The swamp dragon kicked up a slurry as it climbed up the north edge of the bog. The dirt was still saturated with the Ur-Father’s influence, and the maggotkin cultivated as best they could, but the further these plains stretched on, the more the bondage of reality would return. Stacking charnel mounds and seeding feculent orchards kept the soil from eroding into dry banality, the infected roots anchoring Nurgushin on the land. The nurglings tended to meadows under the overseer of plaguebearers on mulluscoids that tilled the ground with their slime. Canker priests, within dilapidated and overgrown monasteries, studied scripture and captured the landscape's beauty in various arts.

  No matter. As the swamp dragon continued, they returned to the quotidian world, what-could-be disappearing behind the horizon.

  What changed the least was the sky. The smog turned the atmosphere brown and the clouds black. Where the west saw gors roam in the heat of the sun, the north had scarcely known a clear day for centuries, and none but the Iron-teeth would give up the wind at their manes for productivity.

  The north was the most industrialized region of Sinui. Rivers ran viscously with the effluent of the many mines and factories that developed across the region like a rash. Passing by the mines was akin to witnessing live phlebectomies, the quarries akin to skin grafts.

  The factories consumed their product and spat out almost everything Sinui needed: construction materials destined to become infrastructure; tools to build that infrastructure; armaments, armor, and ammunition to fight the long war.

  This was all thanks to the gnomes who primarily inhabited the north. Their short stature makes them excellent excavators, and their nimble hands make them natural craftsmen, especially for small and intricate components. Those too restless for patient work joined the army as scouts, sharpshooters, and demolitioners.

  Just like the gors and anyone else with sense, the gnomes fled from the Imperium to Sinui for sanctuary.

  Yun was newly born when the stars touched Incheo. His village was far from their landing, yet their reach was felt farther, carried by rumor from village to village. They defeated the dokkaebi, the sansin, desecrated the tributes to the old goddess, and withstood her wrath. They planted concrete where there was once earth. They clothed suits and dresses where there were once hanboks and chosonots. They enforced a lingua franca where once there were many dialects. They spoke of a true god, one not of the mountains but of the heavens.

  A god of mankind. Of humans.

  They were no longer peoples and tribes. They were humans, belonging to the Imperium, whether they knew it or not. Then there were abhuman: the impurified, the deviant, the degeneration of the human form. They were no longer neighbors: they were beastmen, they were ratlings, they were ogryn, they were witchlings, they were its. They were different, and different was wrong. Different could be tolerated so long as different knew its place, separate and not equal.

  Humans were lured in by the promises of this Imperium. Those who were not, like Yun’s village, were dragged in. They were suffused in Imperium, such that the oldways became known only in hushed whispers away from probing ears, soon not even that, the new generation born not knowing what had been lost.

  Then came the Adepta Sororitas, who declared Incheo to be a shrine world. A shrine world of humanity demanded purity, and purity had no room for tolerance.

  The ghettos and reservations were no longer acceptable compromises. Their existence was a blemish to be cleansed. Their deaths were celebrated by opportunists who plundered their homes and rose to acclaim on piles of corpses, and true believers who were driven euphoric in the slaughter that ‘proved’ their ‘superiority’.

  Some abhumans attempted to ingratiate themselves by admitting to their inferiority, by submitting to every degradation, by positioning themselves as lesser blemishes compared to other abhumans; purity spared no imperfection, and they were put to the pyre all the same.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  Those that spoke out for or aided the abhumans were out down alongside them, their humanhood stripped due to the malady of their minds: tolerance, for those that tolerated the mutant shared in the crime of its existence. The rest kept their heads down. It was not them and theirs, so it was not their problem. The Imperium was too mighty, everwatching, how could they hope to resist?

  Yun’s parents held to their hope, and for that they were lynched. As orphans, Yun and his sister were inducted into the budding schola progenium. They were taught to hate their past, their parents, for leading them astray from the God-Emperor. His sister took to it and was accepted into the Adepta Sororitas. Yun did not fit so neatly, and had to be beaten, and hammered, and sculpted, and whipped into proper shape—or, at least, to be an example for others.

  Yun prayed to any god that would listen, and Nurgushin answered. The sky split apart, and the invincible, all-knowing Imperium was stripped bare. If only it were killed. Instead, he guided those who would answer him to collect the gemstones and deliver them to the sapling that would become the sanctuary within the Sinui mountains.

  They arrived at the Arcanum, a factorum that acts as the seat of power for the gnome council of brewmasters. Here, the brewmasters invoke the maggotkin to be imbued within otherwise inert equipment. While they prefer living hosts like the canker priests, maggotkin can fill and empower the equipment to new heights of capabilities.

  The executive brewmaster and her staff were on a platform conducting such a ritual upon a hydra flak tank set on the cauldron beneath them. The chassis had been inscribed with runes all over its hull and stuffed with squirming meat. Boiling vats of the most foetid brews were opened and stirred to entice the maggotkin still on the other side. The pungent vapor triggered such olfactory synesthesia that their gathered gloom on the ceiling was the very visage of Nurgushin’s Garden. Curious demons peering back at them. Curious as they were, they passed over the prospect. Yun and Mogala went up to speak with the executive brewmaster.

  “Drosophiligrum?” Called out Pusbloom from the shopfloor to one curious rot fly in the gloom, “is that you?”

  “Pusbloom,” its maw unhinged but did not move with the syllables, “you are with these mortals?”

  “Yes, and they have prepared a vessel.”

  “So they have, so they have.”

  “...well?”

  “Well, what?”

  “Are you getting in it?”

  “Hmmm, I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean ‘you don’t know’?!”

  “I mean, I’m not sure this vessel is worthwhile.”

  “Worthwhile? I have seen kin become shovels. This is a tank!”

  “It’s a truck with an anti-air emplacement bolted on top. A shovel is novel. A tank is exciting. This is the worst of both: stuck in the back doing the boring part: area denial.”

  “On the contrary, the most worthwhile enemies here favor the sky. You would have no shortage of targets, no shortage of challengers.”

  “But I want to be the challenger, not the defender. There is this lad, a maggot lord of a feudal world, that the others are flocking to. It will be a race against the other gods, other fledgling gods, for the world, with him leading the charge. What does being a turret offer me?”

  “The Anathema’s most favored will be within your sights. You will challenge His protections as well as you would siege any wall.”

  “We are always fighting the Anathema, that’s the point. A whole galaxy of possibilities sanded down to all its ridges to the same basic template every time. I need some variety.”

  Pusbloom sighed, “Pandamecia has taken root on this world.”

  “Pandamecia!? This is where the old girl has gone? You should have started with that, you sly codger you.”

  Drosophiligrum pushed against the miasma, the gauze segregating dimensions bending around him. The vats were poured into the cauldron by tubing the hydra to be soaked up by the meat of the chassis. The twitching flesh throbbed with life, swelling such that it bent metal, gouting excess bilge across the scum-stained floor.

  The lurid flesh that bulged out suddenly pocked with expulsions of flatulence. From the dark of the quivering hexagons emerged glossy eggs within which the larvae swiveled. Gravid hives such as these nest the maggots within the eggs so that they may emerge as fully grown flies as needed. The flak cannons no longer used munitions; instead, they would spurt digestive enzymes that combust effectively as an airburst. As a living organism now, the tank could absorb hits that would scramble mortal crews and regenerate the damage if given the space and time. It needed no repairmen, no resupply, and could act on its own instincts and accord.

  Such was how a daemon engine was born.