Chapter I: The Valkayrie
The drizzling soft pattering of rain contined at the South Portico of the Imperial Palace where the stylish high gothic spires of the Adeptus Custodes meet the icy ramparts of the sprawling military fortress and home to the Emperor of Mankind. The Imperial Palace Proper loomed beyond the stone and metal battlements ornately designed with elaborate arches and golden eagle statuaries. Despite the palaces ominous beauty with its red drapes hung over the sides of wondorous stone catwalks the continent sized facility seemed more like a prison than a home for such a powerful creature as the Emperor. This resonance was possibly the result of several spotlights scanning the airspace, watching for looming direct threats to the mountain fortress at the facilities core.
"This is Captain Erda. The South Portico is still clear." Said a woman in wonderfullly engraved golden power armor with a red felt cape slouched over her shoulders. She was young, merely one hundred and ten years old by modern Terran standards, with short red hair covered in a grey clothe hood. By her side were an additional seven guards, Adeptus Custodes, all in golden power armor and all holding bolters. The red banners emblazened with the imperial eagle continued to blow off the porticos first battlements defense walls as the rain turned into sleet and eventually into a snowy slush.
"Captain?" barked one of the guards, motioning out into the distance with his bolter. Erda had to narrow her eyes to make out something, a sliver of darkness, clearly an object, approaching the ramparts.
"This is Captain Erda. Adebta Sororitas. We have an unknown contact at the South Portico. Please respond."
The womans vox cybernetic implant went to static and then shut down. Nothing. The object approaching the ramparts morphed as it moved through a blizzard of white mist. What was once a black speck transformed into a person, a person clad in a grey cloak walking through the icy ruins of the decrepit city that once surrounded the imperial palace.
The meganopolis city that had once surrounded the palace was long since abandoned. Everything within three kilometers of the palaces core citadel was an empty ruin of frozen buildings decaying into the old Terran landscape. It was strange to think that at one time billions of people once lived in this frozen hell. It was strange to think that this frozen hell was once the Himalayan Mountains. But, time reduces all things to ruin. What was once green and beautiful, then became a glowing golden palace, and then eventually in 1,000 years... a decaying ruin.
Metal shutters moaned on rusted hinges as this individual marched through a valley of snow. She had something on her back. It was an object clad in a white piece of clothe, massive, and oddly angled.
"Halt!" yelled Erda. Floodlights flashed along the walls of the Imperial Palaces ramparts, triangulating and illuminating the approaching person.
"I said Halt!" she yelled again. This time a warning shot was issued. Still the person pursued.
"Fire at will!" yelled one of the nearby Adeptus Custodes. Thounds of rounds of bolter shot and plasma rounds erupted the snowfall where the approaching person had been standing. The palace defenders continued firing way past when the threat had clearly been silenced until at last a cease fire had been issued and enforced.
Everyone stood on eage as the smoke and fog from the melted snow misted away revealing the charred and cratered landscape where the approaching individual had once been walking. Erda sighed a sign of relief, and then heard a chuckle.
+You missed+
Erda's eyes light up with fright. Those words were not spoken. They were inside her mind. Suddenly, the rampart to her right exploded in a massive avalanche of stone, mortar, and broken bodies. Twenty Adeptus Custodes in golden power armor exploded like red confitti in mid-air raining blood and meat across their Holy Shrine. Erda looked on in awe and horror, as something, someone, stepped through the remains of the broken palace walls.
+Get out of the way.+
"Who are you?"
+I'm not here for you. So, get out of the way.+
In a display of massive physkr power, every head of every Adeptus Custodes within five hundred feet suddenly exploded regardless of cover or counter physkr training. Bodies fell by the wayside as this unknown person marched forward. Bolter rounds fired from towers slammed into a shield of mental energy. Each round upon hitting this shield of mental power turned into golden mist and ceased to exist as a result of atotamical deatomization. Erda felt a chill go down her spin. This was not a normal physkr. This was... an Alfa? No... this was an Alfa Plus.
"By the throne..." she whispered. The hooded figure suddenly stopped its march, turned, and looked at her. Not just in her direction, but directly at her.
+I know you.+ It said flatly.
"Who are you?" repeated Erda as the Imperial Palace, now aware of the attack, fully mobilized. Alert sirens echoed off into the distance as gunships carrying large amounts of reinforcements started to arrive from planetary orbit and nearby adjacent ramparts. The entire continent fortress of the Imperial Palace was about to go on the war path.
+No... I am wrong. It is you, but we have not yet met. You are the one before the other one. I apologize.+
The hooded figure turned back, breaking its glance, walking forward casually. As this person moved forward past numerous bombed out and burning buildings that formed the previous stone towers of the palace grounds two gold plated Warlord Class Battle Titans emerged flanking either side of the assaulting party. Looming like giants they marched forward towards the mysterious Alpha Physker. Additional palace defenders, numbering three hundred Imperial Guards attached to Adeptus Custodes South Portico Defense Garrison lined the battlements of the interior defense ring. All at once the Titans fired their volcano cannons, the imperial guards in fur coats fired their lasrifles. Bright red energy beams riped through the landscape sharding stonework and masonry with sheer kenetic force. Towers fell, the area between the first defense wall and the second defense wall was reduced to rubble.
"This is Tarsus Major. Hostiles confirmed..." chimed Erda's vox, followed by a brief stop, "I don't believe this... is anyone else seeing this!?"
Erda focused in, her eyes widening as the lone stranger continued walking through the inferno and destruction unleashed by the War Titans and Imperial Guard. Everyone was surprised and mortified. It was now that Erda came to a startling realization. This was not an Alpha Physker. Whatever this was, it was something much, much more powerful.
It was now that the grey cloaked individual reached behind its back and removed the canvas clad object. The white clothe draped away revealing a black and red scyth three times the size of a warhammer and oozing with black/red energy which fell away from the sharpened metal like the essence of chaos itsself.
With the blink of an eye, this person stepped within three yards of one Titan. The scythe was swung in two large semi-cirlces. The golden War Titan bisected into four parts, tumbled apart, exploded into shards of metal as it landed across the remains of several stone buildings. The Imperial Guards looked on in horror as the other War Titan turned to open fire, but in another blink of the eye this mysterious person had teleported above the war machine. The sycthe rotated straight down and a massive beam of red energy tore the Titan straight down the middle. Dozens of additional stone buildings in the beams wake collapsed into ruin as the Titan now bisected fell in two seperate directions, exploding in a hellish inferno from which no man could escape.
The Imperial Guards on the second defense battlements opened fire. In response the mysterious indvidual who had just slain two War Titans teleported before the second battlements. She swung that massive scythe from side to side as if cutting wheat. A mile of stone masonry collapsed killing everyone along the battlements.
Off in the distance glowed the giant Limestone pyramid of the Sanctum Imperialis. The other facilities at the heart of the Imperium such as the Senatorum Imperialis and Astronomican Beacon were off to the sides. All these primary buildings were connected by huge stone causeways elevated into the air along the remains of a long forgotten mountain chain. Other structures, floated lazily between the main buildings. It was a literal golden city.
Fifty Adeptus Custodes formed a phalanx before the sythe wielding stranger. They aimed and they fired, but their rounds merely hit an all powerful mental barrier. With a single swing of the blade these men were cut down and reduced to a gory mess.
More men, more gunships, more powerful weapons of war were funneled into the field of battle. At one point a full squadron of Dreadnoughts backed up by a Heavy Cruiser from the Imperial Navy. All were smitten. All were useless. Until, at last, this stranger entered the Sanctum Imperialis. Two more gold plated Battle Titans, both reduced to flaming wreckage, adorned the Eternity Gates entrance.
The stranger marched forward until posiitoned at the core of the pyramids lobby. Adeptus Costodes assembled on all sides and opened fire. Their weapons were useless. By this point it was quite clear that this person could not be stopped.
In an elaborate display of weapon handling the scythe was spun like a baton and the staff end was slammed into the floor. A mineshaft half a mile deep dissintegrated through solid stone and metal deep into the bowels of the fortress. The stranger levitated downward. The bolter shots still being reduced to golden ash along her mental barrier.
At last the stranger reached the bottom floor of the Sanctum Imperiallis. Numerous tech priest watching, stunned, as she walked past them. More Adeptus Costodes, probably the last line of defense fired at the stranger. They were quickly slain,cut to pieces.
Erda had to run to catch up to the battle. The stranger had wasted no time slaughtering a path of death and destruction right into the heart of the Imperial Palace. She passed numerous dead Adeptus Costodes, cut to ribbons, their golden power armor coated in blood. Eventually, her mind started to registar physker thoughts. They were coming from the throne room.
+Send me back+
+Send me back again+
+I can do it this time+
She rounded the corner and found the stranger standing in the middle of the throne room. Sixteen Adeptus Costodes in Terminator armor lay dead at her feet. A powerful physker field, like a snow storm was active in the chambers. It was quite clear that something, someone, was unfolding reality.
The stranger turned and looked at her.
+I see you are here, and that must mean that the other one is nearby.+
Erda instinctavly raised her bolter, aimed, and was suddenly plowed against the wall by another person. She switched her gaze, and narrowed her eyes. This person, this other person, the blood covering her face, but the short red hair... it was her.
"Don't shoot! This isn't what you think it is!"
Erda pushed, herself, or this other thing that looked like her, away. By the time her bolter had been raised and pointed at the thing which had attacked the palace a massive tremor shook the throne room to its very core. Dust fell from the rafters. Stone pillars collapsed. The vacant non-implanted eye of the Emperors skull glowed bright green. And then... there was nothing. Darkness... Erda felt herself falling. She became cold, then she saw swirling blue lights, and heard a male voice inside her head. It was a broadcasting Pysker, a very powerful one by the clarity of the voice.
+Despite my best efforts this is not something that can be completed under normal circumstances. We have tried 67 times, and it has always ended the same way. Now, I have decided that I will send all three of you back to where it began along with a Pysker fragment of my conciousness. Use this fragment to help the past versions of me finish what we started. Surtur will continue her job, her 68th attempt to alter the past. The other you will pursue her through the quantum rifts.+
"Who are you?"
She felt the voice become begast. It seemed as though he was taken aback by the sudden nonrecognition of his being.
+You will understand when you find me in the past. I don't have time to explain everything now. Just take this imprint... the other me's will understand once they prob your mind.+
Erda felt a spike of pain glare behind her right eye as a large amount of information streamed into her very conciousness. It was like a white-out inside her skull. And then... she passed out from pain.