Chapter 151 - The Plague Wars Begin to Shift
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"Alright. Let's talk business."
The Emperor's tone shifted completely. No more lightness. He was serious now.
"I believe you still have a feather. One that belongs to my son, Sanguinius."
He paused.
He was weighing his words, and he knew it. Ten thousand years on the Golden Throne had made commanding feel like breathing. Every syllable that left his lips had been law, unquestionable and absolute. But the person standing before him was different.
That feather was a gift Sanguinius had given to Kaelen himself. Not a grant from the Emperor. Not a relic dispensed from on high. A son had given it to a friend, and that meant it was none of his business how Kaelen chose to use it.
Besides. He and his sons already owed this young man far too much.
The Emperor took his time choosing the right words before he finally spoke.
"If you are willing... I would like to ask you to integrate that feather, along with the soul fragment, into the clone."
"You're saying the feather can stabilize the clone's mind?" Kaelen asked, direct as always.
The Emperor gave a slight nod.
"Fulgrim lacks the tempering. The inner foundation. Even if you show him what his parallel self achieved, he will want it, genuinely. But wanting something and having lived through the fire that forged it are two very different things. Without that, I am afraid he will break down somewhere along the way."
The youth went quiet for a moment, as if sifting through his thoughts for the right phrasing. "So Sanguinius's feather would provide a kind of..."
"A metaphysical psychological defense? Something like that?"
"More or less, yes."
Kaelen dropped his gaze. He thought it over, brief but real.
He didn't agree immediately. Instead he raised his head and looked the Emperor straight in the eye.
"I'll use the feather for this. But," he held up one finger, "you owe me a favor, Master of Mankind. I'll collect it when the time comes. Fair enough? Not asking for too much, am I?"
He let that sit for a beat, then added one more thing.
"And I hope you won't pull the same tricks on me that you pull on the gods."
Kaelen smiled.
It spread across that young face like sunlight through a window on a quiet afternoon, warm and uncomplicated, the smile of a fifteen-year-old who'd just agreed to help a friend with something small.
"Very well. You have my word."
No hesitation. No careful phrasing designed to leave a back door open.
But the smile faded almost immediately, and the Emperor's voice settled back into something heavier.
"Awakening the Fulgrim clone will draw my fallen son to this place."
Kaelen's brow twitched.
"This Plague War is not Nurgle's alone. The Prince of Pleasure will be drawn by it. He will choose to form a temporary alliance with the Plague Lord." The Emperor's voice carried through the dream like a bell struck in a cold hall, the weight of prophecy behind every word. "And what Abaddon brings with him will allow Ku'gath Plaguefather to create something the universe has never seen before."
"Watch yourself. I will be watching over you, always."
Kaelen snapped awake.
He sat up gasping, back drenched in cold sweat, the Emperor's final words still ringing through his skull.
The Plague Wars weren't just Nurgle's fight.
Slaanesh was going to stick his fingers in it too. Fulgrim, the fallen primarch, the Phoenician who had twisted himself into something serpentine and monstrous, was coming in person.
And Ku'gath was already using Sanguinius's soul fragment to cook up something. Add in whatever unknown thing Abaddon was delivering to the table, and...
He had figured it would be three primarchs ganging up on Mortarion. A messy but manageable brawl.
A free-for-all between the champions of every god was a different situation entirely.
Kaelen pressed two fingers against his temple and rubbed slow circles. The headache was already settling in.
His eyes moved to the cube sitting quietly on the table.
The face of the cloned Fulgrim drifted in and out of the swirling green light, that perfect, sculpted face still carrying its expression of peaceful sleep, as if waiting for an awakening that was never going to come on its own.
Kaelen stayed quiet for a long time.
Then he got up, pushed open the door, and walked out.
He needed to find Guilliman.
---------------
Yaksis.
The personal vessel of Warmaster Abaddon tore through the atmosphere and touched down on a planet that Grandfather Nurgle had thoroughly, lovingly blessed.
The hatch opened.
The stench hit like a wall.
It was rot and fermentation and mold all layered together, threaded through with something older and more fundamental, something that suggested decay at a cosmic level. It was as if every sewer, every festering swamp, every garbage heap that had been composting since before the Horus Heresy had been compressed into a single planet and pumped directly into your lungs.
Even the Warmaster of Chaos had his limits.
Abaddon put on his helmet. A rare concession.
He was the supreme commander of the Black Legion. The uncrowned king of the Eye of Terror. He had stared down enemies that made lesser men's souls shatter on contact. But Nurgle's playground operated on a completely different axis of misery.
He descended the Stormbird ramp, his black-armored silhouette cutting across the sticky, yielding ground, and walked straight toward Ku'gath Plaguefather.
The Great Unclean One was squatting in front of an enormous cauldron, stirring the thick, bubbling contents with a rust-caked ladle. He lifted his damp, bloated head when he heard the footsteps, small eyes half-lidded, mucus trailing at the corners, studying the new arrival with an expression that might have been curiosity or might have been nothing at all.
The sound that came out of his throat was like a drain clearing itself.
"Oh, welcome. The forever-furious, perpetually-not-growing-up Warmaster." The ladle tapped twice against the cauldron's rim, slow and deliberate, producing a low, hollow clang. "Welcome to Grandfather's playground. What brings you here?"
Abaddon didn't bother with pleasantries.
"The enemy of my enemy is my friend." The words came flat and rough through his helmet's vocalizer. "I'm here to offer you an alliance, Ku'gath Plaguefather."
Ku'gath tilted his enormous head to one side.
"But Grandfather did not mention the Black Legion would be seeking alliance with us."
"He agreed to it."
Abaddon raised one hand. A warrior from behind him stepped forward.
It was one of the Black Legion's Nurgle Chosen. The armor was a living thing at this point, crawling with Grandfather's blessings, maggots threading through every gap between plates, each footstep leaving a wet impression on the ground.
Abaddon's Black Legion maintained Chosen from all four gods specifically for moments like this. Envoys who could speak the language of whatever divine faction needed managing.
It was pure pragmatism. He trusted none of them. He used all of them.
The Nurgle Chosen moved forward and spoke to Ku'gath in the way only those who had given themselves over to Nurgle could manage. Wet guttural tones. Long slow trills. Occasional gurgles rising from somewhere deep in the chest. To anyone else, it would have sounded like a backed-up pipe finally releasing. But Ku'gath listened, and something changed in those small, rheumy eyes.
They went wide.
"You are saying the Changer of Ways sent you here?"
"Yes." Short. Final.
Ku'gath's reaction was not what Abaddon had expected.
The ladle came down hard against the cauldron's edge. The clang was sharp and discordant. When the Great Unclean One spoke again, his wet voice had an edge to it.
"Then do you know that Tzeentch and Khorne have already joined forces to assault the Scourge Stars? They are trying to take Grandfather's Garden from him!"
Abaddon turned it over once.
The Changer of Ways was sending an army to carve into Nurgle's territory on one hand, and directing the Black Legion to come assist Nurgle on the other. Enemies working against each other and, somehow, for each other at the same time.
Ku'gath's brain, if the plague-sodden mass of nerve tissue swimming inside his skull still qualified as a brain, churned visibly as he tried to parse Tzeentch's logic.
"You already know the answer, Ku'gath." Abaddon's voice was level. "The Changer of Ways only cares about change."
He had no interest in deciphering it further. Tzeentch's game had never been fully read by anyone. Khorne himself had been a piece on that board once. There was no profit in trying to reverse-engineer the intentions of a god who existed purely to keep everything moving.
Abaddon had his own reasons for being here.
His gaze moved past Ku'gath to the cauldron. Something was shifting inside that thick, dark liquid, just beneath the surface. The aura it gave off was wrong in a specific way, sacred and corrupted woven together in a combination that shouldn't have been possible.
"You're missing something, Ku'gath. Grandfather gave you a part of Sanguinius, yes. But a soul without a body is a voice with nothing to speak through. You have the fragment. You don't have flesh for it to inhabit."
Ku'gath's eyes narrowed.
"And you have a solution to this? You walk into my home with empty hands, asking for an alliance?" The wet voice sharpened with something close to insult. "This is a game of gods, mortal. You should understand your place before you—"
The Talon of Horus made a sound. One short, clean mechanical click from the joints of Abaddon's right hand.
For a fraction of a second, the killing intent was fully visible.
Then Abaddon drew a slow breath and pushed it back down.
He needed this creature. He needed its hands, its plague, its access to Nurgle's power, to deal with those primarchs who kept getting in the way. Killing it in its own garden solved nothing.
"I have the blood of Sanguinius." His voice dropped to something quieter than a shout and heavier than one. "It is still on my weapon. Still on the Talon of Horus."
Ku'gath stopped stirring.
"The soul of Sanguinius. The blood of Sanguinius. And your God-Plague." Abaddon stepped forward, one footfall grinding deep into the soft ground beneath his armor. "Think about what that makes, Plaguefather. Think about what kind of thing would walk out of that cauldron."
The liquid inside churned on its own, slow and thick, as if something in it had already heard and was already interested.
Ku'gath said nothing for a long time.
Then the wide, glistening mouth began to open. It stretched slowly, pulling back across that bloated face until the expression could only be called a smile if you were being generous.
"I think you may be right, Warmaster of Chaos."
He turned back to the cauldron. The ladle moved again, deliberate now, purposeful.
"I have already decided on its name. Named for the blood you bring. Named for you. Named for the plague I have been brewing."
The liquid rolled and steamed.
"The Pale Plague. Angel of Final Death."
➤ Next: The Tau Failed (1)
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