The Collected and Collated Annals of the battles, wars and conflicts of Aurish Prime: Part 5: Reapbane

The Father of pestilence had blessed this sewing of the fertile grounds from the beginning.

In the stench of the aftermath of the last engagement the heavy clouds of bloated flies hummed ceaselessly over the corpses of the Tau.

Among that overwhelming droning, patterns began to form. Un-voices babbling in blasphemous syllables began to whisper in to the remnants of Typhus' ear.

It spoke of blessing and allies. Of rot and ripeness, pale pink flesh in ungulent swellings of vile warp matter. A name hissed out of a thousand grinding insectoid mandibles. MUCULENT REAPBANE.

It seemed the whispers of the warp spoke truth, for Typhus knows they are fickle fiends that dwell in the without. When the field of battle was ready to be ploughed and seeded and the bastardized imperial vehicles had cut swathes through his cancerous demon engines, a sign of favour unveiled its self.

Twisting arcs of insects took to the wing, each carrying a morsel of pinkish diseased tissue that dripped with phlegmy digestive bile. Congregating in the air like a flock of migrating birds, murmuring, they traced shapes of something of warped proportions. With each piece of flesh donated to the mass the out lines picked out were filled in. Then, with a flicker like that of old projection film, there was a whole.

It lurched and swayed as it moved. Rolls of flesh slid off of one another and, as they rubbed, fresh purple rashes formed on already riddled flesh. The miasma of odours that wafted from its coagulation in real space bought tears to eyes and even the part xenos metabolism of The Cult instinctively retched to clear the vile poison of its effluent from their systems.

Hard rounds and arcs of supercharged energies slammed into the globulous mass of the daemon, some cutting though and opening new pockets of flesh where purple ropes of viscera plopped out and hang looping like glistening, gaudy trinkets.

It ejected the contents of what ever served as it stomach over the cultists and their artillery. Time after time, bringing its flail down, slicing through armour plate and meat alike. Blows from its blade, formed in some warp-drenched foundry by twisted smiths, beat down upon the hull of the Leman Russ Battle Tank. Eventually, the vehicle succumbed to the relentless flensing of its hull.

Typhus strode forward with the tatters of his troops limping behind with dogged determination; the Death Guard forever resolute in their now profane duty.

The icons were raised. One of warp stuff - a tolling bell held aloft by a one-eyed, winged beast - the other a fountain of sorts, filled with brackish, phosphorescent fluid.

As the remnants of the half human things slunk back to their hiding places among the industrial ruins, Typhus plunged both hands deep in the fountain's basin. Cupping them he lifted his great palms skyward and let the fluid cascade over his eye lenses. He felt this was good, this was great, this was as it should be. He felt the fluid run in to the shapes of his warped terminator plate that had long ago had fused to his mortal flesh, their symbiosis complete in a way none of the Emperor's machine priests could have imagined.

Buzzing again. This time a com bead, detailing the victory of a demon Prince on the planet's surface. The feuds run thick and ancient among the dark gods: the next battle would be a stick in the eye for one of them. The way the grand game would play out? The only way the far future knows.

War.