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 golden warrior ran through the corridors of the Palace, even as they shook from the war outside. The enemy had come again to attack the Palace, as it had so many times before, seeking to murder the warrior's lord. The Palace's defenses, which once could have held all the hosts of the galaxy at bay, were weakened by all the years of isolation and treachery.
Those who should have stood on its walls were elsewhere, pursuing other goals than the protection of the lord they had abandoned. Only the golden warrior and his kin had remained loyal, and they were too few to man the walls, while the attackers were without number. The hosts that had answered their calls for aid before hadn't come, occupied with their own wars or too far to arrive in time he didn't know.
Spectral servants clad in scarlet robes covered out of his way as he ran, mewling pathetic prayers for mercy. He battered those too slow aside, leaving their broken shades behind, not sparing a thought for their pain. They would recover and resume their duties, or dissolve into aetheric energy and be replaced. He passed by the corpses of several that he wasn't responsible for – the enemy was in the palace. That was why he was running, why he had abandoned his men on the breached walls to come to the aid of his lord. The shame of failure burned his soul : in all the ages where he and his brothers had stood defenders of the palace, never before had one of the attacks breached the walls.
But then, this was an attack like none of those that had come before. The entire world was crumbling, falling apart at the seams. Something was happening, something had happened, or maybe something was about to happen, that he hadn't seen coming, even though it was his duty to watch for any and all threats to his lord.
He came upon the door of his liege's chambers, and his hearts nearly seized in his chest as he beheld the corpses of his two brothers, laying on the ground, smashed and bleeding. The warrior didn't pause, nor did he acknowledge the hunger that stirred at the sight of the spilled vitae. The great golden double doors leading to his lord's quarters had been broken down, and he battered the pieces aside as he rushed inside, ignoring the reverence and protocols that had held fast on this star for aeons.
He stopped as he took in the scene. His liege was here – his liege was fine, that was the most important part. The assassin was there, dead on the floor, its shadowy blood spilling across the mosaic depicting how the Siege of Terra should have ended : with the Arch-Traitor slain, and his master heralded as the Savior of Mankind.
"Ah, Azkaellon," said his liege, and he fell to his knees, unable to withstand the glorious majesty of his prince. "How good of you to come."
"My lord," said Azkaellon, forcing himself to ignore his instinct to remain on his knees in order to stand. "The enemy is at the walls, and they have breached our defenses. I … I have failed you."
He raised his head, exposing his throat in a gesture of submission, awaiting his master's judgement. Part of him shivered in anticipation at the thought of his liege's fangs tearing into his flesh and drinking his blood – his memories, his life, his soul, all part of the Angel's being for all eternity …
His prince laughed, and it was the most beautiful sound Azkaellon had ever heard.
"Oh, Azkaellon. Our most loyal and faithful son. You have not failed Us. You and your brothers have done exactly what We needed you to do."
The Terran Crucible
Part Four : The Angel Descends
With the defeat of the six Exalted Daemons, it seems that the tide of the Angel War might be turned in the Imperium's favor. But all is not as it seems, for the power that orchestrated this apocalyptic conflict is one blessed with sight beyond the ken of most mortals and immortals alike. As the defenders of Sol fight against the forces of Slaanesh, the Dark Prince's greatest champion arrives on Terra. Clad in golden armor and wielding a blade that makes reality scream, the truest champion of Slaanesh comes upon the Throneworld in a manner befitting his stature …
To the south of the Imperial Palace laid one of the greatest avenues of Holy Terra, which had been cleared for the parades celebrating the end of the millennium. Armies that could conquer systems had passed on that road, marching in perfect formation under the acclamations of billions of Terra's denizens. Now, it was a battlefield, where these same armies held defensive positions against a seemingly limitless horde of daemons and soul-broken mortals.
On that road, which stretched all the way to the fabled Lupercal's Gate, stood a great numbers of archs, each constructed from materials from one of the Imperium's worlds. Not all of the Imperium's million worlds were represented, of course, but thousand upon thousand of the most important (or readily accessible) ones had been erected, forming a line of monuments to the might and scale of Mankind's dominion in the stars.
One of these archs had been built on Mercury, closest of the worlds to Sol. Long before the Emperor had risen from the ashes of the Long Night, Mercury had been a mining world, hundreds of facilities dotting its burning surface and draining the liquid metal from its core, drawing its heat as an energy source. In recent times, that output was used almost exclusively to feed the Martian forges, and it was a testament to the prodigious industry of the Red Planet that concerns were beginning to rise regarding the consequences of draining too much of the smaller world's core. These concerns, however, had been quickly silenced, for the hunger of Mars for raw materials must be sated, no matter the cost.
The Mercurian Arch was a symbol of Mercury's importance to Sol's economy. It was made entirely of metal, shaped by the craft of the Mercurian mining clans into a work of art and devotion to the God-Emperor that gleamed in the poisoned light of the Tear of Nightmares. Many of the archs made of stone and softer materials had fallen apart in the quakes and warfare of the Angel War, but the Mercurian Arch endured, becoming a de facto rallying point for the beleaguered Imperial forces.
They had fought for days when, on the edge of Sol, the daemonworld Pluto was destroyed by Battlefleet Solar and the Song of the Deep was banished back to the Realms of Chaos. In that moment, the true purpose of the Angel War was revealed, and a scheme that had been hidden from the sight of Gods and mortals alike entered its final stages.
He watched the Harbinger Star come apart. Pieces of the daemonworld fell through the rift, emerging outside the Eye of Terror as flaming meteors carrying the legions of the Youngest God to war. It was beautiful – beautiful enough to captivate him for what seemed forever, as the Angel War proceeded and the pieces fell in place, one by one.
And then, finally, it happened. Six Daemon Lords, Exalted and blessed with the power of the Dark Prince. Six chosen of Slaanesh, sent to bring ruin and madness to Holy Terra. Six vessels of power, prepared to hold onto it until they were defeated, and the power bestowed upon them slipped from their grasp.
But power cannot be destroyed. It merely flows from one vessel to the next, and all the power Slaanesh had lent to its six avatars was now claimed for a singular purpose.
N'kari's betrayal would have ruined the entire ritual by breaking its sacred numerology, but the defeat and treachery of the Eater of Delights had been foreseen and accounted for. Leonatos, the Daemon Prince of Eidolon, had been brought onboard as a replacement, and given the Exalted power that N'kari would have received had it not been forced to turn to the Masters of the Forge of Souls for its dark rebirth.
Everything had gone as planned. Now was the time to fulfill his purpose. Now was the hour to reclaim all of himself.
With a beat of his great golden wings, he fell toward the rift. He rose toward glory.
In his flight, he passed above the Silver Palace, above the hosts of the Dark Prince leaving the Realms of Chaos to join the war in Sol. He passed fields where the forces of Slaanesh and Khorne had battled since the Fall, now abandoned by the Lord of Pleasure and Pain, and laughed as he saw the legions of Khorne stand dumbly, not knowing what to do without an enemy in front of them – and then, inevitably, turn on each other to satiate their unending lust for conflict.
Even here, in the places between places, in the realms where ideas were born and dreams came to die, he couldn't see what might be. That gift belonged to his other self, the one that had remained trapped in that palace, besieged by the remnants of their weakness until they could expunge it, guiding him from afar so that he could set everything in motion.
Soon. Soon they would be one again. Purified of everything that had held them back before. This time, they would make it right. This time, nothing would stop them.
He passed through the Mercurian Archway, and emerged on Terra.
On Mercury, every single human suddenly fell dead, their souls and lives taken from them to empower the Arch's hidden purpose. For generations cultists of Slaanesh had hidden among the mining and scavenger clans, and they had used secrets whispered into their dreams to weave a powerful enchantment within the Arch, and hide it from detection during transport. Through the use of blood samples taken from every Mercurian during mandatory health inspections – made necessary by the harsh conditions of the mining world – they had tied the Arch's sorcery to the population of the planet. In one single heartbeat, millions perished, not aware that the reason why their settlements had thus far been spared the horrors of the Angel War had been solely so that they could serve as fuel for its architect.
The Mercurian Arch rippled with power, and the space beneath it screamed as it became a passage between Holy Terra and the depths of the Warp. The artful decorations of the Arch flowed into new shapes, forming sanity-blasting symbols and runes that drew the eye and did not release it. Those unfortunate soldiers who had taken cover under the Arch were annihilated, their souls stripped from their atomized flesh and taken as playthings by the servants of the terrible power that arrived.
A single figure emerged from the Mercurian Warpgate, tall as a Space Marine and clad in golden armor from head to toe. In one hand he held a sword that burned with fell light; in the other, a cracked and bleeding cup that finally broke apart as soon as the figure set foot on Terra, shards falling between golden-armored fingers and striking the ground with a sound like the tolling of funereal bells. Two wings of golden feathers stretched from the figure's back, and from them dripped a rain of multicolored droplets in which one could glimpse every desire held in one's heart. It had no face, only a blazing light that spoke of unreachable divinity.
The Sanguinor, Herald of Sanguinius, had arrived.
We see the Sanguinor. The golden herald, walking the stars and shining the dark light of Chaos' Youngest God in the Angel's absence. In its right hand is a sword made of a Dark God's blessed hate. In its left is a cup stolen from a murdered legend and filled with a Ruinous Power's cursed love. But that legend's power is spent, burned away by the deceitful oaths it was used to sanctify.
Its golden armor reflects the light that shines from where its face should be. Why do none of its followers ever wonder just what it is it hides beneath that glow ? Why cannot we see ?
There is a reason the Imperium fears angels, even after ten millennia and all the work of the Inquisition to suppress knowledge of the Heresy.
Where this creature walks, the psyche of worlds is left deeply scarred, even after the purges and the fire. It carries offers and pacts, sealed with a drink from its cup, and from its feathers drip a wine whose vines only grow in Slaanesh's own garden.
It is kin to daemons, for like them, it is lies made manifest, a construct of strings woven from power and nightmares. But unlike the Neverborn, whose shapes are painted over their manifestations by mortal brains failing to grasp their true form, the Sanguinor's disguise is deliberate.
We see it walk through the gate its slaves prepared for it. We go back up the thread of causality, of madness and ruin, and we see Mercury.
We see a place of endless industry that has fallen silent. The Messenger of the Gods has delivered his last message. Now there is only silence in their empty house.
The Sanguinor walks alone, without the broken angels that have accompanied it for millennia.
It does not remain so for long : already those turned by the gate's sorcery rally to its side, shouting their devotion and abasing themselves before it.
It shows no joy at their dark faith, but the Aether ripples with its pride and cruel amusement.
We see the lie. The light of the Beacon shines brighter than any illusion. We see past the armor, past the mask, past the light designed to blind. There is something there, but we cannot see it !
But we do see the others, who see this light and abhor it just as much as we do. We see a mouth of fangs dripping with blood, snarling in contempt and hate.
Remember, brother, that when it comes to Chaos, the enemy of my enemy is not – cannot be – my friend.
Of the hundreds of thousands of Imperial soldiers holding the area around the Mercurian Arch, two-thirds had passed beneath it before Light's End. All of them had looked at its decorations, and even the most brutish had felt a twinge of appreciation for its beauty. None of them had sensed the seed that, in that moment of appreciation, had found its way into their soul. Now, bathed in the radiance of the Sanguinor, that seed blossomed, and within moments, all were entrapped in the Glamour.
They saw the Sanguinor as a glorious avatar of the God-Emperor's might, their own minds warped to think of themselves as servants of that divine being. Those of their comrades who hadn't been caught in that malevolent web appeared to them as monsters, creatures of bone and blood that grinned with pointed teeth. Soldiers who had fought side by side through the horror of the Angel War turned on each other without hesitation, in a synchronized act of unwitting treachery that further thinned the gossamer thin veil between Materium and Immaterium.
Even so, the manifestation of the Sanguinor upon Holy Terra didn't go unchallenged. Since Light's End and the dawn of the Angel War, the Imperial defenders had been faced with all manners of Neverborn and Warp-wrought nightmares, but those daemons not spawned from Old Earth's ancient sins had all belonged to the choirs of Slaanesh, the Dark Prince of Chaos and God of Pleasure and Pain. The Angel War was its play, its long-planned move to end the Great Game of Chaos and crown itself the victor.
The other Dark Gods had been caught unaware by the Emperor's demise, their pawns ill-placed to react. But Khorne, whose hatred of Slaanesh was matched only by his eternal bloodthirst, would not tolerate the victory of his despised rival. As the Sanguinor began its march toward the Imperial Palace, the Blood God roared from his Throne of Skulls, a sound that echoed over even the infernal dim of the Angel War.
Long had Khorne begrudged Slaanesh its dominion over the Ninth Legion, for the War God had desired Sanguinius' blood-marked sons for his own before the machinations of She-Who-Thirsts had denied him. The hatred of the Imperial Fists for the Blood Angels, which had seen warbands of both Traitor Legions ruin themselves over the millennia of their imprisonment in the Eye of Terror, was a pale reflection of their patron deity's own fury. Blood was sacred to Khorne, its spilling sacrament to his followers, and he considered the Blood Angels' vampirism an insult – and worse than that, a theft of that which belonged to him.
Khorne had his own plans in motion for the Times of Ending – across the galaxy, dread and ancient powers were gathering, long-forgotten weapons exhumed from their resting places while the armies sworn to the Blood God mustered. And it would not be for nothing. Slaanesh would not steal victory in the Great Game with a move none of the others had seen coming.
A veritable ocean of blood had been spilled by the Imperial army that had held the Way against the daemons and soul-broken citizens. Now Khorne laid claim to that vitae, infusing it with his divine fury. The blood became a portal to Khorne's Realm of Chaos, and through it the Lord of Slaughter sent one of his mightiest servants, one who had last trodden the earth of Terra ten thousand years ago. Then, it had been defeated, hurled back into the Sea of Souls by a foe most potent – but fortunately, there was a vessel available through which the lingering opposition to the champion's return could be bypassed.
Demetrius Katafalque, who had been a Captain of the Seventh Legion the last time Chaos had tested the walls of the Imperial Palace, was frowning under his helmet.
He had lost the other Legionaries with whom he had escaped the Tower of Hegemon after they had refused that arrogant bastard Constantinus' offer of alliance – as if anyone of the Legions exiled to the Eye of Terror would ever consider joining forces with one of Guilliman's weakling offspring !
He had spent years trapped in the cages of the Custodes, fuming with bitterness at the knowledge that the only reason they had kept him alive – the only reason they had even bothered to capture him in the first place – was to use him as a training aide. The sheer indignity of it all had helped stoke the fire of his wrath, but now that anger paled compared to what he felt at the sight of the Sanguinor.
He remembered that golden warrior from the Heresy, changed though he might be. The Sanguinor had first been glimpsed in the war councils after the battle of Istvaan V, sent in the stead of the Ninth Legion's Primarch. Back then, they had thought it an insult, or a sign of the changes the Angel was going through – all of the rebel Primarchs had been changing, evolving past the constraints the False Emperor had imposed upon them. Only much later, when the Eye of Terror had echoed with the sounds of the War of Woe, had they learned the truth : that Sanguinius was a fool, a coward and a madman, who had thrown himself into delusions to avoid facing the truth of what he and his sons had become.
The ancient bargain between Dorn and Khorne still held, protecting the Imperial Fists from the blood-madness that claimed all other followers of the Blood God eventually.
It was … unacceptable. The servants of Slaanesh, whose sole contribution in the Siege had been the slaying of Horus Lupercal, were going to conquer Terra, while the Seventh Legion were still trapped behind Perturabo's hateful Iron Cage ?!
No.
He would not allow it.
Demetrius burned with a deep, cold rage, and against that particular madness the covenant was no protection. His mind warped under the weight of that hate, just as his Primarch's had been, until no cost was too great, no ruin too terrible, so long as it was inflicted upon his foe as well.
It was then that Khorne roared, the Blood God sharing Demetrius' outrage, and the son of Dorn smiled, for he knew what he must do. He also knew what it would cost him, but he didn't care. With a roar echoing that of the Lord of Skulls, he plunged into the lake of blood that had formed around the infernal arch, and opened his body and soul to the great one that awaited there.
Through the willing sacrifice of Demetrius of the Seventh Legion, the essence of the most ancient Daemon Prince of human origin was returned to the world where, in an age none living now remembered, he had been born and ascended.
The lake of blood boiled, a crimson fog rising from its surface in which images of leering, fanged faces could be seen. The wounded and the dying caught in it screamed, and suddenly went silent, swallowed whole by the Blood God's realm. Two great, bat-like wings beat once, twice – and on the third beat, the fog was dispersed, revealing the avatar of Khorne's wrath sent unto Terra.
He was tall, taller than any of the Bloodthirsters in the aspect of which he had been remade by his Blood God. Around his throat was a collar of blackest iron, extracted from the rivers of blood he had caused to spill and hammered into shape by the daemon-smiths of Khorne to ward him against sorcery. His teeth were the size of human blades; each of them a reflection of a rival power he had broken, and he bared them in a rictus of purest fury. He wore a mantle made of hundreds of skulls, each too large to be anything but the remnants of Space Marines.
In one hand, he held an axe whose blade was the size of a Lupercal Tank, and in the other a staff forged from the bones of those he had slain in his mortal life. That staff was almost as tall as the daemon himself, and emblazoned with the skull-rune of Khorne, which blazed with the wrath of the Blood God. Wherever that staff's infernal light touched, the subtler enchantments of the Warp were unmade, and the Sanguinor's own golden radiance was diminished under its touch.
War, in its most atrocious and glorious aspect, had come to Terra once more.
Doombreed was here.
We see Doombreed. First of Humanity's Lords of the Damned, first of the species from which we were molded to be broken and remade into a blood-soaked reflection of who he once was.
Did you know, brother, that not once did the ancient warlord pray to the Blood God when he was still mortal ? And that even now, after an aeon of carnage across the stars, he still never has ? Khorne cares naught for prayer, or devotion. Empty words and promises mean nothing to the Lord of Skulls. Only blood matters, and he who became Doombreed spilled an ocean's worth of vitae when he was still mortal, earning his ascension by deeds that shaped the course of Humanity's history, yet are now forgotten to all but a few of us would-be immortals.
The Blood God burned his mortal name from existence. He could be any of Old Earth's parade of ancient monsters. There were so many of them, brother – a litany of names, each guilty of such crimes their victims cried out that surely they must echo into eternity. Yet they are forgotten now, remembered only by the dead. Such is the nature of glory, that only the gods remember it for long.
You remember Doombreed, do you not, brother ? You saw him as you held our brother's bleeding body in your arms. You gave the order that rained fire upon him from on high, incinerating him along with the sons who gave their lives to hold him at bay.
But Roboute called him back, brother. The manner of his defeat was not direct enough, and the rules of daemonic summoning are more suggestions where our treacherous kin is concerned. He dragged Doombreed away from the Fields of Blood, where the Daemon Prince vented his fury upon the numberless hosts of his god, and hurled him at the walls of the Palace.
We see that battle, etched upon the soul of the world, deeply enough that we watch despite the interference of the many destinies that converged in that most fateful conflict. We see Doombreed tear through the lines of conscripts turned into veterans by weeks of horror.
Such power, increased further still by the Blood God's hate. Power enough to match the six Exalted of Slaanesh ? Power enough to slay the Herald and leave the hosts of the Angel War leaderless ?
No. Surely it won't be so easy.
Dripping with blood and burning with wrath, Doombreed charged the Sanguinor. The Daemon Prince of Khorne towered over the golden angel, the blade of his axe alone the size of the Slaaneshi champion. The thralls of the Sanguinor recoiled in fright, for not even the Glamour could keep them safe of the unholy terror that blazed from Doombreed.
With a roar that was heard all the way aboard the ships of Battlefleet Solar, Doombreed struck. The Sanguinor raised its own daemonic blade to meet the blow, holding it two-handed for the first time in ages, now that it no longer carried its tainted cup. The two infernal weapons clashed, and the shockwave of the impact sent the closest soldiers flying, but the Sanguinor remained standing, bearing the tremendous weight of Doombreed's attack.
With a snarl, the Daemon Prince of Khorne struck with his staff of bones. The weapon, which had broken the sorceries of the greatest Daemon Lords of Tzeentch and sundered the dream-palaces of Eldar potentates in the time before the Fall, smashed the golden Herald into the chest and sent it flying upward, crashing against the Mercurian Arch with enough strength that the daemonic gate was broken in two L-shaped halves that fell to the ground in opposing directions, while the Sanguinor plummeted back to the blood-soaked earth, spreading its wings to slow its descent.
Doombreed stalked toward his prey, eager for the final blow. A few of the Sanguinor's thralls hurled themselves in his path, trying to keep him from reaching the creature they saw as a beautiful angel. They died without the Daemon Prince even noticing their presence. Doombreed's shadow fell upon the Sanguinor as he raised his axe, ready to end the Angel War. As he did so, the Daemon Prince noticed a crack on the Slaaneshi lord's golden armor where his staff had struck – a crack that was spreading.
Before the blow could fall, the golden armor fell apart, revealed to have been nothing more than a shell. A pillar of eldritch light descended from where the Tear of Nightmares had torn the heavens, striking the Sanguinor. Power that had been split apart since the War of Woe was reunited, one champion of the Blood God undoing what another had wrought.
There was the sound of laughter, rich and beautiful. And all within the Throneroom, within the Palace, upon Terra, heard the sound of cruel laughter, and all knew what it portended, for deep in their very souls, they remembered that sound. From the chem-wastes to the highest spires, they heard it and they knew.
The Great Angel had returned.
We see the Angel. We see the Lord of Hosts. We see Sanguinius. At long last, the veil has fallen from our eye, and we see the truth.
He is not mad, or at least not in the fashion we believed him to be. He hasn't been since our blood-soaked brother shattered his essence on the grave-world that turns near the Eye's black heart, and his fell spirit reformed in his golden palace of lies.
The clones of our dead brother, the isolation in his palace, the withdrawal from his Legion as it fell to pieces – a ruse, all of it, from that point on. Now the delusions that entrap him are altogether more terrible.
Sanguinius, our beloved brother, kind and majestic, is gone. There is only the Great Angel now. And oh, but such glory it is that cloaks him. A light that burns away fear and hatred and replace them with adoration. A dream made into a weapon by the dreamer. The vision of an Imperium pure and strong, as our father might have conceived of it before Ruin came for our family.
It is beautiful, brother. That, we will not deny.
But no matter how beautiful, a lie will remain a lie.
Oh, Our beloved brother, you are mistaken. Soon, all shall embrace Our reality.
What ?!
Did you think We would not be able to hear you, Magnus ? Oh, brother, brother. So wise, yet so naive. So learned, yet so ignorant. But worry not, for We shall soon illuminate you.
Hear Us, you children of the pyre, you silent watchers. Hear Us, Our brothers in blood.
We are Our father's rightful heir. We are the uncrowned Emperor, the Second Master of Mankind. We are the one whose sight reached past Light's End and prepared the rites of succession.
We are Sanguinius, and through blood, We are made eternal !
From the corpse of the Sanguinor emerged the Daemon Primarch of Slaanesh, and at his side stood the Sanguinary Guard, summoned forth from the destroyed Harbinger Star, whose bones had become the pathway for Slaanesh's hosts across Sol.
Though he now faced a being far more powerful than the Sanguinor, Doombreed didn't hesitate. The realization of Sanguinius' grand deceit only enraged him further. He struck again with his axe, but the Daemon Primarch struck the blow aside, before plunging his own sword through the Daemon Prince's chest, the Blade Encarmine cutting through Doombreed's armor with ease and bursting from his back in a shower of gore.
"You have played your part, brute. Now it is time for you to depart Our stage."
Sanguinius to Doombreed
The soldiers caught in the Glamour acclaimed Sanguinius as a hero and a savior, who had slain the great beast that threatened their world. He basked in their adoration, which was as deep as any he had enjoyed during the Great Crusade. For so long, his only servants had been the Sanguinary Guard and the shades of those who had died trapped in the Glamour and been dragged to the Harbinger Star – and their emotions were pale imitations of the real thing.
As the Daemon Primarch drank in the adoration of his new thralls, his power rippled out from him and across them, triggering a wave of grotesque mutations they regarded as blessings. Hundreds of soldiers grew feathered wings, which burst out of their backs and through their dirtied uniforms. They took to the air, joining the other nightmares that infested Terra's skies, laughing at this transformation which brought them closer to their new master.
The Angel called his servants to him. Scores of Tithed Ones emerged from the ruins, drawn by an instinct that had been buried deep in their minds during their remaking. Diomedes, first and greatest of them, landed before the Daemon Primarch and knelt before being sent back ahead of the host – a new herald, to replace the one Sanguinius had destroyed in his gambit to reach Terra. Thousands of Laers rallied to the chosen son of their Goddess, and uncounted daemons of Slaanesh abased themselves before the greatest of Slaanesh's champion, now revealed to all of the Great Game's players in the fullness of his restored power and glory. The enthralled slaves saw all of these horrors as servant spirits of the Great Angel, benevolent and beautiful creatures of light, or noble warriors clad in gold and scarlet.
Even when a handful of Violators emerged, led by the undying Ishidur Ossuros, they were welcomed warmly by the bespelled mortals, who saw them as errant knights returning to the side of their rightful liege. The Chaos Marines were too bemused by this welcome to strike at the soldiers, and joined the host as it began the march up the road that led to the Imperial Palace. There, all knew, Sanguinius would claim the throne of the dead Emperor, succeeding his father and bringing an end to the existential dread of Light's End and the horror of the Angel War.
Should Sanguinius succeed and sit upon the Golden Throne, the Astronomican's light would be more than simply ended. It would be tainted, transformed into a projector that would broadcast the dark glory of Slaanesh to all corners of the galaxy. Wherever the light of the Emperor's Beacon once shone, the baleful perfection of the Dark Prince would be resplendent, and the entire Imperium would be lost – for to see Slaanesh is to be consumed by the Dark God's terrible magnificence. Even the most stalwart souls were not proof against the Chaos God's influence – only those warded by the Emperor's faded light could possibly endure, and they would not even be a remnant of Humanity. The fate of the Eldar would seem kind in comparison to such a damnation, for Mankind would not be brought to the brink of extinction, but turned into the instrument by which the Dark Prince would crush its rivals and ascend as the sole God of Chaos.
It was the possibility of that doom that drove the Grey Knights on, as their gunships fought through the monsters-infested skies of the Throneworld. Supreme Grand Master Geronitan had sensed the successive arrivals of the Sanguinor, Doombreed, and then Sanguinius. The first two had long been nemeses of his Chapter, but the Grey Knights had always believed the tales of Sanguinius' madness, for their own oracles hadn't seen anything hinting at the truth in their few, careful forays into the Eye of Terror. Now it was clear that the Daemon Primarch had played them all for fools, pretending to be mad while planting seeds that would only blossom at Light's End.
The Prognosticars among the Grey Knights were still blind to the future, their second sight obscured by the confluence of events that had led (and been caused by) Light's End, but now they could see the past more clearly. It was the Glamour itself, they now realized, that had kept them and anyone else from discovering Sanguinius' deceit. The Angel had woven his madness into the very spell that his Legion had always used to hide its monstrous nature from others and itself, so that those who saw through it saw the vampiric faces of the Blood Angels and didn't look deeper.
They saw glimpses of other things, too : they saw the blow that had struck down the Angel even as he struck down his opponent in turn at the end of the War of Woe, how it had found a weakness left by an earlier self-mutilation and splintered the Daemon Primarch's power even as it forced him awake from the lie Slaanesh had granted him after he killed Horus. They saw repeated killings of cloned brothers, each less painful than the last until the last of Sanguinius' conscience was drowned in fratricidal bloodshed. They saw the Sanguinor, who had been a Blood Angel given a golden mask by Azkaellon in a desperate ploy to hide his liege's madness, be hollowed out as the sundered power of Sanguinius flowed into him above Iydris.
They saw eyes looking back at them from the past, and the smile of Sanguinius as he conceived of the plan that would make him Emperor.
A Space Marine knew no fear; a Grey Knight even less so. Hyperion wasn't troubled by the damage his body had suffered. The loss of martial ability might have bothered him, but by the time he had emerged from unconsciousness the Apothecaries had already been putting him inside the Dreadnought.
Usually, a newly-interred warrior would have weeks to adapt to his new form, months even. With the situation across Sol, there hadn't been any time. Hyperion had learned how to use his new body of metal quickly, by merging his mind with that of other Grey Knight Dreadnoughts and reliving their memories. It wasn't as good as actual practice, but it would be enough to make him an asset rather than a liability, and the Chapter needed every possible asset for this mission.
The gunship he was in held four other Dreadnoughts, ancient warriors who had been awakened from their slumber after the Regals had been defeated, and a Techmarine to make the final checks and apply the last-minute blessings onto their engines. Data flowed through their cogitators and into their brains, showing a patchwork picture of the situation on Terra. But Hyperion found it difficult to focus.
His awareness was still split between what was and what may be. When he had awakened inside the Dreadnought chassis, his ruined flesh hastily repaired and cybernetic interfaces grafted onto still-raw wounds, he had found that his second sight had been fractured by the attempted divination ritual of which he had been the focus. For one thing, he remembered nothing of what he had seen, though Geronitan's questions had made it clear that he had seen and told something to the Supreme Grand Master before passing out.
Whatever he had seen then, he saw other things now. He was still blind to the future, though he at least understood now why – and the thought that the Emperor was dead was far more disturbing and, yes, terrifying, that the mutilation of his flesh could ever be.
But the past was another matter. His mind was flooded with random images, and even all his training couldn't make sense of them. He saw a city where the ground was covered in shards of glass that reflected a burning sky. He saw a not-star that devoured everything near it with greedy hunger, and the avatars of two gods battling under its unlight. He saw a labyrinth belonging to a lady of air and darkness, and knew that a monster was trying to escape it without knowing how. He saw cities inhabited by ghosts trapped in the lie that had killed them, and he saw these cities burning to fuel the fire that now burned in the void from one end of Terra to another. Billions of souls, he realized, consumed to create the Tear of Nightmares at Light's End. Every victim of the Glamour, all who had died with the fangs of a Blood Angel in their throat.
The thought of how long Sanguinius had been planning this was a chilling one. It also helped him return to his immediate surroundings, as past and present collided in a jarring sensation that caused him to unwillingly twitch his chassis' weapons, drawing the eye of the Techmarine. He sent a wordless telepathic pulse to reassure the other Grey Knight that all was well. Or as well as it could be under the circumstances, he thought, with a tinge of what he recognized was uncomfortably close to hysteria.
Focus, he told himself. Focus. Duty calls.
And whatever he was, whatever he had been and whatever he might become, Hyperion would do his duty.
At the Tower of Hegemon, Omegon saw the Grey Knights approach, the sensors of the Custodes able to detect even the shrouded transports of the Grey Knights. The Primarch had already learned of Sanguinius' arrival, and was as shocked by it as anyone else, but he hadn't let it affect him. Already he was gathering all the forces he could find to meet this new threat, but much of Terra's defenders were scattered across her surface, sent to deal with the Exalted Daemons and warbands that were now revealed to have been either diversions or sacrifices.
In a grim tone, Geronitan informed the Primarch that there was every chance that such forces would be enthralled by Sanguinius should they confront him. The duty of slaying the Daemon Primarch must fall to the Grey Knights, said the Supreme Grand Master, for they alone could be trusted not to succumb to his power. Omegon argued otherwise, pointing to the ancient seraphic wards imbued within the walls of the Imperial Palace, which even now, with the death of the Emperor and the opening of the Tear of Nightmares, held the hordes of the Dark Prince at bay. He spoke of himself, of the Custodes, of Magnus and Lorgar and the power they could bring to bear against their traitor brother. But Geronitan could feel the inexorable pull of destiny calling for him to confront Sanguinius, and he would not be deterred. The Grey Knights had been created by the Emperor to be His blade against the Slaves to Darkness : even with Him gone, the knights of Titan would not hesitate.
Over a hundred Grey Knights descended to meet the Slaaneshi horde head-on, which outnumbered them over ten thousand to one already, and was still growing. Sanguinius strode at the front of his army, so that all who might oppose them were instead caught in his Glamour and made to join the ranks of his slaves. But as Geronitan had told Omegon, the Grey Knights' armor and mind were proof against such spells, even ones empowered by a Daemon Primarch and the claimed might of six Exalted Daemon Lords.
Though his Glamour failed to catch the Grey Knights in its lies, Sanguinius didn't appear troubled by their arrival. With a pulse of his will, the Grey Knights appeared to his followers as inhuman monsters, creatures from which everything that made a human being more than an animal had been stripped and replaced with eldritch power through cruel alchemies.
The shape of the battlefield served the Grey Knights : the great road that the Angel was marching down was vast, but not so wide that he could send his entire host against the Space Marines at once. Instead of overwhelming the Grey Knights with the numbers of his mortal thralls, Sanguinius commanded his mightier troops to the forefront : Tithed Ones, Laer nobles and, of course, his Sanguinary Guard. It was them that the Grey Knights met in battle, though the target was the Daemon Primarch himself. Sanguinius was the keystone of the entire Angel War, and it was from him that the Glamour spread like a sickness of the mind and soul. Once the Angel was banished, the rest of his host could be dealt with by the more conventional troops Omegon was gathering at Lupercal's Gate.
With the Titansword in hand and flanked by some of his Chapter's greatest heroes, Geronitan advanced to face Sanguinius. With an imperious wave of his hand, the Angel ordered his Sanguinary Guards to stand aside and allow the Supreme Grand Master to confront him. The Daemon Primarch towered over Geronitan as Doombreed had towered over the Sanguinor. In the lies of the Glamour, Geronitan appeared as a wicked assassin approaching a benevolent king with that king's permission, that he might face his would-be killer in honorable battle.
Though Geronitan's mind was proof against the Glamour, he still saw what the thralls at the back of the line of battle saw, and it disgusted him. This, he knew, was the destiny that had laid upon him since the child that would become him had been taken from the Black Ships by the Grey Knights' recruiters.
Destiny wasn't certain, this he had always known. It was, in fact, a core tenet of the Grey Knights' beliefs. Their faith and loyalty was unbreakable, and to believe that the future was fixed was to invite the horrors of Chaos to shatter all hope. Defiance against the overwhelming might of Chaos, no matter the odds, in the name of that tiniest spark of hope that maybe, just maybe, the Dark Gods could one day be defeated and their tyranny overthrown forever : that was the way of the Grey Knights.
So the future wasn't fixed, which meant that Geronitan had always fought knowing he could very well die in that battle, and his destiny would come to a premature ending. All that had been certain was that, if he lived long enough to reach it, there was something important in his future, something momentous enough that it echoed across the thread of his existence through time itself. He might have thought that Light's End was it, except that if that were the case every Grey Knight alive would have carried the same destiny. Which meant that this moment, confronting Sanguinius, was most likely it. At least, he hoped so, for it weren't, then what other, greater horror might await the Imperium that surpassed even the Angel ?
The Titansword was broken. With a single blow, Sanguinius' sword, known in the Heresy-era records as the Blade Encarmine, had shattered the ancient, Emperor-blessed sword into a thousand fragments.
Geronitan was laying on his back, sent to the ground by the impact. The shockwave had sent Grey Knights and Blood Angels alike flying, clearing a circle around the Daemon Primarch and the Supreme Grand Master. His armor was broken, along with his right arm. His hand still held the pommel of the Titansword.
He raised his left arm, aiming the combi-bolter at the Daemon Primarch – but before he could fire, Sanguinius severed it at the elbow with one careless swipe of the Blade Encarmine.
"Did you think your destiny was to defeat Us ? Fool." The Angel sneered. "We are eternal. We are invincible, the pinnacle of Our father's art made greater still through the crucible of the Gods. You had only one weapon that could harm Us," gloated Sanguinius. "And you already spent IT. Now, IT heeds another call, one that takes IT far, far from here." He loomed over Geronitan, smiling cruelly in a way none of his followers could see, his beautiful features made ugly by the expression. "Exactly as We intended."
"You lie," gasped Geronitan, forcing the words out along with blood. "You cannot … have foreseen … all of this."
"Why ? Because you couldn't ? You were blinded by Our father's death, because you couldn't understand His choice. But We could, and so Our sight pierced through the blinding of Light's End."
"How ?" Geronitan spoke as loud as he could, knowing that his closest brothers were listening, hoping that one of them might gleam some truth from the exchange that could help turn the tide of this disaster.
"Because We made the same choice, once. Back when We were young and foolish, and didn't realize that We were the only thing that truly mattered. We, too, sought to sacrifice Ourselves for Our sons."
His face twisted in disgust at the memory. For a moment, Geronitan could almost see past the Glamour and into the Daemon Primarch's true face, but the spell was too powerful.
"We see differently now, of course. We know that it is only fit for them to sacrifice themselves for Us, for they are Ours, everything they are descended from Us."
He believed it, the Supreme Grand Master saw. This … this creature, this monster that had once been a Primarch, genuinely believed in this insanity. The stories that claimed the Angel had succumbed to madness weren't wrong after all : they had merely been mistaken as to the nature of his corruption.
"You are mad," said Geronitan. "And you will fail. The Imperium will never accept you as Emperor."
"The Imperium will have no choice in the matter. It is Our will that the Throne be Ours, and thus it shall be so."
As darkness closed in on him, Geronitan caught a glimpse of one of his Chapter's Dreadnoughts – Hyperion, he recognized – standing over the broken body of the warrior they had identified as the leader of the Blood Angels among the Slaaneshi host. Like Geronitan, he was dying, one hand stretched toward Sanguinius as if begging for aid, or perhaps recognition.
The Angel stepped over Geronitan, gaze fixed upon the distant Imperial Palace. He didn't even glance at Azkaellon as the captain of the Sanguinary Guard died, a horrified expression plastered on his once-noble features as, in his last moments, he saw the true face of his lord.
With Geronitan's fall, the surviving Grey Knights were forced to retreat. The Space Marines moved quickly, too fast for Sanguinius' massive army to give effective pursuit, though the Angel sent some of his Laers to harass the Grey Knights as they made their way to the Imperial Palace, where Omegon's own preparations would be put to the test. There, at Lupercal's Gate, would the fate of the Imperium be decided.
Ahzek Ahriman woke up, emerging from feverous dreams of fire and screaming faces to a reality that, all things considered, was only marginally better. Or worse, perhaps. He hurt too much to tell.
Ephrael didn't look well either. The right half of her face was covered in a nasty-looking burn, and he could feel the many more wounds concealed by her power armor.
Too much. It had been too much. Less than a fraction of the Beacon's full power, and it had almost destroyed him. He was certain the Rubric was all that had kept him alive : without it reinforcing his soul, he would have become kindling for the Astronomican, like so many other psykers across the last ten millennia.
Even then, he hadn't escaped unscathed. A careful examination of his body, using both his Astartes senses and his psychic awareness, revealed that several of his organs had simply died, burned away by the energies that had coursed through him. His muscles were very, very badly damaged : an unaugmented human with that kind of injuries would have required years of surgery and rehabilitation, if they had survived the trauma in the first place.
He tried to move his arm, and found that he couldn't. He had to use telekine power to do it, puppeteering his own body in a jerking parody of true motion that immediately drew the attention of the other passengers of the transport.
"Ahzek," croaked Ephrael, her voice made raw by her own wounds.
Slowly, carefully, Ahriman sat on the bench where they had laid him down.
"He is here," she said. "Sanguinius. The champion of Slaanesh, the one responsible for all of this."
Ahriman nodded. He tried to speak, but gave it up as a fool's errand : he didn't have vocal chords anymore. Instead, he reached out, speaking mind to mind as he had used to do with his brothers.
He is, he silently agreed. I can feel his presence all the way from here.
She tried to smile. "We aren't so far from him, Ahzek."
He is going to the Palace ?
She nodded. "He and his slaves are marching on Lupercal's Gate."
He froze. So the killer returns to the scene of his crime. He turned his head to look around.
Commander Deradaeddon Nemo of the Sons of Horus was standing there, flanked by a squad of Legionaries. He was utterly still, but Ahriman could feel the rage that boiled inside him. Cthonian tempers, it seemed, hadn't changed in ten thousand years. Nor had the hatred of the Sixteenth for Sanguinius faded. The events of the Siege may have faded into legend, even among the Legiones Astartes, but the Sons of Horus hadn't forgotten the Angel's sin.
They cannot stand against him, he sent to Ephrael. She nodded.
"They know that. Would that stop you ?"
Judging by the look on Ephrael's face when he tried to make his face smile, Ahriman guessed that puppeteering his own lips wasn't quite working.
No. I supposed it wouldn't.
Something flickered before his mind's eye then as he looked at Ephrael. In a moment it was gone, almost too quick for him to register it. But he was one of the greatest Corvidae masters to have ever lived, and even in his current state, he could make some sense of that vision.
Death, he thought, with cold certainty. Death was approaching.
Lucius breathed in.
Behind him was the rag-tag army of Salvor Lermentov. Before him, looming in the distance, stood Lupercal's Gate. It was as magnificent as the Eternity Gate that had once stood in its place, if differently so. For one thing, there weren't as many guns on it as Lucius remembered – although he could still see a respectable number of them, even at this distance. Clearly, the rebuilders tasked with the age-spanning task of repairing the damage Terra had suffered during the Siege hadn't had access to quite the same amount of resources and technology that had been available during the Great Crusade. And yet, it was still awe-inspiring. The Gate stood as a monument to what Humanity was capable of.
They were avoiding the main roads that had survived the quakes. It would have been faster, but there were too many people in need of help within the rubble for them to ignore. They were also much less visible, lessening the odds of a coordinated attack by the various monstrosities preying upon the people of Terra. Even then, they had been fighting almost constantly since they had left Hive Tashkent.
The power sword of Khalid (Lucius had asked the warrior's name as soon as he had the chance) thrummed in his hand. The Thousand Son Legionary had let him keep it, saying that it would do more good in the Reborn's hand than his own; and besides, a son of Magnus needed no weapon to be a terror on the battlefield. Lucius suspected that there were other reasons for the gift, ones which couldn't be spoken aloud, or even through telepathy, just in case something listened.
The blade had been changed by the strange energies it had channelled to slay Yria. Through it, Lucius could feel another consciousness, vast, half-awake, and angry. This was what the Thousand Sons called Vindicta, the newborn Power created from the cast-off wrath of Magnus the Red and ten thousand years of desperate prayers for retribution from the lips of the dying. Wielding the sword let Lucius see the shades of the dead – and there were so many, not all of them dead in the Angel War. Terra was a world crowded with the ghosts of far too many wars.
In his soul, past the tentative link to Vindicta, he could hear Terra's scream. It had started, he now knew from fragmented vox-messages from the Palace, the moment Sanguinius had arrived, and hadn't stopped since. The world remembered the sins of the Angel and his sons, and no amount of mind-control could erase them. And now, Sanguinius was compounding these sins with new ones. The world itself was rejecting him, fighting against his presence, but he was too powerful for that to work – even if, Lucius knew, he could not touch the ground of Holy Terra without it burning him.
Lucius breathed out.
Well. At least he knew why he had felt the need to go to Lupercal's Gate now. Everyone else might have been blinded by the Angel's machinations, but Terra herself wasn't.
The Throneroom shook. It had been doing that for hours now, or perhaps days – it was difficult to keep track of time here, so close to the Golden Throne. Even with the Emperor dead, His power had left a deep impression on the reality of the chamber.
Magos Novkarion and his acolytes were working tirelessly, transferring more of the functions of the primary Golden Throne to the secondary control station they had built for Magnus. For all his intellect, Lorgar admitted that he had only the slightest notion of how the great engine worked : there were secrets used here that dated to the peak of the Dark Age of Technology, combined with arcane lore that only the Emperor and the Sigillite had truly understood.
Through the effort of helping Magnus channel the Astronomican's awesome power and keeping the Dark Gods at bay, Lorgar still couldn't stop one thought from returning to the forefront of his mind, again and again.
Sanguinius was here. Sanguinius was a monster.
When Lorgar had faced Lion El'Jonson, he had felt the regret that lingered within his brother's soul. He wasn't naive, and knew that the only reason the Lion still felt anything like this was because his pain amused Tzeentch – but he had hoped that this cruelty might be turned against the Dark God.
When he had seen Sanguinius through his connection with Magnus, there had been no regret within the Angel. None.
Lorgar had never seen Sanguinius after his fall. By the time he had arrived to Terra with Angron, the Angel had already killed Horus and been defeated by the Mournival. But he had heard the stories, and what he had seen through Magnus' visions had shown a completely different creature.
There would be no saving Sanguinius, he knew. All the nobility Sanguinius had once possessed was gone, replaced by the evil of Chaos. The only way to stop him would be to kill him.
Could he do it ? Could he kill his brother ? He didn't doubt his own conviction, even if he had never fought one of their traitor brothers before, but his capability was another matter. Sanguinius was strong, far stronger than the Lion had been. He bore no wound inflicted by the sacrifice of a hero and anchored by the souls of those who defied him, and had claimed the might of six Exalted daemons in addition to his own. He had also foreseen their father's death, something Lorgar had thought he alone had seen coming.
Magnus twitched, drawing Lorgar from his grim musings. Slowly, the eye of the Crimson King opened, followed by his mouth. Except for screams of pain, Lorgar's brother hadn't spoken aloud since he had been enthroned. The screams had stopped eventually, though the pain causing them had not.
Lorgar realized that his brother was trying to speak out loud because Sanguinius had proven that, somehow, he could listen in on their telepathic communication when Magnus showed him what was happening outside these walls. He was gambling that the Angel couldn't listen in on them here, in the Sanctum Imperialis.
Which meant that Magnus was going to say something important.
"Three things," the Cyclops whispered through clenched teeth. "Three things are needed. A Power, a catalyst through which to refine it, and a target at which to aim it. When these come together, then and only then can we win this war."
AN : Here is your friendly reminder that just because something is written in the Index Astartes, doesn't mean it's actually true. The Indexes are written from an in-universe perspective, apart from the scenes inside them that show events as they actually happened.
So, yes. Sanguinius was behind it all. Shocking, I know. In all seriousness, probably all of you knew that the Angel was behind the Angel War. It was rather obvious. But I hope the reveal that he has been faking his insanity since his mutual destruction at Dorn's hands during the War of Woe was a surprise. I have been holding that idea in my head for years now, since before I even started to write the Times of Ending, like the death of the Emperor.
Speaking of that, I am pleased to see that the demise of Him On Earth has thoroughly shaken your narrative expectations, by which I mean none of you feel certain of what is going to happen next, and you aren't ready to dismiss any possibility. Even the victory of Chaos in the Terran Crucible isn't beyond what some of you consider possible !
Which is good, since that sort of "everything is possible now" was the exact intended effect, both in-and-out-of-universe.
This chapter is named the Fourth part of the Terran Crucible, but you may have noted there is no third part. That is because I have decided to make the entire Angel War section the third part of that "book" of the Times of Ending. From the interlude "A Ghostly Warning" to "The Outer Worlds", the Angel War took more than 100k words, which is more than enough.
I swear, I won't do that sort of thing again. The next "books" of the Times of Ending will be much, much more reasonably sized. I do, after all, intend to finish that story before the heat death of the universe.
Thanks to Jaenera for beta-reading. And, come to think of it, thank to Nemris, who has been holding off on the illustration I asked of him for the next chapter for months now. He has been very, very patient with me, but I promise we are almost done now.
All the players are in place. All the plans have been revealed. Now all that remains is to determine the endgame.
To be concluded in
The Terran Crucible
Part Five : The Battle of Lupercal's Gate
Zahariel out.