Vlad shot him a contemptuous look. ‘I will enter the city when I am invited.’ He drew closer to Mundvard, pleased to find that he was a half-head taller than his lieutenant. ‘Let me instruct you in how this thing is to be done. I will not sneak into Altdorf like some beggar, fighting up from the quays and the sewage-bilges. I will demand my electorship before I raise so much as a sword to aid them. When their desperation finally forces them to crack, I will ride through the gates atop a war-steed, my head held high, and I will take the salute of the Emperor himself. They will invite me in. Do you see this? Nothing less will suffice.’
Mundvard looked at him doubtfully. Vlad could read the thoughts flickering across his elegant face. Is this what Nagash intended? Can it be worth the risk?
Eventually, though, the vampire nodded in acquiescence. ‘So be it,’ Mundvard said, as if he cared not either way. ‘The North Gate is the quickest route from here. The forest is crawling with daemons, mind.’
Vlad raised an eyebrow, and gestured to where his troops were making landfall. Shades fluttered overhead, their long faces breaking into piercing moans. Ghouls slipped between the shadows of the trees, and hulking undead champions trudged through the lapping surf, uncaring if the brackish waters slopped over the tops of their age-crusted boots. Greater beasts were waiting on the barges in iron cages – skeletal leviathans, raving vargheists, crypt horrors wearing bronze collars marked with runes of control. Thousands had already landed, and thousands more would come.
‘Daemons are but the dreams of mortals,’ Vlad said, witheringly. ‘Just wait until they clap eyes on us.’
The underworld kingdom was breaking apart. Sewer arches collapsed under the strain, showering broken bricks into the steaming channels. The air burned, throbbing with released magic that bounced and swerved through the honeycomb of chambers.
Festus went as quickly as his sagging muscles would carry him, sloshing through the turbulent slurry and making his way back to the cauldron chamber. It had been a magnificent thing to witness – his Great Tribulation, soaring up the shaft and breaking into the city above, rupturing the skin of the heavens and ushering in the deluge of daemon-kind. He could feel unreality flex and buckle around him, warping the very fabric of the undercity.
Such complete success did not come without risks. He had unleashed forces that now ran far beyond his capability to control. If he did not get out soon, he would be buried by the destruction he had caused. All he had been charged to do was start the process, and like fermentation in a barrel, it would now bubble away without his further involvement, taken over by an intelligence far greater and subtler than his own.
He stumbled along the sewer-path, kicking past a gurgling gaggle of half-drowned daemon-kin. More of the masonry around him collapsed, sending dust spiralling through the echoing tunnels. Ahead of him stood the cauldron chamber, still lined with popping vials.
This was the crowning achievement of his long art. Most of the petty daemons summoned by the Tribulation would be ripped from the tortured skies by the plague-tempest, but that would not suffice for the greatest of the breed. For such titans of contagion, a more direct route was required.
Festus hurried over to the cauldron, wincing as more glassware exploded above him. The liquids within still bubbled as violently as ever, even though the fire at the cauldron’s base had long gone out. Truly gorgeous aromas spilled from the lip, exuding freely as globular slush dribbled down the obese flanks.
A vast hand thrust up from the boiling broth. That hand alone should have been far too large to fit inside the vessel – it was a scaly, clawed and mottled hand, steaming gouts from its immersion and still wrinkled from the moisture.
Festus clapped his palms together in joy, watching as another claw shot out from the far side of the cauldron. Two enormous fists clamped onto the edges of the vessel, and flexed.
The broth spilled over, cascading to an already swimming floor, and a pair of antlers burst into view. Two enormous yellow eyes, slit-pupilled like a cat’s, blinked at Festus.
‘Plaguefather!’ cried Festus, taking a hesitant step towards the emerging monster.
Like all its kind, the daemon had many names in many realms, all of which were but a distant mockery of its true title, which was unpronounceable by all but the most studious of mortal tongues. In Naggaroth it was cursed as Jharihn, in Lustria feared as Xochitataliav, in destroyed Tilea hated as Kisveraldo the Foul-breathed, in distant Cathay reviled as Cha-Zin-Fa the Ever-pustulent. In the Empire it had earned the moniker Ku’gath the Plaguefather, and its ministrations had ever been most virulent in those lands.
Festus cared little for true names, for he was no scholar of the dark arts, just a meddler in potions and the delicious fluids of sickness. He did recognise the enormous power erupting before him, though – an unstoppable mountain of gently mouldering hides, crowned with a grin-sliced face of such exquisite ugliness that it made him want to reach up and chew it.
Ku’gath looked around, seemingly a little bewildered. It hauled itself up higher, and a truly colossal bulk began to emerge, flopping over the side of the now absurdly tiny cauldron. The daemon’s bulk was far greater than the mortal vessel could possibly have contained, a conceit that Festus found particularly amusing.
‘Where... is this?’ growled the daemon, its slurred, inhuman voice resonating throughout the gradually disintegrating kingdom.
‘Altdorf, my prince,’ said Festus, wobbling for cover as a whole rack of vials crashed to the floor, scattering the glass in twinkling fragments. ‘The Tribulation. You remember?’
That seemed to clarify Ku’gath’s mind. The giant mouth curled as it snorted up remnants of the broth, before it vomited a pale stream of lumpy effluent straight at Festus. The Leechlord revelled in the slops hitting him, sucking up as many as his purple tongue would reach.
Then Ku’gath dragged its quivering flanks clear of the cauldron. A vast foot extended, terminating in a cloven hoof and trailing long streamers of pickled gore. Laboriously, puffing and drooling, the enormous creature extracted itself from its tiny birth-chamber, standing tall before its summoner.
Unfurled to its full extent, the greater daemon was immense. Its antlers scraped the high arched vault, and its withers slobbered over broken potion-racks. When it turned around, whole shelves of priceless liquors were crushed against its sloping flanks, streaking down the steaming flesh like thrown dyes.
‘We have to leave,’ said Festus, shuffling out of the daemon’s path and knocking over an empty prey-cage as he did so. ‘This place is no longer... commodious.’
Ku’gath grunted, and started to shuffle through the chambers, smashing and crushing as it went. ‘I can smell the fear,’ it slurred, spitting through the flecks of vomit still clinging to its lower lip. ‘They are... above.’
‘Yes, yes!’ agreed Festus, doing what he could to usher the beast towards the only exit large enough to accommodate it. ‘Follow the stink! They are lucky to have lived to witness you.’
Ku’gath spat a gobbet of mucus the size of a man’s fist, and it splattered stickily against the wall. ‘I hunger,’ it gurgled.
Festus smiled lasciviously. ‘As do I, bringer of ruin, but it is just a little way now.’ He thought ahead, wondering how he would direct such a leviathan to its true target. ‘Plenty of souls to suck up, plenty of guts to slip down your gullet. They are lining up, one by one.’