ok, i know its been over a year, and for that i am sorry. but to make it up to you fine people i plan to go on an uploading spree. I plan to upload the three part chapter of the prince of the eye, a chapter of the angel war, the true emperor of mankind and maybe others. i can't promise anything.

the in universe explination for my long and unplanned hiatus is that the imperial family went back to the great crusade and are now convening in the Imperial Palace for a session of watching these files, preventing the myraid dark futures foretold by them and maybe some family bonding. I might have Malcador and some custodes drop by, but there mostly out there running the Imperium.

also, the tech priest's first quote is from the dilbert cartoon series, specifically the titular character. if you think you know where a quote comes from comment, you just might be right.

on Russ stating you need psychic potental to acess the wolf spirit, i don't know if thats canon but in any fic I write where Russ is loyal I am gonna emphasize that. It makes him more tolerable to me.

now, spacebattles is down so i can not put the spacebattles link. i hope the mods understand.

s/13366753/29/Prince-of-the-Eye

The Imperial Family got comfy in there thrones in the Viewing Room of the Imperial Palace, built specifically for the purpose of viewing the files of the the Techpriest insistently called the "Magic Box" as aforementioned priest fiddled with the projector. Soon they were all settled and the Techpriest played the video.

Chapter 29: An Elder Evil Awakens

The Emperor noted, "OMINOUS FROM THE START."

Maeleum Datum : 401.M34

Back in the days of the Horus Heresy, even as the rest of the galaxy burned in the fires of the Warmaster's ambition, the Catalexis system had remained untouched. The Warp routes leading to the star and its three worlds had faded mere weeks before the betrayal of Istvaan III, and the Navigator Houses had only found new ones after the Scouring had passed. The people of Catalexis Prime to Tertius had no idea of the cataclysmic events that had transpired during their isolation, and the Imperium's authorities made sure to preserve their ignorance once contact was re-established in the Scouring.

Fulgrim nervously chuckled and said, "Its really setting up just how tragic it's gonna be when whatever elder evil is the subject of this file wakes up."

Thanks to an intact and prosperous economy, Catalexis had become the capital of the newly founded Catalexis Sector. For millennia afterwards, the system was a beacon of peace and Imperial unity, still holding to some of the Great Crusade's ideals even as the rest of the galaxy slid ever deeper into tyranny and oppression. When the Proclamation of Horus reached it, the cults that sprouted in its wake found little purchase. Outside of the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar, there were very few regions of the Imperium that could boast of such prosperity as Catalexis.

The tech priest pressed his button and a male voice said, "This is gonna be bad."

All of this came to an end when an archaeological expedition to Catalexis Secundus' northern pole discovered what appeared to be an impossibly vast machine amidst the frozen wasteland. They thought it to be a relic from the Dark Age of Technology, not realizing that it was actually a cybernetic being – a union of alien flesh and machinery. With their tools and attempts at understanding what they had found, the diggers accidentally stirred the creature from its aeons-old sleep. For the first time in millions of years, the entity that would come to be known to the galaxy as the Cacodominus (a name extracted from the ravings of psykers by Inquisitors) awakened.

Magnus waxed philosophical, "Ah yes, the danger of curiosity is the risk of digging too deep. Some thing were never meant to be found, some knowledge never meant to be discovered. If we hadn't watched these videos I would have never realized that and charged headfirst into damnation." The Emperor smiled, immensely proud of Magnus having realized that yet keeping his curiosity.

The Angel stepped out of the Webway portal, having finally completed his hunt. He had spent ten years in the Labyrinthine Dimension, pursuing the last escaped cultists of the Children of Ur-Gall.

Had any of the tainted pilgrims survived, the seeds of plague they carried would have brought about the death of trillions, as well as destabilized an entire Segmentum, beginning a period of darkness that would have lasted a thousand years. But now, they were all dead, and that dreadful future had been averted.

Sanguinius could not help but draw parallels between what his counterpart on screen was doing and what he and his family were currently doing.

As Sanguinius spread his wings in the Materium for the first time in a decade, his second sight opened fully once again. In the Webway, it had been blocked, and Sanguinius had enjoyed the guilty pleasure of being relieved of the ceaseless stream of visions -

Konrad Curze gazed sympathetically at Sanguinius, knowing the pain of visions of the myriad futures all too well.

He saw it. He heard it. A great abomination, rising from beneath the ice to bind the galaxy to its malevolent will. Its weight on destiny slammed into Sanguinius' mind, and the Great Angel howled in pain and despair, knowing that a cataclysm a thousand times greater than the one he had adverted by slaying the Children of Ur-Gall might yet be unleashed.

Rogal spoke to Sanguinius in his usual blunt manner, "You need not feel guilty for doing what you think is right. Nor for the actions of an alternate self." The entire family agreed with the Inwit primarch, but Perturabo visibly sulked, as the thing he enjoyed most about these viewing sessions was hitting his rival.

Ancient beyond belief, the Cacodominus was possessed of god-like psychic might. Those unfortunate souls who had roused it from its slumber were its first victims, their minds shattered and their every thought consumed by the nightmarish being as it sought to learn what had transpired in the galaxy during its long sleep.

Soon, entire cities across Catalexis Secundus fell under the Cacodominus' sway, their souls forever tainted by its alien presence. The more souls that succumbed to the Cacodominus' domination, the more awake its immense consciousness grew, until it finally awoke in full and unleashed its incredible power. The Warp-routes and astropathic conduits that connected the Catalexis Sector became the veins through which its venom flowed, and system after system fell, its people reduced to thralls, little more than puppets to the Cacodominus' antediluvian desires.

Mortarion muttered something about witch lords while Angron took an ibuprofen to dull the bite of the Butcher nails.

The Catalexis Sector was the first to succumb to the malevolent creature's will, but it was not the last. Within a few months, half a dozen Sectors, hundreds of worlds and over a trillion souls were enslaved by the Cacodominus. Only then did the spread of its corruption stop, the great monster having seemingly reached the limits of its terrifying power.

Rogal bluntly stated, "Everything has limits." This time Perturabo did hit him.

By then, the Imperium was reeling from the loss of so many worlds. Astropaths all over the galaxy felt the echoes of the Cacodominus' awakening, and the extinction of so many souls. Supply lines stretching across Sectors were severed, plunging systems into famine and the dissolution of Imperial order. In the Craftworlds of the Eldars, Farseers found the future muddled and obscured by the Cacodominus' shadow. As anarchy descended on thousands of worlds, Imperial Governors struggled to restore order, drawing upon every resource available.

Roboute said, "Such is the logistics of a galaxy spanning empire where FTL travel and communications rely upon something as unreliable as the Warp." The Emperor nodded and said, "WHICH IS WHY I AM HARD AT WORK ON THE IMPERIAL WEBWAY."

Imperial Regiments bound for distant war-zones were diverted to keep the peace, condemning distant worlds to xenos invasions or rebel uprisings. Space Marine forces returned from the fringe to find formerly stable regions thrown into disarray, all while their Librarians were either dead or crippled by the great power rising in Catalexis.

Such was the Cacodominus' might that it affected the Warp itself, twisting it in ways unknown to any who yet lived. The Sea of Souls reflects the thoughts and emotions of all ensouled creatures, but within the Cacodominus' reach, its psyche was the dominant one. Warp travel became even more unreliable, and astropathic communication was sundered across the entire Segmentum. The rules of sorcery, only ever half-understood by even the greatest of Chaos magi, shifted in accordance to its glacier-like thoughts. In affected regions of space, the carefully designed rituals by which the Traitor Marines escaped the Eye of Terror through the efforts of their mortal followers and dupes became unstable, leading to hundred of Chaos Legionaries facing horrific fates as they attempted the crossing.

The tech priest snarked, "Daemon worlds minus the Daemons." Russ looked at Magnus and said, "Even if it's happening to traitors, you can understand my distrust of maleficarum?" Magnus nodded, "Yes, but remember not all sorcerers are psykers." Russ nodded, "Yeah, i mean you do need psychic potental to acess the spirit of Fenris, so I guess not all psykers are bad." The entire room was shocked and the Techpriest pressed his button and a nasaly voice said, "What just happened?"

The lords of the Eye of Terror could not fail to notice the rise of the Cacodominus. Plans that had been centuries in the making were brought to naught by its mere existence. The networks of cults and rebels suddenly found themselves bereft of their sponsors' support as the complex rituals that allowed communication stopped working. Entire star systems on the other side of the galaxy were unknowingly saved from damnation by the Cacodominus' awakening, though on balance, the creature's rise did far, far more harm to the Imperium than good.

The Thousand Sons, who relied upon sorcery most of all, were all but crippled by the sudden shift in the tides of the Great Sea. The effects of the Cacodominus' ascension were least felt within the Eye of Terror, where the power of Chaos was at its strongest, but even the sons of Magnus were forced to adapt the formulas of their Enumerations to this changing paradigm. Dozens of their cults were destroyed by failed rituals, their members obliterated by eldritch energies.

Perturabo muttered, "Makes sense. The Chaos Gods are not about to let some xenos abomination influence there domain in the material."

After months of intensive research that cost the lives and souls of hundreds of thrall wizards, the Sorcerer Ptolemeraz, who had returned to Sortiarius after his role as ambassador to Sicarius under the Crimson Accords had ended, devised a functioning workaround the Cacodominus' perturbation. At Magnus' command, Ptolemeraz used his aetheric equations to open a small gateway outside the Eye of Terror, to one of the Fifteenth Legion's hidden psyker colonies near the region of space dominated by the Cacodominus.

Magnus felt proud of this despite himself.

The Crimson King dispatched a small party of Thousand Sons through that portal, tasking them with investigating the Cacodominus, and end its alien influence by any means necessary. This party was led by Ptolemeraz's birth-brother, Antiochos, who had earned the Primarch's favor for his brave actions during the battle of Sortiarius at the end of the Legion Wars.

"Find the truth and bring it back to me, my son. However distasteful it might be."

Magnus the Red to Antiochos

Magnus muttered something about Tzeentch being the lord of lies.

Other Legions stopped their operations beyond the borders of the Eye, focusing instead on finding out more about what was happening while securing their borders against rival powers. The Dark Council of the Word Bearers spent eight days in reclusion before emerging from their chamber and decreeing that the Cacodominus was an abomination, anathema to the Dark Gods, and had to be destroyed. Mankind and Mankind alone was to inherit the stars, claimed the Dark Apostles, and all xenos tyrants must be purged. The Seventeenth Legion broadcast that decree to its agents, and plots to distabilize the Imperium were put on hold until the greater, alien foe could be destroyed.

Lorgar noted, "How like chaos to twist the principles of those who oppose it to serve its own will."

On Kerlazium, the Night Lords found the flow of new damned souls delivered to their daemon world had all but dried up, with only the souls branded by the ritual first designed by the Vindicator Sorcerer Nephandim reaching the hell-like world. The complex Warp currents and metaphysical mechanisms that brought the souls of the corrupt to the Eighth Legion's kingdom were disturbed by the Cacodominus' influence. The Night Lords had more than enough damned slaves to suit their current needs, but the plans that had been drawn in the wake of the Darkness War and the Legion's reunification relied upon a steady increase of available manpower as well as akhrali production. When the leaders of the Eighth Legion received word of the Cacodominus' existence, something very much like fear coursed through their souls as they wondered how any one being could possibly disturb the aetheric conditions across the entire galaxy. Fierce debate raged within their citadels as they argued over what course of action to pursue, while Konrad Curze remained silent.

Konrad Curze chuckled darkly at the misfortune of his traitorous counterpart and the traitors who called themselves Night Lords.

"You know he will figure it out eventually, don't you ?"

"Of course. It is inevitable."

"He will not forgive us."

"That, too, is inevitable. But his wrath does not change that it had to be done."

Even mighty Horus was perturbed by the rise of the Cacodominus, whose influence on the galaxy was throwing his own schemes into disarray. The Prince of the Eye was suspicious of the Cacodominus' awakening, and believed that the hand of one or more of his rivals was behind the abomination's rising. None of his oracles, nor his own sight, had provided any warning of the xenos monster's awakening, and that was reason enough to believe someone had deliberately hidden it from him.

Many eyes turned to Alpharius/Omegon, while the twin primarchs of the 20th legion just shrugged.

Driven by the Warmaster of Chaos' irrepressible will, his agents searched throughout the Great Eye. They searched not only for any trace of those behind the Cacodominus' awakening, but also for any clue as to the creature's nature, and every hint or scrap of lore they uncovered was brought to Horus, who alone knew them all.

Horus noted, "Knowing is one half of the battle."

Soon, Horus put together a picture of what the Cacodominus truly was. On daemon worlds that had once been great repositories of Eldar knowledge, scriptures were uncovered that hinted at the monster's origins. The Cacodominus was the last survivor of its species, a breed of hyper-psykers that had risen during the apogee of the Eldar Empire. Its kind had been purged by the Children of Isha, who could not tolerate any rivals to their own power, but the Cacodominus had survived by burrowing deep beneath the ice of Catalexis Secundus and imprinting its will upon the surrounding Warp in order to hide its presence further.

Jagathai muttered, "of course its the Knife Ears fault."

There it had slept for aeons, until the Eldars who had exterminated its kind succumbed to the Fall and the Imperium who rose to dominate the galaxy in their stead was torn asunder by civil war. Now it was rising, and though its motivations were impossible for humans to understand, its actions – the creation of an empire of mind-controlled slaves – were all too clear, as were the threat it represented to Horus' own ambitions.

Yet though the nature of the calamity was now revealed to the Prince of the Eye, the cause of it yet eluded him – for Horus, whether due to paranoia or infernal cunning, refused to believe that the Cacodominus' awakening had been accidental. And so he sent his agents back across the Eye, with new orders burned into their darkling souls.

Only when he had the full picture before him would Horus act. This was told to his advisors and generals, and they redoubled their efforts to secure the Horusian kingdoms in this troubled period while their Warmaster planned his next move.

None of them even thought of the possibility that maybe – just maybe – Horus was afraid of facing the Cacodominus head-on. That, perhaps, the ancient xenos' power might be greater than that of the Anointed of Chaos.

The video ended there and Rogal noted, "That is troubling." Perturabo hit him.