The Iscari, part 2
Drip
Drip
Drip
It was time. Decades more had passed in the materium. The time for action had come. She, the prisoner, had collected more and more of the blessed clean water as it had rained down upon her and watered the flowers to her feet. Her jailor, the Plague father, had watched her with despair and distrust as she grew stronger in resisting his gifts and attention, all that he bestowed upon her in his generosity. Yet life had returned to her, the aches of her body had waned, her skin had regained a healthier tone, her eyes once more held a sharpness to them.
Drip
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Drip
Vines now grew along the bars of her cage, their leafs vibrantly green, full of life. They would wither and die whenever the Plague father dumped his next creation from his cauldron at her, but they would regrow and they did so ever quicker with every cycle. She enjoyed watching him in his agitation. It had been what had pushed her forward. It was time. Time to strike back. In this moment her jailor's attention was not upon her, it was directed at someone else, he who brought her hope, he who had drawn the Rotten One's wrath.
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Drip-drip
He was bleeding the black pus that flowed in the veins of the infected among his people from their bodies and redeemed who he could. He banished the neverborn of the Rotten One or even destroyed them outright. Wrath, Ambition and Lust let themselves be guided by his leash, without none of them knowning it. Every drop of power given to her strengthened the prisoner's resolve. He could help her children so that they may free her. And he who defied the Lord of Despair, he had given her a window of opportunity. So she reached down into the living soil to her feet and took from it a single handful, a daisy blooming in it. A giggle reverberated in the bars of her cage.
Drip-drip
Drip-drip
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Far beyond her cage there was a copse of wailing trees, her target, her hope that she may rouse her children to action. So too she had to hope that this would even work in the first place. She kissed the little flower, drew her arm back, aimed and threw.
-
Yldaen did not know what was happening to her. She was in unimaginable pain. She wanted to vomit, yet her mouth was still made of rotting, fungus laced wood. She could feel an energy shooting through her. Her fingers! With a burst of energy she shook her hands and the disgusting nurgling-fruits growing on her flew off. Her feet broke free from the rest of the roots, the black bark shed from her skin. She opened her mouth and out spilled a slurry that she dared not to think about. Repugnant brown and black flies buzzed around her, yet they burst apart as voice reached Yldaen's ears. A voice that few living Aeldari had ever heard.
"GO! GO AND LOOK FOR HIM WHO GAVE ME HOPE! WHO GAVE ME STRENGTH! WHO FIGHTS THE ROTTEN ONE! HE WHO LEADS ON THE OTHER THREE!"
Yldaen could only stare as she saw the cage and the prisoner within. They, the seer council, they had been right. She was still alive and she was here, in the Plague father's garden. She needed to return back to the materium, back to her people, but how? Already, plaguetoads and plaguebearers were shambling towards her. What way did she-
"Ah, just in time. Not a second too late or too early. You are being rescued, please do not resist."
And so, with a full-out laughter from her rescuer, Yldaen was grabbed from behind and pulled through a gate which closed just behind her, making a sound not unlike a Mon'keigh whoopee cushion.
- (Edit: Whoops, missed the best part)
There is something fascinating in seeing a plaguebearer despair and shake itself in disbelief. What had been a mostly silent horde marching towards the Protectorate troops instead froze on the spot as if shell shocked. Then they all screamed with one voice.
"CAIN! HEATHEN! YOU WILL PAY FOR THIS!"
While they may have been shouting, they remained glued in place.
"KEEP FIRING! SEND 'EM BACK WHENCE THEY CAME FROM!"
Of course the Liberator knew how to call upon his faithful warriors to deliver the killing blow. Once they had done their work and purged the Plague father's forces, they burned what was left. Yet tales spread quickly and this one fight against the Lord of Despair was not the only instance of his foetid forces freezing in their tracks. Something had happened and the Lord Liberator was most certainly responsible. They even say that on occasion a daisy sprout grows from the bodies of the Rotten One's servants.