"My men are gone."
The connection to the Warp had been completely severed.
There was only one possibility.
They were dead.
Death was not the end. Everything in the world returned to new life through death.
For a Greater Daemon of Chaos, death in the material universe merely meant banishment from reality and a return to the Warp. It was far from true death.
Thus, Mortarion did not feel much anger over the deaths of his subordinates.
However, the reports his men had sent back about Gamma World piqued his interest somewhat.
Especially Abaddon's order, as well as Grandfather Nurgle's.
Within the Palace of Death, Mortarion received two messages in succession.
One concerned Abaddon's Great Crusade.
"The Great Crusade."
Mortarion rose from his throne of shattered bones and swollen heaps of corpses.
He was an unimaginably corrupted being. Blessed by Nurgle, his body had swollen to nearly five meters tall, bloated and rotting like the corpse of a giant.
His body was covered in the blasphemous gifts of Nurgle. His breathing mask had completely fused with his face, becoming a rusted metal skull. Only one cloudy yellow eye remained visible. His lower jaw had fallen away, exposing rotten gums and writhing maggots. His chest cavity lay bare, a corrupted heart visibly beating between his ribs, surrounded by coiling intestines and Nurglelings. His abdomen was split open, endlessly spewing poisonous mist and plague flies.
His arms were swollen and ulcerated, his fingers fused into claws. The Silence he gripped was covered in mold.
His legs had become hooves. Every ponderous step left behind corrosive slime.
The air around him was thick with yellow-green toxic clouds. Any mortal who approached would swiftly rot away.
His appearance was unbelievable. Even the Primarchs of old, upon seeing their former brother reduced to such a