Join the Sylvaneth as they fight their way through the seasons, defending their woodland realms from those who would dare to trespass, in this Warhammer Age of Sigmar short story.
The Golden Grove basked in the glow of Hysh, unutterably perfect in its solitude.
Amber light pierced the broad leaves of the cyanthia trees, bathing the soulpod grove. Kyanathiel allowed herself a moment to enjoy the scene: the drifting spores dancing on the breeze, the pulsing glow of the pods themselves, the notes of a gently singing Branchwych as she ran a hand over a freshly planted lamentiri.
Horns blared in the distance, disturbing Kyanathiel’s reverie. She shared a glance with Tyarith, and the notes of the spirit-song turned slow and mournful, heavy with unspoken emotion. Kyanathiel bowed her head, centring herself for what was to come.
‘To war, then,’ said the Grove Guardian.
‘We shall protect this grove with our lives, honoured keeper,’ said Tyarith, the Branchwych’s crackling voice like the rustle of autumn leaves. ‘The lost shall bloom anew to join their memories to the spirit-song.’
Kyanathiel said nothing. She trusted her acolyte completely. Her disquiet had nothing to do with any fear that the grove might fall to disarray. It was in the angry blaring of those horns, in the violent discord that invaded the quiet melody of the spirit-song, the eager and aggressive war cries of tree spirits that welcomed the bloodshed to come. For vengeance. For the reaping.
The Grove Guardian would never welcome war. She would answer her Everqueen’s call, because to deny it was unthinkable. But her soul would remain here, with the sleeping seeds of her fallen kin, awaiting the moment of their renewal.
‘To battle,’ she whispered. ‘The struggle to heal the realms is unending. I will witness death and suffering untold, and with the ambrosia of the Oak of Ages Past, I shall bring to life the Revenants of war.’
A single tear trickled down Kyanathiel’s face, and one of the soulpods that dangled from her genesis tree thrummed as it sensed her sorrow, something as yet amorphous shifting within its crystalline shell.
‘And if I fall, I will remember my beloved grove as it looks at this moment. Beautiful. And eternal.’
Seven seasons later…
Kyanathiel ripped out the Nurglite’s throat with a quick slash of her shears, recoiling as clotted pus splattered across her arm. The swollen-bellied brute tumbled away to land in a muddy pool, spewing his repulsive greenish ichor into what had once been rich earth. The branch-limbs of her genesis tree recoiled, the spites perched there hissing and clicking their mandibles in obvious agitation.
To Kyanathiel’s left, the Kurnothi advanced, loosing arrows that cut into the Maggotkin with sounds like bursting seedpods, spilling foetid juices. Some fell gracelessly to the floor, but others staggered on, chortling idiotically despite their wounds. The stench of corruption, of wrongness, was now almost unbearable.
Kyanathiel wondered if the lands would ever truly recover. Athelwyrd had been cleansed and reclaimed by the Everqueen, but even there, at the heart of Alarielle’s court, there was a darkness that she feared would not recede.
Even in victory, another tragedy. Another irreparable loss.
Yet what was there to do but fight on? The spirit-song thrummed to the sounds of anguish and rage, the cumulative emotion of a thousand and more forest spirits. Amidst the absonant wail of sound, Kyanathiel could pick out isolated fragments of lucidity – individual pleas for assistance and desperate warnings from embattled kin.
‘Guardian,’ came the Branchwych Tyarith’s harsh and grating cry, ‘the enemy is amongst us once more.’
Away to Kyanathiel’s right, the flank was weakening. Horn-helmed fiends with rolls of blubberous greenish fat in lieu of armour lumbered forth, driving back a ragged troupe of Tree-Revenants. As the Grove Guardian watched, one of the brutes reached out with a mouldy tentacle-limb, grabbing a Sylvaneth warrior and holding them in place for an overhead chop that split the luckless spirit down the middle.
The defenders of the forest rushed to reinforce their flagging comrades, but the enemy’s advance was inexorable. They laughed as they slew, morbidly gleeful as the Plague God’s hateful minions always were.
Kyanathiel prepared to make another sacrifice that would cut her to the core. The chrysalid pods that adorned her genesis tree pulsed with crimson light, something stirring within their sloshing amniotic fluids.
The Grove Guardian felt the surge of jade power blossom in the air, and crystalline petals peeled open. Revenant warriors fell, slick-wet, from the eldritch growths, landing on their knees and springing up, ready to fight. They seized swords from fallen Sylvaneth, and with dawning purpose – for each of them was already flushed with the memories and emotions that poured forth from the spirit-song – looked to Tyarith, who brandished her scythe and jabbed its curved blade towards the enemy.
‘To war, seedlings!’ she cried. ‘Defend the wyldwood!’
And so they did. And so they died, but in doing so, they slowed the Nurglites, killing some and stealing the momentum of others. The boughs shook, and into the clearing strode the elder oak Bitterleaf, bending low on creaking limbs to swing his mighty sword. Three plague champions came apart at the waist, guts oozing out like fat, black slugs.
All the while, Kyanathiel poured what was left of her energy into her forest kin, healing what wounds she could, soothing the final agonies of those beyond her aid.
The forest was pitch dark by the time the killing was done. Softly weeping spirits trawled the battlefield, plucking the lamentiri from the fallen. At least in victory, some of these rescued soul-seeds would survive to be planted anew.
‘The Everqueen calls us home,’ said Tyarith, approaching Kyanathiel with a respectful flourish of her scythe. ‘We are to return to the Golden Grove.’
Kyanathiel nodded. ‘Wise. Our numbers diminish by the day. We must sow the seeds of the fallen in order to recover our strength.’
Tyarith’s joy at the thought of seeing her sacred garden again flowed into the spirit-song, an overwhelming note of relief. The Grove Guardian’s own feelings were less straightforward: returning to her beloved haven would only make inevitably leaving it a second time more traumatic. It was a torment she would prefer to avoid, but the Sylvaneth could not replace their losses with sufficient pace in these benighted lands, smothered as they were by the Plague God’s wretched embrace.
They saw the smoke from many leagues away, an ugly black smear across the skies, flickering with greenish lightning. Horror flooded into the combined Sylvaneth consciousness like poison into loam.
Tyarith gave a keening cry, mouth splitting wide in a bitter scream. Kyanathiel joined it with her own outpouring of grief. She could already feel it, the gaping abscess where once flourishing energy had thrived. The burning agony of stem, flower and seed.
The Golden Grove was ablaze.
‘We must be swift,’ the Grove Guardian said. ‘Attend me, Tyarith.’
With that, she wove her hands in a complex pattern, channelling the subtle motes of Ghyran. Ahead, the thick foliage twisted in upon itself, forming the swirling outline of a circular passage illuminated by an emerald glow – an opening that led deep into the realmroot pathways, the arterial routes of life that spanned Ghyran.
Tyarith and Kyanathiel plunged into the green vortex. At once, their physical forms blurred and blended with the flow of jade energy, tracing a wild course through the undergrowth. Time and distance lost their meaning. To travel so along the realmroots took extraordinary focus, and in her horror and grief, Kyanathiel could barely hold to her task. At last, the world shimmered and went still, and the two Sylvaneth found themselves…
…in the burning heart of the apocalypse.
All was aflame, from the fields of renewal to the Three Princes, the trio of mighty ironoaks that formed the northern boundary of the soulpod grove. Dead and dying forest spirits littered the ground, leaking viscous sap from awful wounds. One staggered out of the smoke, wreathed in flame, keening in agony.
Kyanathiel’s grief was too sharp for her to vocalise, but she dimly heard Tyarith’s despairing wail, as if from a great distance.
The thunder of hooves shook the earth and an armoured rider burst from the treeline, wielding an eight-pronged flail. The cursed knight slammed his weapon into the skull of the dying Tree-Revenant, dropping him to the soiled earth in a splatter of pulped barkflesh. Then the human’s horse reared, and he roared with triumphant laughter and levelled his weapon at the Grove Guardian.
Slowed, perhaps, by her horror at what had become of her sanctuary, Kyanathiel could not react in time. The flail swept up and around before descending with terrible force.
Tyarith met it with her greenwood scythe, leaping in front of Kyanathiel with sap running from her eyes and a furious scream spilling from her mouth. The horseman veered in surprise, but even as his steed wheeled about, he was bringing the deadly flail back across in a vicious backhand. It crashed across the Branchwych, sending chunks of barkflesh and vine splattering across the smouldering earth. Tyarith collapsed to the ground.
The rider laughed. Kyanathiel’s rage tore her from her stupor. Her genesis tree lurched forwards and she brought her enchanted shears down in a stabbing strike. For all that mighty flail’s destructive power, it was meagre defence against such a blow. The twin blades plunged deep into the rider’s neck and tore down through his ribcage, shearing bone as easily as if it were summer vine. Blood sprayed everywhere. The gurgling brute slid from his war mount, which growled and cantered away, dragging the dead man behind it.
Kyanathiel bent low over Tyarith’s prone body. The Branchwych was bleeding dark ooze from deep gouge wounds, and her eyes were fading. Through the spirit-song, the Grove Guardian could hear her sorrowful wail – pain and anguish and agony, radiating from the dying spirit in waves of terrible intensity.
‘Find peace, sister of the soil,’ Kyanathiel whispered, reaching down to place a hand on the Branchwych’s crown of thorns and leaves.
She met Tyarith’s howl with a song of her own, a lament that echoed through the trees as her fellow Sylvaneth pursued the heathen raiders and put them to the sword. She sang, too, of loss. Her melody was one of sadness, true, but also one of hope, despite it all. Had they not known the darkest of seasons once before, when the Everqueen withered in the husk of winter and the despoilers roamed the land unchecked? They had endured. Nature had endured, and now the Everqueen once more sat on her verdant throne.
‘All shall pass,’ she said, feeling Tyarith’s convulsions ease as the soothing notes stilled her. ‘Even this grove shall heal. And you – strongest of spirits, harvester, branch-mother – you shall slumber in the soil alongside your fallen kin, until the first drops of spring rain awaken you.’
She felt Tyarith’s essence fading.
‘You were there at the beginning,’ the Grove Guardian said, ‘and you shall be there, come the end.’
And even as she spoke the words, she felt the drops splashing on her back. Sunlight pierced the clouds, bringing with it a clear and icy rain – a steady but gentle deluge that doused the flames licking at the old oaks, banishing the nightmare and gloom that had consumed the Golden Grove. As Kyanathiel watched, a rainbow of dazzling colours split the sky, parting the gathering smoke.
‘Beautiful,’ breathed Tyarith. ‘And eternal.’
Then she was still, and she said no more.
The latest Sylvaneth battletome will be available to pre-order on Saturday, along with the new Grove Guardian, boxed sets, and accessories. While you wait, join the Kurnothi on the hunt in the free short story ‘Spring the Trap’.
