed him, the sorcerer had afflicted him with his master’s mark. Three wretched circles, conjoined.
‘Yes…’ the daemon said. ‘Your sap belongs to me, forest spirit. As this realm falls to my feculent lord.’
The Spirit of Durthu brought his talon up close to his face. His vision was darkening. His thoughts ran thin. The mark of the daemon glowed with fell power. About it, the bark was soggy and pus-threaded. The ironwood beneath was weak and swollen. Worms riddled the wood while lice swarmed the surface of the thick bark.
The mighty talon moved with sudden violence. It started shaking uncontrollably. The wardwood grabbed the wrist with his other hand. As he held it there, maggot-thick pus dribbled down his fingers.
Shaddock fell to his knees in the darkness. His aeons of wisdom, his warrior’s spirit were beyond him now.
‘Radiant Queen…’ he managed.
‘Your queen cannot save you from me,’ the daemon told him, his every word intensifying the pain within the limb. Shaddock felt the pollution spreading through him.
‘Alarielle…’
‘You are Feytor’s now,’ the daemon told him. ‘A child of the Thrice-Father’s reborn. You thought you could deny me entry to this place, but I am the touch that taints. The wound that seeps. The blade that contaminates. There are a thousand ways into your doomed realm. A thousand acolytes to ensure my entry.’
Shaddock tried to stand. Beyond the taunts of the daemon echoing through his infected being, he could hear friction – the sound of wood being rubbed together. There was light in the darkness. Heat. A terrible brilliance that grew into a crackling blaze. Shaddock recoiled but the flames were everywhere. The Wyldwoods, unable to face the corruption around them, had set light to themselves. Their bare branches raged with cleansing flame. Through the spit and roar of the fires erupting all about Shaddock, he could hear the agony of the tree spirits.
Shielding himself from the heat and billowing cinders, the Spirit of Durthu staggered through the inferno the forest had become. The Wyldwoods had not intended to trap the ancient – they had simply been overwhelmed with dread. Shaddock crashed through briars and tangled branches. Smoke swirled and flames roared about him. His leaves shrivelled and curled up before blowing away. Fires took about his twigs.
At last, Shaddock burst free of the twisted wood. A suffering silhouette against the furious flames, he stumbled on without care or thought. He listened for the Everqueen’s song but could hear nothing. The sky was a poisoned smear of greens, browns and black. All but blind, he was alone in the darkness. He could hear the festering creak of his infected limb. He felt agonies blossom throughout his form, the heralds of spreading corruption. All the while he heard Feytor the Thrice-Father, the daemon’s merry madness reaching through him.
Shaddock did not know how long he had been staggering across the afflicted lands but suddenly the ground wasn’t there anymore. His foot stepped out into nothingness. The wardwood reached out to save himself. His mighty talon was crippled and useless. Hooking the sharp digits of his other hand into crumbling rock, Shaddock slowed his fall. With the weight of his mighty frame hanging off some kind of cliff or precipice, the wardwood tried to hold on. For what remained of his dwindling spirit. For the dying realm. For Alarielle.
He could not, however. Rock came away in his hand, and Shaddock tumbled. Air rushed through his branches and hollows. The ancient waited for oblivion, welcomed it. The impact that would break his hallowed form and end his suffering. Shaddock was not granted his wish, however.
He hit liquid, something soft, thick and disgusting. His mighty form plunged down into the vile warmth of blood and pus. It was a river of diseased filth, swelled by the ichor of the raining daemons. The torrent bubbled and slurped along, with Shaddock’s frame floating on the surface. He crashed into the shattered forms of felled trees, the river crowded with debris from further upstream. His spirit all but extinguished, the wardwood rode out the thick current as it meandered through the valley.
Shaddock was carried by the filth, bumping into logs that formed a tangled dam. He drifted to the slimy bank, where he became beached on the shore. There he lay, caked in blood and pus, smothered in flies. He felt the slime below him squirm with daemonic worms. They bit at the wardwood tentatively before opening their jaws wide to devour his limbs.
Through Feytor the Thrice-Father’s dark chuckle of satisfaction, Shaddock thought he heard a familiar voice.
‘Skewer these sacks of filth,’ Laurelwort called.
All about him, Shaddock felt the fleet footsteps of dryads. The wardwood heard the thud of sharp thorns and talons puncturing daemon flesh. The beasts thrashed and squirmed as Forest Folk descended upon them, stabbing skulls and slitting throats. At first, Shaddock thought that Laurelwort must have abandoned her priestess, but as he heard Ardaneth’s soft commands he knew that the Forest Folk of the Arkenwood had left their sacred glade.
‘Get him up,’ the priestess said. Shaddock felt dryads swarm about him, their talons locked about his limbs and bra
nches. Heaving him up onto their shoulders, the Forest Folk carried the wardwood away from the bubble and glug of the disgusting river. He felt Ardaneth come in close, her face next to his.
‘We found you, mighty ancient,’ she said. ‘Now know the peace of a realm thought lost. Once, you awoke to deliver us from a plague. Sleep again, Great Shaddock, and let us save you…’
So the wardwood slept. Gone were the fevered thoughts. Gone was the madness of voices in his troubled mind. Gone were dreams of sickliness and smothering. When he awoke, his sight had returned. The land was pure and he saw it crystal clear.
His spirit burned like a furnace within the fortitude of his body. Looking up, he saw skies of blue, framed by branches heavy with fruit and greenery. A mountain peak, dashed with a cap of glittering diamonds, reached into the heavens. Beyond, he could hear the tinkle and splash of a stream.
‘Where am I?’ Shaddock said, half expecting the vision to be a dream.
‘The spirit awakes,’ Laurelwort said. The branch nymph came into view, standing over him. The wardwood got the impression of Forest Folk gathered amongst the trees. Ardaneth came forth.
‘Great Shaddock,’ the priestess said, her words like a rejuvenating tonic. ‘You are in the Draconite Glade.’
‘How…’ the wardwood said, ‘how can this be?’
‘Like Alarielle’s servants,’ Ardaneth said, ‘there are places that have yet to succumb to the grip of Chaos. Sites of significance that resist the corruption as you have, mighty Shaddock. This glade is protected by Draconyth, the spirit of this mountain. Trees grow on his slopes unmolested and the blessed waters of his meltwater streams are pure.’
With a creak, Shaddock sat up. He had been slumbering in a circle of standing stones. Each was a crystalline menhir, draped with moss. The ancient looked around to see Ardaneth, Laurelwort and the gathered Forest Folk. These were not the dryads he had left behind in the Arkenwood. They looked hopeful but hardened. Their boughs were notched and splinted. Their thorns and sharpened talons were stained with blood and ichor. His own form, however, had been washed in the shimmering waters of the nearby stream. The filth was gone from the ironwood and encrusted mineral of his frame. And so too was the diseased remnant of his left arm.
