I do not own the Warhammer 40000 universe nor any of its characters. They belong to Games Workshop.
Inspired by the Dornian Heresy, by Aurelius Rex.
THE BATTLE OF OLYMPUS MONS
From the Martian underworld rise the United, a mysterious Haydesian Kingdom sworn to Slaanesh. Led by N'Kari, the Keeper of Secrets reborn as a Soul Grinder, this host of Chaos-corrupted mind-linked cyborgs marches north, toward Olympus Mons and the heart of the Martian Collective. With most of the Red Planet's armies sent to wage the final war of the Lie of Iron, Fabricator-General Abristus Teslivi marshals a desperate defense of his capital against the onslaught, while the mysterious Martian Collective struggles to process the significance of Light's End. With the new millennium comes an age of dread revelations, and the secrets of Mars shall be among the first to be revealed …
We see Mars. The Red Planet. Homeland of the Cult Mechanicus, first of the worlds Humanity colonized after leaving the cradle of Old Earth. The world was named after an old god of war, whose roots go deep, past the veneer civilizations ever try in vain to apply upon war. We see all the times the name has proven apt, and oh, but there have been so many. Mankind brought war to Mars, defiling its sands with seas of blood. The Lie of Iron was but the latest of these wars.
We look back, and we see the feuds of rival forges, the Knights and Titans marching to war against each other while the hordes of enhanced warriors that will in time become the skitarii legions teem at their feet. We look further back, and we see the war that ended Humanity's first interstellar empire. Our sight is obscured then, fractured, such was the potency and horror of the weapons unleashed in that dreadful Age.
We see Olympus Mons, capital of an empire of iron and clockwork that is entwined with our father's kingdom, but never quite the same. A mountain of secrets and iron, rising so high it breaches the sky. We see the temples of industry, the repositories of lore carefully collected from the ruins of our forebears' great works and greater mistakes.
We see the scars of war, rebuilt over but never forgotten. Olympus Mons never fell, even as Mars burned yet again in the fires of our brother's rebellion. Its lord held true to his oaths to our father, for He had shown him what it was He was working on in the depths below the Palace, and what tech-priest could reject the chance of being part of such a breathtaking endeavour ? But his successors are not so confident in their devotion. We see the division, the fracture lines that run just beneath the surface of unity that the Mechanicus shows to the rest of the Imperium.
We see the Martian Collective. Hundreds of the brightest minds of Humanity, bound to the singular purpose of keeping the horrors of the Haydes from spreading. What great things might they have accomplished, had their path not led them here ? How different would the Mechanicus be, if it hadn't needed to send its greatest there ? Nothing shines brighter than a future that could have been, brother.
We see the armies of the Mechanicus, descended into Haydes, seeking to end the war their lords have kept secret for ten thousand years. But while they fight to burn the darkness out, its slaves have returned to the surface.
Knowledge is power, but power untempered by wisdom will, inevitably, turn on its wielder. Now, at Light's End, we shall see if those who would inherit the secrets of Humanity's past are worthy of the mysteries they keep.
At the dawning of the Angel War, the first attack on Olympus Mons came hours before the arrival of the United.
From the Tear of Nightmares came dark meteors wreathed in Warp-fire. Scrambled by the interference emanating from the Tear just as badly as the orbital defenses of Terra, and facing their own daemonic incursions in several key sections, the Ring of Iron's guns could not lock onto these hellish comets in time, nor could the forge-city's anti-air defenses. Guided by an unseen hand, most of the space-born projectiles slammed into the defensive perimeter surrounding Olympus Mons, shattering watchtowers and artillery positions, while the rest slammed into the wasteland surrounding the great forge-city, sending tremors across the Red Planet.
Holes dozens of meters wide formed in the walls of the city most sacred to the Machine-God, and within seconds these breaches were under attack as the Neverborn that had clung to the meteors throughout their descent recovered from the impact, having impossibly endured their fall.
To the daemons of Slaanesh, born of passion and pain, the cold minds of the Mechanicus provided little nourishment. Only the more esoteric of their kind could hope to draw strength from the tech-priests machine-sworn souls, but this might have been by design. For as the hordes of the Youngest God descended upon Olympus Mons, they did not scatter to pursue their own hungers as had been the case throughout the history of daemonic incursions. Instead, they remained focused on target, following orders burned into their essences by the power behind the Angel War.
At the same time, broken-data beasts and abynaric constructs emerged from the rad-wastes leftover from the many Martian civil wars, driven to a frenzy by the Tear of Nightmares. The guards of the walls surrounding the forge-city were ill-pressed to keep all of them at bay. Troops were sent from the Fabricator-General's citadel to fight the daemons, while in the depths below the mountain, the Martian Collective pondered its next move.
While the attacks Olympus Mons was currently suffering were the greatest incursion since the dark days of the Heresy, it was still only a prelude of the true threat. Though they had perished to the last, the guardians of the Haydesian entrance that laid to the south had managed to get out a warning : the Collective knew of the death of the one they had sent to watch over that gate, and of the coming of the United.
Of the Haydesian Kingdoms, the United were among the ones of which the least was known. Since the beginning of the Lie of Iron, they had kept to themselves, deep below the surface. What little was recorded in the Martian databases spoke of a Kingdom feared even by the other powers of the Haydes, which only left its borders to conduct raids on its neighbours for captives, leaving valuable infrastructure and resources behind. But between that information and the reports from the martyred guardian force, a grim picture could be glimpsed.
The Collective realized that, should this strand of Haydesian corruption succeed in breaching their chamber and contaminate them with its foul perversion of the Omnissiah's design, all of Mars would be lost – and the rest of Sol would soon follow. The madness that consumed the cyborgs would spread all across the Red Planet. By the time the armies dispatched to the Haydesian Kingdoms returned, they would be forced to choose between death, joining this heresy, or wiping out every other augmented life form on the planet.
None of these were an acceptable outcome to the Martian Collective, and so the United would not reach them. No matter what it took.
The leaders of the Adeptus Mechanicus weren't fools. They had known that the possibility of a heretek force successfully escaping the Haydes. Behaviour-predicting algorithms were unreliable where the Haydesians were concerned at the best of times, for their forms and mindsets were as diverse as they were heretical. But even a mind still firmly aligned with the guiding principles of the Cult Mechanicus could realize that Olympus Mons itself would be a primary target for such a force, especially with much of its forces dispatched into the Haydes as part of the campaign to end the Lie of Iron.
Which was why the capital forge of the Red Planet was far from completely exposed. Its contributions to the underground campaign were sizeable, and would have left entire forge-worlds both bankrupt and defenceless, but the Martian Collective had kept many aces up their sleeve.
Contact with the forces involved in purging the Haydesian Kingdoms had been largely lost, and they were too far away to return to Olympus Mons in time to assist with the threat to the south. Processing all that information, the many minds of the Collective eventually reached a consensus.
All but the most dire of contingencies (the ones reserved for the destruction of Terra, the utter certainty of Mars' fall, and other, even worse possibilities) were enacted. Stasis vaults that were only slightly less protected than the Collective itself were opened, and weapons not used since the Roboutian Heresy were carefully taken out, while data-tombs containing knowledge that had been sealed away because of the dangerous ideas locked within were reconnected to the Collective's memory banks.
Every reserve, every back-up plan, every resource that had been stored away for the darkest of days was called upon.
All information but the absolute minimum required to perform their duties was purged from the minds of the skitarii sent to face the United. In this way, should they be captured alive and subjected to the United's unholy joining, no crucial tactical information would be gained by the enemy.
Warmachines too huge to be sent into the Haydesian Kingdoms were positioned at the base of the mountain. No less than six venerable Ordinatus engines were deployed, two of which hadn't been used in battle in over five thousand years.
As these measures were implemented, another blow struck the Adeptus Mechanicus. Through the broken noosphere, information about what was happening across Sol began to trickle. One morsel of information dominated the datascape, repeated by traumatized survivors on the surface of Terra and screamed in corrupt cant by daemonic spirits : the Emperor was dead.
Across the entire Red Planet, forge-cities already reeling from the Tear's opening were cast further into distress by this revelation. Machine-spirits rampaged uncontrolled as their overseers went into shock, their indoctrinated minds unable to comprehend the enormity of what had happened. In Olympus Mons, however, the Collective was able to maintain order, even as its members were taken aback by this new data. They had known of Omegon's plan to help the Omnissiah ascend, shedding the last of His mortality and taking the war against the forces of Chaos to their own dimension of madness and unreason. But it was clear that something had gone wrong.
The demise of the Omnissiah's incarnated avatar was a tragedy whose impact even the Martian Collective with all its brains and slaved cogitator engines, couldn't calculate. The consequences might very well break the Imperium asunder, but they would never have the chance to if Mars fell to the United.
We see the United, a grotesque perversion of utopia pulled from Humanity's ancient fears of technology. An artificial hive-mind forged from Warp-touched implants, bleeding the soul and replacing it with an all-encompassing need to add more victim to the whole, in the desperate hope that it will fill the emptiness.
It won't. Because the emptiness isn't a void, it is a maw that swallows everything, a hunger that can never be sated.
We see a beginning. In the Age of Innocence, there is a tech-priest on Mars who has trouble understanding other people. He loves them, but he does not get them, and it tears him apart. He thinks he can bring them together, put an end to war and ignorance – and no longer feel so alone. He works quietly, developing his theory before presenting it to his overseers. His fear that they will reject it, and him, is so great that he throws himself into his work, and misses the signs of what is to come.
Then the war comes. It sunders the earth and sky, and madness old and new flows unchecked across the Red Planet. The tech-priest's dream is turned into a weapon, a way to bind captured soldiers to the cause of the rebels. He is broken, reduced to a single cry of anguish made the core of the United, for no reason other than cruelty.
The tormentors are the first to be integrated when the United predictably overcome the limits placed on the tech-priest's design to control them. We see them rampage across Mars' surface, stealing millions before the wrath of iron forces them to retreat to the depths. We see the centuries in darkness, the vat-grown children integrated before they can even truly think for themselves. We see the dream turn to obsession turn to nightmare.
We see N'kari, the Eater of Delights, reborn so soon after its defeat at my hands and its flight into dissolution to escape annihilation. We see the soul-forged metal surrounding its essence, the scars in its infernal pseudo-soul where the Masters tore out its allegiance to the Dark Prince. Soul Grinder, but the name cannot encapsulate all the horror of this, brother. It is daemonkin unleashed without limits, made perpetual into the Materium through the desecration of lore older than the War in Heaven. We know the threefold price it paid – but did it have a choice ? Does any daemon ever truly do ?
The tide of United monstrosities that poured across the Martian wastes numbered in the millions. The entire Haydesian Kingdom had gone to war, leaving behind empty facilities where entire generations had been grown in the darkness. On their way to the Haydesian Gate, the United had further bolstered their number by capturing every remnant of the other Kingdoms they had encountered fleeing from the Mechanicus crusade.
It seemed impossible that the wastes could have hidden so many, yet here they were. Many of Mars' abandoned children had been added to the Unity on the way to Olympus Mons, fitted with fresh cybernetic augments that linked them to the baleful overmind.
As the United host crossed the invisible line that marked the range of Olympus Mons' guns, the forge-city's defenses opened fire. Many of the towers along the city's walls had been destroyed by the daemonic bombardment, and still more had fallen silent as the Neverborn breached them, but scores of defensive emplacements remained in the hands of the Mechanicus, and their onslaught was precisely coordinated.
Las-beams and missiles hurled across tens of kilometers, their trajectories calculated by the tech-priests, precision hits sacrificed in order to allow for greater margins of error that was commonly permitted – the interference of the great storm raging overhead and the heretikal capabilities of the foe had been taken into account. Even so, some of the projectiles missed entirely, their aim fouled by atmospheric, noospheric and aetheric disturbances. But more than eighty percent hit their intended targets, and the front ranks of the United vanished in a wall of fire and shrapnel. Within seconds, tens of thousands of Dark Mechanicum cyborgs were wiped out from existence.
But behind them came millions more. They walked over the incinerated remains of their comrades, across blasted wastes whose newly refreshed radiation burned through their organic components. When the guns of Olympus Mons fired again, the tainted skitarii they obliterated were dead men walking, lethally poisoned by the unseen aura of the previous barrage. And still more came.
Coordinated volley after coordinated volley was let loose, and still the United advanced, treating their foot soldiers like so much ablative armor. A shroud of techno-sorcery had fallen over the United horde at some point, preventing the Martian artillery from marking its targets and saving its shots for the greater threats among the enemy host. With targeted fire denied them, this blind slaughter was the only option they had left, hoping to thin the enemy numbers enough to make a difference in the coming battle.
Gun barrels ran white-hot, their metal beginning to melt as they overheated from excessive firing. Ammunition stores emptied while supply lines were cut by packs of daemons. One by one, the southern defenses of Olympus Mons fell silent. The total number of the United who had perished under their distant fire was impossible to know, but the war-magi estimated that several millions of the cyborgs must have died – and still the host advanced, blanketing the horizon.
As it got closer, the auspex shroud was revealed to be some sort of Warpcraft screen, a shield of twisted reality where the rad-polluted air of Mars shone with lights and images from its war-torn past. Reconnaissance drones caught glimpses of forces whose heraldry hadn't been seen on the Red Planet for ten thousand years. Briefly, some of the older minds of the Collective wondered if a message couldn't be sent to the past through these distortions, before security protocols marked with the highest authority shut down that line of inquiry and redirected them to more productive trains of thought.
Ordinatus warmachines were dispatched to the breaches on the southern side, along with thousands of skitarii warriors to protect them. With the industrial capacity of Olympus Mons, repairing the breaches could have been done in days, and simply sealing them in hours – but that would have been under normal circumstances. Right now, with daemons still rampaging through the streets, turning those breaches into funnels through which the United would be channelled and unable to bring all of their superior numbers to bear at once was the best option available.
There were six major breaches, a number the Martian Collective knew wasn't a coincidence. Knowledge about the Ruinous Powers was usually quarantined within the Collective, but the opening of the Tear of Nightmares had fulfilled ancient conditions that had let the Collective as a whole access lore usually reserved for the highest-ranking personnel of the Holy Ordos. Armed with that knowledge, the genius minds that made up the Collective quickly came to the conclusion that the attack was a ritual, or part of one. The purpose of the ritual eluded them, but it had become clear that the United were here for more than 'merely' infecting the Collective with their heresy and bringing ruin to all of Mars.
Before N'kari stretched the walls of Olympus Mons, a ring of metal that stretched all around the base of the mountain. They rose high and strong, for all that they had already been breached. The Soul Grinder could sense the disgusting faith embedded in them, the result of thousands of years of blind worship. Despite having been severed from the Dark Prince (and oh, how it relished and mourned that pain in equal measure), and despite its agonizing rebirth under the craft of the Masters of the Forge, N'kari was still at its core a creature of sensations and emotions, and the very existence of the Machine Cult offended it on a primordial level. It would enjoy claiming this city and this world, and introducing all of its people to the wonders they had denied themselves for so long.
But first, of course, it must enter the city itself. Its orders, the part it had to play in the Angel War, had been burned into its essence so deeply that even the bargain it had made at the Forge of Souls hadn't been able to erase them. When the United had brought it forth in their summoning circle, they hadn't been distressed or surprised by its aspect – but then again, of course they wouldn't. The union of flesh, machine and daemonic was a common sight in the Haydesian Kingdoms.
They had opened themselves to it, done their best to link the Soul Grinder's infernal consciousness with their own collective oversoul. And while the individual emotions and feelings of each United construct were dim, their aggregation was a treasure of rare value. The oversoul of the United was a living, thinking, feeling thing, endlessly trapped in an all-consuming hunger to add every sentient life-form to its network. Linked to it, N'kari could feel that depthless hunger, and draw strength from it. With a great cry that was part exaltation and part agony, the Soul Grinder unleashed the psychic power of the United, channelling their might through its own incarnate form.
Torrents of Warp-fire burst forth from it. Shaped by its will, they formed six great snakes that flew in the air with screams that spoke of repressed desires finally bursting through, before plunging down, filling the breaches and annihilating both the Mechanicus defenders and the United forces that had held them there. The Unity cried out in grief at their deaths, but didn't relent, for there were millions more souls to claim beyond the walls.
With the breaches temporarily cleared, the United charged forward, joined by N'kari. The Soul Grinder danced among the throng, mechanical limbs clicking on the smashed stones as the United dodged out of its way without needing to look out, warned of its advance by the senses they shared along with so much else. It climbed over a veritable mountain of rubble, faster than even the fastest of the United constructs, and looked upon the vast city arrayed behind it. Its eyes turned up, up, up, until it caught sight of its prize – a singular temple on the mountain's face, where in another age the Anathema had sealed the compact that had bound this world ever since.
Beholding the kingdom it had come to despoil, N'kari laughed at the thought of all that it had done, and all that it would yet do.
With N'kari's sorcerous onslaught, the United were finally able to pass through the breaches and into the forge-city proper.
Like a flood of plague-carrying vermin, the United poured through the gaps and into Olympus Mons, paying for every step with corrupt blood and tainted iron. The Collective had made every square kilometers of Olympus Mons into a death trap. Workers and civilian tech-priests had been evacuated into great shelters on the northern side of the forge-city, as far from the battle as possible without leaving the protection of the walls. Of course, displacing the hundreds of millions who called Olympus Mons home wasn't a quick endeavour, and many were still far from the shelters when the United came, and were caught in the crossfire as the defenders of the forge-city engaged the Haydesian hereteks.
As the battle spread across Olympus Mons, the storm that raged across the wasteland continued to grow worse. Those few eyes still turned outward, watching out for United reinforcements, were forced to stop as visibility was completely obstructed. Several of the Martian Collective's minds ran the numbers, comparing the violence of the storm with the extensive records the tech-priests kept of their homeworld's broken climate. They soon came to the conclusion that this storm was worse than anything that had been observed in thousands of years, with only the storms that had raged during the Age of Strife, after the first collapse of Martian civilization, surpassing them. Calling for reinforcements, already a doubtful possibility, had become impossible : not even skitarii could survive the conditions beyond the walls now. The defenders of Olympus Mons were alone with the monsters.
High up the slopes of Olympus Mons, at the gates of the Temple of All Knowledge, the Fabricator-General stood prepared for war. The Temple was where the Emperor had first landed at the end of the Age of Strife and made contact with the Cult Mechanicus. It was where the alliance between the Imperium and the tech-priests had first been conceived of, and it was one of the Adeptus Mechanicus' holiest sites. But, like all the temples to the Machine-God, its religious importance was matched by its practical one. Within the Temple laid the entrance to the chamber of the Martian Collective, deep in the mountain. Mere hours ago, though it now seemed like another lifetime, Abristus Teslivi had brought three Primarchs there to meet the Collective, and begun the final war of the Lie of Iron.
Since the days of Kelbor-Hal himself, every Fabricator-General had been a warlord as much as a spiritual leader to the Cult Mechanicus. The demands of the Lie of Iron, and the endless threat of the Haydes dwelling on the Red Planet, had made that a necessity. Not all Fabricator-Generals ended up joining the Martian Collective : some were removed from office due to their own failings, while others died from various causes, some natural, some less so. For all its appearance as a monolith, the Imperium was still riven by divisions, especially at the highest levels, and the High Lords were not above the occasional assassination to remove a rival.
It had been many years since Abristus Teslivi had gone to war in person, but the memories of it had been kept fresh within his cloned sub-brain, and they flowed into his consciousness without issue as he reconnected it to his neural network. As his mind turned away from the grand strategies of galactic politics and focused on the immediate tactical needs of Olympus Mons' defense, his physical body underwent an identical transformation. When the Fabricator-General emerged from his sanctum, ready to face the United, he did so as a towering avatar of the Machine-God's wrathful might.
Despite centuries of augmentation bringing him ever closer to complete union with the Machine-God, Abristus Teslivi wasn't without fear. He had long ago decided against having that emotion excised from his brain, believing that fear, when properly used, was an asset rather than a weakness. It wasn't a popular belief among his peers, both in the Mechanicus and among the High Lords, but he still held to it, even if only secretly.
Now, as the Daemon Engine leading the Haydesian forces advanced towards him, part of him wished he had removed the capability for fear from himself. It certainly would make this situation easier.
His sensors allowed him to witness the monster's horror far more completely than a mere mortal could have. Every spectrum was a new aspect of abomination, revealing more of the heresy that the entity was. Forbidden knowledge, usually kept in a separate sub-brain that was locked in stasis within a warded container, told him the creature's standard appellation in Low Gothic : Soul Grinder. It also recognized its pink torso, its horned head, its grotesque proportions that, to a mind more inclined to the weaknesses of flesh, would have been considered beautiful. From these, and from the imagery taken by the Mechanicus forces fighting the other daemonic incursions across the forge-city, Abristus could deduce the breed of Daemon to which the creature had belonged prior to its conversion into its current form. It had been a Keeper of Secrets, once, holder of blasphemous knowledge and unholy data that served no purpose beyond corruption and ruin. It had no place in the Omnissiah's design.
"Your god is dead, little priest," said the daemon, in a voice that sent cascading error loops through Abristus' audio receptors, each of which was swiftly tracked down and suppressed by his noospheric defenses. "The Omnissiah is no more."
"You betray your ignorance, foul thing," replied Abristus. "The Omnissiah was but the Prime Conduit of the Machine-God's will."
He believed that. He had to believe that. The Omnissiah – the being the rest of the Imperium knew as the Emperor – had been powerful, true. Extremely well-versed in the mysteries of the Machine-God, more so than any other soul, as well. But He hadn't been the Machine-God, merely His avatar, the incarnation through which the Prime Force made Its will known to those who sought to fulfill Its design. And while His demise was a tragedy beyond compare, Abristus had faith. The Emperor had been born of the clay of Humanity, after all. Could not the same be said of the Martian Collective ?
The Soul Grinder laughed. "It is you who are ignorant. But worry not. Soon, you shall behold the face of true Gods !"
Abristus opened fire with a dozen different weapons as the Daemon Engine charged him. An arsenal that could have buckled the void-shields of a Warhound was unleashed upon the Soul Grinder.
Explosions flared against its skin, but failed to do any damage. Eldritch light that only his most esoteric optics registered flickered around its body. A psychic shield of some kind, drawing on the same power it had used in its attack on the walls. That ... wasn't optimal. Abristus had relied on the assumption that the power his foe had displayed at the walls was a one-time thing, since it would have used it again if it could be used continuously. Perhaps there were conditions to its activation ?
In any case, if ranged weapons wouldn't work, then he would need to resort to more brutal options. A mental impulse raised a great power axe, emblazoned with the cog sigil of the Adeptus Mechanicus.
The Daemon Engine leapt toward the Fabricator-General, whose axe struck with the strength to sunder tanks. It hit the daemon in the chest as it plunged down, but again, unholy power flared, and the weapon shattered, its own energy field turned against it by the Warp's sorcery.
With a laugh like the death of stars, the Soul Grinder plunged a long blade into Abristus' bulky form. It cut through adamantium-reinforced plating like plasma through flesh.
The Fabricator-General felt the agony acutely. He shouldn't have, but the normal damage reports were overridden by a more primal sensation. The Soul Grinder wanted him to suffer, and so he suffered.
That was its mistake, thought Abristus with the clarity of revelation. Damage reports would have flooded his consciousness, jammed his mind's connections and made him unable to do anything. Sorcery-induced pain, however, was something that could be fought through, if one was possessed of a strong enough will.
And so, Abristus fought. He struggled against agony such as he had never known, and sent the command to the bomb implanted deep within his war-chassis to detonate, even as N'kari held him aloft with its claws.
The explosion that blossomed high up the slopes of Olympus Mons was visible for scores of kilometers, even through the raging storm. It annihilated the Temple of All Knowledge and everything around it for several blocks, leaving only a glowing crater – and within that crater, a wounded, burning, shrieking beast.
Through the power of the United oversoul, N'kari had survived the blast of the Fabricator-General's final act of duty, but the path to the Martian Collective was collapsed and buried under tens of tons of rubble. Enraged, the Soul Grinder summoned the closest United to it, commanding them to dig through the ruins until they reached a section of the tunnel that hadn't been destroyed. In the meantime, N'kari turned its baleful gaze to the forge-temples at the edge of the destruction unleashed by the Fabricator-General, venting its wrath upon their priests and defenders. It lashed out with more bolts of psychic energy, ripping apart structures that had stood for thousands of years and destroying relics that had been salvaged from the ruins of the Dark Age of Technology.
The Martian Collective could not feel despair, at least not in the way a human being would recognize the emotion. But they were running out of options, and had begun considering options to minimize the Mechanicus' losses.
It was then that one of the oldest minds of the Collective, who ten thousand years prior had been named Dalia Cythera, detected what appeared to be a glitch in the south, at the edge of the zone where Olympus Mons' remaining sensor network could pierce through the raging storm. For a moment, she wondered why this glitch felt familiar – then the truth was revealed in all its glory.
He was broken, and he knew it.
He had lost much of himself when the Dragon had died, if such a creature could ever truly be said to die. He had felt himself split apart, his existence rent asunder on a level that went much deeper than mere matter. He had been torn into different parts, and these parts had been hurled away by the power released by the C'tan's demise.
Only one part had managed to escape and return to the time of his departure, to the fire and ruin of the Heresy. That part had taken the name of Warsmith, and led those few of his brothers who had been far away enough to be spared from the Anomaly.
It was dead now, of course. He had felt it die, even if he did not know where it had happened.
Time meant nothing in the Anomaly, but slowly – agonizingly slowly – he had pulled the disparate parts of himself back together.
Even then, he had been trapped, unable to escape from the prison his foe's cataclysmic demise had created for him and his brothers. But then the Primarchs had come, three of them, and together they had struck at the heart of the foe's power. He had watched them fight the avatar of its rebirth, and had finally managed to break free, if only for a moment, to assist them in their fateful confrontations.
He had been dragged back then, but now ? Now he was free. With the death of Moravec, the cage of broken time had fallen apart. The Anomaly was no more, and he had led his brothers out of the dark and onto Mars' tumultuous surface. They had marched back the way they had come so long ago, trying and failing to reach other Imperial forces, not knowing just how much time they had lost in the Noctis Labyrinthus.
Barban Falk emerged from the storm at the head of his host, and beheld Olympus Mons besieged once more. Surrounded by a nimbus of eldritch lightning, he raised his warhammer high, and spoke a single sentence :
"Iron Within, Iron Without !"
We see the Noctis Labyrinthus. We see the gateway into the Haydes. There is an imprint across time, leftover from the first time father walked the Red Planet and fought against … well. You know what he fought against, don't you, brother ? You slew the one who devoured its corpse.
You and Omegon slew Moravec in the depths. You ended an existence older than the Age of Strife, a mind that stood on the very threshold of apotheosis. There are consequences to such deeds, brother.
Look ! He who was called Warsmith has returned. He and his warriors were split and rent asunder by chronophage predations, but duty does not end just by being missing for ten thousand years. The string of time snaps back into place with the removal of Mag'ladroth's weight on Martian reality, and casts an arrow into the back of the United. What was lost returns, and brings salvation in iron clad !
We are past the agency of Fate, brother, past the gaze of the most gifted seers. Our father's sacrifice blinded all but those who could understand His choice, but this ? This is something not even those few souls foresaw.
The forge-city had changed since the Iron Warriors had lifted its siege by Dark Mechanicum forces. Despite the damage inflicted by the daemonic swarms and the United, the forge was in much better shape than it had been then, as the wounds inflicted during the Heresy were gone. This was the first clue to many of the sons of Perturabo of just how long they had been trapped. Fortunately for them, there was no time to dwell on that : Olympus Mons was under attack once more, by an enemy whose Chaotic allegiance was made all too clear by their grotesque augmentations and blasphemous markings.
The Iron Warriors' knowledge of Chaos had been limited before coming to Mars. In a way, compared to what their descendants had learned over the millennia of keeping watch over the Iron Cages, it still was. But they knew enough, and were armed well enough. Barban Falk gave the order, and for the first time since the dawn of the Lie of Iron, the Fourth Legion went to war on Martian soil.
The returned sons of the Praetorian smashed into the back of the United, catching the horde between their guns and the walls of Olympus Mons. With the relentless precision their Legion was renowned for, they made full use of the advantage of surprise and the United's single-minded focus on the forge-city. Within seconds, tens of thousands of Dark Mechanicum constructs had been slain, caught in a hail of bolter fire and heavy artillery.
The United's hive-mind screamed in pain and shock at this unexpected blow. Panic raced through its slaves as it was forced to confront the impossible. The surprise attack turned into a massacre, and it was only N'kari's indomitable will that saved some of the horde still outside the walls from annihilation. The Soul Grinder imposed its command upon the host, pulling as many as it could through the breaches while leaving the rest to die at the guns of the Iron Warriors. In truth, N'kari was as surprised by the arrival of the Fourth Legion as its allies, perhaps even more so. The future it had been told had not included them – but then again, neither had it included its own fall at Magnus' hands and forced bargain with the Masters of the Forge of Souls in order to reach its appointed place as leader of the United.
Through the eyes of the United, N'kari watched the Iron Warriors as they forced their way into the forge-city, coming to the aid of its beleaguered defenders. The Mechanicus forces were as surprised by the Iron Warriors' appearance as the United, but the Martians remembered well the ancient debt they owed to the Fourth Legion, and the ties between Legion and Adeptus had been cultivated for thousands of years. They rejoiced at the reinforcements, even as they noted the ancient pattern of the Legionaries' armor and weaponry.
Despite the Temple's destruction, the Collective still had eyes in the city. They recognized the warriors at once, pulling imagery that dated from the Roboutian Heresy and the Martian War it had unleashed. These thousands of Iron Warriors were the lost forces of the Triarch Barban Falk, dispatched by Perturabo to reinforce Kelbor-Hal and free the Red Planet from the rebels' presence. At the apex of the war, they had gone into the Noctis Labyrinthus, confronting an unknown foe, and only three hundred had emerged of the more than twenty thousands that had remained of the initial thirty thousands after months of gruelling campaign.
Leading the Iron Warriors was Barban Falk himself, or at least part of him. All Iron Warriors had been transformed to some extent by their imprisonment in the Noctis Labyrinthus' time-broken depths, a result of the destruction of the mythical Dragon of Mars, but none more so than the Triarch. The part of him that had walked out of the Noctis Labyrinthus and reported the completion of his mission to the Lord of Iron had been replaced by the energies that had spilled from the Dragon's demise. Arcs of colorless energy coiled around him, sparking from his Terminator armor and the great power hammer he wielded to earth themselves into the ground – and the bodies of his foes. Psychic attacks faded away into nothingness before they could reach him, and the daemons of Slaanesh recoiled from his presence with instinctive abhorrence.
Seeing the destruction of the Temple of All Knowledge, Falk led a detachment of his warriors forward and up the slopes of Olympus Mons, while tasking the rest of his army with purging the rest of the forge-city of the United and the Neverborn. Linking up with pockets of Mechanicus resistance, the Triarch tore through the invaders, and soon reached the ruins left by the Fabricator-General's sacrifice.
There, he faced N'kari and the mightiest of the United, called to the side of the Soul Grinder as it sensed the Triarch's approach. Psychic attacks slid off Falk's Terminator armor like mere rainwater. The energies that lingered within him, a mere fraction of a fraction of the Dragon of Mars' power, were anathema to the Warp's essence. What was left were the mundane weapons the Masters of the Forge had affixed to N'kari's body, and while those were mighty, Falk had fought against the war-machines of the Dark Mechanicum at the peak of the Martian Wars, and prevailed.
With his hammer and the supporting fire of over a score Legionaries, Falk methodically dismembered N'kari, tearing it apart before delivering the final blow. That this method of defeating his foe was utterly humiliating to the daemon was merely a side effect to the Triarch : what mattered was that, by fighting in this way, the threat it posed was dealt with in the most efficient and least costly manner.
Of course, that didn't mean that, when Barban Falk finally slammed his power hammer into the skull of the creature, he didn't feel a savage satisfaction. For all the cold-bloodedness that came with being a son of the Lord of Iron, and for all of himself that he had lost, Falk was still a Space Marine at heart.
Daemons didn't lose consciousness. They didn't sleep, for to sleep was to dream, and how could a living nightmare possibly dream ? Even stasis, those forms of it that did affect the Neverborn, did not rob them of their awareness – it merely trapped them in a single moment, frozen and unable to act, a torture fit to inspire dread in even the black hearts of the Blood God's children.
However, they could lose their awareness of their surroundings when the complex web of emotions and energies that composed them were disturbed. Defeat and banishment were the most common cause of such a thing, which was what N'kari was now experiencing. Its first sensation after the fall of the hammer that had destroyed its incarnate form was that of a cold floor beneath its face, immediately followed by the vast, limitless presence above it.
Slowly, hesitantly, it raised its head, and beheld the figure of Slaanesh. The Youngest God sat enthroned, here in what mortal cultists dreamt the Silver Palace resembled. The Dark Prince looked down upon the defeated Soul Grinder, and smiled.
Confronted with such perfect menace, N'kari whimpered in abject fear and adoration.
"You disobeyed, N'kari my delight," purred the Dark Prince. "You attacked the Cyclops, even though it wasn't his time yet. That might have ruined everything ... if my champion hadn't foreseen it, and put a contingency in place. Really, such a clever boy."
Slaanesh smiled, not at N'kari, but at something else, something the disgraced daemon could not see. Then the gaze of the Dark God refocused upon the wretch before its throne.
"And then ... You betrayed me. You turned your back on me. You took the Oaths of the Forge of Souls, N'kari. You cast your lot with these renegades."
"Now, you will pay for that."
The halls of the Silver Palace had been half-emptied by the daemonic assault on Sol. But the screams of the Eater of Delights as the Lord of Pleasure and Pain made its wrath known echoed loud enough to compensate to make it sound full yet again.
So deeply had N'kari linked itself to the United oversoul that its destruction resonated through every machine and cyborg infected with its corruption. They didn't fall over dead all at once, no matter how convenient or poetic such a thing would have been. But the United were thrown off-balance, suddenly bereft of the Soul Grinder's guidance and purpose, and the Mechanicus defenders and Iron Warriors took ruthless advantage of it.
Within hours, most of the United had been purged, with the survivors having gone to ground, hiding in the ruins they had made. The Neverborn were hunted down and banished, the breaches in the walls sealed, and contact established between Falk and the Martian Collective. With the Fabricator-General dead, command of the Mechanicus had passed to the Collective, until such time as a successor could be found.
Having learned of the situation across Sol, Falk immediately requested transport for his men to join the war on Holy Terra. They had missed the Siege by ten thousand years, but they would be damned if they failed to take part in this new war for the birthworld of Humanity. The Collective agreed, but ships capable of crossing the Warp-torn void were in short supply. Mercifully, the Red Planet was on the same side of the Tear of Nightmares as Terra, but nearly every battle-worthy ship was being mobilized by the Lord High Admiral, who was preparing for a strike against the xenos fleet advancing on the Throneworld.
The Adeptus Mechanicus had its ways, however, and the debt it owed to the Iron Warriors was one that could never be repaid in full. Through the voice of Dalia Cythera, who Falk knew of old, the Martian Collective swore to deliver the sons of Perturabo to the seat of their grand-sire's empire.
AN : What, did you really think I wouldn't find a use for thirty thousand "disappeared" Iron Warriors ? ... Well, truth be told, I didn't intend to do anything with them when I first wrote their loss in the Noctis Labyrinthus. But after their resurgence during the events of Light's End, their return in the Angel War was inevitable.
Between this chapter, the one prior to it, and the chapter of Warband of the Forsaken Sons I am currently finishing up, I can safely say that I am done with the Adeptus Mechanicus for a while. Fortunately, the Angel War is the kind of battle in which any Imperial force can show up, even if its scale is also the reason for the sheer time it's taking to write.
In this chapter, I make allusions to the events of the Martian War, and to the Dragon of Mars and what happened to it back then. While I took inspiration from the novel Mechanicum, the truth is that I only have the vaguest of outlines as to what really happened in the RH-verse. And, really, the details don't matter much. The Dragon of Mars is dead, and its last chance for resurrection ended with Moravec. We might explore that particular series of events more as Falk and his warriors continue their journey, of course. But that's a problem for future Zahariel to deal with.
Thanks as always to Jaenera Targaryen for beta-reading this chapter. She pointed out a mistake that would have been rather embarassing.
Please tell me what you thought of this chapter, and of the Angel War story arc in general. We are past the half-way point of this monstrosity of a storyline, which has grown far beyond what I initially intended. By my current planning, there are still four more parts left to write, and then an epilogue to wrap things up. At the risk of sounding needy, reviews really are one of the best ways to get the creative juices pumping, so if you want to see what happens next sooner, then you know what to do !
Zahariel out.
Addendum : here is something which was posted on the Spacebattles thread a little while ago, after I learned of the new book in the Ravenor vs Eisenborn series (after years of waiting). It is something readers have been asking for a while : a list of the status of the Gloriana-Class flagships of the Legiones Astartes in the Roboutian Heresy universe.
This list only includes the flagships of the Legions (for instance, the Dark Angels had three of the Gloriana-Class during the Great Crusade in canon, but this list only concerns itself with their flagship, the Invincible Reason). I also reserve the right to change what's written below if the needs of the story should require it at a later date, but right now, this is what I think is true.
Dark Angels : Invincible Reason. Survived the Heresy to flee to the Eye of Terror, though the Tuchulcha Engine was destroyed by Cypher at Caliban. Under the command of one of the Grand Masters, it serves the First Legion's schemes still.
Emperor's Children : Pride of the Emperor. Recovered after the Heresy and refitted to serve the Third Legion. Still extant in the 41st Millennium, was attacked by the Laers during the journey to Chemos after receiving news of the Black Legion's attack. Current fate following that attack unknown.
Iron Warriors : Iron Blood (Ironblood in its only mention in the RH). Destroyed during the Siege of Terra as part of Perturabo's defense strategy.
White Scars : Swordstorm. At the Second Battle of Prospero, Mortarion boarded the Swordstorm and fought the Khagan, who fled by sorcery. Before being forced to flee before the rest of the Fifth Legion's fleet, however, Mortarion ordered the enemy flagship destroyed.
Space Wolves : Hrafnkel. Mentioned during the Errance prior to Russ' disappearance. The flagship was taken by Russ into the Maelstrom, and disappeared there : the xenos technology that scattered the Space Wolves who accompanied Russ in his journey with the Lion did not extend to the flagship. Among the pirates and warlords who dwell in the Maelstrom, there are always rumors that the Hrafnkel is still there, a prize waiting for the one worthy enough to take it.
Imperial Fists : Eternal Crusader. Stolen by Sigismund during the Breaking of the Seventh Legion. There have been sightings of the ship since then across the entire galaxy as the Destroyer continues his war.
Night Lords : Nightfall. Serves as the flagship of the Legion Master.
Blood Angels : Red Tear. Was last noted at the Siege of Terra, as the location of Sanguinius while the war raged before he answered Horus' challenge and killed him. After the War of Woe, the Sanguinary Guard defended it against the other Blood Angels who wanted to take it as their own, and used it to hold the Harbinger Star against the enemies of Sanguinius.
Iron Hands : Fist of Iron. One of the first vessels to reach Terra's orbits during the Siege. Orbits the Rotting World, serving as a guard dog to the system. It hasn't been seen outside of the Eye of Terror since the Scouring and the Forgotten War.
World Eaters : Conqueror. Vanished at the same time as Angron, and hasn't been seen since.
Ultramarines : Macragge's Honour. Returned at the climax of the Battle of Macragge, ready to serve as Guilliman's flagship once again.
Death Guard : Endurance. Last noted fighting the daemonships of Phytos. It is under the command of the Commander of the First Grand Company of the Fourteenth Legion, who is given the title of "Fleetmaster" as a result.
Thousand Sons : Photep. Destroyed during the Scouring, when it was boarded by the daemon Sarthorael and the Space Wolf Greyloc.
Sons of Horus : Vengeful Spirit. Still in action to this day, with one member of the Mournival constantly using it as a flagship.
Word Bearers : Fidelitas Lex. Still in service as flagship of the Legion Master of the Word Bearers.
Salamanders : Flamewrought. Destroyed during the War of the Dragon, when Vulkan shed the last of his humanity to become a Daemon Primarch.
Raven Guard : Shadow of the Emperor. Appeared above Hydra Cordatus when Corax attacked the world. Horribly warped by its time in the Eye of Terror and capable of things that defy all the laws of Warp travel, it also escaped the Eye without anyone at the Cadian Gate noticing.
Alpha Legion : Alpha, Beta. The Alpha was destroyed during the Heresy, fighting the Ultramarines. The Beta's fate is unknown.
Next : The Hall of Judgment