Ciaphas Cain, Warmaster of Chaos (Sidestory) Chapter 242: The Iscari, (Part 1), a private fanfic

You just gave me an idea.

Edit: Title: The Iscari, part 1

Drip

Some days it is little more than a single drop. Some days it is not even that. On good days it is enough to fill her cupped hands. And on one magnificent, glorious day it was a light summer rain that lasted for two wonderful hours. Obviously, time does not really exist in the warp, but it helps to understand what was happening.

Clean water is the last thing one might expect to find in Nurgle's Garden. Yet for decades now it was falling down upon one specific spot from somewhere above, so to speak.

Drip

At first the water drops had been caught by the cage as they fell, its ugly rusted metal corrupted them and turned the water into more poison. Yet the water was persistent and with every drop it would wash away some of the rust until it could finally drop down freely upon the cage's occupant. Of course she who had sat in that cage for many millenia could not believe it. Yet the water was persistent and slowly it would wash away some of the dust and muck that blighted the prisoner's once lusterous hair.

Drip

In every drop she could feel the power contained within. They also contained something else, a hint at the power's origin. At first the prisoner did not want to trust the water, after all its origin laid with another of her foes, or so she thought. Yet the water was persistent and with every drop came another hint. He who was tied to the power, he was something else. The Twisted Feather, the Brazen Murderer, She Who Thirsts, they all have tied themselves to him, even if they think the chains run in the opposite direction. There is something there to grasp, a chance to take.

Drip

The Plague Father noticed the water eventually and in his reaction he revealed something else about its nature. For in his rage at seeing his prisoner recovering from his gifts and his attention, he built a great water collector to catch and corrupt the drops and he watered his garden with them. And for a time it worked, at least until the burning rain came.

Drops of pure gold, burning with flames of the same color set fire to the collector, the cage and the ground below. The corrupted water caught fire too and with it the garden was set ablaze. No matter the method tried, the fires raged on resisting all atempts to extinguish them. Uncountable numbers of daemons vanished in the flames before they had returned the water back to the prisoner, its rightful owner. The cage had been scoured clean now, gleaming silvery bright. The ground below had become a flowerbed, roses, violets, lilies, dandelions and many more.

And as the prisoner felt the drops of gold, she knew it for certain. She would have to wait and gather her strength, but eventually she would have the power to act. And even if it would not be a great act by itself, she had to begin carving the stone that laid before her, drop by drop. First though she would have to thank someone.

"Are you sure?"

"With all certainty."

It takes much to stun a Custodes. They who serve Him on Terra have seen many things that would leave most of the galaxy's inhabitants shocked for the rest of their lives. When the Panacea had been handed over to them, a glimmer of hope had been lit within their ranks. But this? This was unexpected.

"How did it get there? And why?!"

For a single daisy with pure white petals bloomed from a crack in the golden throne.

Gold and white. Gold and white as far as the eye could see. Slawkenberg's parks, meadows and gardens were all blooming. Patches of daisies and dandelions sprouted where ever they seemed to please and especially there where Ciaphas Cain would see them.