What Blasphemy

At that moment, the rhythm of battle had become a hymn to humanity, and Chaplain Kroll was its lead singer.

He had passed beyond the bounds of a warrior and become a war machine driven by holy wrath, a walking engine of evangelizing extermination.

A thick, sticky layer of pale blue Xenos blood coated his dark gray Terminator Armour. Each heavy step struck the hard floor.

He shouted the oaths of the Word Bearers Legion and the words Lorgar had written in the Lectitio Divinitatus. His Helmet's speakers twisted his voice into a roar of metal and fanatical faith.

"In the Emperor's name, you Xenos are nothing!"

"By our wisdom, your deceptions shall be laid bare!"

"By our courage, you Xenos shall be exterminated!"

His "sermon" was no empty speech. It was delivered through the thunder of his Bolt Pistol and the crushing blows of his Master-crafted Crozius.

In his right hand, the Bolt Pistol blessed by a Chaplain never fell silent. Each precise shot was the God-Emperor's wrath made manifest, its force blasting pearl-white bodies into sprays of pulp.

In his left hand, he gripped a heavy Staff. Its front bore a metal hammer set with the Emperor's sacred image, surrounded by sharp blades shaped like scrolls of scripture.

Kroll's way of "preaching" was to bring that sacred weight crashing down upon those blasphemous creations.

It taught the Xenos before him what the Emperor's wrath meant in the simplest, most direct way.

With a sickening crack of bone and splintering shell, one Xenos's head was driven into its chest, as though its abhorrent existence had been forced back inside its malformed body.

Another sweeping blow sent the scripture-scroll blades along the Staff's side tearing through a second Xenos, splitting its body in two. Shattered organs and luminous blue blood splashed across the still-pulsing wall.

"For the Emperor!"

"Witness me! In the God-Emperor's name!"

"Witness the Emperor's truth! You shall witness it in your destruction!"

He roared, sometimes even triggering the flamethrower built into the base of his Staff. A brief burst of searing flame reduced the wreckage beneath it to hissing, blackened ash.

In the names of the Emperor and the countless tortured humans, Kroll would scour the Xenos filth from reality with holy fire.

Under his command, the Assault Squad surged forward like a torrent of steel and wrath, sweeping away and crushing all resistance.

The chorus of Bolts and the roar of Chainswords were their only prayers. The Xenos' screams were the only words that closed their sermon.

They smashed through corridor after corridor made of unknown silver metal, destroyed several Xenos defensive positions that had tried to rally, and finally reached an unusually thick door made from some composite of chitin and reinforced metal.

Without waiting for an order, a warrior carrying a heavy flamer stepped forward. White-hot flames licked the door, curling and charring it until only a brittle husk remained.

Kroll advanced and easily shattered the last obstacle with his Staff.

The sight beyond the door filled even these battle-hardened veterans, who had witnessed countless horrors across the galaxy, with fury.

It was a vast chamber. A laboratory. A strange, cold odor of preservative mixed with something cloyingly organic hung in the air, overpowering the Smoke and blood of battle.

The chamber walls were made of a smooth, pale, calcium-like material. Biochemical conduits embedded in them glowed a ghostly green, running like human veins to supply the entire room with power and light.

But what stood inside the room was its true heart.

Rows upon rows of transparent cylindrical containers stood in neat formation, like products in a factory warehouse.

Each tank was filled with nutrient fluid that glowed an uncanny green and connected to the system overhead by a dense web of tubes. Tiny bubbles rose slowly through the liquid.

And floating in those tanks... were humans.

Kroll's gaze fixed on the nearest tank. Through the thick glass, he saw the "specimen" inside.

It was recognizably a human woman, twisted into a posture of eternal agony.

The skin across her body had been peeled outward with unimaginable precision, like a bodysuit stripped halfway off, exposing bloodless, pallid muscle and stark ribs beneath.

Her face was contorted, her mouth open in a soundless scream. Her eye sockets were empty; her eyes seemed to have been removed or altered.

But the true blasphemy lay in her abdomen.

Her abdominal cavity had been opened deliberately for display. And deep within her exposed belly...

Something... something that could never have been conceived naturally...

That thing was being "born."

It was a huge, pale, segmented wormlike creature. At its front was a miniature human face, equally twisted with pain, its infant features still faintly recognizable.

It was forcing its way out of the mother's ruined body in a horrific imitation of birth. A thick, pulsing umbilical cord still joined it to her tortured remains.

This life was a perversion, the most extreme mockery and desecration of life's most sacred process. It was also the greatest possible insult to the Word Bearers, who believed in humanity's supremacy.

In the first edition of the Lectitio Divinitatus, Lorgar had made his central doctrine clear: humanity stood above all things and would endure forever, while the Xenos deserved only destruction.

If you encountered a Xenos, you killed it. If you found one in the wilderness, you killed it there. If you found one in a toilet, you drowned it in the toilet.

The only good Xenos was a dead Xenos, one that had not even left ashes behind.

And now these blasphemous Xenos dared to alter humanity's noble bloodline and sacred flesh like this.

"Emperor... above..."

Kroll's voice sank to a hoarse whisper, as though it had risen from an abyss.

His Helmet scanner magnified the scene. Every horrific detail burned itself into his retinas and deep into his soul.

An emotion he had never felt before erupted within him. It surpassed the fury of battle: a pure, cold hatred fierce enough to freeze the core of a Stars.

"This is..." His voice trembled, not with fear, but with rage so immense it seemed ready to burst through his power armour.

"What!!!"

The Staff hummed in his grip. His Servo-muscles strained taut.

"What!!!"

The warriors around him had seen it too. The thunder of bolters fell silent, a rare pause. Only the Chainswords kept roaring as they spun idly, as though they too felt their wielders' shock and towering rage.

"What blasphemy!!!!!!!"

The final words became a deafening roar, filled with endless anguish and the desire to destroy.

Kroll raised his Staff and brought it down on the transparent tank with all his strength!

Bang—crash!!!

The reinforced glass shattered.

Green-glowing nutrient fluid surged out like a breached flood, washing over Kroll's heavy armour with biting cold and that cloying stench.

Without the liquid to support them, the altered mother and her wormlike "offspring" slumped, hanging from the tubes still attached to them.

The wormlike creature touched the air. Its tiny human face twisted, and it let out a shrill, piercing wail that sounded nothing like a human voice.

Kroll looked down at it. There was no pity in his eyes, only the purest will to cleanse, born of humanity's wrath.

He raised an armoured leg, lifting a foot capable of crushing tank plating, then stamped down hard!

Squelch!

A nauseating crunch. The wailing stopped at once.

The wormlike creature was crushed into a stain ground into the floor, a mixture of pale scraps of flesh and luminous blue blood.

Kroll lowered his head and looked at the woman's corpse, her skin peeled back. She was utterly dead, and her suffering seemed at last to have ended.

His low voice held a rare, almost compassionate solemnity.