The Gods were hungry. Malik could feel it in his chest, a faint tugging at his heart in the direction of the Blade he carried across his back. 

He could not see nor hear nor touch the Gods, but he knew they buzzed around him like flies, invisible, ravenous, eager to be nourished on the blood of mortals. So great were They that men and mutant were little more than Their cattle. And he, Malik, Swordarm and wielder of [i]Huntsman[/i], he was pleased to be Their instrument. Their  chosen butcher. 

No greater honor existed than to spend one's life satiating Them, and by keeping Them fed and content, sustaining all Azoth in being.

The Swordarm was walking alone, barefoot, clad in a simple white tunic. He carried nothing save the Blade slung across his back. He did not need to eat. He did not require water. If he nourished the Gods, They would nourish him in turn. [i]Devotion[/i], said the scriptures of the Forge, [i]is food enough for the Perfect.[/i] Always hungry, always parched, a true servant of the gods would never starve nor die of thirst- so long as he kept the Gods fed.

All around him rose pale, fleshy stalks of fungus tall and thick as any tree, swarming with glittering beetles and strung with tangles of grey moss. The underbrush was rampant with mushrooms of every color, interspersed with faintly waving tendrils that clung feebly at Malik's legs as he walked by.

The Squalid Vale was an unlovely place. 

Nestled between the low, jagged mountains of the Claws and the Western branch of the mighty Godsfangs, the Vale had been tamed, Malik knew, in times now gone. Settled by Ashlanders fleeing the wars of aelgmen and Dratha, then civilized by the Sashuls who had conquered the displaced nomads in their place of exile. The fungus-jungles had been burned back, the land cultivated and turned to fitting use. Towns and even cities had risen up here under the stern order imposed by Nyssos. The provincial capital of Xusa, never a metropolis, had nonetheless been famed for its intricate stonework and its magnificent Forge. 

But those times were over. While the Empire fractured, bandits, rebels and-inevitably- mutants, took the Vale for their own as the imperial armies fell back to protect more prosperous lands. Chaos and misrule allowed the jungle to return, and the Squalid Vale lived up to its name once more.

Malik could not help but feel a twinge of sadness as he passed by the broken stone of ancient salszi buildings, now mottled with lichen and grown over with fungal vines. Mourning what had become of his Empire.

The Order, he knew, would endure, even if the Empire it had helped conquer the known world failed. Privately, in that part of his mind he hoped even the Gods could not reach, he wondered why his superiors seemed so indifferent to the fate of the young Sashul. He wondered if the power of the Blade he was honored to carry might not be put to better use than hunting renegades at this time of unsurpassed peril. Could not a squadron of Swordarms be sent to defend threatened Zar Salis? To infiltrate the Ashlands and kill the heathen Khalul or his dread lieutenants? Could not the power of the Order be used to make the Empire great again?

Malik pushed such questions from his mind, bordering as they did on disobedience and doubt. It was not the role of a Swordarm to question, merely to obey, to feed the Gods, and to kill Their enemies.

The heathen Olms, he knew from the subconscious urgings of his Blade, lay somewhere many leagues ahead, on the other side of the Claws. Olms and the stolen weapon was Malik's business. Not questioning.

And besides, there were more immediate tasks at hand- They were hungry. If he was to continue his hunt for Olms, the Gods would need appeasing.

Malik came upon a clearing, filled with the slender, waving stalks of immature fungus-trees. He drew [i]Huntsman[/i] from its scabbard, admiring how it caught the dim light along its fine edge.

"COME BEASTS AND FEED THE GODS," shouted Malik at the top of his lungs. His voice echoed into the depths of the pale forest. 

He stood there, weapon drawn, waiting. His eyes were closed; his expression serene.

It took them the better part of an hour to appear, emerging into the clearing from the shadowed woods in all directions. Beastkin. Disgusting mutants with the bodies of men but the fanged, horned, slit-eyed heads of monsters. Hands twisted into claws. Skin mottled with fur and scales. Some had chitin mandibles where their mouths belonged. Many had more than two arms. 

It was also clear that some had been infested by the forest in which they dwelt, with fungal protrusions and the fruiting bodies of mushrooms sprouting from eye sockets, mouths, ears, armpits and joints.

Their weapons were varied and poor- some sported rusted axes of saliszi make, others crude hatchets and clubs of stone and wood. 

All in all, Malik was disappointed. A poor meal for the Gods, and a lackluster challenge for him. Despite the fact that there were well over thirty of the creatures all around him.

The beastkin snarled at each other in their barbarous tongue. Then they charged.