The Emperor’s Angel of Death

Even in the worst of times, Hayes found it hard to imagine such a wasteland beneath the hive, like a battlefield after the apocalypse.

The ground here was as hard as bone, with bare trees or some kind of metal sticking out of the earth. They stood tall and straight under the gray sky—a sky that seemed to be the bottom of the lower hive's massive steel structure.

Everyone wrapped themselves up tightly to fend off the cold. Even the streets that looked relatively clean were silent, with only the cries of unknown creatures echoing in the air.

In the dim twilight, the narrow houses huddled together, rising in uneven rows from the twisted streets. Some were metal structures, but most looked like they were made of mud or stone. The most elaborate building was a church, with a uniform slate roof and metal frame, while the poorest looked weathered and dilapidated.

But even having a house here was a luxury. More common were tents or open shacks, where weak, dirty, and thin people huddled around faint fires, wary of the flickering shadows.

The air was always filled with stench—the stench of excrement, the stench of burning things, and the most familiar stench to Hayes over the years: the stench of death.

The Imperium had virtually no administrative presence in the underhive. The Arbitrators of the Adeptus Arbites preferred to spend most of the year in their precinct-fortresses watching surveillance equipment, too lazy to wander into this wasteland. Only when there was a "big mess" would they come in armored vehicles to deal with the trouble. So, generally, the underhive was managed by their appointed magistrates.

In contrast, the Departmento Munitorum and the Planetary Governors paid even less attention to this place. Instead, the Ecclesiarchy showed extraordinary resilience, managing to survive in such harsh and terrible conditions. So, if the underhive had any "administrative unit" at all, it would only be the Ecclesiarchy and the various associations or mutual aid societies they organized.

So, even in the extremely resource-scarce underhive, disparities still existed. Bishops and high-ranking clerics lived in relatively luxurious churches, ensuring they were isolated from the dirtiest believers. Those who could afford the high land prices would build their residences as close to the church as possible and isolate themselves with high walls and guards. Of course, the vast majority of people could only squeeze into dilapidated houses.

This also gave rise to a major characteristic of underhive towns: most settlements were built around a church.

Hayes and his companions arrived at a settlement called Lakeview Town. The name suggested its location—near a massive wastewater outlet of the hive. A large amount of wastewater formed a huge lake in the low-lying area.

As the saying goes, 'People who live near the mountains live off the mountains, and people who live near the water live off the water.' Even wastewater was a huge treasure trove in the extremely poor and resource-scarce underhive. A large number of scavengers gathered here first, making a living by salvaging garbage from the wastewater, forming the earliest residents of Lakeview Town. Over the next thousands of years, more and more people came to settle here. When the Adeptus Mechanicus established a resource recovery station here, Lakeview Town experienced real development. Tech-Priests carrying the Aquila established a church here, gangs and clans gradually emerged, and more industries appeared, including fishing—

Although the quality and health of the creatures bred in the wastewater were worrisome, even the worst quality protein was the best food for underhive residents who ate dirt all year round. As for heavy metal pollution or bacterial diseases, people had to survive first before they could consider them.

Fizz grew up in such a place. His clan was called the Bubble-Eye Clan. As a group of people who had been fishing in Lakeview Town for a long time, they had obvious deformities and mutations due to pollution, and were therefore rejected by most of the townspeople.

However, many people knew about them. Hayes quickly found out where they were—on the west side of town, in a place called Mud Bay.

It was a shallow water beach, and also a relatively safe area on the shores of Lakeview Town. After all, in the unfathomable wastewater lake, there were not only various small fish and shrimp, but also terrifying predators over ten meters long. Many creatures that rushed down from above, the xenos pets that the nobles were tired of playing with, became the nightmare of fishermen after generations of mutations.

As a major food source for Lakeview Town, Mud Bay was not remote. There was even a special road leading there. Hayes hired a simple cart and arrived at his destination in ten minutes.

As soon as he got out of the car, he was hit by a fishy stench that Hayes found hard to get used to. The air here was also very humid, and his two wives had already put on the prepared breathing masks and put one on Hayes as well.

Looking around, the huge black lake seemed like an endless sea. Rows of shacks were scattered on the soft, rotten ground along the lake. To support the houses, the locals inserted pipes into the mud and then built the framework of the houses.

Walking on the plank road, or rather the bridge, Hayes could feel the rotten, damp wood bending under his feet, as if it might break at any moment.

In the gray-brown mud, you could occasionally see dead shellfish, most of them as big as a human hand, and emitting bursts of stench. In addition, you could see all kinds of garbage and filth in the mud. They were washed ashore by the lake and piled up into colorful "coral reefs," but they were not beautiful. You could see glass bottles, cans, and even newspapers and magazines with unknown dates.

Even Hayes, who grew up in the underhive, couldn't imagine that humans could survive in such an environment before witnessing it with his own eyes. (The disparities in the world are not limited to Warhammer. Lagos, the capital of the African "New Star" Nigeria, has the largest and dirtiest water slum in the world. You can search for it if you are interested.)

The residents here mostly wore wet cloaks and were hunched over. When they saw Hayes and his companions, a person only as tall as his waist limped over, carrying a dripping basket in his hand.

"Mister, fish, good, want, cheap."

The other party's Gothic accent was very heavy and very slurred, as if speaking in water. It was impossible to understand without listening carefully.

Hayes looked at the basket. The "fish" inside made him feel nauseous. It was very different from the fish he knew. It was more like some kind of worm, with a light brown carapace, disgusting tentacles at the head and tail, and many appendages crawling on both sides of the body, crowding together and very disgusting.

"Uh, thank you, I don't need it for now. Do you know where Fizz's house is?"

"Fizz... Big Brother Fizz?"

The man raised his head, and instantly Hayes's two wives took a step back in fright.

It was a face that instinctively aroused disgust, with almost no hair, only a few sparse strands, pale gray skin with ugly fish-scale-like white spots, small and protruding eyes, a large and deformed mouth, and a nose almost sunken into the face. If the other party couldn't speak, he wouldn't look like a human at all.

More like the many monsters Hayes had eliminated on the battlefield.

"It's okay."

Hayes turned to comfort the two, then bent down and asked amiably:

"Do you know Fizz? I'm his comrade."

But the other party didn't answer him, but suddenly turned around and shouted.

"Fizz is back! Fizz is back!!!"