The Nefarious Antipustulent of Clan Morbidus by David Guymer

Author:David Guymer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-03-16T07:01:22+00:00

The Archpustulent of Clan Morbidus

The magma plains of Aridian were a wasteland of bronzed sands and slow-moving rivers of molten rock. The air smelled of nothing so much as heat. The nose meekly surrendered to it, passed the impossible duty onto other senses. The sound of bubbling earth, the hiss of geysers. The constant tremble of menace from underpaw. The haze above the endless, flat horizon. The Mortal Realms were a dangerous place for a lone skaven to be, but it was safer by far than being Archpustulent of Clan Morbidus for one lacking the ambition, guile and authority to have craved that position in the first place. The blanket annihilation of Zhurn Aelf-Eater’s sub-tower and all of his best warriors was a small price to pay for this self-imposed exile.

Makulitt had found a hole in the ground and, after some increasingly delirious scrabbling, had expanded it enough to fit himself inside. His paws and footpaws, snout and tail, were wrapped in the surfeit of clothing that the skitter­stone had transported with him from the masterburrow. There was no need for such heavy frocks and grand regalia here in Aqshy. He found moisture by sucking on the split ends of grasses and burrowing for roots. He spent his time in contemplation of the Great Horned Rat, giddy as a plague hermit with heatstroke and dehydration. There was not enough moisture in the air to carry a single contagion, and his head ached for lack of water.

He began to see things. Scratch marks of prophecy in the yellow sky, gnashing teeth at the mingling of two sulphurous plumes, hunched bodies slinking through the haze. He did not worry himself overly, then, when he first marked the wobble on the horizon.

Over the hours that followed it got bigger. He thought of scurrying on, finding himself a new hole to hide in, perhaps even, dare he dream it, a bigger hole, but in his mean and dried-out little heart he knew that he did not have the willpower or the strength. As it drew closer he realised that it was a cart. Its wheels rattled over the broken earth, sides blurry in the heat. Only when it was almost close enough to stand up and touch did he notice the mutant draught rat that pulled it and the single skaven perched on its seat.

With the deep interest of one who has seen nothing else in weeks, Makulitt watched as the cart pulled in alongside his meagre burrow. The draught rat panted thirstily. The skaven leant out to peer at him more closely. He too had lost all sense of smell in the heat. The skaven was wrapped in tinder-crisp robes of bleached green bound at the middle with rope. Spoiled silver devotionals twinkled on braided strings from his belt, almost white in the heat. The Splintered Temple of Clan Morbidus stabbed into Makulitt’s sore eyes every time the slowly turning devotionals caught the Aqshyan sun.

‘You found me,’ he croaked.

The monk bobbed his head. ‘I am sent all the way from Charcoal Scorch to seek-find.

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