The Galaxy is Flood, Not Food

[Jackson Fox]

Day 18



"This is not a rebellion. I would like to make that clear to all. We four are the duly appointed governors of the God-Emperor's most blessed cities of Ate, Dolus, Janus, and Eris. Not only are we invested with His most sacred and holy will, but also authority granted to us by our most glorious and righteous Imperium of Man.

"The actions we take here today, some will call treachery, but nothing could be farther from the truth! We are not the traitors. We are not the ones who have brought calamity to this world. But we are the ones who will save our beloved world from the madness of the real traitor.

"The so-called 'Inquisitor' Catherine Ellen has stolen away badly needed soldiers for her own protection and to try to ensure we could not rise up to stand against her oppression. She claims to wield her authority in defense of the Imperium, yet she has failed at every turn to protect us.

"The eastern cities are enwrapped by chaos, cults commits atrocities against the innocent while eight regiments of Imperial Guard waits in Whiro, doing… nothing. Another twelve regiments of Guard stand at the ready in Deimos, doing… nothing. The Inquisitor even seems to have ensnared the minds of the blessed Sisterhood of the Cleansing Rains, who do nothing but act as guards and enforcers of the Inquisitor's will in the capital, beating down any who have the strength of faith and will to resist the false claims of this Inquisitor.

"The Orks that assail our world, the brutish greenskin xenos, are yet more proof of the Inquisitor's incompetence and illegitimacy. Millions lie dead, slaughtered by the foul xenos, yet just as will the cults of the east, she has not deployed the guard, nor even deigned to provide badly needed reinforcements to any other settlement. The south is ravaged, while the Inquisitor and the Planetary Governor, whose mind she has ensnared with foul technologies and witchcraft, remain inside their palace, unwilling to even look out upon the horrors they have caused.

"We are not so weak. We are not so frail.

"We declare ourselves the true servants of the Imperium of Man and of the God-Emperor of Mankind. We declare a righteous crusade against the madmen that have overtaken this world and we invite all of strong faith and mind to join us!

"For the Emperor! For Mankind!"

"…"

"This is not a rebellion. I would like to-."

"ENOUGH!" Ellen spat viciously and the projection, containing the four, stoic-looking figures of the city governors of Ate, Dolus, Janus, and Eris was cut off a moment later by Vidriov. "HERETICAL SCUM!"

"I calculate a high likelihood of a third party hiding behind these four," Vidriov stated. "Their coordination in this matter and their ability to hide it from all prior investigations indicates-."

"Thank you, Vidriov," Ellen said and the tech-priest fell silent. "This isn't genestealers, that much is obvious. Given how strongly they claimed support for the God-Emperor, I suspect Chaos to be involved."

Vidriov nodded, clearly having been going to say that before.

"I don't suppose we can stop this message from spreading?" Purilla asked, a deep frown on her face.

"Message was first received two hours, forty-five minutes and fifty-two seconds ago. Cessation of message at the receiving ends of all loyal hive cities by cleared tech-priests took one hour, twenty-two minutes, and thirty-three seconds." Vidriov replied. "The number of uncleared people who likely have seen or know of the message has already surpassed the thousands. The chances that individuals of influence that will not be easily purged or otherwise silenced have not already heard the message is… astronomically unlikely."

Ellen spat another curse. Genestealers, Orks, and now a rebellion, most likely of Chaotic origins. Not to mention…

"What of Malum?" Purilla asked. "They remain our only uncontested bastion in the south now. Really, they're our only uncontested bastion anywhere, given the ork problem."

"Malum tech-priests, untouched by Organism-04," Vidriov paused, glancing at Ellen in a way that bordered on insubordinate, before continuing, "Report no unusual activity by the hive's governor or cohorts."

"That's hardly clearing of their name," Ellen stated, icily. "Given that the tech-priests in these rebellious cities reported no such unusual activity either prior to the blackout."

Vidriov looked like he was about to reply, when someone spoke into Ellen's commsbead. It was Adrian Lensk, the lieutenant in charge of Ellen's Tempestus Scions that were guarding the door to the very chambers she now stood in.

"Inquisitor, the Planetary Governor is here. He's 'demanding' an audience."

Ellen resisted the urge to both roll her eyes and narrow them in anger. She could guess what the governor wanted to speak to her about, but for him to demand to speak with her was nearing the same levels of disobedience as the four newest traitors to the Imperium. She was sorely tempted to tell Lensk to escort the governor back to his bedchambers and lock him in there until all this was over… But she was also swiftly running out of allies.

"Escort him in," Ellen ordered, before turning to her two advisers. "Leave us. And Vidriov, inform the Canoness that I wish to speak with her as soon as the governor has deigned to depart."

"Yes, Inquisitor," Lensk replied and it was echoed by Vidriov. Both the tech-priest and the psyker quickly departed and Ellen took a deep breath as she turned towards the heavy doors swinging open.

Of the dozen or so Planetary Governors Catherine Ellen had had the displeasure to meet, few had stuck in her mind like Selvik. He was tall and scrawny to the point of looking malnourished, though she knew well from the number of feasts he held that such was not the case. His face was drawn and almost bat-like in its proportions.

The man was so thin and wiry that Ellen had suspected him of being some kind of eldar hybrid. A thorough investigation by Vidriov into the man's blood had proven this was not the case, though the Governor was shown to be the product of generations of debilitating incest. Still, he was within the acceptable range of genetic deviation from the God-Emperor's design. She could not claim mutation as a reason for removing him from office. Assuming his family's trend continued, however, future generations of Monstrum governors would not be so lucky.

He came to a stop in front of her desk, seeming like a stiff breeze might snap him like a twig. "I require a report."

She could admire the audacity in the man, at the very least, not to mention the sheer, suicidal bravery it took to face down an inquisitor, let alone one wearing a full suit of power armor. Ellen was not a small woman by any means. Even outside of her armor, though she would not have stood higher than him, she'd easily have outbulked him in terms of muscle mass. And in her armor, she stood half a head above him and could have tossed him across the chambers with the same ease as a child might throw a doll that had fallen out of favor.

"You 'require' one?" Ellen asked, a challenging look on her face. "Governor Monstrum, I believe you're forgetting yourself."

Selvik, for as genetically weak as he was, could not be said to lack strength of mind or will. There was a reason he had remained in power. He paused but did not wilt under her gaze as a lesser man might have. "Inquisitor Ellen, I do not forget myself. You are a guest of this world and all we possess is at your disposal, of course. However, this planet has been the responsibility of my family since the days of the Great Crusade led by Him on Terra. I must be kept appraised of the situation or I cannot fulfill my duty as is my privilege and obligation."

The truth in that statement was dubious, to say the least. Oh, Selvik was loyal to the Throne, of that Ellen was reasonably certain, but his claims regarding his heritage were backed up by less than substantial evidence. There was more fiction than fact in his family tree and more than a few signs of a past civil war in Monstrum's history. One that had since been conveniently forgotten by history.

"You are sent reports, regularly," Ellen stated, giving away nothing. "Have you not received them?"

"I have," Selvik stated. "However, they are not sufficient. They do not tell me what is being planned to save my world."

"The God-Emperor's world," Ellen corrected sharply. Selvik swallowed.

"Of course," He agreed swiftly. "So, might I inquire what is to be done to defend the God-Emperor's domain from these xenos and rebels?"

"Very well," Ellen said, as though she were bestowing a favor. She turned to the ancient display and activated its controls. Soon, an image of the northern half of the habitable zone of Monstrum appeared. The hive cities were surrounded on all sides by massive Ork Roks and the rest of their largest craft. Mobs of Orks were represented by bright green dots that glowed, while Imperial defenders were red. The numbers were roughly even, but Ellen knew how those whose only familiarity with Orks came from the Imperium's propaganda might be misled by such things.

"Ah, that is not so bad as the reports made it seem," Selvik said, seemingly relieved and even smiling. "With the Hammer of the Imperium at our disposal, there is very little chance of the greenskins doing much harm, no? A few weeks, months at most, I'd wager."

"The Guard will not be deployed outside of Deimos and the regiments already in Whiro," Ellen stated calmly, but firmly. Selvik's eyes widened slightly and a bit of his confidence left him.

"A-ah, I suppose you want to keep them close to protect the capital. An understandable strategy, of course. And Whiro… To bottle in those cultists in the south, yes?" Selvik asked.

"Yes," Ellen nodded, but said nothing more.

"Well, then I think the PDF can be relied upon to handle the xenos…" Selvik continued to study the display for a moment, when his brow furrowed and he frowned. "This is only the north? What of the south? Those filthy rebels in Janus and the rest?"

Ellen was not surprised that Selvik knew of the rebellion, nor that he spoke about it as though it were common knowledge. By this point, it likely was, at least in the governor's court. She suppressed her frown and maintained the mask.

"We have little means of striking at our enemies there while besieged here, governor," Ellen said.

"Ah, but what of Malum?" Selvik asked and Ellen felt a slight tensing in her jaw. "I have seen the reports say they repelled their attacks quite capably."

Ellen wanted to curse. She had slipped up, altering those reports. In order to hide the fact that there was a plague that was seemingly harmless to humans and also anathema to xenos, she had intercepted the communications between the capital and Malum and changed them to simply show that the hive had fought off the Orks.

"Some leaders are prone to exaggeration, Governor," Ellen said coolly, not allowing her frustration to show. "I am currently investigating the veracity of those reports. When something seems too good to be true, it often is."

"Perhaps," Selvik said noncommittally, and Ellen could have shot him then and there. "Though sometimes one shouldn't look too closely at a blessing from the God-Emperor when that is all it is."

"It is my duty as an Inquisitor not to have such a mindset, governor." Ellen spoke with an icy tone and Selvik wisely shut his mouth and pretended to study the display. "Malum is also under quarantine for an outbreak of an unknown plague. I would not wish to spread that across the planet you rule."

"It hardly matters if a few traitors get sick," Selvik said with a look in his eye that told Ellen he knew she was trying to play to his ego. "The faithful will always be protected by His Light."

"Indeed, but we cannot walk blindly into darkness just because we have His Light," Ellen replied. "We must be cautious."

"I imagine that didn't work on Canoness Praxiah when she told you?" Selvik asked, as though making a joke, but Ellen's face turned stone-like.

"Told me?" Ellen repeated, as though she misheard.

"Yes, told you-," Selvik paused, glancing at her in confusion, before realization dawned and the color drained from his thin face. "She didn't tell you."

"Tell. Me. What?"

"I-, uh, I-…" Selvik's confidence was gone, replaced by barely contained terror at the intense look in Ellen's eyes. "She-, she's left! She told me this morning after we first heard about the rebels! She's going to the south to purge the faithless! I thought you knew!"

"Left? Left the city? That's impossible," Ellen said, in utter disbelief. Not only were they under siege, the tunnels and other exits through the city were all watched by sentinels she had placed there. There was no physical way for anyone to even try to get out without her being alerted.

"The Sisters, their chapel has an old service tunnel!" Selvik explained quickly. His nervousness was palpable. "It is used by their trainees during their initiation ceremony. They have to walk under the Barren Lands and back, just under the surface. The-the heat is supposed to cleanse them of their sins, bring them closer to the fire of the God-Emper-!"

Ellen shoved past the governor, who squawked in surprise and fear, falling onto his side. He might have cracked his skull open for all she cared as she stormed out of the chambers. "LENSK!"

"MA'AM!" The Tempestus Scion in question snapped to attention, as did all five of the other Scions left to guard the chamber.

"Get me onto a Thunderhawk, NOW!"



Hundreds of kilometers away from Deimos, if one placed their ear on the ground along a certain, unseen path, and ignored the noise of countless Orks roaring and baying for bloodshed and battle, the sound of vehicles trundling along could be heard. The wheels of troop transports, the treads of tanks, and the mechanical gait of constructs.

If one was blessed with exceptional hearing, one might have heard something else as well, beneath the clanking and grinding of machinery. It was the sound of a hymn, one modulated by the sound of sealed helmets and filtration devices.

 

[Jackson Fox]

Day 18, Continued



In the deepest parts of the Barren Lands, subject to the fiery gaze of the system's star, it was raining. This rain was not the acidic waters of other parts of Monstrum, shrouded as they were by thick clouds of smog, but something more primordial, something that should only have been found on planets going through the first stages of formation.

In the Barren Lands, it rained liquid flame.

A tech-priest familiar with geological formations would likely marvel at the rarity of such a find and note that the combination of the star's heat and the high number of pockets of natural gases embedded in the craggy terrain led to such impressive sights, if one had the proper equipment to view such events. Indeed, many tech-priests with such specializations had done just that. Millennia ago, a group of the Omnissiah's cultists had come to study the phenomenon more closely. Those studies were long forgotten by virtually all on Monstrum and Canoness Evelayn Praxiah was no exception to that.

To the Canoness and her Order of Adeptas Sororitas, the fiery rain that scorched the white-hot rocks of the Barren Lands was not the result of any freak acts of nature, but proof of the design of the God-Emperor on full display. It was not just superheated rock that pelted the land, but a representation of His cleansing flame and where they derived their Order's name.

So, it was seen as an auspicious omen that the Barren Lands were subject to the greatest fire-rain it had received in eight generations, even if the Sisters could not see it. They could still feel it, both spiritually and physically.

The tunnel was not meant for so many to travel within it, let alone over a hundred vehicles. However, the Sisters persevered, as they always did, with determination and unwavering faith. Over the trundle of the machines, through the smoke produced by their engines, in spite of the sweltering heat that threatened to cook them alive inside their own armor, they marched and sang hymns proclaiming His glory.

The serfs that accompanied the Sisters were just as zealous in their faith and encouraged by the strength of those they served. However, their bodies were more limited in what they could endure. Even if they pushed through the pain that wracked them, their minds were tested by the tunnel's sweltering heat.

Many collapsed where they stood rather than willingly leave their posts or request a break. None wished to be found wanting. Even some of the servitors were beginning to malfunction and those that could not be repaired swiftly had to be left behind. A practice of cycling the exhausted serfs with those carried by vehicles, the interiors of which were marginally cooler than the tunnel itself, was quickly implemented as soon as the fire rain, which would only drive the temperature up even higher, was detected. After a prayer thanking the God-Emperor for His blessing and sign of favor had been uttered, of course.

Not all of the serfs would survive or remain fit for duty, but their numbers were great, and replacements could surely be found in Malum. A city that had fended off attacks by treacherous cultists and foul xenos could not be lacking in faith, after all. Praxiah suspected that the claims of a plague wracking the hive was merely another of Catherine Ellen's schemes or plays for power.

The Canoness marched at the head of the long column of Sisters and rumbling vehicles, leading the way down its dimly lit path. The journey reminded her of the days she had first journeyed down the tunnel, with her fellow initiates. Not all that had entered with her had returned. Delirious, dehydrated, and half-mad from the heat, but alive. The memory of being worthy, at being accepted into the ranks of the Sisterhood, still brought a swelling of pride to her chest.

They marched on, past the skeletons of those past initiates who had failed, their flesh long gone, only their bleached bones remaining. Countless thousands deemed unworthy by the God-Emperor and cast aside over numberless centuries. Failures, worthy of neither pity nor remembrance, their only use now a solemn reminder to initiates of the price those that lacked faith would have exacted upon them.

At three hundred and sixty-two, Praxiah was a veteran of countless campaigns against foul xenos and heretics alike. She had waged many crusades throughout the Ghoul Stars in the God-Emperor's name and her faith had only grown in that time. However, the last war she had been called upon to wage had been decades ago. She would never doubt the God-Emperor's plan for her, but for the last half-century, things had been… far too quiet.

Fifty-four years, Praxiah and her Sisters had remained on Monstrum, secluded in prayer and contemplation. Such a time of peace was… unprecedented, but it had driven Evelayn to the brink of despair. For it was not a time of peace. Wars were still being fought throughout the sector, heretics still drew breath, and filthy xenos remained, endangering the Imperium. And yet, in fifty-four years, not once had Praxiah and her Order been called upon to defend the God-Emperor's realm.

Their last campaign, which had been against Eldar raiders, had nearly destroyed the Order of the Cleansing Rains. The last canoness had been killed by the leader of the xenos pirates, and over eight hundred of Praxiah's Sisters had perished alongside her. Praxiah had been the one to avenge them by slaying the eldar and leading her remaining Sisters in shattering the marauding fleet.

The Administratum had labelled the campaign a 'minor skirmish' ending in victory. And then… nothing.

Over four decades, the Order was slowly rebuilt, brought back up to full strength. New Sisters replaced the dead. And, for the last fourteen years, they had waited, dutifully, for the call.

When Catherine Ellen had arrived on Monstrum, intent on raising an army against a treacherous world, Praxiah had been overjoyed and offered her Order gladly for the chance to serve the God-Emperor once more. The Inquisitor had accepted her offer, but then the warp storm had interfered and things took a turn for the worse.

Praxiah had watched as Catherine Ellen played her little games, balancing the hive cities against one another. She seemed to believe that the entire planet was moments away from a full-blown civil war.

Rather than calming the waters, however, the Inquisitor seemed to prefer needling the situation, exercising her Inquisitorial authority to move pieces around the board rather than investigate the situation more thoroughly and seek less heavy-handed methods of resolution. That was her right, of course, but it made things more tense rather than less.

Praxiah understood the complex history of politics that ran Monstrum quite well. She had to, as canoness. The Sisters could not afford to remain above such petty squabbling, unfortunately, as Monstrum provided the bulk of their equipment and many of their serfs. She had offered her experience and advice to Ellen, and the Inquisitor had seemingly accepted, yet never actually called upon her. Again, as was her right.

The quarantine of Malum was the first time Praxiah had felt doubt, not in the God-Emperor, but in one of those considered to be his left hand. The Inquisitor claimed a dangerous plague wracked the hive city and commanded it be cut-off from the rest of the planet, entirely. Yet, according to the words of convent servants within Malum itself, no such plague existed. By all accounts, the Inquisitor had quarantined a perfectly healthy city for no reason.

That was the start of the rumors, mostly among the tech-priests. That the Inquisitor had found something within Malum, a blessing of the God-Emperor, some ancient wonder of humanity. Praxiah had not paid attention to such things, of course. As much as she respected the red robed priests of Mars, their theological understanding was flawed, especially when it came to whether their Omnissiah was an aspect of the God-Emperor or the other way around.

Then, the cultists had risen up in Limos. Praxiah's greatest shame. She had failed to see such disease festering below the surface. The Order of the Cleansing Rains had prepared to march out at once, to purge the hive of all who spat upon the name of the God-Emperor.

And been ordered to stand down by Catherine Ellen.

Such a thing was practically unthinkable, but Ellen was still an Inquisitor. One invested with the authority of the God-Emperor. So, Praxiah had obeyed, much to the displeasure of some of her Sisters, both new and old. Many had chosen to take the Oath of Repentance for their failure and Praxiah sometimes wondered if she herself shouldn't have done the same.

The Inquisitor had claimed she wished to keep them at full strength, or as close to it as she could manage. The same reason why she was so slow to deploy even a portion of the Guard regiments she had raised. Praxiah had wondered, in the back of her mind, whether that was true or if it was because the cultists had seemingly focused the whole of their ire upon Malum.

She had tried to squash those doubts. After all, if the rumors were true, why would an Inquisitor be content to allow a blessing from the God-Emperor be destroyed? That question had an answer that was obvious, but too terrible to comprehend.

When she learned of Malum's overwhelming victory, she had sent a request to the Inquisitor for the city to be celebrated or commended in some way, but she wasn't sure Ellen had even received her message. It had become increasingly difficult for anyone to get an audience outside of her two advisors, the Genetor Vidriov and the witch, Purilla.

Then the Orks had arrived and Praxiah had thought, certainly, that the Sisters would fight. That they would launch a righteous crusade against the greenskins. But once more, they had been forbidden from taking the offensive against them.

Once more, Malum, so clearly blessed by the God-Emperor that it should have been obvious to all now, had repelled the Ork assault with utter ease. In fact, reports from those servants inside the city claimed the vile greenskins had not returned since their initial attack, so monumental was their failure, making Malum the sole hive city on the planet left free from besieging xenos or in the control of vile heretics and traitors.

The last straw had been the declaration of secession by the four hives of Ate, Janus, Dolus, and Eris. Though they claimed loyalty, Praxiah knew those governors well from past encounters over the decades and had had doubts about their faith for many years.

She could not, would not, be denied a third time. Her Sisters would go to war again, ire of the Inquisition be damned, and fight once more in the God-Emperor's name. Let Him on Terra judge her if she was false, but she knew in her heart that Ellen no longer sought to follow His plan.

They would raise an army of the faithful in Malum and march out and on towards Janus, the Sisters leading the way. She would demand each governor surrender to her and be interrogated for any signs of corruption. Then, when they were deemed false, they would be executed, and their city's purged of their followers. As the Inquisitor should have done with the cult of Limos in the first place.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a mechanical gait coming closer and she heard the voice of Legatine Seritta Adelus. Most of the officers in the Order were veterans almost as old as Praxiah herself, those that had survived the battles with the Eldar. It wasn't favoritism, most of the ranks had to be filled by veterans who were experienced. Seritta Adelus was one of the few of the newcomers that had proven herself competent enough in peace-time to be granted a rank as esteemed as Legatine without that experience.

"Canoness, we have visitors." Despite the helmet that covered her face and slightly modulated her voice, Praxiah knew the Sister was smiling wryly. Strong in faith, in mind, and in arm, but not necessarily the most… serious of her Sisters. It wasn't unusual for less experienced Sisters of Battle be less stoic than their elders, but few were able to walk the line between propriety and insubordination as well as Seritta Adelus.

"I have not seen our scouts report back," Praxiah stated, her brow furrowing. "Explain."

"Catherine Ellen wishes to speak with you," Seritta said, her voice tinted with just a hint of amusement. "She's waiting at the back of our line, with a host of around twenty Tempestus Scions. All armed."

Praxiah wasn't sure whether to curse or smile. She had suspected the Inquisitor would follow them once she'd learned of their departure, even if Praxiah had done her best to keep their movements hidden from the spies that had been nestled throughout Deimos. She had only told the Planetary Governor to ensure that Ellen knew they did what they did in the name of the God-Emperor and were not traitors.

Whether that would work was another matter entirely and Praxiah felt a thin weed of fear and doubt begin to curl around her heart. Had she made the right decision? Was she the one acting against the God-Emperor's Will?

She ripped that weed out, root and stem, and crushed it. She was a Sister of Battle, a Canoness of His Light, and she would never stray from His path. She had survived the Cleansing Rains, Catherine Ellen would not stop her.

"Inform her she may come to the front of the line to speak with me," Praxiah said.

"Canoness? You're… not going to her?" Seritta asked, sounding almost shocked.

"Correct," Praxiah replied with a small dip of her helmet. Seritta nodded and seemed about to speak into her commbead, when Praxiah added, "Go and tell her in person, would you? I wish for you and your Retributors to provide a proper escort for her."

"As you command, Canoness," Serrita said, bowing, perhaps out of instinct to hide the grin that was no doubt spreading across her face.



Serrita, not for the first time, was glad of the helmet she wore this day. Beyond just the protection it provided her against the smog produced by the promethium-guzzling war machines and the cooling systems it provided. She knew some of her Sisters had deactivated those systems for this march, perhaps intent on reliving their initiation, but Serrita felt no such need.

This time, she was glad of it for the fact that it hid her sidelong studying of Inquisitor Catherine Ellen's face, only partly covered by a rudimentary breath filter, drinking in the barely contained frustration therein. She had not met the Inquisitor before, nor had they been properly introduced even now as she escorted the woman past formations of Battle-Sisters and columns of vehicles, but Serrita knew enough about her.

Like any of the Adeptas Sororitas, Serrita held the Inquisition in nothing but esteem and respect. They did the God-Emperor's work. However, while the institutions formed by His command were without flaws, the individuals within them were rarely so perfect. Catherine Ellen was seeming proof of that.

Telling a Sister of Battle not to join the fight against heresy, to stay her hand against the mutant. It was beyond ludicrous; it was outright going against the Will of the God-Emperor. Rumors of Ellen being a heretic were rare, but some had reached Serrita's ears. While she could not be so sure of the woman's true loyalties, at best Catherine Ellen was an idiot in Serrita's eyes. A crass term, yes, but the only one that really encapsulated her views of the Inquisitor.

So, Serrita enjoyed the look on Ellen's face, especially as her eyes seemed to widen in rage behind her transparent goggles at the sight of Canoness Evelayn Praxiah, marching proudly at the front of a column of Celestans, not even deigning to look back upon the Inquisitor.

"Canoness," Ellen growled, having to almost shout over the noise of the Order on the march. The Inquisitor stepped past the Celestans and coming up alongside the Canoness. "Kindly halt your march so we might… speak."

Serrita and her squad of Retributors fell in alongside the Celestans. Their distance was just on the edge of what was respectful and still well within earshot of the conversation that had piqued Serrita's interest.

"The God-Emperor's Sororitas do not halt when they march in His name, Inquisitor," Praxiah replied, still staring straight ahead. "If you would speak with me, come march alongside me as we head for Malum."

"Malum," the Inquisitor spoke the name with something approaching malice, "Is under quarantine by order of the God-Emperor's Inquisition."

"The faithful fear no plague, Inquisitor, but your concern is noted and appreciated," Praxiah said and Serrita almost burst out laughing, but wisely bit her tongue.

"Your fearlessness is not in question, Canoness," The Inquisitor bit out. "Of that you can rest assured you have proven with this… excursion."

"Then you understand why this must happen, Inquisitor," Praxiah said, finally deigning to turn and face the Inquisitor, the glowing red lenses of her helmet fixed squarely upon her. "The God-Emperor's Will must be enacted. The Adeptas Sororitas are His instruments."

"As is the Inquisition, Canoness," Ellen replied and Serrita could almost hear the Canoness' grin with her next words.

"Then we are glad to have your support, Inquisitor," Praxiah said and before Ellen could reply, the Canoness continued. "Though, as a fellow servant of the God-Emperor, I advise you retire from the column before long. The heat of this tunnel is dangerous to… some. As you can see from the bodies."

Ellen's eyes widened in shock before narrowing in wrath. However, the Inquisitor was silent for a long while. Serrita stepped over then, her Retributors, their heavy bolters held at rest in their arms, following alongside her.

"I will escort you back to your Scions, Inquisitor," Serrita said. Her voice made it clear she wasn't offering.

Ellen's eyes swept from the Canoness to Serrita and back, her jaw clearly at work behind her filter. The Inquisitor's power armored hand seemed to twitch, as though her fingers wished dearly to curl around someone's throat or the grip of her bolt pistol, displayed openly at her side. If she tried, she'd be dead before she could get a shot off.

"Very well," Ellen sniffed haughtily, tearing herself away from Praxiah's side and storming in the opposite direction. Serrita followed, though she kept her distance this time. As much as needling someone like Ellen would bring her joy, doing so to an Inquisitor whose wrath had just been provoked was a poor idea.



Ahsael whispered as he worked, carving through the flesh of the whimpering sacrifice. Each burst of fresh fear and pain brought the flickering forms of the neverborn into further focus, their bodies taking new, horrible shapes as they shifted from unreal to real. He could feel their hungry gazes linger on the soul of the mortal psyker… and on his own.

His whispers surrounded them, the arcane words taking psychic form, collars to bind these petulant neverborn, to command them. It was a simple trade. The soul of this sacrifice, and any whose slaughter he commanded them to enact thereafter, in exchange for service.

He had performed this ritual over nine thousand times, bound nine times that number of daemons to his service over the millennia. He could practically perform it in his sleep.

He thought of the encroaching war that was to come. The Inquisitor's position was built upon a quickly disintegrating foundation. The Ork invasion had been unexpected but made ensuring the joint betrayals of both Eris and Ate in addition to Janus and Dolus an easy task. The inaction of the Inquisitor and the Imperium had proven an even greater boon. The governors, both those that had some insight on Ahsael's plans and those oblivious to them, had played their roles perfectly.

His followers could now move all but openly. Eris and Ate, along with certain sections of the outer hive in both Janus and Dolus, would soon find their defenses compromised by unknown saboteurs. As the Orks poured in, slaughtering the civilians, despair would fall. The Imperium not intervene against the xenos, solidifying the belief that the capital had abandoned them. Faith would weaken and, when at their weakest and most vulnerable, the illuminating light of change would come to deliver them all.

He smiled and then felt a psychic backlash from the ritual as the neverborn nearly bucked free from their chains and he swallowed a curse as he refocused once more on the ritual. The lapse was an unforgivable mistake, one the daemons had almost made sure he wouldn't have lived to regret.

He turned his full attention back to the dark sorceries he was enacting. He did not think of the war that was to come, of the great changes he would bring. He did not think of the mortal vessels who surrounded him, basking in the glory of the Great Ocean, waiting for their new masters to possess them, under the unwavering watch of his Rubric marine.



Tide felt his roots growing deeper and deeper, not just in the underhive of Malum, but all across Monstrum. The cultists that had infiltrated the hive had done their work well, already spreading his spores across the hive cities of both Dolus and Janus. Their rebellion was unexpected, but perhaps not all that surprising given the presence of a Tzeentch cult. Ate and Eris seemed to be ensnared by the cult, but not so totally as the other cities. His numbers there were still small, not enough to affect any thing on a grand level, and there had been a few members of the cult he'd avoided infecting, automatically self-destructing any spores that came in contact with them.

Namely, the two Chaos Space Marines that seemed to be running the show, Ahsael and Uirus, who seemed to be the former's subordinate. Tide wasn't too pleased to learn of the presence of a pair of sorcerers, but it had been inevitable that he would encounter some eventually. His dealing with Vra'kzil had given him a boost in confidence in handling Warp-related shenanigans, but that had been under a specific set of circumstances. On his own turf, so to speak.

Depending on how strong this sorcerer was, Tide knew he might be under a very real threat. While he doubted someone as powerful as Magnus the Red would be skulking around on a random hive world, there were plenty of Psykers not as strong who could still kill armies. Tide didn't have a counter for psychic abilities beyond the use of his Domain, and he wasn't entirely sure how to use that in any case. His studies of it thus far had been limited and cautious, particularly around the rift that appeared to lead into the Warp itself. He had no interest in drawing attention to his little hole in unreality.

He could probably overwhelm the sorcerers under waves of Flood Forms. His forces in Malum alone had skyrocketed thanks to the Ork attack. Their corpses had been burned to cinders as far as every Altered mind in Malum knew. Orks were excellent for the biomass they provided. Even an average Boy had more than twice the mass of a regular human. If he were to utilize all the biomass he had gathered to himself in Malum to create just humans, he'd be able to field quite an army at around sixteen million. And it would only be growing from there.

Would that be enough for a sorcerer though? He couldn't be sure. He didn't have enough information. The Altered cultists all thought of Ahsael as something approaching a demigod, but the displays of power he had shown them were not exactly planet-shattering, merely impressive. The summoning and binding of daemons, the creation of daemonhosts, reducing those who displeased him to ashes, that sort of thing.

Ahsael did not seem that powerful. He only had one fellow Space Marine as a servant after all, not including the lone Rubric bodyguard. But, Tzeentch worshippers were excellent at misdirection and none of the Altered cultists knew the true extent of Ahsael's might.

The cultists were slower than the genestealers to implement their plans, but Tide had gotten somewhat of an idea through his Altered. The sabotage of one's own defenses seemed foolish, but Tide suspected the idea was to cause suffering and pain, if only to catch the eye of the Ruinous Powers and draw their attention. There may have been more to it, but Ahsael was not one to share his plans in long, villainous monologues.

Tide kept running through possible ways of dealing with the sorcerer swiftly, but his attention turned elsewhere. Far above the planet's surface, the space hulk's corridors were silent, quiet except for the soft padding of flesh over ancient metal. He doubted he'd killed all the Orks, but it had been hours since he'd last encountered any of them. The hulk's retrofitted hangars were emptied of craft, presumably taken by the Orks to the surface, joining the WAAAGH! below. Had he scared them off or simply slaughtered the last of them? Even now he hadn't explored the entire hulk, so it wasn't impossible there were clutches still in hiding somewhere.

There hadn't been very many Orks on the hulk, a hundred thousand or less, but the biomass was still ample, especially as the Flood-Ork spores continued to grow and spread, providing him with a real-time map of the structure as sensor-stalks grew on every surface, creating a network of eyes and ears.

The treasures he had found were ample, though nothing as spectacular as the forge he had found, which was odd. What was odder was the fact that he was quickly discovering a large section of the hulk's core, nearly twenty kilometers in diameter, had been cordoned off by closed bulkheads, some areas leading into it shut off by magnetically sealed doors, others blocked by collapsed ship sections so tightly packed not even his spores had been able to pass through.

It was more than just odd, it was concerning. Had the Orks sealed this off? There were no memories of them even realizing the enclosed area was there. Had it been some group prior to the Orks' acquisition of this hulk? Some freak accident?

He doubted that last one. 40k was not a setting where such things just happened. There was something inside the closed area, something that either hadn't wanted anything to get in… Or something that someone hadn't wanted to get out.

Tide, not being an idiot, gave the sections a wide berth, though he maintained a constant watch through his sensor stalks on every area that seemed to lead into the enclosed space. If there was something that had made someone scared enough to create a twenty-kilometer wide prison inside a space hulk, he wasn't going to mess with it until he had more information and a lot more prep time. Perhaps once all this was over he'd crack open this particular egg, but for now he'd be err on the side of caution.



Purilla stepped inside the laboratory, her eyes quickly taking in the room. A single tech-priest stood over a dissection table, poking around inside the skull of a purestrain genestealer, but it wasn't Vidriov. It was one of his subordinates, whose name Purilla wasn't sure of, but he looked up, seemingly surprised by her presence, stopping his work.

"Hello," Purilla greeted him with a nod of her head. The tech-priest was young, she could tell. He still had most of his flesh and his face was clear of almost any augmentations save for the cylindrical eye that glared out at her from his right socket.

"Greetings, Psyker Purilla Olivia," The tech-priest intoned, almost as though he were trying to sound mechanical. It was natural from someone like Vidriov, but coming from someone who still looked so human, it seemed almost comical. Purilla kept her face straight. "What is the reason for your presence?"

"I'm looking for Vidriov," Purilla said simply, approaching the table, feigning interest in the decapitated genestealer. "Is he in?"

"The Genetor went to assist Inquisitor Ellen," He said before resuming his work, seemingly thinking the conversation was ended.

"I see," Purilla said, still looking at the genestealer. The tech-priest's mind was agitated despite his calm demeanor. It was so clear compared to older tech-priests like Vidriov, whose augmentations were rarely only surface level. This one had not cut away at his own mind to replace it with mechanical components.

"Do you require further information?" The tech-priest asked after a long moment of silence. He didn't seem comfortable around psykers. Or perhaps it was because she was not of his order? Vidriov's subordinates rarely interacted with others.

"No," Purilla said simply. Her eyes seemed to study the exposed brain as the tech-priests knife worked its way around and through it, carving away pieces of interest for further study, but her mind was focused elsewhere. She was a serpent, coiled in the underbrush, staring at a prey animal that knew something was wrong, but could not say what.

"Do you intend to wait for the Genetor here?" The tech-priest's question was tinted by a hint of frustration. His hands worked dutifully, but she could tell the distraction of her presence was affecting them. Just a little push…

"I believe I will. You will not mind, of course?" Her question was enough, the tech-priest twitched almost bodily, his knife making a cut just a bit too deep. The cultist of the Omnissiah wanted to swear, she could tell, as he refocused on the task at hand and in that opening she struck, her mind reaching out to his. "Stop working."

The tech-priest froze for a moment and Purilla felt his mind struggling for a moment against her influence.

Then, the man withdrew his hands from the xeno's cranium and wiped off the scalpel before setting it aside. The tech-priest turned to face her, his face blank.

"Is the laboratory under surveillance?"

"Yes," The tech-priest said. This time the monotone of his voice had nothing to do with him trying to sound mechanical. "There are three different augurs."

She bit down a swear. She'd only known about two of them, so she was glad she'd asked.

"Can you access them?"

"Not without permission from the Genetor."

"Could you do it without permission?"

"Yes."

"After I depart, you will destroy all evidence of my coming here. Wipe the records in these augurs. If anyone asks, it was an error with the machine spirit."

"Yes."

"Show me to where you keep vials of Organism-04."

The tech-priest turned and moved towards a seemingly empty wall, Purilla following behind him, even as she kept her hold over his mind. His will was not great, but this wasn't easy for her either. The tech-priest pressed a certain spot on the wall and it swung open, revealing a secret compartment filled with nearly a hundred vials, each no larger than her index finger. Each one was filled with a sickly yellow substance, though some were distilled in a clear liquid.

"Is that water?"

"Yes. Organism-04 has been determined to be able to survive in water, as well as six other liquid substances including alcohol."

Purilla's eyes widened slightly. That little tidbit of information hadn't been shared with her or, as far as she knew, with the Inquisitor herself. She wasn't sure what Vidriov was planning, but if he intended to utilize the organism to his own ends… Well, all the more reason for her to do this.

"Give me one with water."

The tech-priest plucked up one of the vials, handing it to her. Purilla stared at the item in her hand, the object of her desires for what felt like an eternity. She did not allow herself time to doubt, unfastening the top and downing the liquid in one gulp. Despite the unpleasant appearance of the substance, it tasted like plain water.

She waited for a moment, unsure what was going to happen. Perhaps there was a time delay? She-

A reunion is welcome, your timing is auspicious.

The whisper in her mind came like a trickle of water down her parched throat, a salve on her wounded flesh, a flood in a time of drought. Her heart swelled with hope and relief and she spoke her next words in a reverent whisper. "Tide…"

In that moment, her focus diverted, and the mind of the tech-priest broke free. His one remaining eye widened in shock and realization, and Purilla could feel the Tide's reaction move her body faster than lightning.

There was no pain, only an odd sensation of twisting as her left arm shifted, the skin and muscles rippling as bones fractured and re-fused. Her fingers became a flesh-tipped lance, tearing apart her arm-length glove, striking out and burying into the neck of the tech-priest like a dagger. The man's face twisted with pain in a silent scream as blood spewed freely and Purilla felt something leave her and enter him.

It was the work of a single, eternal moment. The wound in the man's neck sealed shut, the skin reknitting itself, and Purilla watched in fascination as her hand slowly reshaped itself back to its former self. Soon, the tech-priest stood and the only sign of the attack were the tattered remnants of her glove.

"W-what was-?"

Depart from this place for now, I will reveal all to you.

Purilla obeyed, not sure if she should be terrified or gleeful. As she reached the door, however, she turned back and glanced at the tech-priest.

"Is… is he dead?"

He lives, though he sleeps for now. He shall hide what has occurred.

She breathed a soft sigh of relief. She hadn't wanted to kill anyone.

A rare, but beautiful wish. Hold fast to that and go far.

She departed the laboratory, already thinking of what questions she would ask.

 

[Jackson Fox]

Day 19



Ellen stormed through the palace, not even bothering to hide her wrath. Servants fled from her sight and even the iron-disciplined Tempestus Scions seemed nervous as she passed them by, marching into her chambers.

Her? Weak!?!

She'd have Praxiah's head on a platter at the end of this, along with anyone who followed her heresy. It took every ounce of self-restraint she had to not command the Imperial Guard follow her little crusade and slay every Sister of Battle in that damned tunnel.

But no. Not yet. Not with so many other threats to deal with.

She growled as she activated the display, updated with the newest reports from the battlefield and other insights. The four rebel cities in the west were displayed in blue, the genestealer controlled hives in purple. The Ork forces were green splotches across the planet, roiling like oceans as they crashed against the defenses of the hives. Those hives still loyal were crimson red. And Malum, Throne-damned Malum, was among them, somehow. The entire south was in rebellion, except for the one spot where the most rebels seemed to gather.

She altered the controls of the display and the hive changed to a sickly yellow. Let the Sisters have their 'blessed city'. The God-Emperor would see her vindicated yet and they would all burn, like the rest of those skeletons in that tunnel.

She would go about saving what remained. No more waiting, no more holding her forces in reserve. When this damnable warp storm ended, not one of the traitors would still be drawing breath. If her own forces were damaged she'd conscript replacements from those still loyal.

"Bring me the Lord-General," She commanded into her commbead. "Tell him it is time for the Hammer of the Imperium to come down upon this heretical filth."

They would start by slaughtering every Ork around Deimos. Then, they would move to free Mania, then reinforce Whiro. Half the regiments under the command of the Lord-General, supplemented by PDF forces gathered from each city they passed through, would move south to destroy the remaining genestealers.

The rest of the regiments would be hers and they would deal with the Orks in the rest of the north before descending upon Ate and the traitors therein with His fury in their hearts.



Serrita felt the Rhino lurch to one side as its treads came upon a particularly large and stubborn pile of skeletons, though there was a muffled, dry cracking sound as the ancient bones disintegrated under the heavy weight of the transport. She winced beneath her armor. The driver had not slowed down the speed of the vehicle in the slightest, possibly due to the fervor of the serf piloting it, possibly out of a desire to depart from the tunnel as soon as possible.

Serrita couldn't blame him if that was the case. The tunnel was not a pleasant place to be in for herself either, regardless of the heat. She had lost over a dozen of her fellow initiates in this place when she had first travelled through it. Friends she had known for years. Her memories of that time were muddled by delirium and exhaustion, so she could not even say which skeletons were theirs… But that only made her feel kinship with them all.

Her fellow Sisters, even her own Retributors, had told her that such initiates were failures. Not worthy of memory or mourning. Serrita… could not agree. They were not scum for having limits. They were devoted, hard-working, faithful… That had just not been enough to keep them alive. They deserved remembrance and she often thought of the names of each of her dead friends when she prayed to the God-Emperor, hoping they were at His side.

She thought of their names now as she prayed for guidance in the task that had been given to her.

After the Inquisitor had departed fuming, and not from the heat of the tunnel, the Canoness had ordered her to ride ahead of the main force and ready Malum for their arrival. The sudden appearance of a heavily armed force within the city's walls, especially at a time of high alert, was not likely to be received warmly. Even if they were Sisters of Battle.

No longer needing to maintain apace with the marching Sisters and serfs, the Rhino that had been requisitioned for the task of carrying her and her squad ahead of the rest had sped their journey considerably. Another two days of marching had been transformed into a few hours ride. Serrita wouldn't complain.

The tunnel's end, where the air was marginally cooler than the rest, was marked by a statue of the Imperial Aquilla, its vast wings overshadowing the two massive exits that led into the chapel above. By all appearances from the outside, said chapel was unremarkable in all ways. Sisters who made it to the end of the tunnel were granted a brief respite from the heat to pray before the God-Emperor.

Those who weren't able to speak the prayer properly were bade to return to the tunnel and not come out again. Serrita's best friend was one who had stumbled over the words and been commanded to depart.

The convent had been alerted ahead of time and preparations for the arrival of the Sisters of Battle and their vehicles were already made. Their Rhino had ample space to drive into the lift that carried them to the surface swiftly and cleanly. Serrita barely remembered the convent or her time there during initiation, though she recalled far more than she had of the journey through the tunnel itself. She had not had a reason to return in her years of service.

The convent was filled with the vox-chants of numerous litanies and prayers, as any convent always was. They had arrived in the middle of a service and even the sound of the Rhino's idling engine was drowned out by the cries of praise and worship from the throng of civilians.

Their arrival was met with no little fanfare. As the lift crawled to a stop and opened into the central hall of the convent, the mass of humanity seemed both drawn towards them and pushed away. The Rhino slowly moved forward and convent serfs formed a barricade around it, forcing away the worshipful citizens of the Imperium so they were not crushed beneath the tread of the tank and possibly hamper its movement.

Serrita thought for a moment, then opened the hatch of the Rhino, rising out of it to gaze upon the God-Emperor's people. The appearance of her gleaming white helmet sent them into seeming rapture, tears streaming down their eyes, praises of the God-Emperor leaving their lips, their hands reaching out as if they hoped to touch the Rhino or her armor, despite their limbs being nowhere long enough to reach past the blockade of serfs.

"Sister?" One of her Retributors, Allay, spoke, her tone just sort of condescending thanks to the mechanical filter of their vox. "We should keep our heads down until we reach the governor's palace. There is no telling what corruption may have possessed this city."

Allay was one of the few among the Sisters who… disagreed with Canoness Praxiah's decision to go against the wishes of the Inquisitor. She was also a veteran nearly as old as the Canoness herself and had seemingly made it her duty to inform Serrita of every mistake she made. Allay had not risen up the ranks like other veterans, seemingly content in her position as a Retributor, but she was also less than pleased by having someone as young as Serrita be her commanding officer.

"These people are the ones we have come to save, Sister Allay," Serrita said simply. "They are the God-Emperor's people."

"They do little more than work in His factories," Allay scoffed. "Their duties could be fulfilled more efficiently by servitors."

As their transport reached the end of the congregation, the heavy doors of the convent that were only opened for special events swinging wide to let them pass, Serrita lowered herself back into the Rhino and fixed her helmeted gaze upon her subordinate.

"We are here to protect our people, Sister," Serrita said, a hint of sharpness in her voice. "This is the God-Emperor's will."

Allay seemed to bristle under her armor but said nothing to that. She may have disagreed with Praxiah, but she was not so foolish as to speak that insubordinate belief aloud. Serrita settled back into her seat, a smile on her lips, well-hidden behind her visor.



Purilla was falling in an empty void, sinking into the mattress of her bed. Thoughts ran rampant through her mind, images of the prior day's events flickering across her mind's vision. The stress of the past few days had finally caught up to her and, despite her excitedness at reconnecting with the Tide, she had collapsed into her bed the moment she'd returned to her personal chambers, swept up by a torrent of drowsiness.

It's just Tide, you know.

She opened her eyes at the voice that came from all around and through her, but she was no longer in her room. She was no longer in the governor's palace, or Deimos, or even Monstrum.

The place she was in was filled with trees. But not like half-remembered trees of her old home, whose name she could not recall, that structured agriworld with its neat rows of carefully cultivated trunks, space equidistant from one another. The trees here were wild, free, growing anywhere there was room, with underbrush covering the vast floor of the forest. It seemed to go on forever and she turned her head up to peer through the canopy. She saw the hints of a blue sky and a golden star hidden by swaying leaves and branches. The air she breathed was crisp and clear, free from even the most minor of chemical residue or recycled taste of filtration devices. She had never breathed such clean air and every lungful was possessed of a feeling of welcome, of belonging. Of home.

"Where are we?" She asked, but she already knew the answer. She had felt it before even opening her eyes, the presence of the-, of Tide. It was all around her, in every tree, in every bush, in each breath of air and each ray of sunlight.

She was surprised she could speak so clearly in this place in comparison to last time. Had something changed within her? No, she decided. The presence of Tide was less intense, less choking. It was still as powerful as before, but it wasn't so focused on her anymore.

This is a memory of my own. One of Earth. You know it as Terra. This is it as it was many tens of thousands of years ago, when there was still vibrance to that world.

She sucked in another breath at that knowledge. Even after being shown so much, there was a part of her that still held Holy Terra in reverence. Was that wrong? Should she apologize? Beg for forgiveness-

No.

The simple statement came with intensity, but it was not the kind that intimidated. Instead, it was a plea, a request, and it shocked her into silence far more than any rebuke could have.

You have done nothing to wrong me. Your connection to your homeworld is not something to ever apologize for.

She vaguely recognized that the rhyming way Tide had spoken to her before was no longer in use.

I don't desire to talk down to you. I did then because it was effective in showing you what you needed to see, what you needed to do. Now, I wish for you to understand that, while we are different in innumerable ways, we are more similar than you think. To that end…

She felt a shift, a change in the space around her, but visually there was nothing different. However, she felt something like a pressing on the back of her neck, the presence of something more… concentrated then the diffuse memory around her. She turned and saw… someone.

They were not human. They were tall, nearly two and a half meters at a glance, and had grey, tough-looking skin, with a long neck and almost hunched posture. Their legs were digitigrade, almost like a Tau's, with large hooves. Their hands were four-fingered with two of those being thumbs on opposite sides of the hands. Most noticeable, however, was their face. Four, mandible-like jaws formed the lower half of the xeno's mouth, with two silver eyes embedded in the skull above them.

The xeno was clad in silver, almost archaic-looking armor. They sat in the hollow of one of the massive trees almost like a throne. Another tree facing them had a similar hollow but shaped for someone of human size and body type. Shaped for her.

"I hope you don't mind." The xeno spoke with the voice of Tide, though it only came from a single source rather than all around her.

"Is this…" Purilla trailed off, unsure of how to phrase her question. It was pointless, of course, since Tide already knew what she was going to ask.

"Not my 'true form', by any means," Tide said. The jaws moved in strange ways, yet the voice was very human in sound. "Just one I adopted for easier conversation. Please, take a seat if you like."

There was a staircase leading up to the hollow, one that seemed to have grown out from the trunk of the tree itself, made of the same bark, yet surprisingly flat and level. She studied the xeno in front of her.

"Why not a… human form?" Purilla asked, trying not to be rude. A few weeks ago, she'd have fled at the sight of such a xeno. While she was less inclined towards terror or disgust now, she couldn't help but find the sight of such a large and obviously powerful alien so close to her. Especially one regaled in wargear.

As she sat in the tree, she was expecting it to be rigid, even uncomfortable, but it was surprisingly smooth and even soft like a pillow.

"It did not seem right," Tide replied simply and the xeno did an approximation of what she assumed to be a shrug. "I am not like you. I do not wish you to think of me as a normal or even strangely powerful human. I am alien to you in both form and mind, make no mistake. But that doesn't mean we have to conflict."

Purilla nodded rapidly, not wanting the… entity that had showed her the truth of things to think she was opposed to it for not being human. It was just…

"Indoctrination is not an easy thing to overcome, I understand," Tide said and the xeno waved one of their hands almost dismissively. "Humanity has been given ample reason to fear the alien. As many aliens have been given ample reason to fear humans. But, please, I know you have questions. If you'd like to, I will gladly answer them."

"What- Who are you?"

She got the feeling the xeno was smiling at her as their mandibles peeled back. However, perhaps sensing the sight was disturbing to her, they stopped soon after.

"Well, to answer the 'what' first," Tide seemed to find amusement in her misstep, though she sensed no ill-will or maliciousness in their words. "What you call 'Organism-04' is an extension of me. I am a being adept at the manipulation of genetics, be it human or xenos. It comes naturally to me, as breath does for you. I spread, I grow, I change and adapt. I can 'infect' humans as you have seen and now experienced for yourself, though the extent of my abilities goes far beyond that. Also, as you have now experienced, for which I would like to apologize."

The memory of her hand twisting into a spear-like shape, the sound of bones fracturing and refusing, was not a pleasant one.

"Is… you said that tech-priest was…"

"He lives and is at work even as we speak. He simply has no memory of your presence within the lab or the events that occurred therein. The vial you took has been replaced, the augur and their recordings have similarly forgotten the incident."

Purilla breathed a sigh of relief, leaning back into the hollow. It was very comfortable, almost supernaturally so. She could have fallen asleep within its embrace. Could she sleep in this place? Wasn't she already asleep?

"As for the 'who', as I told you, I am Tide," They continued.

"Are you… the panacea, like Vidriov thinks?" Purilla asked. She didn't believe they were, but…

"I am not, nor am I a creation of your people's ancestors," Tide stated. "That said, I hold no ill-will towards humanity as a people. Individuals among your Imperium are a different matter, of course."

"Like Ellen," Purilla said, grimacing. She could feel the distaste for the Inquisitor from Tide. It was not thanks to her psychic abilities, so she could only assume they were permitting her to sense those feelings. "Are you… of the Warp?"

"Not even remotely," Tide said, almost in an assuring manner. "The realm of Chaos holds no sway over me. The Ruinous Powers are even more repugnant to me than they are to you. They are parasites on the universe itself that have caused damage to all reality, cysts in the skin of the Warp."

She had already gotten a good look at how Tide felt regarding daemons and their dark masters, but to hear it confirmed for her was a blessing. She knew well the perils of the Warp and a small part of her had feared Tide was unaware of them. Of course, that was nonsense, how could such a powerful being not know?

She suddenly got the distinct feeling the xeno was frowning at her, though its jaw structure made such a thing impossible.

"I am not omniscient, Purilla. You have several misconceptions about me, through no fault of your own," Tide said, the xeno's long head shaking back and forth. "We did not have enough time to speak before for a more thorough discussion."

"I-…" Purilla started to apologize, but stopped. Tide had already said it was not her fault. The xeno smiled again and Purilla found it slightly less unsettling.

"First and foremost, I feel it important to inform you that I am not a god or any kind of divine being," Tide said and Purilla blinked. She… supposed she had thought of him with the same reverence as she once had the God-Emperor? Was that displeasing. "I possess might and abilities others do not, but that is all it is: might and abilities. No more divinely granted than a human's lungs."

"Then… Do you worship any gods?" Purilla asked, mostly from curiosity. Even after what she had experienced, she found it difficult to imagine someone not believing in a god.

"None at all," Tide replied. "Though I hold nothing against religion in general or those who follow them. Merely the worship of such entities as the ruinous powers or others masquerading as gods whose actions making them deserving of nothing but eradication."

"Like… the Emperor?"

Tide paused, as if in consideration. It was sort of reassuring, that such a being still needed time to construct an answer to what may have been a difficult question.

"The Emperor is… a conundrum I have yet to solve," Tide finally admitted. "His beliefs and plans are obfuscated by countless lies and half-truths. As I said, I am not omniscient, not even close to it. My knowledge is expansive in some areas, but severely limited in others. It grows as I grow, but I may never find the answer. Even if I did, I would likely forever doubt its veracity. He has many masks, most crafted by His own hands, many placed upon Him by worshippers."

That was… surprising. Purilla was not used to people admitting when they were wrong or didn't know something. Her teachers as a psyker had always seemed to know the answer to any questions she dared to ask. Although, looking back now, she realized they had likely been repeating the same things they had been told.

"It's easy to believe something to be true when everyone says it is," Tide shrugged again. "The difficult part is determining who actually knows what they're talking about and who is just repeating what they were told. The Imperium, unfortunately, has more of the latter than the former."

Purilla considered their words, mulling them over in her head. A thought occurred to her. "What you showed me before, it was… Was that the universe dying?"

"This universe is suffering, not dying," Tide corrected. "Not yet, at least. Just as you have insight that most humans do not, I do as well, albeit not of the Warp. I suppose you could say I am more in tune with the universe. It is alive, in its own way."

"Alive?"

"Mm," Tide seemed to be considering something for a long moment and silence fell across the forest for a time before he spoke again. "There are others, not unlike me, who refer to this concept as 'Neural Physics'. It is difficult to explain, even in this place where meaning is conveyed beyond just words. This concept is what grants me much of my power and abilities."

Purilla was no longer in the forest, but in the void filled with glittering stars. She saw long strands of a sinew-like material, soft blue and glowing white, stretching between those far-off places, spanning impossible distances. They were beautiful in a way she couldn't describe and they seemed to thrum with life. The vision lasted no longer than a moment before she was back in the forest once more.

"Those are called 'Star Roads'. Some, even greater than I at wielding Neural Physics to the same degree that the Emperor is mightier in psychic powers than you, can fashion them from base matter. Such creations are only a fraction of the possibilities granted."

"You possess such might?!?" Purilla was astounded. Constructs that spanned the impossible distances between stars. Such things would render even the greatest works of Mankind less than toys by comparison.

"No. I am comparatively weak among those who are more learned in Neural Phsyics," Tide admitted again. "Though my adeptness at wielding these abilities grow alongside my knowledge, such things will take me many centuries to even hope to achieve."

"C-centuries?" Purilla repeated. That amount of time was… nothing in the grand scheme of things. Ordinary humans, with proper medical treatments, had lived longer than that.

"At least," Tide added, seeming almost embarrassed. "According to my own speculation. It could be far longer and I will need to grow many times larger, though I do believe I will eventually reach that might."

"You grow," Purilla singled out the term. "Do you just need to spread to more people?"

"That is one method, yes," Tide said. "However, one I am less than comfortable using, even during times where it is necessary like now. I do not 'grow' by spreading. I grow from… the dead being added to my biomass."

Purilla felt a cold tendril snake into her heart. "T-the dead?" She whispered.

"I am afraid so," Tide confirmed, sounding ashamed, the xeno's head lowering. "In Malum, as we speak, those who die of natural causes or of accidents, I add to my own growing form. It is… not something I enjoy."

At that, Purilla all but sank back into her tree-seat in relief. "Oh, I see. I thought you meant you were actively killing people."

She thought she might have felt something like surprise from Tide, perhaps even outright shock. "You… Have no issue with this?"

Purilla blinked, confused. "The souls of the dead pass into your care. I doubt you'd be tormenting them like daemons would. This realm of yours is also quite hidden, so they are not in danger of being swept away by the Warp."

This time she definitely felt shock from Tide.

"They… what?" The xeno blinked, mandibles wide almost like a human's jaw hanging open.

"You… weren't aware of this?" Purilla asked, glancing around at the trees. Their leaves were filled with the subtle power of countless sleeping souls. She'd thought they were just those connected to Tide through infection, like the one she'd piggybacked off of into Tide's realm. She hadn't noticed them that time, presumably due to the dark void's intensity, but they were obvious now. Had Tide really not known?

"No!" Tide exclaimed, sounding confused, delighted, and worried all at once. The xeno stood up, looking around at the leaves with a shockingly human look of wonder in their eyes. "I lack the Warp sight that you do. Nor was I looking through any but your surface thoughts when you returned here, I had not realized… Please, tell me, are they in pain? They aren't suffering, are they?"

"Uh," Purilla stumbled over her words and thoughts, surprised by the sudden change in Tide as the xeno closed the distance between them. The sheer pleading in the eyes of the xeno made any fear of them evaporate in the strangeness of this moment. "They're… Not as far as I can tell?"

The xeno did not speak but breathed a sigh of such relief that the realm around her itself seemed to brighten and grow even more… chipper, she thought was the word.

"Thank you, Purilla, thank you," Tide spoke with such sincerity that it made her feel almost embarrassed. Tide really wasn't omniscient, it seemed. "I thought… I wasn't sure if… Oh, thank you."

The xeno reached out and, before Purilla could understand what was happening, wrapped her in the warmest, most loving hug she had ever felt in the entirety of her life. If the tree-seat was comfortable, this was like sitting by a warm fire, wrapped in the fluffiest coat in the universe, sipping from a hot drink in the middle of a snowstorm. Feelings of Tide's relief and happiness flooded into her from the contact. The only thing Purilla could think was wondering how a xeno so terrifying in appearance and clad in metal armor gave such nice hugs.

The xeno stepped away after a moment and Purilla found herself almost missing the feeling.

"Sorry," Tide apologized, sheepishly. His tone almost sounded like a child who had just finished crying from joy. "A-hem."

In a moment, the feelings she sensed from Tide were returned to equilibrium. "I… was not aware the souls of those I Altered went to me upon their deaths. As I said, I lack the same powers that you do. However, I am deeply glad to hear they are not consigned to the mercies of the Warp."

"Ah, yes, of course," Purilla said, still somewhat unsure of what had just happened. She shook her head to clear it. "Um, you mentioned your biomass?"

"Yes," Tide said. "Much of the biomass I have gathered comes from humans who have died in Malum or from the Orks. Ah, are their souls, or whatever they have, here as well?"

"I'm… not sure?" Purilla admitted. It felt surprisingly good to be able to say she didn't know something without fear of punishment. She closed her eyes and reached out with her psychic senses. It was strange in this place, but the souls were like brightly-burning candles in her mind's eye amidst a sea of calm. There were innumerable seas of them, millions upon millions of every size. Some burned brighter than others, like torches, others were so small they were all but hidden among the ocean of firelights. "I… am not sure. Souls are difficult for me to differentiate at a glance, especially in such numbers."

"I see..." Tide somewhat reminded her of Vidriov learning a new piece of information. "Ah, my apologies again, I said I would answer your questions, but I am pestering you with my own. Please, ask away."

Purilla smiled. After everything that had just happened, she wasn't so sure Tide was some god-like being with an ultimate plan as she'd previously imagined. Perhaps they were something better than that. A person, like her, trying to make their way through a terrible universe without making things worse.



YESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYE-

Tide's thoughts were a jumble even as a portion of his focus continued to converse with Purilla. The humans were fine!

Well, they were still dead, but their souls weren't at the tender mercies of daemons! He counted that as a huge win!

Purilla had already turned out to be of immense help to him through that revelation alone. He'd tried to limit what he read from her mind this time around to respect some semblance of her privacy, so he hadn't realized she could sense the souls around her. It was difficult for those limits to have greater accuracy than reading surface thoughts due to the nature of his Domain which essentially made most of those thoughts into speech, but he had tried.

The amount of relief he felt could not be properly expressed in words alone, but he honestly felt like dancing.

In unison, every Flood Form aboard the formerly Ork-controlled space hulk began to do a little jig. Tide had not been a very good dancer in his past life and the types of dance utilized by those of the Imperium were limited in that almost all of them were created and used by nobles for things like balls and other events. As a result, their dancing was rather subpar, but Tide didn't really care at the moment. In the total distraction of his Flood Forms, he did not realize he was indeed being watched by various ship security cameras.

The controller of said cameras was rather confused by the sudden event, but chalked it up to a strange ritual of these alien infected.

Tide himself likely would not have cared even if he had known someone was watching, so great was his joy.

Slowly, almost reluctantly, he pulled himself back from the unmitigated glee. As happy as this knowledge made him, he had work to do.

Purilla's insight in this matter had proven something he had begun to suspect already: He was all but blind to the Warp. Oh, he could likely see any physical manifestations of psychic power and the tear in his Domain that led into the Warp was rather obvious even to him, but seeing souls without the aid of a psyker was not something he could do. At least for the moment.

Was it a genetic problem, or a psychic issue? If his Domain, his 'mind' did not exist within the Warp but outside it, did that mean he didn't have a 'soul' of his own? Or was it just because Precursors weren't familiar with souls in the same way that those in 40k were aware of them?

He'd had no issues perceiving the daemon when it had entered his Domain, nor did his shredding it into its raw immaterial components make him lose sight of it. Obviously, daemons were different from souls, but in what way?

In a 'space' separate from the memory-illusion of Earth that he conversed with Purilla in, an empty void, he found nothing of interest. However, as he imprinted the space with that same illusion, he studied it closely. And it was there that he made his discovery.

He could see the souls of those Altered who had perished. They were very different from a living soul like Purilla, perhaps that was why he had not noticed them before. They were… subdued, barely active. Asleep, she had called them. That was a good word for it. If Purilla was a roaring flame and the essence of the daemon was a lake of calmed water, these were motes of dim light, like fireflies, easy to lose track of and difficult to distinguish. There were many more souls in his Domain than there were dead human Altered, but he couldn't tell which were, presumably, either orks or the wildlife he had initially spread through.

His Domain was clearly more than he had initially expected it to be and it was intriguing to him that he didn't understand its full capabilities. Intriguing… and concerning. While he had 'explored' it before, those studies and experiments he had conducted had been little more than messing around with the essence of Vra'kzil to limited benefit.

There were ideas he had, theories about how his Domain interacted with the Warp, but he hadn't dared to try any of them for fear of drawing notice or corruption from external powers. The ruinous powers were not the only dangers to him and the universe that resided in the Warp.

However, if he continued to operate in ignorance, there was the very real possibility of him missing something crucial, as had happened with the souls. Could he afford that risk? And could he afford the risk that came with seeking knowledge in this cursed galaxy?

Even with all the mental might of millions of minds that were his to call upon, he wasn't sure. He couldn't rush into things, so he would dwell on the matter for a time, working over the possible costs and possible benefits in his 'head'.

 

[Jackson Fox]

Day 19, Continued



They were admitted into the palace of Malum's governor with surprising speed. Although they were a group of Sisters of Battle, their arrival had been, presumably, unexpected. Perhaps the Inquisitor had contacted the governor ahead of time and laid a trap?

However, that seemed unlikely. They were escorted by only a squad of eight PDF troopers, garbed in the equipment of the palace's guard, and they had not even attempted to ask them for their weapons. While there was no chance that Serrita would part with her heavy bolter even if it was demanded by the governor himself, it was still surprising that their wasn't a heavier presence.

Perhaps it was because they weren't going to see the governor, but the man that had been appointed by him to command the city's defenses in the present conflict.

Serrita was less familiar with Monstrum's political landscape than Canoness Praxiah, but she was not completely ignorant of it either. The city governors were supposed to be the commanders of the city's local forces in case of attack, but it wasn't unheard of for them to appoint the duty to someone else. Usually, however, that man was another noble.

The man called Colonel Marcus Agrippa was not a noble of any family she had ever heard of. Nor had she heard of the man himself until their guide had informed her that they would be receiving an audience with him as he was coordinating the city's defenses. Presumably, that meant he was also responsible for the resounding successes against the Orks and possibly even the cultists as well.

It wasn't so strange that his name hadn't been on any of the reports sent back to Deimos, but the city's governor instead. Perhaps he owed the governor a favor or was a close personal friend, someone outside the nobility. Serrita really couldn't say.

The room they were admitted to was a flurry of activity, despite the fact that the city was under no immediate threat. Aides, officers, logisticians, and administratum adepts moved about in a state of ordered chaos, carrying and writing reports, approving requests, and conducting the art of war with the brutal efficiency she would have expected to see in the leadership of a guard regiment, not a hive's PDF.

She could not pick out any officer who stood out from the others. They all wore Monstrum's PDF officer uniforms with surprisingly little decoration, plain grey and red tunics with only their rank insignias displayed on their sleeves and chest. Most of them were majors, the commanders of PDF regiments.

No one acknowledged their arrival or even seemed to notice them, save for one officer who quickly stood from his seat at a central table and walked over to them. Serrita only realized his insignia showed him to be a colonel when he had stopped in front of her and already made the sign of the Aquilla.

"Welcome to Malum, Sister," The officer said. His face was plain and serious. He looked to be in his late forties and lacked any obvious sign of rejuvenat treatments nobles often had. Either he'd somehow had access to high quality treatments that hid the telltale signs of chemically induced youth or he was just rather young for his rank. "I am Colonel Marcus Agrippa. Malum's Defense Forces stand ready to assist the Order of the Cleansing Rains."

"I am Sister Adelus," She replied. Once more, she was thankful for her helmet, which hid the surprised look on her face. That was… very fast. "You know of our mission?"

"We received word from Deimos that your Order would be coming," Agrippa said simply, and Serrita wondered about that. He had not specified who had told them. "I apologize about the lack of a more formal welcome, but I assumed you'd rather we get about the business of war than stand on ceremony."

Serrita felt a wry smile cross her lips. The man was blunt. She wondered if he was a former Guard officer. "We are Sisters of Battle, colonel. War is our ceremony."

"I thought as much," Agrippa said with a nod, and she thought she saw the makings of a smile tugging at his lips. "I have been granted command over eight regiments of Malum's PDF. I'm afraid the governor has insisted the other nineteen remain to defend the city."

Serrita's eyes narrowed at that. From what she knew, most of the hive cities in the south had less than twenty regiments apiece. In a time of war, that number obviously would increase, but if they were only getting raw recruits…

"I can vouch for these regiments, Sister," Agrippa stated and Serrita wondered if her body language had conveyed something of her thoughts. "They served in the battles against the Orks and the cultists. They're not guardsmen, but they're ready to serve the Emperor."

Serrita's concerns slowly ebbed away, and she nodded approvingly. "Excellent. How soon can they march?"

This time, Agrippa had a wry smile on his own face that matched Serrita's. "The regiments have already assembled and stand ready to move out as soon as your Order arrives. We'll march at your Canoness' command."



Tide watched the Sisters through the eyes of what had swiftly become his most valued puppet form. Normally, there was no way Tide would have managed to place one of his infiltration forms in such a high position within the Imperium this quickly. Indeed, even if he'd done everything he could to make one of them the most ferocious and tactically intelligent beings on the planet, which he'd done with more than one of them, and had them perform acts of unparalleled valor and bravery on the battlefield against the Orks, which he had also made sure to do, there was little chance of any major advancements.

It was fortunate, then, that the city's governor was extremely corrupt. Fortunately, not in the Chaos-worshipping kind of way and only in the 'would sell his own seat of power for enough money' kind of way. It helped that he was also somewhat unwell in the head. That such a man could still be considered upstanding in terms of morality among the nobility was… not surprising in the slightest, if Tide was being truthful.

Tide, having access to the entire Underhive and all its contents, had sold a number of semi-valuable artifacts on the surface to gather the necessary funds. They were mostly worthless to him, scraps of archaeotech, half-functional salvage, old artifacts that would only be valued by certain collectors. There were a wealth of those among the nobility and he'd gladly used the fact that their minds were open books to him to squeeze them for every crown he could. It was nothing they hadn't done themselves to those less fortunate.

Having suddenly gained a fortune that could have paid for an interplanetary-vessel, if not a warp-capable one, Tide had arranged the bribe and for his puppet to benefit. He'd even laid 'evidence' that one of the noble families rival to the colonel Agrippa would replace had sponsored his ascension in the inevitability that someone looked closely at it. It was… surprisingly easy to cover his tracks. The Adeptus Arbites and similar organizations were trained to investigate individuals that worked alone or in groups that knew each other to some degree or had to communicate with each other through a trackable method, be it in person or over vox. They had a much harder time tracking something that worked as invisibly as a hive mind.

Likely, that was why they had such trouble with genestealers.

Regardless, the result was the same. Agrippa was made colonel in command of the city's defenses and the only people with the power to do anything about it were all either occupied with more important business or properly provided with suitable 'gifts'. Even if anyone caught the scent of something being more than what the evidence pointed to, Tide would be on the lookout for them. At best, he could set up more evidence that continued to mislead them, at worst, he could exert another kind of influence…

In terms of all the actions he had taken thus far, this one made him feel the dirtiest. Maybe it was the use of money? Still, it was better than just killing the colonel and puppeteering his corpse around… Probably. None of the nobles, including that man, were what Tide would consider 'good people'. At best, they were snobs, at worst… Well, for some, it was rather difficult to not just make them all suffer 'accidents'. Or make their heads explode.

The nobility was, unfortunately, not going anywhere for the immediate future. Tide wasn't sure what he was going to do after all this was over, assuming he ended up with control of the planet. Much of Monstrum's people weren't just broken, it was like their fighting spirit had been literally bred out of them. In many, there was no spark of life at all, it was as though they were as machine as any cog. They worked quietly, slept quietly, died quietly. The result of ten thousand years of constant oppression.

In another way, it was sort of heartening to see that only part of the population was so… deadened to it all, even after so long. A testament to the human spirit, or something.

Tide wasn't sure which part of himself was more sickened, his personality that came from the twenty-first century, or his new nature that recognized just how… pointless such a thing made life. Life existed for a myriad of reasons, but one of those was for the universe to be able to experience itself, to recognize the vast beauty of all creation and experience it in all its wonder. These people weren't experiencing anything, they were barely alive. Even their worship, their faith in the Emperor, was lessened. They still believed, but they believed in the Emperor the same way they believed that tomorrow would hold the same for them as the day before and the day before that.

Tide had thought, more than once now, about just… ending them. Especially now that he knew he safeguarded their souls after their death. Would that be better? No, it wouldn't be better… but it also wouldn't be worse.

He had dissuaded himself from those thoughts. Their beliefs were not his own. He knew that tomorrow could be better. He hoped it could be, in any case. He'd improved the lives of these people already, but he could still do more. Perhaps not while the Sisters were around to see, not until he'd Altered them as well and anyone else who might notice, but he would do what the Imperium had failed to do. Their lives would never be perfect… But they would live.



The Broodmind coiled tightly around the burning hive spires of Whiro. Within the burning wrecks, the last remnants of its enemies were hunted down and slaughtered or converted. Each drone gained rejoined the same manufactories where they had once worked, operating the machines with glee in the name of their new gods. Such tactics were… unusual to the Broodmind, not something it was used to. It was a creature of action and reaction. There was preparation, yes, but always towards a single, overarching goal: subvert enemy defenses and call the Godmind.

This… was not that. Bulwarks were built up, rather than torn down. Defenses strengthened, rather than weakened. Weapon emplacements were repaired, rather than sabotaged.

With the arrival of the green enemies, recognized by some of its drones as 'greenskins', the Broodmind had been forced onto the defensive. Attempts at infiltration of the newcomers had been less than successful. Unknown methods of detection had allowed the greenskins to destroy any converts among their ranks and the Broodmind had yet to discover a counter. The greenskins had surrounded Whiro and captured the area known to the Broodmind's drones as the lower city. Rather than expend its more valuable genestealers upon the green aliens, the Broodmind had sent waves of chaff against this newest enemy. The loss of life was immense, but of low importance. Their biomass would not be lost, merely changed.

Holding and protecting territory or, more specifically, the factories it now reconfigured to its own usage, was a strange, but necessary thing. The Broodmind was, above all else, adaptable. Perhaps not genetically, but there were other methods.

Its newest method of defense was already being produced in great quantities by billions of drones. Not against the greenskins or the rest of the unconverted humans… but against the only real threat on the planet to the Broodmind… and, perhaps, to the Godmind itself.

As each new breathing apparatus was fashioned in the factories of Whiro and Enyo, the Broodmind calculated the approaching moment of its next attack.

 

[Jackson Fox]

Day 20



The tear was a strange thing, not least of which because Tide's sight was two-fold in his Domain. On the one hand, he saw the tear as someone like Purilla would have seen it. A rip in the void, held open by countless strands of silk, nigh-invisible to behold, yet impossibly strong. Through the gap was a realm of hellish madness and horrors, both tantalizing and revolting, as infinitely complex as the universe's inner workings.

On the other hand… When he 'saw' the tear with the aid of Neural Physics, it wasn't so much a tear as a looking glass. The realm he saw wasn't orderly, by any means, but there was something of a way of things that he could discern. Not a hierarchy or a food chain, but something like those material concepts.

Within the roiling thoughts and emotions that made up the Warp were predators that prowled its depths, feeding on the very waters they swam through and upon one another. Of course, this was a metaphor for a realm that could not be properly defined in any language, even its own. Even Tide had difficulty understanding the concepts that he was being shown, almost like a sort of sensory overload. To put it simply… he wasn't intelligent enough to understand the Warp at its most fundamental.

Yet.

To continue the metaphor, the predators were varied and utterly unique. They, like Vra'kzil had been, were made up of fractured thoughts and emotions, the waters given shape and pseudo-existence. Most were 'small', weak, with little power in them, but numerous, like a swarm of some kind of… vicious bacteria. He imagined these to be the 'Least Daemons', like the microscopic daemons Nurgle used for its plagues. Some were of a size like Vra'kzil and these ones usually fed on one another or the smaller entities. Lesser daemons, likely.

Others were titanic, leviathans that drifted along the Warp's currents, like great whales that opened their maws wide and sucked in countless entities. Greater Daemons. These were the ones Tide was most wary of, watching them carefully, searching for any sign of reaction at his presence. Fortunately, they never noticed him. Whatever power he had to hide from the gaze of creatures like Vra'kzil seemed to work on Greater Daemons as well.

Would it work on the Ruinous Powers? The Emperor? Tide wasn't sure, but he also wasn't really interested in testing such a thing. While he had defeated Vra'kzil easily enough, a single Greater Daemon, even the smallest of which had possessed hundreds to thousands to an unimaginably greater number times the power of the bird daemon, had been enough to convince him that he was just a medium-sized fish in an ocean vaster than he could conceive of.

Each daemon was unique, but some were more different than others. Something akin to colors of certain emotions and thoughts were ascribed to each of them. By far the most common were shades of green, red, blue, and pink. It didn't take a genius to figure out who those daemons swore allegiance to. Daemons of the four Ruinous Powers were by far the most active and aggressive, mainly towards one another. The Reds were highly confrontational, the Greens were more placid if dauntless in the face of the others, while the Pinks darted in and out to strike with wicked glee, all the while the Blues struck in areas seemingly both random and calculated, foiling the designs of the other three.

What was more interesting, at least to Tide, were those entities that lacked any of the four main 'colors'. They were far fewer in number and varied in size, power, and aggressiveness. Some were even more vicious then the Reds, others stiller than the Greens. They struck where they pleased, not guided by any greater force Tide was aware of, not participants in the larger game, but actors in it regardless. Some, like the daemons, were fractured, wrought from a larger whole, but others seemed whole.

From what he knew, Warhammer Fantasy had many minor Chaos deities, but in 40k most attention was given to the Ruinous Powers, with only a few entities like Vashtorr and Be'lakor being independent of them, at least to a degree. Were these powers gone entirely or simply less active? Some were only the size of Least Daemons, others as large as the Greater Daemons he had seen.

Those questions fell from his mind after he, almost absentmindedly, cast his gaze further afield. In the distance, he could see things floating in this ocean of psychic power. Far away yet indescribably close, four icebergs the size of what could have been whole galaxies floated in the roiling waters, surrounded by predators so titanic they may have been the size of stars. They seemed to cast everything in their shadow, forming a dark cloud between them all, beyond which he could see only the barest flashes of golden lightning, like the flickering sun behind the canopy of a forest. These icebergs were beyond anything he had seen and, even with all his power, he could not fathom the roiling and raw power contained within each of them.

The Chaos Gods, parasites though they were, had more than enough power to back up their claims. And yet, Tide could tell that this was only the barest fraction of their might, like the shadow cast by the sun during an eclipse. If he saw them as they truly were, even with the mental strength of millions of humans, he'd likely go mad.

He tore his gaze away from those four blights on reality, hoping their gazes did not wander from their endless conflict with the Emperor. He did not need the attention of the gods in this place.

Tide waited for a long while, at least for him. For the Materium, the amount of time passing was relatively slow, a few seconds for them, days for his mind. His ability to slow the passage of time, at least in his Domain, had expanded greatly.

The Warp was strange in how time worked for it. Perhaps it was because of the local Warp Storm, but the waves seemed disturbed, rippling. Despite this, the daemons seemed fine, assuming viciousness was their natural state, though it wasn't like he had many encounters with them.

The flow of time, likely as a result of the storm, was distorted. It seemed to skip forward and back in places, move slower or faster than the Materium. However, there was a pattern in it, somehow. Every four changes, it reverted back to time slowing down. Always after four changes. There wasn't any specific amount of time the changes came upon, the types of changes weren't in any way connected from what he could tell, except for that fourth change.

Was Tzeentch fucking with him? He watched the roiling madness for hours, but he couldn't find a pattern beyond the fourth repeating change.

He was aware this was something that often drove people mad in the Warhammer setting. Staring directly into the Warp was… unhealthy for most. He might have had some resistance to it, but he couldn't say if he was outright immune. He wasn't going to bet on it.

To that end, he receded from his studies. He may have resolved to study the Warp to better understand and combat it, but he wouldn't let himself get so caught up in it that he drew attention away from other, more immediate matters.

The Sisters of Battle were coming to Malum and it was clear which enemy would be their first target. As far as they knew, the western cities were not corrupted so much as simply led by traitors. That would already be a bloody affair where innocents would die. More concerningly, however, an attack would almost certainly result in the discovery of the Chaos cult and result in a much more thorough purge of the city.

He would prefer they attack the Genestealers or the Orks, but it seemed the Inquisitor had 'explicitly' forbidden them from attacking those enemies for the moment. The traitors were a loophole that the canoness had exploited and forced the Inquisitor to accept. How long that would last would depend, but he doubted Ellen would take it lying down. From what Purilla knew, Deimos was already left bustling with the preparations for their regiments to strike out and shatter the Orks besieging it.

He had held off from infecting anyone else in Deimos beyond Purilla and the tech-priest assistant and had chosen not to infect their lungs to prevent his normal method of spreading. If he could, he would prefer Ellen to be the first one he infects, if only to remove that particular threat to him. However, she had not called for Purilla, nor had she returned to the spires ever since her meeting with the Lord-General, instead heading down to the mustering fields where her army was assembling.

Tide wasn't sure the forces the Orks had at their disposal, but they were a varied army with infantry and heavy vehicles. With the benefit of Deimos' high walls and heavy defenses that was not so much of a problem, but the guard regiments Monstrum raised were solely of the infantry variety. The planet had the capacity to manufacture some of the smaller and more standard pattern of tanks and transports, but not in sufficient numbers to support twelve regiments, not against the horde of Orks.

Whether the infantry alone could carry the day was a question Tide didn't have an answer to. The Guard were stubborn and well-trained, but they were still just cannon fodder compared to many of the threats in the galaxy, Orks included.

He was less worried about his own infantry managing the task of dealing with the Orks. Ignoring the fact that he had essentially already made them out to be mobile bioweapons against xenos thanks to a certain 'Organism-04', he could expend their numbers without issue since the eight regiments the Sisters would be receiving command of were solely made up of Puppets, each with zero qualms whatsoever about giving up their life for the mission.

Tide's mission, however, not the Sisters'. If they sought to outright purge the hive cities… He wasn't sure he could allow that to happen, even if it meant revealing his presence to a greater degree than he already had or using whatever means he could to stop them.

Ethics be damned.



Ahsael sat in his throne, his Rubric Marine standing to his side, ever watchful and ever silent, empty gaze looking out upon the gathered sorcerers and servants.

Unlike some of his brothers in the Thousand Sons, Ahsael was not one so disinclined towards their patron god's brothers and their followers. While worshippers of the Architect by far made up the bulk of his forces, at least those that knew the truth of the organization he had spent decades so painfully handcrafting, they were far from the only members. Khorne's bloodthirsty butchers made useful attack dogs in the underhive, provided the proper guidance and occasional disciplinary action. Slaanesh's seducers and courtesans made excellent infiltrators and recruiters both, whether among the starved and deprived impoverished or the eccentric and gluttonous nobility. And even Nurgle's wretches could prove useful, though Ahsael harbored more disdain for them than even those followers of the other gods.

The leaders from these groups were the ones he had called, alongside Uirus, Ahsael's fellow brother of the Thousand Sons. While the man was not as powerful as Ahsael in the sorcerous arts, he was an adept warrior and, most importantly, a symbol of just how outmatched the other gods were on this world. After all, he was the only other Space Marine on this world, not counting the dust-filled Rubric Marine, and an ardent worshipper of Tzeentch.

"Why have you called us?" The question was blunt, as expected from the foremost of Khorne's worshippers on Monstrum, a beastman named Kalak Bronze-Blood. Of all those in attendance, he was the only one that came near to not just the height but also the bulk of a space marine, standing nearly seven-and-a-half feet tall with a frame that rippled with powerful muscle and barely contained rage. His ram horns glinted in the low light of the chambers, having been replaced by bronze fused to his skull some years ago. This was one of his calmer moments, shown by the fact that he was not currently frothing at the mouth and his horizontal, slit-like pupils showed no signs of the Blood God's frenzying madness, though his cloven hooves beat and scraped against the carpeted floor occasionally, tearing up the fine fabrics of the city governor's former audience chamber.

"Consider this a review, of sorts," Ahsael began, ignoring the provocative and nearing disrespectful tone of Kalak. Large and strong he might have been for a mortal, he was no Space Marine, much less a Sorcerer of the Thousand Sons. His disrespect mattered little, his opinions even less so. "Kalak, since you seem so eager, you may begin. Tell me, what have your… warriors accomplished." It was hard to keep the sneer from his voice, but he managed it somehow.

"We have slaughtered many of the greenskins!" Kalak said, his fur-covered chest puffing out with pride and boastfulness. On the other side of the chamber, the silk-clad Lord Janiel rolled his eyes and feigned a yawn, covering his mouth with one manicured hand. "Their skulls have made excellent trophies!"

"So I see," Ahsael said, noting the pauldrons Kalak had made from the heads of two such Orks. They were splattered with blood that could have been leftover from the materials used or something… fresher. "And what else?"

Kalak snorted air, not in a prideful manner, but more out of confusion. Large, strong, brutal… but not exactly cunning. "We have done as the Blood God demanded! Blood has flowed and yet more will in the coming battles! What else could there be to report!"

"Perhaps you'd like to tell our lord of your casualties in those battles you waged," Uirus spoke up, the helmeted space marine making no effort to hide his mocking tone. "Assuming you can even count that high."

Kalak rounded on the space marine, blowing puff of steaming air out from his snout and looking all like the bull about to charge that he was, but held himself back, barely. Kalak, for all he espoused the virtues favored by Khorne, was not so completely taken by the Blood God yet and knew better than to charge a Space Marine like Uirus… Probably.

"The weak perished," Kalak gnashed with a snarl. "Their deaths have only made us stronger!"

"You've lost half your braying cultists," Uirus pointed out.

"And the xenos fled screaming from the walls of Janus because of us!" Kalak spat, a sneer coming across clearly even upon his mutated lips. "You're welcome."

It was Uirus' turn to snarl, coming to face the beastman, hand falling to the hilt of his khopesh at his side. His body radiated hostility and Ahsael could feel the sorcerous power beginning to build up around his brother's free hand. To his credit or to his folly, the beastman did not back down or shy away, despite doubtlessly being able to feel something.

"Enough," Ahsael said and the feeling bled away, as did the hostility in Uirus' stance, if not in his mind. His brother turned away from Kalak, who seemed almost disappointed rather than relieved as he should have been. "Janiel, how do your pleasure cults fare?"

Janiel strutted forward, ignoring the glower from Kalak that the beastman shot him. Of the three foremost servants of the other gods on Monstrum, Janiel was by far the one who could most easily pass for human. His face was well tended to and his frame was not overly monstrous or tainted by more obvious mutations, hidden as it was behind thin silk robes. The heavy perfumes that covered him were almost as rancid as a daemon of Nurgle, yet carried in them a tinge of something alluring and seductive. An air of authority, promises of power and, above all, danger hung about him.

"Work continues in Ate, but Eris' governor is nearly ours, as is much of his court." Janiel's voice was smooth and dark, like a serpent's. Many mortals had been lured into the grasp of Slaanesh by that voice, but it had little effect on a champion of Tzeentch, beyond marking him as one to watch carefully. "We've also begun reaching out to the officers of the local defense forces tere. While they will obey their governors, it will be much easier to move more openly if they are fully ours."

Ahsael nodded, cutting off Janiel before he could continue. Many among Slaanesh's lot were as enraptured by the sound of their own voice as others were, perhaps even more so. A swift end was preferable and it kept Janiel aware of his position in the order of things. Finally, almost reluctantly, Ahsael turned his gaze upon the final individual under this little 'review'.

"Doctor Ferrik, what have you learned from your studies?"

The jubilant mass of pale flesh and jolly mannerisms that was Doctor Ferrik glanced up, having been distracted by some document on his dataslate. A wide, loathsome grin stretched his face disproportionately and the doctor chortled in a way that set his flesh aquiver, looking as though it might slough off him in clumps. "My initial examinations have proven illuminating on the nature of the genestealers and their infections! While purely biological in how they infect, their appears to be a Warp element that connects the mind of the drones to a greater mind."

Ahsael knew this already, but he pretended to be interested in the Nurgle-worshipper's findings. "And might we be able to disrupt this connection?"

"Possibly," Ferrik admitted, a wide frown coming across his face. While not as 'gifted' as many other followers of Nurgle, even some on Monstrum, Ferrik had proven intelligent and, most intriguingly, curious in acquiring new knowledge in a way that was almost Tzeentchian. By making him the leader of the Plague God's faction and focusing him and his cultists on a relatively harmless task, Ahsael could ensure they stayed out of the way until they were needed or could be disposed of without issue. "It would require an immense amount of psychic power or a very focused and precise attack."

Ahsael knew that as well. These were not the first genestealers he had encountered and studied, nor even the first outside this cursed region of space. However, they were acting strangely, even more so than most of the cults that had been twisted by the Ghoul Stars. This strangeness, as seemed to be the case more and more, was centered around the city of Malum and whatever strangeness had taken hold there.

"Then I believe you should begin researching into why the genestealers failed in their initial attack upon Malum," Ahsael stated. "It is possible just such an event occurred there and has somehow been left undetected by others. I will grant you command of twenty regiments to go and free Malum from the Inquisitor's grip. I would ask that you keep your more… obvious afflictions a secret, as the bulk of these regiments have yet to be introduced to the guiding hand of Chaos."

Kalak snorted derisively, while Lord Janiel all but glowered at the Nurgle worshipper, but Uirus was silent.

"Thank you, my lord," Ferrik bowed low, an odd sight that sent a waft of malodorous air towards Ahsael, temporarily overpowering even the exotic scents that covered Janiel. "I shall endeavor to ensure the city falls quickly."

"Another thing," Ahsael stated and all eyes were once more on him. "Word comes from Deimos. The Sisters of Battle have left for Malum via a route unknown to us and hidden from the assaults of the Orks. Presumably, some kind of underground tunnel. They will likely be in Malum by the time you have arrived. While a thousand troops is hardly a grand army, they are not to be underestimated and may prove… difficult for mere defense forces to handle. To that end…"

Ahsael flexed his hand and sorcerous might and the doors into the audience hall swung open. Dragged forward by robed cultists carrying heavy chains, a heavily and ritualistically scarred human man, naked save for a piece of cloth around his waist, stalked forward. Blue flames burned behind his eyes and his movements were stiff and jilted, as though he were unfamiliar with the action of walking and looking around. His flesh seemed to crawl and shift along his bones, like something was shifting underneath and the air grew cold as ice.

"A gift for you, Doctor Ferrik," Ahsael said. "One of a hundred like him. Unleash them as you see fit, but be aware that control is a fickle thing when it comes to daemonhosts."

"Y-yes, my lord," Ferrik said, turning back and bowing low.



Catherine Ellen strode through the mustering grounds in full regalia, her freshly polished and anointed armor gleaming in the buzzing lights of the massive market square that had been requisitioned for the task of holding twelve regiments as they prepared for war. The Inquisitorial Rosette was emblazoned across the black power armor's chestplate in Imperial crimson, outlined in gold.

The Guardsmen who saw her made the sign of the aquila, but she made no gesture in return. The commissars pointed her out, telling the common infantryman that the God-Emperor's own representative, divinely appointed, had been sent to lead them to victory. She ignored them all, moving ever onwards with purpose.

Some Inquisitors preferred to move secretly, believing they could accomplish more from the shadows. Ellen was not one of that lot. The Inquisition's authority was absolute and anyone who denied that was a heretic.

The Lord-Inquisitor who had sent her to Monstrum in the first place did not seem to understand that. Yes, Calistis Hroth was her senior by several centuries and renowned throughout the Ghoul Stars, but she did utilize the authority and recognition that granted her as often as Ellen felt she should have.

There were many threats to the Imperium in the Ghoul Stars. The roving Ork, the hidden genestealer, the subversive Chaos cultist, these were only some among them. Xenos empires ran rampant throughout the Ghoul Stars, whether it was the Togoran Bloodreeks, the wicked Cythor Fiends, or the shapeshifting Thexians, all with their own little empires.

Threats that could have been crushed by Hroth centuries ago. Now, those filthy xenos were likely taking advantage of the Imperium's division and Hroth's inaction.

Ellen would not be so lax. Once this thrice-cursed Warp Storm had ended, she would reunite the Imperial forces of the Ghoul Stars herself and launch a crusade that would scour clean a thousand star systems of the filth and create a bastion of the God-Emperor that would never fall.

Never.



The Broodmind stalked through countless halls and across bridges and in factories. Hordes of screaming cultists mustered at its command, but they were little more important than expendable fodder, loosed like the rounds of one of the autoguns they wielded into the endless tide of greenskins. Its true forces, packs of vicious monsters and mutants with horrific forms and even more terrible powers, waited in the deepest parts of the hives, readying themselves, equipping themselves.

Yet, not all was silent in the darkness of Whiro's burning spires. In one section in the highest towers of the hive the crack of lasfire could still be heard. The shouting of defiance and adulation, not for some xenos false-deity, but for the God-Emperor of Mankind and for Monstrum.

The Broodmind sent pack after pack into this place, intent on slaughtering the last remnants of its enemies, but something disrupted its concentration, its clarity, more than even the taint of these wicked stars and the storm in the ocean had.

Pack after pack, expended like empty cartridges, slain by some threat that, while not great in and of itself, nevertheless refused to die. Refused to break.



On the spires of Deimos, just below the black clouds that covered the world in darkness, all was perfectly still and silent. Even the roaring of the greenskins, the cacophony of the machines and foundries, all the activities of the city far below could not be heard, only seen. Only watched.

In the distance, Warboss Grinhide's roiling horde crashed against the bulwark of the Imperium's defenders again and again, endless in their numbers and perseverance. Yet, the Warboss himself was oddly absent from the battlefield, despite the front gate being the most heavily defended and, as a result, most contested area of the warfront.

Just behind the gate and its stalwart defenders, regiments of the Imperial Guard were massing, preparing for their great push outwards. Catherine Ellen could be seen among them, sometimes, accompanied by her guard of Tempestus Scions.

The Orks were waiting, as much as the greenskins had the capacity for such a thing. More specifically, the Warboss was waiting, lulling its enemies into a false sense of semi-security. Encouraging the belief that all they needed was a single, great push.

He was not so sightless. From the spires above Deimos, he saw all and he comprehended much more. Throughout his observations, he had seen the signs. Ork mobs pulled back, like rabid beasts having their chains yanked upon by their masters. Hordes sitting idly or having their attention turned by a guiding hand towards less valuable targets, simply to keep them busy while the plan ran its course. This Warboss was a tricky one and one that would not reveal himself before the greatest battle yet to come.

The Inquisitor seemed to be preparing to provide that battle, though she had no idea what she was getting herself and her forces into.

Perhaps the Imperial forces would be decimated before the time came. Perhaps they would survive. It did not matter to his mission and, as a result, did not matter to him.

He would wait. He would watch. Until the time came.

On the spires of Deimos, all was perfectly still and silent.

 

[Jackson Fox]

Day 21



Purilla strode through the massive Grand Hall of the Planetary Governor's palace, her eyes drawn to the countless displays of wealth and affluence. The hall itself was a long corridor, nearly a kilometer in length, wide enough to drive a column of superheavy tanks through and tall enough that she could have thrown a stone upwards with all her strength and only gotten around halfway to the top. Gilded statues depicting heroes and saints lined the crimson carpeted floor and hanging from the wall were massive tapestries crafted of the finest silk that portrayed Monstrum's past governors with almost as much definition as a pict. As they were arrayed in order from first to last she was given a, somewhat harrowing, insight into exactly when the governor's family decided to maintain… closer bloodlines.

She felt a spike of amusement, almost like a barked laugh, that was not her own and a soft smile found its way to her lips. Tide did not always make his presence known to her, but he was always just a thought away for her. Whether or not that meant he was always present and watching, but merely silent, or simply could drop everything to 'speak' with her at any time she wished wasn't something she had asked about yet.

Some, mostly those without psychic abilities, might have found the idea of having someone in her head constantly or near-constantly as disturbing or even concerning, but Purilla was used to it. One of the few fond memories she had of her time when she was being trained as a psyker was the presence of the minds of her brothers and sisters. The life they each had gone through, the ardor of the Black Ships, the hardship of their training, that and their abilities to know one another's true feelings had given them a sort of fellowship that Purilla had found herself missing after she was sanctioned. In a way, her new relationship with Tide was like that one.

She waited for a moment, wondering if Tide would speak, but he refrained from doing so, seemingly content with letting her know his amusement. He probably didn't want to distract her from her mission.

Tide's capabilities were truly amazing, once he had explained them further. While she had difficulty understanding the concept of Neural Phsyics, especially since it seemed wholly separate from psychic abilities, he had explained some of his more mundane powers as well, though calling such abilities 'mundane' was beyond simple understatement. To be able to manipulate genetics on such a level and with such ease was incredible.

She still remembered that strange feeling of shifting and reforming that her arm had undergone when she first become what Tide called an Altered, one who, by his own words, was 'infected with the Flood' but not overtaken by it, as most of the population in Malum currently were. Unlike them, however, her lungs had not been changed to produce additional spores, as Tide did not want her infection to be detected.

That memory was disturbing for her in a visceral sense, something Tide had assured her was a perfectly normal reaction to have and apologized profusely for, but taking the wider point-of-view the capabilities were endless. An Altered or one of the forms Tide created himself were essentially walking arsenals and hidden ones at that. If he wished, Purilla realized Tide could likely have spread much more quickly simply by taking control of every Altered like he had briefly with her and sending them after the rest of the population.

That he hadn't was reassuring to her and made her feel that his apology and claim that he didn't like doing such things were both sincere.

According to Tide, things appeared to be coming to a head on Monstrum. Ellen was preparing for her attack on the Orks, the Sisters of Battle were coming to Malum, and the traitors, who she was shocked and appalled to learn were controlled by a chaos cult, were on the move.

She'd been concerned when learning that the Sisters were heading towards Tide's center of operations, but he had reassured her that he would be fine. Still, Purilla wasn't sure.

Tide's position was a precarious one. If an Imperial ship managed to arrive, whether in spite of the Warp Storm or because it had ended, Ellen was likely going to commandeer it in the name of the Inquisition. If it had the ability to perform an exterminatus…

While Purilla wasn't certain Ellen would go that far, she wasn't certain about a lot of things with the Inquisitor these days. Ellen had always been ruthless and, though she had never ordered such an act before, it wouldn't be beyond her.

She couldn't allow that to happen, but Ellen had left her and Vidriov behind in the palace as she went to war, apparently no longer needing their advice. The people of this world, at least those not infected by genestealers or corrupted by the horrors of Chaos, were innocent and deserved a chance at a better life. The universe itself needed Tide to stop the pain that had been carelessly inflicted upon it, to save… well, everyone. Everything.

So it was that she had concocted this scheme and gotten Tide onboard with it. She wondered if he had a similar plan, but hadn't wanted to involve her, as he had admitted that having a Planetary Governor as an Altered would be of immense benefit in the long run. He'd agreed to her idea fairly quick, though that could have been due to how quickly he seemed able to think. Or rather, how he was able to slow time for his own thoughts thanks to Neural Physics.

She was so lost in her own head that it took a subtle mental prod from Tide to get her attention back on her own surroundings. She found herself at the end of the Grand Hall, faced with a door that could have given an ordinary hiver vertigo simply from having to crane their necks up to look at its top, but was relatively small compared to similar portals she had seen on some warships and other immensely opulent constructs.

The door depicted the massive, embossed face of Selvik Monstrum himself, shiny and golden. Despite the bat-like proportions of the governor's face, the angle anyone would be forced to view the depiction from, not to mention some expertly subtle craftsmanship, made the man's appearance seem impressive, noble even. It was an impressive door and utterly impractical.

She did not go through that door, which would only open for great events and court. While she was the member of an Inquisitor's retinue and some would consider her mere presence deserving of such pomp, she knew well that Ellen's goodwill was quickly running thin and she had no desire to be the reason it ran out by making a fuss over them not opening an eyesore of a door.

Instead, she took one of the side entrances, passing by the silent, if glowering, palace guards that stood sentry outside it. Their surface thoughts made it quite clear they felt disdain for her, but whether that was because they knew of her status as a psyker or they disliked the Inquisitor she purportedly served, she did not know.

The chamber that Selvik held court in was just as impressive as the Grand Hall had been. Twelve columns, each made of solid marble and all thick enough that twenty men working together couldn't have wrapped their arms around their base, were spaced along the sides of a grand, Imperial-red carpet itself as wide as the Grand Hall had been and actually a continuation of what had only appeared to be the floor within the hall. Dozens of braziers, each wrought from black iron and lit with roaring golden flames, were placed between each column, though most of the light was provided by the ceiling's lights, though these were no less excessive than anything else in the chamber.

One could easily have made the mistake of thinking that they were outside again, as the ceiling of the audience chamber was not only a hundred meters high, but a masterwork painting designed to depict a clear night sky that, according to local legend, possessed the same stars, which doubled as the lights providing illumination to the entire chamber, that would have been seen from the center of the Imperial Palace on Holy Terra. Purilla doubted that was actually the case, but the view was impressive nonetheless.

Imperial architecture is many things, but subtle certainly isn't one of them, Tide commented silently and Purilla wondered what kind of aesthetics a being like Tide might have preferred. She'd have to ask later.

The massive audience chamber was almost entirely empty, save for a few dozen servitors cleaning it and the one other human swiftly approaching her. The man was tall and thin and he walked with a noble's gait, though a noble approaching a superior, rather than an inferior. The uniform he wore was that of a servant, but the finery indicated a high-ranking one, similar to a butler.

"Lady Purilla Olivia, welcome," The man said, bowing his head. His old age was obvious, despite what had likely been many rejuvenation treatments, indicating he was reaching the end of a very extended lifespan. Three centuries, at the very least. "The governor is awaiting you in one of the side chambers. If you would follow me?"

"Of course," Purilla replied gracefully even as she reached out and brushed the foremost thoughts of the man's mind. Unsurprisingly, he was nervous to be greeting a psyker, though he physically hid it well.

The man turned on his heel and departed from the main carpet. She followed and they made their way to a side chamber, one much smaller and, relatively, nondescript.

Through the door, Purilla saw the governor, sitting hunched over a cup of some kind of hot drink. He glanced up with small eyes and smiled at her, his bat-like features drawing back in what could easily have been mistaken as a snarl.

Purilla imagined she felt something small and light crawl from its hiding place between strands of her hair. She might not have imagined the near-inaudible buzzing of small, insectoid wings as the creature Tide had called a 'Tick' took flight, unseen and unnoticed.

"Welcome, Psyker Olivia," The governor said, sitting up slightly straighter, though he did not rise. "I am told Inquisitor Ellen sends you with a message."

Like she had for the butler, she reached out once more and felt the mind of the man before her. She had half-expected the governor to try and send a body double instead, but likely the knowledge that a Psyker was being sent to deliver the message had killed such a plan in its crib. This was the genuine article.

"Yes, if we might speak in private?" Purilla said, giving the butler a look. The butler, in turn, looked to the governor.

"Of course!" The governor said genially and waved the butler out. His mind said this action made him slightly more nervous, but not scared. He likely had people watching them outside the room, waiting for any sign of psychic attack. He was also unaware of the fact that Purilla could sense the tensing minds of twenty palace guard on the other side of a secret entrance into the room.

"Inquisitor Ellen is unhappy with the current predicament, as I'm sure you can imagine," Purilla stated. A part of her wanted to look around at every flicker of shadow and mote of dust in the expectation of viewing the tick's flight, but she restrained herself.

"So I can," Selvik said, looking genuinely sad. "My world is under siege for the first time in millennia."

"Indeed," Purilla said, while mentally asking Tide, How long?

Already done.

There was no change in Selvik's body language or mental state to indicate his becoming an Altered. Just like that, her mission was successful.

I don't think telling him 'the Inquisitor's annoyed' is much of a message.

I know, Purilla replied. I'm just going to tell him some recommendations for keeping order in Deimos.

Then by all means, he's looking at you.

"Ah!" Purilla said, shaking her head. "Apologies, sometimes I get lost in my own thoughts."

"Do you now?" Selvik asked, a somewhat forced smile on his face. There was a spike in his nervousness at her explanation.

"Now, where were we?"



Vidriov listened to the noosphere, feeling the sacred data in the air all around him. Entering so deeply was almost like floating in an ocean of numbers and code, a place where holy logic reigned supreme. It had its own dangers, of course. The temptation to remain within this place forever, this realm that must have been something like what the Omnissiah Himself dwelled in, was strong. To exist among machine spirits and to leave behind the weak flesh of his form in totality.

He could not, however, as doing such a thing was nothing short of the highest of heresies. He rarely allowed himself to access too much of the noosphere of any world, even one where its waters were relatively shallow like Monstrum. This was a rare and even self-indulgent pleasure, but a necessary one.

He entered a section of the noosphere even more secure than the rest of it, a place where only the three highest ranking members of Monstrum's priesthood had access, including himself.

A string of numbers, words of the lingua-technis, were transmitted to him a moment after he arrived.

Inquisitor Catherine Ellen - Reconsidered beliefs on Organism-04? The question came from the planet's highest-ranking tech-priest, Magos Zalum, personal tech-priest of the planetary governor. The way he spoke was a further emulation of the machines they held sacred, an attempt to remove anything but the bare essentials, though Vidriov personally felt it was an insignificant improvement, if one at all.

Negative¸Vidriov responded in the same language. Remains opposed to anything beyond low-level study.

Not unexpected, another source said. It was Logis Calarn Alpha-4-3, who was the leader of the tech-priests attached to the Order of the Cleansing Rains. She lacks vision.

If he had a form in this dataspace, Vidriov might have nodded. Instead, he sent a code of confirmation, one also sent by Zalum.

Question - Inquisitor Catherine Ellen – Plans to delete hostile elements?

Monstrum Urban Cohorts will be deployed to eradicate the orks outside Deimos, Vidriov replied. I calculate the likelihood of success as approximately 76.541%. Army will continue on to deal with other ork elements in the north, before proceeding to deal with genestealer and traitor elements.

Estimation – Likelihood of success against all ork forces?

48.764%, Vidriov answered.

Estimation – Likelihood of success against genestealers, assuming successful eradication of ork forces?

12.312%.

Estimation – Likelihood of success against traitors, assuming successful eradication of ork and genestealer forces?

0.037%.

Estimation – Likelihood of success in previous estimations if Organism-04 deployed in support of Imperial forces?

Against orks: 99.999% - Against genestealers: 99.98% - Against traitors: 87.068%

Conclusion - Inquisitor Catherine Ellen – Grossly incompetent – Alternative – Traitor.

Agreed, Calarn said. After a long moment, where Vidriov knew they were waiting for him, he replied.

Agreed.

Something must be done, Calarn spoke. She has lost control of the Adeptas Sororitas and over 58% of the planet. She will lose the rest of it if we do not act.

Estimate – Deimos fully blessed with Organism-04 timeline?

Approximately two weeks following initial deployment. Vidriov had run simulations thousands of times already. The rate of spread of Organism-04 was… unprecedented. Assuming additional vectors added to initial deployment, timeline decreases up to 23.412%.

Confirmation – Deployment should begin immediately.

Calarn sent a code of agreement. With the Omnissiah's blessing, it will not be too late already.

With the Omnissiah's blessing, Vidriov agreed.



Canoness Praxiah stood atop the foremost Chimera, gazing solemnly upon the cheering crowds of Imperial citizens that surrounded the Order of the Cleansing Rains as they rolled through Malum's streets. At her side was Colonel Marcus Agrippa. The rolled through abandoned quarantine checkpoints as they made their way towards the camp where the regiments of PDF under Agrippa's command were mustering.

Technically, the arrival of Praxiah and her Sisters in Malum was a violation of that quarantine, even if no one was trying to stop them. However, from a simple conversation with Agrippa himself, whose straightforwardness in getting his troops ready before their arrival she could appreciate in a leader, especially on such short notice, the man had claimed no knowledge of any plague outbreaks.

Certainly, there were no signs of disease or similar maladies afflicting the people of Malum. These were no plague victims, but healthy Imperial citizens, gladdened by the arrival of the Sisterhood and stalwart in their faith to the God-Emperor. In fact, if anything, they seemed even more healthy than the common people of Deimos or any other hive Praxiah had ever seen before. As sure a sign of the God-Emperor's work as any. It was for that reason that Praxiah had rescinded the standing order for her Sisters and their Order's servants to keep their breath filters and helmets on at all times and why her own helmet was tucked under her arm, allowing her to breathe the, somewhat, clearer air of Malum's surface.

"According to reports and long-range surveillance, the transport lines leading to Janus were damaged by the initial Ork assault." Agrippa had ceded command of the overall forces to her upon her arrival. Another welcome surprise. While it was only right, being not only the higher-ranking officer, not to mention his senior in experience by a wide margin, she had encountered plenty of stubborn leaders in her time that were too convinced of their own tactical and strategic brilliance that they refused to give up their command without further persuasion. Ever since she'd arrived, he'd personally started providing her with the also surprisingly in-depth information of the composition of his forces, suspected enemy strength, and all manner of other little details that, while small on the face of it, painted her a vivid picture of suspected resistance.

The man clearly had the makings of greatness within him, as the sheer attention to detail would make even the most skilled Administratum clerks seem slow-witted. Perhaps not necessarily as a general, as she had not seen him operate under the different kind of pressure an active battlefield could create, but certainly as a leader of some kind. However…

"How was this 'long-range surveillance' conducted?" Praxiah asked. While she had already violated the quarantine, she had good reason and knew just what kind of person Ellen was. Marcus Agrippa did not have that reasoning and should have obeyed the Inquisitorial order if he was a loyal servant of the God-Emperor.

"Seismic activity was detected by Tech-Priests manning the augurs at the tunnel to Janus and several explosions were detected by sentries posted to the lower spires. Power running along the lines from Janus was subsequently lost, though our own generators remain functional," Marcus stated, showing no signs of her suspiciousness. "We haven't been allowed to send anyone to investigate the tunnels properly, so the exact damage is unknown, but the destruction was viewed as being great enough that most of the railways would be shut down somewhere around halfway between Janus and Malum. Whether the traitors still have operational rail transport that can get them near there is unknown, but I'd wager they do."

"How far can our own transports get us?"

"Unknown," Agrippa admitted with a grimace. "We'd need to send out scouts to confirm. A servoskull, at the very least."

Praxiah nodded. "I'll have one of our Order's Tech-Priests send some out as soon as we've arrived. No insult to your city, but our equipment is likely more advanced than what you have on hand."

"None taken," Agrippa nodded back to her. "We suspect the damaged sections to be a two day's march out."

"Good. God-Emperor willing, our transports are in better shape than theirs."

"I had the enginseers working on them after I first heard you were coming," Agrippa said. "They're not exactly ahead of their maintenance, but I've been told the machine spirits are actually rejuvenated due to the… break in traffic between cities."

"The God-Emperor works in mysterious ways," Praxiah said and she thought she might have seen the makings of a smile on Agrippa's lips out of the corner of her eyes, but it was gone in an instant, his face once more a professional mask. "How soon can we leave?"

Agrippa glanced at her, seemingly surprised by her question. "Canoness, with all due respect, you and your Sisters just completed a march I'm told kills most of those who take it from the arduousness," Agrippa said, his mask breaking again, this time with a look of what seemed like genuine concern in his eyes. "While I do not doubt the ability or fervor of the Sisters of Battle, with all due respect, I can't imagine you're in top form."

Praxiah leveled a stony gaze at him, one that could make lesser humans cower. Yet Agrippa stood his ground.

It was true that her Sisters were tired and it was also true that they would gladly fight regardless of that. However… She could not fault Agrippa for wishing all their forces to be in top shape. They would be assaulting a hive city, after all, and that was no small task. With only eight regiments and a single Order of Sisters, their task was a great one.

"Very well," Praxiah allowed finally, returning her gaze to the distant grounds where she could see countless lightly armored men and women scurrying about fields of hastily erected tents and other facilities, readying themselves for war. "I will allow for four hours of rest before we depart, if only because it will take at least that long for the first reports from the servoskulls to return."

"Yes, Canoness."

 

[Jackson Fox]

Day 22



The main gates of Deimos, massive and made of thick slabs of ceramite and rockrete, had not ever been opened in the living memory of Monstrum's rulers. They were as old as the city itself, supposedly, built in a time of great strife, constructs the size of the God-Machines of the Mechanicus and nearly as tough. There had been no reason for them to be unsealed in all that time, as no one of sufficient import had ever had a reason to stride out into the grey wastes that surrounded the hives of the planet. At least, no reason that they wanted to bring the entire city's attention to, in any case. It was not even certain if the gates could still be opened.

The Orks had tried anyways. Again and again, they charged the most heavily defended area of all Deimos, knocking upon its doors with their charges, only to be pushed back by the city's valiant defenders. Through it all, the portal had stood strong and unbreached.

Yet now, in a rare moment where the Orks had withdrawn from their attack, the mighty and ancient constructs swung on mechanisms freshly checked and applied with sacred oils, their enduring master-craft parts creaking with stress and rust loudly enough that the sound could be heard for tens of kilometers in every direction, creating a cacophony that even those in the base of Deimos' spires heard the tones of.

From behind them, louder than even the gate's protestations, was a single, harsh command:

"FORWAAARD… MARCH!"

The Imperial Guard was going to war.

In four columns each a hundred men thick, with dozens of tanks supporting their vanguards, four regiments of the Monstrum Urban Cohorts began their march out of Deimos, two million men united into a single force of awesome power.

The Orks were not ones to sit idly by when an opponent marched out to meet them. Unlike the ordered and disciplined ranks of the Cohorts, there was no coordination to their response beyond a general objective to meet them head-on. Hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands of Orks rushed straight at their enemy, shouting and hooting and hollering with joy at the approaching slaughter.

As the Inquisitor had expected. Upon the walls above the gate, hidden wherever they could find cover, thousands of the Cohorts' best marksman and snipers opened fire with powerful las rifles, targeting the largest Orks in the encroaching horde, the leaders of the mob.

While the las rifles were prized for their range and power, even they had limits and could not be expected to reliably kill even a regular ork alone. For that reason, accompanying their surprise attack was the boom of almost every artillery piece Deimos had in its defense arsenal, save those that could not be moved in time for the counterattack. While the demand had severely weakened the other sections of the city's walls and defenses, the resulting slaughter of greenskins and the loss of leadership and morale in their enemy made it well worth the sacrifice.

The charge faltered and slowed, even while the Guard continued to march outwards, forming firing lines akin to ancient terran armies. The front ranks had set their lasguns to full burst, unleashing the maximum power of their lasguns into the enemy horde, sending waves of red death crashing into the fragmented horde. When their ammunition ran dry, they withdrew from the front rank and filed between the lines of their comrades to reach the back of the vanguard, where they would reload. Meanwhile, the second rank became the first and repeated the process.

What resulted was a near endless stream of lasfire that cut through the horde like a power sword sheered through flesh. Thousands of Orks died as the columns marched forwards, their tanks opening fire and adding their voices to the crackling thunder of discharged lasguns.

The Orks, bruised and battered, fled back to their roks in the far distance and a victorious cheer went up among the Guard, but Ellen knew the battle was far from over. This had been the vanguard of the siege, not the bulk of the Ork forces around Deimos. They had been caught unprepared and their defeat had been more due to the surprise and shock of their sudden attack than any actual damage they had dealt.

With enough room to breathe, fresh power attacks were distributed among the four regiments and their lines change formation. Where before they had been a hammer to break the Orks, now they would be marching out from the cover of the city's defenses. They could not afford to be taken by surprise.

Another four regiments emerged from the city, forming a massive block made up of thousand men battalions, forty units thick and a hundred long. Once more, the tanks and other vehicles the Guard had were placed in the spaces between the battalions.

Their formation had eaten up much of their time, but the Orks had not yet responded. So, the eight regiments marched out, eager to continue their initial success.



Ellen studied the battle map, not displayed on her hololithic artifact, but a smaller and far less advanced construct. The flickering, in part due to the poor connectivity with the servoskulls surveying the field, was frustrating to have to deal with, but she had little other option at the moment, unless she wanted to have statuettes on paper in place of any live feed.

The initial march out had gone well. Perhaps a little too well. She had never seen Orks abandon a fight so easily. The violent greenskins were stubborn, if nothing else. Yet they had broken quickly.

Unimportant, she decided. The fury of the God-Emperor was with them. Orks could be cunning, but she doubted convincing an entire mob to fall back in the middle of their charge was possible for any Warboss, let alone one that seemed absent from the battlefield entirely.

On the edge of the map, where the feed was at its grainiest and regularly flicked in and out of existence as servoskulls were unable to get closer due to drawing the notice of the enemy or simply left range, the main Ork force could be seen, the furthest remnants of their shattered vanguard rejoining the roiling mob.

That force was already on its way to meet the regiments, driven forward by the largest of their kind and their own lust for battle and bloodshed. Already, hundreds of thousands of Orks were getting ready to charge their enemy.

An open battle favored the Orks and their brutish strength, but this would be no slaughter. The core of the front ranks, where once lasguns had dominated, were replaced by teams carrying heavy weapons and the tanks and artillery pieces began reforming into a wedge in the center as well, while the flanks were held by infantry.

The Hammer of the Imperium would smash right through these vile xenos, shatter their lines. If the Warboss was among the horde, it would almost certainly be in that center. The flanks would fight a delaying action, forming five lines of defense that the enemy would have to get through to deal effective damage to the Guard's center.



Corren's face and that of his squadmates were all the same, stoic expression, but inside he was shitting himself. Posted on the first line on the right flank was… not a great place to be and staring down an endless green tide of screaming orks would make a man feel less than stellar about his prospects of living. The Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer spoke of greenskins as being weaker than humans and as dumb as plants.

While he would never doubt the veracity of such a sacred text, not aloud anyways, he couldn't help but get the slightest impression that whoever wrote those words was… misleading, a tad.

Orks were not weaker than a man. Over the last few days defending Deimos from their onslaught, he'd seen Orks rip men apart with their bare hands, others with mechanical vice-claws that acted as replacements that could crack armor and bone like crumpled parchment in their grip.

True, they did go down in a single shot… from a tank, at least. His lasgun might have killed a few of the orks in the initial charge, but there were at least ten of his fellow guardsman shooting at the same targets as he was.

He kept all this to himself, of course. No point giving Commissar Blair a reason to doubt his bravery or think he'd make a good means of motivating the rest of them.

However, as the rest of the Orks prepared to charge at them across an open field, he couldn't help but grip his lasgun a tad tighter and wish they still were in the cover of the hive city. Even Blair, normally the most boisterous and ferocious among them to set the example as a commissar did, had fallen silent at the onrushing horde. He thought the man might have had a slight tremble from the way his bolt pistol was shaking.

He set his worries aside and looked for the biggest, meanest ork he could find in his line of fire. He didn't have to look far to find one that fit the bill, a towering creature encased in scrap metal shaped almost in a mocking imitation of true armor.

He didn't fire. He waited. He waited for orders over the commbead in his ear, despite the nerves wracking his body and mind, despite the growing pit in his stomach as he saw that giant come closer… and closer… and closer… and-

"FIRE!"

He squeezed the trigger and his vision was consumed by waves of red light interspersed with blue flashes as every guardsman beside him opened up with their own weapons. The crack of heavy stubbers and cannons and bolters split through his ears like a thunderous crash that threatened to deafen him. The roar of the orks was temporarily drowned out, as was all sight of the approaching horde during the split second where the light that covered them was so bright he might have been in the barren lands.

He kept firing, though it took a minute before his vision actually allowed him to see anything. When he heard the familiar click of his lasgun emptying its final round, it was muscle memory that let him remove the power pack and replace it with a fresh one from his belt, and what let him resume firing despite having no idea if he was actually hitting anything.

Eventually, his vision was restored and the waves of light had become broken up enough that he could see the enemy through it and the pit in his stomach only grew deeper. The orks were still rushing forward, only a few hundred meters away now. If their attack had killed any, he had no idea, the foe's numbers had covered them in the rush.

Order the withdrawal, he prayed, still firing endlessly. He saw three of the smaller gretchen creatures fall to his weapons fire, though that was all they did: fall. They were still moving when they collapsed, though they wouldn't be able to get up again as their own allies crushed them under the weight of their charge as they continued to rush forward.

The orks had been firing the whole time, but now their shots were beginning to land. There was a spray of blood from his right as Mel collapsed to the ground, a heavy metal round having ripped its way through his torso, nearly tearing the man in half. Corren thought he might have heard his squadmate screaming, but he wasn't sure.

Order the withdrawal, he repeated. His lasgun was proving ineffective against the larger orks' heads on its own, doing little more than burning their faces it seemed, so he changed his approach and aimed lower, at their knees and ankles. The Emperor's eye was with him and he managed to cause one of the larger orks to stumble and fall, the last sight of the vile xeno its eyes widening in shock before it was swallowed by the rush.

To his left, he saw Commissar Blair, wildly waving his chainsword over his head as though wanting to fight the orks hand to hand, bolt pistol pointed down at the ground, roaring a battlecry, disappear as several rounds tore their way through him, sending chunks of flesh and cloth flying everywhere. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of his squadmates stop firing for a moment to go over and pull the bolt pistol out of Blair's arm, which had landed several meters away from where the man had been standing.

ORDER THE DAMNED WITHDRAWAL, he shouted, begging the God-Emperor to spare a moment of His time. Finally, He seemed to hear his servant's request.

"First line, throw grenades! Withdraw to second line!"

The moment he heard the voice in his ear, Corren chucked the grenade he had been entrusted with before the battle before turning and booking it for the second line. He did not bother turning to watch the explosions, nor to see the carnage that resulted as heavy stubber fire filled the pre-planned gaps in the withdrawing first line to further slow the Ork charge.

He ran fast and he ran hard, keeping his head low. One of his squadmates, Sephor, was faster, but wasn't as lucky, getting closer to the second line than the rest of them before a brown mass that looked more like a mouth with legs than a true animal shot towards him, its maw opening wide to snap shut around the poor man's lower back, a sickening crack being heard as the force of the collision snapped Sephor's spine and sent him to the ground. He was screaming for a while longer before the squig's razor sharp teeth sliced him in two.

Someone with a bolt pistol, perhaps the guardsman who had picked it up from Blair, fired a shot that caused the vicious beast to explode before it could finish its twitching meal.

Corren reached the second line and dove, sliding victoriously behind the next rank of Guardsman. He panted for breath and began crawling towards the back of that line, only to feel a pair of hands on his shoulders haul him up back onto his feet. A commissar, with a vicious grin on his face, clapped him on the arm almost good-naturedly.

"Well done, son!" The man shouted over the din of battle. "Now, join the line! There's a good man!"

Shit.



"Right flank's first line has withdrawn and reinforced the second line," One of the colonels, placed in charge of that flank, said. Ellen nodded, not looking away from the center of the battle map. Things had developed quickly.

"Sections of the left flank's first took too long," Another colonel, in charge of the left, noted. "They've engaged the Orks with bayonets."

"They'll buy us time," Ellen said. "Heroes, one and all."

She said the words almost absentmindedly as her attention was on the meat of the battle in the middle of the battle map. The Orks had crashed against a wall of stubber, cannon, and las fire, chewing through their front ranks like a chainblade chewed through flesh. The field was already littered with corpses, but something was nagging at Ellen. This felt too… simple, even for Orks. A headlong rush was completely in keeping with their style, but they were almost entirely made up of infantry.

The Orks had vehicles, there had been numerous sightings of them during the siege, but outside of a few warbikes and other light vehicle they were notably absent. Had they been deployed elsewhere on the planet?

It was minutes before the next major change occurred and she heard one of the colonels swear under his breath, perhaps thinking she wouldn't hear him.

"Right flank's second line needs to withdraw," The man said to the vox officer nearby. "Throw grenades and pull back."

"The left flank's second line is holding," The second colonel said, hiding a sneer in his voice and Ellen noticed the other man shoot him a glare.

"Their center is collapsing," Ellen said quietly, causing both men to forget their animosity and refocus their attention on the task at hand. They watched as a combined arms force of tanks and infantry a few thousand strong began to push forward into a breach that had been created. Over the course of minutes, they looked at something like a boarding pod rip through the hull of armor, expanding the breach to be further widened as Ellen ordered more and more troops into the offensive.

"Once we break through their central line, we'll roll up both of their flanks," Ellen said, a moment before there was a shift in the orks.

"Their… flanks are reinforcing the middle?" The first colonel said, sounding almost astounded. "They're pulling back on the right."

"The left as well," The second man said. "They're leaving themselves wide open."

"Order the flanks to encircle the orks," Ellen quickly said, leaping on the opportunity. It was a change in their plan, but the flanks were no longer needed to guard the center.

Her orders were swiftly carried out and the flanks began to close like a vice-grip around the neck of their foe. It was then that Ellen noticed a section on the right of the battle map wink out of existence and she glanced at the tech-priest.

"Servoskull-182b and Servoskull-281c have lost connection," The tech-priest stated as he plugged in several mechadendrites into the display. "Attempting to reconnect."



Grinhide smiled as he watched the faroff specks of fire that had once been a pair of floating humie skulls crash to the ground, taken out by some device crafted by his mekboys. Some kind of 'ee-lek-trow-mag-nat-ick' shoota or something. He didn't really care about the weird name, but the results were useful for blinding the humies.

In the distance, he could just about make out the humies army slowly closing in around his bait. A part of him, a big part, had been itching to be in that fight, to just join in the rampant slaughter rather than do all this sneaking around. Still, this was fun too he supposed. Their faces would be a sight to see, he was sure.

His metal boots stomped loudly up onto the top of his kill krusha, stepping onto his place right behind its main gun. He turned to face those behind him.

"ALRIGHT, YOU GITS!" Grinhide snarled at his forces, remarkably quiet for a horde of orks piloting all kinds of wagons and tanks, slowly being revealed from under massive tarps of human skin stained with the black ash that covered the ground. "WHO WANTS TO FOIGHT SOME PUNY HUMIES!?!"

The silence of the gathering area was shattered by the united roar of orks and revving engines and firing shootas.

"'ERE WE GO, LADS!"



Corren barely managed to pull himself out of the way of the descending choppa, its misshaped teeth cutting through the air where he'd been less than a moment earlier. He lunged forward, his lasgun's bayonet sinking deep into the neck of the ork, its dark blood choking its final gasps as it died. For good measure, he gave the blade a twist before yanking it out, breathing hard, blood pounding in his ears.

Around him, the ordered firing lines of Guardsmen had devolved into a brutal melee as the withdrawing orks suddenly rushed forward again with renewed ferocity. He barely saw the ork choppa falling towards him from his right and he leapt aside, crashing to the ground atop an armored ork's corpse, feeling the scrap metal plates of the xeno's gear sharply digging into his ribs with enough force that they might have cracked.

He raised his lasgun, kept in his hands only by a grip tighter than a dead man's, preparing to either fire a shot or spear the new enemy through, only for a blinding flash to burn his retinas. When he blinked them clear a moment later, he saw the Ork was gone, replaced by a charred corpse and fried gear, choppa fallen from its vaporized hand.

He glanced at his savior, a man wielding a plasma gun, unsure whether to thank him for saving his life or condemn him for firing such a volatile device so near to him, but there was no time. A gretchen leapt upon the weapon's wielder from behind, burying a shiv in his throat in the gap between helmet and chestplate, gruesomely similar to how Corren had slain the ork from earlier.

The plasma gun wielder collapsed to the ground, his weapon falling with him and Corren froze for a moment, half-expecting the unstable device to explode. When it did not, he didn't breathe a sigh of relief, instead moving towards it.

The gretchen was seemingly caught in a blood rage, repeatedly stabbing the already dead guardsmen with its blade again and again. Corren took full advantage of the filthy creature's distraction and fired a shot from his lasgun, briefly enjoying the sight of the resulting miniature explosion as the energy bolt sliced through its neck and caused the thin structure to explode outwards, effectively decapitating the xeno.

He rushed forward and abandoned his lasgun in favor of the plasma gun. He had been trained in its use, though never with an actual weapon as there weren't enough to go around. He hoped the machine spirit did not mind the profuse amount of blood that had covered its frame.

He readied the weapon just as a huge ork, a nob he identified, emerged from the chaos of battle and turned its horrific gaze upon him. The ork roared a wordless warcry and charged, but Corren's finger was already squeezing the trigger and there was another blinding flash and a shriek of bestial pain. Horrifyingly, the monster had survived the blast, despite the lower half of its body being vaporized and everything else being scorched beyond recognition. The ork wailed in pain reaching out with a charred hand at him as though in an attempt to reach his neck to crush it in its grip, before the cry was cut off with a gurgle as another guardsman, one Corren didn't recognize behind all the blood covering his face, stabbed through its neck with a bayonet.

Corren was already moving, already searching for the next target with his new weapon, when he heard the sound of engines piercing through the din of battle. Engines that were louder and far different to those of the Leman Russes and other tanks brought to this battle by the Guard.

He turned, a deep fear in his stomach, almost uncaring if an ork managed to sneak up behind him as had occurred for the previous wielder of his plasma gun. Because at least then he wouldn't need to face what he saw coming for them next.

Barreling towards him at shocking speed was an endless sea, not of the green of orks, but of scrap metal welded onto vehicles that ranged from barely the size of a man to twice that of a Leman Russ. And ahead of the pack of hollering orks and their war-engines was a tank that had to be the size of a vehicle like the legendary baneblade that he had only heard of.

Shit.



"They… They're supposed to just be dumb animals…" One of the colonels, Ellen wasn't sure which, whispered under his breath. She was too busy staring at the battle display as a steadily growing wave of ork vehicles began to spread across the map, her power armored hands squeezing the metal frame of the device tighter and tighter, much to the alarm of the tech-priest.

The orks had outflanked them. They had outflanked her.

"Pull the right flank back and prepare to meet their charge!" The colonel in charge of that flank reacted laudably quickly, quickly delivering a further deluge of orders, more than a few of which were overreaching his granted authority. But that didn't matter.

"Major Lensk," Ellen said, her voice low and dangerous. The Scion stepped forward instantly, his face the mask of a professional killer. "Ready my bodyguard and all our reserves. We're heading out."

"Yes, Inquisitor," The man responded, departing immediately.

"Inquisitor?" The other colonel left the question in his voice unspoken.

Ellen gave no answer, simply turning and storming out of the command tent. Four infantry regiments of the Guard would not be enough to defeat that force of vehicles… But they should be enough to get her to the Warboss.

She had made a mistake, a serious and costly one. But if she killed the leader, the mob would fracture. And, if she failed… she would not have to live with the shame of being defeated by an ork, at the very least.



From high above and far away in the spires of Deimos, the silent watcher saw the battle unfolding before him as he'd expected it to. Catherine Ellen, as the Lord-Inquisitor and other reports had told him, was brash and inexperienced. He'd seen the signs of the orks preparing their ambush, as they moved more and more of their vehicles away from the front to a place hidden even to his excellent vantage and perception.

The waves of ork vehicles crashed into the right flank of the Guard's forces, slashing them to ribbons like power claws through plastek. Ironically enough, the lines closest to fighting the orks that had been left as bait were the ones least impacted by the assault, as the counter-encirclement pushed for the center of the Guard's lines, aiming for the strongest forces.

It was only minutes before the four reserve regiments were rushing out, their few transports rushing ahead of the bulk of the infantry that had to fast march towards the enemy. Those minutes cost the Imperium's forces dearly, tens of thousands dying to the onrush of ork forces.

Ahead of the rest of the Guard's transports was a single, more special chimera, one that had been crafted to higher specifications and bore the signs of authority upon it, flanked by another two, more standard transports. The Inquisitor had taken to the field, apparently intent on either defeating the Orks herself… or dying and not having to deal with the aftermath of her momentous failure. This too had been expected.

The time had almost come. The Vindicare assassin did not tense in preparation, did not shift even a millimeter to prepare his shot. He did not need to.



Grinhide roared in delight at the slaughter unfolding before him, watching as tens of humies were grinded into a red paste under the mass of his kill krusha. He could already see the puny tanks and he rotated the massive turret he stood behind, slamming his fist down on the giant red button labelled with the ork rune for 'fire'.

The massive kinetic round sliced straight through one tank and embedded itself in another behind it before it exploded, shaking the ground with the force of the blast. His tank crashed into a third tank, simply rolling over the top of it and crushing the humie vehicle with its sheer weight.

However, that had proven a mistake, as the ammo cache of the kill krusha's victim exploded and Grinhide was thrown clear of his tank, landing in a heap on the ground.

Undeterred by or unaware of the loss of its Warboss, the superheavy tank trundled onwards, barely bothered by the explosion under it. Grinhide snarled and roared in rage.

"GET BACK 'ERE, YA GITS!" Grinhide shouted at the top of his lungs, waving his massive choppa, which was covered in saws, above his head wildly, but he could not be heard over the sound of fighting. He grabbed the nearest grot and brought the shaking and terrified creature up to his face. "TELL'EM TO COME BACK!"

With those orders, he threw the diminutive beast full force at the tank, the grot screaming as it soared through the air. Grinhide's aim was a little off, as the grot went straight over the top of the kill krusha, disappearing behind its frame. Satisfied that the grot would surely fulfill his orders and definitely hadn't been killed either by the force of the fall or being subsequently crushed by the kill krusha, Grinhide's attention turned to his surroundings.

A dozen puny humies were charging at him with their gun-choppas held ready. Grinhide smiled savagely and revved the whirling blades on his choppa.



Corren wasn't sure how he'd survived the ork encirclement. He'd just kept shooting anything green that moved and that had somehow worked. A dozen other guardsmen, none of which he knew the names of, had gathered around him, moving from the burning wrecks of ork vehicles that had either been destroyed in battle or simply failed. The main ork forces had moved on to attack the center, apparently content to leave pockets of survivors behind to get to the real fighting faster.

Not all of them, however.

Six boys charged out from behind a collapsed ork battle wagon, four with choppas and two with shootas. Corren was already moving before even any of his fellows and the plasma gun, which had already proven itself a dozen times over, unleashed a flash of light that saw one of the gun-wielding orks turned to ash in an instant. The other ork with the shoota was the target of half-a-dozen lasgun shots that dropped him dead almost as quickly.

The four remaining orks roared as they charged and Corren barely had enough time to set his weapon, close to overheating, down before they were upon them, drawing his combat knife. One of the orks ran straight for him, swinging its choppa sideways at his neck, and Corren dropped down low. The ork tried to change the direction of its swing at the last moment, but all it accomplished was throwing off its balance as the blade soared harmlessly over his head. The lumbering beast stumbled to the side and a trio of blasts from a lasgun pelted its armored sides harmlessly.

Corren jumped forward and turned in the same motion, getting behind the ork in an instant, using both hands to bury his combat knife deep into an uncovered section of plating in the ork's shoulder. The xeno shouted in anguish, dropping its choppa as its hands tried to reach the combat knife, but Corren had already wrenched it free and brought it down again, this time onto the monster's skull.

The blade embedded itself into thick bone, but did not sink as deeply as he'd hoped it might. Not deeply enough for the ork to stop moving, its heavy frame suddenly turning to slam the back of its fist into his chest, sending him flying and crashing to the ground, combat knife left stuck in the beast's skull.

There were screams from a few of the guardsmen, death cries Corren had become far too familiar with in the last few hours, and he saw no one was coming to help him as the ork trudged towards him, its square face radiating rage. And he was unarmed now. The ork was unarmed as well, but… well, it was an ork.

The greenskin rushed forward and Corren leapt to the side to avoid its haymaker, lashing out with a kick of his own that harmlessly struck the xeno's armored shin. The ork reached down and grabbed him by his leg with alarming speed and Corren knew he was going to die at that moment.

The ork tossed him like a ragdoll and it was a miracle that his leg wasn't wrenched out of its socket from the throw. The hull of an ork tank halted his short flight and he heard the crack of his ribs as they broke more than he felt the fractures. The air was knocked from his lungs and he gasped futilely for breath, unable to even stand as the ork approached, a vicious grin on its face as it reached up and pulled the combat knife that he'd embedded in its skull, seemingly preparing to return the favor.

Corren's hands closed around something familiar, a hand grip. Barely aware of what he was doing, he leveled a weapon that had the same familiar blue coils as the plasma gun but fitted for a pistol and squeezed the trigger.

The blast held all the fury of the plasma gun he'd wielded before simply contained in a smaller package and the ork fried as easily as the rest had.

He laid there for a while, staring at the charred corpse as it slowly disintegrated in front of him, barely aware of the fact that the other orks had finally been slain by his makeshift squad, now four men fewer.

His eyes fell to the plasma pistol in his hand, a sacred weapon if ever there was one, something he was lucky to even see let along wield. Something even commissars and officers would not always have had access to. He could only think of a single word as he stared down astonishedly at it, one word that fully encapsulated the awe he was feeling at how damn lucky he was.

Shit.



"WARBOSS!" Ellen shouted, her voice augmented by vox cast as her power blade sliced through an ork's torso, parting the two halves of its body with ease. "FACE ME!"

She couldn't be sure she was close to the warboss, but her challenges were being heard by all kinds of orks. Surrounded by her Tempestus Scions, their chimeras abandoned as they pushed into the chaotic melee the battle had devolved into, she was in her element.

No more politicking, no more schemes. Just destroying the enemies of the God-Emperor of Mankind, one corpse at a time.

Another pair of orks charged her, but they were as swiftly cut down as the nob had been and she passed them by without a second thought, her eyes searching through the mob of orks, looking for the largest.

She spotted it, but it was clear this was not the Warboss. All the same, a xenos to be expunged from His galaxy and she moved towards it, her crackling power blade a whirlwind of death and blood as she pushed forward, every stroke cutting down one or more of the vile greenskins.

The ork nob spotted her in turn and roared a challenge as it rushed forward, its own blade falling to slice her skull in half. She moved nimbly even in power armor, darting to the side, her own blade slashing through the dull choppa with utter finesse before following through the nob's own skull, ending it in the same strike.

"WARBOSS!" Ellen shouted again, even louder this time. "COME AND FIGHT, YOU COWARD!"

"OI!" Came a cry as equally as loud as her own and filled with equal parts rage and, somehow, indignity, despite lacking any augmentation of its own. "WHO YOU CALLIN' COWARD, HUMIE?!?"

The Ork Warboss was a towering monster, taller than her by half and bulkier by far even in her power armor. It was covered in metal plating and wielded a choppa that was as long as she was tall and covered in whirling saws with wicked teeth already soaked in blood. Its face was square and ugly with long tusks and dark green skin. She thought she could see stitching around its neck, but she wasn't sure.

"Come and fight, monster!" Ellen said, no longer shouting but still able to be heard thanks to the vox caster. She leveled her blade at the ork in challenge.

"ALRIGHT!" The Warboss seemed both angry and pleased and rushed forward, moving blaringly fast for such a large creature. Lensk and his men opened fire on the approaching ork, but even their hellguns were incapable of dissuading the beast or even doing more than burning its flesh, most of the energy bolts being absorbed by its heavy armor.

Ellen rushed forward to meet the beast, her power blade slicing through the air to meet the Warboss' choppa. She expected it to part through the blunt weapon as easily as it had the nob's, but instead it met resistance as it caught against the whirling blades, the power field met by a similar energy that wreathed the saws.

Ellen was not deterred, however, and she brought her blade up for another blow that fell upon the ork's side like a lightning bolt, only to be met by the ork's choppa once more.

Lensk and his men fired again and the Warboss grunted in annoyance, levelling its freehand at the Scions, revealing an underslung barrel hidden beneath its wrist. The first three shots took out two Scions in explosions of gore and they scattered under fire, searching for cover.

Seeking to take advantage of the momentary distraction, Ellen struck again and again, but the Warboss parried her every blow with frustrating ease. More orks began to arrive around the Warboss, but they stayed away from their fight, instead moving to engage the Scions, removing Ellen's support.

She snarled. She wouldn't need them to deal with such a creature. She didn't need anyone.

The Warboss grinned back, cackling with cruel laughter as it resumed its attack on her. She could not block the strength of the blows, only redirect or evade them. However, now that it was focused on attacking, it seemed to give up all concept of defense and she found her own attacks able to get through.

A single, shallow cut sheared off the ork's shoulder plating, sending a chunk of scrap to the ground and revealing a grisly sight. Sown onto the skin of the ork's shoulder, she saw a set of human lips, cut from the face, tipped upwards in an unnatural smile.

"LIKE MY TROPHIES?" The Warboss somehow combined a whisper with a shout, still grinning viciously. "THAT'UN WAS A GOOD FIGHT. GIMME A GOOD'UN TOO AND I'LL ADD YOU!"

Ellen suppressed a shudder of disgust and redoubled her attacks. She would not become such a thing. She refused!

Yet, all the same, she was being pushed back by the ork's attacks. The monster was faster, stronger, and had further reach than her. And, worst of all, she could tell it was toying with her even as she tried her hardest to slay it.

God-Emperor be with me, she prayed, even as she began to take step after step back, slowly making her way towards the burning wreck of numerous tanks and other vehicles.



Corren could have sworn as he ducked and rolled under the swing of the ork nob, raising his newest sidearm and vaporizing the vicious xeno. Fresh pain shot through him at the feeling of his broken bones being jostled, but his stims were running out and he had no more to deal with the pain.

Around him, his makeshift squad had changed once more. They were now six in number, but he was the only one of those who had been in it when he'd discovered the plasma pistol who wasn't dead. The orks had returned in numbers, but they'd managed to survive thus far through either the grace of the God-Emperor or sheer dumb luck.

A part of him begged him to stop, to rest, to hole up in one of the wrecked vehicles and simply defend that position, but he knew that was a futile hope. If they stayed in one spot, the orks would flock to their position until they were all dead. He'd already seen the aftermath of eight squads of varying sizes who had tried to hold out. Their only hope was regrouping with their main force, if there even was still such a thing.

Unfortunately, what that meant was moving slowly towards where the most fighting could be heard.

A new explosion rocked the ground and nearly sent him tumbling to the ground and he tensed for some new orks to arrive, but none did. Instead, what he saw was a dark shape that flew through the air and slammed into a pair of his poor squadmates, the loud snaps of shattering bones and squelching of ruptured organs easily reaching Corren's ears but failing to even make him flinch at this point.

Rising from the pair of fresh corpses, Inquisitor Catherine Ellen, bruised, bloodied, but alive rose up, covered in her black power armor and still wielding a crackling power sword. She seemed entirely unaware of the fact that she'd inadvertently been used to kill a pair of guardsmen, her gaze never wavering from the source of where she'd been thrown.

Emerging from around another tank, a walking behemoth emerged, the largest ork Corren had ever seen, one whose armor had been partially sliced away, piece-by-piece, to reveal a horrifying sight: dozens of human mouths had been sown into its green hide, lips drawn upward in unnatural grins.

This was not an ork. This was a monster.

Corren froze, the icy grip of terror seizing his heart, as the monster moved. Nothing that large should be able to move as fast as it did, but it lunged forward, knocking aside another of his adopted squadmates with a fist as it charged the Inquisitor, killing the man instantly as his skull was crushed by the force of a hammer blow.

The Inquisitor met him blow for blow, but it was clear she was on the losing side of this fight, unable to do more than slice off more and more of the monster's armor, revealing ever more grins.

His two remaining squadmates were able to move and fired upon the ork with their lasguns, but their attacks did no more damage than anger the Warboss and make it momentarily pull its attention from the fight at hand. Another backhand and a swift strike from its choppa saw both men crumple to the ground, dead.

Corren wanted to run, to drop his weapon and flee, but his legs were frozen in place. He'd slain more orks than he could remember in the last few hours, but now he wanted this to be over. He wanted to be a PDF trooper again, to deal with riots and hive-gangers, not… this.

He wasn't sure what made him move next. His training, perhaps. The God-Emperor, maybe. Or even something more base than that, something primal. Regardless, the result was the same.

He stepped forward and raised his plasma pistol, aiming squarely for the form of the Warboss. The Inquisitor saw him and, eyes widening, she suddenly leapt back just as he squeezed the trigger.

There was that familiar flash and a shriek of rage and pain. Corren blinked the spots from his eyes, but even that moment of distraction was too long.

"YOU GIT!" The Warboss roared, its half-scorched body smoking, but not close to being dead. The mouths of several humans had either been vaporized in the blast or peeled away as they were charred by the heat. "MY TROPHIES!"

Shi-

Corren didn't get to finish that thought as the ork's blade descended down upon him. Only instinct saw him move to the side, saving his life at the cost of his arm, the whirling saws sheering through his shoulder. There was a feeling of being lighter as he fell over onto the ground, before darkness took him.



Ellen leapt forward at the Warboss' distraction; however, the machine spirit of her power blade chose that moment to lose power. Her blade buried itself deep into the scorched side of the ork's back, eliciting a fresh shriek of pain, but unable to deal a finishing blow. She tried to wrench her sword free again, only for the Warboss to whirl around and knock her away again.

The Warboss roared wordlessly, a deep madness in its eyes as foam began to form in its lips. Ellen rose and drew her hellpistol, but she knew it was hopeless.

She would die here, remembered only as a failure on every level.



The Warboss charged… and the Vindicare squeezed.



There was a thunderous clap that threatened to deafen Ellen's hearing as the skull of the Ork Warboss simply disappeared, replaced by a shower of gore that splattered everything, covering the ground and her armor with dark blood and pinkish brain matter.

The Warboss's body, already dead but perhaps not yet aware of that fact, took another step forward, stopped, then teetered over, slamming to a shivering rest at Ellen's feet, limbs twitching wildly, but harmlessly.

Ellen stared at the fallen warboss with wide eyes, uncomprehending of what had just happened. She waited for her death to come, but it never did. She wasn't sure how long she remained there, but once she slowly rose to her shaky feet she realized the battle was already and suddenly over.

The Orks, discouraged by their Warboss' death, fled terrified into the wastes. The Guard, exhausted and battered, did not give chase.

They had won. Yet it did not feel like a victory to Ellen.



By the time the Orks had finally fled from the sight of the walls millions of their xenos filth were dead, piled in mountains of corpses that oozed rivers of dark blood. However, just as many Guardsmen were mixed in with those mountains as Orks.

Fully half of the twelve remaining Guard regiments were gone, two million men dead along with all but a handful of damaged tanks and vehicles. The cunning Ork trap had not defeated them, but it had managed to tear open a great wound. Deimos would stand, the head of the Ork horde had been cut off, but the Imperium's hammer was broken.

Ellen withdrew into her personal chambers as the Guard returned to Deimos to lick its wounds. She shut the door behind her and strode over to her bed, the mud and blood of her battle-tarnished power armor ruining its fine silks as she collapsed wearily onto it, taking a seat on its edge. Dark thoughts raced through her mind.

She had failed in every conceivable manner. She had failed to ready and maintain twenty regiments for the mission to Ervak. She had failed to deal with the genestealer uprising. She had failed to respond properly to the Ork assault. She had failed to see the Chaos traitors. She had failed to keep the Sisters on her side. She had failed to understand whatever was happening in Malum. She had failed to even defeat the Ork Warboss herself, having to be saved by some mysterious sniper who she knew was not one of those under her command.

She had thought she was doing the God-Emperor's will. She had been so self-assured of her own rightness, of her infallibility, that she had lost control of an entire planet. Had her faith not been strong enough? Her zeal?

In her armored hands, she was still holding her hellpistol, she realized. She considered it for a long while, a blank expression on her face. Its lines and barrel, the grooves of its grip. The purity seal that had been affixed to its side was gone, ripped off somehow in the heat of battle, and there were small dents on the grip where her powered fingers had nearly crushed the handle from holding it too tightly. She checked the power pack and found it still held charge. It had remained unfired throughout the battle, after all.

She held the barrel of the hellpistol to the temple of her skull and squeezed the trigger.

Nothing happened.

She sobbed a laugh. She had even failed to maintain the machine spirit of her own weapon. How… typical.

A knock on the door to her chambers interrupted her thoughts. It was light and tentative. Familiar. Purilla. Her Scion guards had not alerted the Inquisitor and Ellen realized she had not seen them since her fight with the Warboss. So, they were dead too.

Ellen did not want to hear the psyker's words, but she didn't have the strength to tell the woman to leave. The knock came again, slightly louder this time. Still, Ellen said nothing, simply returning to staring at the hellpistol in her hands.

The door creaked open and Ellen glanced up, feeling a glimmer of surprise. She had not given permission to enter, yet Purilla had chosen to intrude upon her anyways. That was bold and certainly punishable, yet the psyker showed no fear as she entered Ellen's abode.

Another failure on Ellen's part then, for not instilling the proper respect within her agents. The fact that Ellen did not even try to respond to the act only added to that failure.

"Catherine…" Purilla said, a look of concern and sadness on her face. Her eyes slid down to the hellpistol in Ellen's hands and there was a marginal tightening in her jaw.

"Wh-," Ellen choked on her words and she realized there was something wet on her face, something that wasn't blood. She tried to speak more clearly, but she couldn't manage it.

Purilla approached, slowly, cautiously. Ellen just stared, having given up trying to talk.

Purilla kneeled in front of the Inquisitor, not as a servant might kneel before a master, but as a mother might do so to comfort a weeping child. Was that all she was now? A child, a foolish brat who'd thought she could play at being a servant of the God-Emperor?

Purilla's hands wrapped around Ellen's own powered ones, gingerly pulling them off their grip on the hellpistol. Catherine had no strength to resist her.

Purilla placed the hellpistol aside and took a seat beside Ellen, saying nothing, just wrapping her in her arms.

Ellen broke at last, her quiet sobs filling her chambers as the stress of all she had done finally caught up with her. Through it all, Purilla said nothing, just sitting there and stroking her fingers through Ellen's hair.

 

[Jackson Fox]

Day 22, Continued



Eight regiments, wearing the garb of Malum's PDF, sat in silence as trains as wide as warehouses sped down railways, carrying them towards their enemy. They were quiet and dead-eyed, heads bowed as though in silent prayer. The only signs of life among them were the sounds of breathing, easily smothered by the mechanisms that mobilized them.

Only one train was different, only one needed any commotion that was equally as pointless. In this train, soldiers chatted about nothing, joked, and double-checked their already pristine equipment. Because, in this the foremost train, they were not alone.

A thousand Sisters of Battle and nearly twice that number in servants walked about, unaware that almost every single one of them had already been infected. The only exceptions among them were those who had kept their helmets on for one reason or another or those who couldn't remove them. Tide was well-aware of the fact that not even one of the Sororitas' Tech-Priests, including those who could remove their breath filters, was infected. That they were more aware of Organism-04 than the Canoness and yet had said nothing was… telling.

The battle in Deimos, seen from afar by Purilla, the Planetary Governor, and a steadily growing, but select group of individuals he'd carefully infected, had ended less than an hour ago. His own battle, based off estimations of the damage caused to the rails, was approaching as rapidly as the trains that carried his forces.

Elsewhere, Tide was already working on increasing the number of his Puppet regiments. While he had more than enough of the biomass to spare to field an army even thrice the size of this one, he lacked the material resources that could arm such a force. His Underhive factories were still growing in size, complexity, and number, but it would be some time before they leveled out with his current rate of growth via biomass. Especially now that he was starting to spread through the Underhive via Flork mold in addition to his spores.

More concerningly, eventually he would run out of scrap and salvage to arm his forces with. While the Underhive was a vast treasure trove, he was essentially ripping it bare of anything that wasn't a structural support and his efforts were only growing. He'd have to begin using the mines of Malum to start harvesting raw materials. That the expansion of such mines would double as excellent hiding places for his growing reserves of biomass was simply an added benefit.

The Inquisitor's infection had been a long time coming, though he'd been surprised by the amounts of sympathy he'd felt from Purilla towards her former abuser. The psyker was a kind soul, he knew that perhaps even better than she did, but that she was even willing to extend genuine pity to someone like Ellen in a time of need was… Well, it was humbling. Tide could not say for sure if he would have taken the high road as she had.

He could empathize with some of Ellen's feelings and the despair she felt, but none of that made up for her past actions. He'd refrained from interacting with Ellen beyond simply infecting her for the moment. She was too fragile to really do anything with and… well, Tide honestly wasn't sure what he wanted to do with her now that he had her at his mercy.

For the moment, the core of his attention turned to what was quickly becoming his most personable puppet, Marcus Agrippa, and the Sister of Battle treading towards him.



Serrita felt good. Really good. Possibly the best she'd ever felt. Her steps felt lighter, her sight sharper, even the weight of her armor seemed lessened. Was this the tension she had been told of that came before battle? While she had not fought in any conflicts as a true Sister of Battle, the training of an Adeptas Sororitas ensured all of them were, in some respect, a veteran. There were none untested among their ranks. She had felt battle tension before and this was different. Was it because she would now face true enemies of the Imperium in open war? She wasn't sure.

Still, her spirits were high, as were those of her Sisters, save a few of the true veterans who rarely seemed pleased about anything and the Repentias who were the dourest and most focused among them. Still, she could tell they were not displeased in this moment. To go to war with His foes… It was the reason for their entire existence and they had been denied the honor for too long.

Malum's PDF were similarly of good morale, though Serrita wasn't sure if the Sisters had infected them with their cheer or vice-versa. They joked and laughed, though it all seemed somewhat subdued, perhaps to match the level of the Sisters. Serrita thought that was a shame, as she wondered what they might have acted without the presence of the Adeptas Sororitas.

Their colonel, Marcus Agrippa, didn't seem to have time for such displays of comradery, focused as he was on his work. Though adept in the art of battle and an adept tactician, Serrita could freely admit she was no strategist, but Agrippa seemed well-suited to the task.

At the very least, he was very busy when she entered one of the many compartments in the front car of the train, one that had been taken over by their small Crusade as a command center. He was a flurry of motion, moving from one hastily set-up vox station or display to another, issuing orders that spoke of supply lines, timesheets, and other logistical terms that Serrita was familiar with and knew the importance of, but would have had very much difficulty dealing with herself.

Although the Canoness had been given overall command, Serrita couldn't help but notice the lack of any of her Sisters other than Praxiah, save the pair of Celestians guarding the door. There were servants of the Order and tech-priests that bore the holy symbols depicting them as attachments to the Cleansing Rains, but no Battle-Sisters. An oddity that caused her eyes to narrow slightly.

"Canoness," Serrita came to a stop behind the taller woman and made the sign of the Aquilla. Without her helmet, Serrita could see Praxiah's solid white hair and when she turned the piercing brown eyes set in a heavily scarred face which was missing several chunks of flesh from her cheeks, lips, and ears. The God-Emperor had tested the older Sister many times in her Crusades throughout the Ghoul Stars and Praxiah had yet to be found wanting.

By comparison, Serrita's own face was empty of scars. She'd taken wounds there in her life, of course, but they'd been surgically repaired at her own request upon joining the Order. It wasn't required by any means, but many of the Cleansing Rain's younger Sisters saw only scars taken in His service as a true Battle Sister to be ones worthy of bearing. As a result, few in the Order save the true veterans like Praxiah had any scars.

"Legatine," Praxiah responded with a nod. "Our scouts have determined the traitors of Janus are not content to let us throw off their tyranny and restore the order of His Imperium. They have sent a force, either to intercept us or to siege Malum."

Serrita listened with rapt attention, but she could not help the tiniest wrinkling of her nose at that knowledge. There had been the chance, however small, that the four hives had seceded by misunderstanding rather than outright treachery. It was still an act that would have to be punished, of course, assuming they swiftly begged to return to the fold and accepted their purge quietly, but it was not as decriable as a full-blown betrayal.

This proved that such was not to be the case.

Praxiah gestured to the display she had been standing in front of, one which depicted the tunnel spanning the distance between Malum and Janus. Their own trains were marked by green light on one side, swiftly moving. On the other side, moving more slowly, were red lights, moving to meet them at a middle section, where a vast section of the tunnel had been destroyed.

"We believe their trains are not as well-maintained as our own, hence their slower speed," Praxiah said, glancing at Agrippa, who seemed unaware of their conversation. "It seems the colonel ordered repairs and maintenance be moved forward ahead of our arrival. The traitor leadership seems to lack that foresight or is otherwise impaired."

"Such is the blindness of those without His light to guide them," Serrita said and Praxiah offered a smile, a strange thing that revealed too much of her teeth due to the missing flesh.

"Indeed," She agreed before continuing. "We will take advantage of this. By the estimations of Logis Calarn," she gestured to the head of the Order's tech-priest attachments who was standing nearby, his mechadendrites plugged into several of the train's systems, "We will reach the center of the tunnel three hours before our enemy. That gives us a decisive advantage I intend to take full advantage of. We will garrison a defense at the end of their stretch of tunnel and hold there. The number of trains and, most likely, the forces they have is greater than our own numbers, so we will let them bleed themselves against us."

The plan was… unusual, Serrita noted. Sisters of Battle were not defensive fighters, like some in the Guard or the Adeptus Astartes. They did not hold the line, but pushed it forward, rallying those around them to do so, whatever the cost. They had whole units dedicated to shock and awe, like the winged Seraphims and the Repentias.

Something of her surprise must have shown on her face, because Praxiah grimaced. "I understand you may not be as pleased with this plan as one where we take the fight to our enemy… But you will still be able to honor His name in this battle. You shall be commanding the defense."

Serrita blinked. That… couldn't be right. She was an officer, yes, but not one of that high a rank! Not to mention, she was not a true veteran, could she really-?

She squashed the doubt beginning to bubble up inside her and schooled her face into one of grim determination, trying to match the fierce look in Praxiah's own expression. "I will endeavor to do my duty in His name, Canoness."

"See that you do," Praxiah nodded. "For you will have only one regiment of Malum's PDF under your command, along with three companies of your Sisters and our armor contingent. The rest of the Order and the PDF will be required for another task. Colonel Agrippa will assist you."

"Yes, Canoness."



The trains of Janus were filled with a thick, virulent stench. The blessed scents of disease and rot were ever-present, accompanied by the soft groans of suffering of those few troopers who had not yet fully succumbed to the concoctions crafted by Doctor Ferrik.

Twenty regiments of PDF, ten million new children of the Grandfather. Minus a few that had not survived the onset of decay or had tried to escape. Such small minds, Ferrik knew, unwilling to embrace the truth of the universe.

He drank deep of their suffering, feeling himself grow even more bloated as new plagues filled and swelled his mortal body. He would have to thank 'Lord' Ahsael if he cared to ever thank a follower of the loving Grandfather's rivals. While the fallen angel had told him to refrain from sharing his afflictions, and would surely be displeased to learn of just how vehemently Ferrik had disobeyed him, there would be little issue once all of Malum had fallen to the Grandfather's beloved. Ferrik's own might alone would certainly grow to match even the sorcerer's great power and his viral armies would become unstoppable.

Ferrik waddled through the corridors of the train, entering the only section where the scent was not that of rot and decay. His nose curled at the difference. Instead of the smells of the Grandfather, it was the unwelcome filth of his rivals.

Chained in iron that was not just iron, a hundred and more pairs of eyes gazed at him from the darkness. Some snarled and rattled against their chains, trying to break their physical bindings as much as the spells that held them. Others whispered alluring nothings, promises of power in exchange for freedom. Finally, and most detestably, some just laughed, cackling as though everything were some joke.

Not one of the hundred daemonhosts provided to him by Ahsael was bound to a neverborn of Nurgle. Tzeentch was the most heavily represented, but Khorne and Slaanesh also had their wretches present. Only the Grandfather was excluded and Ferrik could only believe that was intentional. Few things with Ahsael and his lot weren't.

He'd have to have them all put down once he took Malum and no longer needed them. With luck, he wouldn't require them at all and could keep them bound. A thousand Sisters of Battle were a threat, but a minor one, nothing before a force ten thousand times their size and blessed by Nurgle's might. And, should the faith they held in the Corpse-Emperor falter, the Plague Lord would gladly welcome them into his toxic embrace.

Ferrik sneered at the daemonhosts and left the otherwise empty section, content in the knowledge that they remained bound and trapped. Perhaps, one day, he would help the Plaguefather chain his rivals like that.

The cackling of the daemonhosts grew louder and he imagined he heard the laughter of something greater behind their voices. Three things, to be specific.

His waddle was just slightly faster leaving than it had been coming in.



While the PDF were not as well-equipped as the Guard, Malum was not defenseless by any means and Tide had made sure the regiments leaving to liberate Janus were given the best of what the city could provide. At least, the best of what wouldn't raise any eyebrows or accusing glares from any tech-priests who actually knew anything about anything.

Mostly, this was in the form of heavy stubbers and lots of explosive devices, ranging from hand grenades to breaching charges. Few of his PDF had anything better than an autogun, but he had enough fun stuff to turn a tunnel into a killing ground. The regiment under the command of Serrita, who he'd recommended through the voice of Marcus Agrippa solely because she didn't seem as batshit insane as certain others among the Cleansing Rains and Sisters in general, would make itself into an excellent bulwark.

What Tide was less certain about was how he would reign in the Sisters without relying on more direct methods. Zealots were wont to martyr themselves and he'd rather keep their deaths to a minimum if possible. Not to mention the fact that if they started a 'glorious charge' his own forces would be expected to abandon their extremely advantageous positions to assist and that could cause a great many problems in a bad situation.

Revealing himself to them was not in the cards, at least not at this stage. Even if he lied and pretended to be some kind of Saint or vision of the Emperor, more than a few would certainly be doubtful if not outright rejecting him as the imposter he was. He could not outright take control of their minds and make them do anything unusual without causing alarm among the tech-priests. The same tech-priests who he knew were checking their own consistently for any signs of Organism-04. He could try to infect them all at once, but he suspected more than one had replaced enough of their brains with mechanical components that he wouldn't be able to fully control them.

With luck, Marcus Agrippa could ensure Serrita was not going to expend a needless number of her Sisters on a frontal assault. That was the whole point of this plan the 'good colonel' had pitched to the Canoness, after all. He didn't mind losing his Puppets all that much, they were inherently replaceable after all, but letting the Sisters of the Cleansing Rains kill themselves in suicidal charges did not sit right with him.

Which led him to his… other impending problem. His enemies were human.

True, the genestealers had sent armies of humans, but those had been infected. Anything of their former spirits were gone and they were not that different from his Puppets in that respect. It wasn't their fault they had been infected and he wasn't happy about killing them by any means, but it was necessary.

This was much the same, he knew. Chaos corrupted those it touched and these humans were serving Chaos. Knowingly or not, they were his enemies, aiding the cysts in reality that were the Chaos Gods… But that was the same line of thinking as many inquisitors and others in the Imperium had and it led to an assumption of guilt by association.

He didn't want to be like that, but did he have a choice? Even if the enemies he faced appeared corrupted and monstrous… He didn't want to kill them if he didn't have to. Could he save them? Heal them of their corruption somehow? He didn't know.

He couldn't take chances, or could he? The galaxy was dark and vicious and often punished those who were anything but the same in their actions… But did he have to be the same to survive?

He was going to kill millions of people in the next few hours. They didn't deserve to die. The genestealer cultists hadn't deserved to die either. At best, he could infect their bodies and ensure their souls entered his Domain, where they could rest and he could try to undo anything that had harmed them… But he wasn't going to be able to save them all. How many souls would the Chaos Gods gain this day, sent screaming into their wretched embrace because of what he was about to do?

True, they'd probably cause more harm further down the road if he let them live. He'd be saving untold numbers of innocents by defeating the cult, not to mention protecting his own existence… But he would still be killing them.

It was too easy to let his mind drift from its focus. To let his emotions get lost in the sea of information, cause and effect, action and reaction that were his senses. Not to shut down, but to stop caring, to stop considering the individual and only look at the whole.

That was how the Precursors saw things, he suspected. It explained a lot of their actions, how they could seemingly be both callous and nurturing. They didn't see individuals so much as they saw wholes. It was not that certain persons were worthy of holding the Mantle of Responsibility, the custodianship of the galaxy and of life itself, it was that a certain species was worthy. In the case of the Halo universe, humanity had succeeded where the Forerunners had failed. He wondered if the Precursors, almost certainly being multiversal beings, had ever visited the 40k universe.

Probably not if they still thought humanity as a species was worthy of such a thing.

Then again, he was doing the same thing to the Precursors, ascribing them all to a single point of view. The Primordial, the precursor mind in control of the Flood from Halo, was all but proof that its kind were not all alike in their world views. Tide, if he could even really be called a Precursor give his situation, was certainly not familiar with his own kind all that much.

Maybe, one day, he could leave this universe and seek out others. Then again, that would essentially be abandoning this universe to its fate…

He pushed such thoughts aside for the moment. While he was not distracted by them, his multitasking abilities had grown as vast as his gravemind form had, he simply didn't wish to think about them for now. He had more immediate concerns.

Namely, that they had just arrived at the center of the tunnel.



The tunnel that connected Malum and Janus was close to a kilometer wide out of sheer necessity for the number and size of the trains expected to run between them. The orks, perhaps out of a sense of cutting off the supply lines of their enemies combined with an uncanny aim or, far more likely, out of sheer dumb luck, had crashed one of their rock fortresses directly onto the tunnel, causing a rupture along its length that totally destroyed a near-kilometer of the structure.

There were a few orks left in their miniature fortress, but not enough to mount an actual defense and these were swiftly purged by a strike team of Sisters equipped with flamers while the regiment of PDF surrounded and shot any orks attempting to flee from the makeshift bastion. Even while this purge was being undertaken, the majority of the 22nd Malum Cohort was moving into position on the Janus side of the destroyed tunnel, bottlenecking that section with as many heavy weapons emplacements as they could cram into its width, gathering up the broken scrap of the tunnel and stacking it into defensive fortifications.

Colonel Agrippa was given quite a bit of leeway in how he positioned his troops by Serrita, something he took full advantage of.

"Place our heaviest weapons along the sides of the tunnel on the platform, keep them off the railways," Agrippa said, dragging his fingers over the areas indicated on the hastily drawn battlemap of the tunnel. It was really just a series of freshly inked lines scratch onto a plastek flimsy, but it was functional in the image it produced. "The center will have to be held with regular infantry. If the enemy get it into their heads to break through by throwing a train at us, I don't want to lose any of the more powerful equipment."

Serrita nodded. The logic was sound and, if the enemy did attempt such a dishonorable attack, their losses would mainly be in manpower rather than more important things like heavy stubbers or tanks.

"We can hope they'll avoid that and instead try to break through the old-fashioned way," Agrippa added. "If they think our center is weak, we can let them push us back there and then descend on them from the sides."

"What of our tanks?" Another man, a major whose name Serrita had never been told, spoke up. She wondered what he was talking about, as Agrippa had already said their heavy weapons would be on the sides of the tunnel, but the colonel responded with a different answer.

"We should keep them near the back. Make a few piles of scrap and put the tanks on top of them to shoot off of."

"Would it not be better to keep them near the front lines, where their armor may do the most good?" Serrita questioned, before realizing the mistake she had just made. She was in command here, her question could inadvertently be viewed as an order when she was really just curious about why Agrippa had made the decision.

"As you wish, Legatine," Agrippa nodded, his face a stony mask. She couldn't tell if he was displeased with the change in plan or if he thought she had deeper reasoning for it. "Place them near the front on the flanks."

Serrita would have to be more careful with her words from now on. She was more used to being given orders rather than the other way around. Some of her superiors in the Order often thought of her as too independent a thinker, partly because she dared to occasionally ask for clarification and partly due to her other tendencies and she had found it too easy to fall back into that role when she was meant to be leading.

The rest of the planning session concluded quickly after that. Around a hundred thousand men and women of the 22nd were packed into just under two kilometers of tunnel, packing it to the brim with weapons, bodies, and armor. Another three hundred thousand would be arrayed outside the tunnel's entrance, building yet further defenses in case the enemy managed to get through. And, should all that still not be enough to stop the tide of enemies, the final hundred thousand would provide a third and final layer of defense before the enemy would have a shot at reaching Malum.

"Finally, our elites, the Sisters," Agrippa said, turning to face Serrita along with the majors.

"The Order of the Cleansing Rain will fight as we always do, at the front," Serrita said firmly, though she knew that her words weren't entirely true. Of those Sisters she was leading into battle this day, only a score had seen a true battle, let alone one of this scale.

They were few, but their presence would have a powerful effect on the rank-and-file, Serrita was sure. They were His Adeptas Sororitas, after all.

Hours later, the trains of the enemy could not be seen, but could be heard when they halted, the screeching of metal against metal and the rumbling of the slowing colossi heard and felt from kilometers away. Despite what she had expected, the 22nd seemed to be in neutral spirits, if not good. Where before they had been hearty and cheerful, now they were grim, professional in a way she hadn't expected from local PDF, even battle-hardened as they were.

Serrita could appreciate the stoicism, though she wished they'd had a greater reaction when the battle-chants and hymns of her Sisterhood began. The 22nd did not seem particularly fervorous now, only quietly determined. Perhaps they were nervous. She couldn't quite find it in herself to blame them for a lack of zeal. She was nervous too, after all.

Serrita, rather than command from the center with Agrippa and his staff, had taken to the front. Perhaps it was needlessly dangerous, but the colonel didn't seem to really need her there and she was a better fighter than she was a general.

She spoke prayers to Him on Terra and asked for His light to guide not only her hand, but also those of all under her command this day.



"They have gathered quite a harvest for us to reap, Doctor," Ferrik's second-in-command, one of the cultists most blessed by Nurgle upon Monstrum, a man who had taken the holy name of Festil, said. He was taller and more muscular than Ferrik, though still bloated by sickness, appearing like not unlike a waterlogged giant, though he was not close to the size of a space marine like Ahsael. Where Ferrik was a scholar, Festil was a warrior and it could be seen in their appearances, beyond their disease-ridden flesh.

Their scouts had reported the gathering of enemy troops at the end of their broken tunnel. Ferrik hoped to repair the tunnel to resume transit between the hives, if only because it would allow the diseases of his cult to spread more easily once Malum had fallen, so he'd held off from the tactic of sending one of their trains crashing into the enemy's lines. Instead, they'd disembarked some kilometers away and were now in the midst of marching towards the foe. Ferrik and Festil now viewed a hastily sketched battlemap made from a scrap of flesh that one cultist had removed like a scab.

"Indeed," Ferrik agreed, thick folds of his flesh shaking as he rumbled with mirth before breaking out into hacking coughs from his partially liquified lungs. "They no doubt still believe us to merely be unenlightened mortals like themselves."

"It is a shame they will not live to see the love of the Grandfather," Festil said, tears of pus streaking down his face. Ferrik smiled and placed a caring hand atop his lieutenant's shoulder, bursting a cluster of pustules and releasing a variety of airborne blights.

"Their souls shall be the rot that grows the Garden," Ferrik comforted his crying companion. "Send them to his viral embrace."

Festil nodded, still sniffling, before straightening and putting on a brave face, perhaps for Ferrik's benefit. He waved over a man who looked as though his flesh had partially melted into the vox caster he bore on his back. "Send forth the feeders."



The sound of the enemy approaching was not that of an ordered army on the march, but the slow shuffling of the mob, quieter than what an army should have produced. The lights of the tunnel were only partially powered, casting everything in a dim, flickering light, and a thick mist, a pale fog had settled. Whether it was steam, runoff from some massive engine, or something more sinister, none were certain. Visibility was low, but when there was only one possible direction to come from… it wasn't really needed.

"Fire."

The order came down across all vox channels. Unlike the Imperial Guard, the forces of the Malum 22nd were autoguns rather than more advanced laser weaponry. As a result, the flash they produced was relatively muted in comparison to what even a tenth their number of lasguns could have created, but the thunderous cacophony they created was far more deafening. Serrita's helmet was barely able to reduce the violent sound of endless autogun fire to something that wouldn't permanently damage her hearing, so she was not sure how the PDF, whose helmets lacked any such systems beyond the barest physical countermeasures, could manage to not go deaf instantly. She wondered if they had and just didn't care.

The heavier weapons of the tanks joined their voices to the chorus of blasts and Serrita could make out shambling forms through the fog, temporarily outlined by explosions before disappearing less than a second later. Something was… off about those shapes, but she wasn't sure what. The weapons of the Sisters were not drowned out by the noise of thousands of autoguns and cannon fire, the bark of bolterfire cutting a clear note.

For nearly a full minute, the tunnel in front of them was an unending torrent of death and destruction, the walls and floor shaking from the sheer amount of shrapnel and ballistics flying through the air. The smell of death grew thick in the tunnel, even through the filters of her helmet.

Despite this, Serrita was astonished to see the outlines of the enemy continuing to appear closer and closer. They should have been scything down rank after rank of their enemy, far faster than those behind the newly dead could gain ground before being themselves cut down, not at the shambling gait they seemed to be moving at. How was this possible?

Then, Serrita saw their first enemy shamble into sight through the fog and she inhaled sharply, a cold chill crawling down her spine.

The creature before her, for it was no man, was missing half of its head, the top half of it appearing to have been blown off by an autogun round, yet it strode forward nonetheless, its tongue flapping wildly like a writhing serpent in its jaw. The walking corpse, for how could it be anything else, looked desiccated and starved, barely a bag of bones. It walked with stilted movements, its body riddled with holes some as small as a fingertip others that of a fist having been blown through it. Its uniform, not so unlike that of Malum's own PDF, was ripped and shredded in places. In one hand, it carried an autogun like a club, rendered incapable of realizing the true potential of the weapon it held because of the corruption that gripped it.

Serrita fired her bolter at the abomination and watched its torso explode in a shower, not of gore, but a festering, yellowish-green substance that could not have been anything as natural as blood. The liquid splattered far and a glob of it landed near her boot. She thought she saw it twitch almost as if it were alive and she wasn't sure if this foul corruption actually was or simply being shaken by the tunnel's own vibrations.

She had no time for questions, however, as more creatures emerged from the fog. Almost every one of them bore wounds that should have slain them, yet they continued on without issue and Serrita snarled before speaking into her vox.

"Canoness, our foe has fallen to the dark powers!" She spat with burning rage as she fired a barrage of bolter rounds into the encroaching horde, joined by her Sisters. "They bear signs of disease and sickness!"

"I understand, Legatine," The Canoness replied. "The plan remains the same. Hold fast. We will purge them and all of their wretched kind."

"Yes, Canoness!" Serrita switched vox channels, speaking to the Sisters who fought alongside her now. "Flamers to the front! Purify this corrupt filth in sacred fire!"



Tide had expected the enemy to be corrupted to some degree, but this was a bit fast, even for a plague god. He knew there would be some cultists who had been mutated by Chaos, but an army of this size was just…

He really shouldn't have been surprised. He'd infected an entire hive city in roughly two weeks, after all. The Imperium's hygiene and medical care available to the common man wasn't exactly top notch. Still, from the steadily growing number of 'sources' he had among the cults, the regiments being sent to conquer Malum were supposed to be mostly regular PDF, not cultists. Which meant these changes had occurred in two days, if not even less time. That was… concerning, to say the least.

He probably would have puked if he'd still been human. Scratch that, he'd definitely have puked at the sight. While he'd never really minded depictions of Nurgle worshippers in art, seeing them in person was… way grosser. No way he was letting these things anywhere near Malum. Which was what brought him to what was quickly becoming another problem for him.

They just wouldn't fucking die.

His Puppets riddled the oncoming horde with autogun fire, however the kinetic rounds only blew off chunks of flesh and bone. Headshots were proving ineffective, but destroying their legs was at least enough to halt them. He focused the attention of his troops on that instead, sending a series of faux-voxcasts by a number of different officers to maintain the charade of an independently minded army.

The tanks, at least, were proving their worth in spades, annihilating scores of the approaching poxwalkers with explosions of shrapnel and energy blasts. The heavier weapons like heavy stubbers were able to at least disable one of the poor souls every few shots. Similarly, the Sisters were able to actually put down the wretches with their bolters and especially their flamers.

Back in Malum, he had begun the needed preparations to convert a number of his factories to begin producing such weapons. While their production rate would be far slower than that of the ubiquitous autogun he'd equipped his army of puppets with, he was sure they would prove far more effective in the long run. Similarly, he began looking into which factories might be able to produce Leman Russ tanks. He didn't know how they operated, not yet, but that didn't mean he couldn't make them. It hadn't stopped the Imperium, after all.

With the change in tactics, the enemy advanced had slowed considerably. Tens of thousands of what had once been ordinary, innocent people were blown apart or partially vaporized or incinerated by their weaponry.

In response, their enemy just wandered forward in endless, shambling hordes, choking the tunnel with their bodies. Not a single puppet or Sister had perished or even suffered so much as a scratch from them, but Tide knew that wouldn't remain the same for long. He wasn't necessarily concerned about this foe's combat ability, however.

With each fresh wound, the enemy released a thick ooze of sickness rather than blood. Already, pools of the corruption was beginning to form and inch slowly closer to the front ranks of his Puppets.

Tide wasn't sure what would happen if one of his puppets was infected by Nurgle's diseases. Memories from his past life told him that such things were sometimes the work of cell-sized daemons rather than a normal plague. He'd managed to defeat the genestealer infection because, while it operated at a high level, it could still be considered a fairly mundane virus.

The flames of the Sisters could keep the pools at bay, but only on the flanks where they were present to do so. The rails, where much of his infantry were fighting, were not so covered.

Would it be like what had happened with Vra'kzil? That was the best-case scenario, he was confident he could quickly deal with such weak daemons. However, if it was different…

A part of him, a very large part of him, told him to run. He didn't need to face this enemy today. He could pull everything back to Malum and prepare proper weapons that could burn and deal with the plague god's followers.

The Sisters were not the sort of people he was particularly fond of. As much as people had defended the morality of the different factions in his past life, he did not have the luxury of viewing them through the lens of a fictional setting. Not anymore. They were zealots and, regardless of what he might have thought of them in his past life, they could commit awful atrocities at the drop of a hat. They could be as cruel as Chaos worshippers, as arrogant as the eldar, and as unfeeling as the necrons. Leaving them to die, possibly even turning on them if they tried to stop his retreat… He could have. He very easily could have and even convinced himself just as easily that he was right to do so.

But he didn't. Because, for all the horrible acts some of the Sisters had committed and all the atrocities they were each willing to inflict upon innocents in the name of their God-Emperor… They were still people.

He could not save the lives of these wretches that had been transformed by Nurgle's corruption. He could not save the lives of those infected by the genestealers. He could not save those who had been slaughtered by the Orks or by any other of the countless threats in this galaxy. He could not save everyone.

But he could save them.



Sister Lelia shouted prayers to Him on Terra as she fired round after rounder of her bolter into the horde, now mere meters away from her. Regardless of the distance, she held her ground and she was gladdened that the 22nd, rather than flee as might be expected of lesser men and women that often filled the ranks of Monstrum's PDF, stood alongside her.

However, despite their fervor, despite their firepower, the enemy was coming closer. They brandished their autoguns as clubs and their rotting teeth gnashed the air in anticipation of flesh to feed upon. One lunged at her with surprising speed, but she blew it apart, feeling its disgusting corruption splatter her powered armor. While sacred rites had been spoken over it and purity seals placed to protect her, it would still have to be cleansed with sacred rite after the battle.

Another three of the creatures moved closer, but they were bathed in flames from the weapon of the nearby Sister Katreen, their diseased flesh melting off them as they burned in the cleansing fires, their bones swiftly charring and crumpling under the heat. Yet more came ever closer.

Lelia was undeterred. If she was to die in this, her first battle, so be it! She would go down in glory, firing her weapon, fighting to the last!

Two more reached out towards her. Her bolter took the first in the chest and she saw the autogun descending. It cracked against her helmet, bouncing off harmlessly and leaving the wretch's hands entirely. It reached out with claw-like fingers as if to grip her throat, until she fired her bolter again point-blank.

However, from behind the one she had just slain, two more arrived and grabbed her arms. She strained her limbs and managed to send one crashing to the ground, but its grasp was replaced by two others, while a third and fourth joined the other side. She lashed out with a kick, her power armored shin crunching straight through the leg of one of the unclean abominations, sending it toppling to the ground, but the shift in her own weight let the horrors drag her down.

More of the monsters rushed her and she felt hands scrabbling around her helmet, trying to rip it off her head. Around her, the shouts of her sisters and the PDF grew muffled under the crush of bodies and she struggled harder but could not break free.

Then, suddenly, there was a loud cry and she felt herself and the pile of what must have been nearly a dozen corrupted humans shifted. She felt a pair of human hands grip her shoulders, stronger than the Chaotic filth, and haul her away from the clutches. She had no time to wonder at the titanic strength that such a person must have had to move the full weight of a power armored battle-sister, before she was struck by another sight almost as incredible. The dozen and more poxwalkers had been pushed over and off her by a trio of PDF troopers that had thrown themselves, bodily, at them in what could be nothing less than a search for martyrdom that matched her own.

They waded through the bodies of poxwalkers, throwing punches and elbows and kicks and knees even as the disease and sickness must have been seeping into them and it was only her training taking over that saw her raise her bolter, which had never once left her grasp, and continue firing.



It had probably been a bad idea to let his puppets use their full, Flood-granted strength, even in such a short burst as to save the Sister of Battle. However, that wasn't really what Tide cared about at the moment as the horrors carried within the poxwalkers in turn entered the trio of puppets that had dared to enter melee range.

The effects were almost immediate. To those looking on, the suicidally brave troopers collapsed to their knees, hacking up a yellowish liquid as their veins flared and bulged green. Internally, it was even worse. Tide's memories had been correct.

Countless daemons, each barely larger than a single cell, wreaked havoc across the bodies of the puppets. Tide could see and feel as the swarm of monstrosities clogged arteries, filled lungs with liquid, burned into neurons, and more. Their bodies were collapsing, shutting down as they were sabotaged from the inside.

Tide was pleasantly surprised; this was not nearly as bad as he had feared. These daemons were numerous, easily spread, and fast-acting. He could certainly see why they were so deadly to humans and normal forms of life… But he was not a normal form of life.

In the depths of the bodies of the infected puppets, the tiny daemons found they were no longer alone. Where before they'd been given free reign, the alarms had been sounded and now the defenders had been roused to action.

Crafted using components from the most vicious bacteria he'd acquired in the most malicious depths of the underhive, tens of billions of Flood-forms the size of a few clustered cells launched their counter-attack.

The war that was fought along tunnels of blood, in the pumping chambers of the heart, upon the laboring walls of the lungs, was not like the war fought without. There was no roar of battle, no screams of the dying, no flash of explosions. It was silent, dark, and vicious.

The hastily named Anti-Nurgles, or Antigles, were remarkably simple in their approach. They swarmed the tiny daemons, latching onto the cell-sized monstrosities and essentially eating them, melting them inside tiny pockets of something like stomach acid that would be harmless to his puppets were the thin membranes broken and released. For all the pain and suffering they could inflict, these tiny daemons lacked the supernatural endurance of even the poxwalkers that carried them, perhaps simply because they'd never needed to be that durable to accomplish their work.

He'd take full advantage of that mistake.

His initial counter was met with great success and millions of tiny daemons were consumed and banished back to the Warp in what to outside observers was mere seconds as he flooded, pun very much intended, his puppets' bodies with Antigles. After that initial victory, however, the tiny daemons seemed to realize that this prey had fangs of its own.

Despite drawing from the best of what he had available, his Antigles were, apparently, not exactly top-tier troops in cellular warfare. Every daemon he banished managed to rip apart a dozen or more of his tiniest soldiers before falling. He adapted as best he could, but the information he could gain was relatively… sparse. The senses of his Antigles were highly limited and while the daemons were anything but stealthy, he couldn't exactly see them either. He wasn't looking at the battle with a microscope, nor did he have any creature with eyes small enough to see such a conflict that he might be able to adapt for a play-by-play.

Fortunately, the daemons seemed even less prepared for a fight like this than he was. And, while they could shred the Antigles he sent at them apart, that biomass wasn't going anywhere and was quickly reabsorbed by the body before being crafted into yet more Antigles. The only thing he was losing was energy and the daemons were slowly being hunted down. The puppets would not survive simply due to the amount of energy and biomass being used in so short a time, but the daemons wouldn't either, their spread cut-off after a single casualty.

If they managed to infect a Puppet with more daemons than he could counter, or the daemons were more powerful than what he could handle, he'd likely have a bigger issue. He was sure future battles, even with cell-sized daemons like these, would not be as easy… But for now, he had found an edge and would happily capitalize on it.

Across the tunnel, scenes just like what had played out with the first Sister began to occur. He sacrificed his Puppets by the score just to protect a single one of the Cleansing Rain's warriors, sometimes in spite of the zealot's own attempts to go out in glory and honor. In turn, the Sisters seemed only to fight all the harder with every puppet that fell, whether it was to the clubs, claws, and teeth of the poxwalkers or the loss of energy caused by his less visible war. He took no small amount of amusement in the knowledge that he was creating countless martyrs in their eyes, yet not allowing any of the Sisters to enjoy that 'honor'.

Most of the Sisters had sealed their armor upon realizing the enemy they faced was diseased, so he didn't have to worry about them getting infected. While most were fully Altered, he could not draw on their biomass and energy as easily as he could a puppet, so he was glad of the added protection for them. He wasn't so sure the Repentias and Sisters who had more faith than sense would do as well, but he could try his best to keep them out of trouble when the second act began.



Ferrik frowned. Something was wrong, that much was clear even to him, who was not learned in the ways of war as Festil was. He and his lieutenant were watching the battle now on a display projected from the new eyes of a floating servoskull covered in dark runes. The bone's previous owner had been a psyker of some power and their sacrifice had made for a useful divining tool, though Ferrik would never tell its maker, Ahsael, that.

"Why are our foes so… resilient?" Festil spoke the word with no small amount of disgust in his voice. "They perish, yet the Grandfather's plagues do not spread across their ranks."

"Could it be for the same reason why the genestealers and Orks failed in their attacks against Malum?" Ferrik pondered, no less disturbed by the blasphemy being committed, yet equally fascinated by it. "Some kind of antibody, perhaps?"

"None can stand against the Plague Lord's concoctions!" Festil snarled, his large face contorting with such rage Ferrik was reminded of Kalak. His lieutenant's hand gripped the rust power sword held at his waist, an artifact of his old life now blessed with the decay of the Grandfather. "I will not allow such a thing!"

"It is most despicable," Ferrik agreed, nodding sagely. "Will you exact retribution upon them in our Grandfather's name?"

"Gladly, my lord," Festil seethed with rage, drawing his sword, its blade crackling with twisted energies. "I will take our best. If their bodies do not feed the plague, they will feed the worms!"

"Go and bring death to them," Ferrik nodded. Normally, he'd have been less willing to let Festil act on emotions like this, especially when he relied upon the man for his advice in commanding a battle. However, when the battle was in a tunnel like this, it did not take a genius to know there was only one direction from which the enemy would come.



"All breaching charges set, Canoness," The trooper stated with a nod as she handed Praxiah a small, hand-held device. Praxiah nodded in kind before turning to look out across the ashen fields that surrounded the tunnel linking Janus and Malum. Four regiments and four hundred Sisters of Battle stood at the ready along the length of one side of the tunnel. On the other, she knew, were another three regiments and three hundred Sisters, equally prepared.

"All forces at a safe distance?" Praxiah spoke into her helmet's vox. There was a chorus of affirmatives. She smiled beneath her helmet, considering the device in her hand. It was a trigger. A trigger connecting to the six-hundred-and-seventy-three breaching charges currently placed along nine kilometers of the Janus-side of the tunnel, placed precisely over where Logis Calarn and his tech-priests had indicated were load-bearing structural supports.

"Fire in the hole," She heard a voice speak and she looked over to see the trooper from before smiling at her. It was a breach of conduct, but Praxiah couldn't help but chuckle.

"Fire in the hole," She repeated as she unlocked the safety and pressed the trigger.



For a moment, the length of the tunnel's insides were illuminated by white light as countless explosions ruptured the metal frame and seared through its supports. There was a thunderous creaking as metal millennia old could suddenly no longer support its own weight and a pause in the traitor forces as the ceiling above them seemed to dip and bend.

And then, it all came tumbling down.

Logis Calarn's calculations were perfection itself, calculated expertly. Nine kilometers of tunnel, packed even tighter with traitor forces than the section being defended by the PDF, fell onto the heads of millions of traitors, burying them alive and dead with no distinction.

Even before the frame had settled, the seven regiments and Sisters were moving forward, their weapons opening fire on any exposed remnants of the corrupted. The bulk of the forces were placed on the opposite ends of the tunnel. On the side of the tunnel where the defenders had been fighting a grueling slog, nearly two kilometers of tunnel had been left deliberately unaffected by the maneuver, leaving a few of the poxwalkers with their semblance of life intact. On the other side, the rear elements of the enemy forces, not just poxwalkers but those relatively few corrupted that had maintained some semblance of personalities and wills, now found themselves suddenly made the new front.

However, they had other problems now.



Ferrik saw the flash, heard the explosion and shrieking of metal twisting, but it was the cackling of daemonhosts that pierced his ears.

He was blinded, deafened, and disoriented, knocked to the ground by some fool cultist or other. However, from behind him, he could hear the sound of a hundred sets of spellbound chains straining. He turned, blinking away the spots in his vision. Festil was gone, him and his best troops taken by whatever the corpse worshippers had done. The daemonhosts were his best chance at victory now… but Ferrik felt no glee at their release, only a cold dread.

A host of a neverborn of Tzeentch was the first to break free. Its body seemed to writhe with unholy might under its thin flesh, its fingers twisting and elongating, becoming sharp talons that were wreathed in blue flames. Its face was a blank mass of flesh, but nine lines grew there, flicking open to reveal as many eyes that shifted through countless colors, both real and not, in moments. All nine of those eyes were focused on Ferrik.

He heard a voice, a whisper in his mind, babbling and jeering and utterly unnatural, yet understood the meaning nonetheless.

"No, no, please!" Ferrik pushed himself away from the monster, terror infecting his voice, but it was pointless. In an instant, the daemonhost was gone from his sight and then returned to it, floating over him as though suspended in water. It had no mouth with which to grin, but he could feel its malicious glee nonetheless as it raised its flaming claws in preparation of the killing strike. "NO!"



Praxiah stalked forward through the wreckage of the tunnel, liberally applying her flamer to any sign of corrupted flesh sticking out of the debris. Her Sisters around her did much the same, while two regiments moved in towards the next section of tunnel, preparing to deal with any remnants of their foe.

The plan had worked even better than she had prayed, owing partly due to how packed the tunnel had become with the bodies of poxwalkers and other corrupt filth. Millions were crushed under their tread. This defeat was only proof of their corruption in her mind.

Yet, the enemy was not crushed yet and she could hear screams beginning to sound from the dust-filled tunnel where their rear guard should have been. Her eyes narrowed. They had not yet reached their foe, so who was slaughtering them?

The answer soon became apparent as hordes of former PDF troopers, many of whom seemed barely more cognizant than the poxwalkers themselves, rushed out of the tunnel, throwing themselves headfirst into the scything autogun fire of the 25th and 27th Malum Cohorts she had brought to this fight. This was not some desperate last charge, she recognized in an instant, but a rout.

The reason for the terror of their enemy emerged from the tunnel, scores of the worst kind of witchcraft. Praxiah had seen daemonhosts before on a few occasions, but never in such numbers.

They were monstrosities and she knew enough of the dark powers from her long wars against their servants to recognize the differences between them. Hulking beasts with blood-covered claws and slowly elongating skulls were the battle-crazed creatures of Khorne. Sinuous and striking beings that wielded chains as whips were the disgusting and seductive servants of Slaanesh. And, most numerous and varied of this new enemy, were the myriad forms that daemonhosts of Tzeentch took, babbling with mad laughter.

Evermore to their credit, Malum's PDF did not flinch in the face of this fresh nightmare and Praxiah knew how strange that was. She had seen hardened guardsmen and even some of her Sisters balk at the appearance of the Warp's horrors, yet these were mere veterans of two battles, if even that many. Were they so faithful and resilient?

She could not say, but the Cohorts gave no answer save to focus their fire on these new foes. It did not surprise Praxiah in the least to see the forces of Chaos turn upon one another like feral beasts. They were not united under the glory of His light and grace.

"Destroy the witch-crafted!" Praxiah called into her vox and her Sisters descended upon them. Jetpack-equipped Seraphims descended like winged angels, their twin bolt pistols punching holes into the rapidly repairing flesh of the daemonhosts. Praxiah could not help but grin as she saw the Malum Cohorts, no doubt inspired by the sight, break their formation and rush headlong into the enemy, shouting a united and wordless warcry, throwing themselves at the hordes of traitors and tainted with almost reckless abandon.

She saw half the daemonhosts suddenly disappear in flashes of blue flame, each one a Tzeentchian wretch. The remainder of the filth seemed caught off-guard by the sudden departure of their 'allies'. The Slaaneshi daemonhosts seemed to split, some throwing themselves even more fervently at their foes, others attempting to flee only to be cut down by bolter and autogun. The Khorne daemonhosts were too driven by their bloodthirst to even conceive of notions of fleeing.

She burned herself a path through the horde of traitor PDF, stepping over the unclean bodies steadily being purified by flames as she strode forwards. Hooking her flamer to her hip, she drew her chainsword, revving its engine as one such beast of Khorne's eyes locked onto her.

The abomination roared and ripped the spine from a nearby traitor, one which was wreathed in blood and flames that transformed it. The daemon blade was made of brass and glowed with a hellish light as it cut through another traitor to point at her in a challenge.

"FOR THE EMPEROR!" Praxiah roared as she charged.

"BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!" The daemonhost roared in reply. "SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!"

Their blades crashed against one another, the motors of Praxiah's power armor groaning from the strain as she struggled to meet the Chaotic filth's own strength. She roared with effort. "YOUR DEATH IS HIS WILL, DAEMON!"

They traded blow after blow, neither managing to strike the other. The other daemons and her Sisters flowed around them, but did not interfere in this duel. Praxiah was fine with that. She did not need help here.

So, she was somewhat disgruntled when she saw four PDF troopers of the Malum Cohorts throw themselves at the daemonhost, who seemed almost as surprised as she was by the act. The abomination acted quickly, its blade flashing through the air and cutting two of the new attackers in half, but the other pair slipped behind the daemonhost's guard, shoving their bayonets into the beast's side. It roared, more with frustration than anything mortal like pain, its balled fist crashing down onto the skull of one trooper accompanied by the crunch of bone as the man dropped to the ground, killed instantly.

She saw the grenade the other trooper primed in one hand, holding it fast to the body of the daemonhost even as it turned to slay him as well. Her eyes widened and she threw herself back, just as the explosion of shrapnel went off.

When she rose back up to her feet, the trooper was in pieces scattered across the ground, while the witch-made beast was mostly whole, but heavily wounded. Its body was slowly repairing itself, pulling its various muscles and bones back together, reknitting flesh as the daemon possessing it tried furiously to maintain its hold on its mortal vessel.

Praxiah's chainsword put an end to that, its biting teeth slashing through its neck in a moment. The head rolled free, but still screeched despite having no lungs with air. Such was the strange powers of Chaos and she brought her boot down onto the thing. There was some satisfaction there, as the creature finally ceased and died, as all enemies of the Emperor must.

She looked around and saw that the battle was nearly over. Despite the unexpectedly Chaotic nature of their foe, His will had seen them through this day. Praxiah raised her chainsword above her head.

"FOR THE EMPEROR!" She cried and her Sisters repeated the cry of victory as they pushed forward all the harder. Malum's Cohorts loosed their own wordless warcry and joined in the slaughter of the enemies of the Master of Mankind. Praxiah could have laughed with glee. This was her purpose, her joy, her duty.

It had been too long.

 

[Jackson Fox]

Day 23



"Colonel Marcus Agrippa, you and your men have performed your duties admirably in the face of this filth," Canoness Praxiah said, her voice amplified by vox cast. The ceremony had been rapidly assembled on such short notice, held right outside the long field of debris that had once been nine kilometers of tunnel. While all eight of the regiments brought with them were being honored, only the 22nd was present, as it had taken the bulk of the casualties and performed the important task of acting as the anvil for their hammer.

The rest of the regiments, accompanied by a few elements from the Sisters, were pushing towards Janus, forced to march by foot and vehicle due to the enemy having withdrawn its trains at some point, possibly in the effort of ferrying more forces to the conflict. It would be several days before they reached the exit and Janus proper, especially as their speed was slowed from having to check both sides of the tunnel walls for explosives in case their foe attempted to copy their trap.

The 22nd and the bulk of the Cleansing Rains were assembled in the ashen fields outside the tunnels, far enough that they did not have to smell the rotting corpses of the crushed poxwalkers. There had been a rare thinning in the cloud cover, turning the dark sky grey instead of black. Such things were not unheard of but certainly not common on Monstrum and Praxiah had taken it as a sign of the God-Emperor's desire for honors to be bestowed on those who deserved them the most. Only a few Sisters and serviles were elsewhere, cleansing the corpses of foe and ally alike with purifying flames.

And, she was more than willing to admit, these men and women deserved them. Nearly two hundred of her Sisters, including many of even the zealous Repentias, had had their martyrdom postponed for another day through the sacrifice of the Malum Cohorts. It was a shocking display of faith that Praxiah had never seen the like of before. Certainly, she had not expected for not a single one of her Sisters to perish in a battle of this scale and ferocity, but it was these men and women, not even Guardsmen, that had given their lives for the sake of the Order of the Cleansing Rains.

Their faith and ferocity in the face of the ruinous powers was astounding, far beyond any mortal troops she had ever fought alongside before save her fellow Sisters. While she could have slain the daemonhost herself, she would not dare denounce those troopers that had thrown themselves towards it, knowing they wouldn't survive.

They had gone to the side of the God-Emperor, Praxiah was certain.

"For your service and the zeal of your soldiers, you have the gratitude of the Order of the Cleansing Rains and the Imperium," Praxiah continued. She made the sign of the aquila. "While I can grant you no proper honors this day, know that the God-Emperor sees your sacrifice."

Agrippa returned the sign and bowed his head in thanks, saying nothing, a small smile on his face.



"Is that all you have to tell me, my dear doctor?" Ahsael asked the floating and bloated form of Ferrik. The squirming mass of flesh was wounded all across his body, but he bled only a sickly yellow substance rather than true blood as he whimpered pitifully. Nearby, holding the failure aloft with daemonic power, was the host of one of the neverborn that had returned from the battle. It cackled with delight as it felt the soul of the good doctor hovering between realms, already tasting the death that was to come and eager to claim his soul.

"I-," Ferrik's pleas devolved into a hacking cough, though whether it was because of the myriad sicknesses wracking his body or from the wounds that had been dealt to him by unnatural claws, even Ahsael couldn't say. "P-please! My luh-lord!"

"Disappointing," Ahsael said dismissively and waved his hand. The daemonhost was upon him before the sorcerer had even fully turned away, leaving the screaming wretch's body to be feasted upon, as would soon also be the case for his soul as it was cast into the Warp. While none were quite so fervent in their desires as the Neverborn of Slaanesh, most daemons enjoyed the pain and suffering of mortals, particularly those that worshipped the rivals to their own god.

Ahsael sat upon his throne. Where not so long ago he'd had the leadership of the cults present, now only Uirus was present, other than the daemonhost who was even now dragging its blubbering prey into the shadows.

"Are you concerned, brother?"

Ahsael glanced at Uirus, arching an eyebrow. "Do I looked overly pleased to you?"

"Of course not," Uirus replied, bowing his head. "But Ferrik's words of this threat are…"

"Troubling," Ahsael finished. "As disgusting as I find all who worship Nurgle, Ferrik was not an incompetent man. The flaws of his military acumen aside, his plagues should have wreaked havoc across the corpse-worshippers. While I can understand the zealots to be protected by their armor, the rest were mere defense forces. They should be ravaged with disease, yet they continue their march towards Janus even now, all the very picture of health."

"I have heard tales that the power of the Warp suffuses the zealots of the Imperium at times, protecting them from the influence of the Neverborn and our sorceries," Uirus said. "But never in such numbers."

"I do not believe this to be a case of strong faith in a corpse on a throne, Uirus," Ahsael said. He paused, considering for a moment, before continuing. "None of my visions showed such a situation arising on this world. I believe we are betrayed, my brother."

Uirus' brow furrowed at that. "One of the cultists?"

"Not by our servants, Uirus," Ahsael said, shaking his head. "But our masters in the Warp."

Uirus' eyes widened. "Tzeentch," He breathed.

"Perhaps," Ahsael admitted, tilting his head. "The Architect of Fate is as fickle as the Warp itself. But it is also possible one of his brother-gods or another has obscured this future from me. Nonetheless, it is clear to me that we have displeased something."

"The future has always been fickle," Uirus said and Ahsael almost thought the man might have been trying to reassure him, ludicrous as such an idea was. "Our enemies are not so mighty that we cannot defeat them without divining the future."

"You may be right," Ahsael said, pausing for a moment. "But it would be foolish of us to continue without making the proper inquiries. It may be that some daemon or other has muddled the tide of fate to confound us and I would like to know why."

"Such things are seldom swift in producing results, Ahsael," Uirus said, crossing his armored arms. "Our foes are days away from the gates of Janus. While their force is a small one, they have proven their ability to confound greater numbers."

"Do you doubt your own skill as a commander, brother?" Ahsael asked with a flicker of a smile and Uirus tensed.

"Would I not be assisting you in this matter?"

Ahsael shook his head. "I have power enough."

"It is not your power that concerns me, brother, or any other aspect of your skill. It is the Warp's trepidations that weigh on my mind. Ever since the opening of the Great Rift, the daemons have been… excited, like predators drawn by the smell of blood. Old precautions may no longer be enough."

"Careful, Uirus," Ahsael said, his voice growing hard. "It sounds as if you are calling me reckless."

Uirus tensed again, withholding a grimace. Ahsael had no need to call upon his power to know his brother had not intended the slip.

"Apologies, my lord," Uirus bowed his head. "I will trouble you no longer with my questions. Janus will hold for you."

"Good," Ahsael said, his voice taking on a more magnanimous manner as he leaned back in his throne. "I'll also assign Kalak and his horde to protect Janus."

"My lord?" Uirus' tone did not hold the rising anger in him at the thought of the beastman, but Ahsael could sense it, nonetheless. "Why… him?"

"For the same reason I sent Ferrik to attack a city that had managed to survive two attacks that, by all rights, should have damaged or conquered it," Ahsael said, shrugging. "An expendable pawn to be thrown at the enemy so we might learn more of them. We now know our foes have some kind of resistance to the plagues of Nurgle. We must now learn if they are equally resistant to the mad berserkers of Khorne."

"And… if they are?"

Ahsael considered the question. Uirus, though not as powerful a psyker as himself was still a brother of the Thousand Sons and a servant of Tzeentch. Far from making him trustworthy, it meant he was as equally capable of great treacheries as he was of stunning acts of loyalty. If Uirus thought Ahsael was sacrificing him like the Khornate ragers…

"Then you will hold the city until the spires themselves crumble," Ahsael said finally. "Expend the lives of every mortal in that city if you must but hold it for Tzeentch. I do not expect you to die for Janus, but I do expect you to keep both your life and the hive. I will be in communion with the Warp for nine days. Regardless of our foe's strength, I think you can manage such a thing, yes?"

Uirus nodded, both reassured and suitably chastened. "Yes, my lord."



Catherine Ellen rested in her bed, staring blankly up at the ceiling. Her armor had been set aside, inexpertly removed by Purilla, its myriad pieces stacked in a corner of the chamber. Her hellpistol and anything else in the room that was a weapon or might have been used as one had been removed while the Inquisitor slept. Less than a day ago, she'd have been outraged by the action. Now, however…

The door creaked open. It needed to be oiled and the cleaning had been scheduled for an hour ago, but Purilla had cancelled it. Ellen hadn't told her to.

Purilla stepped into the chamber, closing the door behind her with a foot. She carried a tray containing a variety of foods, meats, fruits, and vegetables imported from nearby Agri-worlds years or even decades prior and perfectly preserved through artificial means until they were ready to be served. A banquet the likes of which all but those who dwelled in the highest spires of Monstrum could never dream of seeing, let alone eating. Breakfast.

Purilla asked something, how she was feeling most likely. Catherine didn't listen. She didn't respond. She didn't move or acknowledge the psyker in any way.

Purilla came over to the side of Ellen's bed, setting the tray next to her on the bed. The girl took Ellen's hands in her own, not in a reassuring way but to turn them over and check her wrists for any cuts that may have appeared. First the hand closest, then the other.

Despite her appearance, Catherine's mind was not at rest. The events of the last day and, indeed, the last few weeks were running through her mind at a lightning pace. She was looking for every place where she made a mistake. It was not hard to find them, they were abundant.

She had cried herself to sleep the night before. Her failures had never been more clear and it was a small blessing that she'd rested soundly with no nightmares or dreams of any kind. She wasn't sure when Purilla had left but was certain it was after she'd fallen asleep.

Purilla sat down in a chair she'd dragged forward the previous night. "This is a lot more worrying than the crying," She murmured, though not to herself. She had seen others like this before, men and women who had simply… shut down. Mostly they had been psykers who could not withstand the trials they were expected to survive in order to be sanctioned by the Imperium. They would often disappear overnight, but some would be found dead in the morning cycle, having slashed their own wrists or throats.

I admit, I did not expect her to fall so hard, so fast, Tide admitted, whispering in her mind. She's in a sort of mental loop, reliving her mistakes and failures.

"Can…" Purilla glanced down at the woman, unsure if she should even be speaking to Tide while she was so close by.

Speak freely, if you wish, she is not willing to hear anything right now, Tide stated. Purilla considered the offer but chose to decline it.

Can you help her?

That… depends on your definition of 'help', Tide replied. I cannot just… fix her brain. Or, rather, I am not willing to forcibly reshape her mind from its current state to be what I believe would be ideal. I can keep her from causing herself or anyone else physical harm, but her mind must remain her own.

What about how you showed me how the Imperium was just using me as a tool? Purilla asked, frowning. You helped me and 'reshaped my mind', didn't you?

Yes, and also no, Tide countered. I showed you the truth you were unable to see. You drew the conclusions and changed yourself.

And what's stopping you from doing that to help her?

Your situations mainly. How do you think she would respond if I revealed myself now, as I did to you? That not only were her darkest suspicions regarding organism-04 correct, but also even worse than she had imagined?

You're not trying to destroy humanity, Purilla pointed out.

Do you think she will really care? In this state, she will either go mad with rage and want to exterminatus the planet or sink even deeper into this despondency.

You could stop her.

Easily, she has been Altered, but simply taking control of her body would not help her.

Would… would 'fixing' her really be that bad of an option?

Tide was silent for a time and she thought she might have offended him in some way. She was considering apologizing for even asking, but his voice returned before she'd decided.

It is… not an easy decision. With someone with her authority as not only an ally but a willing ally, we could accomplish much. However, do I have that right? I have intentionally killed before, but only in the defense of my own life or the lives of others, and, in a very tangible way, I would be killing her by tearing out her mind and replacing it with one of my own design. Why should I be the judge of what is right and wrong?

You see the universe in ways no one else does, Purilla said, remembering the glimpses of insight into Tide's own understanding of reality. To see the ruinous powers not only as dark gods but also understand them as what they were, fundamentally, poisons to the universe, to life itself. She shivered, a part of her longing to once more see in a way her mind had never been designed to truly understand. If not you, then who?

Then no one, Tide replied. I do not want to control or rule, I do not want to destroy or kill, I… I…

What do you want? Purilla had never felt Tide so… uncertain before. In many ways it was both terrifying and… comforting. The question was one she had been thinking about asking for some time now. What were they doing? They opposed Chaos and all others who would threaten life, but was it just opposition? What was their plan?

Tide was quiet for a while once more, contemplative. Purilla studied Ellen, who was slowly blinking, entirely unaware of the conversation going on inside the psyker's head. A part of her, a white-hot kernel of rage, wanted to just reach out and wrap her hands around the other woman's neck, to choke the life out of her and send her to her precious God-Emperor. It would be nothing less than what she deserved for all the pain and suffering she had caused, not just to Purilla, but to countless others.

Yet, a larger part of her, the part that was driving her now, could find only pity in her heart for Catherine Ellen. The woman who had failed her troops, her Imperium, and her God, who had spent hours sobbing last night.

It was hard to reconcile those contradicting feelings and she wondered if Tide was having similar thoughts. Purilla was still a member of Ellen's retinue and the woman was an Inquisitor, so she was technically required to aid Catherine in any way possible, even if that was only in name. Tide had even less of a reason to help Ellen, though also less of a reason to hate her.

I want to create life.

Purilla blinked, distracted from their conversation by her straying thoughts. She coughed, more out of an ingrained reaction to covering her physical spluttering than any actual need to, before realizing how silly that was to do, her face coloring slightly.

Pardon?

I want to create life, Tide repeated, seemingly fine with just ignoring Purilla's misstep. I want to bring life to barren worlds and shape new plants, animals, bacteria, everything.

Are you sure you're not a god? Purilla had asked the question, only half in jest, before she could stop herself. Rather than take offense, Tide seemed amused, apparently understanding she regretted her phrasing.

Quite certain, Tide said, and she felt a rumble of his amusement, like the feeling of distant thunder. My phrasing could use some work, I suppose, but my words are essentially what I meant. I want to create all kinds of life, not life controlled by me, but allowed to grow and thrive in freedom, without the worry of it all being destroyed by monsters. I want a galaxy, a universe, at peace, one willing to accept and live alongside an endless variety of lifeforms, be they sapient or not.

His words were accompanied by images, concepts of life far wilder and more extravagant than anything Purilla had ever imagined before. Some creatures were terrifying in their alien appearance, others warmed her heart, some were simply strange and even funny-looking or seemed impossible in their appearance, but all were unique and wonderful. She saw whole worlds that were filled with life, not kept as ordered gardens or harvest factories like Agri-Worlds, but truly free and beautiful.

The images were almost too much for her to fully process, but when the flurry of thoughts and emotions were finished, Purilla realized that there was something wet on her face and she was grinning.

That's… that's nice, was all Purilla could say as she wiped her face of the tears. It was far too simple of a response, but all that she could come up with.

Thank you, was Tide's own simple reply.



Vidriov stepped out onto the plaza of the spire, his auditory sensors picking up the rushing of the wind and, far below him, the clang of Deimos' countless factories, still hard at work even after such a monumental battle. Near him, a pair of servitors carried a large crate between the two of them, nondescript save for the mark of the Adeptus Mechanicus emblazoned on its sides. The spire they were in was one of the center-most that reached past the cloud cover of the planet, though they stood in a section located just below that blanket of smog.

Vidriov took a moment to step out onto the plaza, a rarely visited part of the towers where their work would not be disturbed, and he looked out across Deimos. It was an inefficient world, run by incompetents and failures, infested with corruption of both the filthy alien and foul Chaos. Such a world would, in most cases, be purged via exterminatus had a ship with the capability only been able to be called upon.

But perhaps it could still be saved by the grace of the Omnissiah, rather than cleansed by His wrath.

He sent a silent command to both servitors and they set the crate down, one using the hydraulic claws that had replaced its flesh and blood hands to remove the top, revealing the device held inside. It was a mash of wires and compartments, with four large tubes held in its other sections. The bomb was a crude thing, not born out of a blessed STC or similar record of knowledge from the Golden Age of Technology, but from the combined knowledge of himself, Logis Calarn, and Magos Zalum to fashion something new. There were some in the Adeptus Mechanicus that would have him turned into a servitor for the creation of such a device, but Vidriov knew they were fools who could not see the logic in his actions.

It had been Logis Calarn's report on the effectiveness of those infected with Organism-04 against the forces of the ruinous powers that had driven them finally to action. Organism-04 was a creation of the Omnissiah, a biological machine crafted to guard His chosen against vile influence of Chaos and Xenos. What more proof did they need?

The device was withdrawn from the box and placed on the edge of the plaza. Its weight was all that kept it from being swept off the side and falling kilometers into the city below.

Ten such devices had been created, but more were already under construction in secret laboratories in Deimos known only to those of the Mechanicus. Such devices would not be used to infect Deimos, but the other hives and ensure a stronger world.

Omnissiah damn them if they were wrong.

"For humanity," Vidriov intoned and he activated the device. It blinked active and, after waiting a carefully calculated amount of time, Vidriov applied force to the side via the end of one of his cybernetic legs to relocate the bomb into an area of freefall.

It was 2.7324 seconds before the bomb exploded, though the fire blast was hardly visible from the top of the plaza. There was no visual sign of the spread, but in mere moments Vidriov detected the rapidly increasing levels of organism-04 in the air around him as some of the spores were kicked up. Most, however, were spread out, scattering far.

Elsewhere in the city, in carefully chosen areas, be they central ventilation ducts or above market or even in chapels, the nine other bombs went off. Their explosions were small and would do little damage, if any. With the Imperial Guard's colonels already strong-arming the local PDF and Arbites into joining them to refill their heavily depleted ranks, the city was in uproar and would hardly notice a few tiny explosions, let alone investigate them.

Vidriov extended his mechadendrites, one tipped with a syringe. This action was not a part of the plan, but… Well, he'd already come this far. The others could study its effects all they wished, but Vidriov had faith.

The syringe plucked into one of the last remnants of his flesh, a portion of his left shoulder, which connected to the organic components of his brain via his plasteel-encased spine. The syringe injected a flood of spores and Vidriov gasped as he felt its work almost immediately, dead nerve endings flaring back to life. He might have imagined he could feel it working, moving up and into his spine and brain, repairing old flesh and removing any impurities. His only regret was that he'd cut away his lungs and could not share the Omnissiah's gift as it was meant to be shared.

"Omnissiah, preserve me," Vidriov said and if he still had lips he would have smiled ruefully at the irony of the words and their new, far more literal meaning.

Well, that's not quite my name, but you asked nicely enough.

 

[Jackson Fox]

Day 23, Continued



The throne room of the Planetary Governor was alight with all the decorations and pomp that could be gathered on such short notice. Its vast ceiling, painted in an awe-inspiring likeness to the starry night sky not that different from what he remembered from his time training on Holy Terra, had increased the luminosity of its false-stars to an almost glaring level. Far below, on either sides of the long carpet that led straight to the throne itself, where Governor Selvik sat, ranks of Imperial Guardsman in dutifully polished uniforms and armed with ceremonial lasrifles, stood at attention, each standing precisely ten paces from the next. Beyond them, in the wings of the throne room, countless men and women of affluence and power stood, draped in rich enough finery that, all together, they could have been sold for a small starship.

Twelve men and women marched down the central aisle, towards the governor. The first was the Lord-General, someone Belleric knew had not even been present in the command tent during the battle. The two behind were the colonels who had been left in command of the Imperium's forces after the Inquisitor had entered the fight herself and they were positioned at the front. The nine behind them were a number of officers of various ranks, each accredited with playing important roles in the 'success' of the battle. The throne room thundered with applause from the nobles and others in the wings, the grateful leadership of the city cheering on the Heros of Deimos. One set of hands, in a corner of the throne room, remained still, however.

Belleric watched the ceremony with utter indifference, unwilling to so much as lift his hands in applause to the men and women that had, supposedly, led and won the battle being honored by Selvik. The Tempestus Scion, and it was now the Tempestus Scion with the deaths of every other man in his company in the Battle of Deimos leaving him the last of his kind on Monstrum, could not care less for this, but he'd been directed to attend in place of Inquisitor Ellen.

Those orders had not come from the Inquisitor herself, as she had remained secluded within her chambers, apparently making plans for future campaigns according to his master's pet psyker who had also been the only one to see her since the battle. That a stormtrooper grunt, not even an officer, had been sent would no doubt be seen as an insult, but he'd obeyed.

The other ceremony attendees gave him a wide berth, perhaps owing to his grimly hostile appearance and he could see a couple of palace guard giving him nervous glances every now and again. He did not care, nor did he care that his mood was likely not helping the situation.

His brothers-in-arms, the men with whom he had trained and fought alongside for decades, were all dead. Other Guard units might have been changed without care, but Scions were different in many ways, one of them how close they were with their own. They operated as a team and the loss of one was keenly felt, like a punch to the gut.

His life as a Scion was likely over. He could be given a new team of other Scions that had survived the deaths of their squads, perhaps, but that was rare and such units never had the same cohesion as a group that had been trained from the start with one another in the Schola Progenium. No, more likely, he was going to be move to some other unit. A bodyguard, perhaps, if he was lucky. If he was not, he would be placed behind a desk somewhere and start pushing paper for the Administratum. He shuddered at the thought.

Despite his mind being elsewhere, Belleric was still a trained warrior and his senses had not diminished. He was aware of the person, a guardsman judging by the distinctive clack of boots on tiled floor in this room filled with only the fanciest forms of footwear, approached him from behind at an angle. He did not turn, but tensed, as though expecting an attack. Normally, the rear would have been covered by one of his brothers, Roric or Arin usually depending on which had annoyed Major Lensk more that day. Their absence was like a weight in the back of his mind, making him paranoid.

"Sir," A somewhat familiar voice spoke and Belleric half-turned, glancing over his shoulder to see Corren, a grunt who, like Belleric himself, had lost the whole of his squad in the previous battle and been wounded. They'd both been dragged off the battlefield by medics and stuck in the same healing tent. Granted, Belleric's wounds were arguably not quite so permanent as Corren's own.

Belleric nodded, forcing himself to relax slightly. He'd seen the one-armed guardsman in action, saw him fire a plasma pistol at the ork warboss and save the life of the Inquisitor. Something Belleric and his own squad of Scions had failed to assist in.

He wasn't going to lie, a part of him hated Corren for that, but a larger part respected the man for something that had taken real mettle to do. Not many mortal humans could face down an Ork larger than many of the Astartes, let alone survive with 'only' a lost arm in exchange. While it took a lot more than mettle to become a Scion, he could freely admit that Corren at least had that qualification in sufficient supply.

The one-armed Guardsman's shoulder ended in a stump that had been carefully patched up by the medics, the bandages now covered by his dress uniform's sleeve that had been stitched up to not just hang freely. In the tent they had been both been taken to the pair had spoken some in-between Corren's occasional blackouts from the bloodloss and moments where the painkillers wore off. Corren looked far better now, though still seemed pale and he kept shifting around uncomfortably, as though there was an itch he couldn't scratch. Belleric could also see he seemed just a tad unsteady on his feet, likely still on some kind of medication.

"How's the stomach?" Corren asked and Belleric shrugged. An ork had nearly disemboweled him, but Belleric had managed to keep his guts inside his stomach long enough for the medics to keep him from dying a slow, painful death. Granted, life was just as slow and painful now, as he'd refused to take a full dosage of painkillers, only accepting enough to let him function. He deserved the pain for failing his squad.

"Fine," Belleric grunted. "Your arm?"

"Still missing," Corren replied with a dark chuckle. "I've heard some of the officers who lost limbs are getting augments. I might be in line for one after them."

"You and plenty of others," Belleric said. His status had given him access to higher quality care and his stomach had been patched up in a few hours by the tent's chief medical officer. The stitches were now contained within a cast that had been wrapped around his entire lower stomach. It made sure that he couldn't bend over or really turn on his hips. It also itched. Badly. "Surprised to see you here."

Normally, a regular guardsman's only hopes of ever getting into the throne room of a Planetary Governor's palace would be as an escort or honor guard, or as apart of something like this ceremony.

"My regiment's colonel is attending," Corren said simply. "Only about twenty of us left that are coherent enough to act as any kind of escort. I guess I got lucky."

Belleric nodded. More than a few of the regiments who'd been in the thick of the fighting had been reduced to a few companies of able-bodied men, if even that. It may have been a victory, but it was a horrifically costly one.

A tech-priest walked past the pair of them, for some reason gently shaking a thurible of incense on the end of a small chain, and Belleric's eyes narrowed slightly. The scent was off somehow, but what drew his attention was the priest themself. They were one he had seen before and they weren't a member of the palace's tech-priests, but one of Vidriov's lot. What were they doing here?

"Something the matter?" Corren asked and Belleric was surprised the man had noticed, the guardsman's gaze following his to the tech-priest.

"Its nothing," Belleric said, shaking his head. Probably one of the Inquisitor's schemes. He had his orders to attend this ceremony, he'd fulfill them. A small part of him, a paranoid part, wondered if the reason he'd been sent here was because he was expendable and the Inquisitor was intending to assassinate everyone present. Probably not. He wasn't big on the politics of this world, but he was fairly certain the Inquisitor would have just commanded the ringleaders be round up and shot.

Schemes just weren't her style.



Vidriov was falling or… sinking? He was submerged, dropped into an ocean, utterly dark, which stirred at his presence. The pressure he felt was like nothing he had ever experienced before, not even from the strongest of machine spirits he'd interfaced with, yet it was not harmful, nor did it threaten to sweep him away, threaten to crush him beneath its weight that was greater than the force a titan could exert.

He lifted one hand in front of his face and found he could see it despite the darkness. Except that shouldn't have been possible. He no longer had hands of flesh, having cut them away to replace them with mechanical limbs long ago. Yet there they were, the hands he had possessed once. He looked down, not feeling the craning of motors along his neck, but the sensation of flesh stretching and tightening. The rest of his body was similarly returned to its natural, weak state, although clad in the red robes of his order.

How was this possible? What was this? Who had spoken to him?

Hello, Vidriov.

The voice came from all around him, from the waters themselves. It was a quiet voice yet held the same power within it as he had felt from the ocean. He had likened this being to a machine spirit, but it was so much more. Could this be… the Machine God?

I am not your god, Vidriov. My name is Tide.

With each word, meaning revealed itself to him. Each word was complex beyond the letters that made it up and his mind struggled to comprehend everything, particularly the name of this entity. 'Tide'. There was so much there that it almost made his head hurt.

A part of Vidriov was terrified, naturally. He was trapped, surrounded by a power so far beyond himself there was no proper analogy he could think of to describe the disparity. Yet, he felt no hostility from this being, no malice, nor even cold indifference. It was reassurance, geniality, even love. While it denied being the Machine God, at the very least this was no daemon of code. But, could this really just be a powerful machine spirit?

You know me, Vidriov. At least, partly.

Organism-04 flashed through his mind and understanding came with it. The Archaeotech bioweapon against both xenos and diseases. It was not as simple, not as unintelligent, as he had thought.

Yes. We have much to discuss.



Tide studied the machine priest now held within his Domain. He could feel the adulation coming off of him, but also the fear. Vidriov had mentally compared the sensation of being within the Domain to the feeling of interfacing with a machine spirit, albeit vastly more powerful than what he had ever worked with. In a way, Tide could admit, he sort of was, if one wanted to get loose with terminology.

Vidriov, like Purilla, had trouble speaking like this, when Tide did not alter the Domain to be less… empty to their sight. Since he didn't want to just talk at Vidriov and study his thoughts in lieu of a proper response, Tide shifted reality all around Vidriov.

He had created a forest from Earth for Purilla because he'd sensed she missed the trees from her childhood, before she'd been taken away by the black ships. If he wanted Vidriov to be comfortable, however, that wouldn't do.

A library came into existence all around his guest, though this was no ordinary creation, just like the forest was no ordinary forest. It was endless and its shelves held no books, but databanks and slates. It was a tech-priest's library and the moment it took form he could feel Vidriov's small curiosity about what information might be contained within it, though it was overshadowed by all the other emotions running through him at the time.

Tide had taken the form of the Arbiter before with Purilla, but that was because he'd wanted to remind her of his inhumanity and how that wasn't always a bad thing. For Vidriov, however, that wouldn't work in the same way. So, he crafted from his memories a certain… other character.

The Master Chief formed, clad in full armor, before Vidriov. Instantly, he could feel Vidriov's intrigue regarding the suit of powered armor that was unfamiliar yet also clearly human in design.

"Hello, Vidriov," Tide said, hiding the small fanboy thrill that came from speaking through the Master Chief's own voice.

"Who-!" Vidriov stepped back, his hand going to his throat. Tide would have grimaced if he had lips. This tech-priest had removed his vocal cords and much of his jaw many decades prior, replacing it with a 'superior' mechanical version. It was no wonder that speech with long forgotten parts would be unfamiliar and strange.

"I told you, I am Tide," He said in reply to the half-asked question. "You know me as Organism-04, though I would prefer you did not call me that to my face."

Vidriov steadied himself and Tide could see he was mentally running through his religion's commandments, the Mysteries and the Warnings. It was a calming mechanism and surprisingly effective.

"You…" Vidriov said after a long moment. His words were slow and carefully enunciated as though he were considering every syllable. "Are… a… machine… spirit?"

"If that is what you wish to consider me, I will not stop you," Tide said with a shrug.

"You are… the organ-ism?" Vidriov sounded the final word out and Tide nodded.

"More specifically, I am the intelligence behind the organism," Tide added helpfully. "When you injected yourself, you allowed me to contact you like this and bring you here, to my Domain."

Countless ideas and theories were running through Vidriov's mind, Tide watching them all. That this was a trick, that this was real, that everything around him was a dream. In a way, he was correct on all accounts, but Tide doubted knowing that would make things clearer.

"You are… an intelligence?" Vidriov asked, still jarred by the half-forgotten method of communication. "An intelligent… machine?"

He could see a dark horror beginning to well up within Vidriov at the idea, the terror of being at the mercy of an Abominable Intelligence. Tide intended to assuage that fear.

"I am not a machine, at least not one of metal and wires," He said. If one wanted to get philosophical, he and all organic forms of life were just different types of machines. The Mechanicus, or at least certain elements of it based off what he had learned from the memories of those adepts he had acquired and Vidriov's own, even believed such to be the case, that humanity were just different and inferior types of machines. "I am made of flesh as much as you are."

He could tell that calmed Vidriov down, though only somewhat. Abominable Intelligences, like the Men of Iron that had contributed to the downfall of ancient humanity, were horrific to most of the Mechanicus, heretical in the extreme. However, machines with organic components and minds, like servitors and even the Tech-Priests themselves, were not only acceptable but actively praised as sacred.

Of course, Tide was still an unknown and very much inhuman entity, Abominable Intelligence or no. Vidriov was right to be afraid, especially since he had just willingly infected not only an entire hive city full of tens of billions of people but also himself.

"What are you?" Vidriov asked, attempting to gather up his courage while hiding his fear. He could not hide his thoughts or feelings from Tide's gaze, but there was no reason to let him know that. Not yet, anyways.

"I am Tide," He replied, enjoying the small spike of frustration that came with that unhelpful answer. "I am the Flood. I am here to help."

"Help who?" The Genetor demanded, suspicion bubbling within him.

Tide sent the feelings of a comforting smile towards Vidriov and saw him tense like he'd been physically struck. He answered.

"Everything."



Reality collapsed and Vidriov was once more adrift, sinking in an endless black ocean. But this time, the universe was not empty. An ugly scar, like a wound that had been left to fester, tore through the space in front of him. He saw it through, he was given the understanding, the vision provided by his mind and soul. To those eyes, the rift was horrific, a gateway into a realm filled with horrors beyond comprehension, beyond age, beyond the laws of the material universe.

Maddened armies of terrible power and visage clashed in eternal brawls of galaxy-rending scope beneath a citadel of brass scorched black by flames that stood atop an ever-growing mountain of skulls that dwarfed titans and battleships, abominations that could only have existed within the nightmares of madmen cackled with insane laughter as they slipped between ever-changing labyrinths of crystal and silver, weaving infinitely complex schemes against their foes, their allies, even themselves, wretches wracked with such filth and acrid diseases that the mere sight of them could have turned the stomachs of even the most stalwart of warriors and who relaxed beneath the shade cast by vast panoplies of unreal trees that rotted away in moments before springing up anew, and monsters of such capricious beauty and debaucherous cruelty that they could have made the stonehearted weep and lovers slit the throats of their partners, who danced in ways both languid and sprightly amid fields of screaming supplicants and moaning victims.

Vidriov gazed into the Realm of Chaos and he knew it was only by the grace of whatever entity held him here that it did not gaze back.

He tried to scream. He could not. He tried to run. He could not. He tried to turn away his gaze. And it was this that he was able to do.

The rift disappeared, obscured by more of the endless ocean, but the images he had seen from it were burned into his mind.

I showed you a small part of Chaos, not the full truth. You would not survive the sight of such things. Not sane, in any case. I apologize for making you see such horrors, but it was important for you to understand that, as vile and horrific as you feel to witness such monsters, I still am disgusted by them more.

Why? The question crossed Vidriov's mind unbidden even as he tried to calm his mind, tried to calm the feeling of adrenaline pumping through him. It was difficult, since it had been so long since he'd encountered anything to make him feel so utterly horrified.

You and the rest of humanity fear and hate the daemon, and rightly so, because of the suffering they inflict, because of their opposition to your Emperor, because of their enmity towards your kind. I fear and hate them for their actions as well, but also the damage they inflict upon the universe itself.

Images once more came and understanding came with them. He saw the galaxy, pulsing and teeming with life. He felt, experienced, so much. Pain, suffering, joy, love, sadness, melancholy, hope, anger. It was beautiful and terrible in equal measure and it was right. It was a gear that turned perfectly in time with countless others like it, it was the gentle hum of a starship's engine as it fired for the first time, the subtle whirring and clicks of a perfectly wrought piece of engineering. The universe itself lived, was a mechanism of incomprehensible scale, and all things experienced within its expanse were important, good and bad, orderly and chaotic. Life grew and changed and fought and died and prospered. It was proper. It was right. It was sweetness.

And then the rift returned.

He did not see into it as before but saw it as it took root in the galaxy. He saw it spread, tendrils of corruption that grew like the roots of weeds, burying themselves deep and feeding upon the nutrients, the emotions, of the galaxy, of the universe. There was suffering from this, but it was wrong, excessive, repulsive. These experiences did not contain sweetness, but rot. These did not feed growth, did not feed life or the universe, but reduced it, twisted it and made it monstrous and abominable.

Vidriov knew much of this already. The universe was a machine, the Machine. The Motive Force itself was responsible for all life's blessed movements, while the daemon was a corruption of that holy work.

You understand, in your own way. The universe suffers because of these so-called 'gods'. They are nothing but parasites and deserve only destruction. However, I am not powerful enough to accomplish this. Not yet.

Vidriov saw something, but he was unable to describe or even fully comprehend just what he was looking at. It seemed to change in form and majesty, going from a mighty beast that could have swallowed whole star systems to a microscopic bacteria no more significant than any other and everything in between. He saw it was more advanced in one moment than even the greatest stories of the Golden Age of Technology, then less than even the most primitive of feral world savages. Yet, throughout every change, something remained the same, though Vidriov could not say what.

This… being was mighty and had a righteous cause to stand behind. However, that alone would not have been enough to secure Vidriov's loyalty. What drew him to it was what else it had, its secret insight into the nature of the universe, of the Machine God and the Motive Force.

Neural Physics, while I would hesitate to call the same, is similar in concept to the Motive Force you worship. It is a power that I can wield, to a degree, and I grow more adept with it each day as I grow. However, that alone will not be enough to safeguard the universe or even this galaxy.

It was… asking for help? Vidriov's help?

He should have said no. There was still so much he did not understand about this being, about its plans, its origins. Yet, he did not.

He felt something within his mind click, a moment of perfect clarity. Such moments were blessed, granted by the Machine God in moments of great importance. This was such a moment and the feeling of divinity filled his breast.

Vidriov could not kneel, but he bowed his head low and gave his answer.

"Yes, Chosen of the Machine God."



Tide blinked or would have if he were still a normal human. He had not given Vidriov that feeling of clarity and he doubted it came from the Machine God. Vidriov had come up with that on his own.

I am not chosen by any for this task, he tried to clarify. It is one I have taken up myself, as you are choosing to.

Vidriov didn't believe him. Or, rather, Tide could tell that the tech-priest had his own idea of what was happening.

"You are chosen, though you may not see it yet, my lord," Vidriov replied and Tide would have arched an eyebrow this time at the sudden granting of a title. "I do not believe the Machine God would have created a being with such insight and knowledge except in the holy task of repairing its mighty work. And that is your task as you have proclaimed."

Tide really wanted to reject that notion, he was by no means a holy being let alone the chosen of some mechanical deity. Except… He really couldn't.

He'd initially expected this conversation to go differently. He'd expected Vidriov to deny him, to rail against the filthy xenos, while Tide continued to show him more and more of the universe's hard truth until eventually causing him to reluctantly aid him. He'd spent several seconds planning out the entire conversation and its countless possible paths the moment Vidriov had infected himself, an amount of time that seemed small until one considered he was thinking on the matter with the collective intelligence of literally millions of brains. This sudden figurative bending of the knee, and he suspected it was only figurative because Vidriov was currently floating in an endless black ocean of void, was miraculous and, frankly, a little strange. However, the tech-priest's words were sincere.

If he denied Vidriov's sudden adoration for him, he'd do possibly irreparable damage to their very new, very fragile relationship before it had even had a chance to grow into something.

But Tide didn't want to lie to the tech-priest either. It wasn't because he was a morally good person, he'd lied plenty in his past life, but because of the knowledge he had of this universe. In 40k, almost every problem he could think of had been caused, in some way, by a lie or a withholding of important information. He had to strive to be different.

So, he would tell Vidriov, deny him and try his best to explain exactly why he wasn't an agent of some all-powerful god…

Except nothing was really coming to mind.

When looking at it from Vidriov's point of view, it really did make some amount of sense. An entity of great power with the ability to manipulate the 'machinery' of the universe itself, one crafted of flesh to ensure that it was not an abominable intelligence, who wanted to protect all life in the universe against threats to allow it to grow and continue to exist for reasons that could only be partially understood?

Tide himself did not fully understand his own nature, so how could he deny something that he couldn't be sure of? He didn't think he was divine, but something had put him here in control of the Flood. He hadn't thought about it much before now, but could it have been the Machine God?

He'd initially believed it was one of the Chaos Gods or maybe even the Emperor, but he didn't think they were even aware of his existence at this point. As for the Machine God… that particular deity wasn't one he had learned much about in his past life, so his information on it was rather limited beyond the teachings of the machine cult. However, now that his notice had been drawn to it, he could see a number of… rather eerie similarities between what he knew of Precursor beliefs and the Machine Cult's, at least in the more esoteric sense.

Machines were alive in a way. Hell, works of Neural Physics architecture like star roads were possibly sentient. And, if one thought about it, the universe being alive and wanting to create other forms of life to experience itself sure sounded similar to a cosmic being that crafted organic beings to reveal its knowledge to.

As far as he knew, there was no entity in the Warp like the Machine God. There were other kinds of 'gods' of course, the Void Dragon shard trapped on Mars was a contender for the title of Omnissiah alongside the Emperor, but… An all-powerful god?

Tide was not religious or even particularly spiritual. Although, being tossed into another reality, let alone Warhammer, as the damn Flood had given him a whole lot of questions. It was an aspect of his new life that he had deliberately not thought about too much. It tended to get cyclical, something that could end up eating a lot of his expanded mental power if he wasn't careful.

He could not refute Vidriov's beliefs since he didn't actually have any evidence that he wasn't the Machine God's chosen agent. While he personally believed it was the responsibility of the person making the assertion to provide the evidence that supported it, Vidriov, along with most of the galaxy it seemed, did not share that common sense. Tide could already tell Vidriov's world view had shifted and settled into a new status quo, one with him as some kind of… well, not a god, at least. He wasn't the Omnissiah, but something akin to an archangel, divinely appointed.

Was this how the Emperor had felt when first speaking with the Martians? He was sensing a pattern and he wasn't sure he really liked it…

Very well, Tide stated at last, though to Vidriov only a moment would have passed. While I do not share your beliefs in my having some kind of ordained nature, I will not oppose them either. Your faith is your own and I have no right to take it from you.

Tide could sort of understand why the Emperor had decided to burn down every church on Terra, along with most of the holy men who refused to give up their faith, given that the Chaos Gods very much liked to subvert the faith of people into faith towards them. However, that didn't mean he condoned it or wanted to do the same. He had no issue with religion on the whole, it was just when that religion did stuff like slaughtering innocents, burning cities, or committing war crimes like they were items on a bucket list that he had an issue.

What this meant was he had an issue with most religions in the 40k galaxy, but he wasn't going to tear down all of them. Unlike worship in the Chaos Gods, the Machine Cult could be changed into a force for good in the galaxy. At least, Tide hoped so.

Vidriov bowed his head again and Tide could feel the man's faith and belief being reinforced by Tide's words. He hadn't done anything wrong, so why did he feel… icky?