Skaven Story Word Update

2k words

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Skyseeker sailed until exhaustion, her head constantly twisting and turning as she checked her surroundings for enemies. It had taken many hours, but she’d managed to avoid confronting any more of the slave-hulk’s crew, the massive Gritus ship vanishing from her sight as continued her eastward journey.

It had taken no small amount of time, but sun’s harsh glare had finally begun to abate, Skyseeker stretching her muzzle out in a yawn. Sleeping was a thing she constantly struggled to suppress, as the Warrens of Skavenblight were even more perilous when one couldn’t defend themselves. The marshes were no different. Even if she hadn’t seen any wildlife so far, these bogs weren’t uninhabited, who knew what would come after her once night settled.

Only when her exhaustion reached desperate levels, did she scour the riverbanks for shelter, finding that only the reed beds provided even a measure of cover, and she didn’t fancy resting in the dirty waters. What she wouldn’t give for a dank, Skyseeker-sized crevice to slink into for the night.

Steering her craft to one of the many islands, she settled on creating her own shelter, kneeling in the muddy shore as she began to claw at the earth. While her arms were sore from all the day’s rowing, the land was as soft as mush, her nails carving out a burrow that should conceal her, as long as nothing looked too carefully. By the time she was finished, she could feel her eyes burning with exhaustion, but at least she uncovered a worm during her digging, which she promptly consumed.

Her spirits slightly lifted, she squeezed into her burrow, having to curl into a ball in order to fit inside. Her energy was too depleted for her to clear out more room, but she liked the feeling of tight spaces anyway.

Checking to make sure no one had stolen her craft, she draped her cloak over herself, a sudden biting cold making her shiver. Strange noises carried on the wind from some unseen location, confirming her suspicion that at least something other than Skaven called these marshes home. She would need all the energy she could get on this quest, but in these unfamiliar, flooded lands, her imagination conjured up horrible monstrosities that made resting an already troublesome task even more difficult.

Stretching onto her back, she pulled her goggles off her face, wiping the grime off the lenses with her thumb. Perhaps now would be a good time to explore those buttons she discovered before. She pressed one at random, a noisy click startling her. She peered out into the marsh, holding her breath as she waited to see if some nocturnal creature would investigate.

When nothing came to eat her, she peered through the lenses, opening her muzzle in awe. The goggles had expanded the view, the rocks in the ceiling of her burrow ballooned in size. She wiggled her fingers in front of her face, her vision so zoomed she could spy each fleck of dirt beneath her nails.

More buttons enhanced the filter even further, Skyseeker taking the goggles off to examine them further. It seemed that the buttons caused even smaller lenses to flick out from the side, each one shrinking until they were smaller than the pads of her fingers. How strange. A switch on the underside of one eye caused the frames to take on a brighter hue, fighting back the shades of darkness and replacing them with clearer whites and blues. She could see perfectly well in the dark, but perhaps pairing this with the zoom function, she would be able to spot threats from even further away now.

Before long she felt fatigue wash over her, and this time she could fight it back no longer. She held her daggers close as it forced her eyes closed, sleep soon taking her.

-xXx-

It took several long days of rowing, but eventually Skyseeker could proceed no further on her shantycraft. The dirty riverbeds gradually began to recede until they were only knee-high, the islands turning into long stretches of land, isolated tide pools breaking them up in places. She had reached the border of the marshlands.

The river she’d followed since her encounter with the slave-hulk came to an abrupt end, Skyseeker drawing her carft up to the bank on its far side. She placed her paddle by her foot, surveying the landscape with the help of her goggles’ new abilities. Before her, the blighted lands continued on for a while, until a wall of fog blocked her sight. The lands of the man-things lay beyond this obscuring haze, according to the map Lord Gnawdwell had shown her. Digging up her flawless memory, she remembered the province was called… something beginning with a T. Or was it an E? No matter, it was a land belonging to savage surface-dwellers, she would have to be extra careful from here on out.

Although Skyseeker had never seen the marshes with her own eyes until now, they sheltered the home she had always known, and she felt a disconcerting sense of finality as she readied to press on. She looked back the way she’d come, finding that the Shattered Tower that marked Skavenblight’s location was far beyond her vision now, even with the added help of the goggles.

She gave the marsh one final glance, then stepped off the craft.

Chapter 2: Tilea

The land beneath Skyseeker’s paws warped with every step. What was once malleable ground of the marshes began to solidify, turning islands of soft soil into mangled formations of rock. Where the nature in the marshes was withered, now she could see them blooming healthily between cracks in the granite. The hills of stone almost like natural defences to her, blocking the influence of the marsh from spreading any further.

Climbing one of the taller outcrops, Skyseeker shielded her goggles with a paw as she surveyed the way forward, the explosion of colour almost dazzling her right off her perch. Grey gave way to green and brown, the rugged terrain lushed with carpets of green stalk-looking things that waved in the breeze.

Even the gnarled-things that had permeated the quagmire had changed. They rose up healthily into the air like towers of wood, their branches furred over with leaves, as though some magical force had bestowed a curse of colour upon them. Snow-capped mountains put a stop to the stretches of green eventually, the land sloping into peaks so tall they rivalled the Shattered Tower in terms of height.

To say Skyseeker despised the change in scenery was an understatement. The marshes were a chore to navigate, true, but at least they didn’t make her eyes want to bleed. It was only thanks to the goggles that she didn’t have to forgo her sense of sight on this leg of her journey.

She descended into the beginnings of the rolling meadows, her heart thumping against her chest as the mist that had draped over the quagmire began to wane. From out of the overcast, the heavens took on a striking shade of blue, her mind struggling to balance her curiosity of the sky, and the pervasive sense of exposure it instilled in her chest. What kinds of creatures could stand all this sun and breeze and soft plants? They must be horribly mutilated if they could thrive in such a distracting ecosystem.

Skyseeker had heard descriptions of the surface-dwellers, savage-things with skin instead of fur, towering over even the largest of Skaven. They wielded weapons of steel and fire, rather than the clearly superior artform of Warpstone. Skavenkind greatly outnumbered the surface-dwellers, but what they lacked in numbers that made up for with cunning tactics and unwavering faith, fighting to the bitter end all in the name of their false Gods.

How much of this was true or not was hard to tell, and she pleaded to the Horned Rat she didn’t get the chance to find out. To kill Skaven was one thing, but to fight creatures bigger than Lord Gnawdwell…

She shook these thoughts from her mind. A Mors assassin like herself would have no trouble avoiding creatures that needed so much sunlight. Just like in the Warrens, she would cling to the shadows wherever they lurked, slipping right between the legs of those who stupidly thought they could seek her out.

As she pressed on through the hills, she started to believe the lands might be abandoned. She expected the surface-dwellers to have constructed fortifications against the marshes, to have assembled armies to patrol the roads and hinder her progress, but there was nothing. A few crumbling ruins dotted the area, but they looked as decrepit as Skavenblight’s tunnels, perhaps Lord Gnawdwell had exaggerated their threat? No doubt a calculated move to keep her on her toes.

A few more hours of walking proved her wrong. Strange constructs came into the limits of her view as she weaved between two hills, Skyseeker scrambling onto higher ground for a better look at them. Placing a paw on her goggles, she zoomed in on the objects, and after a few moments, she was looking upon what appeared to resemble a city, though she could be wrong.

The buildings were leaning against each other at peculiar angles, the quality of the masonry varying wildly from building to building. The clusters of buildings were separated by dozens of tiny islands, canals full of green water snaking between them. It appeared a little too much of a juicy target for artillery in Skyseeker’s opinion, but perhaps the true city lay below, and this eyesore was just a decoy. Whatever her opinions of the surface-dwellers, their engineering was commendable.

Just before she prepared to move on, something moved through the meadows between her and the city, something big. She brought her goggles back one magnification, tweaking the dials randomly until she cleared up the image.

She glazed over a sea of gnarled-things growing across the land like scab over a wound, snivelling in annoyance as she tried to relocate what she’d seen. There! A group of her kin scuttled from hill to hill, turning their pink noses up as they scented the strange smells of this place. Skyseeker put their warband in the hundreds, and that was only the ratmen that she could see from this angle.

Rubbing her chin in thought, Skyseeker drafted up a plan in her head. Her Lord had said the Great Clans were already moving ahead of her, perhaps she could use them to her advantage? It was risky, but she’d rather travel this strange land with an army as opposed to being a lone-rat.

Glancing warily at the city, she headed in their direction, eager to relish in the feeling of safety in numbers once again.

-xXx-

The riveted plates of his sabatons squeaked as he raised a foot onto the raised lip of earth, shaking out his portable telescope and peering through it at the countryside. Great mountain ranges encircled the province of Tilea, rising up like monstrous teeth to the north and east. The Vaults were sturdy fortifications against the threats lying beyond them, but they were not impassible. There were many routes squiggling through the ranges, some well-known, some not, the stretching shadows playing tricks on his eyes as he searched the slopes.

“You up here again, Cap’n?”

He lowered his device with an annoyed click of his teeth, looking back to see a young man climbing up the path. He was dressed in a creamy-coloured gambeson with the Tilean coat of arms stitched over his vest. He vaguely recognised the scout from prior encounters, but couldn’t recall his name.

“Expectin’ trouble from the north or soemthin’?” the scout continued, his eyes following the path of his telescope to the Vaults. “Can’t rightly see the point of watching the passes like a hawk, sir. Dwarves are sittin’ pretty in their mountains, and the greenskins are more interested in the Border Princes than us.”

“Attacks often come from where we least expect, lad,” he replied, pushing the two ends of his telescope together with his gauntlets. “What news do you bring?”

“The Commander sent for you,” the scout answered. “he’s in the war tent.”

He nodded, stopping to pick his decorated helmet off a nearby rock. Feathers the colour of blood plumed out of the apex of the metal, plucked from an exotic animal not native to this province. Tucking the helmet under his arm, he gestured for the scout to lead on, the two moving down the path.