Hiya! This took way too long, but here's
another sequel
to this omake series
that I've been doing, because recently the Emperor's Children had a truly insane encounter, downright 'divine' you could say, which has given Fabius the perfect excuse to continue his research.
-----
The Spider and The Phoenix.
You are Fabius, Master Apothecarion of the Emperor's Children Legion and Primogenitor of the Imperium, and you have had an excellent time recently.
Your endeavour in training and improving the quality of the Nightingales had gone further than initial training, as per the deal you had made with both the Primarch of the Night Lords and of your own Legion. At times you held doubts to the capacity these mortals had for this path, which were proven with the few failures you had, but it hadn't gone too badly.
They were not perfect. They were not equal to the most novice of Apothecaries and not even 'great' by your standards. They had merely achieved something approaching 'good' by your view, with some bordering on potential that placed them as adequate assistants to some of the more middling tasks that were required for Astartes surgical care.
Still, it was certainly a display of progress. The few Apothecaries from the Night Lords and Salamanders that worked under your direction had praised the mortal's capabilities, so for those of lower standards of quality they certainly excelled. You had to admit, you couldn't think of any group of mortal field-doctors that could match those that you taught.
Konrad Curze was to arrive sooner or later, ready to lay upon your surgical tables for analysis. With your brilliance guiding his group of human medics into far beyond the skill they first displayed when they came under you, this collection of the Nightingales was more than enough to guarantee his consent to lengthy studies.
This agreement had certainly turned to your favour. You were glad that Fulgrim had approved of it.
Any moment now the vessel you were in would leave the Warp and arrive by the rest of the fleet. Then it would be time to personally report to your Primarch. See his progress in assisting the Sun Guard, broach several subjects relating to the Nightingales and the eventual arrival of his gaunt brother. Perhaps expand the Apothecary exchange program.
You wondered if you would get promoted for your efforts. While you were the undisputed master of the Apothecarion, you were but a Lieutenant-Commander within the ordinary structure of the Emperor's Children. A high rank to be certain, but you could rise even further.
You knew you could achieve higher standing, especially when your project on studying the Primarchs would grant true results.
You examined the progress reports you compiled on the Nightingales, along with other projects you undertook. Going over them while within your private facilities, personally examining the data gleamed from Lord Vulkan's examination to prepare your surgical tools for when you could cut into Konrad Curze.
Several things happened as you tweaked the settings and positions of one of your training Servitors, ready to simulate it for a victim of intense chemical warfare.
The first was that the ship suddenly came out of the Warp. A feeling of stability and relaxed mundanity washed over you, only to be loudly evaporated as the silence of your workstation was broken.
A general high level alarm was heard across the whole ship, a warning not of a physical enemy but some sort of hazard. Clarification comes from a monotone voice. An automatic warning for potential infection. The Pride of the Emperor was under quarantine, not allowing anyone to enter or exit the Gloriana until the issue was settled.
Before you could properly react to this, a vox-broadcast personally transmitted to you. A notification from its sender appearing in the corner of your helmeted vision. It made you freeze.
The signal-codes it carried were marked for the very highest level of emergency. It indicated that it was sent by your Primarch directly. The alarm was beyond any other that could be given. It elevated the matter far above your initial estimates. Whatever happened warranted your direct attention immediately, this quarantine was dire. A small flare of excitement came as you accepted the transmission.
"Finally!" a voice that wasn't Fulgrim, but a member of his Phoenix Guard.
"Chief Apothecary, your presence is required immediately upon the Pride of the Emperor. Symptoms and causes will be transmitted in a few minutes, it's still uncertain exactly what happened."
"And what has happened?" you inquire, scenarios quickly racing through your head as to what you'd be sent to cure, heal or research. Dark Age bioweapons. New xenos diseases or parasites. A new hostile parasite of extreme danger that infested other members of the Legion.
"A Warp-based influence has effected the ship from the recent compliance, effects are still under investigation. Quarantine has been put into place already, but… our father might be…" the warrior trailed off, as though he couldn't even believe what he was speaking.
"The Blight might have affected him somehow, something like it at least. Others too, including the Phoenix Guard."
Your ears ring for a moment. Your previous thoughts wither into nothingness, every plan for research pushed aside as every dream for the future threatened to be extinguished. You briefly wondered if this was a nightmare and you were reliving the death of the Third Legion once more, some hallucination brought by the Immaterium as the ship arrived back in the galaxy.
The Chirurgeon clicked rapidly to your ear as you listen to the brief description of familiar symptoms relayed over the vox, the life-support systems detecting the severe shock in your mental state and administering various concoctions to calm your mind. It's not enough to stop the fear, but enough to quell the panic.
You collect all necessary equipment that surrounds you, including several specialised tools you don't care keep secret, focusing on every piece of data the Phoenix Guard sends as he speaks or transmits them. The Apothecaries from the Night Lords and Salamanders stay for now, along with the Nightingales, but you order nearly all those from the Emperor's Children follow you.
You do not walk, you run. Not waiting to board the flagship before you begin your work, ordering over the vox about quarantine procedures and early treatments.
This living nightmare, if it truly was that accursed disease once more, would not destroy the Third again under your watch. It would not take the Phoencian, you refused to allow him to fall to this.
-----
It happened on a world known as Losri, a simple world that possessed a strange feature visible from space.
Upon the planet was a gigantic chasm that would have been able to fill a large hive-city within its depths, perhaps even two or more, and indeed was filled with with scrap and filth that accumulated for milenia by its populace seemingly since it was first colonised.
The pit was known by a few names, designations such as the old gutter to the mire to the catacombs, but it was known most simply as the Abyss. Legends and mythology from Losri all centred around it, the deep cut into the world itself. Few were wholly positive, yet many discussed the wonders it held beyond the unwanted.
There was reason, riches more than metaphorical. There was a large amount of archaeotech that was visibly seen just by looking over the edge, kept in terrible condition as rust and ruin ravaged the wreckages. Entire facilities half buried in the rock, parts of starships as twisted hills, untold treasures lost from the old age of mankind. Worth an immense bounty, with even the most degraded riches possessing immense value. Yet few dared to venture at all, and those that did seldom returned.
It was known that something beyond mundane had afflicted the area. Distortions of physical space, the exact nature of it was unknown at the time but past a certain point from the surface the Abyss was larger and deeper than what was ordinarily possible. Darker than what it would ordinarily be, even when the sun was directly overhead. Putrid mud seeped whenever it rained, forming lakes and rivers of sludge. Teeming with life.
Half-machine and half-corpses made most of them. Ancient creations that resembled Servitors, but designed by madness and malfunction. Corpses rotten to the bone with devices too rusted to function, from humanoid to what appeared to be animal. Cyber-beasts, abyss-machines, rust guardians. There were many names for the denizens of the ruins, and all were completely hostile to anything that came from the surface to their depths.
Yet there was one that stood above all the rest. It was also known by many names. Too many to fully decipher. Language and dialect seemed to distort around the same figure, words from different regions and eras seemed to accumulate around it almost as much as the physical refuse. The King of Chains. The Buried Screamer. The Unwanted One. The Inner-Outer Lord. Master of Nothing. Scratched Colossus. Hollow Giant.
Titles and epithets all shared the same theme of devastation, torment or the undesired. Some pieces of folklore presented this being as the god of the dead, with the Abyss as its hellish afterlife. A gateway into an other realm protected by a mad gatekeeper. A being of tortured power. Apocalypse made manifest.
While it was dismissed as being a god when its legends were known, the sheer amount of similar lore over the same figure and the strange phenomena of the chasm warranted attention. Especially as the first Imperial expedition vanished in bursts of screams, the berserk machines underestimated.
The mythology was then viewed through different frameworks. Perhaps a horrific experiment of the Dark Age trapped within its tossed aside cage. Or a scar from the Old Night's apocalypse made manifest. Or simply the amalgam affects of so many Warp-based technologies all half-activated in broken states.
The legends held more truth than first assumed.
Fulgrim had named it the Unbound when he saw it for himself, within its prison at the very bottom of the Abyss. The legend made real. The nightmare made manifest. The impossible horror.
The Phoenician had ventured into the depths by waging war at what was inside, deeper than anyone had ever seen before. It grew worse with each layer, the distorted space forming a twisted ecosystem as it stretched greater over the landscape. Leaving only the worst predators to survive.
Horrific beasts that were more alien than some of the strangest xenos, things that seemed to defy reality at times. Pseudo-dreadnoughts perpetually leaking mixtures of blood and grease, or dust and withered flesh. Malformed fauna that had never seen daylight, pale and eyeless underneath shells of fused archaeotech.
There were other reports of stranger things, things neither of flesh nor metal, but it was difficult to understand exactly what was really there. Further distortions on the truth, on what should make sense. Hallucinations and illusions considered, machine spirits of recording devices targeted by influence. Yet so much of it seemed so real, with battle-trophies marking many as proof.
The Primarch delved into the deepest parts of the pit to face the source of and then, a few hours later, came back out from it completely devoid of his usual demeanour. Almost seeming shaken, his confidence gone.
Fulgrim had left and ordered the Abyss be filled with promethium, an ocean of fuel that flowed near the brim as it drowned the horrors inside, then he set it alight in an infernal cascade.
And something horrible cried out to the heavens, leaving its mark.
-----
You moved through the Pride of the Emperor's interior, going through every report you read and detail glimpsed, now heading straight for your Primarch
It wasn't like any ordinary disease or bioweapon, it was something infused by or entirely sourced from the Warp.
Billions were afflicted in total. From denizens on Losri to Astartes in orbit who hadn't even set foot on the planet. Even machines. From shutting down the augments of exchanged Iron Hands to causing the Titans that fought beside Fulgrim to act erratic.
There were thousands of disparate effects caused by the final scream of the Unbound as it was burnt, and those were just the known and recorded effects. Weaponry needing maintenance en masse. Intense hunger, to the point that some Astartes had to be restrained and sedated as years worth of rations in but a few hours. Servitors having their organic bodies rapidly ageing. The ship itself had been lightly effected, by what the Techmarines claimed about the void-shield generators and various other systems.
There was too much to count, no certainty of any treatment or quarantine effectiveness. It wasn't even known if this influence was transmittable.
Warp diseases were also not unknown, far from it. The earliest times of the Imperium, when it was a fledgling nation upon Terra, had fought many that used the Immaterium in ways that seemed like sorcery. Curses. Plagues divorced from biology, a few Astartes today still sporting the scars. Or the psychic calamity that fell upon the peaceful Azurites of Uranus and led to their annihilation, the Screaming Plague.
Beings utterly infused by the Warp weren't unheard of. Aside from certain explanations on psykers, and Kesar Dorlin's notes on Astartes, there were examples of xenos with such traits. The Enslavers were the greatest danger. Or the Psychneuein, most famously known for infesting the homeworld of another Primarch. The entirety of the Maelstrom compliance.
Yet it was still hard to consider that being coupled with the Blight, with the sheer scale and variety of everything. That infernal curse that plagued the Third Legion. Sourced from the genetic faults that were present in all the Emperor's Children, no matter what world they were from, of which there was only one explanation.
Your mind raced as you considered the implications. Either intentionally or not, was it possible that the genetic structure in Fulgrim and others had been damaged by the Unbound's attack to resemble the Blight? Or genuinely bring it back?
No, you refused to believe that. There had to be an alternative explanation. This nightmare could not have happened. The designs of the Emperor of Mankind were greater than any strange being dwelling in a ramshackle pit.
The lingering idea could not be shaken away, however. You wanted to deny it but the potential for it, what you knew and suspected, clashed with your emotions. It was foolish to let yourself act like this, but even with the Chirurgeon's assistance it was so difficult to accept.
Fulgrim could die if you made a mistake here. The morale and organisation of the Emperor's Children buried with him. Your own future. All of it reduced to ashes.
You had prepared for this. Gained some experience with Primarch biology due to Lord Vulkan, although barely any of it made sense and took months for any progress to decipher the results. The Blight was studied heavily even when you focused mostly on other projects, for it still lingered in your body as it slowly killed you.
Yet even all this seemed… insufficient. Every achievement and advancement you made in your work could amount to nothing. What did you really know of souls? Psychic effects? The Warp? If it wasn't for the shared notes of Kesar Dorlin, you'd scarcely realise how inherent it was to gene-seed.
If the soul of your Primarch was afflicted, how could it be cured? Could you even detect it, test for it? No, you couldn't. It'd take years, decades ot study that Fulgrim might not have allowed to reach that. You didn't have that time.
You steeled yourself as you saw saw the doorway to the Phoenician's personal chambers. Despite their physical absence, the Phoenix Guard were nearby. Kept in sealed chambers where they were tended to by other Apothecaries, ready to rush to their master's side if required even in their condition.
You took a deep breath. Telling yourself that if the worst occurred, if Fulgrim laid dying and you had no way to cure him, you could put him in stasis. Send him to the Emperor.
Inside were veteran members of the Apothecarion, the most skilled and experience of the Legion save for yourself, who tended to the Primarch as he laid upon a surgical bed. Their sedated form, slightly pale frame, was all too familiar in appearance now.
You idly noted the concoction used to keep the Phoenician unconscious was based off your own creation, born from your recent research.
"Report." you demand, analysing everything around you. The medicines, the biological-research, scanners and their readings. No stone unturned.
"Organ analysis indicates noticeable improvement." one of the veterans spoke. "Attempts to manage his condition have succeeded, he's recovering well."
Improvement. Recovery. Those words burned in your mind for a second. They didn't exist for you when you dealt with the patients afflicted with the Blight, they were little more than the walking dead.
But of course that wasn't true for Fulgrim. He wasn't just any man, he was a Primarch. One of the greatest things that the Emperor had designed. Hope flared in you once more as you considered the implications of this. Perhaps studying the similarities between your biology and his could shed insight on how to rid yourself of the Blight entirely, finally grasp a true cure.
It was an idle desire, something to distract and smother all other thoughts related to the potential demise that you would make absolutely certain does not occur. Focus was required. You would give everything for this, it had been a culmination of what life had required from you and the knowledge you sought.
"Is he infected?" you ask, going over the readings of a data-slate.
"No definite signs of the have been seen, but almost all degeneration symptoms are identical. We're… unsure."
You look again to Fulgrim. There were many possibilities as to what exactly the Unbound did, but discovering it would be difficult like this. Treating the symptoms would mean next to nothing if the Blight was truly here in some form.
You wished that the so-called 'god' within the abyss had been organic in nature. Your Primarch had managed to make its immense form bleed, staining his blade with its 'blood', but the entity had been a Titan. If it was organic, crystalline, or anything else then perhaps it could have offered you some answers. Instead, the unholy oil was delivered to the Forgemaster so he could investigate it. There were just too many questions.
It was time to solve this.
"Tell me everything you've done thus far, leave no details at all." you demand, ready to start your efforts. "We'll start on preliminary work here, then move him to my personal once his condition improves. My laboratory is the best facility we have for this. What is the condition of his hearts?"
You take over, fully in charge of not only Fulgrim but all those who were attacked by the Unbound. Redesigning procedures to suit this potential contagion, quarantine adjusted to maximum efficiency.
Later results thankfully show that the situation was far less worse than the nightmare it appeared to be, within a couple of weeks the worst affected all recovered as the influence. Machinery calm and functional. Astartes and serfs stabilised. The inhabitants of that infernal world recovered.
Still there was caution for a while, knowing the dangers the Warp could theoretically inflict in a more 'direct' view, but life went on and you had found treasure troves of research for your efforts with your own Primarch.
It truly was an auspicious time for your efforts than first assumed. And this attack… well, it may just be what you needed to convince Fulgrim the necessity of your actions. Your improvements. Your greatest goals.
None of you were fully perfect yet, but with your efforts that could all easily change.