The Nephylum, Nexus nearspace
Lord Glurtosk gritted his rotten teeth so hard that three of them burst into powder. His head was pounding with a cluster of black, sight-stealing headaches, and he was finding it hard to think. He had reached up to touch the wreck of his forehead after the battle, and felt great disquiet at the spongy, sloppy texture underneath it. Still, he had lived for ten millennia, and Grandfather Nurgle clearly was not done with him just yet. It would heal, his brain would reknit in pleasing new shapes, and another fetching scar would join his collection.
‘It will take more than a t’au to lay a son of Nurgle low,’ he slurred, taking an unsteady step towards the bridge. Yet despite it all, she had reduced his beautiful command centre to utter ruin. If there were any justice she would already have frozen to death out there in the endless black. He tried to take pleasure in the thought, but his mind recoiled from the idea of being so powerless, so out of control, adrift in the uncaring vacuum of outer space.
If it weren’t for dear Fenst, or rather what was left of him, perhaps that was exactly what would have happened to him.
‘How is he holding up?’ Glurtosk had to shout over the shrill whistle of air escaping out into the void and the ship’s emergency systems belching out replacement atmosphere from grille-mouthed gargoyles.
‘He won’t last,’ said Thurglaine, kneeling in the filth as he scored a string of darkly glowing runes around the breach in the glassaic panel.
Looming over the sorcerer was the giant, fly-headed spawn that had once been Bridgeman Fenst. He writhed and screamed, his abdomen stuck thoroughly in the hole cut by the xenos witch. His countless, multijointed limbs thrashed and spasmed as the cold, merciless vacuum of space pulled his innards through the plates of his back and sent them spilling out into the void.
‘And is the matter in hand?’ asked Glurtosk.
‘It would already be finished,’ said Thurglaine, ‘had I not been interrupted.’
Glurtosk was about to bark his irritation, but he swallowed his anger down. ‘A work of art defiled,’ he said, taking in the countless corpses, slumberers and half-comatose ratings scattered upon every console and dais. ‘A tempest, set to rage within a once-loved sanctuary. A fine and vintage–’
‘Oh, do shut up,’ muttered Thurglaine.
Glurtosk turned, indignant. The sorcerer had his back to him now, arms wide, a giant bubble of mucus extending in front of him like a snot bubble blown from some titanic nurgling’s nostril. The bubble was encapsulating Fenst, or rather his forlorn, limp remains, and extending beyond the ship to seal the breach. Somehow, against all reason, it did not burst, but hardened and thickened until it looked more like rockcrete than a mucosal bubble.
With some relief, Glurtosk felt his multi-lung relax its frantic, bellows-like pumping in his chest. He took a deep breath of wonderfully foetid air.
‘Congratulations,’ said Glurtosk. ‘You did something of worth.’
‘I stopped the ship from coming apart,’ said Thurglaine. ‘What did you manage, again, when the enemy was plunging right into your innermost sanctum? Ah yes, you had a hole punched in the centre of your head, and let her escape even with the jaws of your trap caught around her foot.’
Rage swelled in Glurtosk’s chest. ‘I endured, as is the way of our Legion, brother. Better yet, I maintained my course.’ He gestured at the Startide Nexus, glimmering before them on the main viewscreen. ‘Soon we shall pass through the portal, and lead our fleet to new glories beyond!’
‘I would not be so sure,’ said Thurglaine. Behind, the sorcerer’s most loyal Death Guard were shuffling forward, careful not to seem as if they were standing in mutiny, but advancing nonetheless. ‘I have consulted the Soothmask. The way to Grandfather’s grace no longer lies through the hole in space.’
‘You lie as you breathe,’ said Glurtosk. ‘Look at your precious mask. The witch left it in tatters!’
The sorcerer put a wizened hand across the wrecked device, his posture changing in a moment. Scenting blood, Glurtosk raged on.
‘The canister is breached, and its cowl torn. Surely such a gifted seer can perceive that which dangles around his neck? If it ever held the vapours from Nurgle’s Garden they escaped in the brawl, and were likely sucked out into space! Perhaps you should scurry back to the Night Hag and play at being king there instead. Perhaps your certainty itself is gaseous, and hot air at that.’
Thurglaine stood as tall as he could, his black and lipless mouth agape. ‘I have a connection to it that you could not possibly understand. You call me a liar? You, who has grown fat off my vision, whilst doing little more than bluster and pose like a strutting bilepiper? You are a disgrace to the primarch and to the Legion.’
‘I shall ask Mortarion whom he considers most valuable when I see him in person for the sack of the Eastern Fringe,’ growled Glurtosk. ‘Whom will he choose, I wonder? A captain who has delivered Grandfather’s curse to an entire empire, or a meek seer who turned aside at the last?’
‘You know not what you do. If you go through that portal without a vizier of some kind to guide you, you risk your own demise, or worse, the stasis of the past. Those who fail to learn from history are damned to repeat it. I tell you now, turn aside.’
‘That,’ said Glurtosk, stepping forward until he loomed over the sorcerer, ‘that I will not do.’
‘Then I wish you good luck, brother. I feel you will need it. Perhaps one day we shall walk the Garden together. But frankly, I doubt it.’
There was a blur of light, a stink of befouled ozone as if a bolt of lightning had torn the heart from a rotten tree, and the sorcerer and his warriors were gone.