Ka-rokk was quiet for the first time in as long as anyone could remember. No howling, no roaring, no laughing, no fighting. Just silence as he stared down into the newly formed torrent down in a newly formed valley.
“Rondhol seeks to prey on you, my master,” Wyrdsquig whispered in his ear, “but only because it sees you has the greater threat!”
Ka-rokk grunted.
“Surely this is a sign that you are on the right path! Them worshippers also got done, that’s something…”
“On da right path… pffft,” he replied, “dis ain’t right. And you know it, ya squeeky git. We needs to fight now, we needs to hit it back!”
“Master, I think… ”
“My fastest boyz say dat big floatin’ city is coming this way now? I fink it’s time we paid them humies a visit.” Ka-rokk pulled his eyes away from the frothing deluge to stare at the sky. “It’s time we found a city place to chuck it, and right into dis here git of a rock seems good to me.”
“And how do we do that then, hey?”
“Dats why youz are here, to do da thinkin’ when the thinkin’ is tough. Figa it out git, or I’ll squish you has hard as dem boyz got squished. I wanna see dat city down, and I want it to bleed this here rock until all my boyz have been revenged!”
Ka-rokk had been a day of journeying away, and he had still heard it. Everyone had heard it. The ground had shook, thousands upon thousands of birds and other great beasts were seen flying up into the sky, while those stuck on the ground roared in defiance as the earth trembled. The river that he and his ladz were sailing on shifted completely and suddenly, throwing them overboard into the new rapids. But they had survived the earthquake, it was just a bit of water after all. If only his boyz closer to the Dell were so lucky. A single group of tattered orruks were found clinging to a raft as it floated down stream hours later. They had brought the news, with destroyed armour and a single Greenwood Scythe as evidence of their tale.
The Waaagh! had overrun the followers of Chaos that dared to quell a continent. But their song, their lifeblood, had evidently begun to outrun them, driving the desire to hunt and kill to ever-greater heights. The local Sylvaneth, it turned out, were but a precursor, and drawing closer to the edge of the Furyoth Dell had resulted in great beasts descending on everyone within striking distance, including the Waaagh! itself. An avalanche of crabs, called Sinjuuri, had begun the attack as the golden light of evening descended onto the continent. Crashing into both orruk and dark follower alike, they tore at extremities, punctured eyes, got under armour, and ate through flesh like acid through leaf as they forced anything still alive to retreat onto the rivers – where the warbands had met their doom.
Slitherschool eels, diregators, and mud tigers surged out of the Dell and down the rivers – destroying all within their path. They brought down both raft and ship and had eaten anything and everything that fell into the soon crimson waters. The Brashbriar Brood had attempted to calm the fury, but caught up in the Waaagh!’s fury, they barely knew how – many had torn into their new allies or simply leapt into the churning waters. Most were lost. Slitnat, one of Ka-rokks Daggboyz was confirmed dead, impaled on a tree as he attempted to run into the forest. Zaggok and a good many of the Spookbustas perished in the churning milieu. While both Urgoth and Dughoz were technically just missing, someone had seen one of the diregators take off Dughoz’s arm off before pulling him into the drink. One of the survivors had seen Khazamzi Voidreaver and Razgor Beastbreaka dueling atop a burning ship when a bonesail had leapt out the water, taken off Voidreavers top half, and knocked Razgor into the rapids. His Realmhuntaz had jumped in afterwards – roaring in fury and hacking away at the creatures that swarmed over the group.
One of the survivors had whispered to Ka-rokk as he lay in the mud – the rivers hadn’t even run red afterwards, it had claimed every last drop from them.
Ka-rokk had sent orruks to the place to find any survivors, and had also sent a warning to Borga Gutpuncha and Dargaz Flamedrinker – just in case. Gutpuncha has been made boss of Da Tailz and is currently taking a stealthy approach in locating a giant sloth that needed some looting. Da Headz had made the Firebelly a boss, and had set off to clear Da Bearded Rock with flame and krumpin.
Far away, similar discussions were happening amongst Blackmaw and his lieutenants. Skarra Spinebreaker has since been sent in by the pirate overlord to take over the efforts on the rivers, and, notably, has been instructed to push into the Dell at all cost. Anyone lost was assumed dead, and the single messenger that had reached Blackmaw was slaughtered in anger on the spot. Whoever was still out there would need to survive on their own for a time, and if they weren’t going in the same direction, well, Spinebreaker was not one to dwell on the dead.
But the followers of the Dark Gods ranged far and wide in Rondhol, and many had already breached the newly revealed lands…
Koabla Khai, or possibly more appropriately, the Sigmarite scholar Larisa Melborn, had successfully found a section of the Xarlanth within Furyoth Dell. The Iron Bloods had found an ancient Temple of the Storm, with a massive section of the voidship crashed right through the center of it. As they approached it, though, the ship had exploded in a magical vortex, throwing the warband back, their armour barely keeping them alive as a hurricane of stone and Ghurish magic ripped through the area. As Irox Bloodforged had managed to stand after the initial shock waves, he saw a portion of the ship as being sucked through a now-visible portal that must have been within the temple structure. The temple itself was completely altered in the blast, burst open as the Xarlanthian ship section and the portal, arrived at a magical equilibrium, with the voidship and temple sections floating through the air around the now levitating portal.
Through that portal, on the other side of the continent and high in the Mountains of Maraz, Castellan Malenkon of the Inquisition of Umberspire now stood in front of an active gateway – with a portion of a Seraphon ship lodged into a very similar temple structure above their heads.
Over the past few days Melchad Hawkcaller, other influential members of the Council, and even Sorrah Nikos, had all increased the intensity of the calls for the city to move towards Furyoth Dell. This, paired with the Grey Company reporting significant issues on the Mountains of Maraz, the Council of Khardhir has finally decided to move the city in that direction. One would think that this would be the most notable event to speak of within the city, and yet one would be wrong. News flies fast through the floating metropolis – the city itself was attacked by Chaos worshippers, and the technical plans for the Hopu Taonga*, initially drawn up by Gondrysdassnir for the College of Engineers, has been stolen. The House of Vermillio erupted in anger, claiming that their family was directly under attack, and have requested a formal investigation into a number of events where their business partners were threatened or even killed. Due to the ongoing uproar, as well as being so publicly rebuffed in the Council, the House has since pulled their donations from the Navigators Guild as a sanction of sorts, claiming that they will only reinstate the cashflow once they are sure that the Council has taken the necessary steps to insure their safety.
And so the City now floats towards the Furyoth Dell, albeit slower than preferred, and at each others throats as they contemplate the fact that the worst can safely be assumed – someone out there now has access to their own artefact, allowing for easy location of Xarlanthian ruins.
One group that needs no such artefact are the survivors of the Xarlanth itself. Those that had been aboard the crashed ship had initially been assumed dead, but groups of the Seraphon seem to be converging on distinct locations throughout the continent. Scouts for Khardhir have confirmed that these are the Gaping Portal, Furyoth Dell, and Civilia’s Ruin. The exact reason for these locations in particular is unknown, but many suspect that the lizardmen are traveling to sections of their ship they deem most important.
As news of the city moving towards Furyoth Dell reached Civilia’s Ruin, night was setting. A great surge of green energy burst into the scarlet sky and was seen throughout the city. Sorrah Nikos stood holding the small machine that had produced the effect next to Lieutenant Duhanden of the Grey Company. As the Lieutenant looked skyward, amazed at the effectivity of the light, he did not sense Nikos’ knife cut up below his armour and into his back until it was too late. As the secret Stormcast burst into lightning, Sorrah was forced to throw up an arcane shield and the blast sent her flying through the air while the Emissaries of Forgelight leapt from the shadows.
The ensuing battle was horrific. Caught completely off-guard by their supposed “allies”, the Grey Company was cut down as they slept or took watch. Captain Levi and a number of the Ventoleons stood back to back with the Company, in a last ditch effort to defend the great “Hammer of Sigmar” – a large canon brought in by the Grey Company to defend Civilia’s Ruin. They fell to a man as they made a final stand against the deceivers. With the weapon being used by the Emissaries, alongside Nikos’ magics (not to mention the element of surprise), all those that called the agents of Chaos their enemy were either cut down, blown up, incinerated, or lost in the night.
The screaming lasted hours as the survivors of Civilia were also rounded up, and brought into an ancient atrium at the center of the city by Ratcyst’s Skaven. Many of the survivors had attempted to take up arms as best as they could, but they fell regardless – with knives in the dark or warpstone weaponry pressed point-blank against foreheads.
As dawn broke, the ruins emerged from the night changed entirely. Still flooded, they now sat below a dome of arcane magic. The Xarlanthian section, claimed to have been “stripped of all value” now sat atop a central tower; empowered and protecting the ruins from anyone that would dare approach the city. Men, aelves, and duardin were held in pens with Skaven wardens, and dragged out periodically to a newly rigged system of labs, torture chambers, and morgues.
As the water washed the ruins clean, and the blood ran out into the Bitingsea, it finally left the waters clear and reflective once again. For those that deemed to look into those waters, into that reflectivity, they were were able to see, high above them in the crisp morning sky, a silver tower floating in readiness.
*A machine that can point to multiple sections of Seraphon-specific energy sources.
