Jon Skellan snarled through fanged teeth as he smashed in the skull of yet another Nergalite bastard with his club. The weapon was a brutish and ugly thing : a piece of rusted metal he had pulled from the wreckage of the underhive, hammered somewhat into shape, and wrapped a bunch of rusted chains and nails around. Before the battle, there had still been spots of blood belonging to the last ganger he'd killed with it on it. But it did the job, especially when wielded with his supernatural strength, and in the underhive that was all that mattered.

Lizbet was fighting by his side, wielding her own, equally ugly-looking but efficient weapon. Despite the grim and dirt that covered her, she was just as beautiful as she'd been on the day of their wedding. Which only made sense, since that had been the same day the four of them had been Turned.

Jon still remembered it as if it were yesterday, the events of that fateful day burned into his memory. He and Stefan Fisher had known each other all their lives, and falling in love with a pair of sisters had brought them even closer to another, to the point they had been brothers in all but blood. Jon had proposed to Lizbet on the same day Stefan had to Leyna, and their weddings had taken place on the same day (both to celebrate them all becoming family, and for the more pragmatic reason that it would make the celebrations less expensive, always a concern even in their comparatively prosperous section of the underhive).

Then, right after the priest was done leading them through their vows and everyone had stopped clapping, the doors of the church had burst open, and the Vampires had swaggered in, already covered in the blood of the people they had killed outside, too quickly for anyone to scream.

Even now, years later, Jon still dreamt of their laughter sometimes. They had taken their time with their victims, making sure nobody could escape as they killed the guests one by one, before bestowing a 'wedding gift' on the two couples.

Jon's first memory as a Vampire was lapping the stale blood of his family from where it had pooled on the floor, all reason lost to the terrible thirst that afflicted the newly-Turned as their body's complex changes finished. Thankfully, Stefan was made of sterner stuff than Jon, and he had pulled Jon away from the red liquid, pinned him against a wall, and held him there until he had regained control, stoically bearing the scratches Jon had dealt him with his claws. If not for his brother-in-law, Jon was morbidly certain he would have lost himself to the beast inside of him then and there.

He had never forgotten that debt, which had been the one bright spot on that awful day – well, along with the fact that Lizbet had risen as well, the two of them still together despite everything.

With their human lives lost to them, vengeance had been their drive for the next seven years, even as they learned to cope with their new condition. The monsters responsible had turned out to be from the mid-levels of Primus, having come down to slum it and indulge their depraved appetites on people nobody would miss, so that they wouldn't earn the disapproval of the Vampires tasked with maintaining Cassandron's order.

They might have been able to avoid the attention of the Coven's law enforcers, but they'd been wrong to think nobody would care. One by one, Stefan, Jon, Lizbet and Leyna had hunted them down, sharpening the skills everybody in the underhive needed to reach adulthood in the process, along with mastering the strange gifts that came with their new status.

The last of the bastards, Aigner, had gotten wise to their pursuit and tried to flee to the highest levels of the hive and beg protection from the leadership of the Volkihar Coven, but they had caught up to him and ended his miserable existence on the very threshold of the mass-conveyor which would've carried him to the spire.

Jon had taken a dark delight in how the wretch had begged for his miserable life, even if Stefan had stopped him from making Aigner suffer like he deserved before ending him. Although, given they'd been right in front of a bunch of armed guards from up the spire, he'd to admit his brother-in-law had a point, so Jon had simply ripped Aigner's heart out and shot him in the head repeatedly with a shotgun. Supposedly, there were Vampires who could survive that, but Aigner wasn't one of them.

And then, for a time, they had been lost, with no idea what to do next. The four of them had spent a few months wandering the hive, feeding on vermin and gangers. Eventually, they had gone back to their home-town, which had returned from ruin during their absence as new settlers claimed the area where their families had lived before being slaughtered.

With Stefan as their family's leader, they had taken the region as their territory. Since then, they had fought off gangs and rival Vampires, all while carefully feeding on the population – taking enough blood to keep the beast inside satiated, but not enough to threaten anyone's life. It was a delicate balancing act, and the four of them were all too aware that they would frak up and kill someone they didn't mean to eventually, but it hadn't happened yet, and on the whole, Jon was pretty sure they'd done more good than harm.

And if he was wrong, he was certainly evening that score now, fighting to protect the underhive's denizens from the monsters rising from its deepest and darkest depths, where even Vampires feared to tread.

This was their family's first time fighting the Brood of Nergal. They'd been told about them by the other Vampires with whom they'd occasionally dealt, but hadn't seen one before in person. Which, given how many of them had revealed themselves today, had very worrying implications – but there wasn't time to think about that right now.

Getting news from the rest of the hive was difficult at the best of time, but they had still gotten word of the Governor's assassination. Everyone who knew the truth of the Brood had expected a forceful reaction by the spireborn, but the Nergalites' numbers had taken them by surprise. It had actually taken several hours for them to hear about the onslaught, simply because at first, no survivors had managed to escape the Brood long enough to send a warning.

Once they'd heard about what was going on, though, the four of them had immediately gotten to work. After a brief evaluation of their situation, they'd decided that their territory was too far from the evacuation lines and defensive points being set up higher in the hive-city. The four Vampires might manage to make the trip alive, but the ones relying on them for protection most definitely wouldn't – and leaving them behind wasn't an option.

So they'd gathered everyone they could reach, barricaded them inside the most secure building they could find, and prepared themselves to face the horde. They hadn't needed to wait long, and had been fighting more or less non-stop ever since, more and more Broodspawns emerging from the labyrinth of tunnels which made up the underhive.

At first, they had just been protecting their people. But word of a safe haven had spread across the region, and people had flocked to them for aid. Jon didn't know how many exactly (there hadn't been time to do a proper headcount), but it had to be in the thousands by now. Anyone who could hold a gun and shoot above their heads and into the Nergalite horde was on the walls, and anyone who could hold something heavy to smash a skull in was standing behind them, ready to finish off any horror which slipped past their Vampiric protectors.

So far, it had worked. It felt strange to be a hero, but Jon could get used to the feeling. Unfortunately, it didn't seem he would've the chance.

"We can't hold here forever," whispered Lizbet, her words too low to be picked up by the humans but more than loud enough for the enhanced hearing of the Vampires. "Not if they just keep coming like this."

Her words, however softly spoken, were true. They were getting tired, even with their inhuman endurance, and their equipment, such as it was, was reaching its limits. Soon, they'd be reduced to fighting off the Brood with their bare hands, and while they could still do plenty of damage with those, it'd inevitably mean being overwhelmed and ripped apart by the frenzied horde.

"We do not run," grunted Stefan. "If this is where we die, then so be it."

They could still escape, Jon knew. If they disengaged and fled, the Nergalites would go after the people inside rather than pursue them. They could run away, hide from the Brood until the Coven had dealt with them.

But if they did that, they would become no better than Aigner and his cronies, and Jon didn't value his immortal life so much that he'd throw away his soul to preserve it.

Jon was well aware that, out of the four members of their strange, deathless family, he was the one with the most tenuous grip on his humanity. Even as a human, his temper had been something he needed to keep an eye on, and becoming a Vampire had only made it worse. But with the help of his family, he had been able to hold on these last three decades, partly out of a desire not to fail them, and partly, he must admit, out of sheer spite and the drive not to give the bastards who had done this to them that last victory.

And he would not let the Broodspawns win, either.

For the next half-hour, they kept on fighting with grim determination. Scratches were beginning to accumulate on their exposed skin as their innate regeneration was slowly being overwhelmed, and Jon wasn't sure whether the blurring at the edge of his vision was due to creeping exhaustion or some kind of Brood plague finding its way into his cold, undead blood.

Suddenly, he heard a cracking sound from behind the horde of corrupted Vampires. Las-weaponry was far too valuable to be common in the underhive, but Jon still recognized the noise from the few times he'd heard it before. Had the spireborn sent help ? It wasn't impossible : they were coming down to purge the Brood, after all, and there were certainly enough Nergalites here to warrant their attention.

Then he saw what was leading the newcomers, and knew that whoever this was, they weren't spireborn at all.

A towering crimson figure led a host of armored troops, which looked small in comparison – but only in comparison. In the figure's hands was a blade of purest darkness, which seemed to swallow all the light around it as it scythed through the Nergalites. Behind it walked a smaller armored silhouette carrying what looked like a heavy machine gun, except it fired las-bolts instead of bullets, a woman in a weird bodysuit with a pair of blades, who moved with more speed than any Vampire Jon had ever seen, and a veritable army of red armors, who were firing into the Nergalite horde with ruthless precision.

The Broodspawns tried to run, but they were caught between Jon's family and the unexpected reinforcements. Within minutes, the last of them had been put down, and the armored titan walked toward the refuge. Instinctively, Jon raised his cracked club, before lowering it with a scowl. There was absolutely nothing he could do to the warmachine if its pilot was hostile, and it would be a very stupid way to die if he wasn't.

"I am Ciaphas Cain," said the red giant, his voice booming out of a vox-speaker on his horned helm – which was a weird design choice, but Jon wasn't about to argue with the man about it. "I am here on behalf of the Volkihar Coven and the Governor of Cassandron, to assist in purging the Nergalite taint from Hive Primus. Who speaks for you ?"

The four Vampires looked at one another, then Stefan hesitantly stepped forward, cranking his neck to look up at their savior (or so Jon hoped he was).

"I am Stefan Fisher, lord Cain," Jon's brother-in-law said, and bowed deeply. "Thank you for helping us."

"Think nothing of it," replied the lord, and Jon couldn't help but think he sounded sincere. "We received your vox-calls for help, and couldn't just leave you alone. The entire reason we are on Cassandron in the first place is to assist its people, after all. However, I must admit I was surprised by the sheer number of Broodspawns assailing you. There shouldn't be –"

Cain suddenly went silent. Someone was talking to him over the vox, but his helmet was too well insulated for even Jon's enhanced hearing to pick up more than a vague buzzing. When the voice stopped, the warlord cursed.

"Well, that answers my question," he continued ruefully. "It seems we were more right to come here than we thought, Sieur Fisher. There is another wave of Broodspawns on its way here, and it's a big one. The defenders above us have just reported in that the Nergalites pressuring them are pulling back, and my oracles tell me this place is their target."

"What ?" asked Stefan, sounding as flabbergasted as Jon felt. "Why ?"

"We thought your people were only targets of opportunity, drawing the Brood because of the concentration of victims your stronghold represents," explained Cain grimly. "We were right, but we missed the reason for it. There is some manner of foul sorcery at play, and the people you have been defending are to be the sacrifice that will activate it."

"That's impossible," said Jon before he could stop himself. "When the towering red armor turned toward him, he forced himself to continue : "Broodspawns are barely more than animals, they can't plan or coordinate like this ! And they don't use 'sorcery' either !"

"All things change in time," said Cain sombrely. "And in my experience, thinking the slaves of Decay to be mindless beasts is a dangerous assumption to make. Ultimately, it doesn't matter how or why this is happening : the Broodspawns are coming, and we have to deal with them."

Then he turned to his forces, giving order in a calm, controlled voice, guiding the red-clad troopers as they took positions around the stronghold. Despite their bulky armors, they moved swiftly, clearly being experienced in such tactics. Those with ranged weapons took position to lay down covering fire, while those who carried heavy shields and melee weapons formed a wall behind their lord.

For a moment, Jon simply looked on. Then, he shook his head, snarled, and with a pulse of supernatural strength, leapt over the heads of the crimson-armored soldiers to land on the other side of their line, ignoring Stefan's alarmed shout.

Cain wasn't alone, Jon saw : the two figures which had stood at his side during the earlier battle were both still there, and they immediately turned toward him, hands moving toward their weapons, only to stop as their lord raised a hand.

"Are you sure about this ?" Cain asked, looking down on Jon.

"This is our home," replied the Vampire. "I'm grateful for your help, but I won't let you fight alone."

"Very well," said Ciaphas Cain. "I won't insult your honor by denying you this. Tell me, though : what's your name ?"

"Jon Skellan, lord."

Lizbet landed next to him, soon followed by Stefan and Leyna, all of them looking at Jon with fond exasperation. Cain looked at them all, his thoughts unreadable behind his faceplate, and nodded slightly. In the distance, Jon began to hear the sounds of the Broodspawns approaching again, and his hands tightened around his cub.

"And what of you, ladies ?"

"Lizbet Skellan." "Leyna Fisher," they replied.

"Fine names one and all," said the warlord, before turning toward the source of the growing cacophony that heralded the Nergalites' return. His armor moved with surprising grace, even as it crushed Broodspawn corpses underfoot with every step – they had fought for so long, the entire open space was littered with them.

"All together then," he declared, pointing his weapon forward and igniting its black energy blade. His voice rose up, carrying across the space : "Hear me : not one Broodspawn shall get pass us ! For Cassandron and the Protectorate !"

The battle-cry was picked up by every crimson-clad soldier, and to Jon's own surprise, he found the words emerge out of his own throat, along with those of his kindred and the shooters hiding behind the shelter's barricades.

How easily they'd all fallen in Cain's orbit, he thought, in the brief moment before the Broodspawns erupted from the tunnels and the butchery started anew.


In hindsight, I really shouldn't have been surprised that everything went wrong so quickly.

The cleansing of the underhive had gone extremely well to begin with. Getting from the spire-top to the lower levels had been a slog, but the Covens had made sure to maintain a decent level of transport infrastructure, likely with this exact scenario in mind, so although it had been a bit of a headache to coordinate we had managed it relatively easily.

Once down here, the USA troopers had started butchering the Nergalites with great enthusiasm, and the Cassandron PDF showed a surprising level of competence (I suspected that being used as cat's paw in the Vampires' politics had kept their skills sharp). Vlad himself was frakking terrifying : I didn't know who would win if it came to a fight between him and Malicia or Hektor, but I knew I would fare very poorly outside of the Liberator Armor, and would prefer not to test it inside either.

The only trouble – if you didn't count the thousands of underhivers who had already died by the time we even got there, but there was nothing we could have done to help them – had been the revelation that Vampires, including the Brood, were somehow undetectable by any conventional technology. Thus, while our logistic corps were planning our descent, the borgs had worked feverishly to create an emergency patch for the USA troopers' suits of armor. The update disabled their sensor suites, which wouldn't have been able to detect the Nergalites. That was good, because I must admit, the idea of fighting an invisible enemy had filled me with terror.

I had been nervous about deploying this update, since there hadn't exactly been time for proper testing, but the alternative was too dire to contemplate. Fortunately, the borgs had once again surprised me with their competence, and there hadn't been any major issues with it so far. Equally fortunately, the standard USA training covered how to fight without the benefits of a power armor's enhanced sensory capabilities.

I'd been thinking of how the daemons of Chaos could mess with technology by their mere presence when I'd added that course to the curriculum, and I was trying very hard to convince myself that the Vampires' disruptive effect on all surveillance technology wasn't anything like the Warpspawns' own. I wished I'd been able to ask Areelu and Krystabel for confirmation, but there hadn't been an opportunity to talk with them somewhere that wasn't likely to be bugged or otherwise spied on before I had to leave for the underhive. The ansible connection was still up, but I had no idea how sharp the Vampires' senses were, and asking whether our new allies were actually some rare kind of daemons in disguise wouldn't have been good diplomacy.

Fortunately, a quick word with Jurgen had confirmed that the Vampires' supernatural abilities weren't like those of psykers : while my aide had felt something when Akivasha had annihilated the Nergalites back at the spire, it had been distinctly different from the impression he got when his fellow witches called upon the Empyrean with their own unnatural gifts.

Of course, we couldn't guarantee that the same was true of the Broodspawns – in fact, it was all but certain that they had their own warlocks among them. So I'd ordered Jurgen to avoid using his considerable psychic talents unless absolutely necessary, just in case. Besides, he was more than deadly enough within his suit of armor, his multi-barrelled lascannon cutting down swathes of Nergalites with nearly the same ease it had the Infected of Skitterfall.

I was beginning to see a pattern here, and I didn't like it. Unlike the Infected, the Brood were capable of speech and basic planning, and my paranoia refused to let me think for a moment that it was a coincidence they had returned to the spotlight right in time for my visit to this planet. I had a sneaky feeling that Nurgle was escalating in response to me foiling his puppet's scheme with Zerayah on Adumbria, which meant there had to be more going on than a 'mere' uprising by a rapidly spreading plague of monsters.

I'd gone to battle piloting my own custom suit of armor, which would have been overkill for this type of enemy if I'd believed such a thing existed. Like its predecessors, the third iteration of the Liberator Armor had an extensive sensor suite, but I'd been forced to turn off nearly every one of them and rely instead on my own eyes, looking through the lenses of the suit's helm. Mercifully, the borgs who'd built the thing had made sure those were clear – something I'd have considered part of how over-engineered the whole thing was, but which I was now very grateful for.

Even with its senses hampered by the enemy's weird abilities, the armor was still more than worth the effort of bringing it down to the underhive. Between its toughness and the sorcerous wards against corruption that had been woven into its design, the fangs and claws of the Brood could do little more than scratching the paint, and I had been able to lead from the front without worry, cutting down entire swathes of the Nurgle-corrupted mutants with Liberation's Edge.

Then one of the USA's vox-officers had told me they were picking up a faint signal coming from some distance off our planned path. A few adjustments of the device by one of the borgs who had accompanied us and we'd been able to decipher the distress signal, despite how badly garbled it'd been by the poor quality of the transmitter and interference from trying to get any kind of signal which didn't use the techno-sorcery of the ansibles down here.

I had thought rescuing the civilians would be a nice way to avoid the darkest depths of the underhive. Cain the Liberator had a reputation for valuing the lives of civilians, and there was even a case to be made that since the Broodspawns were attacking them, coming to their aid was tactically as well as morally sound (the latter of which, admittedly, had little place on the galaxy's battlefields).

Of course, I couldn't divert the entire Protectorate complement from the initial battle plan on a whim. Strategic stupidity aside, it would make it look like I was scared – which I was, but I couldn't have everyone else realize it. However, I could take command of a small detachment and bravely lead them to rescue the endangered civvies, while leaving the bulk of the fighting to my subordinates. I had left Hektor leading the rest of the USA troopers, along with General Mahlone (who, unlike the World Eater, had to stay in a command vehicle and properly coordinate things instead of rushing ahead of the soldiers in a whirlwind of messy death).

It had seemed like the perfect way to avoid having to fight in potentially unstable terrain while wearing several tons of power armor. Out of all the ways I could die, being crushed by a hive-quake was one I'd thought I'd left behind when the Schola had taken me.

At first, my plan had appeared to work like a charm, despite the itching of my palms which told me the other shoe was just waiting to drop. Sure, I'd needed to fight once we'd reached our destination, but the Nergalites had presented little danger to me inside my suit of armor and with Jurgen and Malicia at my side, to say nothing of the bunch of bloodthirsty Khornate psychopaths (but I repeat myself) following me.

But no sooner had we crushed the vermin between ourselves and the locals that Harold had piped in over the ansible network, cheerfully informing me that he and the other oracles had detected some kind of infernal sorcery at play here, and that the hivers were probably the target of some grand sacrifice which would rupture reality and allow the putrid legions of Nurgle to enter the Materium. From the way he'd phrased things, I could tell he had somehow deluded himself into thinking I'd known about it from the start, or at least strongly suspected it.

I hadn't said anything to dissuade him of that belief, though I hadn't confirmed it either. In my worryingly growing experience managing the expectations of insane Chaos cultists, letting them come to their own conclusions about myself was much safer than outright lying to their faces, if only because most of them had spent years lying to their superiors and hiding the fact they'd sold their souls to the Ruinous Powers.

In any case, I was stuck here now, with only my aide, my bloodward, a company of USA troopers and four Vampires who looked more like underhive gangers than the dark aristocracy I'd encountered in the spires. At least unlike Akivasha, none of them were likely to be able to tear me open with their mind, else they probably wouldn't be down here in the first place.

What I hadn't told Stefan and the other Vampires was that, according to Harold, the Nergalites had deliberately herded survivors to them, so that they could kill them all at once. The 'stronghold' was more or less directly above where the magi had located the lair of the Brood in Hive Primus (though there were several hundred meters' worth of metal in the way), which apparently would have helped with whatever it was the mad mutants intended to do.

Being trapped in the underhive with a daemonic incursion of Nurgle would be very bad for my chances of survival, even inside the Liberator's Armor. So I had no other choice but to stand my ground, lead the defense, and make damn sure I lived to inconvenience the Plague God another day

The soldiers went into position, showing that all that time and resources spent building elaborate training scenarios hadn't been in vain (which I felt ambiguous about, but right now it meant they were better prepared to save my life if I needed it). I gave another short, rote inspiring speech, once again using the training I'd received at the Schola for a cause that would've horrified my old instructors (absently, I wondered how they were doing, what with having apparently trained a traitor to the Throne, but that train of thought didn't lead anywhere good so I swiftly abandoned it).

Then it was time to fight once more. There was a brutal simplicity to the fight, in truth. The Broodspawns were trying to get past us, to slaughter the civilians cowering inside the boarded-up building so that they could feed the despair and horror of their final moments to the Warp, and we were fighting to stop them. Inside the Liberator Armor, I'd no choice but to fight in the vanguard, but it continued to do its work admirably well, although it would need a new coat of paint once this mess was over.

For the next four hours, the USA troops and our new Vampire allies held the line against the Brood. All the while, I kept receiving reports from the rest of the purging forces informing me that, thanks to the distraction we were providing, things were going very well everywhere else. They were in awe of my strategic genius, because of course they were.

At least I could vent my frustration on the Broodspawns instead of screaming incoherently over the vox. Eventually, the drudgery of the battle dragged me into a weird, semi-meditative state, where I kept slaughtering the Broodspawns by the score, regular small injections of Panacea and stimms keeping me from feeling fatigue as I directed the movement of the Liberator Armor. This wasn't the mindless rage Hektor had described so many followers of Khorne fell into, thank the Throne, but rather something I suspected had happened to countless human soldiers in our species' long and bloody history.

And then, suddenly, it was over. No more Nergalites emerged from the passages to throw themselves at our line.

Despite our overwhelming advantage in equipment, we had still taken losses. USA troopers had been dragged down by clutches of Broodspawns, who had used their supernatural strength to rip open their armor and do horrible things to the fleshy humans inside. None of the fallen were in a state to get an open-casket funeral, even if their bodies hadn't been going to be burned on the spot to prevent contagion as a matter of procedure.

Out of the one hundred troopers I'd brought with me, nearly a quarter were dead, and that number again were wounded, though the Panacea would take care of that promptly now the fight was over. The four Vampires were all alive, though definitely the worse for wear, with the one who'd nearly given me a heart attack when he'd jumped over the soldiers to land next to me having lost an eye and half of his face. Jurgen and Malicia were fine, the former's armor having absorbed what few blows the Broodspawns had managed to land, and if Malicia had even taken a hit or felt any exhaustion whatsoever, I couldn't see it.

I raised Liberation's Edge up, careful not to accidentally cut into the ceiling and cause debris to fall on me, which wouldn't have done my image any good. A cheer rose up from the survivors, swiftly picked up by the local defenders on the wall. Then the clean-up started, with the troopers piling up corpses for the pyres as the medics ran checks on their squads. I told them to go check on the civvies once they were done : we'd brought more than enough Panacea with us, and it was a good opportunity to foster some goodwill. You never knew when someone would know something useful they would feel more inclined to share once you'd done them a good turn, after all.

As the tainted gore of thousands of Broodspawns cooled on the floor, my armor's internal systems chimed in to inform me that I was being hailed over the vox – and it was a powerful signal, to work so deep in the hive. I checked the caller's id, and found that it was marked with Vlad Volkihar's personal sigil – or, rather, that of the man who spoke for him when using devices which didn't register the existence of Vampires.

It was hard to believe that the Covens could run a planet without such basic conveniences as being able to use a vox, but I guessed it ensured they would always need human servants. I blink-clicked the link open, and was greeted by someone speaking with in a tone I'd have expected from a butler at a fancy banquet rather than someone in the middle of a purging operation.

Predictably, I didn't like what he had to say.


Vlad Volkihar laughed in exaltation as he cut through the hordes of the enemy, his power blade (acquired from off-world through a series of intermediaries at an obscene cost, but well worth the price) slicing plagued flesh and rotten bone with equal ease. Behind him came the elite of Cassandron PDF, carrying shock mauls and riot shields, guarding the ranks of soldiers equipped with standard-issue lasguns who followed in their wake and fired above their heads.

Even as he laughed, though, part of his focus was spent keeping himself from succumbing to the beast that dwelled within the heart of every Vampire. It would give him strength, true, but it would also rob him of his intellect, and he needed it to wield his weapons rather than rip the Nergalites to shreds with his bare hands, let alone lead the armed forces under his command.

Besides, losing control to the monster within was among the greatest faux pas of the Covens' ruling elite, as it implied that the Vampire's will was weak. And with what had happened to Mannfred, Vlad couldn't afford to look weak to the rest of the Coven if he wanted to have any hope of keeping his rank of Regent once this was all over.

Mannfred. Vlad still couldn't believe his Progeny would fall so low, even though the evidence his servants had discovered in the spire after the attack was undeniable. He had always known Mannfred was ambitious : it was part of the reason why he had Turned him in the first place. Ambition was a valued quality among Cassandron's human nobility, a virtue to cultivate to prevent them from becoming too reliant on their immortal masters and give up on exercising power for themselves.

Vlad had thought that, as a Volkihar, Mannfred would channel that passion and ambition to pull the Coven to ever greater heights. But instead, Mannfred had fallen prey to the same trap so many Vampires did : he had become too self-centered, thinking only of increasing what was his by taking from others, rather than by contributing to the expansion of the whole.

Still, Vlad had held onto hope that his Progeny would grow out of it in time. Now, however, that would never happen. Mannfred had become a parasite instead of a symbiote, a net drain on the Coven. And while that was failure enough, it paled into insignificance compared to his alliance with the Brood. Even trying to kill Vlad would have been more acceptable than this.

With all Vampires being immortal, there were limited opportunities for advancement, and while killing one's superior to take their place was frowned upon for obvious reasons, it was still more or less regarded as a fact of life – so long as the would-be usurper was subtle about it, and, more importantly, didn't endanger the entire Coven in doing so. Something which Mannfred's unholy alliance with the Brood most definitely had done.

There could be no forgiveness for what Mannfred's actions. He would die for this, and Vlad would be the one to deliver the death blow. Finding him would be difficult : Mannfred had successfully hidden his treachery for who knew how long. But there were very few places beyond the reach of the Volkihar Coven.

Before Vlad could avenge this slight on his honor, however, he had more pressing duties to attend to. The Broodspawn had known they were coming, of course : after their brazen attack, even their corrupted minds couldn't fail to realize that retaliation would come, and they had chosen instead to strike first. Within hours of the Governor's assassination, reports had begun to reach Vlad, relayed from the Vampires who, having failed to earn a better place for themselves in the ceaseless games of power and influence of the Coven, dwelled closer to the bottom of Hive Primus than its top.

Hundreds of Broodspawns had emerged from their hiding places and immediately gone on a frenzy of feeding and infection. Unlike the true Gift of the untainted Covens, the Brood could spread their curse with incredible speed, and even the strongest-willed infected humans could only resist the madness that had devoured the Ruthven Coven for a few moments before succumbing to it.

Turning someone, making Progeny from mortality's clay, was a lengthy and delicate process, with the Maker staying by their chosen's side and helping them through the changes, all while regularly feeding them both their own blood and that of other humans. Oh, it was possible to make it quick, to simply pour blood into the mouth of someone as they lay dying and let the ancient power of the precious crimson fluid work on its own. But that ran the chance of the Progeny rising as a feral beast, fit only to be quickly dispatched. Some lowly Vampires might still resort to it, but not the aristocracy which ruled the Covens.

The dark gifts of Nergal, however, completely changed these rules. As more and more underhivers were assimilated by the Brood, hundreds quickly became thousands. If they weren't stopped, these thousands would become tens of thousands, which would become millions – and then Hive Primus would fall, just like Hive Septimus had fallen thousands of years ago.

Vlad remembered it well : the sight of the corrupted hive-city was burned into his memory deeply enough that not even the fog of passing centuries could cause it to fade. He had been human, back then : an officer of the Cassandron PDF, part of the forces gathered for the Purge of Septimus. It had been his actions during that time which had marked him as worthy of the Gift, bestowed by none other than Lady Akivasha herself, one of the Coven's most revered members.

It had been a nightmare, where the atrocities of the Brood had damaged the barrier between the Materium and the Warp to the point it had been on the verge of breaking. If not for the Ancients' defeat of the Thrice-Damned, all of Cassandron would have been transformed into a playground for daemons, with the Brood of Nergal left to rule the ashes.

Things would not degenerate to such extremes this time, though. Although this particular outbreak was of a size not seen since the Purge, the Covens were still well-used to dealing with such situations, and the Nergalites had never been able to recover from the losses they had suffered during the Purge of Septimus, when their corrupted elders had been slaughtered to the last. Even without Cain's help, they would have eventually cut out this infection.

That wasn't to say Vlad didn't appreciate the Protectorate's assistance. Well-trained as the Cassandron PDF might be, they were still restricted by the quality of equipment the planet could produce. That was fit for Militarum service (and indeed, the system had raised numerous Regiments for the Imperial Guard, tithed from units that had been carefully kept ignorant of the Covens' existence), but it was clear that the USA's own wargear was on a different level.

Vlad would have to make inquiries about acquiring such gear for the PDF at some point. Not that their equipment was the only reason for the Protectorate's troopers' efficiency, far from it. After the strategy meeting in the spire, Vlad had asked one of Cain's aides, as politely as he could, whether the man had making a jest when he'd mentioned the USA trained its members inside a Space Hulk. While the question hadn't been taken as an insult, thankfully, the uniformed woman had barked a brief laugh and assured him that no, the Liberator hadn't been joking.

Now that the Imperium had abandoned Torredon, Cassandron must look to its own defense, and the coalition which had gathered under the Liberator looked to be their best bet. Making alliances with the followers of Chaos was unprecedented : over the millennia, preserving the secrecy of the Covens' existence from the Imperium had been their absolute priority, and the disciples of the Dark Gods weren't renowned for their subtlety, at least in the long-term (and the leaders of the Covens, by definition, always looked to the long term).

But Lady Akivasha had ordered it be so, and the Volkihar Coven had followed the lead of its awakened Ancient. Given that it was Cain's blood which had awakened her, and that even without the Broodspawn uprising, the food the Protectorate brought was the miracle the Covens had been hoping for since the collapse of the trade routes even as they made preparations for famine, it only made sense.

There was also the fact that the Protectorate had a fleet in orbit which the Cassandron SDF couldn't possibly stand up against, but nobody had been so gauche as to bring that up in polite conversation.

Not that there was any real danger of Cain opening fire on the planet. For all his martial prowess and dedication to Chaos, it was clear that the Liberator held a much non-Imperial view on civilian casualties. He'd gone so far as to split off the main thrust of the purge to go defend a bunch of survivors, with nothing but a company of troopers with him. The fact he'd given command of the rest to sir Hektor, one of the two Astartes who had accompanied the Protectorate envoys to the planet, without hesitation, said something about the trust Cain held for his subordinates – Vlad wasn't sure what exactly, but he'd find out in time.

"My lord," said Vlad's aide, the latest in a long line of mortals who'd held the title, after approaching him during a lull in the fighting. "We've been contacted by sir Hektor. He told us the Protectorate forces have reached the Nergalite lair, but there's a problem. He's asking us to join them as soon as possible."

"So we lost the race, then," mused the Volkihar Regent. The PDF and Protectorate forces had split up on their way to the depths, to cleanse more ground and avoid being too disadvantaged by the terrain. "Very well, let us see what the issue is."

Moments later, Vlad was standing at Hektor's side at the entrance of a large cavern which had formed amidst the rusted metal and crumbling ferrocrete of the underhive. The way in was blocked by a green shimmering barrier, the sight of which made the Vampire nauseous despite not having eaten anything solid in millennia.

Without a word, Hektor picked up a rock and hurled it at the obstacle. The stone stopped mid-air as it hit the barrier, before crumbling apart as sickly roots burst from inside it.

"Sorcery," spat the Astartes. "I haven't checked what happens when someone tries to go through, but I can guess. And the scouts I've sent to try to find another way report the same thing in every passage. We can't go any further until it's brought down."

"Great," sighed Vlad, hiding his worry. This was something new : he hadn't seen anything like that in Septimus. Maybe the Ancients had when they'd gone deep into the Thrice-Damned's palace, but that wasn't exactly reassuring either. "Do you know how to do that ?"

"No," replied the former World Eater. "But I know who can. We need to call the Warmaster. Jurgen, his aide, should be able to break it."

"And if he cannot ?" asked Vlad.

"Then we're going to need to call the magi from the fleet and have them join us here," shrugged Hektor. "But that will take a lot of time, so …"

"You're right. I'll call Cain right away."

If nothing else, he reflected as his own aide tried to raise Cain on the vox, the Liberator would appreciate the opportunity to join them for the final push into the lair of the Brood.


AN : Hello everyone, I'm back !

This chapter really fought me for some reason, not sure why (I blame the heat, it's been brutal). Anyway, it's done now.

Jon Skellan and his family are characters from the Von Carstein trilogy, and if you have read it, you will know that their fate in this story is much, MUCH kinder than what it was in the Old World. Yes, even though I made them into vampires themselves (keeping in mind that the Cassandron Vampires are very different from the Warhammer Fantasy Vampire Counts, if only by virtue of not having the "our mere presence in a region causes life to rots due to the unnatural, Nagash-designed magic which keeps up moving, and being transformed turns nine out of ten normal people into monsters" thing). Go read the books if you don't believe me.

I came up with Broodspawn as another name for the Nergalites and decided it flowed better, so I introduced it in this chapter. In-story, the reason why it wasn't used before is because the Vampires with whom the Cainites interacted were all high-class Vampires, who use the appropriate language.

(Don't think about it too hard.)

As always, I hope you enjoyed reading this, and I look forward to your thoughts and comments. Next chapter, Cain and his companions face off against the source of the corruption in Hive Primus, and learn a horrific truth. Stay tuned !

Zahariel out.