The Slidecrown Sundering
Seize the Crown
Virulent Despair
(Part 1 | Part 2)
At first, the masses of scraggly, hunched things had spooked Choleretch Slugbulk, when this battle had just begun and he and his rival sorcerers had rushed to take their position overlooking the battlefield that these ruins had become. The whole place had been swarming with them, and he had immediately suspected betrayal, for those wretches looked more unwell than many of Lord of Decay’s own worshippers. Not the blightkings who stood guard over his position, of course, for their bodies were pleasantly swollen with Grandfather’s gifts, but amongst those less uplifted, he had met many a marauder who appeared more or less hale and hearty, but for a few buboes and boils.
These creatures, on the other hand, were jaundiced, naked things, with bald pates yet sporadic spots of thickly matted hair elsewhere on their bodies. Hunchbacked and emaciated, they drooled and frothed at the mouth, bulging eyes rolling madly in their sockets. They looked like nothing so much as victims of some terrible wasting disease.
Choleretch was ashamed to admit, even in the privacy of his own mind, that he could consider any disease “terrible”, for in the scriptures of rot, they were all said to be gifts, regardless of their symptoms. As one of Grandfather’s most faithful and learned sons — for not just anyone could rise to become a sorcerer — he of all people should understand this… yet he could not lie to himself; wasting away to nothing had always seemed a most tragic fate to him. Unconsciously, one hand drifted to his own bulbous belly, as if to reassure him that it was still there.
Thankfully, it soon became clear that this vile creatures were no followers of the Plague God. Even his most cursory magical examination revealed that a pall of amethyst magics hung about the malnourished horde. They still breathed — no deadwalkers were these — yet they were barely living at this point, nothing more than ordinary humans warped and twisted by the foul winds of Shyish, and for all their ferocity, they possessed none of the gifts Grandfather granted even the least of his servants, nor even the lesser blessings granted by Grandfather’s brother-gods. They were fearless, but weak and unarmed.
At first, he was unsure how much his powers would even affect them; after all, neither deathrattle nor ossiarch could fall victim to the same sorts of plagues as would affect most mortal men, instead requiring specially tailored ailments to target their unique physiognomies. Fortunately, these concerns proved unfounded when the very first spell he lobbed — a bubbling globule of pus — struck a scraggly figure clean in its chest and sent it to the ground, where it spasmed and contorted, shrieking uncontrollably for a few blissful seconds, before the conglomeration of pathogens he’d hit it with did their work and robbed the foul thing of what meagre scraps of life had remained to it.
Even after it became clear that the creatures were utterly unprotected from magical attack, Choleretch couldn’t entirely shake the worry that they might all be buried beneath a tide of the twisted creatures, and his mood fouled further when he glanced skyward in search of air support — wondering what was keeping their pusgoyle cavalry from tearing down from the skies to lay into the rabble — and saw blightlords engaged in battle with enormously muscular monstrosities with bat-like wings. Though they looked radically different from the pitiful masses below them, those terrors of the skies shared the hunched postures and jaundiced flesh of the swarm, clearly indicating some sort of connection between the two.
It seemed like the cavalry and the army’s general — the Lord of Afflictions, Glurk Glutsore — were capably holding the fliers at bay, but it was clear that their ground forces would get no help from that direction. Fortunately, the blightkings were as effective as ever, particularly so with a good, solid fortification to keep their more numerous foes from quickly overrunning their position.
Choleretch was also pleased to see that the men seemed to still be in high spirits — despite the tidal wave of haggard degenerates threatening to engulf them — even chuckling at the efforts of the pitiful freaks and bantering as they culled them. Still, for all their merriment, the sorcerer saw that some had already sustained minor injuries; scratches, bite marks, and suchlike.
While their wretched foes didn’t even wield weapons, that didn’t mean they posed no threat at all. How many such trifling cuts and scrapes would it take to slay a mighty blightking? A dozen? A score? A hundred? If their line faltered, the number wouldn’t matter. They would be swamped in moments, and that would be the end of them.
“Hold the line!” he gurgled, as the winds of magic coalesced around him, just prior to unleashing his next spell. This one he was particularly proud of; a huge blister swelled on his palm, then burst, and from it spurted a gout of bile that shot out over their battlements and splashed onto one hunched figure. A slight hand movement dragged the stream across, soaking a second creature, then a third, before it dribbled to a stop. Each of the three stumbled, coughed and gagged when struck, but initially appeared to suffer no more harm than mild discomfort.
Then their flesh began bubbling, as ever-larger cysts formed wherever the bile had touched their skin, then popped explosively, spraying blood and pus around them. A few moments of flailing and screeching later, and all three lay dead.
So it went, he and the other two sorcerers continually drawing in the winds to empower their most deadly and creative uses of Grandfather’s gifts, each seeking to outdo the others, whilst the blightkings kept them safe from the starving horde. They persevered, yet not everything went their way. More than once, Choleretch was given a scare as a few of the wretches managed to reach the top of the barricades together, then work in concert to haul a blightking over, sending him tumbling down to be torn apart by their foul kin.
Always such assaults were repelled, but as the battle wore on, the joviality of his fellow rotbringers began to sound strained to the sorcerer, as if their good cheer was loudly proclaimed to all who’d listen as much to steady their own nerves as to brighten the mood of their brothers-in-arms.
It was no easier for Choleretch and his rivals, despite none of them personally getting stuck-in to the melee. Having channelled so much magic through his sickly form, the rotbringer sorcerer eventually found himself leaning on his staff and wheezing, his vision blurred and his entire body tingling with power. He knew that if he kept this up much longer, he’d be as likely to turn his own brains to mush as he would to drive off the foe.
Thank Grandfather, that proved unnecessary. With a bestial cry of fright, the largest of the bat-winged horrors peeled away from the fight for the skies, and its kin quickly took off in its wake. After what might have been a wail of dismay, the deranged, half-dead, human-ish horde likewise turned about and scampered back the way they’d come.
Choleretch allowed himself to drop his staff — which felt heavy as solid lead — and slump to his knees. He barely even noticed a few of the blightkings clambering down from the defences to engage in some sort of obviously pointless pursuit of the scarpering things. He permitted himself a moment of relaxation and gratitude at having survived another battle.
But all too soon, his reverie was broken by the harsh guffawing of that imbecile, Glurk. Looking about at the carnage, Choleretch ground the blackened stubs of his teeth together, seeing red for a moment. He was sure that from on high, the general thought this was some grand victory to be lauded — for were there not piles and piles of enemy dead strewn across the field of battle?
What the cretin failed to understand was just how close they had come to unmitigated disaster. They had lost far too many good blightkings in this battle, and all three of their sorcerers were utterly spent. If another army should discover them in this miserable state, all their dreams of despoiling this verdant isle in Grandfather’s name would be well and truly over.
