[Inquisitor Rosenadel]

Part VI: The Retched

The cultists were never considered to be especially cunning, but I had suspicions all along that they were more then they seemed. Their subtle coordination, their rituals, it all pointed to a more intelligent center. A malign intelligence that was bent on disease, decay and rot.

So when the cultists started planting their feet in the ground and chanting, I knew something was very, very wrong. They were shot to ribbons, but kept on chanting. Froth and bile bubbled up through their lips as they spoke in an unholy tongue. And when we shot them they did not bleed like normal men, but instead pus flowed forth from their wounds in amounts disproportionate to their blood capacity. They swelled, and their chanting reached a peak.

Then, each bloated head exploded in a spray of mucus, which flowed around their feet and started swallowing their bodies. The mucus bubbled and moved, and out of it came little pus-creatures, not larger than a rat, but distended, grubby, and giggling, always giggling. These, I knew, had to be daemons. We shot at them, and tore them up with our bayonets, but they had a high tolerance for pain and they were not even wholly corporeal. Sometimes a las-shot or knife would go straight through them and not affect them at all.

By this point, a member of the Inquisition had finally arrived, and there was now a battle going on in space above. The Inquisitor hand-picked several squads to accompany him into the deepest, foulest depths of the ghettoes. My squad was one of them. He had brought along his own personal compliment of Stormtroopers, of course, and the toy soldiers held themselves aloof, fearless, and focused. It felt like a contest between us, the PDF, and the Glory Boys, both vying for the Inquisitor’s praise. It certainly made us fight harder. But those Stormtroopers did earn their respect from us.

Even with the Inquisitor’s daemon-fighting knowledge, we had a hard time of it getting to the centre of the corruption. When we finally got there, after nearly two days straight of fighting, and having been reduced to less than half our numbers, the PDF and the Inquisitor broke through. What we found reduced us by half again merely on account of men losing their minds.

Words almost fail me when it comes to the description of the place. It was in a former Imperial church, barely recognisable. Weeping sores covered every surface, smile, pus and mucus flowed from every pore, and thick, obscuring gasses made our eyes water and burn. Most broke out in hives immediately. Some men simply rotted away, their grey matter coming out their ears, nose and mouth. Men retched and retched until they vomited their own organs. The Inquisitor kept chanting some prayer, trying to keep himself and the PDF from harm. But out of the muck and ooze rose a great lumped thing, with several mouths scattered over its bloated, swollen body. It held a sword dripping in bile and blood. The Inquisitor charged, and the thing stomped forward. The stormtroopers shot at it, but more things bubbled up from the ground and fought with them and us. After finally hacking apart one of the pus-covered daemons, I looked again to the Inquisitor. He had been impaled upon the daemon’s sword, and was decaying at a rate I thought not possible.

I yelled to the rest of my men to run. We all broke, screaming, running for our lives from the evil, diseased place. But there was nowhere we could hide. When we got back to the city, we found out that the Chaos Space Marines were finally attacking. Little did I know how rewarding and life-changing that battle would be.

does anyone even read this?