She found it ringed with Chaos power, a cornered animal panting and whining with fear. Anger replaced Alarielle’s distaste and she forged on, fuelled by ire. At the approach of the Everqueen’s presence the corruption parted, scattered like leaves in a gale, but swiftly the taint returned, pressing hard against her soulform.
The grim surroundings nearly silenced her voice. The crushing stench of Chaos energy was overpowering, endless waves of decrepitude and corruption crashing over her. Her light was no star, nothing more than a guttering spark in everlasting darkness. Timidity all but stilled the tongue of her spirit-song.
Gathering her nerve, ignoring the fear that she would draw unwanted attention upon herself, Alarielle sang loud and clear, calling to the quivering spirits of Clan Faech. She pushed back the darkness as it encroached on the path she had made behind her. The Everqueen beckoned and cajoled, tried to soothe away the primal dread that trapped the sylvaneth as surely as the warriors of the Plague God.
‘Fight it!’ she insisted, bursting forth with fresh soulsong. Alarielle could almost touch them, could almost make the magic flow into the spirits to rouse them from their terrified stupor. ‘Reach out to me. Break free!’
But they did not. Not only dread quelled them. Bitterness spat back from the renegade forest spirits.
Recoiling, Alarielle could do nothing as the grip of Nurgle tightened again, a black sludge that filled the space around Clan Faech as tar bubbling up from its pit. It hardened, seizing them fast once more. Their song was muted and deathly silence engulfed Alarielle.
The Everqueen realised she was alone in the great sea of darkness. She fought back panic, searching for the rivers of life-essence that had brought her here, desperate as a ship’s crew tossed on a tempestuous sea.
She caught upon a glimmering trail and started to follow it, but in her agitation did not sense the approach of something else. It was too late that she detected another presence in the mystical strata — a triumvirate entity. A three-spawn fly of Nurgle made into bodily form somewhere in the vale. A sting strike, a spine of pure Chaos, pierced her spirit, pumping darkness into her soul. Like a toxin in the blood of a mortal, the Chaos energy flowed through her, trying to drag the Everqueen into the mire of death that surrounded her.
She fled.
Returning to her body, Alarielle gasped, suppressing the scream of horror that wanted to break free — her subjects had to fight on, could not know anything was amiss.
The Chaos taint was still in her. She could see it now, like a blackness in her veins, darkening her skin, dimming the light of her presence. It worked fast, weakening her, trying to consume her with burning pain.
Horror gripped her. All that she had feared, all that had cowed her for those long years of slumber, was coming to pass. The touch of Nurgle was in her. Beneath the surface of her being, raw wyldmagic and Chaos power thrashed against each other, their conflict sending agonising stabs through her.
‘My queen?’ A Spirit of Durthu stood over her, its spirit-song a sombre throb of concern. She realised a single crystal tear marked her cheek, a sign of the struggle within.
She took in a shuddering breath but dared not speak of what had happened. The Everqueen mastered her fear and urged the tree spirit to leave her.
Unprompted, the Spirit of Durthu lay a twig-fingered hand upon Alarielle’s arm. At his touch she felt the foul magic burst forth, engulfing both of them. The spirit’s branches shuddered and its soulsong became a low moan of age-old aching.
She felt the spirit drawing forth the blight. Alarielle tried to fight it, to hold the poison in herself. But the spirit would not be deterred, placing another leaf-limb on her to bring forth more of the taint.
‘It is not… yours to… take…’ she gasped, but the spirit silently looked at her with deep emerald eyes as the corruption flowed into its heartsap.
When it had siphoned away the last of the dark power, the Spirit of Durthu reared up, taking a step back from the Everqueen. Already its leaves were wilting, branches drooping with the weight of the poison in them. Its spirit-song was little more than a few whimpering notes as wood turned to dust and sloughed away, revealing blistered greenwood beneath.
‘My queen, everlasting font of life,’ croaked the spirit, sinking down. Threads of mould spread over its splintering, disintegrating form. ‘Lead our people to fresh life. Fear nothing more. Let the wrath of the sylvaneth carry you to victory.’
The spirit slumped, degenerating into scattering motes and spores that drifted away, leaving nothing but a blackened heartseed. The last vestiges of its song died away with its body.
She had almost failed her people again. Freed of the taint, Alarielle calmed herself, her sorrow short-lived. In the past she had allowed fear to rule her, to break her resolve. Not this time. Not now.
The fire of her wrath flared from her body like a fresh dawn. Where its light touched, Alarielle’s presence filled the sylvaneth with a deep rage. She drove the wardroth beetle forwards with a thought, weapon held high. Her spirit-song called to her glade-warriors to follow.
Incandescent with fury, the Spear of Kurnoth singing its own bloodthirsty hymn in her thoughts, the Everqueen passed into the Vale of Winternight.
If the breaking of the wall was a dam bursting, the coming of Alarielle was an ocean rising to engulf the Vale of Winternight. With her came the Wyldwoods, limbs and leaves angrily swaying, creepers and thorn bushes advancing beneath their shadowed canopies. Ahead of her life magic streamed. The gale of her approach washed away the thick fog, revealing the parched lands of the Vale of Winternight.
All had been drained of vitality, the cracked earth like the dry skin of an ancient mortal. Scrubby bushes with blood-red thorns grew out of split heartseeds, and fungal fronds played in colourful profusion from the corpses of animals. Such trees as had survived were twisted, stunted things with flies as big as birds buzzing in their limbs. More insects fluttered in thick swarms, fighting against the rush of air that heralded the Everqueen’s arrival.
At the heart of the valley, where once had stood the lifetree of Clan Faech, a tower now rose at the centre of a soulpod-studded grove that had become a thick mire of bubbling mud. Threefold were its bastions, winding about each other like vines, becoming one at the pinnacle. It seemed to have grown of tumorous bone, split and blistered, cracked and flaking. No windows broke its surface, but a single fracture formed a jagged door at its root.
The warriors of Nurgle were arrayed about this fortress, grotesque and bloated, cadaverous and vile. In ranks of rusted mail and blood-spattered plate they awaited the attack of the sylvaneth.
They did not have to wait long.
The earth erupted with choking, snaring vines, and the spirits of the worldwood descended upon the Nurgle army. Branch and root vied against hammer and spear, talon versus blade. Whipping leaf-limbs crashed against shields marked with the fly rune of the Plague God. Ensorcelled iron bit deep into spirit-folk flesh. Blood and phlegm, bark and sap flew.
The trembling ground beneath the stride of the wardroth beetle set the beat of the battle-song that rose from Alarielle. From her heart poured out a rhythm of defiance and death. It drove the sylvaneth, enriching their hatred as mulch fertilises soil, filling their limbs with vigour and growth. Where Alarielle fought, the followers of Chaos died.
A dozen armoured warriors set themselves against her advance, their axes flaking rust and dried blood. Alarielle did not hesitate, but met them head-on. Their blades broke on the carapace of her wardroth beetle, and other blows went astray in the blinding light of her presence. The beetle charged without pause, trampling foes and spearing another on its antlers. The Spear of Kurnoth whirled and plunged, lancing through the bodies of the survivors, foetid blood streaming from the mortal wounds left by its touch.