Eight planets. Eight rounded hells, unrecognized from their original forms. going no longer by their mortal names, but now by titles gifted to them by their infernal masters. And now, each of them orbited through the void, lit not by the gentle kiss of a sun's hot fire, but ignited by the reddish light of the rift that now sat where Armegaddon once was. Weaving in and out from the eight rounded colossi of the stars, swarming as numerous as the locusts in an apocalyptic plague of crop-devouring death, were clouds of ships, crewed by heretics, each one a floating castle laden with cannon.

"What a sight," Armstrong commented as he watched the holo-screens on the bridge of his flagship. "What a terrible sight," the truth was, Armstrong was numb with terror on the inside. He couldn't cry out in terror because he was frightened to, he couldn't feel his anger, knowing that such a feeling towards this whirlpool of the immaterium would be like yelling insults at a god. He could only stand, his ship with the rest of the remnants of the Imperial fleet. "Patch this sight through to command," Armstrong insited to his crew. "We…we must be prepared to fight to the death."

Eight daemon worlds and thousands of heretical ships, with a warp storm as that filled space was what Armstrong saw. Somewhere in the mix of heretical power, was the black candle of the Despoiler himself: the demigod of heretics. Abaddon.

"Sir, we must disengage from this system!" yelled one of the crewmen. Armstrong's eyes were frozen to the screen, so he did not check the speaker.

"By the Emperor," Armstrong said to himself, "Holy Terra is within striking distance from here." He was too dazed with the magnitude of the horror. Nothing mattered to him now. If a torpedo found the bridge right now, it would be nothing to him but a loud noise. 'How can this happen?'

"WE MUST DISENGAGE NOW!" yelled a frantic crewman from his seat, beside a pale-faced officer who was praying frantically.

"Disengage," Armstrong whispered. 'Emperor save us.'

…

Inside the small chamber, deep in the glamerous mountain-palaces of Terra, a single screen flickered. Upon it, a steppe that stretched into the horizon. Upon the steppe, a scattered mess of fallen necron warriors.

"And so command from all sectors have reported," spoke a tall man, clad in the finest silks that the best taylors on Terra could spin, "and so the Departmento Munitorum have confirmed." His face was only partially lit up, like the moon on a cloudy night, by the soft glow of the screen: the only source of light in this room. Even that light grew dimmer when the screen's display flashed back to its default display: the Imperial eagle rendered in bronze upon a stone-grey background.

"Fellow lords, we all shall show great caution over such reports. In these waning times, when all news spoken here is of tragedy and apocalypse, such news is like a stone inside a sandal: out of place and unwelcome. How can such an impossibility be verified?" asked a voice from the darkness.

"Fellow lord," said the first man, "It must surely be the will of the Emperor. All your departments, from the Administratum to the Officio Assassinorum must trumpet this to their adepts. Let the word spread throughout His domain that the Emperor's will has freed us from the necron scourge." A gentle chorus of low mumbling came from the darkness as the other High Lords discussed with one another what they would do.

"Fellow lords, I am one man who has learned over my long years never to trust a blessing. Until this is confirmed, I will not be so quick to spread rumor," stated another voice from the darkness.

"It is not just the military that has detected this," said yet another voice, visible only as a hodded silhouette in the light of the screen. "The navigators guilds all around come from distant sectors with news of the tombfleets stilled. Every necron has gone silent, as if their very souls were sucked from them. I believe it was the Emperor who raised the necrons to battle the tyranids, then felled them with the death of the hive fleets. Every navigator will know."

In the darkness, there was a beep.

"Do not contact me when I am in a session unless it…" said someone else in the darkness. There was a pause. "Praise the Emperor," he half-whispered, half laughed. "Praise him truly…when?" to hear such an old man speak so youthfully brought a grin to the silk-clad High Lord. There must have been a good cause to celebrate then.

"Fellow lords," came the announcement, "it has happened again. The orks are destroyed." All eyes turned to the screen and grainy, shaky footage of a field of orks bursting into flame greeted the High Lords. Each of them clustered in, whispering prayers as the footage looped. "And it has happened everywhere."

The orks are destroyed? The news was delivered staight forward, but to everyone in the room, he might has well have said that death had been destroyed, or fire had been destroyed, or storms had been destroyed. The invincible orks, whose numbers were larger than the humans and climbing at a rate of billions a year? Was even Him on the Golden Throne so powerful? The screen changed once more to its default display.

"Yes?" asked the same voice, following the same beep. Would the next footage show a second fall of the eldar? "Impossible," came the low whisper. "Emperor save us."

The Imperial eagle upon the screen was rudely replaced by a hellish vision of a warp storm of gargantuan proportions. All the High Lords believed they beheld the Eye of Terror, until they noticed a passing planet, dwarfed by the storm.

"Isn't that Chosin?" askedo one of the High Lords of Terra.

"No, it can't be…" whispered another in ignorant defiance of the truth. The High Lords watched as eight rounded shadows broke out of the twisting depths of the storm, drifting forwards like a titan's armada. Eight daemon worlds.

"This is the Armageddon system," one lord whispered, "our order of business, fellow lords, has presented itself clearly enough, and the Emperor's will cannot be taken for granted. We must re-route all military forces. The Emperor has cleansed us of our enemies so that we may better battle chaos." There was a collective murmur of agreement, though no eyes had yet left the screen.

"This wil be death," the lord continued, "death upon the grandest scale, and when the that storm has closed, I expect the blood of one billion martyrs to wet our Imperium. But we cannot…" he paused for a moment.

The whole display had just been replaced by a stranger, filling the screen in place of the warp storm. In a cloak as black as the background he sat in, the hooded stranger wore a mask, equally black, and metal by its texture. The High Lord saw nothing but dark behind his eyeholes. Then he was gone, so swiftly that the High Lord questioned whether he had really seen him.

"Did anyone else just see that?" asked the High Lord suddenly.

"Of what do you speak?"

"Show it to us again. Turn the footage back and point it out." The footage was turned backwards, but as the image looped again, as the High Lord watched, the stranger did not reappear. Nothing but illusion surely. Fear could drive a man's imagination mad.