Then came a terrible scream from the palace. Aelyn spun, the painful prickling on her skin driven from her mind by fresh horror. Three of the infected charged down the carpeted hallway and burst from the arched door. Two hurled themselves onto palace guards, smashing the soldiers down the steps in clattering tangles of armour and hammers and flailing limbs. The third launched itself in a high arc and sailed towards the Swords. Instinct took over and Aelyn plucked a curved Wanderer’s dagger from her belt, flinging it to thump into the creature’s eye. She stepped aside, and the spore-stricken nobleman hit the cobbles with a wet crunch. Aelyn noted with distaste that pale fronds of mycelium had pushed through his skin like hairs. As his corpse lay twitching on the ground, the fronds sought purchase in the cobbles and began to dig in and spread.

‘We need to move,’ said Aelyn, shocked at how shaken she sounded. The attack of the infected had woken her companions, their mercenaries’ instincts taking over. They looked to her with fear and disgust in their eyes.

‘Where to?’ asked Romilla, then cursed as another mushroom split the web of skin between finger and thumb. ‘Where in the realms can we flee from such a malefic manifestation of the Plaguefather?’

‘Not Nurgle. Not Chaos at all,’ said Borik, sounding like he had been kicked in the chest. ‘We had it wrong.’

Aelyn heard more screams from within the palace, accompanied by the groan of buckling wood and metal, the crack of splintering stone. Something huge was stirring inside. To her left, the palace guards bludgeoned their infected into bloody pulp, before staggering away from the bodies looking aghast.

Everything was happening with nightmarish speed. Aelyn felt overwhelmed, her mind close to shutting down in self-defence. She couldn’t let that happen or they would all be lost. She wished for Hendrick. He would know what to do. She thrust the thought of him aside.

She could mourn later, but for now it was up to her to lead.

‘We need to get back inside,’ she began, forcing the words out, forcing herself not to stare up at the malevolent moon looming inescapably above her.

‘There’s something in there,’ replied Romilla, and Aelyn could see the priest was struggling too. ‘Some fungal obscenity. It grew out of the regent militant’s body and just kept growing. It filled half the feasting hall by the time I got out of there.’

‘Then we must be quick, before–’