Bound Fate

ILikeCommas


Thanks to Someone else. for advice on lore, characters and just writing, and to Ahriman's Aide for knowing the details of Warhammer 40k like no other.

Kudos to DarkMage for first portraying Furia as more than just anger.

This book is dedicated to Brett.

Hope you found your peace.


It is a time of peace.

The Great Crusade is long over, the epic battles and mythic triumphs of a galaxy-spanning effort to bring Mankind together once more are but echoes in the minds of Imperial citizens.

But the Primarchs live on, united as they ever were, the memories of war still fresh in their aeonian minds.

In another time, perhaps, this would not be so; but here the Emperor, the Master of Mankind, knew humility and tolerance. Here He listened to Eldrad Ulthan, Farseer of Craftworld Ulthwé.

In the 34th millennium Terra is whole, the Imperium united; the harbingers of Chaos were cast down from among the ranks of the Word Bearers, and so the Great Heresy never came to pass.

The Eldar Empire is reborn on the eastern fringes of the galaxy, the Pact of Brotherhood between Man and Eldar symbolized by a Golden Orb which links the seats of these two great realms through the Warp.

But the Primarchs are exemplars of war, and a time of peace causes them to chafe, to scrape at the boundaries of life.

The Emperor foresaw this even before He gathered His lost sons, and at Ullanor, when He made great Horus the Warmaster, the Emperor put His plan into motion.

When the Primarchs returned from the Great Crusade, called suddenly, an unexpected gift awaited them.

A family.

For while they toiled at the outer reaches of the galaxy, the Emperor had toiled yet more fervently that they may have a legacy beyond bloodshed.

That gift was imparted seventeen Terran years ago and now those Daughters, those Lady Primarchs, stand on the cusp of their young lives, only a year yet remaining before they begin the march to determine their own fates.

But dangers as never before face the Daughters, and all that stand between them are children, their lives abandoned for the Daughters' dream of a normal life.


"The first years of the Great Crusade, the wars of man against man... they were an undesirable circumstance gone too far; only the wisdom of the Emperor, and the foresight of one even farther seeing than he, prevented them from going any further."

– Primarch Magnus the Red, at the signing of the Treaty of Material Sodality

"You raise children, you take care of them, shelter them, feed them, put your hopes and dreams in them. You make them feel special. It's what parents do. I think... I think we [the Imperium] treat the Daughters the same way, like celebrities. Like they're our children."

– Dova Viriato, Holo Performer

"Greatness is not measured by birth or blood, wealth or power, or even accomplishments, but by the adversity faced to achieve one's ambitions."

– Tal Urtė, Honour to All: A Call for Equality


Prologue

Miranda floated effortlessly through the Warp, the unctuous deep of happenstance and undiluted emotion. She felt peaceful and content in a way she rarely felt in the Materium, the real world. Her father had often warned her against delving into the Great Ocean, but with the rapid increase in her psychic ability she'd begun to do so in her sleep without consciously willing it.

Magnus grudgingly accepted the necessity of Miranda's trips, but only at home, around him. She'd agreed excitedly and, while her cousins slept only four hours a night, she would often spend six or more treading the currents of the Empyrean.

Miranda had to admit, it felt much safer to do so at home: her father's presence calmed the tides somewhat. She felt his warmth and guidance all around her, buoying her up and removing every last trace of insecurity she'd felt in the past. The image of a black diamond passed over Miranda's thoughts, and she shuddered despite the warmth of her bed as the Sea of Souls changed around her.

She heard a dull roar, felt a blankness overcome her, and the Warp went dark. One-by-one points of light emerged into the darkness. So few at first, and so dull.

But then more, and as more appeared each grew brighter and more colorful. They grew into the dozens, thousands, billions. Into a great multicolored star, innumerably more than its component parts.

Soon they spread, farther and farther, a whole galaxy of lights, brimming with stars.

No sooner had they reached a glorious apex did they begin to disappear.

In a haze of red and black the lights turned malevolent. They began to devour each other, multitudes quenched by hate and fear.

Miranda felt herself cry at the immeasurable loss of life, the oncoming end of everything.

Just when all seemed lost another light revealed itself, greater and brighter than the others. A light she realized had been there all along, watching and waiting for this time of need. It drew the other lights around it and the first star was born again, greater and brighter than ever.

The other lights swirled and moved around it, grateful for its presence, but never approaching. They came close enough to warm themselves, but not close enough to warm the great light.

For a time the great light stilled in its actions, then from it emerged other lights, brighter than the myriad smaller lights. They were to form a link, a bridge between the great light and the small lights.

Then that bridge shattered.

The brighter lights spread out and the great light sought t bring them home, bringing other lights, making them brighter than they were that they might brave the darkness. It was a long and terrible expedition, and not all the brighter lights were found.

But the long scattered smaller lights were brought into the fold and soon the galaxy of lights was back, swirling around the great light, studded by the brighter lights. It was balanced, harmonious.

It was good. And yet the brighter lights began to move, to fidget and chafe. They had been made to seek and unite the smaller lights, and without a purpose they grew distressed.

And so the great light made more of the brighter lights. They were smaller and more delicate than the first host, but more beautiful and lively. They stilled the brighter lights, brought them closer to the galaxy.

All was complete, perfect.

Miranda felt herself jerked away as she saw an imperfection. She soared among the lights and could see the picture up close.

The lights were still bright, but the subtleties and inconsistencies began to show. Like an ocean that appears blue and clean from afar, but up close the pollution and grime forms into layers, distinct tracts among the water.

Miranda saw one in particular as she drifted, a rough blackness starkly unlike the lights around it.

Like the great light it sought the warmth of its brood, but the other lights moved away, swirling ever around it.

One of the lights, duller than the others, sought out the blackness and approached it.

The light grew brighter.

They danced and capered with each other, even when a tract of red nearly carried the darkness away. The other lights kept their distance, uneasy as they always had been, shunning the blackness and its companion.

Soon the blackness formed into a diamond, a single perfection among the wash of lights.

Then a single light, smaller and weaker than the others, moved in.

But the blackness was contained in the diamond and it was easy to approach. The weak light tore away at the black diamond and grew brighter, blood red.

The other lights soon approached, each taing a small piece of the black diamond. The once-dull light jumped and bounded, but it was too late. The black diamond crumbled away.

The end of the black diamond propelled the again-dull light, and it shambled, stumbled throughout the galaxy of stars. It began to move faster and faster, growing brighter.

Not completely red, not fully of anger and blood, but with a terrible purpose. It moved in an indiscernible pattern, swirling around the brighter lights and the delicate-brighter lights.

It had learned from the weak light how to tear. It tore at the delicate-brighter lights one at a time, making them duller, changing their color and movement.

The great light saw this and grew red, more terrifying than any red that had come before, even before it first appeared.

But the again-dull light had learned from the weak light. It plunged into the great light and the great light was rent asunder, split and carried amongst the galaxy of lights.

Miranda felt herself fall, felt gravity somehow reassert its hold over her despite her detachment from the Materium. She fell and fell, and with a sudden realization stopped herself.

Everything felt distant, even her father, and so she opened her eyes, her Witch Sight. In the Materium this allowed her to see into the Warp, to breach the barrier between dimensions.

But here, in the Immaterium, in the boundless expanse of drifting purple and swirling violet, she found a vista opening up before her, a great city buried underneath her home.