Chapter 171: The Call of the Flesh and Blood Monster
The ground of the Calixis sector convulsed violently. Rubble scattered across the earth as a foul stench, the reek of centuries-old decay, filled the air. The crust split open, and something emerged from the depths.
A monster. Grotesque beyond measure.
Its body was a horrifying amalgamation: rotting muscle threaded through twisted bone, entrails flowing like rivers of corruption. Long tentacles trailed behind it, each movement accompanied by a wet, nauseating sound.
"Suppressive firepower! Hold distance!" Raldoron's voice cut through the tactical channel, sharp, clear, commanding. The First Captain of the Blood Angels Legion knew what they faced.
Meltaguns erupted in response, spewing white-hot flames directly into the deformed masses. Rotten flesh exploded. Pus and corrupted fluids splattered across the earth. The monsters shrieked, piercing, anguished wails, but they kept coming, relentless.
"First Captain, where is the Primarch?" A warrior's voice crackled through the vox, strained with worry.
He paused to drink from his canteen of strawberry-flavored artificial blood plasma. "Surely he wouldn't abandon us?"
"The Primarch is testing our resolve," Raldoron responded, his meltagun burning bright as he pushed forward. "We hold the line. He will return. He will bring victory."
The certainty in his voice was absolute.
Just then, the sky split. A massive rift tore open, and through it came a meteorite, and riding atop it, two figures. The Blood Angels' faces transformed instantly, joy blazing across their features.
"The Primarch returns! And he's brought Lord Francis!"
"Victory! Glory awaits us, brothers!"
"Hahahaha! Death to the damned!"
Their celebration was brief.
As Sanguinius drew closer, they saw what he was: a dark, churning mass. Behind him, the sky boiled with shapes that should not exist.
"Everyone, MOVE!" Francis's voice echoed across the field, his arms windmilling. "The big one is coming through!"
The Blood Angels' expressions shifted from triumph to horror in a single breath. They pivoted and ran, their shouts carrying genuine terror.
"Run, brothers! Behind the Primarch, daemons! Countless daemons! Run! Hesitation means suffering!"
The flesh-and-blood monsters that had been advancing halted abruptly. Their grotesque forms froze mid-movement. The tentacles still wavered, claws still gnawed at the putrid air, but something in them seemed... confused. Uncertain.
Then the sky screamed.
A tremendous sound, like reality tearing itself apart. Every monster on the field stopped and looked upward. The Warp-rift burned with unnatural light, twisted energy cascading downward like a waterfall of madness.
From that rift came a figure wreathed in golden fire, Sanguinius, wings spread wide, Francis still clinging to him, the flesh-armor still erupting with Chaos eggs.
The Blood Angels fell silent, watching.
Then came the flood.
Nurgle daemons poured through the rift like an infection made manifest, their roars shaking the earth. Slaanesh daemons followed, dancing through the air with predatory grace.
"Seize Francis! Capture him and the benevolent Father will elevate you to princedom!"
"Out of the way, you filthy things! The Prince of Pleasure demands him! Clear your ugliness from his path!"
"For the loving Father!"
"For the exquisite Prince!"
The flesh-and-blood monsters below froze in confusion. But when the first wave of Chaos eggs struck them, chaos erupted in full.
The eggs gnawed at their forms, consuming and merging, creating larger amalgamations from the cannibalized corpses. Yet the grotesque flesh-monsters didn't discriminate; they would devour everything. Daemons and eggs alike.
Rumble.
Drop pods fell from orbit like meteoric rain. The Soul Drinkers emerged first, their forms already shifted, already changed, transformed into Ork-like mutations that roared with primal fury.
Ancient walkers stamped across the battlefield under their control, each step a declaration of war.
"WAAAAAAAAAGH!"
The Thousand Sons followed, their sorcerers raising staffs as psychic fire bloomed across the battle zone.
The engagement became a nightmare of intermingled horrors.
Nurgle daemons swung rotting weapons that poisoned the very air, creating swamps of putrescent death with each blow.
Slaanesh daemons moved like serpents made manifest, graceful, hypnotic, lethal. One tore through a Blood Angel's armor with ease, raking claws across exposed flesh. The warrior's scream joined the chorus of agony.
A Blood Angel caught in a Slaanesh daemon's aura froze, mesmerized for a critical second. The daemon's claws found his throat. His life ended in silence.
But the Chaos eggs surged forward, consuming the killer daemon in a frenzy of gnashing mouths.
Only to be swallowed by one of the grotesque flesh-monsters.
Only to be burned away by a Thousand Sons sorcerer's psychic flame, the caster himself was already reeling from the mesmerizing aura of another Slaanesh daemon.
"Stay focused! Look away from their eyes!" A company commander's roar barely cut through the chaos, but it wasn't enough.
Around him, his brothers succumbed one by one to the Prince of Pleasure's terrible beauty.
The battlefield had become a maelstrom, a place where no single faction held dominion, where death came from every direction.
Then Francis paused.
He'd been surveying the chaos, and something had struck him as fundamentally wrong. He looked at one of the grotesque flesh-monsters with genuine confusion, studying it.
The creature returned his gaze with a countenance full of tentacles and gnashing teeth, and somehow, impossibly, Francis sensed shyness in that alien expression.
"This... this is not right. This is absolutely not right," Francis murmured, pressing both palms against his face.
He looked at the battlefield with fresh eyes. And then he saw it. The pattern. The undeniable pattern.
The flesh-and-blood monsters killed daemons. The flesh-and-blood monsters killed Imperial soldiers without hesitation.
But whenever a Soul Drinker came into danger, these creatures positioned themselves between threat and target. And more, when opportunities arose to slaughter the Soul Drinkers outright, the monsters looked away, ignored it, and refused to attack.
And the way the Soul Drinkers looked at them...
Francis had seen that look before. It was the way a son regards his father, even when the observers had no eyes.
"Primarch, did you... Did you involve yourself with something before you left?" The second company commander's words trailed off. His eyes were heavy with something Francis couldn't quite name, disappointment? Resignation?
"We all understand your... indiscretions, but Primarch... who exactly... why are you making those sounds?"
A younger soldier tried to continue, "You were always eccentric, my lord, we understand that, but who exactly have you been—"
A veteran's hand clamped over his mouth.
But Francis understood the implication, and his response was immediate and furious.
"You're talking nonsense! I am a pure lover! I haven't involved myself with anyone! Believe what you want, but next time one of you needs surgery, anesthesia is off the table!"
The Soul Drinkers fell back immediately, fear replacing curiosity.
The flesh-and-blood monsters, however, displayed something that looked disturbingly like grief.
Francis's eyes widened to their limits. His heart began to hammer against his ribs. What?
What? Had something happened before? Something he had no memory of? How could his... his taste be so strong?
He looked up again just as one of the monsters tore into a Nurgle daemon, flesh and ichor exploding with each bite. Despite the horror of it, despite the wrongness, Francis found himself thinking...
"He's actually... rather handsome."
The monster looked at him with what could only be described as bashful hope.
"Gather up!" The command tore from Francis's throat almost of its own accord, carried on some instinct he didn't recognize.
From all directions, the monsters converged. Dozens of them, moving with terrible purpose, arranging themselves in a line before him.
The Soul Drinkers "...Knew it"
The Blood Angels "..."
The Thousand Sons "..."
Even the daemons fell silent.
Only the Chaos eggs continued their work, gnawing relentlessly at Nurgle daemons with what seemed like familiarity, as if they had been born to this particular task.
"Combine!" Francis shouted, the command emerging from somewhere deep, somewhere he didn't understand, didn't control.
The monsters convulsed. Their tentacles retracted. Their eyes darted with frantic terror. Blood and mucus wept from every crevice in their bodies.
Then, as if pulled by invisible chains, they began to move toward a common center. The will that had bound them individually shattered. Their bodies intertwined and twisted, tentacles braiding together, teeth and claws embedding themselves into neighboring flesh.
The sound was indescribable, screams of agony, wet, tearing sounds, the sickening crack of bones being rearranged, reformed, repurposed.
Everyone who heard it felt their scalp prickle with primordial dread.
The fusion continued. Bodies merged and reformed. Muscle and plate restructured themselves into something new, something vast. Countless eyes opened and closed in dissonant rhythm. Countless mouths shrieked and growled, each voice a discordant note in a symphony of transformation. The tentacles, bloated tubes of flesh and blood, bound the merged forms together, extending, reaching, until...
A colossal creature stood before them, nearly fifty meters in height.
The fighting stopped. Everyone, Soul Drinkers, Blood Angels, Thousand Sons, daemons, fell silent, frozen in the presence of something that transcended their understanding.
"What is that thing?" A Blood Angel's whisper carried the weight of absolute terror.
The Soul Drinkers stared at the pulsing mass, recognition dawning but refusing to solidify. The thrumming of blood and flesh was unmistakable.
Could it truly be... the Father's long-lost son? But this creature was massive. Impossibly large. Fundamentally wrong.
At that moment, the entity's voice resonated across the battlefield, not in words, but in a resonance that bypassed sound entirely and spoke directly to the mind.
Rangdan.
The Forgotten. The Forbidden. The Purged.
Francis felt the name like a hammer blow to his chest, and in that instant, something dormant within him, something he had not known, stirred with terrible recognition.
[End of Chapter]
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