Warp Token Update

2k words

***

He feared they would have to do battle with the skeleton, but then the chariot altered course, making for an adjacent dune. Only when he could no longer hear its wheels did Roderick release the breath he’d been holding, Skyseeker’s tense little body releaxing as she followed suit.

“What was that!?” Skyseeker demanded, then answered her own question. “looked like a a bone-thing being pulled by more bones-things!”

“I’ve never seen a monster like that before,” Roderick muttered. “vampires, zombies, but nothing with all its flesh rotted off.”

“It guard-protects the relic,” Skyseeker mused. “think there are more-more?”

“I don’t know. We best be on our guard,” Roderick replied.

“I already am!”

“You know what I mean,” he added. “we’ll have to forego campfires from now on, keep our eyes open. I don’t know how we can kill a skeleton, assuming they can be killed at all…”

“Is getting cold,” Skyseeker muttered, bundling herself in her arms. “stupid desert-place. Hot one second, freezing the next!”

Roderick reached for the blanket in his back, rolling it out and encouraging Skyseeker to lay down. Rest wouldn’t come easy after what they just saw, but they had to try. Once she was down, Roderick cuddled up to her from behind, shielding her little body with his own, the Skaven reaching up to cradle his face with a paw.

“Thank you, Rick-rod,” she whispered. “Promise to breed with you when Skaven not so exposed.”

He chuckled, planting a kiss on her forehead, the little rat squirming and giggling as he held her there for a few seconds longer, the two soon settling in for the night.

-xXx-

After a quick breakfast, they continued their journey through the early hours of dawn, hoping to get in as much travel before while the heat was tolerable. Their path brought them before the area they had seen the chariot during the night, Roderick detouring over to examine the tracks it left behind.

“If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I’d say these look like normal horse prints,” Roderick began, kneeling in the sand as he eyed the chariot’s path. It swerved in seemingly all directions, leading Skyseeker to believe the chariot had been on patrol duty, and not searching for trespassers. At least not yet.

“Rick-rod seems surprised,” Skyseeker mused. “Fredwil not warn you of bonemen?”

Roderick shook his head. “He said that Chaos may take new forms this far from the Empire’s light. Although…”

“What?” she asked.

“I’ve never heard or seen the Chaos gods reanimate men and creatures like this before,” he added. “the closest I’ve seen are the corrupted men of Nurgle, but that skeleton didn’t seem like a result of plague or infestation to me. Perhaps some new Ruinous Power stirs in these lands…”

“Well that’s just great-great,” Skyseeker mumbled. She gestured at the sky, raising her voice and saying: “Damn you Chaos-things! Go die in warpfire! E-Except you, Horned Rat, do whatever you want-need.”

Not wanting to linger, they soon picked up the pace, leaving this dune behind for the next. Sand was everywhere. Her eyes, her lungs, even between her toes, it seemed to just go wherever it pleased no matter what she tried, her hood providing little respite against the sweltering heat accompanying it. It was like the Trantine Hills all over again, only a thousand times worse. She couldn’t believe she had been so hard on Tilea – at least back then the water she drunk didn’t immediately make her tail glands swell with cramps. There had also been trees for shade and crevices for shelter, but out here there was only nothingness, each rising dune promising some new obscured feature, only for disappointment to rear its head at every crossing.

At least the company was worthwhile. That was one change from Tilea that she could appreciate. No longer was each exchanged word between them full of malice or distrust, instead there was an unspoken air of relaxation surrounding them, their indulgence back on the wolfship having sated their desires for one another – for the moment of course. She could see in his eyes that he longed to breed her again. That was good. She wanted him to watch her tail, she wanted him to admire her and her alone.

It felt so liberating to be craved in such a manner, to have allowed Roderick to see a side of her even she didn’t know existed. Nothing about her was hidden from him, and likewise, she knew all his secrets, and the realisation made her weak at the knees in more ways than one. But she had to control her newfound breeding urges – now wasn’t the time or the place, not with all those creepy bonemen riding around.

-xXx-

“Do my eyes deceive me?” Roderick asked, holding out a hand to shield his face, his gauntlet glinting in the light.

They had been going on for the better part of the day, their supplies slowly but surely diminishing as they plunged deeper into the desert. It made the load lighter on her back, which was relieving, but that feeling was quickly chased by worries of starvation. Perhaps she’d been too eager to ignore Wilfred’s warnings…

But her worries seemed to have just become in vain, Skyseeker using her goggles to zoom in on what he was looking at.

“They don’t,” she answered. “See man-thing? Told you crossing desert would be easy peasy.”

“Don’t remember you saying that,” he muttered, following her down the sandy slope, making a beeline for the strange feature. It was a little out of the way from the relic’s direction, but not enough to put them completely off-track. What they saw wasn’t another chariot or anything like that, thank the Horned Rat, but a discolouration on the horizon, easy to pick out against the brown, dusty backdrop.

It was a handful of dunes off to the east, and crossing each one brought the image more clarity. Sand gave way to spiky underbrush, first a muted, bleached colour like dirt, but gently taking on more vibrancy the further in it went, until devilweeds became bushes of lush leaves. There were plants, too, not e prickly kind they had seen thus far, but the tall, wooden kind, like those back in Tilea, lining the humps of grassy fields as apposed to dusty dunes.

“Life, this deep into the desert?” Roderick mused as they came one dune closer. “After leagues of dust… how is this possible?”

“Horned Rat’s filthy blessings, of course!” she chimed. “And if I know anything about surface-world – and I’m an expert at this point – it’s that plants equals water!”

“We should proceed carefully,” he warned. That wasn’t suspicion in his eyes, was it? “Whatever wildlife lives in this place, it’ll be drawn here. Remember the gryphon?”

“Wish I didn’t,” she mumbled, slowing her strides. “Alright, Rick-rod, made your point-point. Slow and steady!”

Curtailing her excitement, they passed over the last dune with caution, and soon enough, she was standing with grass stalks sprouting between her clawed toes. Behind her was sand, but before her was paradise, like a slice of Tilea had been scooped up and dropped down by the paw of a God. A flock of birds flitted from left to right, helping to sell the image, and Skyseeker was confident she could pick up the calls of bullfrogs from somewhere nearby.

Bushes obscured the landscape ahead, blooming wildflowers adding dashes of colour. Beyond them rose a distinct noise, the trickle of water unmistakable. It really was as though the Horned Rat had blessed them with fortune. Skyseeker led the way, pushing through the sparse undergrowth, soon coming upon a clearing. The grass reached almost unnatural levels of green the further it went, Skyseeker soon spotting winding river flowing through the oasis from right to left. It was being fed by a babbling brook, the water nestled between rows of bountiful trees with leaves thick enough to provide dappled pools of shade.

“Sweet refreshment!” Skyseeker exclaimed, rushing down the incline. She was suddenly thrust back onto her rump as Roderick seized her by the scruff of her neck, holding her back.

“Wait! That’s not water, that’s…”

She was about to reprimand him, when she took a closer look at the river, her demeanour shifting. Most water she’d seen on the surface was blue, but it wasn’t the case for this one. It was pink, its substance so cloudy she couldn’t see the riverbed beneath it, the colour clashing with the green, bountiful surroundings.

Tilting her head in confusion, she inched closer, Roderick following closely behind as they approached the river’s edge. She brushed its surface with her whiskers, her nose filling with the acrid stench of copper.

“Supposing this isn’t a normal thing on the surface-world?” she asked, waving a paw in front of her muzzle.

“Of course not,” he chided, scanning his surroundings with a horrified look. “I knew this was too good to be true. Gods, everything here is being… fermented by blood.”

“Look! See more over there!” A short ways upstream was a breach in the treeline, the pair looking through to see the oasis opening up, exposing more branching riverbeds stretching further to the east. There were dozens of them, each flowing crevice filled to the brim with the crimson liquid.

“It trails in from the south,” Roderick noted. The lands between the blood took on the appearance of spoiled carcasses, brown and bloodied, Skyseeker able to pick out bones of long-dead giant creatures with the help of her goggles. “How many bodies would be needed to make this many rivers run red? What could be capable of such slaughter?”

“We have saying in Skavenblight,” Skyseeker replied. “you find shard of warpstone, you don’t think about where it came from. Now is a time to NOT ask where red comes from.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Roderick muttered. “I’d rather die of heatstroke than spend another second in this place.”

Skyseeker nodded her agreement, the two turning back the way they’d come. Roderick was taking great care to avoid touching any of the thickets and trees, his disgust palpable. She wondered if it was just the plants feeding off the liquid, and if the animals hadn’t acquired a taste for blood either…

-xXx-

They spent three long days trekking across the desert, keeping out of the way of the occasional chariot that crossed their path. Whether it was the same boneman or multiple patrolling chariots, Skyseeker couldn’t say, but they seemed to spot the troublesome patrol more often with each passing day.

While the blood rivers had been a troublesome detour, it provided a visible landmark, forming a band of green and brown to their east. While she didn’t need it to find the relic’s location, thanks to her warp-sight, but perhaps it would prove useful on the return trip. If it did indeed flow out to the ocean, returning to the wolfship should be simple matter.

“Let us rest for the moment,” Roderick called once they reached the peak of the next dune. “Gods, we’re burning through this water,” he added as he lifted one of their waterskins, taking a long draw.

“Not to worry, we are close,” she assured, sitting down beside him.

“Indeed? Can you sense its closeness or something?”

“No,” she chuckled. “I can see it. Look.”

She pointed to the south, and from their vantage point they could see boundless desert in all directions, save for a solitary feature at the very limits of their vision. Through the sepia haze was a dark stretch, little pinpoints rising up through the empty horizon.

“Look where?” he asked. “I see nothing.”

“I forget you have stupid man-thign vision,” she muttered, reaching up to lift off the goggles. “Here,” she added, passing them over. “use wonderful Skaven technocracy to visualise.”

He handled her apparatus with considerable care, bringing them to his face and holding the lenses over his eyes. “I see… something,” he confirmed after a few moments. “towers, buildings perhaps?”

“Is a city,” she confirmed. “And if I were to hide-stash a relic, it would be in a locked burrow, but a city would be close second.”

She chuckled as Roderick glanced down at her, the human asking her what was so funny.

“You look humorous with goggles on,” she giggled. “like a hairless warlock.”