Kian Voss breached the periter and sprinted toward the heart of the Equine Reach. The closer he got to the village, the more the reality of the world seed to warp.
There were no birds. No insects. Even the wind seed to have lost its voice. Agri-World 496b was designed to be a paradise; it should have been teeming with life, yet here, the forest was a tomb of silent, grey timber.
Kian checked his status. He had downed all his functional energy drinks and covered the final stretch in a stimm-fueled blur. As he broke through the final treeline, the village ca into view.
It was a large settlent—dozens of timber and stone houses arranged in a wide circle, surrounded by the massive, open pastures of the horse-ranch. But there were no horses in the fields. No children playing in the streets.
Kian vaulted a wooden fence, his boots hitting the tall grass. Suddenly, a searing heat blood against his chest.
He unzipped his work-jacket and pulled out the Sanctified Purity Seal the Canon had given him. The parchnt was smoking. Black, vein-like patterns were spreading across the paper, and within seconds, the holy script ignited, crumbling into grey ash in his hand.
Kian tossed the remains aside, his eyes narrowing. The seal had burned purely from environntal exposure. The Warp-taint here wasn't just present; it was atmospheric.
"Alright," Kian whispered, drawing his sidearm and clicking off the safety. "Let's see how deep the rot goes."
He moved toward a massive timber structure on the outskirts—the primary stable. A sound drifted through the cracks in the wood: the frantic, high-pitched wailing of a human infant.
Kian pressed his ear to the planks. Beneath the crying, he heard a wet, rhythmic squelching and the low, distorted neighing of horses. A man's voice was murmuring a feverish, repetitive prayer.
Kian shifted to the door, held his pistol in a one-handed grip, and kicked the latch.
He had killed over a hundred n since arriving in this millennium. He considered his stomach to be made of iron. But the sight inside the stable made his vision swim with nausea.
In the center of the hay-covered floor, several cyber-steeds had been fused together. Their bodies were lted into a singular, pulsating mound of grey-green flesh, covered in weeping sores, distended tentacles, and black boils. Five horse heads protruded from the mass at random angles, their eyes rolling back in their sockets as they let out low, rhythmic groans.
The creature was in labor.
A man in tattered, filth-caked robes was kneeling in the muck. He was stroking the pulsating flesh-mound with a look of parental love.
"Push, my beauties!" the man croaked. "It is coming! The Gift is coming! The Cycle is almost complete!"
A wet, tearing sound echoed through the stable. A massive, translucent placenta—filled with black fluid and writhing white maggots—slid from a breach in the at-mound.
The man lunged forward, using his fingernails to tear the sac open with ecstatic greed.
The infant's crying intensified, but as the air hit the newborn, the wailing transford into a wet, bubbly giggle.
The man turned, holding the thing he had "delivered." He saw Kian and offered a wide, toothless smile. He held the creature out like a trophy.
"Guest... look... isn't my child... beautiful?"
Kian stared at the thing in the man's arms. It had the body of a foal—four spindly, shaking legs and a coat of yellowed fur—but where the horse's head should have been, there was the head of a human infant, its eyes milky and its skin bloated with edema.
The man was smiling. The human-headed foal was smiling. Even the horse-heads on the flesh-mound were now letting out a rhythmic, laughing sound.
Everything was happy. Everything was rot.
Kian didn't say a word. He holstered his pistol, picked up a heavy wood-axe from the wall, and stepped forward.
SQUELCH.
With one heavy swing, he took the man's head off. The body slumped, and the human-headed foal hit the dirt. It kept giggling, its tiny human mouth opening to reveal rows of needle-like teeth. Kian brought the axe down again, splitting the creature's skull. Green ichor and maggots sprayed his boots.
"Laugh at that," Kian spat.
He grabbed a kerosene lamp from a hook, smashed it against the central flesh-mound, and struck his lighter.
The stable erupted in flas. The fused horses didn't scream as they burned; they continued to laugh, their distorted voices joining in a chorus of joy as the fire consud them.
Kian backed out of the burning building, his brow dripping with sweat.
Warp-taint. Flesh-fusion. Psychological euphoria.
"It's Nurgle," Kian hissed. "The Grandfather is gardening."
Behind him, footsteps approached. Three farrs in stained overalls were walking toward him. They ignored the burning stable. They ignored the bloody axe in Kian's hand. They carried wicker baskets filled with what looked like rotting at and bruised, black fruit.
"Greetings, traveler!" one called out. He had a pair of wooden horns growing from his forehead and his skin was the color of a bruised plum. "You look hungry. Co, join our family feast! The Harvest of Abundance is for all!"
The "food" in their baskets was a crawling mass of decay, covered in flies.
Kian lit a Lho-stick, his hand shaking slightly. "You lot ever take a bath? You sll like a week-old corpse."
The mutants offered warm, humble smiles. "Forgive us, guest. We have been too busy celebrating to mind our scent. We shall wash after the festival!"
Kian exhaled a cloud of smoke and raised the axe. "Don't bother. You won't have skin left to wash in a minute."
He moved in a blur of transhuman speed. Three swings. Three heads. The mutants didn't even try to defend themselves; the last one died with a smile of "understanding" on his face.
Kian realized the horror of the situation. This was the specific danger of Nurgle's rot. The victims weren't "possessed" in the traditional sense—they were converted. They believed their hideous mutations were gifts of health. They saw their rotting village as a paradise.
He began a systematic purge. He moved from house to house, pouring kerosene and striking matches. He turned the village into a giant pyre.
But the fire woke the hive.
Shambling figures began to erge from the smoke. Hundreds of Poxwalkers—the forr villagers—stumbled into the streets. They weren't charging with weapons; they were surrounding Kian, their voices a distorted, wet murmur of "concern."
"Guest, why are you doing this?"
"Please, stop the fire. You'll hurt the blossoms."
"Join us, brother. Let the rot take the pain away."
The spiritual pollution was starting to stack. Kian felt a heavy, lethargic coldness spreading through his limbs. His vision flickered. For a second, he saw the Poxwalkers as normal, crying peasants, begging for their lives. Then, he blinked, and they were back to being bloated monsters.
[HUD WARNING: MALIGNANT CONTAGION DETECTED]
Health points are dropping. Stamina recovery reduced by 50%. Sanity failing.
"Piss off!" Kian roared, firing his pistol into the crowd.
He ran for the center of the village, looking for a clear path out, but the exits were being choked by the sheer mass of the "Blessed." He was nearly surrounded. He considered pulling the master-cord on his demolition vest and ending the raid.
"Soldier of the Throne! Over here!"
A woman's voice cut through the giggling of the horde. Kian looked up. On the third floor of a stone hab-unit, a woman was waving from a window.
Kian didn't hesitate. He burst through the front door, slamd the heavy bolt shut, and sprinted up the stairs.
The Poxwalkers gathered outside the house. They didn't break the door down. They stood in the street, looking up at the window with "polite" patience. In their twisted minds, they were simply waiting for their guest to finish his visit.
Kian reached the top floor and burst into the back room, his pistol leveled.
A middle-class woman lay on a cot. She was covered in pustules, her skin grey, but her eyes were still human—clear and full of an agonizing, lucid grief. She held a bundled infant in her arms.
"Don't rub your eyes, Soldier," she whispered, her voice a dry rattle. "I am not yet fully his. Not yet."
Kian looked at the baby. It was crying—a real, human cry of pain.
"The village... they began to worship the 'Lord of Bountiful Harvests,'" the woman sobbed. "Then the horses changed. Then we changed. We stopped feeling the pain. We started to... like the sll. But my child..."
She pulled back the blanket.
Kian recoiled. The infant had a human body, but its head was that of a miniature horse, its large, wet eyes staring at him with a terrifying, innocent intelligence.
"Horse-headed n. Man-headed horses," Kian growled. "The cycle of the freak-show."
The woman looked at the kerosene tins in the corner of the room. She looked at Kian, a single tear of blood rolling down her cheek.
"Soldier... I beg you. Give us the Emperor's rcy. Purify this womb. I cannot let him beco... like the others."
Kian looked at the woman, then at the horse-child. He picked up a tin of kerosene, doused the bed, and stood by the door.
He struck his lighter.
"Sleep well, ma'am," Kian said, his voice devoid of emotion.
He dropped the fla, and the final light of the Equine Reach began to burn.
☆☆☆
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