Grikk Mookshield had seen many things in his long 5 years of life, but he didn’t think he’d ever understand the other races’ obsession with gold.
It was a perfectly fine material, don’t get him wrong; it was rust-proof, easy to work with, conducted realmstone energy better than copper could, and looked pretty stylish in jewellery – the medals his clanmates had gotten from the Concienda Campaign was proof enough of that. But the display before him seemed excessive.
The human hirelings he’d picked up from the Weirdrock were attacking the stone beneath them with picks, shovels, steamdrills, and apparently limitless enthusiasm. Most of them, anyway. The ones from outside of the wilds, or from other realms entirely. Meanwhile the locals he’d hired as navigators had designated themselves as sentries; scaling the few trees in the gully they’d started mining in and keeping watch from their shady canopies, the lucky wretches.
The skaven of their party, both clanrat hirelings and his own Refrakd Acolytes, had sorted themselves in a similar manner. The strangers carved gouges into the earth like squabbling hydraflies, while his hulking brothers and sisters stalked amongst them in small groups, keeping discipline with pointed realmshard carbines and cold stares.
Unfortunately, the stares were the only cold things in a mile radius. Even though the steep cliff walls kept the worst of the evening sun off them, there must have been something in the stone of the valley itself that had absorbed the heat from the height of the day, only to release it when out of direct sunlight. Actually, despite the heat clinging to his fur and pressing into his temples, he could imagine a few useful applications for such a material, both at home and for their employer. He chittered an order to take a few samples to a nearby underling and took another swig of Great-Horned-Rat-blessedly cool water as the rat ran off to find a clawpack ready to make some extra cash; probably more of Ghalbakk’s coins. It wasn’t like there was anything you could buy with warptokens around here instead.
The muggy heat was so bad Grikk had taken his mask off, letting it swing freely around his neck in the pseudo-breeze that didn’t so much blow away the heat as it did stir it like thick gruel. Exposed to the outside world (a rarer occurrence than it probably should be, he’s willing to admit), his snout twitched as he took in the smells of the world around him. Sweat, dust, and metal. The fumes from Clan Refrakd-provided mining equipment, each with its own distinct realmstone fuel noticeable, if you knew to look for it. The musks of at least three different skaven clans, not counting his own. The milk-and-grain smell most humans carried, mingling with the peppery undertones that he’d learnt meant excitement. The faint earthiness of the twistrees that stubbornly clung to life here, underscored by the animal fear of the wildlife cowering within them from what must have looked like the end of their world. And the faint tang of gold ran underneath it all. The smell of the metal on the wind was what had drawn them here, after all.
The assault on his senses was disorienting, almost intoxicating. So many skaven, from different clans, working with both each other and non-skaven for a single goal, no matter how bizarre it seemed to him. And it was only possible because he had brought them together. This was the future Kralt Gemeye had promised him, promised all of them, so long ago. It just about made this hellish environment worth it.
He might even have called it beautiful.
“Master,” an Acolyte waved him over to her dig site, eyes wide with fear. “Look-see here!”
////
It took him a moment to realise what he was looking at. He tilted his head, as if a new angle would magically turn the jumble of bone and metal into a coherent image. At last, he saw the familiar curvature of a spine, and it all snapped together.
Human and duardin skeletons wielding crude mining tools had been fossilised in the rock; some had been preserved mid-swing, while others were curled protectively around lumps of gold. Humorously, it looked as if they had been buried alive mid-excavation, as if the Biting Stones had slammed the valley shut in their geological war, and the stupid miners had been too blinded by greed to get out of the way in time.
Wait a second…
Oh. Uh oh.
A chill ran down his tail despite the heat. He’d barely even been aware of the mountains around them, but now they weighed on his mind like so many tons of rock on his ribcage, crushing the life from him. Was it just him, or was the gorge wider when they started digging?
The musk of fear coiled around his snout like a serpent, and he dimly noticed his own glands had vented in sympathy. It would likely spread throughout the camp in minutes, but he felt there were bigger – and heavier, a voice in his head whispered – things to worry about than a loss of discipline.
“Keep digging, but be quick-fast about it,” he hissed to his minions, desperate to keep some control of the situation. “We leave by dawn.”
That was, he thought grimly, assuming we get to leave at all.
