Nutans paid no heed to Yushikin's tension. He reached out and pressed a purple button on one of the instruments, then took two steps back and waited for the entire stained-glass panel ahead to rise, revealing a faintly glowing passage and a spiraling staircase leading downward.
He then walked into the passage and gestured for Yushikin to follow.
The Imperium Marshal hesitated for a moment before finally stepping forward.
This area was completely unadorned, utterly out of place with everything else. As Yushikin descended the steps, he saw something below emitting a cold blue glow.
When they finally reached the bottom of the stairs, Nutans suddenly turned to him.
"Here, Marshal, is the answer you seek."
Yushikin looked around. The blue light came from more than a dozen transparent pods along the walls, each as tall as the ceiling.
Within every pod floated some indistinct form—some were vaguely humanoid, some resembled organs or limbs gathered together, while others seemed to be nothing more than twitching muscle tissue.
The rest of the room was filled with gleaming worktables covered in all kinds of instruments, some of whose functions he could not begin to imagine.
He walked between the pods and, with disgust, saw that some contained horribly bloated flesh that nearly stretched the glass apart.
"What are these!?"
The horrific sight left Yushikin almost speechless. He forced every ounce of strength into a terrified question.
"I'm afraid I cannot offer an appropriate explanation, and you would find it difficult to understand anyway."
Nutans did not answer. He turned and walked toward an arcade leading into another room.
Yushikin followed him, studying the pods more closely as he passed. One held a body as large as a Greenskin's, but it was not a corpse. It looked more like something from a nightmare,