On Slawkenberg, print-sheets and vox-casts, which had grown in numbers ever since the Uprising and the Liberation of speech, had reported on the Adumbrian expedition in detail. There wasn't a soul on Slawkenberg who didn't know about it, and all paid close attention to the news coming from the distant Adumbria system.
Through the use of the ansibles, the people knew exactly what was happening in the Adumbria system in real time. They knew that the expedition fleet had arrived in Adumbria, and that contact had been made with the survivors, those pitiful few who had been abandoned to their deaths by the callous Imperium. They knew of the horror that had befallen that distant world, though few images were made public to avoid traumatizing the children who had never known the Giorbas' oppression. And they knew, too, that the forces of the USA were mustering for an attack on the heart of this evil, led by the glorious Liberator himself.
In the last few years, the various faiths which had blossomed after the Ecclesiarchy's violent purge had grown in numbers and influence. The creeds of Battle, Change, and Joy had taken many guises, while the cult of the God-Emperor had quietly continued, in a more gentle and merciful form than the Ecclesiarchy's tyrants had ever allowed. Even the Bringers of Renewed Greatness had expanded their ranks, welcoming all those who thirsted for knowledge and wanted to put it to the service of the people. For such was the will of the Liberator that all be allowed to pray as they desired, so long as they obeyed the law and didn't try to sow discord on Slawkenberg.
These faiths had many differences, but there were traits they all shared. Slawkenberg must stand united to survive and prosper, and none other than the Liberator were fit for the task of leading them into the future. The Imperium was a rotting, shambling parody of the noble institution it had once been, its purpose long since eroded away. And the Power of Decay, the Lord of Plagues and Despair, was the Archenemy of Humanity, spreading misery and suffering to break the species' spirit in order to feed off their despairing acceptance.
Some creeds believed these last two were linked, that Nurgle had poisoned the Emperor and through Him the Imperium. Others thought the Emperor had been the greatest human to have ever lived, but had died long ago, and the High Lords of Terra were keeping up the charade that He still lived in order to keep their positions of power. For some of those who saw Change as the cardinal virtue, the Imperial treatment of psykers was considered a ploy of Decay seeking to keep Humanity from evolving into a species capable of fighting it on more equal grounds. Others believed that the three Powers which had lent their support to the Uprising had, once upon a time, been servants or even part of the God-Emperor Himself, which struggled against Decay in the Immaterium in order to bring the Imperium back to its original self, even as their own champions were cursed by Decay and transformed into hollow parodies of themselves.
All in all, Slawkenberg's religious landscape was a complex and patchwork thing, but also a pragmatic one, helping keep the peace which the Liberator cherished above all else. And now, regardless of their personal beliefs, all prayed for the victory of the USA and the Liberator against the hosts of Decay which had seized Adumbria.
The Nails pound, pound, pound into his skull.
He hurts. All four of his limbs are broken in several places. His body is awash with various infections which even his transhuman physiology are struggling to contain. The fever he is running alone would already have killed a mortal man, boiling his brain inside his skull. Several of his organs, already withered by centuries of life in the Eye of Terror, have been torn out of his open guts.
Yet these pains are nothing compared to the one inside his head.
For the Nails pound, pound, pound into his skull.
He does not know how long it has been. His helmet's internal display broke down centuries ago, and there is no day or night on this accursed rock.
He knows, in some small corner of his mind that hasn't yet been broken by pain, that he should be dead already. He wants to be dead. But he isn't. Something is keeping him alive. Perhaps it is the Nails, unwilling to release him from his slavery to their hunger for violence. Perhaps it is the very sicknesses running through his flesh, prolonging his agony for the amusement of the Lord of Decay.
He does not know. And the Nails pound, pound, pound into his skull.
He wants to fight, to kill, to die. Anything so long as their pounding finally, finally stops.
"This one is still alive !"
A voice. Human. He does not wonder who they are or what they are doing here. All he can think of, in the haze of red-blood agony, is that he must kill them, spill their blood and take their skulls, so that the Nails will grant him blessed release.
But he cannot move. He groans, more blood pouring out from his mouth, and twitches weakly like a fish drowning on land. He hates his weakness, though not as much as he hates the Nails.
Still the Nails pound, pound, pound into his skull.
"Gods, are those his guts ? How long has he been out here ?"
"Weeks ! How the frak is he still alive ?! Medic ! Give him a Panacea injection, now ! Maximum dosage !"
"Do we know what it does to Space Marines ?"
"No, but it's not like we have a choice ! Hurry !"
Something pricks at the exposed flesh of his neck. It takes several attempts before piercing through the leathery skin. He hears the hissing of something being injected into his bloodstream, and then –
The pounding stops.
There is no blood, no killing, but the pounding has stopped. The pain of the Nails is gone, not just held at bay by slaughter.
For the first time in a hundred centuries, Hektor of the Twelfth Legion falls unconscious with a tranquil smile on his scarred mess of a face.
The Lord of War was different from every tank Regina had ever been in during her time in the Imperial Guard. It was far larger than the other tanks of the United Slawkenberg Army, and combined the function of an artillery piece with that of a mobile command center.
Colonel Ygdal (in full armor himself, with a power mace hanging on his back) was focused on the four screens covering one side of the command vehicle, which were showing the pict-feed of the flock of servo-skulls flying above the battlefield.
Unlike the ones Regina was used to, the USA's servo-skulls were made of metal rather than bone. The USA's tech-priests (or borgs, as they were apparently called) didn't use normal ones, just like the entire USA didn't use servitors. As someone who had always been uneasy in the presence of the Mechanicus' ministers (due to the horror stories she'd heard as a child of entire Guard Regiments being turned into battle-servitors after seeking refuge on Mechanicus' forge-worlds), Regina was forced to admit that she found both of these changes to be welcome ones. The fact that their leader, Basileus-Zeta, didn't have any visible augmetics, had also helped take off the edge of the constant fear she'd felt since willingly putting herself in the heretics' midst.
Her decision to do so hadn't exactly been popular among her subordinates, but she had to do it. Someone from the 296th had to be involved in this : the Regiment's honor demanded no less. It had taken a lot of arguing, but eventually even Sulla had seen reason, or at least had grudgingly bowed to her superior rank. And after some more arguing, they had even accepted Regina's choice not to bring an escort with her because, well, they would hardly have been able to protect her from the USA, so she might as well not risk anyone else's lives.
Not that the heretics had shown any sign of intending her harm so far. In fact, they had been remarkably accommodating, and even the common troopers were treating her with the respect they seemed to feel was owed to someone who'd held the line without support for so long. It was certainly different from the other Guard Regiments she'd met before, who'd treated the 296th as second-class soldiers – either because their primary duties were garrisoning Imperial worlds, or, less acceptably, because they were women.
Regina forced herself away from this train of thought, and back to the present. With Skitterfall's airspace compromised by Warp sorcery, the USA had advanced straight from Glacier Peak aboard a fleet of transports recovered from where the 296th had left them after the evacuation efforts had ended. They had been refuelled with promethium stocks brought from orbit along with the supplies for the civilian population, given a quick look-over by the borgs, and within one day of the USA's arrival they had marched out.
Within a day, they'd reached Skitterfall. Adumbria's planetary capital had been about as well fortified as that of most Imperial worlds when the Infection had struck : a large wall had been built around the original settlement, before the city had inevitably grown beyond it. Obviously, the gubernatorial palace was located within the walls, but fortunately, the perimeter had already been breached during the Ravagers' ill-fated assault on Skitterfall. The Infected had tried to close the breach, but whoever was controlling them clearly had no idea how to build fortifications, and the whole thing had come apart again within a few moments of the USA's artillery bombardment.
Of course, the Infected had immediately come pouring out of the breach, just like they'd most likely done during the Ravagers' attempt. But so far, the USA was acquitting itself much better against the horde than the warband whose rotting corpses they were forced to trample as they advanced.
Despite the horrific appearance of the foe, it was an awe-inspiring spectacle. The Slawkenberg troopers were far from being the equals of the Space Marines, of course, but Regina imagined this must be not too different from what a massed deployment of Sisters of Battle looked like, if they were willing to follow proper tactics and not rush at the enemy with the God-Emperor's name on their lips. The vanguard troopers were armed with heavy boarding shields and chainswords, pushing against the Infected horde while their comrades opened fire from behind the shield wall.
Once the breach into Skitterfall proper was secured, the advance slowed down considerably as the USA forces were funnelled into the city's streets. Regina grimaced : she knew from experience that city-fighting was a nightmare, though at least there weren't any civilians left in Skitterfall to worry about.
The Lord of War remained near the breach, at the forward operation base which had swiftly been constructed there. Given what the servo-skulls were seeing, Regina had no intention of getting out of the tank and its recycled air. The city looked nothing like she remembered it, as the corruption which had seized its population seemed to have spread to the very buildings. Skitterfall looked like it had been pulled out of the fever dream of some terminally ill madman.
The Infected were also not only far more numerous, but stronger as well. According to the witches, who were monitoring the battle from orbit, they were drawing strength from the very corruption afflicting the city. Regina wouldn't have thought anyone but a Space Marine task force could have punched its way through the city like the USA was doing, and yet she could see it happening with her own eyes.
At the forefront of the USA host was Cain himself. The heretic leader was piloting a Dreadnought-sized suit of armor, with a heavy bolter mounted in its left forearm and a shard of pure blackness shaped into a sword in its right hand. Regina had no idea what the sword was made of, but it cut through the Infected like a plasma cannon through a snowfield.
At Cain's side was his bodyguard, or 'bloodward' as she was apparently called. Why Cain needed a bodyguard while inside that terrifying warmachine Regina didn't know, but given the curves of Malicia's body armor she suspected she'd an idea.
They were making good progress through the city when she suddenly noticed something.
"There," she said, pointing at a screen. "These Infected are going to catch these soldiers," she gestured at another screen, showing a squad of USA troopers currently engaged with a pack of bestial things which walked on four limbs and had entirely too large jaws, "from behind."
"Blood and ashes, you are right," replied the other Colonel after a couple of seconds, before immediately shifting his voice to a clip, no-nonsense command tone : "Squad 97, fall back two intersections and stop the Infected swarm coming from the west."
They watched tensely as the troopers fell back and held their ground, preventing this section of the USA advance from becoming bogged down.
"Thank you, Colonel Kasteen," Ygdal sighed. "I'm afraid I'm still somewhat inexperienced when it comes to large-scale battles like this. Training exercises can only do so much, but that's no excuse."
"You're welcome," she said reflexively, before suddenly realizing that she'd just provided assistance to enemies of the Golden Throne. Until now, she'd only refrained from attacking them and shared information about the other heretics present on Adumbria, but now she'd directly acted to help them.
She doubted any Inquisitor would've seen much of a difference, but how easily she'd done so still troubled her. Was this how it started ? One small, perfectly reasonable footstep after the other, until you turned you back on Him On Earth and start worshipping daemons ?
And yet, try as she might, she couldn't think of anything else she could've done. The only question, she thought, was whether or not this had all been part of Cain's plan all along.
It was fortunate that, between the Liberator Armor and the suit of power armor I wore inside it (because after what had happened during Korbul's attack, I'd made damn sure I wouldn't be left defenceless if I was forced to abandon the larger suit), no one could see my face. I didn't know what expression exactly I was making now, after the utter terror of the last … however long it had been since the battle had started, but I doubted it'd fit the image of Cain the Liberator.
I would really have preferred to be in the command vehicle with Ygdal, but the very existence of the Liberator Armor meant I couldn't do it without tanking my ill-gotten reputation for heroically leading from the front. Which would be perfectly fine by me, if not for the fact that reputation was part of what kept the rest of the Liberation Council in line. And so here I was once again, throwing myself into mortal peril in order to avoid greater peril later.
I was beginning to worry this would be a theme for the rest of my entire miserable life, though I was of course still blissfully ignorant of how worse than even my most pessimistic thoughts the future would be.
At least the new and improved battlesuit was proving itself worth the exorbitant price tag thus far. The claws, fangs, and occasional biological projectile weapon the Infected were using had done nothing more than scratch the paint and slightly dent the outermost layer of armor so far, while my weapons were cutting them down in droves. With how many enemies we faced, I had discarded the use of the wrist-mounted bolter, which would run out of ammo long before making any significant dent into the enemy numbers, and was instead wielding my new sword two-handed, although what I was doing with it was really more akin to butchery than any real swordsmanship.
The sword had been another 'surprise' from the borgs, constructed using some of the tech recovered from the few fragments of the Drukhari flagship which had been fished out of Slawkenberg's ocean. As Tesilon-Kappa had told me with disturbing enthusiasm, they still had no idea how it worked, but they'd still managed to make something useful out of it.
According to Malicia, the blade was made of something her people called 'dark matter', which was so non-indicative as to be completely useless. Granted, the Succubus wasn't whatever nightmarish equivalent of a tech-priest her kin used, but I had a growing suspicion the name of the stuff had been chosen purely for intimidation value.
In what I could only think of as a sign that the God-Emperor hadn't completely given up on me yet, I'd been able to convince the borgs not to name the weapon the Cainblade or something equally asinine. Admittedly, Liberation's Edge wasn't much better, but at least my name wasn't in it. And from a purely martial perspective, I couldn't deny its efficiency. It seemed there was nothing it couldn't cut through, and I didn't feel any resistance through the armor's feedback mechanism.
Meanwhile, Jurgen was carrying a multi-barrelled lascannon with an ease made possible only by his own standard suit of power armor, and swept entire streets clean with overwhelming firepower while keeping his psychic faculties in reserve for later. Despite being far smaller than the Liberator Armor, he was keeping up without issue, as were the other vanguard troopers which followed in my wake.
As for Malicia, she was clearly having the time of her life butchering a wide variety of enemies who couldn't so much as scratch her. It was fortunate her laughter could only be heard over the private vox-link between her, Jurgen and I, because even the most battle-hardened troopers would've been disturbed by the sheer cruel delight the xenos killer was taking in the whole thing. Her new suit of armor had been assembled from pieces taken from the corpses of her dead allies (I hadn't needed to be a mind-reader to know what her response to being offered a suit of armor built by human hands would be), although the frankly ridiculously impractical spikes and unnecessary edges had been smoothed off.
Most of the troopers around me had trained in the claustrophobic labyrinth of Emeli's Gift as part of the cleansing operations. While none of them had encountered anything as dangerous as the Genestealers I'd stumbled upon during my first and only expedition on that giant deathtrap, there had been plenty of warped, misshapen things left aboard for them to sharpen their skills on. These lessons served them well now, in the brutal butchery that was battle against the Infected hordes in the streets of Skitterfall.
Of course, I thought bitterly, if the Infected had possessed half the tactical sense of a gretchin we would all be dead already. Skitterfall's twisted streets made it the perfect ground to stage an ambush-intensive defense in depth, and my paranoid mind kept screaming at me about threats in the shadows that thankfully never materialized. Instead, the Infected were apparently content to simply hurl themselves at our ranks in slavering swarms to be cut down by our concentrated firepower.
Not that we were getting it all our way, of course. As every Imperial Guard commander well knows, quantity has a quality all its own, and the Infected present in the capital outnumbered us massively. Yet even so, USA casualties were low : the presence of medicae in power armor carrying Panacea injectors meant that, even when a trooper fell, they survived more often than not to be carried back to the FOB. I had even been forced to make it clear that no, the wounded weren't allowed to return to the fray once they'd recovered, as with their armored suits broken they would be liabilities.
Here I was, desperately looking for a way out, and these morons wanted nothing more than to get back to fighting the Infected hordes.
"Onward, my comrades !" I bellowed over my armor's vox-speakers, raising Liberation's Edge high. "Let us bring dawn to this city of eternal twilight !"
Throne, I couldn't believe I had just said that. I sounded like a character in a two-credits novel. The troopers around me lapped it up, though, too high on bloodlust to care about the losses they had already suffered or the fact that we still faced an entire city full of more monsters like the ones we had faced, and roared their approval with enough strength to shake the poisoned sky. As far as I could tell, despite all the horrors we'd faced, not a single trooper had so much as taken a backward step without being ordered to.
Frakking Khornates.
Still, we were making good progress. Of course, every meter of advance meant we were closer to the gubernatorial palace and the not-so-fresh horrors awaiting us within, and try as I might I couldn't think of a way to avoid leading the charge into the den of the beast.
My plan, if it could be called such, was to have Jurgen engage the sorcerous leader of the Infected in psychic combat. I was well aware that for all his psychic might, my aide wasn't nearly as powerful as whatever was responsible for Adumbria's woes, but I didn't expect him to win, merely to draw its attention for an instant. Then, me and every trooper I could bring with me would shoot the sorcerer while it was distracted, and hopefully our combined firepower would be enough to overwhelm whatever defenses it could maintain while engaged with Jurgen.
It wouldn't be the epic, one-on-one duel between myself and the source of all of Adumbria's evils I'd no doubt the rest of the USA fondly imagined was going to happen, but it should work, and more importantly it should keep me alive. I was confident I could spin it as me not wanting to give the wretched Nurglite the honor of fighting me directly afterwards.
I had half-managed to convince myself this all would work out when our advance suddenly stopped.
"What the frak is this ?" I asked eloquently, looking at the barrier which blocked our progress.
It was to an energy shield as the rest of Skitterfall was to a normal city. It looked like a giant bubble of pus that covered a good quarter of the city, including our destination, and absorbed all of our fire without any sign of damage. I had ordered one of the servo-skulls to fly through, and after seeing what had happened to the unfortunate device I wasn't going to let anyone try to get through themselves.
"This appears to be a sorcerous barrier," cut in Harold after some time. The Tzeentchian magus was back aboard the Fist of the Liberator alongside Krystabel, neither of them being suited for this kind of operation. "Fortunately, I believe we have managed to track down its source. Sending the coordinates now."
The map on my display updated itself to show the location Harold was talking about, and a sudden thought intruded upon me.
"Wait," I asked. "Are you telling me that the source of this barrier is outside the barrier itself ?"
"Yes, lord."
I waited, but he didn't elaborate further, pushing me to eventually ask :
"Is there any reason for that ? It strikes me as very poor design. Usually, shield generators are located inside the shields themselves."
"I, huh." Harold genuinely sounded taken aback, having clearly been too caught up in locating the source of the obstacle to think about this. "I don't know. Maybe the source of the barrier can't be moved ? There might be some ritual component to the ritual maintaining it which is fixed in place."
"Maybe," I said, not believing it was that simple for a moment. "But we are going to treat this as a trap regardless."
Which predictably turned out to be the correct course of action, although frankly speaking the trap in question wasn't much to worry about, which was a pleasant surprise for once.
According to the old maps provided by the 296th, our target had at one point been a monastery of the Order of the Imperial Light, a local offshoot of the Ecclesiarchy. If the maps were still accurate (which, given how saturated the city was with Warp energy, was far from guaranteed), then the temple had been thoroughly desecrated.
Statues which I assumed had depicted saints and famous Adumbrian religious figures had been disfigured, and were covered by the same fleshy growth that spread throughout Skitterfall like unholy ivy. Fist-sized insects swarmed on the ground, forming a shifting carpet of nauseating colors and forcing even my power-armored companions to check their footing (the Liberator Armor, of course, crushed them without slowing down).
The temple was defended by larger Infected than we'd encountered previously, including a towering brute the size of an Imperial Knight, which nonetheless went down remarkably easily once two hundred USA troopers focused their fire on its ridiculously small head. Inside the temple itself, we found the source of the barrier atop what must have been the main altar where the monks had gathered for their daily prayers.
It was, or had been, a man, laying on the altar, with numerous tendrils plunging into his flesh and linking him to the rest of this place's foulness. Despite the utter ruination of his flesh, his eyes were still intact, and he stared at us with agonizing clarity.
A quick look was enough to know there was nothing we could do for him. His suffering was fuelling the sorcerous barrier : according to Krystabel and Harold, he'd likely been one of the Ecclesiarchy's representatives on Adumbria, chosen for this awful fate because of this. And while the Ecclesiarchy was far from popular among the troopers of the USA, nobody deserved such a gruesome fate.
I struck the killing blow myself, before ordering the troopers carrying flamers to burn the remains to ashes. To my own surprise, I caught myself muttering a prayer for the poor bastard's soul, though I doubted he'd have appreciated it, given who was likely to listen to me these days.
I was about to give the order to move out when I heard a voice calling out my name.
"Ciaphas Cain," it said. "We meet at last."
The voice was at once whiny and filled to the brim with arrogance, and I found myself unpleasantly reminded of Caesariovi Giorba's rantings before I had shot him with his own bolt pistol. I turned toward the source of the sound, and found that the large mirror hanging on the wall behind the broken altar had become a window into another, even more awful place. The fleshy growths were even more prevalent wherever this was, but I didn't have time to inspect the other room in detail, as my attention was immediately drawn to the speaker, who stood right in front of whatever fell pict-taker equivalent he was using for this sorcerous communication.
The man (at least I assumed it was a man) was morbidly obese, to a point that made the Giorbas look like paragons of fitness and health. It was difficult to judge heights from within the Liberator Armor, but I was confident he was of rather small stature, and wearing what looked like a nobleman's robes, except far too small to properly cover his repugnant bulk.
Every trooper in the room aimed their weapon at the mirror, but I stopped them with a gesture. If this was what I thought it was, then this may be an opportunity to gain some useful intelligence.
"You have me at a disadvantage, sieur," I said, to break the awkward silence that had descended on the room.
I felt a slight headache start to bloom inside my skull, and reflexively blink-clicked a rune on my armor's internal display, which triggered the injection of a slow trickle of Panacea into my bloodstream. The headache receded at once, leaving me free to focus on the conversation.
"I am Adrien de Floures van Harbieter Ventrious," he pompously announced.
"Never heard of you," I replied truthfully, and under its many layers of fat, his face looked like he'd swallowed a lemon.
"Of course you haven't, you foul heretic," he spat. "Your ignorance is made clear by your choice of patrons."
"Is this what this is about ?" My stomach plummeted in my boots at the sheer hatred dripping from his every word, but, conscious of the many eyes watching me, I forced myself to keep up the Liberator persona. "Shouting at me for refusing to let the literal lord of decay and sickness torment my people ?"
"I wanted to see you for myself," he replied. "To see the fool who dared to deny the Grandfather's gifts, and scream his pitiful defiance into the Aether for all to hear."
I spread out the Liberator Armor's arms. "Well, you've seen me now. And I have seen you, too. I must say," I continued, layering my next words with all the mockery I could muster, "I'm not impressed either."
"Your flesh will rot on your bones," he spat the words along with a wad of phlegm that would've made any cleaner weep. "Your armor and weapons will rust into nothing, and as your mind breaks under the realization of your own stupidity, you will beg for the Grandfather's forgiveness !"
"No," I said, and for once I wasn't lying. "I will never beg Nurgle for anything."
At last, the entropic energies of the windbag's communication spell became too much for the mirror's fixings, and it crashed onto the floor with a sound between breaking glass and the shrieking of damned souls, sending razor-sharp shards flying, none of which managed to penetrate my armor.
"Well, that was an unpleasant conversation," I said, turning to my companions, who were all staring at me. Right, they'd just seen me waste time talking with the madman apparently responsible for all the horror surrounding us. "But at least now we know the name of our enemy. Let's get back to killing him, shall we ?"
How ?! How had he done this ?!
The entire time they'd been talking, Adrien had been casting a curse on Cain through the mirror, one that should have had his body shrivel and die under the strain of a hundred different plagues. The curse's power had been diminished by the wards placed on his armor by the disciples of the Changing God, yes, but what remained should've been more than enough to kill him !
And yet, he hadn't even appeared to notice. Clearly Adrien had underestimated him, despite the warnings he had received. One of the other Dark Gods must have protected him somehow, either by strengthening his body or simply blocking the curse completely, he didn't know.
No. No, he wouldn't fail. Not now, not when Adumbria was so close to being fully within his grasp.
He still had one last card to play. Grandfather Nurgle wouldn't abandon him. He wanted Cain dead, Adrien knew this. And if the thralls couldn't do the job, then he just had to ask for something which could !
As he slowly waddled his way back to the chamber of the Blessed Spawn, he ran through the formulas and un-words that had been revealed to him since his illumination into the entropic ways of the universe. Perhaps, if he could break through the Blessed Spawn's resistance … no. That wouldn't work. Oh, the Spawn would be more than able to defeat Cain and his minions, but breaking its defiance would take too long.
Then … then he would call for one of Grandfather's strongest children. The entire city had been made as close to the Garden as possible; the barrier between realms was thin enough for one of them to cross the gap and join him in defense of all he'd built.
Cain was strong, and so were his allies, but they were still only mortals, even the disgusting xenos scum he'd welcomed in his court. Let them try to use their pretty guns against one of Grandfather's greatest servants : all of their weapons and armor would turn to dust, along with their foolish hopes.
AN : Happy Holidays, everyone !
Thanks you all for your kind words on the last chapter, and for the various Omakes which have been written on SpaceBattles showing Cain in various other situations (such as a Rogue Trader and a Crime Lord, among others). If you're reading this on another site, I really recommend checking the SB thread.
Like several other characters in this fic, Hektor is from another story of mine, Warband of the Forsaken Sons. And yes, the panacea stopped the Nails from affecting him (more details will be revealed later). You might now begin to imagine how Cain is going to react when he learns his bunch of lunatics rescued a corrupted Astartes dedicated to Khorne.
Here is a hint : it's going to be hilarious.
The next chapter of A Young Girl's Weaponization of the Mythos is almost complete. I expect it to be published sometime tomorrow, which will be fitting considering it's quite possibly the most wholesome piece of fiction I've ever written (despite being a crossover between the Cthulhu Mythos and Youjo Senki of all things).
As always, I look forward to your thoughts, suggestions and Omakes.
Zahariel out.
