The Fabulous One

A Tale of Bile – Part the Third and Last

by Tim Sweeney

 

“Ah yes, my dear old brother,” continued Fabius Bile, inexplicably feeling as though weeks had gone by since he had last spoken to Gharghath the Unspleened.

“INNNNNTTTTTTRLLLLOOOOOD?!” inquired Gharghath, apparently unsure why Bile was forgoing his usual habit of leading into the story with some form of humorous aside.

Bile ignored the Berzerker bound to his operating altar, staring off into space in what he hoped was a suitably dramatic fashion.

“Him and I were just so very different.  Sure, we looked like siblings, what with the chiselled good looks and long, white hair that just can’t be tamed, and we even share a penchant for human-skin trench coats,”

“SEEEEEEEEEEMMMMMILLLLARRRSH!!!” said Gharghath, somewhat smugly in Bile’s opinion.

“Even when we liked the same things, it was for different reasons.  Take a topic I know is close to your own heart: religion.”

Ghargath nodded, a gigantic bronze symbol of Khorne prominent on his bare, scarred chest next to what appeared to be a pict of a small, furry animal, the frame inscribed with the word ‘MIIIIITTTTEEEENNNSSSHHH!!!!’

“As you are probably aware, when Fulgrim went and got himself all possessed, the Emperor’s Children became a lot less about the pursuit of perfection, and a whole lot more about weird, phallic growths popping out of your ears.  Oh yeah, and loving the METAL!!!” If it was possible for a person to stick out their tongue and head-bang sardonically, then Bile was absolutely nailing it.

“Most of the lads were pretty content with their new lot in life,” he continued after a moment, wincing as he rubbed his now-sore neck, “Especially once they got the free upgrades and huge supply of drugs.  I was kind of against this, since I’m not one to partake in recreational intoxication – I’m definitely more into developing super strength, rather than developing the munchies, if you know what I mean.  Fabulous pretty much shared the same views, but for entirely different reasons.”

“HUNNNNGH?” asked Gharghath.

“I’m sitting there in the apothecarium one day, right, trying to get impTunes to work on Kiallodon’s doom siren, when all of a sudden my brother comes running in, screaming: ‘It’s people,’ he says, ‘Soylent Freem is made out of people. They’re making our combat drugs out of people. Next thing they’ll be breeding us like cattle for drugs. You’ve gotta tell them. You’ve gotta tell them!’”

Fabius paused for a moment, a faraway look in his eyes.  He dug one of his saw blades deep into Gharghath’s shoulder, the garbled cry of pain helping to assuage his remembered guilt.

“I’ve got to admit, I felt kind of bad when I told him I was the one melting all those folks down into handy tablet form.  Anyway, where was I?”

“Religionssssssssss,” hissed Ma the daemonette, providing a much needed respite from all of Gharghath’s capital letters.

“Ah, quite.  Anyway, a few of the boys in the Legion weren’t too thrilled at the idea of blindly embracing religion, even with a relatively fun God like Slaanesh as the object of worship.  Fabulous and I were probably the most vocal about not wanting to leap head first into a love-fest with She Who Thirsts.  Personally, I never really bought into the whole God thing as a concept, you know?  Even the Corpse-Emperor’s whole ‘Don’t worship me guys, I’m just really psychic, definitely not a God, wink-wink, nudge-nudge, no seriously, I pinky-swear it’ reverse psychology shtick that was so effective on Lorgar and the Word Bearers just seemed like cheap parlour tricks to me.”

Fabius broke into laughter suddenly, “Oh wow, speaking of the Emperor, did I ever tell you about how Angron was convinced for the longest time that he was a puppet?”

“PPPPUPPPPESSSSHT?!”  Gharghath looked confused.

“Yeah, I puppet.  And I don’t mean the whole conspiracy theory floating around of ‘the Emperor was a puppet of Chaos from the beginning, blah blah blah’ that you always hear.  No, I mean an actual puppet!  Apparently when the Big E rescued him from his homeworld, there were a bunch of psyber-cherubs tethered to daddy’s armour, and he was completely sure that the Emperor was a giant marionette!”

“BLARGAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!”  Laughed Gharghath.  Even Ma’nkkqopxrqak’takzzxxpkq was fighting a toothy grin, crab-claw clacking in amusement.

“Gods only knows who he thought was controlling him!”  Bile wiped a tear from his eye at the memory.  Angron hadn’t seen the funny side to the story when he confessed it to Fulgrim over drinks one night. As it turns out, the Primarch of the Emperor’s Children couldn’t keep a secret to save his life, as Fulgrim had immediately gone and blabbed to all the other Primarchs.  They’d all had a pretty big laugh over the story, especially Curze and the Night Lords, who always enjoyed a joke at someone else’s expense.  Of course, that hadn’t stopped the Night Haunter blabbing his own stuff to Fulgrim, with similarly humorous results.

“Anyhoo, the spread of religion had its benefits for me personally.  I enjoyed the, shall we say, ‘ethical freedoms’ embracing the God of excess could bring.  For example, it was generally frowned upon as a loyalist to format the brain of a wounded Devastator and install Windows 30,000 onto his cortex, but suddenly everyone was pretty cool with it, even if the Devastator in question was no longer compatible with his lascannon.”

“IMAMAC!!!” cried Gharghath the Unspleened.

“Quite.  Anyway, all the sex, drugs, and METAL!!! couldn’t make up for how annoying the constant rituals were, not to mention the tentacles and rapid development of multiple man-breasts.  My brother had apparently been sharing many of the same feelings about the Legion’s debasement, but not exactly for the same reasons.   As you probably remember from a few minutes ago in this very same conversation, but which could possibly be weeks ago due to the vagaries of the empyrean…”

Gharghath’s eyes had glazed over.  Bile was ok with that, this part wasn’t really aimed at the bezerker anyway.

“…My dear brother had pulled a bit of an Eldrad and predicted the change in armour colour scheme to black and pink.  With the wide adoption of his idea, this design immediately became, and I quote, ‘soooooooo last season’, which meant that Fabulous could not, in good conscience, stay with the Emperor’s Children.”

Bile’s voice suddenly became high-pitched and lisping, in a way that no Adeptus Astartes should ever be able to accomplish.  Obviously, his acting performance enhancing drugs were working a treat.

“‘The problem, Fabius darling, is what other choice do I have if I rule out Slaanesh?’ he confided in me, after all the kerfuffle over the people-drugs was sorted, ‘Khorne?  Red just does not suit my natural complexion, and all that brass is just ghastly against my frosted tips, so that option is right out.’”

Gharghath seemed quite pleased to hear this.  Bile privately agreed; the God of Kill, Maim, Burning had gotten off lightly that day.

“‘Tzeentch has that lovely pastel thing going on,’” Fabius continued in that lilting, child-like voice, “‘But he has even more pulsating tentacles than Slaanesh does, not to mention that terribly annoying thing his followers are always saying,’”

“Jussssst asssss Planned!” spat Ma, rolling her eyes.

“JUUUUSSSSSHHTTTASSSSSHPLLLLAAAAAANNNNNEEED!” yelled Gharghath.  His eyes were rolling pretty much continuously anyway.

“I know, right?  Honestly, Fabulous was such a know-it-all that Tzeentch would have turned him to spawn in the first five minutes anyway.  He didn’t even mention Nurgle, either.  Green armour and pus were never going to suit my bro.”

“FFFFFFFAAAAATTTTSSSSOOOOOO!!!”  Gharghath howled with laughter, apparently having a typically Khornate opinion of the God of Decay.

“He was in a pretty tough situation.  I found the whole religion thing to be an annoyance, but he really needed to find a God.  The fact was that all the cool traitor Astartes were doing it, and my brother needed to be a part of the ‘it crowd’ or he’d probably go all Night Haunter and wig out.  In the end though, after much soul-searching, he made a fairly cutting edge, risqué choice:  Malal…”

“BLARGLECOPYRIGHTINFRINGEMENTNARGLE!!” Gharghath looked close to panic, somersaulting eyes even wider than usual.

“Sorry, something caught in the throat.  He made a fairly cutting edge, risqué choice: Malice.  It worked out pretty well for him too, I might add.  Black and white are timeless, of course, plus he got to be part of a fairly exclusive club that allowed him to be a total, utter biatch to the other boys.  But there was a bit of a snag he didn’t really count on,”

“ABBY?!” howled Gharghath, hatred warring with fear in his so-called words.

“Indeed.  After the shemozzle that was the fight on Terra, Abaddon took control and started calling these Black Crusades.  He even slaughtered my Horus clones, which, at the risk of going off on a tangent, I personally took a lot of offence at.  I mean, seriously, you try and do something nice for a guy, give him his clone-daddy back, and how does he repay you?  Not to mention those things cost an absolute fortune to produce, the staff at the factory were devastated after all their hard work, just a terrible situation all round.”

“FFFFFAAAAAABBBBUUUULLLOOOOOSHHHH?!”

“Oh yeah, my brother.  Anyway, Abaddon called a Black Crusade.  Naturally, my brother shows up as it was THE place to be.  He rocks up all decked out in power armour inlaid with ivory and onyx, gold filigree, fur, the whole works, and accompanied by an entourage of chained and bound bloodletters.  All pretty stylish right? So he saunters on in and just walks straight up to Abaddon on his throne, brazen as you please,”

Bile relished the rapt look on Gharghath’s face; the Unspleened was a relatively new convert to Chaos, and hadn’t had an opportunity to go on Black Crusade yet, never mind personally meeting the Despoiler himself.

“‘Abby, darling,’ my brother says to the foremost Chaos Champion in the galaxy, ‘Love the topknot, really complements the pallid skin and trophy racks, but this whole Black Legion thing is just overdone!  How about a nice puce and cerulean scheme? The Puce Legion, now THAT will strike fear into those loyalist busybodies!’”

The bezerker and daemonette joined Bile in a healthy bout of laughter at Fabulous’ ridiculous antics.

“What happensssssss next?” asked Ma, recovering first.

“Oh, Abaddon cut him in half with Drach’nyen.  Never had much of a sense of humour did Abaddon.”

Silence rained for a moment.

“WWWWWHHHHHHAATTTTTHHHEEEEEEFFFFFFFFFFFFKKKKKKKKK?!?!” screamed Gharghath.

“Sorry old boy, I missed that?”

“WWWWWHHHHHHAATTTTTHHHEEEEEEFFFFFFFFFFFFKKKKKKKKK?!?!?!” repeated Gharghath, even louder than the first time.

With a sudden jerk, Gharghath the Unspleened yanked his hands free of his restraints, hugely muscled arms barely even flexing with manliness at the effort required.  He reached up and tore the tube from his mouth in a spray of phlegm and saliva.

“I said, is that seriously how the story ends?” said Ghargath, voice remarkably calm and cultured for a wanton bezerker of Khorne.

“It is indeed.  Oh, that also brings us to the results of your test.”  Bile held out a hand to Ma, who handed him a stack of paper, only slightly torn by her pincers.

“Ahh my dear Gharghath, I have great news: the tests are all negative!”

“Oh what a relief!” cried Gharghath happily, his disappointment at the end of Bile’s story obviously forgotten.  Just as planned.

“Indeed, in spite of all your fears I can reliably conclude that you are, in fact, not a mongoose.   I assume the feeling you thought was a mutation coming on was actually just indigestion.”  Bile smiled at his patient, always happy to be the bearer of good news.

“Thank you so much, doctor, you have no idea how much that means to me!  Same time next week?”

“Of course Gharghath.  Just see Nursey the Malpracticesuitable at the front desk and book an appointment.  Have a nice day!”

][][][

Bile sat at his big old desk, leafing through a stack of papers in preparation for his next appointment with Pukus the Inedible, Champion of Nurgle.  Pukus was a new patient, apparently suffering from an ‘embarrassing condition.’

“Patient,” hissed Ma’nkkqopxrqak’takzzxxpkq, appearing suddenly at Bile’s side.

Bile looked up.  Pukus bucked the trend typical in the followers of the God of Disease, being cadaverously skinny, with only a mild case of acne and a few nasty looking moles to show for his allegiance.

“Ahhh, I can already see the problem Mister the Inedible.  Not putrid enough?”  Bile asked, not unsympathetically.

The patient nodded, looking rather forlorn.  Bile could see the plague marine straining desperately to force his gut out into some resemblance of unhealthy corpulence, but it just wasn’t working out for the poor boy.

“Come lay down on this altar and we’ll run a few tests.”  Bile accompanied the chaotic champion across to the table, tying the restraints and inserting the various tubes with the relish of a man who loves his work.

“We’ll need to run some blood workups, not to mention testing your pus and snot levels.  Ma here,” Bile indicated the nearby daemonette with a lazy wave of a mechanical arm, “will be taking a few samples using that astonishingly large syringe she is clutching in her claws.”

Bile paused for a moment, noticing that the patient seemed particularly nervous.  He had just the cure for that.

“Let’s have a chat, you and I, while we wait.  Tell me, friend Pukus, have you ever heard of my sister?  No?  I think you would have liked her.  Her name was Scabrous Bile, and she was a Champion of Nurgle back before most of us even knew about the Chaos Gods.  Why, back then…” His voice trailed off cinematically.

+++Fin+++