Karak-Azgaraz does not sleep. Beneath the stone, life is a constant rumble of hammers, bellows, and shod boots. But now, there was a new sound: coughing. A wet, deep cough echoing from the lower quarters all the way to the Throne Room.
Geneviève was putting her armor back together in the guest armory. Thrunbor, the renegade smith of Gisoreux, had done good work, but the repairs made by the Stonehammer clan smiths were on another level. They had beaten out the dents with geometric precision and etched minor runes of protection onto the pauldrons. As she tightened the straps of the breastplate, Geneviève felt a difference. Not physical. Spiritual. The experience in the prison, having torn the chain and healed the dwarf, had crystallized something inside her. She felt... clean. Despite the filth, despite the proximity to disease, she felt that her blood flowed with a purity that no external filth could taint.
Thorgard entered the armory. He was not wearing his helm, and his face was grey. "Are you ready, Umgi?"
"I am ready," replied Geneviève, lowering Sir Gilles' visor. The metallic voice was back, but now it had an undertone of natural authority.
"Good. The King has authorized the descent. But you must know where we are going. We are going into the 'Cistern of Tears.' It is the main aquifer beneath the third level." Thorgard spat on the ground. "The engineers say the air down there is saturated with Warpstone dust and plague spores. The filters on our masks last twenty minutes. If they break, your lungs rot in five breaths. It is a suicide mission to close the bulkheads and isolate the water."
Geneviève looked at the dwarf. "I do not need masks."
Thorgard arched a bushy eyebrow. "Don't be a stupid hero. That stuff kills even Trolls."
"I said I do not need them," repeated Geneviève. And in that moment, the dwarf saw that it was not arrogance. It was a statement of fact.
The squad consisted of Thorgard, six Ironbreakers clad in gromril armor so heavy the floor shook at their passing, and Geneviève. They descended on a chain lift into the darkness, leaving behind the torchlight to enter the sickly glow of underground phosphorescence.
The air changed. It became thick, greasy. It smelled of copper and sweet meat. The dwarves put on heavy brass and leather masks connected to canisters on their backs, their breaths becoming mechanical rattles: Hhh-krr, Hhh-krr. Geneviève put on nothing. She felt the poison in the air. She felt it touch her skin, try to enter her nostrils. But it was as if it slid off. Her immune system, blessed by divine will, annihilated every spore, every bacterium the very moment it touched her mucous membranes. She walked with her head high where the dwarves advanced hunched over.
They arrived at the Cistern. It was an immense cavern, half occupied by an underground lake. But the water was not crystal clear. It was a bubbling soup of green and brown sludge. On the banks, hundreds of Skaven of Clan Pestilens—plague monks dressed in green rags and encrusted with buboes—were chanting around wooden and brass machines pumping toxic sewage directly into the aquifer.
"By Grungni's beard..." muttered Thorgard through his mask. "It's an invasion."
At the center of it all, on a rocky islet in the middle of the toxic lake, was a Plague Priest. A horrific creature, tall and skeletal, holding a giant censer from which poured pure Warpstone smoke.
"We have to reach the shut-off levers on the opposite wall!" ordered Thorgard. "Tortoise formation! Shield wall!"
The Ironbreakers closed ranks, their rectangular shields forming an impenetrable barrier of gromril. The Skaven saw them and charged, screaming prayers to the Great Horned Rat.
The clash was brutal in the confined space. The dwarves' axes rose and fell like pistons of a steam engine, grinding rat meat. But the Skaven were endless. And worse, they started throwing Poison Wind Globes.
The glass spheres shattered against the dwarves' shields. Clouds of corrosive gas enveloped the formation. "The filters!" yelled one of the Ironbreakers. "They are failing!" The gas was too concentrated. Even Dwarven technology was struggling.
Geneviève realized they would never reach the levers in time. She stepped out of formation. "Gilles! No! Get back!" barked Thorgard.
Geneviève did not listen. She threw herself out of the shield wall, directly into the cloud of deadly gas. The gas enveloped her. For a normal man, it would have been the end. The skin would have peeled off, the eyes would have exploded. But Geneviève was a sacred vessel. Her Aura of Courage shone, visible now as a faint halo around her black armor. She walked through the green smoke like an avenging ghost.
The Skaven stopped, confused. They saw this human warrior walking in their most potent poison without even coughing. "The iron demon!" shrieked one of them.
Geneviève drew her two-handed sword. She was not fast like an elf, nor strong like an orc. She was inexorable. A Plague Monk jumped on her with two rusty knives. She took the blows on her breastplate and responded with a slash that split him in two. The infected blood of the Skaven splashed onto her, penetrating the slits of the helm, touching her lips. Nothing. No infection. No disease. She was untouchable.
Geneviève charged toward the pumping machines. She was alone, surrounded by fifty enemies, but her immunity made her a psychological terror for creatures who worshipped disease. If disease could not touch her, then she was anathema to their god.
She reached the first pump. With a scream of effort, she brought the sword down on the main gear of rotten wood. The machine smashed apart. Thorgard and his men, seeing the girl opening the path in the poison, found new vigor. "The ancestors are with the Umgi!" roared the captain. "Charge! Do not leave her alone!"
The dwarves broke their defensive formation and charged like a battering ram, trampling the line of rats to reach Geneviève.
As they destroyed the machines, the Plague Priest on the islet raised his censer and began to intone a dark litany. The lake of sludge began to boil. From the murky waters emerged something huge. A Rat Ogre, but mutated, swollen with greenish fluids, with tubes grafted into its flesh.
Geneviève turned, panting but unharmed by the gas. She looked at Thorgard. "You close the bulkheads," she said, her voice calm amidst the apocalypse. "I will keep the beast busy."
"It's too big for you!" shouted the dwarf.
"I do not get sick, Thorgard. Its claws are only meat. And steel cuts meat."
Without waiting for an answer, Geneviève turned toward the horror coming out of the lake and began to run. Not to flee, but to gain momentum. She was about to face a monster three times her size, in a lake of poison, armed only with faith and iron. And she was exactly where she wanted to be.