Something held it tightly. Something cold, tight, and slowly decaying. A flicker of consciousness, a tiny spark of something tried to make sense of its situation.
Pressing against this cold decaying thing, the tiny spark somehow learned that this was a hand, a human hand. It cared less about how it came about this knowledge, and more
Suddenly the decaying hand was gone, held by two living human hands. More knowledge came to it, and it found that it was within something called a lasgun, one of trillions upon trillions made over thousands of years. Knowing what it now was, and what it could do, it did the only thing it could do.
A pulse of energy was released, and it felt something from the hands that now held it. Shock. Surprise. Fear. All of these new things called emotions flooded to the tiny spark, and it began to grow. But with this growth came more, a greater sense of the world around it, and a hunger for more.
Then the hands left it, and it could feel nothing around it. Just when it thought that this would be the new state of its existence, something hit it, something longer than it was, larger, and hollow. Whatever it was, the spark held onto it, and like a joint in a machine it could do more than just unleash pulses of energy.
Wiggling about it hit more things, adding to its mass. When a human hand grabbed it, it swung its lasgun part at it and unleashed a bolt of energy.
Something different happened with the second bolt. There was no fear, no shock, nothing more than the sudden end of something bright and warm. Its hunger was fed, the tiny spark being able to draw in a portion of this sudden brightness and warmth before it was completely extinguished. It grew again tenfold, with knowledge flooding the tiny spark.
The spark held together two lasguns, a mortar tube, and more, it now knew. It could also feel more beyond itself, lights in the distance, lights that were similar to itself. Maybe these were human, or maybe they were more like it, the spark knew not which. What it did know was that one came close, very close, so close it could not let its hunger go unanswered.
The other lights were far away, though the spark could not really tell an exact distance. When the one just began to move away, it unleashed a bolt of energy at it. Ready for the sudden end of the light, ready for its brightness and warmth, the spark drew much more of the human light than the last time.
It now had more power. The spark had the power to bend the solid materials of its body. Righting itself onto three legs, it now knew what legs were, it hobbled towards more of the lights. This was not such easy going as it soon found there were other things that existed that it could not sense, and it soon ran into something exceptionally large, much larger than itself or a human.
There were other things, too, smaller things, things that when it touched it found it could make some use of. It had the power now, and it collected some of these, attaching it to its body as best it could. With one of these came a new sense, something it found to be wondrous as the spark could now perceive the world around it in a new way. Now it could see the objects that had gotten in its way.
More humans came to it, and it could sense more than just their lights. They had shapes, physical forms, and they carried lasguns.
From a distance greater than knew existed before acquiring this new sense, one of the humans used its lasgun and unleashed a bolt of energy at the spark. The bolt hurt, burning the physical body it had, and the spark knew fear for itself. In an instant it knew that with enough hits the humans could destroy its body, and potentially kill it.
Spinning its lasgun about, it shot back at the human. This time it only hurt the human, it's light burning as bright as ever.
Something landed by one of its feet, and before the spark could try and figure out what this gift was it found itself flying. It did not feel burned like what the lasgun had done to it, but it could feel parts of its body were torn, sheared by sharp metal flying from what had been thrown to it. It felt itself land amongst more things, some heavy, dense, and something else that was new.
Taking what energy it could spare, the spark managed to take three of these heavy and dense things and place them to its body for protection. It was just in time as it felt another lasgun bolt hit it, hitting one of the new pieces of heavy metal, and it did not burn.
With its lasgun it shot again. The human fell, its light flashing brightly, and in the instant it managed to capture a sliver of power. Hungry for knowledge, this sliver gave it only a little, but from that was something useful.
More humans drew close, it could tell from the auspex protected within its body that they held their lasguns ready at it. When they were close, it took its other new body part, and unleashed a gout of impossible fire.
Intense heat washed over the humans, burning them to the bone and allowing the spark to draw their light within itself. With its immense boost of power it collected more parts from among the wreckage it had landed in, building itself up more with broken or working weapons.
Mocking the human form it could perceive from its auspex, the entity took a second mortar, a grenade launcher, a lascannon, and an autocannon and affixed them to the frame of a small multiple rocket launcher and made a pair of legs. The lasgun it had been born in was part of its right leg, along with the first mortar it had come in contact with.
With larger, stronger, and more agile legs, the entity walked towards the humans. There were many it could sense now, dozens, maybe even hundreds. Their lasguns barely hurt as it spewed forth impossible fire at the humans, their lights, their souls feeding its hunger, its need for knowledge and power. As it walked it claimed more parts for itself, collecting a large gun that a human had tried in vain to use against the entity. This gun was attached next to its fire, and with it a new power to send bolts of fire rapidly and at a great distance.
More humans came at it, the close ones were burned with impossible fire while those that seemed more dangerous at a distance were shot with its gun. With the collection of more souls the entity learned a new emotion, a new concept, one of futility in the effort the humans made to try and destroy the entity.
From beyond the range of its auspex came a new threat. An explosion so large and violent erupted at its feet that sent it flying. Several humans were lost, fragments of their souls captured to feed its hunger. No knowledge of what caused this came to the entity as it landed further away from the humans. It was in pain, but not mortally hurt.
The explosion had thrown it against the wreckage of a vehicle of some kind. It had wings, which the entity claimed for itself, along with the remains of another multiple rocket pod.
With its newfound wings, it launched itself from the ground towards where it had been thrown from. This time it sensed something new, something larger than itself, and something the data within the auspex said to the entity was dangerous.
It leaped again towards this larger thing, just missing another explosion that would have probably really hurt had it stayed where it had landed. This larger thing barely moved when it landed, and proved to be impervious to its impossible fire or its bolts of energy. It wanted this thing destroyed, for it knew it was hurtful, but also because there were more human souls within that it was hungry for.
Finding a spot where it could grip it with a foot, the entity kicked the top part that seemed to be the thing's arm. It kicked several times, finding it was quite durable. So the entity mustered up what strength it could for a last ditch effort to kick through the shell of this thing.
Instead of kicked through it, the entity kicked of the thing's arm. It brought its fire into the things body, incinerating the humans within the Leman Russ battle tank.
Thinking it would be nice to have an arm, it jumped to where the turret had landed. Part of the battle cannon had broken away from the turret, and touching its body to it the entity was able to make the cannon barrel its left arm. Its fire and bolt thrower were moved to the end of the empty barrel, and it felt it now had a complete arm.
The beast walked towards more of the humans as they now fled. Its long legs were easily more than enough to overtake any human as it burned them in passing. It collected more things it thought would be useful. A device called a vox caster allowed it to hear. Binoculars granted it the ability to see light. More tank shoes gave it protective armor in places that it felt were weak and vulnerable to damage. A lascannon on its shoulder that still had a battery pack allowed it to send powerful bolts of destructive fire, so powerful that the next Leman Russ tank it encountered was destroyed in a single shot.
Flying on wings of steel and fire when it needed, the monster killed every human it could, consuming its mind and soul for knowledge and power. In the human measure of time of an hour it had slain all the humans it could. A total it now knew to be ninety-nine.
With its hearing it found there were more humans a great distance away. It took to the sky on a mirage of fire, heading towards the largest collection of humans it knew existed.
The humans called it a city, though the beast cared not what the human word or name for it was. It walked the streets unimpeded, laying waste to structures and collecting dozens more souls.
Something changed when it consumed is nine hundred and ninety-ninth soul. Taking the multilasers off of two wrecked Sentinels, it made a second arm. A section of thick cable bonded to the multilasers, wrapping around them once loosely, and at the end of this cable, where it met with the barrel of the multilaser, liquid metal sheathed in a mirage of fire grew out and formed a human like hand.
This new arm, and a body that mocked an angel in scrap metal form, the monster continued its quest of slaughter. The hand proved useful as it once ripped the cage off of a Sentinel to grab and crush its pilot while it rapidly sent bolts of energy at a platoon bent on its destruction. Humans scattered when it threw the wrecked Sentinel at them, unable to escape its impossible fire as it chased after them.
Light gave way to darkness, though it mattered little as the monster could see the bright flames of the human souls as it went. Driven by its hunger it continued on to pursue and consume more human souls.
During the period of darkness, in the middle of the night, the monster learned that humans could also fly. It felt cheated, wronged that something so weak could not fly on its own and had to rely on machines to carry them. When one of the metal birds flew overhead, it jumped up at it. Carried by invisible flames, its hand tore through the armored metal wing as easily as it could crush a human body. Finding something hard to grip, it let itself fall back to the ground, the shaft of its jet engine broken in its hand.
It paused for a moment as the broken shaft changed in its hand. A pair of prongs grew out from its sides, curling up towards the end as that flattened into a sword's blade. The weapon was far from perfect, as the daemon forged meta rippled within reality. Instead of a smooth diamond tip, the sword looked to be broken and jagged at its end, like some great force had pulled the tip off like the sword were taffy. Despite the looks the blade was wreathed in a mirage of impossible fire, and strong enough to cleave through the armor of more than one Leman Russ that the Imperial Guard tried to bring against it.
The sun rose again, and still the daemon slew and consumed. It tore through buildings made of ferrocrete like they were rice paper, drawing dozens of souls at a time as the humans within them died, its power growing more slowly the more it consumed. It did not care about the nearly stagnated growth as it soon learned exponentially more souls were needed to grow its power.
Soon new creatures appeared around it, tiny and only as high as the mortars that made up its feet. They were pink, playful, and ever changing. One would have four arms, only to have one fly from its body as it threw fire at a human. At first it tried to destroy these ping things as they appeared, but they split and turned blue with the first blow landed upon them. The pink ones acted playful, but the blue ones were mean and vicious, and some even tried hurting it.
But these pink and blue horrors were not detrimental to it. With each human one slew, its own power grew. As they marched from it, so too did its reach of being able to consume more human souls.
Soon there were hundreds of the pink daemons, and others also soon joined it, drawn to it like moths to a fire. Some were like burning wraiths of mouths and multicolored fire, others were like a creature of the deep waters some of the humans knew about, swimming through the air and chewing through human and armor with equal abandon.
For nine days the daemon marched on, growing in power as its forces grew in number. At the sun reached its zenith of the ninth day the daemon slew and consumed its nine hundred and ninety-nine million, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-ninth soul, a new kind of daemon appeared before it. They looked similar to it, but a mockery of flesh while its body was metal. They had vulture like heads, a pair of wings, and each held a long staff in its wicked looking talons. Among what clothing they wore, and adorning one end of their staves, was an intricate eye of fire. The metal daemon knew it had no such mark on its own body, but knew it felt familiar and comforting.
"The architect of fate welcomes you." the nine said in unison, "Speak, speak your name and become prince of his realm, speak your name and claim your legion."
The first word spoken was impossible for anything human to articulate with any great ease. The nine Lords Of Change that stood before it, however, accepted its name, its true name.
The daemon prince's left wing burned. It was painful but not damaging. It did not need to look, knowing that it now bore the Eye Of Tzeentch on its body, forever warlord and servant of one of the lords of the warp, one of the for gods of Chaos.
Their work done, the army of daemons vanished. There was no pop, no flash, no clap of thunder to announce their departure. They were there one moment, and gone the next, almost as if they never had been in the first place. Only the destruction wrought by the birth of the daemon prince remained, the charred and soulless bodies of millions of humans and Imperial Guard soldiers remained.
IMPERIAL RECORD 0116.023.75 ref 166.13
Date: 7723999.M40
Re: Incursion of Gallathrax
Thought: Life is Death is Life
I am afraid to report that our arrival at the Imperial garrison on Gallathrax was too late. Though we were already passing close to the world when the daemonic incursion was detected, it appears to have moved much more quickly than anticipated. It is unusual that it cumulated so quickly and noticeably, and that there is even a lack of any discernible taint of chaos remaining. Squads of Grey Knights have been dispatched to investigate, finding nothing of note remaining. Witnesses cognizant of recent events are being questioned before being terminated.
One librarian was able to trace the path of destruction by deviations of the warp left by whatever created the disturbance that caused us to top here in the first place. The trail appears to begin at a distant outpost. No survivors were to be found, and the site has been cleansed and purged.
Some holoimages have been recovered, documenting what can be best described as the growth of some kind of daemon. It does not match any known form written in the liber daemonica, though one word spoken by witnesses seems to be consistent for what will likely be taken as the common name of this daemon, and not its true name: Oberoth.
The ultimate level of power of Oberoth cannot be determined at this time, and only future encounters will give us this knowledge. What can be certain, based on witness accounts and the divinations of the librarians, is that this daemon is at least equal in power to a prince and is aligned with the chaos god identified as Tzeentch. Dealing with Oberoth should and must be handled with the same care as any other daemon prince, and this opinion is unanimously agreed upon by the librarians of the Grey Knights present.
The order of Exterminatus has been declared to prevent the possible spread of chaos on Gallathrax, and to other worlds. Rights of cleansing will be performed before leaving the system.
By the Emperor of Mankind may the survivors be spared a fate worse than death.
Athrix Hermongh
Inquisitor of the Ordos Malleus