After the call of the Regent's aide informed us of the situation, we left the refugee stronghold and its local defenders behind. The four Vampires actually offered to join us, and after a moment's consideration, I agreed, but made a show of worrying for the civilians so that only one of them – Jon Skellan, the one who'd first volunteered to keep fighting – would come with us.

For all their admittedly impressive strength, the four Vampires could do little that a hundred USA troopers couldn't when it came to fighting the Brood, but having a local with me could always be useful. On balance, I'd decided that the boost to my reputation was worth the sacrifice of three additional bodies I could put between me and the enemy.

We made our way deeper into the underhive, Skellan soon proving I'd been right to bring him along by guiding us through the labyrinth of collapsed corridors and unstable passages. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that my own tunnel rat's sense of direction was as sharp as ever despite the years that had passed since I'd been on a proper hive-world, and I was able to anticipate many of the turns our Vampire guide led us through.

The deeper we went, though, the more nervous I got. Not just because we were approaching the lair of a bunch of crazy Nurgle-corrupted mutants who apparently had a witch powerful enough to erect a sorcerous barrier capable of stopping the advance of an entire army, although that certainly was part of it. More immediately worrying, however, was the fact that the lower levels of the underhive were in an even worse state that the ones we'd traversed so far.

Eventually, I was forced to come to terms with the inevitable : I couldn't take the Liberator Armor any further, not without risking causing a collapse which would see us all buried under enough rusted metal and dirt that even Jurgen would strain to dig himself out with his psychic powers, nevermind the rest of us. The armor's servos were strong, yes, but I was all too aware of just how many megatons of potential rubble hung above our heads. Also, the tunnels were becoming smaller and smaller, and while I could have just dug my way down, the previous point made that an unacceptably risky course of action.

Of course, I couldn't help thinking that leaving the borgs' masterwork unattended in the underhive was a poor idea : even with most of the locals having fled or been eaten, I was cynically certain we'd be lucky to find a single bolt of it left by the time we made our way back. There was nothing for it, though, and truth be told, if some enterprising scavvies were resourceful enough to break the massive piece of wargear apart and carry it away, they deserved to have it. Besides, I had a few more stored aboard the Fist of the Liberator, precisely due to what had happened the previous two times I'd gone into battle in one.

We took Liberation's Edge with us, of course. Jurgen picked up the weapon's deactivated form and started carrying it without me even needing to ask, holding it with all the care of an Ecclesiarch entrusted with a relic of the God-Emperor. Unlike the rest of the armor, it was irreplaceable, since the borgs still hadn't cracked the scavenged Drukhari technology it was made of. It could technically be wielded by someone in a standard suit of power armor, but only in the same way an Ogryn could technically use a tree trunk as a club : it would hurt whatever it smashed, yes, but you would have Horus' own time trying to hit anything in particular.

That left me in my own suit of custom-made, human-sized power armor. While it had a few extra bells and whistles I hadn't asked for (but hadn't refused either), it was basically the same as every trooper's when it came to how much damage it could take before breaking. I was armed with my trusty chainsword, which had gone through so many repairs over the years due to my regular practice with the USA, I doubted there was much left of the original weapon, and that damned bolt pistol I'd taken from Caesariovi Giorba, in what might as well have been another life.

I told myself there was no reason to panic. I had survived for years in a underhive before, and I didn't have the advantage of such advanced gear or a bunch of hardened killers dedicated to protecting my life. Yes, the Nergalites' use of sorcery was concerning, but the Infected had done the same on Adumbria, and I'd managed to survive there too.

Still, all my attempts at rationalization couldn't stop the tingling of my palms, which I'd learned long ago was one of the ways my subconscious tried to warn me of imminent peril – although really, in this particular case, I had already figured it out for myself.

It took us around an hour to link up with the rest of the forces. I spent every minute waiting for an ambush that never came, but made sure no trace of it could be heard in my voice as I greeted Regent Volkihar, General Mahlone, and Hektor, who stood around a hololithic projector showing a patchwork map of the nearby tunnels.

"Lord Liberator," Mahlone (identifiable only thanks to the rank markings on his own armor, as he was keeping his helmet on, like every other trooper) answered me. This was his first time being deployed on the frontline of a military operation since the Uprising, and part of me had worried his Khornate nature would rise to the fore at the opportunity. But it seemed that particular worry had been for nothing : the General appeared to still be as professional as ever.

"Follow me," he continued. "We set up camp out of sight of it, because … well, you'll see."

He led me past the impromptu camp, around a bend in the path, and gestured at the obstacle which had stopped their advance dead in its tracks. "This is it."

The sorcerous barrier filled the tunnel completely, and the map showed that, just like Hektor had told me over the vox-net, it formed a sphere surrounding a spot exactly under the location of Skellan's stronghold. It shone with a sickly green light, and as I looked at it, leering faces began to appear, staring back at me with enough malice to extinguish the very stars –

I tore my eyes away, blinked, and the barrier was back to looking like a strangely colored energy field. I really wanted to believe that had only been my imagination, but I knew better. Since leaving the Schola, I had learned more about the Warp than I'd ever wanted to. The fact that I'd been affected like this despite my armor's wards was far from reassuring.

"Yes, I see why you didn't want to wait for us next to it," I said out loud. "It is most unpleasant. Jurgen, could you –"

Before I could finish telling my aide to do something about it (how exactly, I had no clue, but in my experience asking Jurgen to get something done and letting him figure out how was the best way to get results), the barrier faded away, completely vanishing in a few seconds, with a sound like a relieved sigh.

"Jurgen ?" I asked weakly. Maybe, just maybe …

"That wasn't me, sir," my aide replied, sounding as concerned as I felt as he mercilessly crushed the last of my hopes that his powers had somehow grown by leaps and bounds since the last time I'd seen him use them. "Didn't have time to do anything, as a matter of fact."

"That," I said in the silence that followed this announcement, broken only by the slow dripping of unidentified liquids and the groaning of the underhive, "was far too easy."

"You are correct," replied Vlad, frowning. "A trap, then."

Well, let it never be said that the Volkihar Regent wasn't capable of basic pattern recognition, and a more competent strategist than such Imperial luminaries as Chenkov and Karamazov. That was something to be thankful for, I supposed, trying very hard to see a silver lining and not to think about how the mutant noble helping keep a millennia-long conspiracy hidden from the eyes of the Imperium was more competent than a Lord Inquisitor and Imperial Commander.

"That is almost certainly the case, yes," I agreed. "And given that the path opened only after we arrived …"

"… it must be aimed at you," finished the Vampire noble, who didn't sound all too pleased that the ancient enemy of his people apparently saw me as a greater priority than him. That made two of us.

I briefly considered turning back and returning to the spire, leaving this mess to Vlad and the rest. If the enemy wanted me here, then logic dictated that I shouldn't oblige them. It only made tactical sense.

Unfortunately, while running away with my tail between my legs would get me out of danger in the short-term, it would damage my image in the eyes of the USA. And there was also the fact that, if I left, I'd have to take Jurgen and Malicia with me, and either of them could prove to be the decisive factor in the incoming struggle. If the task force failed because I'd removed them from it, then I wouldn't be any safer after all – I would just have lost my chance to stop whatever the Brood was up to in time.

"Well, if our friends have gone through the trouble of setting up such an obvious invitation, it would be impolite to refuse," I said as nonchalantly as I could fake.

"Sir," Mahlone cut in, "with all due respect, I don't think you should lead the way in there. There's no way of knowing what foul sorceries the Nergalites have set up."

I made a show of looking dejected, rather than jumping in joy like I actually wanted to. I'd been fully resigned to leading the charge into unknown peril, but for once, the universe had thrown me an opportunity to let someone else do it without losing face.

"You're right, General. The honor of leading the advance will go to someone else," I said, with as much reluctance as I could fake. "Hektor, if you would ?"

The World Eater bent over, then stood up and threw a piece of rubble through the space where the barrier had been. The rock flew with a speed any urchin would have envied, and smashed against the opposite wall, leaving a dent.

"Can't hurt to be careful," said Hektor in his unnaturally deep voice. "Someone might have been feeling clever and kept the barrier's effect in place, even if we couldn't see it anymore."

I nodded judiciously, as if I had thought of it as well. Hektor went ahead of the rest of the task force : while his power armor wasn't much tougher than that of the troopers, his gene-forged biology was on another level entirely. Even with the Panacea granting miraculous regenerative capabilities, there were limits : Hektor could survive injuries that would kill a normal human outright long enough for his armor to increase the dosage of the substance continually coursing through his system.

"Blood of the Gods, it stinks in here," he called out after a few moments. "But I don't see any traps or ambush, and I can hear something coming from deeper in. Chanting, I think."

Oh, brilliant. A Nurglite stronghold whose sorcerous protections went down the moment I got near, with its inhabitants chanting. The trap couldn't have been more obvious, but walking away and letting the Broodspawns finish whatever they were doing unbothered would only be worse in the long run.

"All USA units, activate void-protocols and move in," I ordered, before turning to Vlad Volkihar. "Your soldiers cannot follow us in there, I'm afraid. Their equipment won't protect them from that kind of environment."

"That might be so, but I am immune to such poisons. And before you ask," he added with a smile that showed teeth too pointy to be reassuring, "yes, that extends to the vile contagions of the Brood. We have tested it over the centuries : as long as I don't actually drink their blood, I will be safe, and I assure you I've no intention of sullying my tongue like that."

There was little I could say to that, and having another body to put between me and danger was always nice, especially since Vlad had his own reasons for being on the forefront of the advance, so I nodded sombrely and we all went in.

Soon, it became clear that the Brood of Nergal had claimed a long-abandoned, hollowed-out machine as their lair. What purpose it had served in the early days of Cassandron's colonization, I could only guess. Given its age, and the further defilements the Broodspawns had inflicted upon it, I doubted even the borgs could have identified it.

Everywhere I looked, I saw signs of the Lord of Decay's influence. Crude renditions of the three-pustuled rune of Nurgle had been carved into the rusted metal by Broodspawn claws; swarms of bloodflies and other infested vermin had to be cleansed before our advance with flamethrowers; and rotting corpses hung from meat hooks, twitching in a morbid parody of life as their liquefied insides were devoured by Warp-born pathogens.

I didn't need to be a psyker to feel the rage radiating from Jurgen at the spectacle. After the Cleansing of Skitterfall, the hatred of all things related to Nurgle had become deeply engrained within the USA, but even the Khornates' wrathful disgust paled compared to my aide's far more personal enmity toward the servants of the Dark God of Decay.

"Stay calm, Jurgen," I urged him. "Losing control here will only serve our foe."

He nodded stiffly, but didn't respond aloud, which I had to guess was good enough.

Just like what had happened in Skitterfall, the vox stopped working as we went deeper into the Nergalites' lair. Without the Liberator Armor or Mahlone's command tank, we were cut off from the ansible network (I had made sure to inform Harold beforehand to keep him or Krystabel from panicking at my silence and do something stupid, like flood the planet with summoned daemons looking for me).

We were reduced to shouting and hand gestures, but human armies had managed just fine with those for millennia. Once again, the USA's training aboard Emeli's Gift was proving its usefulness, as even after years of work by the borgs, there remained entire sections of the Space Hulk where conventional methods of ranged communication were disabled by the alien nature of the walls.

Soon, I too could hear the noises Hektor was talking about. It was like chanting from many voices, but only if the throat of every singer had been cut and sewn back together by someone with only the most basic understanding of surgery beforehand.

We came out into a large open space, which was nearly filled with hundreds, thousands of Broodspawns – the source of the dreadful singing we'd heard. Surprisingly, despite the fact there was no way for an army of USA troopers to advance stealthily, none of them were looking in our direction : they were all turned toward the other side of the cavern, where a crude altar had been constructed by piling up pieces of broken rockrete and rusted metal. Another Nergalite stood atop the altar.

All at once, the Broodspawns each turned to face one of their kind, and simultaneously plunged their claws into its chest before tearing out their hearts. Black, rotten blood flowed onto the ground from the ripped organs and the holes they had left behind, completely covering it in a repugnant tide.

For a moment, we simply stared in shock. Then the coin dropped, and I understood what had just happened with sickening certainty.

"They're offering themselves up as sacrifices !" I roared. My little detour to the stronghold of Skellan and his folks had prevented the Brood from slaughtering the civilians and harvesting their deaths, so instead, they were using their own members. To what end exactly, I hadn't the faintest idea, but I knew it couldn't be good for me or Cassandron.

"Kill the priest, now !" I shouted, joining action to word and bringing up my bolt pistol.

Without hesitation, the troopers opened fire, and despite the distance, a large portion of the shots were on target. But the space around the witch was distorted, and not a single las-bolt hit.

I cursed silently. There was nothing for it : we'd have to get this done close and personal, despite the obvious danger of such a course of action.

"Charge !" I shouted, joining deed to word, all too aware of the hundreds of eyes watching me. To my relief, Malicia overtook me almost immediately, as did Hektor and Vlad, their inhuman bodies granting them speed far beyond even what was possible inside a suit of Slawkenberg-made power armor. And behind them, bless their insane souls, every single trooper followed, bellowing Khornate war cries and my name as they did so.

Exactly seven seconds after we'd started our charge, however, the gory mess under our feet flickered with a familiar greenish light, and I saw Jurgen flinch in the corner of my eye. Before I could call out a warning, a hand burst out of the ichor.

A humanoid figure with one grotesquely large eye, a single broken horn, and the skin of a corpse that had stayed underwater for months pulled itself out of the pool of gore – though of course, that was merely how my mortal senses interpreted the manifestation of the lesser daemon of Nurgle. It held a sword in its hand that looked so rusted it would fall apart at a stiff breeze, but as it brought it up to strike at me with surprising swiftness and I parried it reflexively with my chainsword, it held fast against the whirring adamantine teeth.

That didn't stop me from chopping the daemon's head off with my return strike, but even as I did so, I noticed many more of its kind rising from the mire.

Plaguebearers. I knew of them from that time a holo supposed to depict the events of Adumbria had become a gateway to the Warp due to some moron using actual footage of the Infected. In the aftermath of that particular clusterfrak, I had asked Krystabel and Jafar for information on that breed of Neverborn, reasoning that since I'd pissed off the Lord of Decay, I might as well know my enemy.

It had predictably led to several nights of difficult sleep, especially since I couldn't use alcohol to drown the terror like I'd done earlier in my inglorious career as a traitor to the Golden Throne. While Plaguebearers were among the lowest servants of Nurgle, they were, supposedly, each the soul of a mortal who had died to Nurgle's Rot, a truly horrific Warp-born pestilence which tainted the soul as well as the flesh.

Of course, since absolutely nothing remained of the mortal within the Plaguebearer, I suspected that the stories were complete grox-shit. I didn't doubt that the victims of Nurgle's Rot were the source of the Plaguebearers, but in the same way a caterpillar infected with the eggs of a parasitic insect was technically the source of the resulting creatures. The deluded followers of Nurgle might believe that their Dark God granted them immortality by helping them ascend to a lesser form of daemonhood, but in truth, they were only food for his legions.

I had shared that theory with Jafar, who had stared at me with a look of mixed horror and awe before rushing out to try to confirm it. Since summoning daemons was still forbidden on Slawkenberg, the opportunities to run proper, 'scientific' (I had no idea what that word meant, but it was important to the borgs and magi alike) experiments were rare, but he'd later come back to tell me that, at the very least, nothing in their existing knowledge outright countered it.

Regardless of their true nature, the Plaguebearers were a dangerous foe. Their Warp-forged blades could cut through power armor in blatant mockery of the laws of physics, and the numerous infections of the weapons could strain even the Panacea's healing properties. Soldiers in crimson fell and didn't rise, though few of them died outright : the remainder were left to twitch on the ground in agony, their bodies turned into a battleground between the Nurglite sicknesses and the Panacea their gear had automatically injected them with.

"Form up on the Liberator !" shouted Mahlone. As a member of the Liberation Council, the General's duties left him little time to train, but while he couldn't go through the same insane training program as the USA's common troopers, power armor was a great equalizer, and he could still direct the men and women around him with his voice when the vox didn't work. "The daemons are converging on him !"

I had hoped it was my paranoia talking, but of course it wasn't. I was the one who had thwarted the Plague God's schemes on Adumbria, after all; the one who had found the Panacea aboard Emeli's Gift, and the one who had shared it with the Imperium.

Still, facing the undeniable evidence that one of the Dark Gods had it out for me wasn't a pleasant feeling.

My own armor had been enhanced with sorcerous wards crafted by Krystabel and Jafar themselves, in one of the rare instances of the two of them working directly together. In theory, these protections could turn around the Plaguebearers' blades as if they were mundane weapons, but I would much rather avoid testing it. So cowering behind a hundred armored troopers sounded very appealing at the moment.

However, my reputation, the only thing which kept the heretics I was surrounded by in check, demanded that I respond to Mahlone's orders. I cut down another Plaguebearer with my chainsword and kicked its lower half away, before pointing the weapon, dripping with infernal ichor, toward the altar :

"Keep moving !" I roared. "Take down the source of the summoning !"

We pushed through the mass of daemons, but for every one that fell, two more rose up to take its place. Even inside my unpunctured armor, I could smell the foul stench of the creatures, its supernatural nature ignoring the fact I was breathing recycled air only. With a blink-click, I activated the Panacea injector, reasoning there was no such thing as being too cautious in this situation. Fresh strength filled my tiring limbs, and my growing nausea faded away.

I kept on fighting, allies at my side, but though we were still making progress, it was agonizingly slow, a grinding battle of attrition which favored our enemy. Malicia could have crossed the remaining distance thanks to her superior agility, but her duties as my bloodward demanded she stay near me : it would do her no good if she killed the Broodspawn witch, only for me to be slain in the mean time. As for Jurgen, he was already using his powers liberally, striking at the infernal host with bolts of Warp-energy and telekinetic force that obliterated handfuls of the monsters at a time. But I knew that, in surroundings such as these, this was straining him, and the closer we got to the witch the worse it would get, as the God of Decay's influence got stronger and stronger.

Hektor, however, was unbound by any such restrictions, and so were Vlad Volkihar and Jon Skellan. The World Eater bellowed oaths to the Blood God as he cut down swathes of Plaguebearers with his great chainaxe, and the two Vampires followed one step behind him. The Regent fought with a deadly elegance that seemed to be a mix of Malicia's fluidity and Hektor's raw power, while Skellan fought with the same kind of ruggedness I'd witnessed in the most vicious and tenacious underhive gangers in my youth.

Together, they carved a bloody path through the Plaguebearers, until Hektor climbed atop the altar where the still-chanting witch stood and, with a single blow, bisected it vertically.

For a single heartbeat, I dared to hope that this was over. Then Jurgen started shouting again :

"Something is –"

Whatever warning my aide wanted to give, he didn't have time to finish speaking it. The dead witch, its two halves still standing up by some grotesque miracle, detonated with enough strength to send Hektor, Vlad and Jon flying, and force every trooper in the room to the ground. Thankfully, the Plaguebearers were also affected, or we would surely have suffered grievous casualties.

By the time I returned to my feet, unsurprised to find Malicia already standing guard over me, the daemons of Nurgle were gone, vanished as if they had never been here. A quick look told me that Hektor was still alive, albeit embedded in a wall on the other side of the room, which he was trying to pull himself free of with only limited success.

I was about to order some troopers to go assist him when I saw something which chilled me to my core.

Smoke was rising from where the Nergalite witch had stood – except it wasn't smoke, I realized, but a cloud of buzzing flies. Before my eyes, the Warp-spawned insects coalesced to form a humanoid figure over five meters high. The resolution, for lack of a better word, was extremely poor : it was like looking at a low-quality, glitchy hololithic. Yet the vision was still terrifying enough as it was. I could catch glimpses of bony spikes piercing through skin, a pair of curved horns, and eyes that burned with the same fell light as the barrier which had protected this place.

It looked like no daemon of Nurgle which I was aware of. The figure's appearance must have been familiar to Vlad, however, for I heard the Volkihar Regent gasp from where he had landed :

"No," I heard Vlad say, shock and horror clear in his voice. "It can't be."

"But it is, little Vlad," the sorcerous projection purred, speaking through the swarm's buzzing. "Surely you recognize me ? It has been many years, and you were still untainted by Cassandron's curse, but it was a most memorable night, was it not ?"

"Talk to me, Regent," I snapped in my best commanding voice, hoping to drag the Vampire out of his shock. "Who, and what, is that ?"

"It is the Thrice-Damned," replied Vlad, still sounding out of sorts. Then he snarled, using anger to overcome his surprise (or at least making a good show of it) : "You are dead, abomination. Dead and gone these last four thousand years !"

"I was," easily admitted the specter. "But Lord Nergal gave me a second chance, once I had done my penance in His bountiful garden."

"If you truly believe that, then you are even more of a fool than you look," I cut in.

Drawing the creature's attention to myself was the last thing I wanted to do, but I was confident it wasn't really present in the room with us (although that might have been the case had we not stopped the Broodspawns' ritual in time).

"Nurgle – sorry, Nergal – is merely using you as a tool to further his ends, nothing more," I continued, playing into the part of the Lord of Decay's enemy which I had unwillingly stumbled into years ago, all too aware of the dozens of USA troopers staring at their Liberator in awe.

"And hello to you too, Ciaphas," the repugnant apparition chuckled, and I shivered when I heard it speak my name. "Your blasphemy is expected. Gurug'ath sends his regards, and his fervent wish that everything you have built and everything you love will crumble before your eyes, before they too rot and fall out of their sockets."

"I see that in addition to his numerous character flaws, he is a sore loser as well," I replied, forcing my tone to remain light. "I can't say I'm surprised about it, or that the two of you are acquainted. You certainly are as ugly as he was before I cut him apart and sent him to the Warp."

"Acquainted ? We are kin, he and I, in the eyes of our lord," the Thrice-Damned boasted. "I met him in the Garden, when he delivered your Slaaneshi friend's message."

It was then that the realization hit me like a power hammer. In hindsight, I really should have got it the moment Vlad identified the creature as the Thrice-Damned. This wasn't some sorcerer playing with forces he didn't understand, nor a minor daemon manipulating the Brood to its advantage. Throne, it wasn't even a Greater Daemon like the one responsible for the Infection of Adumbria.

This was a Daemon Prince, a being which had once been mortal (or as mortal as the Vampires were), before being elevated to daemonhood by his patron deity. Like Emeli, whom the Thrice-Damned apparently knew – although I couldn't say I was surprised she'd been making waves in the Immaterium : she was just that kind of woman.

This was bad; really, really bad. I wasn't clear exactly how the infernal hierarchy worked between Daemon Princes and Greater Daemons, but I knew that Emeli, at least, was powerful in the court of the Dark Prince, unless she'd managed to deceive both the Handmaidens and Tzeentchian magi regarding her power (but, since she'd pulled a frakking Space Hulk out of the Warp, I was inclined to believe she'd been truthful). If the Thrice-Damned had ascended to the same level of power, but aligned with Nurgle, then this didn't bode well for Cassandron, and more pressingly, me, since I was the poor frakker who had spread the Panacea as far as I could.

Then I remembered my words to Gurug'ath, spoken in the throes of a frenzied rage which had somehow let me defeat the Greater Daemon responsible for the Infection of Adumbria, and my stomach dropped even further. In my brief fit of insanity, I had threatened Nurgle, the Dark God of Decay, himself. The fact that I hadn't immediately keeled over and managed to stay alive since then was a miracle I had tried very hard not to dwell on over the years, but now I was face-to-face with a Daemon Prince of Nurgle.

But no. This wasn't a Daemon Prince in front of me, I told myself, merely a projection, like what Emeli sometimes did to speak with me without manifesting on Slawkenberg in all her dark glory. If I could deal with Emeli, then I could deal with this.

"Is that so ? I must say, I'm curious," I said, half playing for time so that everyone who'd been thrown off their feet could get back up, half fishing for information. "If the story we were told are true, you were a Vampire when you turned to the Lord of Decay. What I don't understand is why. You were already immortal and powerful. Was it simply not enough ?"

Again, the monster gave a chuckle.

"Do you know, little heretic, you are the first one to actually ask me this ? Back during my first rise, the Ancients merely came in weapons bared."

"Hardly surprising, given you were trying to turn their people into monsters and kill them all," I pointed out. "In my experience, you don't ask questions to a plague : you burn it out."

"True, but as you well know, it doesn't always work. As for your question, the answer is simple : Vampires are abominations." The Thrice-Damned's eyes flared with mad zeal as he spoke, and the fact he was hovering atop an altar gave the whole scene the appearance of a crazed prophet addressing a crowd of unbelievers. "I saw how our very undying existence is an affront to the natural order, and wept for us all. But Lord Nergal forgave me, despite my blasphemous nature. He welcomed me and all of the Ruthven Coven into His embrace. The Covens tried to erase me from history, to strip me of my very name, but they failed to realize that they only made me stronger by cutting off the last remaining ties to my former, pathetic self."

The projection raised his arms in a morbid parody of a Ecclesiarch giving a benediction :

"I am Hash'ak'gik, and all Cassandron shall be remade as I have been remade, in Great Nergal's embrace."

"Not if we have anything to say about it. And as you can see," I gestured to the charnel house surrounding us, "we've already thwarted your schemes here."

"Here, yes. But elsewhere ?"

Oh, I didn't like the implications of that. Despite the helmet and armor I wore, he must have felt it, for he chuckled again.

"Come find me if you dare, Ciaphas," he taunted. "It will end where it all began, and when it is over, my lord will have His due, and you will pay for your childish defiance of the inevitable."

'Inevitable'. That word again. I was getting really tired of it. What was it with every frakking spawn of Nurgle that crossed my path using it to threaten me ? Was it due to their fundamental belief that all things ended (which made sense enough to me) and it was thus better to embrace entropy, rot and decay, and spend a marginally longer existence in horrid agony so that when death finally came, it was a release (which most definitely didn't) ?

Or was it something else, something related to the monster that haunted my nightmares from time to time, and stared back at me with my own eyes ?

It didn't matter. There was only one acceptable response, and for once, it was one I and the Liberator agreed on.

"Nothing is inevitable," I snarled. "Jurgen, disperse this specter. We've wasted enough time here."

"Right you are, sir," replied my faithful aide as he stepped forward. Hash'ak'gik's gaze turned toward him, filled with open contempt, but before he could say anything, Jurgen slapped his hands together in front of him with a thunderclap.

There was a pulse of energy and the smell of ozone, and the flies which had made up the Thrice-Damned's projection fell to the ground, dead, even as the unholy pressure which had been weighing us all down since entering this place slowly began to dissipate. It would take a lot more than Jurgen's little trick to cleanse the corruption here, I knew : I was under no illusion that, for all his power, the main reason Jurgen had succeeded in ending the Daemon Prince's transmission was that he'd already said everything he wanted to say.

"It's time for us to leave," I told everyone. "We must re-establish contact with the rest of our forces and figure out what this all means."

Because off course, of course it couldn't be as simple as a traitor in the Volkihar ranks taking advantage of the situation and manipulating the Broodspawns in a bid for power, before being predictably double-crossed by the Nergalites and almost unleashing an apocalypse on the very Hive-city he presumably wanted to rule over.

If I somehow ended up facing this Mannfred character before this was over, I was going to give him a piece of my mind, and have Malicia give him as many lethal injuries as it took to put a permanent end to his stupidity.


Victory was theirs, though the revelation of the Thrice-Damned's return had cast a pall over it. As they left the Brood's lair, consigning it to fire, Vlad Volkihar mused on what had happened this day, and what it would mean both for Cassandron in general, and the Covens' alliance with the Cainite Protectorate in particular.

In all his centuries of life, Vlad had never seen an Eldar fight, though he had heard their kind had raided the Sanguia system for generations. He had heard that even their lowliest warriors were supposedly the equal of a score of human soldiers. And while he had disregarded the tales as obvious exaggeration at the time, having seen the lady Malicia fight, he was forced to reconsider.

Cain's bloodward was a dancing terror, cutting down the foe in droves as she dodged or turned aside every attack that came her way, her cruel laughter echoing down the tunnels of the underhive as she fought with an elegance that wouldn't have looked out of place in the ballrooms of the highest spires. Should it come a battle between the two of them, Vlad was confident he could win, but only if he had time to call upon the fullness of his Gifts to push himself to her level.

Hektor had been equally impressive, but then Vlad had expected nothing less from a Space Marine, even one who had turned against the Emperor. The Covens' contacts in the Imperium kept them informed of the various potential threats to their existence, and Vlad's office contained a sizeable dossier on the capabilities and tactics of the Astartes Chapters operating in the Damocles Gulf – just in case they one day needed to fight them. Hektor was, perhaps, a tad more aggressive in his way of fighting, but he still fell within the bounds of Vlad's expectations.

Cain's aide, the psyker Jurgen, was more difficult to analyse. Vlad wasn't unfamiliar with psykers, of course : Cassandron paid its tithe to the Black Ships like any other Imperial world (though the Regent had a feeling things were going to change in the future). And, just like any other Imperial world, there were those psychically gifted who sought to avoid being shipped off-world. Inevitably, such individuals came to the attention of the Covens, who had a strict policy of dealing with them swiftly as part of their general goal of keeping the Imperium from investigating the planet.

During his rise to the rank of Regent, Vlad had fought such wild psykers several times, their meagre powers proving no match for the strength of the Blood. But it was clear that Jurgen was something else entirely, if the way he'd dealt with the Thrice-Damned's sorcerous projection was any indicator.

And then, of course, there was Cain himself. By all rights, the Liberator should have been the least of his party's fighters, by virtue of being, as far as Vlad's eyes could tell, an unaugmented human. But Cain had fought like a man possessed, showing physical abilities far beyond those Vlad had seen from the USA troopers, who used more or less the same armor as their leader. Every blow of his chainsword had been perfectly aimed, and every shot of his bolt pistol had felled at least one of the Nergalite daemons.

The Volkihar Regent suspected that whatever changes had made Cain's blood so delectable to his Maker were also responsible for his incredible martial prowess. Surely, the Liberator was no mere man, unless his power armor was somehow far more advanced than that of his soldiers, which didn't fit with Vlad's observations.

Even the underhive Vampire, Skellan, had proven interesting. One of the few things Vlad regretted about his ascension to Regent was that his duties kept him in the spires of Hive Primus, surrounded by the nobility of the Coven. And while all of them had proven their worth before being Turned, there was a part of him that missed the simplicity of battle, and the simple camaraderie that could be found between soldiers.

Skellan was no soldier, but he was a fighter to be sure, a gem in the rough that Vlad believed could serve the Volkihar Coven much better than by remaining in the underhive as a vigilante.

Among the Covens, influence had to be backed with personal power : it was a tradition harkening back to the first days of their kind, according to the lessons Lady Akivasha had taught him. Supposedly, it was linked to the mysterious origins of their race, of which even Vlad knew little, but the Regent suspected it had more to do with legitimizing the rule of the Ancients, who wielded absolute power over their descendants.

They linked up with the Cassandron PDFs who had established a cordon around the Broodspawn lair, and began their ascent back up the hive. Within an hour of forced march (the USA troopers handling the rapid advance remarkably well, even taking their power armor into account), vox contact was re-established with the rest of the planet.

The good news was that the rest of the planet still stood. The bad news was, nobody could say whether that would stay the case for long.


The Thrice-Damned has returned.

The thought kept repeating in Mannfred's mind as he was once again forced to flee for his life to escape the flames of the burning Nergalite stronghold. Once he was out of immediate danger, he moved through underground passages that, unless he was already lost, should lead him to the wasteland beyond the borders of Hive Primus. He had a safehouse there, kept stocked with frozen blood – not nearly as satisfying as drinking it straight from the vein, but it would sustain him – and a small flyer that could take him anywhere he chose on the planet.

Even boosting his speed with his powers, the journey there would take him several hours at best, giving him plenty of time to ponder what he had witnessed.

After making his way down the hive to avenge himself on the Broodspawns who had dared manipulate him, Mannfred had found his way blocked by sorcery. His efforts to break through or find a way around the barrier had been in vain, but they'd kept him occupied long enough to hear the approach of the PDF and Protectorate forces. Since the Cainite heretics had clearly a more advanced knowledge of sorcery than anyone on Cassandron, he'd kept watching, and sure enough, they had brought the barrier down and went inside to confront the source of the Brood in Hive Primus.

During the fight that had ensued, Mannfred had managed to stay hidden, drawing on the Talent he had learned from a Jacaerth centuries ago, as payment for erasing evidence of the other Vampire's involvement in some scheme or another (he didn't remember what exactly, not that it mattered, since the Jacaerth had gotten killed a few decades later in an unrelated power struggle within his Coven). Being able to completely erase his presence, to the point that not even a Vampire's enhanced senses could detect him, had taken a lot of practice, but the benefits were well worth the effort. Especially since it seemed that his ability had even worked on the daemons which the Broodspawns had summoned with their own sacrifice.

Thanks to this Talent, he'd then been able to listen in on the exchange between his Maker, Cain, and the arcane projection. Part of him wanted to dismiss the spectre's outrageous claims, but another part of him knew, deep within his blackened heart, that the creature had spoken no lie when it had declared itself to be the Thrice-Damned returned.

It was clear now that Mannfred had been manipulated, instead of being the manipulator as he'd thought. The fact it had been done by none other than the legendary renegade Regent of the Ruthven Coven was poor consolation. His goal had always been to rule Cassandron, and he couldn't do that if the Nergalites consumed it under the leadership of Hash'ak'gik – and joining them straight up was out of the question, he had too much self-respect for that.

The thought struck him that he could just leave. From the vox-chatter he'd been able to intercept before getting too far from the allied forces, it seemed that the situation in Hive Primus was repeating itself across the rest of the planet, with Nergalite outbreaks rising up from the underhives.

With every hive-city in chaos, Mannfred was confident he could quietly vanish, either in the underhive of Primus, or by securing passage to another Hive, where his Maker's influence wouldn't reach. Now that Cassandron seemed on the verge of reconnecting with the rest of the galaxy, he might even be able to escape off-world and start over, creating an entire new lineage of Vampires who regarded him as their progenitor. That firebrand Jakob had supposedly done so on some distant world called Necromunda, though given the circumstances of the outcast's departure, there was little information about him going around even for a spymaster such as Mannfred.

But … no. Even as the idea came to him, Mannfred knew he wouldn't do it. It would be too much like giving up, like admitting defeat. Mannfred was many things, but a quitter wasn't one of them. He would rule Cassandron : nothing else was acceptable.

Which meant that he had to find the opportunity that surely must exist within that chaos. And there was only one place he could think of where he was guaranteed to find it : where the Brood of Nergal had begun, and where, according to the myths of the Covens, its remains yet lingered.

He would go to Hive Septimus.


AN : For those who are curious, Hash'ak'gik is a name from the Legacy of Kain video game series, whose lore had no business rocking as hard as it did. As I mentioned on the SB thread, in the first draft of this chapter, the Thrice-Damned's name was actually Mogh, from Elden Ring, but I changed that when the DLC came out and revealed some truths which meant it no longer fit.

And yes, the actual, pre-daemonhood name of the Thrice-Damned will be revealed at some point in the story. And also yes, it is a name I shamelessly lifted from existing Vampire fiction. I wonder if anyone will manage to guess it.

As always, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and look forward to your thoughts. Next up will be an update to A Young Girl's Weaponization of the Mythos : its next chapter is almost complete as of time of writing this.

Zahariel out.