Chapter 1162 - 503: Serpent and Rat
"Mm, just as expected." Some weariness clung to the silhouette of the Great Demon Lord, Mazda Moody; the amount of Magic Power needed to banish Chaos Demons was utterly staggering, and even as the strongest of Demon Toads, Mazda Moody felt his skull aflame with needle-stab agony.
Yet he had no choice now, forced to steel his mind and keep directing the Lizardman host to fight on.
By this time, every Lizardman Legion had already suffered more than half casualties. At Mazda Moody’s command they re-formed ranks, bracing themselves once more for battle, the battle line shifting yet again toward the Great Pyramid, many of the Temple Guard Legions already having fallen back up onto the steps.
Meanwhile, out beyond the city walls in the Skaven Ratmen lines, Right Claw Skurk of the Plague Clan was howling with laughter, drunk on an incomparable exhilaration. Behind Skurk, the Ratmen Artillery emplacements were unleashing every shell they had at full tilt; dozens upon hundreds of rounds hammered against the surface of the Great Pyramid like a deluge of stone rain.
Even with the Ancient Saint Shield that Mazda Moody had raised, and the sacred protections woven into the Pyramid’s stone, virus and plague still crept through the Lizardman ranks. Countless Spirit Lizards and Lizardman Warriors began to growl in torment; they could smell bile leaking from their entrails and the copper tang of blood filling their airways—the Skaven Ratmen’s pestilence was burrowing into their flesh.
Driven by grim necessity, Kuga ordered the army to fall back again. The Winged Dragon Rider squadrons had already taken horrific losses in their earlier blood-soaked clashes with Chaos Demons, yet under Kuga’s command they chose a suicidal assault. The remaining Winged Dragon Riders steered their Winged Dragons to beat their wings and claw their way higher into the sky, then tipped over into perfect plunging dives to strike the Skaven Ratmen Artillery positions.
The crashing boulders and the Winged Dragon Riders’ death-dives succeeded in annihilating a fair number of Plague Claw Catapults and dimensional stone lightning cannons,
Lord Skuk opened his jaws wide, watching as the catapults and dimensional stone lightning cannons went up in ruin. The Plague Clan’s Right Claw felt not the slightest pang of regret; instead he sneered without restraint. The Winged Dragon Riders’ dives had blasted the Artillery emplacements into showers of stone shards, Ratmen corpses flung in all directions—but the riders had paid dearly. By the time they had achieved their objective, fewer than one in ten Winged Dragon Riders could still take off again. Ravenous, covetous Skaven Slave Rats were sprawled atop the heaps of rider corpses, gnawing with abandon, shrieking in brutish satisfaction as they gorged on blood and meat.
The Winged Dragon Riders’ sacrifice was, to the Skaven Ratmen, nothing more than a minor annoyance. At Skurk’s order, the Slave Rats scrambled to set about repairing the siege engines.
What truly troubled Skurk was that he could not contact the Great Horned Rat. The Horned Rat God’s will flickered, on again off again, leaving the Plague Clan’s Right Claw perplexed. Just moments ago, deep within Skurk’s own will, the Great Horned Rat had loosed a few warning "squeak-squeak" tones—but they had faded back into nothing almost at once.
What was that? Lord Skuk, his entire body bulging with meaty tumors and leaking pus, did not know. He could only keep bellowing for a savage assault on the Lizardman ranks: "Forward! For the Great Horned Rat! For the Plague Clan!"
They could not afford to wait any longer. Skurk could already see the radiance seated atop the Great Pyramid—light fierce enough to pierce the entire Subspace. The First Generation Demon Toad, Venerable Crok, was slowly awakening!
Now the entire avenue of the Starlight Bridge was choked with Skaven Ratmen bodies. Tens of thousands of clawed feet churned the muddy ground; rotted ichor of plague and liquefied earth gurgled together in filthy pools, while shrouds of toxic fog and stench thick enough to make the mightiest Ancient Triceratops faint dead away in a single breath rolled across the field. And yet, within that miasma, the Skaven Ratmen of the Plague Clan felt a surge of spirit and strength like never before!
Slaughter the cold-blooded breed! Annihilate Lustria!
For the Great Horned Rat!
Lord Skuk of the Plague Clan led the charge in person at the very front, his whole form wreathed in the winds of pestilence, intent on leveling this first city of the Lizardmen with thunderous ferocity and butcher every enemy to the last. Under his banner, the most terrifying shock troops the Plague Clan possessed had mustered; he would lead this army, shrouded beneath clouds of disease, to sweep the battlefield like a storm!
The Plague Clan’s Plague Warrior Legion and Plague Monk Legion pressed close behind. The Plague Warriors gripped tight their Decaying Battle Halberds, weapons blessed with the Power of Plague, their infamy long since spread throughout all Lustria. Like the other formations of the Plague Army, these elite fighters were clad in ancient, foul-stained robes—their unmistakable mark.
The Plague Monk Legion were a band of utter madmen. These reeking abominations were famed far and wide for a battle-frenzy that outstripped any of their kin. Under Skurk’s leadership, the Plague Monks chanted the sacred verses from the Book of Plague, every word they spat dripping with the Great Horned Rat’s malice. Foam frothed on every mouth; many Plague Monks had already gone blind, shambling forward by biting down on the tails of comrades ahead. Yet none of this hampered their killing strength. From the very first clash, the Lizardman Warriors and Spirit Lizard Warriors—already exhausted from a brutal blood-battle with Chaos Demons—were thrown straight into slaughter. Plague and fatigue had gutted the Lizardmen’s fighting power, rendering the cold-blooded breed sluggish and brittle. One after another, Spirit Lizard Legions and Lizardman Warriors fell in relentless succession before the Plague Clan’s advance.