Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

Skilled as they were at building, destruction was the specialty of every Space Marine. The Astartes, who had been baffled just moments before, perked up the instant they heard something was to be burned. Hefting their flamers, they began scouting out the best spot to start.

Lin tucked his journal away, intending to call Issaga over for some guidance. But Kurande, who was still rooted in place, suddenly called out to him.

Lin didn't even turn his head. "If you want to know what an Isstvaanian is, I'll explain later. Right now the urgent matter is—"

"Look at the ritual," Kurande cut him off. "The ritual has changed!"

Lin turned around and saw that the blood which had long since congealed in the grooves of the ritual circle was, at this very moment, flowing once more. Fresh blood dripped down the ritual dagger buried in the Inquisitor's chest, running along the seven nodes that had already been filled and extending toward two brand-new nodes that had only just appeared.

The number had gone from seven to nine.

Lin's expression hardened.

He kicked aside the Inquisitor's corpse that he'd meant to preserve as evidence, but by this stage of the ritual, this self-sacrificing Inquisitor was no longer its center. Desecrating the body did nothing to halt the flow of Psychic power.

The dimming ritual circle flared again, driven by the nine eyes of the circle. The Bishop, who had been at death's door, suddenly grew animated, like a candle flaring one last time before it gutters out.

"It's Grandfather—it must be Grandfather come to save me!"

No one had the time to pay him any mind. At the same moment, Lin received a transmission from Arlo.

"It's another batch of Chaos Cultists! They activated the nodes almost instantly—we had no time to stop them!"

Arlo, shouting his warning, glared at the cultist he had hoisted up and demanded harshly, "Who is your leader? What is your goal?"

The cultist did not answer. He only cackled with a grating, twisted laugh. "You can't stop us. All is offered unto the Changer of the Ways!"

Damn it. Tzeentch had gotten to them.

Though he'd wondered from the start whether Tzeentch's hand might be at work, even Lin hadn't expected it all to come crashing down this abruptly. Sergeant Arlo crushed the Tzeentchian cultist's skull in his grip. "Do we destroy the ritual circle?"

Lin looked at the eye of the circle that had been activated. The Nurgle profane energy that had once saturated the nest was now being wholly devoured by the ritual circle. The rot spreading through the cavern rapidly decayed, regressed, and crumbled into powder under the circle's absorption. The Bishop, who had been laughing madly, suddenly went pale with panic.

"No—no, this is wrong, this isn't Grandfather!"

He thrashed desperately. This time what left his body was no longer Nurgle's profane energy, but his own soul. "This is not the Garden of Life—this is, this is—!"

The last wisp of soul peeled away from his flesh, and the Bishop collapsed limply. His life dissolved into dust along with his final words: "...the Labyrinth."

There was no need to call for him now—Issaga came charging in of his own accord.

"What's going on? All the Nurgle cultists outside just dropped dead—their souls were drained away in some bizarre fashion..."

When he saw the scene in the room, the Librarian sucked in a sharp breath.

"Tzeentch!"

His uttering of the name aloud drew the attention of the unspeakable presence. Every warrior save Lin heard nine different voices whispering to them all at once.

Even a Space Marine would feel his skull splitting under such a psychic assault, and the effect only intensified as time passed. Some warriors could no longer keep a firm grip on their weapons.

At the center of the ritual circle, the barrier between the material universe and the Warp had already been torn open by Psychic power. A rift gradually widened. Though it was still too small for anyone to pass through, everyone could already hear the tittering laughter drifting from beyond it.

No matter what, the ritual could no longer be stopped.

If they were to shut down a single node now...

"Sever the flow of Psychic power through a node, but don't close it completely," Lin ordered Arlo, testing the waters.

Arlo obeyed. He removed the ritual object the Tzeentchian cultist had earlier placed there, and the ritual circle beneath him instantly dimmed.

The blue glow that had flickered across the nine nodes suddenly turned into eight blood-red eyeballs. The Tzeentchian daemon's whispering vanished, replaced by a bloodlust surging up from the depths of everyone's heart.

Seeing the red glow already welling up in the eyes of the Astartes around him, Lin shook his head. "Put it back."

The red light receded, returning once more to Tzeentch's blue.

The Warp rift was already larger than before. Having sacrificed every Nurgle cultist here, the ritual circle was expanding with extraordinary efficiency. The Tzeentchian Greater Daemon hidden beneath the circle could soon thrust its bird-like head out through the rift.

"Hee hee, the Great Unclean One's partial soul will keep me entertained for a good long while. And as a bonus, there are these delicious Astartes souls..."

His greedy gaze swept over everyone present, his body already impatiently clawing at the not-yet-large-enough opening of the rift. "Offer your souls to me, you lackeys of the Corpse Emperor, and perhaps I'll be merciful enough to let you go without too much pain!"

He knew no Astartes would accept this offer, but what a Tzeentchian Greater Daemon relished was precisely this process of stoking emotions with words.

The pain and hatred on the Space Marines' faces all became his nourishment. He swept his triumphant gaze across everyone present—only to be startled to find one man advancing toward the Warp rift as though he saw nothing at all.

It was a Tech-Priest, plainly empty-handed, yet strolling toward him as casually as a man ambling through a garden.

The daemon felt an immediate sense of foreboding, but the pride of a Tzeentchian Greater Daemon would not let him retreat so easily at this moment. He thrust a claw out through the gap, swiping it about to drive the man back.

"To challenge a god is folly—stand down!"

Lin caught the blow with casual ease. The talon that swept across him had no effect whatsoever, and instead it was the Tzeentchian Greater Daemon's limb, coalesced from Psychic power, that began to disintegrate.

The Psychic bindings imposed on the Astartes suddenly slackened, and everyone present heard his panicked voice.

"What in the world are you?!"

"Playing at schemes? Making me choose between you and the Sadistic Terror?"

Lin pressed step by step toward the Tzeentchian Greater Daemon in the rift. The daemon nervously tried to retreat, but the very body he'd wedged into the gap in his eagerness to enter now became the obstacle to his escape.

He was pinned there in the gap that would no longer widen, forced to watch helplessly as Lin drew closer.

"No, no, this is wrong!" he shrieked. "This isn't how the plan was supposed to go!"

"Aren't you a god?" Lin found this amusing. "Can a god's plans go wrong too?"

"Of course I'm a god! It's just—"

"Enough. Drop the act."

Lin loosened his wrist, revealing his Solar-Powered Warblade and leveling it at the Tzeentchian Greater Daemon's limb wedged in the rift.

"Put on airs, and I'll send you flying!"

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