The ancient looked out over the broken battlefield. The metal beasts of man lay strewn about in heaps, piles of beastmen surrounding them like barricades of tainted flesh. Scorch marks that stank of fulminated earth, and myriad beasts of the distant stars rot in the still air. Cultists and brightly garbed soldiers and bled dry by the elements.
He looked to the proud stone walls of the Thunderer’s Free City, bold in taking from the earth to build walls to protect against it. His needles shook in quietus, he knew of man’s pride and its need to pummel the realms into a shape that befits them. Chopping axes and rancid gunpowder, horrid sounds that brought only pain to the wilds. Paranoid apes that hid behind steel and gave themselves to the first power that didn’t kill them on sight.
The Stinging Rain, Titanneedle’s Kurnoth hunters, had shown him the crash site of a sky duardin ship not long ago. Shot down by its own allies in typical mortal paranoia, its twisted metal girth scorching the nearby hillock in its wake. Had their been survivors, the Hollowpine would’ve butchered them for their stupidity alone.
The pale treelord crushed a broken ballistae to splinters beneath his tread. Damn these mortals and their greed, even with obtaining the Gladewyrm and the amberbone this was nothing but a waste of their time. Only the people of Mila tried to become one with the wilds, and became servants to their verdant icon. They rebuffed the Hollowpine’s protections, fearing the Copse of Silence even more then their enemies. Titanneedle enveloped the body of a fallen gryphon in his boughs and heaved it at the fearful free folk of Drakheim. It’s limp form crashed against the stone, shattering more shards of cowards masonry free from its mold.
Rot and death takes these mortals, Titanneedle seethed silently in his mind, we won’t waste another moon in this doomed land. Pine needles fall silently to the ground as he turned to face the Void Choir.
The spite revenants, heinously capricious examples of the Sylvaneth, had set themselves to dancing atop the bodies of the felled guardsman of Drakheim. Each silent splintered step mulched muscle and bone, drawing forth vitae once more to soak their roots in. In complete silence, once the mound had been flattened thoroughly, paired themselves with another. One placed a claw on the others barked hip, and the reverse upon their partners shoulder. Clasping their free hands together, they looked to the walls to make sure the guards that had been watching them the entire time knew they were watching in return. Slowly they began, spinning circles in the gore slaked mud. A gruesome silent mockery of a noble Azyrite ballroom upon the open grave of the fallen.
Titanneedle watched in appreciation. The Void Choir were the best in the glade at the gruesome mimicry that was their chief way of war. Break the enemy with twisted versions of their comforts and plans, then shred them as they flee. This was bold even for them, they didn’t often perform in broad daylight. He watched as the spun and rotated, the blood that soaked their forms spiraling out from them in thin sheets like gossamer. He watched, and for the first time in an age he felt something familiar.
Fear
He had brought the whole choir, fifteen revenants in all. Yet each of them had a partner. He watched them spin faster and faster. Twirling quietly yet swiftly, their razor sharp roots sending digits and limbs flying away from the bodies along the edges of their macabre performance. He saw it, a pale shadow mockery of those present. Its hollow black eyes not the carved holes of his glade, but windows into the void itself. It’s movements were just barely faster then its partner, causing it to stumble slightly as the others circled around the pair still maintaining the performance. The false revenant pulled its partner tightly to it and stopped instantly still, freezing in place disobeying the forces of nature. It looked over its shoulder at Titanneedle, ashen gray face cracked a empty smile of pitch.
“Long time no see, Hallowpine,” it called to him in deep rumble that shook the plate armor of the fallen warriors.
The Void Choir pounced upon the horror. It had broken their performance and must be punished. The spite-revenants fell into a morass of flailing wooden claws and bloody mud. Bark and blackened sap flew as they tore into their victim. Titanneedle closed the distance in moments and with a wide sweep of his needled fist scattered the smaller sylvaneth before him. He only saw the torn remnants of the sylvaneth the thing used as a partner.
Fury and fear mixed in this roots. He had felt that coy emptiness only once before. When Old Bones cast his glades voice and songs to the void.
It spoke using the form of one of his own to taunt him.
It spoke using his stolen voice to anger him.
Titanneedle turned as swiftly as his trunks could move him. He found his reason, the truth as to why his forces came here. Something in the void had found his glade’s song and voice and took it for themselves. He didn’t know what they were, but he finally had a goal. The pain from ages ago flashed fresh through his being. The entirety of Drakheim was under the horror’s gaze, and Titanneedle knew the consequences. His glade huddled by their trees and watched the realms die around them to protect themselves just to be hollowed out body and soul. Separated and alone the people living here, especially the foolish mortal humans, would perish and be consumed by the void.
The treelord charged towards the pine laced wyldwood that brought them here, his weight causing silent tremors to shake the ground. He barely cared for the mortals, but he would rather let his soulpod be planted in the deepest fold of Nurgle’s girth than let those things have them. It didn’t matter if fear or goodwill would drive the mortals of Mila and Drakheim together, Titanneedle and the Copse of Silence would make it so.
