THE IMPERIAL PALACE:
"You survived, then."
It was not a question. Arik Taranis nodded. "I did. During the time when your son, the first Warmaster raised an insurrection I and my battle-brother slew Astartes and took their gene-seed and modified them. The three of us are the last of your Thunder Warriors and we have dwelled on Terra ever since, fighting at times secretly against individual infiltrators from the Long War."
The Emperor's stern face was impassive though as always His features were plastic, dancing between faces and expressions in that hypnotic fashion Taranis had remembered from Unity. He dropped to his knees.
"We served you once, in Unity. I know why you culled us, Lord and Master of Mankind. We did not fit into a world of peace, as you aspired to make. But in a world of the Long War, and in the Final clash at the end of time, perhaps the three of us can tender our aid and bring to the stars the power that united Terra. One last time."
The Emperor stared for a moment and then the dancing multi-faced God in armor nodded.
As he took Taranis's hand and raised him to his feet Perturabo blinked as for a moment he saw a vision-
Tall golden and blue figures in what seemed neither flesh nor metal but a mixture of both wielding strange bolter-like crossbows slamming into a mass of howling Chaotic beings, led by an impossible and wondrous figure.
They shouted: "For Sigmar! Heldenhammer!"
They slammed into the flank of the forces of Chaos who hissed and howled and yet pressed between not one but two Gods of Order, Sigmar and the Master of Mankind their armies were shattered and the Maelstrom closed.
He shook his head and the moment passed. Only the Primarchs of the Grey Knights and the Emperor gave him a look, the Emperor raising an eyebrow skeptically for a moment but letting it pass in silence.
"My Lord," the Emperor turned to a Sister of Silence.
"Yes?"
"There is a ship that just appeared out of the Warp overhead."
Everyone looked up. "It bears the markers of Fabius Bile."
He said "It is not Bile's work."
He then turned to his sons.
"My sons, I ask that all of you save Taranis and the Warmaster leave. What is to happen here, for a few minutes, must be left entirely within these hands. If the judgment should go one way, you shall have your answers in less than an hour."
Hesitantly, the Primarchs stepped out of the room, all of them save Warmaster Perturabo who instinctively reached for his hammer. The Emperor raised his power claw to gesture not to do so and Perturabo nodded, if confused.
The Emperor waited and then a sudden boom and a flash of electric light followed as four figures landed and stood before him. They were clad in artificier armor, if unadorned. Indeed it seemed like elements of the Ruinous Powers had been enscribed there but to the Emperor's inner amusement the Power within these four had shattered.
Perturabo and Taranis both stiffened and then in spite of the warnings did begin to reach for their weapons until again the Emperor gestured not to do it.
Four psychic voices spoke in unity at once, the power sufficient to drive the Warmaster and the Thunder Warrior to their knees:
++We have come to submit to your judgment, Master of Mankind.++
The Emperor's voice responded:
+You are clones of me, a technology that was and is forbidden in the Imperium. Clones made in the Eye of Terror by a fallen heretic.+
Their eyes remained on the ground.
+But you were not corrupted by the Eye. I can see this.+
The Emperor stood taller, in a way, than he had before.
+It is the time of the Final War between Chaos and the Imperium. We have fought for ten thousand years and it is time to return to an Age of Legends, to blaze and forge the stars anew and shatter the heavens with the songs of steel.+
Then the dancing faces for a rare point in time shared the same emotions, a strange calm and yet predatory smile with eyebrows coming closer together in a fashion like a gilded and terrifying eagle.
+But it is fitting that at the End of All Things that a God should have Four who proceed him.+
With a cryptic smile the Emperor turned and to the first of the Four Clones said:
+Come+
And he stood up and went to the Emperor, who handed to him a laurel and a bow.
+You shall ride forth conquering and to conquer.+
With a sudden assertion of the power granted to Him by a hundred centuries of Worship, the clone's armor shifted to a brilliant, almost eye-searing white and he nodded, standing with the bow as he awaited the judgments of the other three.
To the second of the clones the God-Emperor said +Come+
And he stood and he was given a sword.
+You shall take peace from the Stars and the Traitors shall turn and slay one another in Your Presence.+ He nodded, taking the sword which seemed to hiss through the air with a palpable, tangible malice and glee.
An assertion of Divine Will and the armor turned red.
To the third of the clones the God-Emperor said: +Come+
And he stood up, his armor shifting to a dappled kind that made him paradoxically seem a God in height and yet gaunt.
With words that the God-Emperor and His clones understood but none else did save, perhaps, one who had he still been living would have found it deeply amusing in a way none else would:
+A quart of wheat for a denarius, a quart of barley for a denarius. Do not harm the oil and the wine+, and the third was given a scale which glowed with psychic might, seeming to emit rays of power.
To the Fourth He gestured and said +Come+.
And then with a subtle hint Taranis followed him:
+You are Death, and Hell shall ride with you.+
Handing to him a great scythe reminiscent of the weapon of Mortarion, He said:
+To You is given power over a quarter of all who need judgment. They shall be slain with fire and sword and famine and the wild beasts that go forth and crawl upon the Earth.+
The Emperor then turned to Perturabo and spoke with that seemingly cryptic smile:
+And the God spoke to Him who strode upon the Clouds across worlds: Swing your Hammer and strike the vines, sweep the grapes of Heresy from the Stars. Heresy has shed the blood of saints and prophets and it shall be given blood to drink as is its due.+
Another vision, and Perturabo saw himself a colossus standing amidst the eternal and silvery stars raising Worldbreaker and then with a sudden swing psychic screams followed and millions fell headlong across some worlds, for a total of one billion heretics, the first in a psychic blow not by the power of Chaos, but by the power of Order itself.
The Emperor smiled and then his eyes glowed and one hundred centuries of Worship blazed forth in a golden field of psychic energy invoked by the sudden massacre and death-scream of the Chaos-worshipers across the Imperium. A golden Storm of Order that would seal off the Eye of Terror and the Chaos-bands there, in time sufficient for the Emperor to unleash the first strike of the Final War, a blow that would devastate the power of Chaos and send the suitable message that in the End of All Things all would be fixed.
The God-Emperor smiled as Perturabo gazed blankly in horrified fascination.
"Well done, my good and faithful servant."
With this the Emperor placed a golden-armored hand on the shoulder of the Warmaster.
Then He gestured and the doors opened and His sons strode in.
"These are my Four Horsemen," He gestured to each of the Clones.
"Conquest, War, Famine, and Death. Each suitable as a counter-symbol to the Gods of the Warp, Conquest against the Skull Throne, Famine against Pestilence, War against Love," and he turned to Death with a cryptic smile, "and Death against Hope."
The immense claw on his right hand splayed outward as He said, "gather the Legions you command."
To the Grey Knight Psykers He said "Call to you all of the Grey Knights. Let them see their Primarchs make war. We go now to the Maelstrom. And in our great fist, it shall close."
The Emperor then smiled again with that disconcerting display of emotion from one once always known for stoicism.
"To remind my people of my fealty to them, raise my first flagship. As in the end, so in the beginning it shall be in the Imperator Somnium that the Master of Mankind leads Mankind in the Rhana Dandra, the End of all Things!"
A cheer echoed with a bellowing howl from some and cheers of bloodlust and eager for war in others. Only in the mutual unease of the gazes of Vulkan and Perturabo was there disconcertment at the nature of events, and in Vulkan's case the moment passed and he began to cheer with the same lust for blood and death that others brought.
THE EYE OF TERROR:
Abaddon the Despoiler led a ship to test the sudden crackling golden field that had ringed the Eye of Terror. The Gods were startled by the sudden manifestation of the purer Psychic fields within the Warp, and by the sudden and brutal demonstration of the Power within the Gilded Lord on Terra.
Too, they were disconcerted not just by the audacity of Bile in cloning a God not once but Four times, displeased at the symbol, but by the awareness of what the Emperor was planning to unleash. The Gods ordered their loyalists to strike, and then as they slammed into the golden shield and explosions of thunderous Psychic Force consumed ships and entire crews of Astartes in shrieking pain, a first horde emerged in strange form.
Gigantic verminous rat-like things with great ram's horns on their heads, shrieking "For the Glory of the Horned One" though in the silence of space their sounds emerged more from the power of the Warp than any kind of vocal force. The monstrous enhanced form and power of the Skaven, first deployed against the Storm of the Emperor's Vengeance collided into it and left black smears and smoke in space in soundless shrieks and in the Warp-torn howls of the damned.
Five score and seven score the forces of Chaos smote the shield. Five score and sevenscore they failed and were banished within the depths of the Immaterium and left with naught but their names.