Looks like GW is releasing a short lore snippet ahead of the Underworlds release! Enjoy!
The fledgling city of Embergard may have fallen as the Skaven ripped their way through reality and swarmed across the Realm of Fire, but not all was lost when the hard-bitten settlers who raised its walls were finally driven out. A band of Sigmar’s chosen warriors pick through its mines to protect the valuable veins of realmstone within, but dangers lurk in the dark – and tensions may threaten to shatter the group long before the enemy finds them.
BLOOD IN THE MINES
This place had once been known as the Tinderbox. It had not been an ill choice of name. Embergard’s wealth had come from the veins of realmstone that wound throughout its mines. They sweltered and smoked – every day, every night, they flickered with the fuming glow of emberstone. Subterra normally had the decency to be cool and damp. But this was Aqshy, so of course, it had to be burning hot, leaving armour to scorch against sweat-lathered skin.
Ardorn Flamerunner had decided that he hated it. He hated how heat clogged his throat. He hated the mine tunnels’ low ceiling with their stalactites of granite and basalt, and he hated how they snaked into taunting blind corners – nothing like the rolling firegrass plains he’d hunted on as a youth. He hated the old multi-tiered excavation sprawling out like terraces of burnt wood and black stone beneath them. Standing on the lip of a chasm shaft riddled with wooden platforms, severed cart rails and decaying winches, he peered into the darkness. It dropped right into the bowels of the Ashenmont mountain, lit by pulsing clusters of emberstone that none had yet been foolish enough to try to thieve.
Most of all, though, he hated the shriek and spark-flare of knives being sharpened.
‘God-King’s bells, would you cease that?’
The sharpening noises did indeed cease. The Stormcast Eternal sighed before looking back over a shoulder. A shadow pushed its way off the cave wall. They were similarly attired, though even more of their armour was hidden beneath cloak and cloth than his own. The warrior’s face was covered by a cowl and half-mask. Only the eyes were visible, and they held disdain enough.
‘I must keep my blades sharp, Ardorn.’ Farasa Twice-Risen’s voice, with its curious and unplaceable accent, bore no obvious rancour. Yet her rebuke was evident, as cutting as the twin knives now holstered at her waist.
‘Evidently.’ Ardorn said. He could hear his own growl.
‘If we are to fulfil our mission and protect these mines, then we must all be razor-sharp.’ She gestured to the glittering whetstone she held and spoke with the faux-patience of a tutor’s cadence. Farasa might, he mused, have been a preacher in her first life, though of what faith was unclear. ‘You understand this, I trust?’
‘I understand that we have been down here for months, keeping the claws of vermin and the hands of our own misguided people away from the realmstone through whatever means necessary.’
Ardorn spat the words. He stepped forward, face to face with Farasa, hand curled tight.
‘I understand this duty has taken us from the war front,’ Ardorn said. ‘I understand that every corner we creep around might hide a sudden, undignified death. And I understand that, despite all of this, you insist upon these performative irritations. You sharpen your swords with great ceremony; you cut and jibe with every word. Is it your goal to bait me, Farasa? Are you smirking under that mask to have succeeded?’
The cavern ceiling gave a sudden rumble, grit and ash dusting free. High above, the ruined surface of Embergard was once again being bombarded, though it was impossible to tell by which side. It brought enough of a pause to the mounting argument for a sigh to breach it.
‘We have this discussion every other day, I swear.’
Yurik had sat himself on an overturned scoop-lifter to tend to his crossbow. The older man had removed his Mask Impassive and set it to his side. He looked up to the pair, scratching the jaw of his teak-skinned face, his eyes flashing with wry lightning.
‘Before you tear one another to pieces and are made to account for yourselves before the God-King’s throne, might I ask you to take a breath and consider where we are?’
Ardorn breathed deep, scowling. Smoke brushed the back of his throat – the scorching, arcane emanations of emberstone. He grimaced. Aqshian realmstone, especially concentrated as it was down in the Tinderbox, always set the brain and the blood boiling. It stole up on you if you didn’t master yourself. With force of will, he urged himself to calm.
‘Forgive me, sister,’ Ardorn said, a splayed right hand set over his left in the old tribal gesture of contrition. ‘I forgot myself.’ Farasa hesitated before awkwardly following suit.
‘We both did.’
‘“And Sigmar watched as peace once more reigned in the halls of High-heim, and he did smile a secret smile and think it good.”’ Yurik chuckled at his own quoting – one of the dusty Azyrite dramaturges he was so readily fond of. ‘Just because the world is ending does not mean we must abandon manners, no?’
The sharp look the pair shot him was interrupted as another great rumble rocked the cavern. It came in a ghost-blast of heat and noise, and the edge of some greater explosion loosed down one of the adjoining tunnels. All the Stormcasts turned, battle stances assumed. Yurik stood and slipped his helm into place.
‘That was no surface bombardment.’ It was true. By now all of them knew the sound of warp-bombs.
‘There are Skaven abroad, kin,’ Ardorn said. His words had a feral edge as he hefted and primed his handbow. ‘Finally, prey worth venting our fury on.’
‘A most fine-great explosion, learned Warlock. If-if I may simply advise—’
‘You may not.’
Zikkit Rockgnaw was in far too good a mood to suffer the indignity of explaining himself. He sniffed, his whiskers twitching to the sweet sulphur-stench of detonation. Rock crumbled and fell away from the jagged blast wound in the tunnel wall. It had not been fully breached yet, but through its cracks he could see the telltale glow of his prize. A rich seam of emberstone, one the man-things had been unable or, likely, too stupid to recover before the Great Ascendancy had swallowed them. All Zikkit’s for the taking, as was right and proper.
‘Yes, most devious one, only…’ Nitch Singe-snout mewled. The Acolyte sported a gas hood, but it didn’t hide his wheedling tones. He shifted from one foot to the other, twitching nervously, bombs clattering where they hung from bandoliers. A fat-bodied rat curled on his shoulder, hissing at the Warlock. ‘Only, not alone down here, no-no. Other clan-bands. And the storm-things—’
He stopped short, gasping and croaking, as Zikkit’s mechanical claw arm fastened around his throat. The Warlock sneered as he lifted Nitch, leaving the Acolyte’s feet and tail scrabbling and flicking in a frenzied flurry. Zikkit squeezed harder, and Singe-snout croaked, pawing weakly at the iron talons throttling him.
‘You do not see my vision, worm. You wish to be a Bombardier, yes-yes? To join the techno-covens? Lose-leave this… skittishness. I require minions, but you are not irreplaceable.’ Zikkit hissed each word, goggles glowing with inner light. Nitch nodded desperately. Scoffing, Zikkit dropped him, leaving the Acolyte to twitch and wheeze before turning back to the wall. A look of irritation stole over him.
‘Still. Emberstone volatile, yes-yes. Drill-work, maybe. Where is Rittak?’ His second had vanished in pursuit of more realmstone, and while it had made things easier to think, he was now needed. Muttering, Zikkit hefted his own drill. Condensing the energy needed to power a warp-grinder into a two-handed device saw the thing always trembling dangerously – but so long as it merely trembled, it was a problem for later.
‘Do it myself, then, yes-yes.’
‘Master.’
The Warlock was halfway through deciding how to dismember Singe-snout when he realised it wasn’t him who had spoken. Further along the tunnel, Krittatok hunched, his long metal feeler claws tapping at the floor. The Acolyte’s masked face swivelled to face Zikkit. He was forced to suppress a shiver. There was something ‘off’ about Krittatok, not least that rasp he insisted on speaking in.
‘The stone speaks,’ the Acolyte said, his head cocking sharply. ‘Foe-things come.’
‘I hear noth—’
Zikkit paused. He did hear something echoing through the stone ceiling. The thump of running feet, before a set of wooden planks used to block some gouge in the roof were smashed through. Golden shapes dropped through the opening, cloaks trailing.
Krittatok should have been crushed by the storm-things’ landing, ground to meat and blood. Yet, as they landed, the Acolyte was simply not there. Instead, he was uncoiling from the darkness, leaping onto the back of a cloaked, half-masked goliath. Sparks flew as his finger-blades traded blows with twin knives.
Singe-snout, too, had managed to not entirely embarrass himself. Less than a breath had passed between his priming a bomb and twitchily hurling it. Perhaps that was why it detonated prematurely. Rock tore from the tunnel wall, flensing shards seeing the leader of the storm-things turn away and shield his face.
Pumping adrenaline saw Zikkit take all this in. He was very much aware, then, as the helmed warrior at the rear of the storm-thing pack aimed a crossbow right at him, its tip crackling with corposant storm force.
His fear-musk glands were readying to squirt when he heard the throaty howl of an engine speeding closer.
Rittak Verm was shrieking with glee. It was lost in the motorised wail of the lesser Doomwheel he never left and always insisted on revving to the maximum. It spun blurring and blindingly fast, more whooping cackles leaving its crazed rider. And the faster it span, the more the warpstone blaster-drill mounted to its fore sparked.
Zikkit hurled himself sidewards as a warp-bolt lanced from the drill’s tip and down the corridor. It took the marksman in the chest, knocking him off his feet as he fired, sending the shot wide. Rittak’s Doomwheel was clipped and jolted sidewards enough to strike a rock and get airborne, scraping against the tunnel wall as Rittak screamed and another errant warp-bolt shot off into the dark. Another explosion joined it, as did Singe-snout’s manic cries. The tight, confined world further narrowed. Smoke. Grit. Hot tongues of fire burning breath away.
Instinct saved the Warlock. He felt displaced air before seeing the blade and reached out with his mechanical arm, catching the Stormcast Eternal leader mid-swing. God-forged muscle bunched against soot-stained steel.
Zikkit broke the lock and slunk back, taking his drill in a two-handed grasp. It whirred into life, sparking as the Warlock jabbed with it. The Stormcast Eternal was forced into nimble backward steps. Virulent warp-lightning played off golden armour.
The Stormcast had drawn a handbow. Had Zikkit not already lunged, its bolt might have pierced his angular skull. Instead, it cut a crackling line along his cheek, and his warp-grinder’s tip tore a chunk from the Stormcast’s flank.
They came apart then, vermin and immortal, panting hard as they faced one another through the cramped under-dark. Steel rang and motor growled as desperate battle raged around them. Their positions, Zikkit noticed, had reversed. The Stormcast stood with his back to the weakened wall, a contemptuous sentinel whose face was lined with murder-making urges. For a moment, fear rushed back. The Warlock twitched with flee-urge.
And then, from crevices deep in the mine tunnel walls and through the cracks made by their explosion, the light pulsed as if beckoning. A wash of orange ember-glow spread a sickly, furious heat through his core and saw the Skaven hiss and bare fangs. The storm-thing, too, seemed to sense the spiritual heat wash. His patrician features crumpled in hate, blood trickling from the wound in his side as he spat out the same.
‘You want the emberstone, vermin? Then I invite you to take it.’
‘Yes-yes,’ Zikkit nodded as if it were obvious. Fire’s glare reflected from his goggles as he gunned his drill’s power. ‘The rage-rock is mine-mine. Learn well, man-thing. Won’t save you.’
The ceiling shook again under the fury of sustained bombardment. Metal crashed, lightning flashed – and buried emberstone flared with fire.
Snarling fury, the Stormcast advanced, blade drawn. Wreathed in warp-energy and emberstone light, Zikkit hissed and leapt to meet him.
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