The Burning of the Garden
Not even the most foolish Nurgling dared twitch.
The battlefield stood suspended in a suffocating stillness. Only the Emperor's Sword burned in Eileen's grasp, its golden fire snapping softly in the wind.
"Brother…?"
Mortarion hovered in mid-air, wings rigid. For ten thousand years the Warp had scoured his mind, yet it had never faltered like this.
He stared at the small figure crowned in radiant light… then at Roboute Guilliman, who lay below with unmistakable relief—almost joy—on his face.
Rage surged.
"Absurd!" Mortarion roared, voice splitting the air. "The Emperor sired no daughters! He forged eighteen sons—no, eighteen slaves!"
His scythe Silence trembled in his gauntlet.
"What are you?" he spat. "You dare claim kinship with that tyrant? You dare call him brother?!"
Eileen did not even glance at him.
She kept her gaze on Guilliman until she was certain the foolish smile on his face wasn't some lingering poison-induced hallucination.
Then she turned.
---
[Listen carefully, Eileen.]
Old Huang's voice echoed within her mind.
[When I erased Typhus, I drained the warp core sustaining him. I've shaped that energy into a barrier around your soul.]
[For today, you may wield everything—without losing yourself.]
A faint chuckle followed.
[Play. Vent your frustration. But leave the winged one to me. I have words for that 'unfilial son.']
"Got it," Eileen replied silently.
Her eyes, blazing gold, shifted.
Hodsec.
The bloated champion still clutched a rust-eaten dagger slick with filth. While attention wavered, he lunged, a mountain of rotting flesh barreling forward.
"He's mine! Grandfather promised me!"
Calgar shouted a warning.
Guilliman tried to rise.
Too late.
---
"Buzz."
The air trembled.
Eileen vanished.
No warp-flash. No distortion. No afterimage.
Simply—gone.
Hodsec stumbled forward, momentum carrying him several steps past the purified sand.
"Hey, fatso."
The voice sounded beside his ear.
He turned—
Gold.
Eileen hovered before his face, the Emperor's Sword blazing white-gold in her hands.
"I heard you wanted to make Robert your toy."
Her smile was thin and merciless.
"Let's see how you like being ash."
Hodsec shrieked and raised his armored arm—barnacle plates thick as tank hulls.
Eileen did not spin. Did not flourish.
She lifted the blade.
And brought it down.
A single, clean strike.
The Emperor's Sword passed through arm, skull, torso—down to the swollen gut—without resistance.
She reappeared behind him, flicking imaginary blood from the blade.
Three seconds passed.
A thin golden line marked the center of Hodsec's body.
"…Hot…" he gurgled.
Light erupted from within.
Not outward—inward.
The flame devoured essence, not flesh. His shell, his rot-swollen organs, the warp-echo of his true name—
All collapsed into incandescent annihilation.
Hodsec did not dissolve.
He ceased.
True death.
Silence swallowed the battlefield.
Even Mortarion inhaled sharply.
---
Then—
A deep, distant tremor rolled across the planet.
The plague-clouds above flushed crimson.
A sound echoed—vast, guttural, resonant with something ancient and wounded.
Ku'gath tumbled from his palanquin, face pressed into the filth.
"Father…"
His voice trembled in genuine terror.
Mortarion looked upward—then beyond.
Through his empyric sight he beheld the Garden.
The domain of Nurgle—eternal rot, fecund decay, suffocating damp.
And now—
Fire.
In the region corresponding to Hodsec's annihilation, golden flame spread through the diseased foliage.
Plague Trees—cultivated for millennia—ignited.
Nurglings fled screaming as sacred psychic fire consumed loam and fungus alike.
The strike had not merely slain a daemon.
It had traveled the metaphysical tether binding him to his patron.
It had burned the Garden itself.
Mortarion's grip weakened.
Only one being in the galaxy wielded such annihilating, ordered flame.
And yet—
The presence before him was smaller. Warmer.
More human.
Eileen lowered the sword.
Golden fire still danced along its edge, hungry.
Behind her, Guilliman, Calgar, and every Ultramarine felt it—the shift. The impossible had become reality.
Hope.
---
[Hahaha! Well done!]
Old Huang's laughter rang bright within her mind.
[That old recluse keeps his house damp enough to grow a million plagues. We're merely helping him with pest control.]
A pause.
[The underlings are gone.]
His tone sharpened.
[Now… for the winged one.]
Eileen tightened her grip.
She raised the Emperor's Sword and leveled its burning tip at Mortarion's pale face.
A brilliant smile curved her lips.
"Hey. Moth."
Her voice carried lightly across the battlefield.
"Your dad's calling you."
"Time to go home for dinner."