Three days. That was how long Rittichik had been cowering in the hole he’d dug into the dirt under a pile of fallen tree trunks, waiting for the dust to settle enough to be able to get his bearings. Stale fear-musk filled his nostrils, the earth around him soaked with the odor. His fractured wrist was bound with bits of leather cord and cloth torn from the hem of his tunic. It ached, but he didn’t have anything to stop that at hand. He’d sated his thirst with water from his canteen, had munched on strips of some kind of dried meat and other foodstuffs scavenged from his pouches and surroundings. He ventured out only when it was dark, his visibility still seriously limited by the choking clouds of sediment in the atmosphere.
During his brief forays into the mess, he’d found the corpses of three of his acolytes, as well as one of the jezzailiers formerly under his command, their bodies mangled from the impact of the meteors. He’d scrounged bits of food and two more canteens of water from them, as well as a functioning jezzail and another pistol, for all the good they did him. Thanks to what he now knew was a massive amount of Nullstone, none of the weapons would fire, their charges rendered inert by the anti-magic properties of the negatively-charged version of Realmstone. One of the things he had managed to scavenge was three chunks of Nullstone the size of his fists, about as much as he could carry without overwhelming him from the weight.
He wasn’t alone out here. Twice, he’d had to hide his presence from others, coming to inspect the impact site. The first was a small group broken off from the Stormcast he and his underlings had fought earlier. They seemed a little off, disoriented by something.
The second group was funnier. Rittichik had been forced to hold his muzzle shut when some idiot necromancer ventured too close to the Nullstone with his skeletal charges, the energies animating the walking corpses dissipating suddenly when they got too close. Watching the man-thing wizard rage and curse at his minion’s inability to remain animate around the Nullstone was hilariously funny to him.
But that was twelve hours ago. By now, enough of the dust was settling that Rittichik could get his bearings once again. He cringed at the sight that lay before him. Formerly a forested valley, it was now a devastated badland covered in the shattered remains of fallen trees, piles of rubble strewn everywhere from the impact of the meteors. Rittichik shouldered the scavenged jezzail and started making his way out of the valley. He had to get back to the Spire and report to the Arch-Warlock what had transpired. Not that it mattered, he suspected Clan Eshin had already informed Laskitt about the meteors and the loss of Rittichik’s forces…
