"Heresy. Blasphemy!!"
That was the only thought running through the front-line Death Guard at that moment. To speak of their Father with such contempt. To refuse the welcoming embrace of the great family. The entire Death Guard contingent had turned red with fury.
All except the senior company commander. Because in that instant he had become aware that something was genuinely wrong.
As a Death Guard who had followed the Daemon Primarch through the entire Great Heresy, he suddenly realized that the warriors across from him looked familiar.
"Were they not supposed to have been orbital-bombed by Horus? Were they not supposed to have died on Istvaan III?"
"Wait. What is that. Why can Grandfather's blessing not pass through. And every one of our family who moves through it comes out significantly weakened."
He was full of questions he could not answer. Grandfather's blessing had already descended. So why had not a single person crossed over into the great family to help slaughter the false Emperor's servants?
But then....
"The Soulless. The false Emperor's dogs are using the Soulless and their ashes to drape this entire area in their filth. That is what is creating this veil."
The Death Guard commander bellowed the realization across the line. These servants of the false Emperor were repulsive. They had resorted to dragging mops through filth and using them against the children of Nurgle.
Was this any way for warriors to behave? Disgusting. Truly, profoundly, unbearably disgusting.
"The ashes of the Soulless have their limits. Valiant Death Guard will not be stopped by this stinking refuse. Charge!!"
He had identified what he believed to be the solution. The Soulless could not be corrupted, true enough. But they had their ceiling. And this was merely ash. Force a path through it, and the enemy would lose their shelter.
Grandfather's blessing would fall upon them then. More would join the family.
So the Death Guard company commander led from the front, his expression set with absolute resolve. He knew that the moment he passed through, he would be carrying something unclean. His brothers might even find him repugnant afterward. But this was for his brothers. For Grandfather's great cause.
Loyal children of Chaos would not flinch from such a sacrifice. Everything for Gran....
"...?"
The moment he broke through the boundary, the Death Guard commander went completely still.
Because the expected revulsion from the Soulless presence was entirely absent. What he felt instead was something different entirely. A quality of life unlike Nurgle's. Not unpleasant, simply alien to what he knew.
And in the moment of crossing the black barrier, roughly half the aura he carried was cut away.
Zhou Ye's purpose was simple: suppress the plague. And in the interest of conserving energy for the larger engagement ahead, he had kept the Wither effect limited. No sweeping landscape of total decay. Only elimination at the level of microorganisms and plague-carriers. Nothing visible, nothing dramatic.
Physical bodies could still pass through. The plague riding them, however, would be stripped down by half on entry. And it would not be spreading anywhere inside. So this was nothing like a Necron situation.
"This is..."
Before the veteran Death Guard had even fully processed what had happened, a shot connected. His head detonated. The headless body folded to the ground.
The entire battlefield went quiet.
Death Guard, Space Wolves, Lamenters. Every one of them froze simultaneously.
Because the shot that killed him had not come from any of them. An Astartes could charge through concentrated fire. They could deflect or roll clear of shots aimed at vital points when given any reaction time at all. A headshot like that was only possible when there was no time to react.
So the one who killed him was not anyone present.
It was a Death Guard with a hand that would not stop shaking. He had been shot by his own brother.
The Warp-barrier that Zhou Ye had established jointly with the specialized obelisk had filtered out the psychic interference. Now, for the first time, the Death Guard who had crossed through could see themselves clearly.
"Kill me. Kill me....."
A trembling voice, and then a Death Guard pulled his own grenade.
Boom!!
The explosion tore through him and the cluster of plague zombies around him alike, reducing them all to fragments.
He had taken his own life.
And he was not alone. The other Death Guard who had already crossed through turned their weapons around in the same moment. They cut through every rotting zombie within reach with everything they had, and then detonated themselves alongside the remains.
In an instant the Nurgle daemon host descended into internal chaos. The entire assembled Imperial force stared at it in bewildered silence.
This was Nurgle. Not Khorne. Khorne's warriors got too deep into the fighting and started swinging at anything. But Nurgle was the most unified of the four internally. How had a single engagement produced this much self-inflicted collapse?
"This is what I said. The Commander's plans are always flawless."
The Space Wolves Dreadnought Ancient spoke to the combat team clustered around him, with himself at their core.
"Hmm...."
Every Wolf pup gave a stiff nod in response. Then they looked up at Gullest, standing at the top of the fortress with the Chapter's sacred relic, sustaining the protective barrier. Expressions of something approaching reverence settled across their faces.
In all honesty, they had been working alongside this Ultramarines-lineage warrior for several days now. They had been genuinely concerned at points that he might simply collapse. That state of perpetual near-death had been remarkable to witness. But to hold together a Chapter of this bewildering composition, make them function as a unified force, and get tactical orders executed effectively throughout.
Genuinely extraordinary.
By now they had worked out at least the outline of it. This Chapter was composed primarily of loyal warriors drawn from the rebel Legions.
That it had not disintegrated immediately upon formation was probably entirely due to the Chapter Master's personal hold on it.
He must be exhausted....
What they did not know was that Zhou Ye had subcontracted the Chapter Master's duties to Ai-chan, and Ai-chan had in turn subcontracted to Klein. Which meant the Chapter Master they had been operating alongside was, in practice, Klein.
But if even Klein had anticipated that the Death Guard would turn on themselves, that was a level of foresight that defied easy explanation...
"Withdraw!!"
At the rear, the Death Guard senior company commander issued the retreat order without hesitation. This had been a probing attack. But how had they ended up in internal collapse before the two sides had even closed to direct engagement?
No wonder those people had rejected Grandfather and refused the family's embrace.
When the survivors came back in, his expression turned very dark.
Of the twenty-plus Astartes he had sent out, not a single one had returned safely.
"Lord Typhus will reach the battlefield in seven days. Until then, focus on eliminating the Orks and the Aeldari first...."
---o---