This Cannot Be Real

Fabius Bile turned to his new ally, struggling to hide the grimace that threatened to tear his sallow, aged face apart. His operation was over. Spiderlike limbs stitched his wounds closed. One appendage, equipped with fine, moving filaments, held a lump of what looked like cancerous tissue. It was covered in tiny wormlike shapes, resembling eggs yet to hatch.

Bile smiled. This flesh contained the plagues and diseases that the Plague Legion had implanted in him. The little creatures had tormented him for years. Their agonizing pain had denied him a moment's peace and left him unable to think.

After Cadia's fall and Guilliman's awakening, the Primarch had dealt the dark gods a brutal humiliation in the Odras system. Two daemon Primarchs had been captured, and two greater daemons slain. One awakened Primarch had single-handedly made the Warp gods lose their composure. The battle had shaken the powers of the Warp to their foundations. Many ancient beings of extraordinary intelligence realized that conventional means could no longer deal with him.

The Great Unclean One Rotigus therefore gave the Death Guard a sacred relic: the Plague Ark. Typhus hoped to use it to recover the daemon Primarch Mortarion, pleasing Grandfather Nurgle and earning greater rewards. Bile accompanied the Plague Marines to the Scourge Sector to release the Plague Ark from its stasis field.

The Plague Ark had been fashioned from a void whale. A juvenile of that same kind had stirred up storms in the Sea of Souls and attacked the Crusading Order's fleet. Fully grown void whales were extraordinarily vast, reaching two thousand miles in length. An entire ecosystem could exist upon their immense bodies.

Those that roamed among the stars were called stellar leviathans. Lesser creatures found ways to board them and travel between star systems. Their enormous bodies could support complete ecosystems, allowing species without the means of interstellar travel to make such journeys upon them.

Those that wandered the Sea of Souls were void whales. Their bodies likewise housed countless sinister, grotesque Warp organisms. Born within that sea, these immense creatures had a powerful connection to the Empyrean. They swam through its darkest, deepest fissures or rode its tides. Their sheer bulk allowed them to stir up tremendous Warp storms with ease.

The Imperium had known of these monsters since the Great Crusade. Many colonization fleets had encountered them, their immense bodies capable of crushing any Imperial warship. It was from such creatures that the Plague Ark had been made. Bound by an ancient will, they became something dreadful. Rotigus hoped the Ark could counter Guilliman's powerful armies.

Bile cared little about that. He had his own reason for visiting the Scourge Sector: a finger bone of the Night Haunter was said to be there. For years he had collected every kind of material connected to the Primarchs. A bloodstained cloth, a carved bone—he overlooked nothing. He traveled to every corner of the galaxy, trading his expertise for information on such mysterious relics.

To obtain what he wanted, Bile casually betrayed the Plague Legion accompanying him. Once he had seized the hand bone, he led the three Space Marine Chapters pursuing him onto the Plague Legion's line of retreat. A great battle broke out, and he took the opportunity to flee.

That had enraged Typhus, First Captain of the Death Guard. After Guilliman captured Mortarion and hung him up in Ultramar, Typhus took control of the entire plague-ridden force, hoping to win Nurgle's favor by rescuing his gene-father. Bile's diversion had inflicted heavy losses and humiliated him. He sent Plague Marines after the scientist in pursuit of revenge. That was why Bile had come to Kadur to bargain with the renegade Brass Dragons.

“I will help with your enhancements,” Bile said. He had barely finished when urgent alarms rang out. “The Emperor's Children have broken in!” The New Men and servitors guarding the outer approaches sent the warning over the communications channel. Bile's expression darkened.

He had once been an Apothecary of the Emperor's Children, but many of them hated him to the bone. The first reason was his insane experimentation. Seeking to perfect their gene-seed, he had dissected large numbers of Slaanesh-worshipping serpentine xenos to improve the Legion's genetic stock. Those mad actions had delivered the entire Emperor's Children Legion into Slaanesh's grasp. Many had been reduced to the pitiful state of needing drugs simply to fight.

The second reason was that Bile had given his clone of the younger Fulgrim to Trazyn the Infinite as a collector's item. Those two deeds had earned him the undying hatred of many Emperor's Children.

Encouraged by Typhus, a small warband had refused the Black Legion's summons and diverted to Kadur. They intended to hunt down Bile and avenge themselves upon the Apothecary who had betrayed their Legion.

Bile took up his Rod of Torment. The weapon was ancient, once belonging to a daemon prince named Sh'lacqclak.

The daemon had become lost on some forgotten world and had even lost his personal scepter. Bile had discovered it on a lost world within the Eye of Terror. After claiming it, he reforged it to suit his own needs.

Savage mutants poured from the warship's dark corners. Dense gunfire tore their twisted bodies apart. Clad in hideous power armor, the Emperor's Children easily broke through their defenses. They shrieked and laughed with delight, trampling, hacking, and shooting the misshapen abhumans that tried to drag them down. Hundreds of warped mutants died with ease.

Bolts carrying enormous kinetic force smashed their skulls and rib cages apart.

The mutants and New Men were no match for the traitor Astartes. They died in batches, unable to halt the furious Emperor's Children. Those wretches who had fallen into darkness vented their rage, storming through the doors and killing their way deeper into the warship.

Bile passed through a palatial corridor with the Chapter Master and his gland-hounds behind him. He had specially developed these abominations to possess tremendous strength, enough to contend with the traitor Astartes. Normally, they were used to harvest the gene-seed he required.

The renegade Space Marines of the Brass Dragons joined the fighting, and the Emperor's Children began to lose ground. On learning that Bile was here, they had rushed in furiously without considering whether they could defeat him once they found him. But the Death Guard were on their way. If they could only hold Bile here, he would have no escape. The thought of killing him filled every Emperor's Child with a terrible hunger for battle.

Mutants, New Men, and Brass Dragons fought the Emperor's Children. Outnumbered, the latter were gradually overwhelmed by the enemy mass, their purple ceramite disappearing beneath it. “Kill them all. Take their gene-seed,” Bile ordered.

The long years had stripped away every feeling he once held for these former comrades. He cared far more about the gene-seed they carried. Perhaps their bodies would yield some interesting experimental data.

Just as the Emperor's Children were about to fall, something new appeared on the battlefield.

New Men and mutants fell in droves. Bile stared in horror at the thing that had suddenly entered the fight. Disbelief filled his eyes. “How is that possible?”

Before his horrified gaze, a giant slaughtered his way across the battlefield in plain, unpainted power armor, the steel still its original gray. He wielded a blood-red blade. Its serrated edge sliced effortlessly through Bile's carefully enhanced New Men and mutants, dismembering the warped creations in an instant. His skill in close combat made everyone else's seem inadequate.

The Emperor's Children stared at the invincible giant in astonishment. Tiny tentacles upon their faces quivered. A current of sensation ran through their slick bodies, making them tremble. This mighty figure easily suppressed the mutants, New Men, and renegade Brass Dragons alike.

The Chapter Master roared and charged with his sword. The outcome was never in doubt. He was knocked effortlessly to the deck. Even the few blessings he had received from the Warp could not bridge the gulf between them. A blood-red blade rested against his neck. One wrong movement would end his life.

“Stop. All of you, stop. Or I kill him.”

The being's voice needed no other sound to lend it force. His words rang like bells, boomed like cannon fire, and crashed like waves against the shore. They thundered across the entire deck, drowning out the noise of battle. The voice filled Bile with terror and the Emperor's Children with joy.

Bile knew that voice. Every warrior of the Third Legion knew it. It flowed within their blood. It echoed through their souls.

At its sound, their thoughts returned ten thousand years into the past, to when they had still been humanity's saviors, guiding it out of slavery and freeing it from every threat. They had carried reason and wisdom among the stars. They had been humanity's proudest, mightiest warriors.

“Impossible. You were already...”

Bile, who had maintained his composure until now, could scarcely remain standing beneath the shock. He could not believe any of this was real. It could not be real.