Day 34
Above the hive city of Enyo, the black clouds hung as they always did, their thick, sensor-confusing shadow impossible to see through. Normally, few paid the sky any mind. Why look at such a dour sight, after all, when there was labor to be done? Even the coming of the Brood Mind, the coming of the Four-Armed Emperor, had not changed that aspect of the lives of Enyo's people, even if every other part of them had been robbed, butchered, or changed into perfect servants.
However, since the attack on Limos, the sky had been watched vigilantly, autocannons and even flamer and chemical weapons readied at all times. Insects and other creatures that usually were just a part of life in the hives had been descended upon with a vengeance, nests of such creatures exterminated with brutal prejudice. Never had there been such a campaign against pests conducted on Monstrum in living memory, let alone one done with such obvious glee as maddened cultists descended upon the critters with all the zeal of a Sister of Battle butchering heretics.
So it was that the hive city was unusually quiet in many dark places, the buzzing and skittering creatures that had once swarmed now only a trickle, having learned quickly to remain hidden. All the while, the genestealers that had spent the past days slaughtering them turned their gazes upwards, with every ripple of the clouds watched carefully. Every augur in the hive city had been turned towards the interior of the clouds surrounding the hive spires, though this had little effect because of the obscuring ash.
Thus, they were blind to the ocean that flowed towards them across the ashen soil. Tens of billions of black-carapaced beetles scurried swiftly across the ground. Atop each of their backs was an eye with a solid black pupil, trained upon the hive city and its walls. Occasionally, someone would appear atop those walls, looking across the ash ocean, and it was at these times that the entire swarm would halt as one, appearing as nothing to the poor eyes of humanity all while the sentry was closely watched by the gaze of the beetles, both countless and singular. Only once the watcher had turned their gaze elsewhere did the swarm resume its silent approach. Often times, huge sections of the swarm would be moving only in the periphery of a sentry's sight, like a shadow that flicked out of sight the moment it was focused upon.
Soon, the first beetles had reached the foot of the walls, where they could move freely unless a sentry craned their necks far over the top of the walls and looked directly down. The swarm spread out along the base of the walls, forming mounds of millions of scrambling beetles every few meters.
It was hours after the first beetle had reached the wall that the last had made it to its position. Only then did the next stage begin. As one, the beetles changed, their hard carapaces transforming into something softer that reached out and connected to the beetles around them. Guided by an unseen will, tens of billions of beetles became tens of thousands of giant, spider-like creatures.
Each one had eight legs that possessed thin tubes that ran the length of the limb and connected to a special sac within their bodies. These creatures were very wide and flat with no eyes, rather having the sensor stalks common in Flood forms flicking and twitching. Their bodies were a dull grey, a perfect match for the rockrete wall before them. When the first one reached out and touched the wall with a clawed limb, a small amount of webbing shot out and stuck to the wall, giving it a perfect hand grip. Carefully, the creature tested the strength of the grip, lifting its entire body up off the ground, bringing its legs in close to its body so it hung entirely upon the webbing.
Nothing broke.
As one, the creatures began their ascent. They moved slowly, carefully, as the predator stalking its prey did. When possible, they used natural crevices and gaps in the rockrete of the wall to move upwards, saving precious biomass, though they never dared use one that looked even slightly unstable.
If one were to look onto Enyo from afar, they would see nothing out of the ordinary. A particularly eagle-eyed viewer might think they saw movement, but only someone with truly extraordinary or unnatural sight would see the truth.
It was an hour before the beasts began to near the top of the wall and their pace slowed to a crawl as they sacrificed speed for stealth.
As if hatching from them, each creature produced a smaller beast, also spider-like, that crawled silently ahead of their larger parents. The tiny critters rounded the top of the wall and took in the sight of Enyo and the sentries on the wall, most with necks craned up.
But not all. A cultist swore an oath, though it was more a cry of praise for the Four-Armed Emperor, and reached out, swatting the spider he had noticed, splattering it against the rockrete fortifaction.
And, with that, the battle began.
It was a moment later that the sentry responsible shouted in alarm as a tube-like tendril extended upwards and seemed almost to look at him. In an instant, a spike of bone shot out like a bullet and took the sentry in the throat.
As powerful as the Brood Mind's control over the minds of its drones were, powerful enough instincts were too deeply engraved and the sentry fell to his knees, clutching his bleeding throat rather than attacking, as the Brood Mind commanded.
He tried to wrench the spike out, but it seemed to melt in his grasp and he suddenly felt very tired. The last thing he saw and the last thing the Brood Mind saw through him was the sight of a strange creature that looked like a bundle of dozens of tendrils similar to the one that had shot him. As it scurried towards the rest of the servants of the Four-Armed Emperor, the drone collapsed to the ground as the Brood Mind abandoned this body and the man that had once inhabited it came rushing back.
It was only an instant until he died, not even enough time to put his thoughts into words. Not enough time to understand what had happened or what was happening. However, it was enough to feel. And, in that instant, he felt grateful.
"What in the name of all the gods is that."
It took Uirus a moment to realize the question had been spoken by himself, so stunned he was at the sight of… well, whatever that thing was.
"We were routinely checking the other hives for major developments, my lords," One of the cultists said both to Uirus and a silent Ahsael. The two Space Marines stood beside a bowl of poisonous blood, sorcerous illusions granting sight of faraway places. Within the bowl, a serpentine shape crafted of pure starlight danced around the height of a hive spire. The cultists that had scried the image traded furtive glances, shifting uneasily, while the one who spoke maintained a steady gaze with all nine of his eyes boring holes into his own boots, clawed hands clasped in front of him. "The… ah, the genestealers are, uh…"
Uirus normally would have told the mortal to spit it out already, but the sight of something entirely unknown to him was rather distracting.
Was it some kind of genestealer creation? He had never heard of them creating anything like this. If the Warp Storm was interfering with their connection to the hive mind, had the genestealers channeled that psychic energy into some kind of weapon? Or was this entirely unrelated to them, perhaps some kind of Warp entity that had manifested unbeknownst to even him? The number of local daemons unaligned to the Four had steadily been increasing, so had one of them somehow entered reality?
He realized that the cultist had said something, but he'd been so distracted he hadn't heard. "What did you say?" He demanded, as though he thought whatever had been said was unbelievable, rather than simply a lapse in his attention. The cultist flinched at his tone, but quickly repeated the words.
"The genestealers are gone, my lords." Ahsael, as if drawn from a stupor, turned to look at the cultist, who seemed as though he might wither under the intense gazes of two transhuman, Warp-enhanced beings. Given their status as sorcerers, that was a distinct possibility.
"Explain." There was very little patience in Ahsael's tone.
"We… checked the city, we found no sign of the genestealers. Just strange flesh constructs operating machinery and a great number of strange vines, covering everything."
"Show me," Ahsael ordered and the cultists obeyed. Sorcerous power snaked through the air and the images contained within the bowl changed to an area within the hive city, a sort of market square that was empty of all life. Or, rather, almost all.
Spread across the rockrete ground, snaking through piles of ash, was a thick tangle of vines, each of which looked diseased, almost decaying. Sprouting from them in clusters every three or four meters were flower-like red stalks that twitched and swayed in a breezeless wind.
Uirus' jaw tightened and he fought to keep his hands from clenching into fists. Had the Nurglites somehow spread to Limos without his notice? They had been slaughtered, but had that merely been a ruse? Realizing the growing fury within himself, Uirus rose to the first of the enumerations, meditations created by Magnus the Red before even the days of the Great Crusade to aid those with the Gift. Slowly, the anger ebbed and he studied the vines with unbiased eyes.
"Show me these… constructs," Ahsael said, his voice perfectly even. The cultists obeyed once again and the image changed. At the term of flesh construct, Uirus had imagined something akin to a servitor, but he now saw just how mistaken he had been.
The internals of one of countless factories in Limos was not quiet despite the absence of genestealers. Instead, it was busier than ever as limbs crafted from tendrils assembled the components of lasguns, operated the machinery and, in some cases, outright replaced it. Uirus felt his focus waiver and redoubled his efforts to maintain his calm, rising higher through the enumerations.
"Where are the bodies of the genestealers?" Ahsael asked.
"We have not been able to locate them, my lord," The cultist said fearfully. "Nor any Orks or uninfected humans."
"And these… things are operating every factory?"
"Every factory we have looked into, my lord," The cultist said, bowing.
Ahsael was silent for a moment. At so near a range, Uirus could have reached out with his mind and spoken to him silently, but Uirus kept quiet. Ahsael likely shared his suspicions about just who was responsible for this. The manipulation of flesh and the creation of such bio-machine hybrids on such a scale was not something followers of Nurgle were well-known for, certainly none of the cults that had formed around the late doctor Ferrik. Most of all, however, had been that strange, starlit construct. It stood out in his mind as something not quite real. Daemons sometimes took strange shapes like that, pretending to be angels or other divine creatures, but this felt… different.
"Leave us," Ahsael commanded. In a matter of moments, the assembled cultists all but fled from the chamber, leaving only Ahsael, Uirus, and the ever-silent Rubric Marine alone. The sorcerous images began to fade without power to fuel them, but blazed back to life as Ahsael extended his own hand out and fed it with his might. "We must see how far this rot has spread. Whiro shall be first."
As he spoke the name of the city, it appeared in the bowl. The image sped past the tower and through the black clouds of Monstrum, down into the city itself. With a god's eye of the battlefield Uirus used his enhanced perception to study the goings on of the hive even more closely.
Armies of genestealer cultists scurried throughout the hive, some rushing to the walls, but most seemed to be moving in the same direction. They were running to what Uirus realized was the southern wall, to the tunnel that connected Whiro to Enyo through the Barren Lands. Ahsael noticed it too and flicked the view over to it.
Uirus' eyes widened a fraction of a centimeter at what he saw. Countless infected, hyrbids, and even purestrains were fortifying their end of the tunnel, laying explosive charges, wielding chemical and flamer weapons, some standard others horribly improvised. Genestealers always moved swiftly and efficiently when they needed to, but Uirus almost thought there was something… desperate about how they were acting.
"Why are they only fortifying the tunnel?" He asked aloud, crossing his plated arms.
"Because it's the only direction they can come from," Ahsael said.
"There are other threats on Monstrum. The Imperium in the north-."
"Is clearly not as pressing as whatever is in the south. With us."
"Still, they have Enyo, right?"
"Do they?" Ahsael asked and the image changed once more, this time rushing towards Enyo. And it was at this point that Uirus fell from the enumerations entirely.
The monster roared as it charged towards the cluster of genestealers, using its oversized arms to carry it across the ground like some extinct primate of Terra. Its claws dug into the rockrete, leaving gouges to mark its path. Its head was practically a stump, a hollow tube out of which half-a-dozen red stalks emerged, flicking and twitching.
The hive city of Enyo was a bloody hellscape, but there was a strange lack of corpses. What looked like thick, black raindrops fell from the sky, illuminated by the flash of skyfire cannons. Rather than rain, however, these were tiny flies with sharp mandibles that began to swarm. They were too small to hit easily and too many to reduce their numbers with anything short of explosions and flame weapons. However, what had caught the bulk of the attention of the genestealer defenders were the monsters that crashed through their fortifications.
The cultists opened fire upon the monster before them with over a dozen autorifles, a flurry of solid-slugs taking it in the chest. Rather than putting it down, as it would have for a human, or even slowed its charge, as such an effort would a Space Marine, the slugs just shot straight through the creature, as though its internal organs either weren't there… or were entirely optional to its continued survival.
The monster was upon the cultists in a moment and the carnage began. It lashed out with one of its arms, each of which were thicker than any the cultists were wide. Like a power hammer, it slammed into one cultist and kept going, taking him clear off his feet and slamming him into another, and then another, sending them all through the air, tangles of blood and broken limbs.
The fourth and final cultist grabbed a fragmentation grenade and made to pull the pin, the zeal for his alien god driving him to suicidal sacrifice, only for the creature to reach out and slash the man's arms with one of its claws, causing both his hands to simply drop to the ground, the grenade bouncing away harmlessly, pin left unpulled. There was a moment where the drone simply stared uncomprehendingly as he tried to pull the pin from where the grenade had been moments before, only for the creature to impale him upon another claw through the stomach, dropping him to the ground a moment later.
Despite the seemingly non-lethal wound, the monster moved onwards, searching for its next group of foes. And then, something that could be seen as either miraculous or horrific occurred.
The drone stood up, its wound closing. Similarly, the three cultists who had been slammed away began to twitch and wrench their own bones back into place. One, whose skull had been smashed against the rockrete, his brains scattered across the ground, stood despite his caved in head.
Erupting from their bodies, strange mutations took hold of these living corpses. Arms exploded into tentacles, fingers extended into claws the length of a forearm, heads wrenched backwards or had their jaws ripped apart to make room for the same red stalks as the creature from before had possessed, that grew like flowers from clay pots.
Then, what had once been cultists rushed away, following the wake of the creature. They came before one genestealer hybrid that wielded a staff and dressed in strange robes. She barked a command that sent ripples through the illusory image as psychic power was called upon with a shrill screech that belonged more to an animal than a human. The original monster, large and strong, seemed to ripple for a moment and then exploded in a shower of viscous yellow liquid and tattered green flesh.
The hybrid, a Magus of the cult, was joined by a dozen cultists that rushed forward, their eyes wild with feral rage, driven forward by unnatural zeal and alien strength, equipped with cutting tools ranging from a functional chainblade to the knives of a chef. Their fallen allies, twisted by whatever the monster had been, roared in reply and met the charge with unrestrained fury.
Two cultists fell immediately, impaled by the claws and collapsing to the ground like sandbags. One of the creatures remained in the back of the fight, rapidly mutating. Its torso seemed to crackle and swell like a balloon. It almost seemed translucent.
With a running start, the monster leapt through the air with strength far greater than any mortal, clear over the heads of the cultists, still steadily falling to the claws and tentacles of their former comrades. The Magus seemed surprised, but reacted with the speed of a warrior, looking up. There was another tremble of psychic might and the mutated cultist exploded just as the first monster had. Only, rather than splattering the ground with that liquid, it was like a gas grenade exploded. Thick, greenish-yellow clouds covered the cultists and the Magus, who were hidden from sight by the clouds… only to emerge only seconds later, just as mutated as their comrades had been.
Scenes like this played out again and again throughout Enyo. Every moment, thousands of cultists perished, stood back up, then changed, mutated into things just as monstrous as what was killing them, seeking to further the spread. Faster and faster, one became ten, became a hundred, more and more.
Even more terrifyingly, each time a creature passed a corpse they would take a moment to scratch it. Nothing more, just a scratch, perhaps as deep as a papercut in the flesh. And, seconds later, the corpse would rise to its feet and change just as the rest had, no matter how long it had been dead. Ork, genestealer, human, it didn't matter. All joined the horde.
Ahsael fought hard to keep the abject horror and fear from his face. He had seen many things in his centuries of life, fought and bound many horrors of the Great Ocean. But he had never seen something like this.
They watched for hours. And that was how long it took for Enyo to fall. For the genestealers to die and return as something else, something strange and monstrous.
Hours.
The realization he made at that moment likely caused the most dread he had ever felt in the entirety of his life. This nameless foe they faced, the ones who masqueraded as pdf from Malum…
"They… they have been holding back against us."
Uirus stared down upon the hive city, now filled with the dead returned and given new purpose. It was not his first encounter with the dead being brought back and twisted. Besides servitors, the monstrosities of Nurgle often had such powers over life, death, and undeath. However, such twisted beasts were little more than animated corpses, suffused with sorcerous energy to grant them a dark spark of false-life that drove them to spread and slaughter the Plague Lord's enemies.
This was something else entirely.
He watched as what had once been the bodies of humans, orks, genestealer hybrids and purestrains seemed to turn a viscous, diseased green and melt into puddles of mutable flesh, that spread, thinned, connected, and then… transformed. It was a matter of seconds as what must have been tens of billions of corpses became what looked to be nothing more than vines.
Dark gods, Uirus thought with a start. If this thing grew through the dead, then the army they had decided to throw away in Janus…
"Brother-!" Uirus began, turning sharply towards Ahsael, only for his fellow Space Marine to hold up a hand.
"They are lost already, if our foe decides speed would be preferable over stealth," Ahsael replied. His gaze upon the illusory reflection was unshakeable. "Did you see how swiftly it spread? Even united, it would take days for an army of daemons and other conjured horrors of the Warp to take a hive city… And months at the very soonest for mortal armies with the blessing of the gods."
"Brother, we have to…" Uirus stopped, unsure of what to say. What could they do about this threat? The genestealers hadn't been all but defenseless against this threat. Their own cultists and mortal armies were not able to withstand even what Ahsael himself admitted was an enemy restraining itself. They had a small army of daemonhosts they could unleash… but even if each monster could take out a thousand of these foes before falling, with the city of Enyo alone, this threat had an army greater than anything on this planet. Greater than most sub-sectors, in truth.
And it had Limos as well. How far had these… things spread? Malum, certainly. Their mimicry of the PDF from that hive city, the deception towards the Order of the Cleansing Rains, clearly implied a high level of intelligence. If they could mimic people… Had they infiltrated the other hives controlled by the Imperium?
Had they infiltrated the cults? Uirus wondered with growing dread. How could they tell if someone was one of these mimics? The sheer control and coordination implied a central mind controlling or, at least, guiding them all. Uirus had only recognized something being off with the PDF because of tiny details, things ordinary mortals would never have a hope of noticing, and he had only learned of their true nature because of the incident with that burned Sister of Battle.
"Brother?" Uirus was shaken from his revelations by Ahsael's curious voice. His brother was still staring down at the illusion.
"Apologies, my lord, I was… distracted." Ahsael merely shook his head without his eyes wavering from the images. The vines seemed to be redistributing themselves, heading towards the factories. The genestealers had abandoned their work when the attack had started, yet now it was being resumed by new flesh constructs just like those in Limos.
"I asked, what do you think its plans are? It is re-manning the industrial districts with its own forms. And… look. Do you see what it is doing?"
Uirus glanced back at the illusion and watched as the vines moved like tendrils, swiftly and efficiently taking apart a factory machine with the speed and grace of a team of mind-linked Mechanicus priests, minus their prayers and sacraments. Some components were taken away by other vines, some were replaced with fleshy counterparts, others replaced by different ones seemingly brought from elsewhere.
"It is… repairing the old machinery?"
"It is doing more than that," Ahsael said. "It is reconfiguring these factories to produce… something else. What would take a team of Enginseers and serfs days to accomplish, it is doing in hours and minutes."
Uirus was not surprised to hear the curiosity in his brother's voice… but he was slightly concerned by the small amount of admiration it was mixed in with.
"What is it trying to get the factory to produce?" Uirus asked, trying to change the subject.
"I am not sure," Ahsael said. "Weapons, perhaps? To arm more of its mimic-soldiers."
"I don't understand why it bothers," Uirus said, crossing his arms. "Why the façade? This world is isolated by the storm. It could easily slaughter the Sisters of Battle and then do to our own hives what its done in the east."
"Indeed… if it were simply a feral beast, that is likely what it would do," Ahsael replied. "It could need the corpse-worshippers for some purpose its own mimics cannot accomplish."
"Some greater plan?" Uirus suggested. "When the Warp Storm subsides, the Sisters vouching for the ferocity and capability of the mimic soldiers could provide it a means of leaving this planet. A way to spread to other worlds."
"That is one possibility." Ahsael nodded. "We do not know enough about the way its mind functions to make such predictions, however…"
"Do you intend to…" Uirus paused, suddenly unsure if this was the right way to phrase his question. When Ahsael remained transfixed by the illusion, he pushed on anyways. "Do you intend to study this creature?"
Ahsael tilted his head as he stroked his chin, deep in thought.
"… Yes," He finally said after a long while. "But not here and not now. We do not currently have the means to conduct such a study, nor are we safe enough to do so. We will require… assistance."
"Do you mean… the legion?" Uirus wanted to shift his weight between his feet, wanted to fidget. He stopped himself from doing so. Such things were mortal qualities, unbefitting of a Space Marine.
"Yesss," Ahsael breathed through his teeth like a hiss. "Ready the Gallow's Eye for detachment and departure."
"We are…" Uirus caught himself before he said the word 'running'. "… leaving Monstrum?"
"This world's value is no longer as a land for me to rule," Ahsael said, banishing the image simply by retracting his might, the swirling waters of the bowl slowly stilling. "But a place where a great power now dwells. A power that I will either have to destroy… or learn to wield for myself."
"What of the ork space hulk? It could-."
"It is either empty or been rendered inoperable. Why else would it remain silent, hanging above our heads like some misshapen moon?"
"If…" Uirus paused, but Ahsael's look towards him compelled him forwards. "If this threat is left unwatched, unhindered, it may grow out of any hopes of control or destruction."
"Indeed." Ahsael nodded. "Which is why I want you to ensure the weapons systems of the Gallow's Eye are checked and rechecked. If we cannot have these hive cities for ourselves… then this foe may not have them either."