Seeing the spear in the nameless man's hand, Nurgle felt a strange unease.
In the final stage of the War in Heaven, the Old Ones lost control of the Warp, and Nurgle began to rise.
He and his servants spread plague across the entire material universe.
That had played some part in the decline of the ancient sages.
Countless lives were lost in that war.
He did not retreat into the Warp until the Necrons joined forces with the C'tan and sealed the rifts spreading across the galaxy.
Even so, over the long ages he never lost momentum, continually spreading sickness and plague among civilisations and peoples, granting his favour to the finest among them, and growing ever stronger.
When Slaanesh was born, Nurgle joined the commotion too, and seized the chance to steal away Isha, the goddess of life.
Nurgle had clashed with the other three Chaos Gods again and again in fierce battles.
Yet he had never felt the terror the Nameless Ones brought.
In that instant, the plague god realised something. He too might die and be utterly destroyed.
But now there was no other path.
His mansion, the heart of the garden, had been smashed to pieces in a single blow.
His plague-daemon army was suffering defeat after defeat under the Imperial coalition's fierce assault.
The other three gods did their best to help, but they could not stop the Imperial raiding forces.
Worse, a traitor named Pudge was steadily encroaching on his territory.
He had been driven into a corner, with nowhere left to flee.
Nurgle swung a rusted greatsword down at the Nameless One.
A sharp, piercing whistle split the air, carrying a stench with it.
Where the blade passed, even the swarms of black flies that had hovered over Nurgle's Garden for thousands of years corroded instantly and fell as drops of thick green slime.
It was a blow struck by a Chaos God, with power enough to destroy the entire galaxy with ease and bring death to all things.
Yet such an attack meant nothing to Datch.
He already possessed the Heart of the Universe.
Through it, he could take partial control of reality's console, and had in effect become something like a god of creation.
Nurgle's greatsword held a power that could corrode anything and sever every dimension.
Any ordinary living thing it cut would vanish in an instant, without leaving even a trace of its existence. To Datch, it was nothing.
Datch swung the Spear of the Saint-Slayer down to meet the blade of Nurgle's greatsword.
When the two weapons collided, a deafening sound rang out, like billions of thunderclaps roaring at once, and the entire Warp shook.
A torrent of energy erupted and swallowed everything around them.
The swarms of black flies in the air evaporated in an instant.
Gigantic plague-maggots that had been crawling slowly through the marshes were flung from the ground by the shockwave and torn apart in mid-air.
In the void, the filthy warships were still fighting the Imperial fleet.
Caught in the aftershock, they tumbled and smashed into one another like dead leaves in a hurricane.
One ship after another exploded into terrible green fireballs.
"Has the Nameless One already gained the power to face a Chaos God head-on?"
Cegorach had taken Isha to a safe zone purified by Pudge's life-energy.
Behind his half-smiling, half-weeping jester's mask, his eyes were fixed on the two fighting figures.
Shock and disbelief seeped into his voice.
A Chaos God was invincible.
That was the conclusion Cegorach had drawn after the Fall.
The extinction of the Eldar gods in the Fall had proved it beyond doubt.
Yet now, the Nameless One's performance had shattered Cegorach's long-held belief.
An enemy armed with nothing but a spear had driven the Plague Father to desperation and dealt him terrible wounds.
The Nameless One, a being of unknown origin, had already gained the power to fight a Chaos God.
The C'tan, the T'au goddess and the newly rescued goddess of life, Isha, were all filled with awe.
Isha most of all. Long his prisoner, she knew better than anyone how terrible Nurgle's power was.
Meanwhile, the longer Nurgle fought, the greater his dread grew.
The Nameless One's power was infinite, beyond anything he knew.
It was an ultimate power far surpassing the four Chaos Gods, the Old Ones and the C'tan.
Fighting on is pointless. I am fated to lose.
There was no driving off the Nameless Ones, and he could not protect his own garden.
Nurgle even thought, gloomily, that his chances of escaping the battlefield alive were nil.
"Perhaps we can talk." Nurgle parried with his sword the spear-point Datch had thrust at his chest.
The rusted greatsword's blade was already covered in countless scars and notches.
Every one of them had been left by the Spear of the Saint-Slayer.
"We need not fight to the death. I made mistakes in the past. I will never anger the Imperium of Man again."
"I can also promise never to encroach on realspace, and to pour out all the primordial plague-liquor that has been brewing in my plague-cauldron for thousands of years."
"There is no reason for you and me to fight."
Hearing this, Datch grinned.
"Are you kidding me, fatso?"
Ignoring Nurgle's plea for mercy, Datch thrust the spear again and again. Nurgle was forced to answer with the sword, and the clash of metal rang out.
In Datch's hand, the Spear of the Saint-Slayer became a dense, overwhelming blaze of golden light.
He attacked faster and faster, giving Nurgle no time to breathe and no opening to negotiate.
After a fierce and utterly brutal struggle — one that threatened to erase the very laws of the universe — Nurgle's guard finally left a gap.
Datch did not miss his chance. The Spear of the Saint-Slayer shot out and pierced Nurgle's obese chest.
Under that terrible power, cracks spread across Nurgle's gigantic body, and light blazed from within them.
These cracks were not physical wounds. They marked the collapse of the plague god's very "concept of existence".
With a groan of pain, Nurgle's body tore apart and dissolved into endless black ash.
Just before that fat, half-rotted face vanished completely, its mouth opened one last time, as if trying to say something.
It might have been a farewell to Isha, or a curse on the Nameless One.
Whatever it was, no one heard it, and it would never be recorded in history.
And so a mighty Chaos God vanished completely.
With Father Nurgle's death, the entire garden-realm shook and underwent a violent transformation.
Towering, half-rotted ancient trees withered and crumbled into black ash.
The plague-rivers and slime-marshes that had run through the whole Garden of Nurgle dried up rapidly without his power.
The corpses floating on them visibly turned to ash and disappeared.
The daemon princes raised up by merciful Father Nurgle, the Plaguebearers, the Great Unclean Ones and Nurgle's champions all felt their father's blessing vanish at the same moment.
On the other side of the garden, Guilliman, blessed by the Nameless One and the Emperor, was fighting Mortarion.
The duel between the two Primarchs was not as intense as the battle between the Nameless One and Nurgle, but it was still terrible.
As they fought, deep cracks split the ground, and foul slime spurted from them.
"Guilliman!" Mortarion roared, swinging his scythe at his brother.
That scythe held terrible plague-power; every stroke cleaved space itself.
Guilliman's Emperor's Sword was no less terrible a weapon.
Every blow rang with a dazzling roar of flame.
Each time scythe and longsword met, terrible energy burst out with the roar of metal on metal.
But the instant Nurgle was pierced by the Spear of the Saint-Slayer, Mortarion felt his father-god's blessing vanish.
His power visibly and rapidly declined.
"No! That cannot be!" Mortarion's voice was full of despair, and disbelief filled his eyes.
How can our loving Father fall?
This isn't real. It isn't real.
Father is one of the most powerful Chaos Gods in the Warp. No one can defeat him.
"Mortarion, I will put you in a kennel, take you back to Terra and have you stand trial." Guilliman had felt the change too, and the Emperor's Sword in his hand blazed even more fiercely.
He knew the fight between the Nameless One and Nurgle had already been decided.
As expected, the Nameless One had won again.
Realising this, Guilliman was overjoyed.
He truly is the best partner anyone could ask for. Whatever he does, he is unbelievably reliable.
Guilliman swung the Emperor's Sword in a flurry of strokes, the golden flame on its blade leaving ever more dazzling streaks.
Mortarion gave ground again and again and was forced onto the defensive.
"This isn't real!" he shouted hysterically.
Nurgle's defeat made him feel like a clown once more.
He was always one step too late, always on the wrong side.
Every time I stand at a crossroads in life, I choose the wrong way.
"Pitiful." Guilliman leapt, raised the Emperor's Sword and brought it down with tremendous force.
The technique was simple yet deadly, concentrating the full weight and fire of the Emperor's Sword at the tip of the blade.
Mortarion was forced to parry with his scythe. The instant the weapons met, Mortarion, bereft of his father's blessing, was overpowered.
His knees buckled, and he dropped to them on the spot.
Guilliman bore down hard, and each time the golden flame of the Emperor's Sword struck the scythe, it grew terribly stronger.
Mortarion sank lower and lower, like a stake hammered into the ground again and again.
Then Guilliman stepped back a pace, raised his sword and knocked Mortarion's scythe aside.
Reversing his grip on the Emperor's Sword, he slammed the pommel into the side of Mortarion's helm. His brother reeled, stunned and disorientated.
When Mortarion could resist no more, Guilliman produced a purpose-made shackle.
Dorn had designed it specially for captured Primarchs. It was forged from adamantium, with numerous Dreadnought and Eldar sealing runes set into the clasps.
It could completely suppress the psychic power of its wearer and sever his connection to the Warp.
Guilliman shackled Mortarion and ordered a cage brought to ship him back to Terra for trial.
Nurgle's death-cry threw the entire Warp into frenzy.
The other three Chaos Gods had witnessed it too.
Nurgle had fallen; his garden had collapsed; and the Nameless One stood spear in hand, the Saint-Slayer, before the Plague Father's remains.
Nurgle was dead. One of the Four, the Plague Father, the source of all sickness, decay and despair in the universe, had been erased by the enemy down to the very root of his existence.
With Datch's help, Pudge brought Nurgle's domain wholly under his control.
His body swelled at once, growing from about the height of a Space Marine's knee to a size that would not be out of place facing a C'tan or a Chaos God head-on.
His skin, once semi-transparent with faintly golden veins shining through, became a crystalline layer that gave off a warm, steady emerald light.
The instant he absorbed the fragments of authority, countless green rays of life burst from his gigantic body and spread in every direction.
The plague-daemons in their path screamed in agony as the emerald light engulfed them.
Their ugly, rotten shells collapsed on the spot and became entirely new forms of life.
Some became spirits of life with transparent wings, dancing gracefully above forest streams.
Some became angels of life, conjuring flowers and buds from thin air and walking barefoot across fertile soil newly risen from the dried-up marshes.
Some became broad-winged, feathered birds that soared freely through the garden's sky.
The garden, once smothered in mud and plague, underwent an astonishing transformation too.
The rotten marshes became clear streams, their cool water flowing gently over pebbled beds.
The twisted, withered plague-forest vanished, and a lush forest spread in its place.
The fog-choked marshes that had once covered the garden, endlessly spewing terrible green plague-spores, were now grassland where vivid flowers bloomed in profusion.
Rare flowers and plants that bloom only in the purest surroundings swayed gently in the breeze.
The Garden of Nurgle, once a symbol of despair and death, had become a breathtaking green paradise brimming with life, enchanting all who saw it.
A beautiful house appeared at the centre of the garden.
It was as vast and ancient as Nurgle's mansion, but vines climbed its walls, and vivid flowers bloomed in profusion, radiating vitality — utterly unlike Nurgle's mansion, that symbol of death and decay.
And so a great life-form, a symbol of hope, new life and the future, was formally born.
Having witnessed the transformation of Nurgle's Garden, the hosts of the other three gods chose to withdraw.
They had already lost this battle. Prolonging the stalemate would only add to their losses.
The news spread across the entire Warp in an instant.
A Chaos God had died.
It shocked countless beings throughout the Warp.
Many powers existed in the Warp.
The Black Sun of the Calixis Sector, for one.
Or frontier Warp-creations that had fled the ruins of the Old Ones' laboratories at the end of the War in Heaven and never joined any faction.
Or the remnants of other races' gods.
But of all the powers in the Warp, the Chaos Gods were without doubt the mightiest.
The order of the four gods had ruled the Warp for thousands of years, and no power had ever truly been able to challenge their authority.
Today that order had collapsed at its very foundations.
Despair showed on the faces of Tzeentch, Khorne and Slaanesh.
The age of Chaos was over: the age that had sprouted at the end of the War in Heaven, reached its height after the great collapse of the Eldar empire, and once driven the entire Imperium of Man to the brink of ruin during the Horus Heresy.
The instant the Spear of the Saint-Slayer pierced Nurgle's chest, that age had truly ended.
The Lord of Absurdity would become the absolute ruler of the Warp.
Not as a Chaos God, but as something far higher, older, and more inviolable than the Chaos Gods.
...