Inquisition Files II- Nightmare Man

 ==THE CASE OF THE NIGHTMARE MAN==

 

Inquisitor Galliard flipped through the Inquisition's "X" Files, the cases it had never fully resolved or could never explain, left to rot here on Nemesis Terresa. There were some ten million such cases, and he had to go through all of them, or at least enough until the Lord Inquisitor remembered he was down here doing this busywork.

 

Galliard was proud that he'd been making some progress. Helping out the Burning Man, attending to some other minor busywork cases with anomalous objects and insane books. Apparently some freak of an Inquisitor had included an "Eldar Farseer Hymen" in the catalogue and Galliard was stumped if he could figure out a purpose for that. Apparently according to the accompanying literature, if the virginity of a certain female eldar, designated once every generation to be the avatar of Isha, was ever taken, than an Eldar Craftworld would fall. Apparently the Hymen had belonged to Iyanden's Farseer, though there was no way of proving this.

 

Whatever, that crazy nonsense was past him. Today he had something more serious to attend to. Apparently he was going back down to the cells. There was a Prisoner who'd been there on-off for the last few hundred years. No one was quite sure what to do with him, as he seemed to be capable of breaking out and wreaking merry havoc almost at will. All previous efforts to terminate had failed. This one seemed painfully obvious in its resolution, but Galliard had to go see to be sure.

 

He descended once more, into the bowels of the planet....

He descended to the eightieth floor, one of the deepest. Here the air was deep and stale, and there were very few cells. Just massive, huge vault doors, and a scant few servo skulls and servitors that kept the corridors clean. These were the DANGEROUS and VERY DANGEROUS prisoners and items. One could feel the rankling taint of chaos, even here. It was said that the further one went down, the greater the taint of Chaos and...worse could be felt. It was hard to shake the rumours that the Inquisition had actual full blown Daemons chained in the bowels of the planet. Almost no one went down there. Heck, even Galliard couldn't go past floor 85- only an Inquisitor Lord or someone with Vermillion level security clearance could descend further.

 

He walked briskly, his steps stirring up dust as he did so. He kept his hat brim low, and checked that his bolt-pistols were fully loaded. He carried also with him a thrice-wrought power-sword, the pommel inlaid with a rare soul-stone, stolen from a dying eldar warlock. He called the sword Wraithkin, and was one of his most prized possessions.

 

Today, he might have need of all of it. This Case, its subject, was once a man, a preacher named Lars. But he had been deemed a Radical, and Radical Lars had been targeted by an inquisitorial kill-team. When they came for him, he had been...warped...by the touch of Nurgle, into something unfamiliar, something foul and evil.

 

The story of how they got him here, into this cell, was long and epic. He'd skimmed it, of course.

 

"INQUISITOR...ARE YOU SURE...YOU WANT TO OPEN THIS CHAMBER?" The servitor quaked.

"Relax. There's a secondary chamber inside, for viewing."

"EVEN SO...ONLY ONE LAYER OF METAL BETWEEN YOU AND...IT..."

"A layer a foot thick, i remind you."

The Servitor shrugged, as if to say "i tried".

 

He slid the long mechano-key into the lock, and turned. With a hiss of depressurisation, the first, huge vault door swung open, revealing the observation area, and a smaller, more compact, secondary vault door, which required -2- keys to open.

 

Galliard walked into the room, and was not surprised when the outer door swung closed, with a huge clang. A single light flickered dimly, and the shutters opened on the view-window. Inside all was blackness and buzzing, and he could barely see anything...

 

A face, leered out of the darkness, an impossibly wide grin.

 

hello there, galliard come to gawk?

 

a voice like a thousand flies buzzing and crawling along his skin filled Galliard's mind. So...strong...even for him. This was going to be tough.

 

"Radical Lars is it? You already know who I am, so let’s cut to the chase. I'm here to close your case, so the sooner you co-operate the sooner I can be out of your...ah...hair..."

 

why would i ever want you to leave, you poor silly boy. i want to PLAY

 

The leering face smashed itself against the glass, hard. It flexed, but did not break. For now. At no point did it stop smiling.

 

"I...know, about what you can do. Case-file 106 was very...thorough. About their attempts to dispose of you. Such lack of imagination my predecessors had. I know exactly how to kill you, Case 106. Does that frighten you?"

 

i will wear you inside out and fuck you in from within

 

a creeping rot began to crawl along the walls, and a warning light went off. WARNING CONTAINMENT FAILURE DETECTED.

 

Galliard smiled grimly, hiding his own building fear. This was not going to be fun, or easy. He readied his bolt-pistols.

"Is that your only trick? You ought to be ashamed to call yourself Nurglespawn. You've been down here for what, five hundred years? And only now do you think to try and break through? You must really like being bored."

 

ohihavent been bored galliard ive been very very busy. I knew you would come. I saw it. Ive been preparing a nice little playground.

 

The face smashed through the glass, cutting it and causing black ichor to ooze. It leered, and shouted

 

HELLO INQUISITOR, TIME TO PLAY

 

The bulb exploded, and the world went dark.

 

Galliard fired his guns, though he was blind, and a cloud of rot drenched his senses. He felt the cold, clammy hands of the Nightmare Man dragging him into a buzzing, creeping, crawling cloud. He had to exert every ounce of his psychic power just to keep from disintegrating into a putrid pile of goo and bone. A mass of insects writhed, pupated and died on the edge of his psychic shield, which was but an inch from his flesh. The noise and darkness was unbearable, and Galliard felt himself choking, as he was dragged through...into...somewhere else.

 

He coughed, hacking, as he was dropped onto a platform, a rough corroded metal square hung in oblivion, with long twisting tunnels of rusting pipes all around. A sub-dimension of the warp, a mockery of a decaying industrial facility like you'd find on any hive world of the Imperium.

 

He unsheathed his sword. It glowed a weird pale-blue, casting strange shadows on the walls of rust and death all around him.

 

runinquisitiorimcomingforyou

 

"Not if I come for you first." He snarled. He was going to win this fight.

 

The chase went on for what could have been days, years, minutes, or weeks. All was timeless in the Nightmare Man's lair.

 

His echoing laughter could be heard, sometimes, luring Galliard on, taunting.

 

ihave alleternity to play with YOU

 

Sometimes he'd lunge out of the darkness, sometimes he'd appear behind the inquisitor and try to strike. But always Galliard was ready.

 

"You fear my blade, 106! You fear to do battle with me. Come face the touch of something that can never decay!"

 

allthingsdecay, inquisitor, especially you

 

Galliard began to sweat, exhausted, and he lay down for a while, his chase fruitless. He looked at his hands. He was ageing rapidly, though no time he could discern was passing. His cloak also was worn and faded, and his armour felt creaky and old. This truly was a place of decay.

 

"Face me, damnit! I won’t rot here without a fight!" he snarled, lifting up his sword, and though his chest burned with fatigue, he ran down yet another twisting corridor without light, using his exhausted psy-senses to search ahead, for anything to fight with...

Galliard collapsed to the floor, heaving with breath, leaning on the sword, coughing up blood. His hand was withered and old, and he plucked a strand of white hair from his scalp. He shuddered, feeling emaciated and weak. His cloak fell from his shoulders, frayed and worn, and even his armour now was more rust than metal, an anvil that dragged him down.

 

"Curse you, 106. Too coward...to even fight me..." He felt his heart slowing, every breath ragged and torn. His eyes felt so heavy. The leering face appeared again, and it walked slowly towards its prey.

 

A funchase but predictable i knew it would end thusly

 

It reached down for him, a long clawd hand, ready to flay him....

 

He swung his blade up, the glamour falling away in seconds. He was young and healthy again. The Nightmare Man recoiled, surprised. Wraithkin sang, a keening song, as it ripped through the rot-man's flesh. Galliard grinned. "So easily deceived! I knew you would not close till you perceived me weakened."

 

Lars tried to duck, to weave, to scamper away, but ichors pumped freely from the wounds. Wraithkin bound it here, kept it in this domain, its domain. It could not flee.

 

"It amazes me that my predecessors were too cowardly to enter your domain with you. Afraid of failure. Afraid of death and decay. I fear nothing!" He roared, and stabbed the blade upwards, ripping up through the dead creature's guts, spilling them onto the ground. Immediately, a thousand pupated creatures began to devour them, and the cloud of rot descended on Radical Lars.

 

no...youmusnt...youcant

 

"Your time is over, Lars. Admit it, you didn't escape because you were afraid one of us would figure it out eventually, and end you." He swung hard, so hard the blade sparked off the walls as it cleaved through Lars's neck, a fountain of foul, reeking ichor-blood spraying everywhere. For once, his head wasn't grinning, as it flew into the Void.

 

Galliard stood, pommel in his hand, blade faced down, as the world rotted around him with terrifying speed. Pipes decayed and melted, the ground crumbled and faded, and everything became...blackness. Eternal, cloying blackness.

 

He brought the blade up, and carved a hole in the blackness, and stepped through, into the light...

 

Galliard stamped the file. 106- CLOSED. He smiled to himself with satisfaction. Maybe he had a knack for this sort of thing after-all. He had only needed to spend a few weeks in Terresa's vast library, reading every scrap of material on Nurgle, his servants, his spells and daemons. One thing seemed to bare true- chaos-spawn like this were weak in the Warp, where there heart was. If it died in the Warp, the currents bore its essence away to fragment. Of course, most creatures that dwelled in the Warp could not be so easily broken. But Lars had never -really- escaped, though it seemed to be in his power.

 

A bit of guesswork, some cross-referencing, and the death of a few mind-rent savants later, he had had his answer, and, with it, he had ended the Radical, Lars.

 

"You know, this Case-work is starting to become fun, Servitor. What’s next?"

 

SOMETHING ABOUT AN ORKISH INVENTION NAMED A FUNSTIKK, SIR.

 

Galliard groaned.

 

==THE END==