Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

Honestly, Lin was rather curious to see what a Great Unclean One of Nurgle actually looked like.

Maybe it would turn out to be that old acquaintance who'd been solo-tanked by Blackhead's ride and then had his skull popped open by a chainsword?

But sadly, even if a Great Unclean One of Nurgle was garbage in a fight, its corrosive power was still first-rate. If he let a Great Unclean One manifest, then even a Space Marine couldn't guarantee he wouldn't suffer mutation of the flesh from the thing's compulsory corruption.

Lin had no choice but to regretfully abandon the idea.

He strode forward, and the filth within the Pool of Life shrank away from him in dread, as though it were a living thing. He extended his Servo-arm and, with a single motion, fished out the cultist who was still busy singing praises to the greatness of Grandfather.

The profane force of Nurgle clinging to the Bishop began to drain away the instant it touched Lin. The energy in the Pool of Life surged madly toward the Bishop at the center of the ritual, trying to fill the void left behind after the profane force upon him was annihilated.

But annihilation was irreversible.

A roar came up from the bottom of the pool—a venomous curse that had been on the verge of breaching the barrier of the material universe, only to be kicked back through the shrunken rift into the Warp.

That nameless Great Unclean One was trying to cow Lin this way, but Lin, utterly unaffected by the profane force of the Warp, regarded it as nothing at all.

Realizing the ritual was hopeless, the profane force that had sought to fill the void began to retreat. Deprived of the support of Nurgle's profane force, the Bishop swiftly withered.

Just like the two cultists he had drained before, the man reverted into a decrepit old man on death's doorstep—an ordinary person terrified of dying.

Lin looked at the shriveled old man before him and realized that, before he had become the Bishop, this person had been no different from any other resident of the underhive.

In this era when the powers of Chaos had yet to make themselves known, where on earth had he obtained the accursed knowledge sufficient to summon a daemon of Nurgle?

A pity that Lin could no longer wring an answer from the Bishop's mouth.

The Bishop was already bound too deeply to the Warp; his husk of a body had long been able to function only through the might of the Grandfather. Now that the profane energy of Nurgle had withdrawn, he was as ruined as a withered branch, and had reached the end of his life.

Perhaps a shot of adrenaline afterward might be worth a try...

Lin tossed him to an Astartes who had come up alongside him—they had entered long ago, only the earlier "duel" had left them no room to intervene.

Or rather, could that really be called a duel?

"An arcane defense circuit?"

Kurande couldn't help but ask, but quickly contradicted himself: "No, that's not it—the effect of an arcane defense circuit wouldn't be this absurd..."

As a means of countering the Psychic powers of the Warp, the arcane defense circuit—held by only a handful of Chapter Masters—could negate most of the control effects produced by Warp-based Psychic power. But such negation was absolutely not like Lin, who simply ignored that pure Psychic onslaught outright.

He stared at Lin in astonishment, as though only today had he truly come to know this sage for the first time.

"A little trick grounded in science," Lin answered with a shrug. "This matter is also recorded in On Shattering the Furtive Imperial Truth Through Science."

Kurande, a firm believer in the Imperial Truth, met Lin's answer with silence.

If anything, he felt his own views on the Imperial Truth waver ever so slightly.

Lin walked toward the pool of filth that still reeked of foulness. Though the once-thick profane air of the Warp still coiled within the nest, a good deal of it had dispersed after all that upheaval just now. His optical capture system could already make out, through the water, the ritual circle at the bottom.

"We're going to drain the pool and see just what's down there."

Kurande nodded, and the Astartes around him began to move.

With the Bishop brought to justice, the remaining Nurgle worshippers still alive posed no fundamental threat—though the purge against the Nurgle faithful continued. Even so, the Astartes smoothly set up pumps and began draining the filth from the pool, piece by piece.

As the water level dropped, Lin caught sight of a rather familiar symbol on the pool wall. He called up his earlier communication logs with Inquisitor Vladilena, and the symbol before him corresponded exactly to the Inquisitorial contact sigil she had previously entrusted to him.

So it really was connected to that traitor Inquisitor?

As the pool was completely drained, they also saw the figure kneeling at the center of the ritual circle.

The man should have long since been swollen from soaking in that filthy water, but strangely, his entire body showed no sign of decay.

Judging from his posture, he must have driven a dagger through his own heart. The fresh blood flowing down along the blade had run through the grooves already carved into the ritual circle, extending to seven nodes and forming the main veins of this ritual.

Lin stepped forward. On this still-undecayed corpse he found a journal and a rosette that symbolized the man's own identity within the Inquisition. These two objects had already made clear who this person was—a traitor Inquisitor of the Ordo Malleus, Wudier.

Issaga was still outside, protecting the warriors from the corrosion of Warp energy, but there was no need for that specialist to be present; everyone else could grasp well enough what had happened here.

"He performed a rite of self-sacrifice," Kurande said in a low voice.

Lin nodded. "Perhaps the answer lies within his journal."

He opened the journal and skimmed through it, ten lines at a glance.

"June 6th. Slew a daemon of Slaanesh."

"July 7th. Hunting a daemon of Nurgle."

"August 8th. Bested a daemon of the Sadistic Terror."

"September 9th. No gains whatsoever today. Wudier, oh Wudier, how can you be so slack! Have you forgotten the oath you swore when you first joined the Inquisition? This cannot go on!"

The first half of the journal was mostly filled with such trivial, empty entries. From them Lin could tell this had been a diligent Puritan Inquisitor who took the hunting of daemons as his personal duty.

He kept turning the pages and found that the change appeared after this Inquisitor issued his first Exterminatus.

"I often think back to that planet, even though I am quite certain my choice was in no way wrong."

"I passed the review of the Order of Annihilation—a distinction that eighty percent of Inquisitors never attain. Yet still I have nightmares—dreaming that the countless wronged souls on that planet are all screaming at me."

The text that followed grew fragmented and disordered; clearly that Exterminatus had been no small blow to Wudier. But some months later, his writing became neat and orderly once more—only now the words faintly betrayed a fanaticism that transcended ordinary reason.

"In the course of hunting a traitor, I met the most important mentor of my life. Beneath the Emperor, I am certain he is far greater than anyone I have ever encountered until now. He told me that Exterminatus is not a sin, but a means of saving mankind..."

"Humanity can only grow through conflict. Only difficulty in just the right measure can save this gradually rotting Imperium..."

"And if there is no difficulty, then difficulty must be manufactured..."

"Wonderful—I am beginning to understand it all!"

There was no need to read further. Lin already understood why this Inquisitor had walked to where he was today.

Lin closed the journal. On the inside of the back cover he saw the Inquisitor's final words, written in his own blood.

"I have found a steward, and this steward is a deeply hidden worshipper of Chaos. If one wishes to manufacture difficulty, he could be no more fitting a subject."

"Let it all begin..."

"In the name of the Imperium, I offer up all that I am!"

Though Inquisitors came only in two kinds—Radicals, and Puritans who had not yet become Radicals—this Inquisitor had plainly walked a path that counted as extreme even among the Radicals.

"He was an Isstvaanian Inquisitor," Lin said in a grave voice. He gestured for the Astartes around him to raise the flamers in their hands. "Move quickly—we must burn this place clean!"

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