Chapter 46: A newly confirmed intern has to take the blame right off the bat!

"Inquisitor Aglaia."

Aglaia stumbled so violently that the dossiers in her hand slipped and scattered across the floor.

Had it not been for Sister Arabella catching her by the arm, she might have lost her composure entirely.

"It's nothing, it's nothing, My Lord."

Stumbling over her words, Aglaia made a couple of awkward grabs at the air before finally scooping up the fallen documents.

She let out a long breath, subtly channeling her psyker abilities to regulate her body's hormonal levels, forcing her brain into a state of artificial calm.

"How goes your plan?"

"After clearing out the Imperial Navy forces, the Seeker began funneling massive waves of population into the primary world of Pield. We do not know how he managed it, but there is a Webway gate located there. Thus, according to our agreement, we are to process these populations centrally."

"The entire population of the sector?"

"Everyone. When my fleet last made contact with the scouts monitoring each planet, less than one-tenth of their populations remained."

*Clack.*

The sound of a pen tip striking the deck.

Aglaia raised her hand and struck the Archon squarely across the face.

A single blow, delivered purely to vent her fury.

The Archon's already mutilated visage was severely deformed by the impact.

Had Archmagos Cawl's mechanical appendages not held her back, Aglaia surely would have struck him a few more times.

"You damned swine! Stupid pigs! Do you have any idea what you've actually done?"

Restrained by unyielding cold steel, Aglaia abandoned her struggles and unleashed a torrent of abuse.

"There are nearly five trillion souls in the Pield Sector, and you just stood by and let that lunatic herd them all onto a single planet, marching them straight into his sacrificial slaughterhouse!"

"And you idiots actually believed his nonsense—you swine are going to be part of his offerings too! Do you even know the consequences of sacrificing this many souls..."

Aglaia no longer dared to imagine it.

She had witnessed the devastation of Chaos aboard the Black Ships once before.

Merely an unstable psyker swallowing the souls of a dozen cellmates had been enough to allow Nurgle's blight to contaminate half a vessel.

The ship's iron bulk rapidly rusted and decayed, before erupting in foul pustules. She had watched with her own eyes as repulsive Plague Marines emerged from demonic portals that reeked like cloacae.

Anyone in the vicinity who merely brushed against that aura mutated on the spot, the microorganisms and bodily tissues of their frames growing in chaotic unison, fusing together before marching toward the living with eerie, twisted smiles.

Had the Emperor's Adeptus Custodes and Sisters of Silence not been present on the vessel at the time, she would not be alive today to vent her rage before these exalted lords.

Five trillion people—even accounting for heavy attrition, that still left two trillion, the population of four hive worlds...

Aglaia wore an expression of utter despair.

That old bastard had truly gone mad.

To satisfy his thirst for knowledge, he was willing to sacrifice so many souls to Chaos.

*'...Emperor, please tell me what I must do.'*

The young Inquisitor was at a complete loss; the stern demeanor she had maintained solely to project authority completely collapsed.

In the beginning, she had simply believed she had caught her mentor's dirty secret, intending to use the opportunity to eliminate the traitor who had betrayed the Emperor and inherit his estate.

After all, Inquisitors dabbling with Chaos was commonplace in their line of work, and getting eliminated for it was equally common. From the moment she discovered her mentor beginning to dabble in Chaos, the idea had taken root.

Besides, she thought her luck was rather good, initially feeling quite pleased that mere moments after earning her full rosette, she had the chance to take over her branch of the Ordo.

Yet—

That old bastard.

How could he possibly pull off something of this scale?

All she wanted was to quietly take out the old bastard, avoid any entanglements with Chaos for the rest of her life, spend a few decades organizing historical texts to hand over to the Inquisition, dump this endless mess of a burden onto someone else, and retire to a Paradise World to live out a comfortable life.

With stable biological-type psyker abilities, living for several centuries would be completely effortless for her.

She had already scoped out a house on a Paradise World, and even paid the final installment just to secure a prime location.

Why on earth did that old bastard have to make things so unimaginably huge?!

Aglaia swore that if she survived this ordeal, she would never study the Horus Heresy again; anything associated with Chaos was pure danger.

At worst, she could just pick some random Space Marine Chapter home world. Macragge had well-documented archives, but no—rumor had it the Blood Angels were too deeply tied to the Warp. What about one with massive historical gaps...

I'll go study the Unforgiven Dark Angels instead! Surely that Chapter isn't tangled up with Chaos!

Yet, was now really the time to be planning for the future?

A voice echoed from the depths of her heart.

*Can I even survive this?*

Aglaia asked herself in the silence.

She did not know.

She didn't even know how to respond to a disaster of this magnitude, having only experienced that single Black Ship incident, with everything else gleaned solely from texts. She had no inkling of the consequences should such a staggering multitude truly be sacrificed to Chaos.

She was just a youngster who had barely stepped out of the archives. Bribing the Adeptus Mechanicus and an Expeditionary Fleet had already required an ungodly amount of audacity; she certainly couldn't conjure up Sisters of Silence and Custodes out of thin air.

"Inquisitor Aglaia, can you confirm that the intelligence you have obtained is authentic?"

Seeing that the young Inquisitor was beginning to shut down mentally, Romulus spoke up to verify the facts, having roughly pieced together what had transpired.

"I can say with near certainty."

Aglaia nodded. She had been investigating her mentor for a very long time.

"Because the answers to the first three questions were already known to me, and the xenos's replies matched my own intelligence, I officially requested this reassignment. That old bastard's conspiracy has already succeeded; I don't even know how we..."

"Inquisitor Aglaia, I care little for the internal squabbles of your Inquisition."

Romulus glanced around the chamber and immediately cut her off.

"You need only tell us what we are likely to face."

The most crucial question right now was the exact nature of the situation awaiting them.

The Astartes didn't quite grasp what a magnitude of five trillion lives meant in the context of a Chaos sacrifice. Due to the whimsical mathematics of GW, they remained deeply skeptical of any numerical data retrieved from before their transit.

"What? Cultists blanketing every world, endless tides of daemons crawling out of the Warp, corrupted Inquisition fleets... perhaps by the time we reach Pield, we'll witness the planet being actively swallowed by the Warp. It's already over..."

Aglaia replied with utter pessimism, every word making her soul feel as though it were being shrouded in an even heavier layer of shadow.

"You—"

Marshal Orlan stepped forward, preparing to drag this bewitching witch away.

Romulus raised a hand, gesturing for him to stop.

Orlan swallowed his words, glanced at the silent Imperial Fists, and stepped back.

The company watched Aglaia in silence.

Karna remained calm and steady; Ramses quietly pondered his own theorems.

They all extended boundless patience to the Inquisitor, knowing that any rookie who suddenly inherited such a catastrophic mess right after gaining full status would inevitably crack.

The young Inquisitor kept her head down, pressing her hands against her temples as if trying to flee reality.

Arthur waited for a moment, finding it increasingly difficult to watch, until a faint pressure registered on his pauldron.

He turned his head to see Karna signaling him with a look.

Were they really expecting a traumatized individual with such a warped worldview to snap out of it on her own? The more she stewed over it, the more heretical her thoughts would become, until her psychic powers spun out of control and treated everyone to a Warp-firework display.

*Clang.*

With deliberate crispness, he drew his black sword.