Nurgle and Isengar in the style of Abstract Expressionism, as interpreted by DALL-E in February 2025.

  Chapter 34: Love to love you baby

  Moho refuge, Lower crust, Confluence dimension

  Year 42 of the Confluence Republic (local time)

  Nurgle strolled through the house humming a happy tune. There were no actual windows to gaze out from – they were surrounded in every direction by kilometers of solid rock, except in the downwards direction where the rock turned liquid within a few hundred meters – but he and Isengar had set up viewpoints on the walls that looked like windows but peered out on faraway places. Nothing particularly useful – in theory, someone could observe the Divination magic and trace it back to them – but all very pretty. They had windows looking out on other planets, on deep caves lit only by the glow from the lava, on scenic spots hidden away in forests and jungles. Stuff like that.

  As usual, Nurgle walked around naked – he always claimed he was a naturally born nudist – but these days Isengar never complained. Indeed, his companion had finally come to appreciate Nurgle’s powerful and well-shaped body: after their success in Erd, Isengar’s mood had lifted somewhat, and after the longest hiatus Nurgle could remember, they were finally fucking again.

  Well, it was not all lights and flowers. A bit of darkness in there, actually. Nurgle had long maintained that Isengar would feel better – in the therapeutic sense – if he would just express his guilt and shame in erotic games, and now Isengar had finally relented. Which meant there was an abundance of kinky games going on, some of them a little bit dark.

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  But that’s life! You have to take the darkness with the light. If life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Also, the darkness can be your friend.

  Down in the Erd dimension, darkness in the form of shadows had indeed been very helpful, apparently wiping out every last one of the other, not so friendly, shadows. Now, the attack shadows Isengar and Nurgle had released were just wandering around aimlessly, and drops of magical energy were manifesting spontaneously all across the planet. Isengar wanted to have the attack shadows self-destruct immediately, worrying about what Nurgle’s secret friends might really be up to and wanting the army of shadow constructs gone before someone could use it for nefarious purposes, but Nurgle advised patience. If just one of the old shadows remains, it would start consuming Erd energy and replicate uncontrollably again.

  After a while, though, it seemed very unlikely that any of the old shadows had managed to avoid detection. Isengar also argued that if a straggler should show up, wiping it out would be a simple job, which was true enough. Much more elegant to just let their army of automatons do the job, though. Nevertheless, to sate Isengar’s impatience, Nurgle helped him direct all their shadows to a city called Istanbul, where they uploaded their energy, leaving a large hoard inside one of the pretty religious buildings.

  The question was what to do with it. The energy had originally belonged to the Erd dimension, where it did not dissipate but instead took the form of a luminous semi-liquid substance. As tempting as it would be to take it for themselves, Isengar was obviously having none of that. Nurgle basically agreed, and didn’t need the energy for anything for that matter, although he suspected someone else would take it if they just left it there. At least he convinced Isengar to leave a group of their attack shadows as guards – if one of the old shadows had gotten to this hoard, there would have been a feeding and replication frenzy like nothing anyone had seen before.

  Maybe that would be worth it just as a kind of fireworks, but Nurgle did not want to have to repeat the whole process, and he was curious as to what this accumulating Erd energy would lead to. They ended up just leaving the hoard inside the religious building, obfuscating it and surveilling the area, and then Nurgle sent off a message to his secret friend saying that they had disarmed their weapons and what would you recommend doing with the hoard? Isengar thought it would be really interesting to see what these people responded to that.

  Nurgle and Isengar in the style of Félicien Rops, as interpreted by DALL-E in February 2025.