The Galvanist's Apprentice

The Galvanist’s Apprentice
by
Bobby Derie

The dull eyes quiver and the muscles of the face convulse under the primary current, and the young women in the audience gasp aloud. The professor’s second nod, not long in coming, prompt me to pull the switch, allowing the secondary current to travel up the wires of the naked torso and re-animate the pallid arms. In due course during his lecture did I follow the subtle commands to apply more galvanic force to the piecemeal creature on display.

The head sat on the top shelf, suspended on geared mounts so that the professor could shew the spasming of the windpipe and concealed it again. Likewise were each of the limbs mounted to move independently—the whole arm and leg on the left, and the hand and foot on the right. For the torso, the professor had me go to with a bone saw to make of the chest a kind of door, so that the currents could be applied direct to heart and lungs by long steel pins. Of the poor fellow’s male member, I cannot say that is received any more dignified treatment, save that the professor kept it laid out on a wooden block and covered under a black cloth until he at his call the vivifying galvanism was applied to the metal rings attached to either end, allowing it to rise for the astonishment and edification of select clients.

I watched the batteries with some urgency, for the presentation grew long and above the acrid stink of chemicals and metals came the all-to-familiar odor of crisping flesh, and I fancied to see streams of boiling fat begin to seep from where the wires were embedded in the corpse. Yet I was happy with my work, happier than I had ever been. Alas, such days were not to last.

#

I was put apprentice to Professor Blackslate at the age of eight. My father had played at being a resurrection man, but ran afoul of a sexton at midnight and a hastily-swung lantern saw two new bodies in the graveyard that night. The professor had been a sometimes acquaintance with my father, and with my mother afloat in drink it was needed I should find work.

His rooms at the time occupied a small attic off Grape Lane, though I soon learned he was forced to move frequently do to the many smells and other minor discomits associated with his practice. There were pans of acid placed about, sheets of dissimilar metal, and assorted lengths of wire, but the highlight of his setup at the time was his primary apparatus - a barber's chair adapted to the medical application of galvanism to different parts of the body. It was in this chair I sat during our brief interview, and he alternately quizzed and lectured me on the mysteries of the galvanic forces and the human form, his Scots slipping sometimes into French, and often railing against the Hallerians.

I did not know then exactly what my duties were to be. Looking back, if I had but known the scope of the education that would soon be mine, perhaps...but as then, there are questions better left unasked.

 

##

The end came quickly, when it did. The Professor had achieved a modicum of success in his business and his experiments, forcing motion back into dead tissues and through gentle stimulus of the currents affecting remarkable cures to many ailments. We had several patients to recommend us in our practice, for we seldom if ever burned or worsened any cause, and the Professor had published advertisements and pamphlets with their kind remarks prominently displayed. It was at this time, at the height of his success, that the Professor grew more daring and began to host those private entertainments for a discerning clientele. I believe the true rot sat in when a local squire, whose dalliance with doxies was notorious even in those days, commissioned a smaller version of Blackslate's apparatus for personal use. The squire was not unfamiliar with the principles of galvanism, and had taken a fancy to the stimulating effect on certain members as demonstrated by a German envoy in London. With the squire's detailed description of the machine and its effects, it was little work for the Professor to deduce its operation and construct a similar device.

 

The squire paid in guineas for the galvanist's troubles, and I think it was the gold fever that gripped him then - for where one such device was made, so could more. There seemed no end to such clients, often quite well-off and established members of the town, and the Professor was forced to improve our working apparel and quarters to better receive such guests. Perhaps some lingering guilt on the practice still lay on Blackslate's breast, for he did not include me in this private work at first - but as demand increased, and his attention was drawn to the development of newer devices for the precise application of currents, so did my duties come first to assisting in the manufacture of the strange leather-and-copper belts, and then in their demonstration.

 

All told, however, this could not have been more than seven or eight months. Then one warm night in midsummer I was called on to assist the Professor with a particular client - a fine lady of good breeding and great beauty, gone somewhat the worse with the rigors of marriage and childbirth. I parted the black curtains to the private room and discovered her there in the apparatus-chair, covered with a black sheet, but otherwise appeared to be naked - her dress and skirts hung carefully in the closet. The Professor held in his hands a new device - twin rods of copper and zinc, perhaps three inches long and rounded at the tip, held to a flexible strap of stout leather, from which dangled the cords to the battery - which he declared a cure perpetual for the female hysteria, which required no doctor's visit to alleviate the rigors of that ailment. I watched and listened as he instructed the matron on the proper installation of the device, and dipping his arms beneath the sheet, proceeded to demonstrate this process, which caused the lady some excitement.

 

Then, at his instruction, I applied the current.

 

Ladies and gentleman, I will not expound what occured thereafter, save only that the poor lady was dead before we could fetch a proper doctor. That smiling c

orpse will haunt me for all my days.

 

#

There might have been a stretch of gaol after that, but the Professor's barrister was clear on the Herculean efforts on our part to save the lady, and we were acquitted - though ruined in other ways. My mother died of a canker in her bosom during the trial, or so the neighbors said, for I never saw her pass or even the body afterwards, and so my fate seemed tied to my master. Debt was our grim spectre, and chased us from the cheapest rooms to the flophouse, and now are office were back alleys and shadowed doorsteps, where the Professor would coax unwholesome gentlemen with excessive promises of galvanic pleasures, and I squeezed discarded lemons for their juices, and ever cruder were our methods and implements.

 

##

I do not know what took Blackslate in the end, though I suspect it was cholera, consumption, or transportation. We had reached our lowest level, huddled together in rags against the quietly raging winter, a raw parody of an organgrinder and his monkey, and the product our few clients came for had less to do than the weak currents from our empty batteries than my ministrations with chapped thighs and scrawny arse. Seven years had passed, and the Professor took from his bosom a scroll - I knew not what it was then, only that it was his treasured possession through our leanest days, and now as the dawn was still-born in the coal-smoke morning, he thrust it into my hands and stalked out alone into the snow and the soot.

I opened it with half-frozen fingers, and beheld my apprentice contract, sign'd and filled. I was a journeyman galvanist now.

 

###

Squigslayer II City of Squigs

Squigslayer II: City of Squigs

Being another wholly unauthorized tale of Gotrek & Felix

by

Bobby Derie 

The first arrow thudded into Gotrek's left shoulder. Felix watched it quiver there for a moment as a few others buried themselves in the multicolored sands at his feet, then ran for the shadow of the nearest towering rib-bone. Or tried to, at least. An arrow had staked his red Sudenland cloak to the ground, and Jaeger found himself flat on his back and choking. The Slayer pulled the bone shaft from his shoulder with a small spurt of blood and stared at it with his single eye, then scowled and scanned the landscape.

They stood on an ancient road, half buried in discolored sand, the walls of a dead city before them. To the left and right of them stretched the vast skeletons of dragons, intermingled with the pale sun-bleached and wind-whittled bones of lesser creatures. Another volley shot forth, and Felix felt more than saw Gotrek raise his axe to block the arrow; bone splinters rained on Felix's head as he fiddled with the clasp of his cloak.

"Get up, manling." The Slayer growled. "Unless you want to die on the ground."

Felix managed to free himself from his cloak and rolled onto his knees next to the slayer, regarding the empty piles of bone. Some of them moved. With nary a sound, a handful of skeletons raised themselves up from where they had been laying. They had been perfectly camouflaged in the endless waste, and Felix wondered what foul necromancer had laid this trap. The patient undead snipers could have lain thus for centuries.

As the skeleton archers knocked their horn bows again, Gotrek roared and launched himself towards them. Felix drew his sword and followed, using his longer legs to keep pace with the Slayer. The undead did not react at all to the dwarf's war cry, but continued their almost mechanical routine, unflinching in the face of their assured destruction.

The Slayer was on them just as they raised their bows, the starmetal runeaxe slicing through brittle ribcages and wind-polished arm bones, leaving the skeletons with jagged splintery limbs. Undeterred, the skeletons stabbed and jabbed at the dwarf with their stumps. Felix shook his head at the Slayer's brute display, and used the flat of his dragon-hilted blade to bash the undead into pieces. Slicing and stabbing were of little use when your foe had no organs to puncture or blood to bleed, and the man lacked the dwarf's tremendous strength. Between the two of them, the pair destroyed a half dozen skeletons in mere heartbeats, driving the remainder back toward the towering ribcage of some ancient drake.

As Felix had battered one skeleton up against an arching rib-bone, and prepared to deliver the final blow when his dragon-hilted blade twisted of its own accord, burying itself in the solid rib bone of the dead dragon rather than the skull of the skeleton archer he was facing. Jaeger cursed at his ill-luck; the templar's blade had saved his life many times over the years, but its special purpose was the destruction of dragons, and the trek through the dragons' dying ground had been a struggle just to keep the damned thing sheathed. Felix worked to remove the blade, but could only watch as the skeleton sniper recovered and advanced on him. Then Gotrek appeared again, and with one ham-like fist grabbed the skeleton by the base of the spine and pulled. Spine and skull ripped clean through clavicles and rib cage, and the Slayer cracked the spine like a whip, causing the skull to strike the rib bone holding Felix's sword so hard that the skull exploded into a dozen pieces.

Finally, Felix placed a leg on the dragon rib and managed to pull his sword free. Gotrek idly wandered about, stomping on skulls lest they be more undead. Felix retrieved his cloak, sighing at the new holes in it, and the pair set off again.

Gotrek and Felix had walking the Plain of Bones for five days, headed for the distant World's Edge Mountains. Their water had run out two days ago, and the Slayer had assured Felix with grim certainty that every oasis and pool from here to the Dark Lands was toxic, and their only hope was to run across a stream from the eastern side of the mountains. Felix was bitterly sure that the squat, bulky figure actually took some perverse satisfaction from their impending doom.

Among the towering bones of long-dead dragons skittered giant scorpions and tenacious black flies that attacked the mismatched pair in swarms, sucking the moisture from eyes and armpits. They'd found the road almost by accident, and the city in the distance. Neither of them knew of any settlements in the Plain of Bones, but it was the only hope they had, so they began walking toward it. Now, alert and awakened by the battle with the skeletons, the man and dwarf edged warily through the open gateway of the dead city.

Felix knew the architecture instantly. The vast, blocky architecture of ancient Nehekhara surrounded them, an outpost of the most ancient empire of man. A tomb city, the long-dead inhabitants enshrined within small steep-sloped pyramids and houses of the dead, buried with all their tools, ornaments, and servants. Felix had seen such sights before, in the blasted wastes of Araby, and he shivered at the thought. The ancient empire had been given over entirely to undeath, ruled by its ancient Tomb Kings and undying Lich Priests, and over all the Great Necromancer, Nagash, who had been slain in the days of Sigmar. The eons-old evil of this place made him shiver despite the heat.

Gotrek sniffed loudly. "There is water here, manling. I can smell it."

"An oasis." Felix said aloud. "The ancients must have built this necropolis right on top of it. We've got to find the outlet."

The two stalked through the silent streets. The outpost had been laid out on a grid, row upon row of small, steep-pyramids surrounded by the corpse-houses of servants and small courtyards that separated one household from the next. Felix was wary; the whole area had been despoiled by something more than the ravages of time. The doors of the houses of servants had been burst open from the inside, and there was much evidence of battle, though no bodies – not even skeletons – remained out in the open. Dust and sand piled up in the streets and courtyard, disturbed here and there by the prints of some small creatures, though what would or could survive in a city like this was beyond Felix's considerable experience.

Gotrek stopped to examine a series of scratches on the entrance to one of the broken courtyards. Felix glanced over his shoulder, trying to keep his shadow from obscuring the view. They were a series of almost regular signs, vaguely reminiscent of the markings Felix had seen somewhere long ago. Could these be the hieroglyphs of Nehekhara?

"Gotrek, what is it?"

"Squiggles, manling." Gotrek saw Felix's blank look. "Squig-sign. Nonsense sigils from the Goblin Tongue, etched by fang and claw, as a Tilean parrot might ask for a sip of grog."

"Squigs? Here?" Felix said, aghast, remembering the bouncing balls of teeth that goblins liked to ride into battle. "How?"

The Slayer seemed to ponder that for a moment, then set his teeth and ran a dry tongue over cracked lips and grinned. "Dwarf tombs are sealed air-tight. If there is the slightest crack, squigs can get in to the dark places, and consume the corpse from within. No one knows how they get in there, but they do. This place, with its shoddy mannish work…the whole complex must be riddled with tomb squigs."

Felix gripped his sword tighter and stared about him. No longer were the undead his greatest concern. He and the Slayer were trapped in a city of squigs. The two had faced the damned beasts before, and the thought of an entire herd of them, grown fat on the contents of an entire necropolis was a frightening thought. Still, they had no other hope but to continue on. Now, though, as they walked the dead streets Gotrek and Felix looked—and found—more evidence of the squigs. Discarded teeth and the shuffling of pale, fleshy bodies in dark corners, the hint of eyes watching them from the empty doorways of ravaged mausoleums. The wind brought strange sounds to him, like the scrabbling of many claws on stone and a rhythmic voice raised in invocation.

The street ended at a great courtyard before the largest pyramid, a squat fifty-footer capped with a pinnacle of black stone. Felix had seen far greater pyramids in the distance during his stay in Araby, but guessed that whatever minor noble had lorded it up back here centuries past did not rate anything so grand as the deathly abodes of the Tomb Kings. The courtyard was filled with the remnants of some decades-old battle, the still forms of a large goblin warband lay desiccated and half-buried in the blowing sands. Empty harnesses showed where squig-hoppers had once ridden against ranks of Nehekharan spearmen, and fallen; the squiggly beasts themselves were conspicuously absent – perhaps the ancestors of the vast tomb squig population that Felix had sensed more than seen around them as he and Gotrek made their way through the city. Felix's eyes fell on the sight of a desiccated wyvern corpse, and his sword stirred a little in his grip.

Here, however, as nowhere else in the city there were signs of life. Before the city was a great row of living trees, roots spilling out of their ancient planters to dip in an ancient ditch filled with water – a veritable moat in front of the great pyramid, fed by the waters of the oasis. Only a narrow stone bridge flanked by gigantic statue-sarcophagi allowed entrance from the courtyard to the pyramid, and standing on it was a wizened priest-figure, holding aloft a basalt tablet. Here was the voice that Felix had heard, and as he and Gotrek stepped into the courtyard, the figure finished his incantation.

Felix did not feel the wave of dark magic the Lich-Priest had released, but he knew it must have come, for all around them the dead army stirred to life. From the pyramid came ranks of undead spearmen and archers, bronze blades and armor glinting in the noon sunlight as they passed on either side of the Lich-Priest to take up ranks before the watery moat. The lids of the massive statue-sarcophagi on the left pressed open and from it a massive Bone Giants stepped out; the right sarcophagus stayed shut and quiet. As the final troops filtered out, a bandage-covered Tomb Prince emerged from the pyramid, great bronze spear in hand, and took his station next to the Lich-Priest on the bridge.

In the courtyard itself, the nigh-skeletal corpses of the goblins stirred, awakened by the dark magic. Unlike the near-silent skeletal troops of Nehekhara, though, a dark echo of snickering, mischievous laughter could be heard from the rising dust goblins. The undead goblins re-formed their straggly ranks, raising broken and rusted weapons in a caricature of the vital Greenskin defiance Felix had known before. The hulk of the wyvern flapped its leathery wings, scales and skin cracking, dust and black beetles dislodged from every crevice as the zombie dragon raised itself up. Still tied to its back was the corpse of a goblin shaman, head flopping back and forth to the beast's movement from a neck that had obviously been crushed in the great beast's death throes. A weighty crown of Nehekharan design still clung to the goblin shaman's head, and Felix swore he could see black fires in the pits of the undead Greenskin's eyes. Whatever dark magic had raised the goblins, even in death they were opposed to the enemies that had ended their brief, violent lives. Gotrek cackled to himself as the two forces drew themselves up to re-enact their ancient battle, and ran a thumb down the edge of his runeaxe, eager to seek his own doom in the ensuing melee. Felix glanced at the pale light the runes on Gotrek's axe was emitting, and tried to limber up his sword-arm, sure of the terrible battle he was about to face, hoping he would live through it long enough to plunge his head into the waters of the oasis.

One of the dust goblins raised up its grey-green hands to its mouth, and began a croaking hooting. The call was taken up by the other dust goblins, even as the Tomb Prince settled his army into its final ranks. Felix felt a rumble in the paved stone beneath him, watched the sand pile nearest him vibrate and tremble.

Then the tomb squigs came.

From all throughout the city, every pale, toothy beast ran, jumped, bounced, and charged to the scene of battle, brought by the ancient call. Gotrek and Felix had to run forward toward the rear of the dust goblin lines to avoid being overwhelmed by the flood of squigs as they crammed the street, piling over and on top of each other in an effort to heed the ancestral call to Waaagh!

So sudden was their flight toward the dust goblin rear ranks, Felix missed the outset of the combat proper. Ahead of him he heard the twang of a hundred bows fired in unison, the clattering stamp of a hundred skeletal spearmen marching forward and pressing into the dust goblins' ranks. Gotrek did not slow down as he approached the rear of the undead goblin army, but swung his axe at head height, taking three of the petite Greenskins from behind and continued on without breaking stride. Felix followed him, slashing and bashing at the child-sized dust goblins. It was an old practice for the two experienced warriors, and Felix felt himself lopping heads and severing limbs almost on instinct, maintaining the crucial space that Gotrek needed to do his bone-crushing work.

The squigs spilled into the gap behind the Slayer and his ally, and before long Felix was stabbing into pale, squishy bodies as well as dry, malevolent corpses. The Slayer snarled and laughed, almost lost to the endless, ritual combat as the two undead hordes engaged each other, snapping dust goblins and tomb squigs in two with each swing of his runeaxe.

After what seemed an eternity, Felix lopped off the head of a dust goblin only to find the two-handed stroke parried by the bronze blade of an ancient Nehekharan skeleton. With a shock, Felix realized that he had broken straight through the dust goblin ranks and into the front of the Tomb Prince's army. Felix slashed wildly around himself, surrounded on all sides by the animate corpses, looking for Gotrek.

The Slayer was not far away, but was half-buried by a tide of smaller squigs. Felix stalked over to him, striking indiscriminately at undead human and goblin as he raced to help his friend. Jaeger had almost reached the dwarf when a shadow fell across him, and a warm pestilential breeze blew into his face. Above him, the zombie dragon hovered, some dark magic keeping it aloft despite the vast holes in its membranous wings. Green and black electric arcs played around the crowned head of the undead goblin-shaman, but Felix's eyes were only on the dragon. The templar's sword almost leapt from his hand at the hovering beast.

"Wyrm-kin! I will return you to the grave to plague man nevermore!" Jaeger shouted, the volume and intensity of the cry ravaging his dry throat. The undead wyvern turn its long head toward him and opened its maw, unleashing a pestilential torrent. Instinctively, Felix raised the blade in a classical parry, and the vile black breath split before the edge of the runeblade. All around him squigs sickened and died on the miasma, puking their pale green guts out of their enormous mouths. When the zombie dragon was finished, Felix was in a clear space surrounded by the limp, somewhat deflated corpses of a dozen tomb squigs. He leaped at the zombie dragon, the templar blade raised in a two-handed overhead strike, oblivious to all else.
Gotrek stomped on the last of the tomb squigs that had been holding him to see the manling leaping up at an undead wyvern, swinging his sword, shouting obscenities and vile oaths about what he would do to its corpse. The dust goblin and Nehekharans were still locked in battle, but the tide of squigs had turned things against the Tomb Prince badly. As Gotrek watched, the Bone Giant was swarmed by tomb squigs, and fell against the unopened statue-sarcophagus, ripping it off its lids. Inside, there was scant trace of the Bone Giant's brother; what remained was a single vast tomb squid, skin as pale as the blindfish of Karak Varn.

The Slayer roared at the sight; here was a worthy doom indeed.

The eruption of the tomb squiggoth distracted the zombie dragon sufficiently that Felix was finally able to land a solid blow, the templar blade sheering through desiccated flesh and bone in search of some vital point or organ. All he really managed to do was release a vast swarm of black flies, which vomited forth from the open wound. Felix swallowed at least a dozen of the nasty corpse-bloated things before he could close his mouth, and needed to use his cloak to unblock his nose and mouth. A shadow fell on Felix's neck, and he rolled out of the way just as the zombie dragon crashed once more into the paved stones of the courtyard.

Whatever dark enchantment that had animated the dragon was obviously collapsing, and the dark lights in the silent beast's eyes were dimming even as Felix watched. With one last effort, the undead wyvern swung its maw around to Felix again. This time, instead of parrying, Jaeger swung the templar's blade directly at the undead dragon's smoking maw.

The bronze blade sliced through the back of the wyvern's mouth and took off the top of its rotten skull. A torrent of miasmic gas spilled from the stump of the neck, then dissipated as the last of the black sorcery fled from its bones and the beast was still. Felix breathed heavily, still spitting flies. He was tired and limbs trembling as the sword's possession left him. Warily, he circled the corpse. The goblin shaman was still strapped to the beast's back, its head twisted around to the back and facing Felix with a rigor mortis grin. Jaeger's sword felt like it weighed a hundred pounds, but he raised it and brought it down on the undead Greenskin's neck, severing the thing cables of flesh that kept it connected to its body.

Something called at Felix then. He stared into the dead shaman's eyes, and some ancient, dry force gripped his brain. The templar blade fell from his limp hand and Felix fell to his knees, hands reaching for the Nehekharan crown as some tired voice in the back of his mind screamed at him to stop. Gotrek's boot caught Felix in the chin as he was bent over to take the crown, and the human fell back and lay as if he had been pole-axed. The dwarf Slayer's runeaxe slammed down on the goblin's skull, sundering the crown and reducing the few brains within into a gritty green paste, which clung to Gotrek's axe as he pulled it back. In his head, Felix heard a tinny dying echo of a scream.

"Get up, manling. Now is no time for resting." The Slayer said.

Felix moaned and sat up, spitting blood from where he'd bitten his own lip, but grateful for the Slayer's interference. He was sure that without his aid, he would have been enslaved by the crown, just as the goblin shaman had been. Around them, the dust goblins began to collapse. Without the dark magic of the crown to sustain them, the hateful spirits of the Greenskins were departing their physical shells once more. Felix picked up his blade and followed Gotrek as he stalked toward the tomb squiggoth.

The Tomb Prince's forces themselves were hard-pressed, not by the dust goblins but the massive uncontrolled tomb squig herd around them. Felix watched tomb squigs fighting over a goblin's thigh bone in vicious tug-o-war, and a passel of tomb squigs had gnawed the limbs off a Nehekharan skeleton and were sucking the dusty marrow from its long-decayed bones. The Bone Giant was on its hands and knees, almost entirely covered by squigs, and then its skull burst apart like an eggshell as an extra-large tomb squig with a pronounced horn cracked the massive construct open from the inside. Jaeger almost felt sorry for the undead things. Almost.

The Tomb Prince and Lich-Priest had staged a fighting withdrawal at the mouth of the great pyramid itself, and Felix observed it with something akin to academic interest, noting that with the limited space of the bridge had created a stalemate – despite their greater numbers, the tomb squigs could not bring them to bear, and the Lich-Priest could continue to conjure necromantic reinforcements. It was but a temporary balance, however, because the tomb squiggoth stumbled forward toward the bridge now, and no unit of skeletal spearmen was going to stop it.

Just as the tomb squiggoth stepped its bulk onto the bridge, Gotrek broke into a run, aiming himself at the thing's swinging tail. Felix swept his sword around him, killing the few tomb squigs around him, but keeping an eye on the Slayer. By the time he had reached the apex of its back, the tomb squiggoth had brought its entire bulk onto the bridge and was busily munching the Tomb Prince's guard into bone meal. Cursing as the Slayer dropped out of sight behind the squiggoth's hump, Felix grabbed at the pale flesh and began climbing it himself. The thing's hide fairly bristled with bone arrows, so Felix found the climbing easy, even holding the templar blade in one hand.

Felix crested the hump to find Gotrek squatting on the squiggoth's neck, the mighty runeaxe raised above his head in both hands. The squiggoth was mad with fury, shaking its head left and right in an effort to dislodge its attacker, but Gotrek was holding on tightly with his knees. Then a bronze spear scraped the Slayer's head, embedding itself in the squiggoth's bulk. The thing shuddered and died. Gotrek stood up and stomped on its skull a few times, but it was clear that the squiggoth was quite dead. The dwarf shot a maddened glare at the spear-chucker, and at that moment Felix could see the chunk the spear had took out of his ear, blood running down the side of the Slayer's face. Alone, surrounded by the pulverized remains of his guard, the Tomb Prince and the Lich-Priest stared at the mad Slayer.

Gotrek's axe toss was like a drawing from a Tilean philosopher's treatise on mathematics that Felix had once glimpsed at the university in Altdorf. It was a perfect, beautiful arc, and the Slayer's axe split the Tomb Prince from crown to groin as it fell to earth, runes blazing on the starmetal surface. Felix was by this time sliding down the neck of the dead squiggoth, the templar blade held at shoulder level. As the Lich-Priest turned to unleash some dark invocation at the Slayer, the human threw the sword like a spear, pinning the undying priest to the wall. The mummified corpse seized up for a moment, thenwas still.
Gotrek and Felix retrieved their weapons and filled their water skins. Both of them took turns dunking their heads into the clear waters of the oasis, glad it had not yet been fouled by dark magic or the bodies of the undead. The Slayer looked at the great tomb squiggoth with something like melancholy.

"I have been robbed of a mighty doom here, manling."

"There will be others."

The great squiggoth shook. The Slayer grinned and readied his axe.

"Maybe…"

The tomb squiggoth's mouth opened, and a torrent of tomb squigs poured forth, their mouths bloody and full of pale meat. Felix blanched as he realized that the lesser tomb squigs must have literally eaten through their dead, titanic comrade. Felix sighed, then speared a fat squig that was too bloated to do more than gnaw at his boot. Beside him, Gotrek laughed.

"Come, manling! There are a city of squigs between us and my doom!"

###

Squigslayer!

Squigslayer!

Being a wholly unauthorized tale of Gotrek & Felix
by
Bobby Derie

“Behold, manling.” The slayer growled. “The abscess of the world.”

Felix Jaeger choked and gagged in response, burying his nose in his worn red Sudenland wool cloak. His nose had not been subjected to such abuse since he and Gotrek had been sewerjacks in the vaults of Nuln. Gotrek and he were hiding, as best they could, behind a mound of ancient caked and dried dung that had been molded into the likeness of one of the gods of Goblindom. Swallowing back a mouthful of bile, he chanced a glance around the idol.

Before them in the twilight lay the greatest orc cesspit in the Old World, a vast pool that lay at the bottom of sheer cliff that had served as an open latrine to the Greenskins of the Massif Orcal. Streaks of brown and green stained the rockface down to the pit of foulness that had received the foul, odorous tribute of hundreds of Greenskin tribes in the centuries. Idols of orc and goblin dung like the one Gotrek and Felix now hid behind ringed the pit sporadically, and Gotrek could make out the likeness of Mork, Gork, and other more obscure Greenskin deities.

Gotrek Gurnisson, trollslayer, had sought his down throughout the world, from Albion to Cathay. Felix had stood by the Slayer’s side as he fought orc, elf, and man; dragon, daemon, and giant in the search of his doom. Felix knew that Gotrek was driven to face off against the greatest monsters the world possessed, for nothing less would wipe away his shame. Now they had come here, following a Bretonnian peasant’s tale, and Felix cursed himself bitterly for his foolish oath to follow the Slayer and record his doom.

Felix knew Gotrek well and disliked the mad look in the slayer’s sole remaining eye. The dwarf assayed the cesspool carefully, running a callused thumb along the edge of his great starmetal runeaxe. A few filth-caked goblins and snotlings of the Brown Eye Tribe waded at the edges of the turgid brown mire, rooting for squigs. In the university at Altdorf, Felix had heard that squigs bred beneath the vicious pools and mounds of orc waste, and that the Greenskins relied on them as both a foodsource and as beasts of war. Felix had never known squigs came in as many different shapes and forms as he could see now—previously, he had only known the bouncing, bipedal war-squigs which goblin tribes ran into battle, the terrible squiggly beasts that seemed half teeth and all mad.

It had all been going so well. The local lord knew Gotrek of old and had agreed to put them up for the night, and shared his local wines. They were dining well on could mutton and deep in their cups of the local vinegary red, ensured of a warm and dry pile of hay in the barn to sleep for the night—as close as Felix figured they would get to civilization in Sigmar-be-damned Bretonnia.

Then the stableboy came in yelling about the squiggoth.

Felix remembered how Gotrek sat up at the word, and asked short, pointed questions. The lord had been more than quick to answer them, Felix had noticed, and placed particular emphasis on the dangers involved. He didn’t think the old man could have gotten the Slayer out of his lands quicker if he’d offered Gotrek a bag of gold. Shaking off his ruminations, Felix studied the sight before them.

A single great goblin rode around on the back of a great albino squig as big as an Imperial warhorse, surrounded by an honor guard of the biggest, meanest, best-armed and armored goblins in the camp. Undoubtedly this was Turdlick, shaman of the Brown Eye Tribe. By some unspoken signal, the squig bearing the shaman lurched forward toward the vast brown pool, and a strange hooting went up. Every goblin dropped whatever they were doing and began a procession, heading in the same general direction as Turdlick.

“Now, manling!” Gotrek growled quietly. “Follow me!”

Taking the opportunity of the goblin’s distraction, the duo made their way quietly to the next dung idol. Felix, with his longer legs, had little trouble keeping pace with Gotrek. Once safely hid behind the icon of filth, Gotrek waited a few moments, and then proceeded to scurry out for the next idol. In this way the two came by degrees closer and closer to the edge of the mire, and in a few minutes they had reached the marshy shores of the cesspool.

The shaman, by this time, was standing on the back of his great squig and exhorting his followers. Felix was too far away to make any sense of the goblin’s pronouncements, but he could hear the crowd thump and bellow in response to every line. Then the shaman turned back to gaze at the great cesspool and raised his arms. Licks of green fire seemed to dance around Turdlick’s hands, then shot into the night and land at the exact middle of the cesspool.

At first, nothing happened, and the brown slime was still. Then the crusty surface rippled slightly, as if by a strong wind, but Felix felt no such breeze. Finally, a vast green-black hump began to break the surface, the liquid waste rolling off of it, like the crocodiles of distant Araby. Felix squinted in the dark, hoping to get a better look at the thing as it emerged from the orc-pit. The hump continued to swell and grow larger, and the whole filthy surface of the pool was agitated. The goblins took up to hooting again, and as Felix looked out he saw other huger lumps emerging from the pool, small hillocks he had taken as submerged islets and other geographic features.

Then there was a vast squelch, and the squiggoth stood up. Felix stole a glance at Gotrek and even the Slayer seemed to be registering disbelief. It was if the entire cesspit had raised itself on four vast legs, each of which was larger than a Bretonnian warhorse. Mounds of orc-dirt and rancid waters ran off its back as the squiggoth raised itself from the muck in response to Turdlick’s call. Felix was reminded of an ancient story he had read from a book of Arabyan children’s tales that his father had given him on his naming-day, about an great fish or turtle whose broad back was mistaken for an island. Here could be the truth to that tale.

Now standing free of the cesspool, Felix could see the beast more clearly. It was certainly of squig stock, it had all the basic requirements: it was green and had big teeth. Beyond that, there was something reptilian in its gate, and the head was diminutive compared to the body, attached directly to the great humped mass of its body without any proper sort of neck. Between the vast fleshy columns of its legs, Felix could just discern its tail—or what he prayed fervently to Shallya was its tail.

Now, all of the Brown Eye Tribe save for Turdlick and his guard, surged forward with nets and long pointy sticks. The goblins ran quickly past its great gaping mouth—although not quite quickly enough, for an herd of snotlings were swallowed up by the squiggoth as they dallied too close to its maw—and between the vast forelegs, so that the belly of the great beast formed a roof over their heads. Pale things squirmed in the mud, and Felix realized that they bulk of the squiggoth must protect the largest and most favored squigs, which the goblins were now catching.

“Come manling! Now is the hour of my doom!” roared the Slayer.

Felix cursed and unsheathed his sword as Gotrek sprinted towards the great green thing, running to keep pace with the Slayer. Turdlick’s guards shouted a warning and surged forward to deal with the intruder. The first swing of Gotrek’s axe took split the face of the one goblin, sliced open a second from left shoulder to right hip, and cleaved the third in the groin, but the dwarf did not stop moving. Felix’s dragon-hilted sword stabbed and slashed at the wounded, finishing off those that were dying but not yet dead and were still dangerous.

The slaughter was mercifully brief, and soon Gotrek stood before Turdlick himself. The shaman was still seated on his great albino squig, but the thing seemed like the smallest of mice now compared to the vast green horror behind them. Turdlick stood at his full height atop the squig, green froth foaming at the corners of his mouth and sparks of green fire coming from eyes, ears, and nostrils.  Gotrek was running towards the Greenskin, but when he was still a few yards away the shaman gestured and a great green blazing fist tore from the sky and smashed into Gotrek, sending the dwarf to his knees.

Felix watched amazed, for the apparition of the fist disappeared almost as soon as it had come, and Gotrek rose immediately back to his feet, eyes blazing. The Slayer managed another two steps forward and the shaman gestured again, and again the vast green hand appeared from nowhere and crushed Gotrek into the marshy earth. The slayer jumped back to his feet, blood streaming from nose and ears. Turdlick for his part was laughing in devilish glee, and the great albino squid was slowly backing away from Gotrek, increasing the distance between them.

Now Felix had caught up with Gotrek, and the two advanced side-by-side, cautiously getting nearer and nearer to the mountainous squiggoth. Green fire licked at the shaman’s eyebrows as he gestured again, and this time both Gotrek leapt out of the way, flinging his axe in the shaman’s direction. Felix was less quick or less fortunate, and felt the massive hand of Mork crush down on him, pushing him into the wet earth. Searing pain filled his left shoulder and clods of foulness clogged his mouth and nose. In that moment Felix knew he was going to die, drowned in a bucket of orc "I swear too much".

A stout hand grabbed Felix’s lanky blond hair and drew him back aright. Gotrek took a moment to survey Felix’s condition, then grabbed his left arm in one hand, placed his massive right paw on Felix’s shoulder, and wrenched. Once again, Felix felt the indescribable pain as something inside him popped back into its accustomed socket. Leaving the dazed human where he was, the Slayer waded off into the pit.

Still in shock, Felix sat and stared at the milling goblin chaos in the shadow of the squiggoth. Through the haze of his pain-filled-brain Felix realized that the impact of the spell must have dislocated his shoulder, and the dwarf had re-set it before it had inflamed and the limb was rendered useless. The great albino riding-squig was some distance away, sinking into the mire. Gotrek’s thrown rune-axe had cleaved the thing deeply, splitting skull and brain and spine. Turdlick was still atop the thing, a haze of green smoke wisting from his charred neck-stump. Felix knew how dangerous the Greenskin magic was, and apparently the final spell had been too much for the shaman to safely handle.

Gotrek waded forward, now waste deep in the muck. Without his axe, bloodied and bruised from the shaman’s maltreatment, and caked in orc-filth, the Slayer was much less of an imposing sight. Even his great crest of hard was damp with green slime, and hung to one side of his head. Some of the nearest squig-hunters took this as an opportunity to attack. Gotrek caught the first sharp pointy stick in his left hand, pulled the goblin that had thrust it toward him, and brought his ham-like right fist down on its head. The skull smashed like an eggshell, spilling brains into the mire. A pair of goblins tried to net the Slayer, but only managed to incapacitate his right arm. Gotrek ignored them and continued toward the sinking albino squig and his axe, dragging the hapless squig-hunters behind him.

Felix managed to find the strength to stagger to his feet, leaning on his sword for support as he fixed his red Sudenland wool cloak into a makeshift sling for his arm. Gotrek would not be able to hold his own forever, he would need help. Even as Felix advanced, he saw that Gotrek was having a hard time of it. Besides the net caught around his right arm and the two goblins he was dragging behind him, a half-grown squig all was attached to his left leg, the vast toothy mouth closed up to the Slayer’s knee. Squelching with every step, Felix dove into the cesspool after Gotrek, stabbing and slashing at the squigs. Almost immediately he felt the putrescent liquid spill over the edge of his boots, felt the mud and mire at the bottom of the cesspool pull at them. By the time he had taken ten steps, Felix had lost both boots forever in the squig-nest and felt indescribable slime squish between his toes.

With a few slashes, Felix finished the goblins holding Gotrek. The dwarf was busy trying to dislodge his axe from the albino squig, the weight of the Slayer’s muscular body just causing it to sink deeper. With a roar of triumph Gotrek freed his axe, and ripped the remnants of the net away from him. Felix stepped forward and skewered the squig biting into Gotrek’s leg, twisting the blade a few times until the thing stopped moving.

“Careful there manling, I almost lost a toe!” the dwarf growled, then stalked for the nearest of the colossal legs. The Slayer surveyed the scaly green flesh with the eye of an engineer, then cast his single eye to gaze on the vast arch that the squiggoth’s forelimbs made.

“Give me a boost.” He commanded.

Felix stared at the mad dwarf in disbelief, but got down on his knees in the orc filth and offered his broad back to the Slayer. Gotrek clambered on top of the human as if he was no more than a footstool, and Felix gasped beneath the dwarf’s weight. With terrible calculation, Gotrek slashed his axe at the mighty leg, opening a vast chasm that wept a pale, horrible green ichor. Felix thought he could no longer discern terrible odors after his time in the miasma of the orc-marsh, but this new scent had him adding his own wretching offering to the pool in front of him. Gotrek grasped the cut in one hand and pulled, lifting himself free of Felix’s back. Felix watched, amazed, as Gotrek began to climb, using the mighty rune-axe to carve hand-and-footholds out of the squiggoth’s hide.

Eventually, the dim beast noticed the carnage being done to it, though Felix thought that surely the wounds Gotrek was inflicting, though terrible to most any other terrestrial creature, were no more than the bites of a mosquito to the mighty squig. It was like attacking a mountain, one strike at a time. The terrible hooting of the squiggoth changed in tone and, and suddenly Felix felt a warm, wet breeze blow behind him. He turned to see a forest of great teeth, each the size of a Bretonnian knight’s shield. The squiggoth had lowered itself as far as it could to inspect the slight pains that had finally arrived in its tiny brain, and what it saw there was Felix. The great mouth opened, and once again Felix feared he would die in this place. He held his sword in front of him, prepared to do what damage he could to this thing before it ate him.

“Oi, you!” the Slayer shouted above, and Felix looked up to see Gotrek take a flying leap from the squiggoth’s shoulder, his massive rune-axe held over his head in both hands. Whether or not the squiggoth actually heard him, Felix would never know, but a shaft of moonlight caught the edge of the starmetal axe, and it seemed to burn like fire as it came down into a perfect arc, ending on the squiggoth’s head, right between the eyes. The axe head buried itself ‘til no metal showed, and in another moment the Slayer’s hands and arms had disappeared into the wound. The weight and momentum of dwarf and axe had cleaved straight through the squiggoth’s skull, and some hideous suction was now pulling the dwarf inside as well.

The hooting stopped. All around in the shadow of the squiggoth, Felix saw the goblins of the Brown Eye Tribe stop their squig hunting and look up. A tiny shiver ran through the beast, and in that moment Felix rand, clambered, and crawled for the edge of the cesspit, out from under the beast’s shadow. The fall of the squiggoth was like the death of mountains and gods. Those goblins too stupid or afraid to run were caught beneath it as their vast squiggy shelter collapsed upon them. Felix swore that the Massif Orcal shook, and a black wave of liquid filth and dead goblins caught him from behind, propelling him into an ancient, half-crumbled dung idol, the soft center of which broke his fall.

Wrestling his way free of the orc-dirt, Felix looked on the vast squiggoth as it sank slowly into the mire. The beast was only so much carrion now, probably a meal for the hundreds of squigs its bulk once sheltered. Then, looking around, Felix realized Gotrek was nowhere to be seen. Felix called the Slayer’s name, circumnavigating the vast pit and shouting into the darkness. It had never dawned on him that the dwarf might actually perish here. For a brief moment, Felix wondered how the hell he’d write this up. Certainly he doubted that Gotrek wished to be remembered as having found his doom as a squigslayer, then drowned in the greatest cesspool in the world.

Felix chewed his lip, feeling the loss of the Slayer. He was sore, tired, filthy in a way he had never been before and hoped never to be again. His boots lay beneath a hundred tons of squig, and could still taste the rancid flavor of orc urine on his breath. Gotrek Gurnisson, his only true friend and companion these many years, lay here, a massive mound of squig-flesh his only monument. Felix started to laugh. He cackled. Something inside his stomach broke and he whooped and hollered and laughed until he was out of breath, and he laughed some more, clutching his stomach and unable to breath. His black depression over the final death of Gotrek had given way to the terrible thought that finally, at last, after so many terrible adventures he was free. Free of the Slayer, free of the oath he had sworn in that moment of drunken madness.

Felix was still giggling when Gotrek punched his way out of the squiggoth’s head.

“Oi, manling!” the Slayer yelled. “What are you laughing at?”

Felix’s chuckles died, something like relief and a terrible weariness flooding back into his soul.

“I’m just glad you’re alive, Gotrek.”

“Don’t see why there’s anything to be glad about.” The dwarf said dourly. “It would have been a mighty doom, to die slaying a squiggoth and an entire goblin tribe to boot.”

“Don’t worry Gotrek. I’m sure we can find you another doom.” Felix said with a sigh. “Now, let’s go teach the Bretonnians how to boil water. I need a bath.”

Gotrek’s nose twitched in a mighty sniff.

“Aye manling, that you do.”

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That Constant Necromancy

That Constant Necromancy
by
Bobby Derie

Atomic light shone through the strange clouds of a burning sky, and all the fields on either side of the road were ashy dust and weeds; the still dun mounds showed where the cattle and horses had ceased their pasture to lay down and die. The cracked streets laid like an ancient empire, in whose fissures and potholes was built new kingdoms of ants and termites, vast series of mounds and structures raised up in the shadow of rusted street lamps blown over, houses knocked to kindling, their contents spilled and exposed to air and invisible fires that tanned and bleached and burned from the inside out.

A hush came and the wind died, as the audience before the song, and the baleful, bright sun darkened for a moment, and took on a softer flare.

There was something classical about the curve of the hood, the rounded headlamps, the strange face of the radiator grill; a perfect Euclidian parabola that had been realized on paper with blue pencil and drafter’s ink. It was the fresh-cut grey of dark, flat virgin stone, as if washed in the fresh-flowing wounds of granite mountains laid bare by pick and dynamite. Prim white gloves grasped the wheel, and the eyes that stared out from the windows were the antique blue of a long-forgotten sky.

The song hit the ruined town first.

There was something of a march in it, a military cadence as of a million men in step, shattered every now and again by thunderous percussion cannonades, and merged in with the rhythm were pieces and fragments of old anthems and songs, riffs and openings from tunes that had seen nations through war and peace and back again. The speakers of the ghostly grey car shouted and sang and blared, and it reverberated through air and wood and artificial stone, to be heard by whatever spirits there might be to hear.

A softer breeze picked up, and an empty swing began to sway again. Fallen telephone poles, street lamps, and trees righted themselves, to stand tall once more. The driving wind increased, and the skeletons of houses at the edge of town that had folded in on themselves from the blast put on again their ancient flesh of shingles and vinyl siding. Mounds of moldering, broken brick skittered over the vacant shell of the gas station, and the rust on the pumps blew off in a pale red dust to reveal a mirror shine.

In the street, the empire of the ants died in sudden cataclysm as old asphalt flowed as if new again, healing over the wounds where they had built.

By the time her tires hit the outskirts of town, the grass had fallen down as if it had been visited by the swathing blades of elder days. A thin thing with copper pigtails and a pink dress picked herself up from the earth and stepped backward into the waiting swing, to be carried again. Students emerged from beneath their desks to retake their seats, and men and women cowered no longer in basements and closets, or under beds. In the town jail a pickpocket stared out from behind stout bars, and across the tracks the black folk stirred and felt the familiar burden take them once again.

The music swelled as she drove through the old town square, with it small somber monuments of brass on cut stone, past two churches and a synagogue whose pews were packed but from which came no song, or sermon, or prayer. On the wall of the diner, two shadows broke a long kiss and stepped out into the world again.

As the music faded from the entrance of town, the weary cattle and horses laid down once again to their long rest. The rails fell from the fences and the weeds stood, as if waking from a strange delirium. A harsher wind followed on the soft breeze, and what had been the work of burnt years reclaimed the gas station in moments. The swing swished through the air, and a pile of old bones in faded and torn pink rags fell to earth, a small grey skull landing in a mound of copper pigtails.

A strange procession followed. Gaunt men and women with set faces rode thin horses that frothed at the mouth. A handful of automobiles lumbered in caravan; the leader a grim-faced man who clutched the wheel beside his silent, worried wife, their children in the back had ash-colored skin and receding black gums that revealed long toothy smiles. The front of the car was new, but long creeping tendrils of rust and dry rot streaked the back; the car behind it was worse. The last car in the line was a boxy thing on bicycle wheels that got caught in the spreading cracks in the road, the engine sputtered out a final cough and then the whole carriage collapsed as the music died.

The prisoner in the jail waited, and as the walls fell leapt free of the masonry; the hot breeze stripped him to bones within three steps, but this time they would lay outside his cell. Two lovers shared a kiss again, as their shared shadow etched itself onto the bricks of the wall behind them. The faces of the townspeople turned to the sky—the bright blue sky, as blue as the woman’s eyes—before the atomic sky returned again.

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