Two Sides of the Warp Token/Skaven Story Update

2k words of the skaven story, which I shall call Two Sides of the Warp Token. You guys like it? I was going to call it 'Fur, Steel, and Warpstone', but I chose this in the end. 

***

“Listen to my greatness, stupid minions!” a low, powerful voice called out, its owner obvious enough. The Warlock Engineer bobbed its helmet as it spoke, the grill fixed over its muzzle giving its voice a menacing effect. “The enemies of Clan Skryre are many in these tainted lands. They shall all die-die for the glory of Great Horned Rat. But first!” the machine added, warp-lightning travelling along a circuit wrapped over its harness. “Nap time!”

***

The exhausted warband’s cries were equal parts pain and joy, the Warlock waving a mechanical arm as he ordered camp to be made, Skyseeker relaxing as he turned his back on her. The Warlock was so imposing, the blending of machine and magic as strange as it was unsettling.

Axes were handed out, the copious amounts of slaves taking them to the surrounding forests, hacking away at the tall wood-things. A few unfortunate ratmen were caught in the path of the felled plants, their shouts of alarm cut short as they were squashed. The sigh elicited much laughter from the rest of the warband – morale always spiked when food offered itself to the ration piles.

Skyseeker joined her fellow runners, hacking away at the wood-things with a handaxe and hauling the pieces towards the firepits, the Warlock casting a spell to ignite the wood once enough was gathered. The blazing fires fought back the encroaching darkness, Skyseeker looking out across the forest to see many other pits blooming across the area – there must be other spellcasters supporting the warband.

Cradling her rumbling stomach, Skyseeker made her way to the ration piles, and for the first time in her journey, nobody tried to steal from her. The warband had an abundance of rations, so all she had to do was wait until everyone else had eaten, then gather up her scraps.

After eating her fill of corn and a few strips of unrecognisable meat, Skyseeker searched for a spot to rest. The slaves were retiring to their freshly-dug burrows in drives, Skyseeker already hearing hundreds of snoring noises from the many holes in the earth. Skaven slept in piles to share warmth when they weren’t killing each other, and while sleeping underground was an appealing prospect, Skyseeker wasn’t about to trap herself beneath a hundred horny ratmen for the sake of driving off the cold.

She picked a spot far enough away that she wouldn’t be disturbed, but close enough that she could run back to the safety of the warband if some nocturnal creature happened upon her. She could already feel numbness spreading down her limbs as she distanced herself from the fires, but nobody said her undercover mission would be easy.

As she crawled into the cover of a patch of ferns, she noticed that the sky had changed at some point. The bright blues she’d seen in the day had turned to black, though not quite as black as her fur. All across this new, vast canvas were points of glittering light, the sight enrapturing her. There had to be thousands of them, sprinkled throughout the heavens with seemingly no pattern or order. She wondered what they were, magical flares? Comets of Warpstone?

It felt odd to lay there and just… stare at the sky, but in a pleasing sort of way. She could almost forget she was in the nightmarish hellscape of the surface-world, forget her rearing paranoia for a few brief moments, and just let her thoughts wander to nothing in particular. She tried to touch these twinkling points with her paw, but she couldn’t reach them. Perhaps if she climbed that wood-thing over there she might be able to…

Despite her protests, fatigue crept over her, and she curled into a ball, the afterimage of the sky burned into her eyes as sleep took her.

-xXx-

The warband marched through the forests, armour and weapons clanking, paws skittering across the many pools of light painting the ground where the sun penetrated the dense canopy. Wood-things and ferns, that was all the surface-world had to offer, the monotonous landscape quickly boring Skyseeker as the hours blended together.

Fortunately, it wasn’t long before a landmark appeared, changing up the scenery. The land dipped into a vast trench, stretching from left to right, and sitting at its lowest point was a bubbling river. The water wasn’t green like the underground ponds in Skavenblight, nor murky-brown like those of the marshes, but as clear as crystal, transparent enough that one could see the moss covering the submerged rocks. Did that mean it was poisoned? The skavenslaves leading the warband didn’t seem affected as they crossed it, perhaps its contamination didn’t affect her kind.

As her and the gutter-runners descended the slope, she spotted a Skaven running the other way from where they were marching, moving up the column’s flank. He seemed to hold some measure of rank on account of the whip in his paw, but he looked as spooked as a slave, his beady eyes stretching out of their sockets as he threw his hands out.

“Man-things!” he shrieked, his limbs darting about like he was in the midst of a stroke. “Man-things on hill-mound! Warlock say make-form line here-now!”

The ratling gunner pairs hoisted their weapons above their wastes, their loaders keeping the machinery clear of the water as they formed ranks. At the front, the skavenslaves fanned out, creating a wall of bodies on the far bank, spears and swords aimed up the incline. Skyseeker could see the Warlock Engineer at the forefront, waving his mechanical arms as he shouted orders at his minions. She couldn’t hear him, but in typical Skryre fashion, it was probably a rousing speech about how he’d kill them if the man-things didn’t do it first.

Her and the gutter-runners were ordered to hold the left flank of the formation, her legs kicking up splashes of water as they took up position in the winding river. She peered up the slope, where maybe fifty paces of open ground separated the shore of the river and the top of the hill, the crest obscured behind dense clusters of wood-things.

Every rustle of leaves and creak of wood filled her with anxiety, her eyes flicking about as she scanned for her enemy. The urgency of the messenger implied an immediate attack, but there was nothing, and there continued to be nothing. She counted the seconds until they reached the hundreds, the tension in her chest reaching a boiling point when she counted to the thousands and then lost count.

“Where-where man-things?” she asked, trying to sound as male as possible and failing miserably to her own ears. She was asking no one in particular, but the runner on her left answered her.

“Patience!” he chided, tossing his knife from paw to paw and dropping it on the third throw. “Man-things always make us wait for attack-charge.”

“They scared of Skavenblight-might!” another added, yowling in pain as a ranked ratman hit him with his whip.

“Silence!” the ratman snarled. “No talk, more wait-wait!”

And wait she did. She could feel the sun switch directions as more time passed, her feet freezing as she held her ground in the water, her face hot as the sun bleached her fur. This was no warband! All the tales she’d been told of Skryre’s vast schemes of war involved overwhelming numbers and firepower, not standing around and doing nothing. She wanted to charge in and hunt the man-things down, but this was theirterritory, it would be easy to fall into a trap with no warrens or tunnels to fall back to if things went wrong.

The runner that told her to be patient eventually decided it was nap time, Skyseeker wincing as he had to be beaten awake. He wasn’t the only one beginning to tire. The ratling gunners had nothing to brace their heavy weapons against, their thin arms trembling as they tracked the hill for targets. The warplock jezzails sitting far to the rear faired a little better, as they could rest their long rifles on their pavise shields and dose off when nobody was looking, but it was clear that restlessness was giving way to faituge, perhaps an intentional move on the man-things part.

Skyseeker lifted her head, exposing her teeth in a yawn, watching a flock of feathered-things flapped their wings overhead, soaring down to perch on a branch down the river to her left. As her boredom began to outgrow her lingering anxiety, it happened, and it happened quickly.

A low-pitched wail rang out over the forest, the noise coming from seemingly all directions. The uneasy sound soared in volume until it reached its pitch, oddly musical to her ears, and then as it deceased, gruff shouts from the undergrowth rose up to continue the foreboding call.

Skyseeker turned her eyes to the line of wood-things up the slope, watching figures emerge from between the roots. They were dressed in striking, bright colours that matched the sky, their wargear contrasting against the oppressively green surroundings. Some of their faces were covered in fur, while others were clean and naked, Skyseeker able to make out pink, soft-looking skin covering flat faces.

The man-things raised swords and shields, their war-cries making her fur stand on end as they charged out of cover and descend the slope. Some of the skavenslaves bounced on the spot, blibbering and crying, while others turned tail, batting aside their counterparts as they made to retreat. The latter of which were quick to be punished by the ranked Skaven, which helped to keep the former in check as their fellow ratmen were beaten for their cowardice.

“Ahead-forward!” a guttural voice called out somewhere to the right, one belonging to the Warlock. “Throw your pathetic tails onto them, minions! Quick-quick!”

Unleashing a call of their own, the skavenslaves advanced, thousands of scurrying feet leaving the water to meet the charge. The man-things were halfway across the open ground now, and more still were coming from out of the forest. They just kept coming, dozens reaching the hundreds, but the skavenslaves still vastly outnumbered them.

The crank of winding gears drew Skyseeker’s gaze to the back ranks, the ratling gunners bringing their chain-guns to bear, their loaders begining to crank the warp-stream tanks. Dozens of rotary barrels began to spin, spewing bullets that started off slow, before gradually building up into unbroken streams of warpstone.

The firepower arced over the skavenslave ranks, splashing into the paths of the oncoming man-things. She watched as one of the surface-dwellers took a burst of warpstone to his chest, his war-cry cut short as he rolled to the ground, tens of the man-things forefronting the charge succumbing to the warp-hell.

The other man-things didn’t falter, instead raising their shields over their heads, the warpstone barrage ricocheting off their concave surfaces. The ratling guns accuracy was much to be desired, so the weapon teams couldn’t target their exposed legs reliably, only saturate the hill with overbearing firepower and hope for a lucky hit.

Skyseeker watched with glee as scores of the man-things were cut down, the ones lagging behind forced to lead over their fallen kinsman, but the charge didn’t stop, the mass of blue and white figures spearing into the oncoming skavenslaves. As the two sides met, the clash of metal on metal was almost as loud as the barking of the chain-guns, Skyseeker’s fear-musk spraying as a cluster of slaves was swept off their feet by a man-thing wielding a hammer the size of the average clanrat.

More of the man-things survived the warpstone suppression, hitting the skavenslave line with devastating force, their tall frames slightly obscured behind the scurrying troops. Skyseeker thought the ratling guns would cease fire, but that was not the case. The gunners angled their barrels lower, bringing their fields of fire over the skavenslaves, catching dozens of Skaven troops in the crossfire. She waited for the Warlock to order them to halt, but none came, a look of horror on her face as the warband suffered more casualties than the man-things did. Skyseeker knew that sacrifice was a way of life for her kind, but to see this display troubled her, and she thanked the Horned Rat that she belonged to the noble Clan Mors.

The butchering only stopped when the ratling guns needed to reload, the weapon teams slapping fresh tanks of warpstone into the ammo packs. Some of the teams of two started arguing about how slow the other was being, resulting in a few short, but significant delays, as Clan Skryre relied upon their guns more than anything when it came to combat.

The skavenslave line began to visibly bulge inwards, as swords and spears flashed through the air, the towering surface-dwellers threatening to split the warband right down the centre. Skyseeker clutched her daggers until her paws hurt, she wanted to get in there, take her first man-thing kill, but no order to advance was given. There must be some tactical advantage having the runners stay put, but she’d never been in a warband before, and had no idea what that could be. All she and the other gutter-runners could do was watch the fight and slowly lose their nerves.

She was momentarily drawn away from the battle by a chirping sound, flicking her head round to spy the flock of feathered-things she’d noticed before. They’d flitted from their perch, the sounds of war failing to spook the tiny creatures until now. Strange. She glanced below their perch, her eyes widening as she caught movement from further down the river.