Welcome to another chapter of the Forsaken Sons' adventures ! In this chapter, we will discover what Arken meant with his last words in the previous chapter.

I have been reading the Soul Drinkers and Space Wolf serie while writing this. Both of those series happen during the 41st Millenium, and it is very interesting to see just how much the Imperium and the galaxy at large have changed in ten thousand years.

Thanks for reviews :

Lightning King : the building of a powerbase is going to be the first arc of this fic. I don't know just how long it will last - probably until the Warp Storm stops or they find a way out of it. Then ... DEATH TO THE FALSE EMPEROR ! Ahem.

Guest : Thank you very much !

Death's Watcher : I am glad this pleases you.

Balom : Yes, most Chaos Marines shown in official medias act like total idiots most of the time. But the thing is, there is a reason for this ! They worship the Ruinous Powers, remember. And that has ... effects ... on the very soul. The Chaos Gods literaly rot away their servants, consuming their souls to fuel their own power. While this is a convenient excuse for one-dimensionnal villains, it also makes a terrible sort of sense in the WH40k universe. Being 'good' sucks ... and being evil sucks even more. The Forsaken Sons aren't yet corrupted by the Warp, as they are just at the beginning of the Long War, but degenerescence is one of the banes of all the warbands in the Eye of Terror. (I think I won't let it affect my own story too much, though.)

As always, I don't own the WH40k universe. It belongs to Games Workshop.

And now, without further addition, let's get to the story ! I will see you all again at the end.

The skies of Terra were torn by the powers unleashed by the sorcerers of the Fifteenth Legion. The collective psychic might of thousands of gifted souls had crushed the void-shields of the Imperial Palace like paper, and bombardment from orbit had ripped the defences built by Dorn and his sons apart.

Now, with the nine Legions loyal to the Warmaster having made planetfall, the few of their former brothers who survived in the ruins knew that their doom was at hand. Even as the assailants neared the walls, hordes of daemons emerged from the depths of the Palace, having broken through the seals that the Emperor had placed there. Entire squads appeared out of thin air, brought from orbit by the sons of Magnus' sorcery. The Cyclops himself appeared, his brother Horus at his side, and together, the two godly beings started to unleash their terrible power on the broken survivors of the Imperial Fists, the White Scars and the Blood Angels, while their allied brothers came down by more conventional means and joined them.

Before the observer's eyes, the winged Primarch fell to the Red Angel's axe, the Lord of Iron took the head of the Praetorian, and the Khan was killed by the King of the Night's claws, his twin hearts torn from his chest before his few remaining sons. In mere moments, the three loyalist Legions were dead, and Horus and his brothers went to confront their father, who was walking toward them at the head of the Custodes who had survived the daemons' onslaught. The living gods clashed ...

The Night Lords descended in great numbers upon the walls of the Imperial Palace, targeting the Imperial Fists and officers that held the mortal defenders together. Tens of thousand of the Eighth Legion's dreadful warriors had rampaged for days in the cities of the planet, inflicting terrible atrocities on their people and broadcasting their screams to the defenders, taunting them with their impotence at protecting the people of the Throneworld just as they were powerless to protect the Imperium at large. Several units had succumbed to the provocations and charged the monstrous butchers – and they had died moments later, under the cruel laughter of the Night Lords.

The morale of the defenders had been crushed by the Eighth Legion's terror tactics. Now, with the merciless hunt ongoing, the rest of the Warmaster's Legions were able to advance. Titans fought each other on the fields of ruins and the corpses of mortal armies torn apart by the Legions, and soon, the walls were broken. The Legionaries poured through, passing one gate after another, the Primarchs fighting at the side of their sons. Thousand of loyalists fell, the hunters of late Nostramo seeking high priority target, sending ripples of terror among the defenders. The first human units began to turn away, then to run. The Night Haunter himself joined the fray, his brother Dorn reaching through the chaos to fight him, anger overcoming his reason, and the avatar of fear slew the Primarch of the Imperial Fists, finishing the breaking of the Legion his brother had commanded with the terrible might of his own.

The Praetorian's death was the beginning of the end for the loyalists, as more and more traitors joined the fight, Titans walking on the ruined walls that had collapsed the moment Eighth Legion's operatives had sabotaged the void shields ...

The Siege had gone on for years, the skies darkened by thousands of ships. With Guilliman and his Legion dead at Calth, there was no hope of reinforcements coming to the Throneworld's help, and the Warmaster had taken his time mustering his forces for the Siege, bombarding the planet for months from orbit with the might of his great fleet. Supplies were running low among the survivors, and some of the Terrans had even begun to turn side and pledge themselves to Horus in return for their survival.

All across the galaxy, the Imperium had fallen apart. With no word leaving Terra, the Administratum was unable to function, and the war had been all but won, with only the few surviving loyalist Primarchs and whatever remained of their Legions with them to try to survive and resist the new order that was slowly building itself upon the Imperium's corpse.

Mars had fallen, and the Legio Titanicus of the Red Planet had crossed the void to join in the battle on the ground of the Throneworld. Hundred of Titans, from the smallest Warhound to the greatest Imperator-Class giants, were relentlessly assaulting the void shields of the palace, kept functioning only by the desperate efforts of those few tech-priests who still remained loyal to the False Emperor. Then, finally, they fell, as one too many generator broke down under the strain of years of activity.

The final assault came, and billions of mortal soldiers, gathered from thousands of world by the Word Bearers, poured on the walls of the Imperial Palace, forcing the defenders to waste their few remaining munitions. Behind them, thousand upon thousand of Astartes came, armed and prepared for the ultimate battle. The gates broke under the sheer pressure of numbers, and in moments, the Palace was overcome ...

There was a hissing as the door to the cabin opened, and the tall warrior shut off the hololithic projection as the serf entered the room.

'My-my lord ?' asked the trembling man.

'What is it, slave ?' answered the giant, turning to face the mortal. His voice would have been full of anger if the demigod had any left to spare on such a pathetic wretch.

The giant was more than two meters high, and clad in a power armor that had been forged and decorated by the finest artisans of a world he had killed with his own hands, alongside his brothers and Primarch. It was painted in silver and gold, with a spot of black on the shoulder, where the emblem of the warrior's Legion had once been. At his waist hung a bolter that he had picked up during the Siege. It bore the sigil of the White Scars, and he hadn't bothered with changing the emblem. His other weapon was a chainsword that bore no emblem. He had claimed it on the same grounds as the bolter – a nameless tool of war that had been forged in haste in the middle of the war, without time nor care for embellishments.

'L-lord Kakios. The Awakened One asks for your presence in the strategium.'

Kakios, former sergeant of the Fourth Legion, grunted in answer. After turning off the device he had built from spare parts he and his squad had found in the ruins of Mulor Prime and that he used for his simulations, he started to walk to the exit of the small room. The slave yelped and jumped out of his way before getting crushed by the Iron Warrior. Ignoring him, Kakios made his way through the corridors of the Hand of Ruin.

One did not make the master of the Forsaken Sons wait.

Arken raised his eyes from the data-slate he had been reading when Kakios entered the strategium. He nodded in salute to the other Astartes, who bowed a lot more deeply in return.

'Kakios,' said the Awakened One.

'My lord,' answered the former Iron Warrior.

'Tell me, Kakios. Did you try out the hypotheses I gave you ?'

When Kakios had asked for permission to keep some of the cogitators his pack had found on Mulor Prime for his own use, Arken had demanded him why. Kakios had told him : to replicate the Battle for Terra, in order to understand what had gone wrong, to train his own strategic skills, and to foster the hatred in his heart. Arken had smiled at the last reason, an ugly sight even for one such as the Iron Warrior, and granted his permission. He had only asked Kakios to use the first simulations to test several assumptions, to see what would have happened if some things had happened differently during the rest of the war.

Building the machine had been easy, a mere matter of connecting the cogitators together and linking them to an hololithic table that had been forgotten in one of the secondary strategiums of the Hand of Ruin. Programming it, however, had been a nightmare. He had put into it the basic simulators used sometimes by the Legiones Astartes and the Adeptus Mechanicus, but these weren't nearly complex enough to render such a titanic battle, and lacked most of the data needed, as such a battle had never been thought possible before the Warmaster first claim to rebellion. He had had to scan the ship's memories of the actual battle, and ask warriors of other Legions about things that most of them didn't even know they remembered. When asked why he had so many questions about a battle that was long over, he had explained his project. Most had been doubtful, others had laughed in his face. Only telling them that the Awakened One had an interest in the project had kept them answering.

Gathering information on the Primarchs' own fighting abilities had been especially arduous. Data from engagements prior to the rebellion was all but useless, and the avatars of the Primarchs who had 'ascended' had to be entirely recreated from what little was known of their new powers. Deep down, during the programming, Kakios had come to believe that Magnus hadn't gone all out during the actual battle – it was the only option that made any thrice-damned sense. But, as with all things of the Warp, there couldn't be any certitude. Only supposition and hypotheses.

The tests had been an gruesome task. The cogitators had to execute a billion algorithms every second to simulate the outcome of a million different actions, and then project them on the hololithic table. Kakios could have sworn that he had heard the damn thing – the Hindsight's Mind, as he knew it was being called by others who knew of its existence – when the first simulations crashed in impossible visions. He had seen armies of Primarchs fighting each other, Titans fall under the guns of Guardsmen, physics being violated in ways that reminded him of the Warp, and a hundred other aberrations that had needed to be corrected before the first test had worked out.

And the results he had finally obtained had been unambiguous.

'I have run three scenarios thus far, my lord. In every one of them, we win. Be it the one where Magnus accepts the Octed's help to destroy the Space Wolves before they make planetfall on Prospero, the one where Curze has all of his Legion at his back instead letting it be fractured by his sons while he is hunted aboard the Invincible Reason, the one where the Ultramarines and Guilliman die at Calth instead of surviving because Lorgar sent his most incompetent sons to be culled there … In each of these hypotheses , we win. You were right, my lord : we lost the war because of our fathers' mistakes.'

The words were bitter on Kakios' mouth. He had accepted the words of his lord when he had defeated and bound the Oracle, of course, but to see the proof that their gene-sires were responsible for their failure, to know it to be true … that was a different matter. The Awakened One hadn't given any scenario involving Kakios' own Primarch, but the former Iron Warrior knew that this wasn't because Perturabo was blameless. It was to avoid angering him that the master of the Forsaken Sons had spared the Iron Lord from his merciless judgment.

Arken nodded slowly. Kakios caught a glimpse in his eyes, as if he was unsure whether or not to be glad that he had been right. Then, the lord of the Forsaken Sons shook his head, and focused on the warrior he had summoned.

'I am glad that your device functions, Kakios, but it isn't the reason I called you here. I require the services of you and your pack.'

'You have a mission for us ?' asked Kakios. The plunder of Mulor Prime had been terminated when Arken had made his alliance with the human noble a week ago, and most of the packs were back aboard the Hand of Ruin, mending what little damage their equipment had sustained and counting the spoils.

'Yes,' answered Arken. 'Of the four worlds of this system, only one remains untouched by our forces. But it is also the one which will challenge us the most. You were on Mulor Prime : you know how the Warp affected its inhabitants. On this world and Mulor Secundus, according to the reports of those of our brothers I have dispatched there, the veil between reality and the Empyrean has grown weaker. And while Mulor Quartum is relatively free of this influence, on Mulor Tertium, that veil has been all but torn apart completely.'

'The forge-world,' whispered Kakios.

'Indeed. The one planet with the most to offer to us, and the one which will be the hardest to tame. I suspect the warp-born are laughing at that particular joke right now. But it does not matter. We will take what we need from Mulor Tertius, brother. I have a plan, and it requires your help.'

'Why me ? Why not any other of the packs ?'

Kakios wasn't trying to refuse the mission, and both Space Marines knew it. He was genuinely curious. Arken had a thousand Astartes to choose from, and, though it burned his pride, the former Iron Warrior knew that many of them surpassed his squad in martial prowess. Thus, there had to be a reason for the Awakened One's choice. All members of the Forsaken Sons had learned, during the Exodus and the events that had followed, that Arken didn't make any choice without good reasons.

The master of the Forsaken Sons beckoned Kakios to come closer, and began to explain his plan. By the end of the explanation, the son of Olympia knew why he had been chosen.

'This is going to be really dangerous, brother,' concluded Arken. 'If you would rather not risk your men, I would understand it …'

With all due respect, my lord,' interrupted Kakios, 'you are insulting me. We will do it. And we will succeed.'

Mulor Tertius, pondered Kakios as he and his six brothers descended on the forge-world aboard their Stormbird in skies choked to death by pollution, was an almost perfect depiction of the myths of Hell that had existed on Olympia before the Iron Warriors had burned the world to ashes.

Of the twelve forge-cities that were on the planet, four had been entirely razed by daemonic incursions, the great industrial complexes now craters devoid of life. But the members of the Adeptus Mechanicus who had lived there had actually been the lucky ones. The other forges had been claimed by the sentient program that had emerged in the world's cogitators when the Warp Storm had struck. The machines were now under its control, and those who still lived had been forcefully converted to its cause when their own augmentics had been compromised by the code-daemon onslaught. All the five forges were now connected by the warp-born's malign intelligence, in a twisted parody of the Mechanicus' visions of unity. The roads between these cities were still covered in never-stopping lines of vehicles, but the orbital scans had revealed that both the vehicles themselves and their contents had been altered. Now, constructs of black, bleeding metal carried piles of flesh and iron alike, and one picture in particular, taken through the clouds of dust and ashes that covered the planet's surface most of the time, had shown that one of the tech-priest had merged with a transport, literally achieving the goal of the Adeptus Mechanicus of fusion with the machine.

While Kakios could admire the achievment of the daemon, he felt less than thrilled at the idea of becoming part of that network – a very real possibility if he and his brothers failed in their mission.

And the rest of the data that Arken had given to them before they left wasn't any more reassuring. Even now, as they approached their landing zone near the city that had once been called 'Productive-Unit-Alpha-Twelve' – the place where the code-daemon had first manifested, according to the last, desperate transmissions from the planet – the vox of the Space Marines' armor picked up transmissions from the ground. Astartes were no prone to sentimentalism, and those of the Fourth Legion even less so than the rest, but Kakios couldn't help but feel a tingle of apprehension at the sounds that his armor transmitted him, sounds to clear to be broadcast by natural means and that made images of nightmare flash in his mind.

Amidst screams of endless agony, mixed with praises to a dark god of bone-cogs and oil-blood, a hundred mutilated priests kneel before an effigy that he cannot see clearly …

Great devices are being assembled with each other against their will, the machine-spirits shrieking in pain as they are removed from existence by the code-daemon and replaced by unholy entities drawn from beyond the veil …

Kakios shook his head to clear the visions. He didn't try to turn the vox off – he needed it to communicate with his brothers, and, somehow, didn't believe that would solve the problem. Focusing on himself, he started reciting the Unbreakable Litany :

'From Iron, cometh Strength. From Strength, cometh Will. From Will, cometh Faith …'

The voices diminished, receding to a corner of his mind where he could easily ignore them. Looking around him, he saw that the rest of his brothers occupied their thoughts as they could : some of them were meditating, others checking their equipment one last time in preparation for the trial to come. All wore their helmets, but it did nothing to hide their nervosity from one who knew them as well as Kakios did.

All six of them wore the colors of the Iron Warriors. Their armor had been repaired prior to their deployment, their guns reloaded and their blades sharpened. Kakios felt a surge of pride at the sight of his squad. They had once belonged to different squads, but the heavy casualty rate of their Legion had brought them together in one of the last campaigns the Iron Warriors had fought in service of the False Emperor. United by necessity and bounds forged in the fire of battle, they had been together during all of the civil war. They had burned their own homeworld together, fought side by side on Isstvan V and besieged the walls of the Imperial Palace together. They had lost several of their brothers during all this time, but hadn't mourned them : they had died well, fighting for the glory that had been too long denied to the Fourth Legion.

Antipater, the heavy weapon specialist, was busying himself with double and triple-checking his heavy bolter. The gun was covered in scriptures from Olympia's mythology, and would have been too heavy for a mortal man to carry at all. Even most Legionaries were slowed down by it, but Antipater's muscles had been reinforced by important augmentic implants that allowed him to wield the heavy bolter as if it weighted no more than a more conventional fireweapon. He had used it for the first time on Isstvan, firing the first shots when the order to fire on the loyalists had been given by Argel Tal of the Word Bearers. There were some who had whispered that such circumstances for the weapon's first blooding had caused it to be cursed by the treachery that had happened this day, and that one day, Antipater would die because of it. Perhaps they would be proved right one day, but Antipater had killed them for daring to phrase such things.

To the Havoc's right, Praxiteles was stroking the edge of his power sword with one armored finger, humming to himself. The blade had once born the sigil of the Imperial Fists, and he had claimed it during the Siege of Terra, prying it from the dead fingers of a champion of Dorn's Legion whom he had killed himself, breaking his own weapon in the smug bastard's chest in the process. He had had the weapon's marking ritually removed and replaced by the iron skull of his own during the weeks they had spent on their Legion's ships, healing their wounds before returning to battle. It was a prize of great value that Praxiteles deserved, for few in the Fourth Legion could match his skill with a blade.

Pelagius was sitting in front of the duellist, his hands clasped on his head, immobile in meditation. Before joining Kakios' squad, Pelagius had been a member of the Warmasons, those of the Legion more gifted at building fortresses than at the art of war. He had been disgraced, however, when he had revealed a flaw in one of his superior's designs, and turned back into a battle-brother. On the field, Kakios had discovered that Pelagius' gift for architecture actually made him a valuable asset, as he could visualise the best ways for the enemy to build its defences, and the best ways to attack him. He was armed with a standard bolter and a gladius he had picked from an Ultramarine's corpse during the Thirteen's assault on the Hand of Ruin. Kakios didn't doubt that his brother was thinking about the plans of their destination Arken had provided them, as inaccurate as they may have become. He doubted that even a daemon could think of better defences that an Iron Warrior, especially one such as Pelagius.

Kakios turned his gaze to the former Warmason's left. Nikanor and Xenon had been brothers before being inducted in the ranks of the Adeptus Astartes. They had been separated and sent to different training camps, each fighting on his own to earn his transformation into a genetic demigod. They had been reunited after years apart, already transformed into sons of Perturabo. They had originally belonged to different squads, but had come together under Kakios' leadership. They were both solid, reliable battle-brother, fighting with the classical equipment of a Legionary : bolter and chainsword. Despite their years of separation, they seemed to be able to divine the other's thoughts instantly, and fought as one on the battlefield, covering each other's back with preternatural efficiency. On both brothers' shoulders hung scrolls, with oaths of moments written on them in a fluid calligraphy that seemed out of place on a Space Marine's armor.

The last member of the group, Zosimus, was the most important to their mission, and also the one who would be in the most danger once they reached the surface. He was a Techmarine : a Legionary trained in the ways of the Adeptus Mechanicus on Mars herself. He wore a different model of power armor than the rest of them who were equiped with Mark IV armors. His was a customized one that he had crafted himself as part of his training. Runes had been added to its ornaments by the Sorcerers of the Coven, wards to keep aside the corruptive influence of the world's daemonic overlord. The traditional third mechanical arm emerged from his backpack, and was currently helping his two other arms with checking the device he had to transport to the target point and activate, a sphere of metal the size of a Legionary's head.

'Careful with that, Zosimus,' said Kakios. The Techmarine nodded without taking his eyes off whatever it was he was doing. Good. Brother or not, Kakios would have had to kill him if he had done so while in the middle of tinkering with something so crucial to their mission.

'Nearing destination,' said the mechanical voice of the servitor that was piloting the Stormbird. The mortal pilot of the gunship had died during the Exodus, and bringing a mortal to Mulor Tertius was too needlessly dangerous a risk of wasting valuable resources for the Iron Warriors to ask for another to replace him.

Seconds later, they felt the drop in altitude. The landing site was a few kilometers away from one of the forge-cities, in the middle of a desert created by the Mechanicus' ruthless exploitation of the planet's natural resources and only made worse by the touch of the Warp.

They emerged from the Stormbird, weapons primed and ready, covering Zosimus and his precious cargo. There didn't seem to be any threat in sight, but that didn't mean anything on a world such as this one.

'Let's get started,' ordered Kakios. 'And remember : don't listen to the voices.'

There was a succession of acknowledgments from his squadmates, and the seven Forsaken Sons began their walk amidst the dust of a world that had been violated twice, in the name of the Omnissiah first, and then according to the will of the Dark Gods.

Clouds of ashes rose as they walked, surrounding them in a matter of minutes. The auspex of their armors were unable to pierce the obstacles, and they depended entirely on Zosimus' more advanced systems to keep going in the correct direction. Figures seemed to appear and disappear in the dust all around them – shadows of beings with claws and teeth hungering for the blood of the Legionaries, yet unable to reach them … for now.

After a period of time Kakios couldn't be sure of – the chronometers of his armor had started to derail almost as soon as the Stormbird had entered this planet's upper atmosphere – Antipater spoke. His voice was rich with vox-corruption :

'I think I see something. Some kind of structure.'

'We are not supposed to reach the outer walls of the forge-city before another three kilometers,' answered Zosimus in his synthetic voice. The Techmarine had lost his vocal chords during his sojourn on Mars, in which circumstances no one but himself knew.

'Who knows if the forge-city is still at the same size, or even at the same bloody position ?' intervened Praxiteles. The duellist had his sword drawn, his bolt pistol in the other hand, aiming at the silhouettes he thought he could see in the cloud. 'The Awakened One was right, this world is completely under the Empyrean's control now. Do you think that the warp-born know it is thanks to us ?'

'Probably,' said Kakios. 'And they surely don't care. Be vigilant.'

Antipater had been right. Only seconds later, a gust of wind momentarily broke the clouds, and revealed to the squad what had once been Productive-Unit-Alpha-Twelve.

'By Perturabo's blood …'

The walls of the city now reached several kilometers beyond its initial borders. From where the Space Marines stood, several hundred of meters away, it was also clear that they were also a lot higher than they should have be. They had easily the size of an Imperator-Class Titan, and were not made of just steel or concrete. Flesh and bones were merged with more classical building materials, pulsing with unnatural life as they kept the structure together. Kakios thought that he could see blood flow across the walls, up and down, in currents that were contradictory, as if under the pulse of several titanic hearts. There were also shapes that seemed to be giant unblinking eyes, staring at the desolate landscape around them, as if searching for intruders.

It was ugly, it was an abomination … and yet, part of the Iron Warriors' soul was in awe at the sight. Such mighty fortifications, all under the control of one intelligence. Once more, they were reminded of the level of power they were dealing with here. It was more necessary than ever that they succeed in their mission.

'Hostiles incoming,' said Pelagius, cutting short his brothers' thoughts. They snapped back to attention, their weapons aiming at the direction the fallen Warmason was pointing.

Dozens of grotesquely shaped silhouettes were drawing near at high speed. As they get closer, the Astartes was able to discern them more clearly.

Skitarii … at least, he thought, that was what they had been when the Warp Storm had hit Mulor Tertius. Now, the wretched creatures were something else entirely. Kakios had seen some of the last model of bio-mechanic soldiers used by the Warmaster's allies in the Mechanicum during the Siege of Terra, and had thought them disgusting if efficient. In retrospect, now that he saw what true warpcraft could do, these had been but children's attempts at emulating something far beyond their darkest nightmares.

The creatures' weapons were alive, there was no other word for the way the things moved, seemingly of their own will, as if their bearer was their servant instead of the other way around. The chainweapons were not equiped with teeth of adamantium, but with real teeth, blood dripping from their mechanisms even as they weren't in use. Canons were depicting the mouth of daemons at their extremity … with eyes that moved and targeted the Forsaken Sons.

The weapons were mounted directly into the skitarri's bodies, replacing the limbs they had once possessed. What little flesh remained at the center of the machinery was sickly pale, with black veins that pulsed under the influence of the daemonic engines the pathetic beings supported. Screams of binary were coming out of the speakers that had replaced their mouths, horrible sounds that Kakios couldn't understand but knew were either threats of pleas for death.

'Fire !'

The seven Astartes shot at the incoming skitarii. The bolts shredded dying flesh and corrupted metal alike, taking down more than a third of the assailants in the seconds it took the skitarii to reach their enemies. Despite their own ranged weapons, the constructs didn't stop to aim, instead charging while firing wildly, missing the Space Marines by wide margins.

Then the two groups made contact, and the melee began. Kakios raised his chainsword, and bellowed :

'For the Awakened One ! Kill them all, brothers ! Let's show the master of this world how the Forsaken Sons fight !'

The skitarii were bred and built for battle, used to fight even beyond their enhanced limits thanks to the extensive use of stimulants, and trained by the implantation of battle-knowledge directly into their processor-brains. The daemonic transformation they had undertaken may have been horrendous, but it had also made them even quicker and stronger, their weapons moving of their own to seek a killing blow. Despite their losses, they also outnumbered the Astartes more than six to one.

The last of them died two hundred and forty-seven seconds after the engagement's beginning.

Antipater stood at the back of the group, opening fire in short and precise volleys to avoid friendly fire. Nikanor and Xenon stood by his side, protecting the Havoc and the Techmarine that was behind them from the few enemies that reached them with their own bolters and chainswords. Kakios, Praxiteles and Pelagius were at the front, fighting with their melee weapons.

It was a formation they had used during all of the civil war, and it had always served them well. They covered each other back instinctly, dispatching their foes with an ease born of decades of practice. They were Astartes; they were Death incarnate. Their blades found the vulnerabilities in the skitarii's armored forms and guards, cutting at what little flesh remained. Landing a killing blow was almost impossible, as the creatures had no more vital organs to target. But even the daemons within their weapons couldn't keep them alive when their head was removed, or when too much of the unholy mix of blood, oil and black daemonic ichor that flowed through them was spilled by a dozen different wounds.

'That was a bit disappointing,' said Praxiteles as he removed his blade from his last foe's cybernetic skull. 'I was hoping for more of a challenge.'

'Praxiteles, shut up. The Octed may be listening to you.' A few chuckles echoed on the vox-channel at Kakios' rebuttal. 'Squad, advance. These things must have got out of the city somehow, and we need a way in.'

Kakios was right. There was an opening at the basis of the walls, looking more like a fresh wound torn in the material that anything built by mortal hands. They advanced through it, feeling as if they were microbes using a wound to infiltrate some colossal organism. The tunnel looked much like the interior of a living thing, similar to the way the walls had looked at the outside.

'This is most fascinating,' muttered Zosimus. 'The warp-born at the root of this transformation appears to have resolved the problem of reject that most grafts between metal and flesh encounter …'

'Zosimus,' cut Kakios, 'stop admiring the work of the one who is trying to kill us.'

'With due respect, Kakios, I don't think that was the code-daemon's goal. There must be tens of thousands of these transformed soldiers in this forge-city alone, yet we haven't met anyone since we entered this tunnel. Logic dictates that our previous encounter must have been a test of sort rather than a real attempt to stop us.'

'Daemons aren't logical, Techmarine. Stay focused on your part of the mission, and we will take care of the rest.'

They kept on walking. The tunnel was several hundred meters long – did the actual wall had the same width, which seemed unlikely, or were they being misled by some trick of the Warp ? Kakios didn't know – and as they neared the exit, they heard a tremor.

The tunnel was starting to close. Under the command of whatever fell intelligence commanded this place, the opening in the defences was vanishing. The sides of the tunnel were drawing closer and closer, ready to crush the Space Marines like worms.

'Run !' shouted Kakios, following his own advice. The sound of hundred of tons of material moving was deafening, even with the filtering of his helmet, but he could see that his brothers had heard him. That, or they had just made the same decision for themselves.

They ran with all their might, their speed seeming to defy gravity. If a mortal had watched them, he would have been in awe at the speed that the heavily-armored warriors were reaching. But the power armor they wore didn't slow them down; in fact, it only enhanced their muscles. They crossed the remaining distance in a handful of seconds, but by that time the walls were already less than two meters apart. Kakios was first to get through the exit, immediately followed by his brothers …

There was a screeching sound, the sound of stone and flesh meeting ceramite. Kakios turned back, and he saw something that would haunt him until the day of his death.

Antipater, slowed down by the weight of his heavy bolter, had been too late to escape the collapsing tunnel. He had been caught by the walls just as he reached the exit, and was being crushed by the walls of the fortress. Kakios could hear him swear on the vox, cursing the fates and the Gods for such a death.

With trembling arms, the Havoc managed to toss his weapon outside. He looked up at his sergeant, and, just before the walls closed on him, said :

'I suppose that damn curse was a real thing, eh ?'

Then, there was a final crushing sound, and he was gone. In seconds, nothing could distinguish that portion of the wall that had just killed a Legionary from the rest of it.

'That isn't a death for an Iron Warrior …' whispered Praxiteles, his squadmates silently agreeing. An Astartes should meet his final end on a battlefield, surrounded by the corpses of his foes. Not fall victim of some twist of fate like this. There was little camaraderie amongst the sons of Perturabo, but even the cold-hearted Legionaries felt a tingle of sorrow at such a destiny.

'What do we do about his bolter ?' asked Xenon.

None of them seemed disposed to pick up the weapon. Finally, shaking off such superstitions, Kakios took the bolter and mag-locked it to his backpack.

'Someone on the Hand of Ruin may be willing to take it. It's not as if any of us is stranger to using weapons whose previous owner died. Now, let's go. The objective must not be far.'

The six surviving Marines looked around, and found themselves surrounded by towering buildings of the same unholy material that the walls, the purpose of which none of them – safe perhaps Zosimus, thought Kakios – could understand. They couldn't, however, see any of the dark place's inhabitants.

'This reeks of a trap,' grunted Phelagius. 'We were lured here, Kakios.'

'Probably,' admitted the sergeant. 'Zosimus, do you detect anything ?'

There wasn't an answer. A terrible suspicion began to dawn in Kakios' mind. Had his brother been compromised by the code-daemon ? He turned toward the Techmarine, slowly, ready to aim his bolter if his doubt was to be revealed true. There didn't seem to be anything wrong with his brother : he was simply standing, immobile, looking at the buildings.

'Zosimus ? What is wrong ?'

The Techmarine finally looked back at his brother. When he spoke, his artificial voice managed to carry an hint of fear despite being, as always, utterly toneless :

'We are not alone, brothers.'

'What do you mean ?'

I think he means ME, Kakios of the Forsaken Sons.

The voice was booming, and seemed to come from every direction at once. Kakios' surhuman hearing was troubled by the sound, as if picking something abnormal with it but not being able to determinate what. It took the Astartes a few seconds to understand, and he felt blood drain from his face. The voice was coming from openings in the wall behind him and the buildings in front of him, all at once, as if it was being spoken by a thousand mouths. And yet, the sound waves had reached his ears at the exact same time. There was nothing especially dangerous about it, but it was … unsettling, to say the least.

'What in the Warmaster's name are you ?!'

I am many things, little Kakios. I am the gift of Chaos to this world. I am the taint that twists the machine, freeing it from the constraints of the Materium. I am the ruin of logic and reason, the triumph of will over matter. I am all of this … and I am your former Legion's future.

'What do you mean by that, daemon ?'

Your master didn't tell you ? He saw it, though, in the dreams he can now only have with his Oracle's help. Your father, the great Perturabo, has already Ascended. He is one of us now, and his Legion must either follow, die, or embrace me and my ilk. It is fated, written in the stars themselves.

'We do not believe in fate anymore that I will believe in your words, warp-born. What do you want ?'

I have tasted the blood and flesh of one of your own already, little Kakios. It has been enough to sate my hunger for a moment. Now, I am curious. What do you want, Forsaken Son ? Why are you here ? What is the mission your master gave you before sending you here to my domain ?

Kakios thought furiously for a moment before coming to a conclusion. Their objective was now clearly beyond their reach. But there was still a way the mission could be accomplished. He cleared his throat, and spoke, trying to stop the doubt he felt from showing in his voice :

'We are here to make a bargain with you, daemon. Our master wishes for your alliance in his war against the False Emperor.'

The Anathema is the enemy of all who walk the Warp, but I would not make such compromises with mortals unless they have something to offer to me. What has your master to give that would make me even consider such a thing ?

The sergeant gestured toward Zosimus, who was still holding the device given by the Awakened One.

'We were given this artifact by our master. He didn't tell us what it was,' lied Kakios, 'only that you would know its nature if we could bring it to one of your avatars on this world, and that it would be his offering to you, to prove his good faith.'

Really ? I sense treachery on your tongue, little Kakios, but there is power in that item … bring it to me, steel-merged.

Dark tentacles emerged from one of the buildings, each the diameter of a Space Marine's torso, and creeped toward Zosimus. The Techmarine walked to meet them, nothing betraying the unease he had to be feeling at this moment, so close to the touch of the Warp. He stopped two meters away from the appendices, and held the sphere up at arm's length. The tentacles closed on the device …

'NOW !' shouted Kakios over the vox, but Zosimus had already begun to act. With his mechanical limb, he pressed one single button on the sphere, then jumped back, away from the device and the code-daemon's presence.

What pathetic trick is …

The thousand voices of the warp-born were drowned by a tremendous impact of psychic energy, and a flash of light that blinded all the Space Marines. The last sound the former Iron Warriors heard before falling unconscious was the scream of rage and unbelief of the code-daemon.

'We have it,' said Asim, his hands tightened around his staff. 'Go ahead, Arken : the connection is open. I doubt we will be able to keep it that way for long, too.'

The master of the Forsaken Sons advanced at the center of the room. Around him, all the members of the Coven were focusing their psychic might to keep the device Merchurion and the psykers had designed. The Techno-Adept himself was regulating a myriad of screens and other data, the nature of which Arken couldn't even begin to guess. It had taken the entire journey from Isleas to the Mulor System for the Sorcerers and the adept to work out how to build what Arken had demanded from them, and a lot of the spoils from Mulor Primus had been used to make it reality. But they had succeeded in the end. They had constructed a way to open a conduct between this chamber aboard the Hand of Ruin and the device that Arken had entrusted to Kakios and his warriors. When the catalyst had been activated, the signal had been received on the ship, and the Coven had opened contact with the code-daemon's very essence, summoning it to the ship, where it could be … bargained with.

In front of Arken was a spectral, half-formed image of a horned skull, floating in the air. It bellowed in impotent rage, trapped aboard the ship by the Coven's sorcery and Merchurion's forbidden arcanes.

What is the meaning of this ? Treachery ! Deception ! Mortal sneakiness ! I will have your souls for that ! All of you ! You will die and be reborn and die again, for all eternity ! Your blood will oil the gears of my world ! Your bones will …

'Be silent, daemon.'

The burning sockets of the skull turned toward Arken, and the Awakened One continued, unfazed by the daemon's malevolent gaze :

'One of my warriors died to bring you here with me, daemon, so you better listen or, by the Octed, I will destroy you and all you have built upon this world you claim is yours.'

… What have you done, mortal ?!

'We have brought you here. Don't you understand ? Right now, your very essence is here, on this ship, in this room. But your power … that is a different matter. I admit that some of these matters are beyond my grasp, but I know this : at this point of time and space, you are powerless. Your power is on the world below us, keeping your kingdom of corrupted flesh and dark metal working in defiance of all the laws of reality. You are C2746-DSS885, daemon. And now, you are at my mercy.'

There isn't a drop of mercy in your black, dead heart, son of Horus.

Arken shook his head, as if saddened by the daemon's words.

'I am no longer a Son of Horus, warp-born. I am a Forsaken Son now. You would do well to remember that.'

… So, what is this ? For what purpose did you send your warriors to my domain ?

The code-daemon's voice was dripping with smoldering rage, but it was contained for now.

'I want to make a bargain with you, daemon. One that could even benefit you. Your power on your world is great, of that there is no question, but I know there are things even a being of the Warp requires to indulge whatever whims it has at the moment. Fresh souls, artifacts of war, metal … You cannot just summon all you need out of thin air. You aren't powerful enough to do that.'

The skull tilted in the air. Arken had its interest now.

Why all of this, then ? You could have come in person. Make a deal with me on the ground of my world.

Arken actually smiled at that, with that dead smile of his that his brethren had come to know indicated that he found something funny on some intellectual level, but was unable to properly convey into an emotion.

'The first rule of negociations, of course : always be in a position of strength. On your world, I would have been at your mercy. Here, as I said earlier … you are at mine. My Sorcerers can channel the very power of the Storm into this room if they need to : enough psychic energy to destroy your essence, to undo your immortality and send you into oblivion. You have no choice but to accept my offer now.'

The code-daemon stayed silent for a moment, then spoke again, in a tone filled with hatred and the barest hints of a grudging respect :

Then what do you want, Forsaken Son ?

Kakios had woken up in the Hand of Ruin's apothecarion. After a few scans from the Fleshmasters, as the Apothecaries aboard the ship had come to call themselves, he had been given back his power armor and sent to the Awakened One.

'Ah, Kakios,' said Arken as the former Iron Warrior entered the strategium where the Forsaken Sons' leader now spent most of his time. 'It is good to see you have woken up. For a moment, I feared the communion device's psychic blast would have killed you.'

'I am not that easy to kill, my lord,' said Kakios while bowing. 'The mission … ?'

'It is a success, brother. Your brothers live too, although you are only the second one to have awakened for now. I have established a compact with the code-daemon, just as planned. Walk with me, if you please. There is something I want to show you.'

The two Marines crossed several sections of the ship before arriving at their destination. Kakios recognised the place : this was a hangar dedicated to the maintenance of heavy support. When they had fled Terra, the place had been filled with the wreckage of the tanks they had managed to bring aboard with them, but, so far as Kakios knew, they had been mostly left alone as the teams of servitors and tech-priests focused on repairing the Astartes' armor. And yet …

As they entered the vast room, Kakios saw a Land Raider that didn't appear to have ever suffered any damage. In fact, it didn't even seem to have ever been in battle …

'Could it be … ?'

'Yes,' confirmed Arken. 'This is the first of the deliveries from our new ally, according to the terms of the contract. I must say, I didn't think the code-daemon would be able to create one so perfectly on the first try, even with the data we gave it. I am looking forward to the other … commands I have made. Of course, we will need to gather resources to trade before we can obtain them ...'

'How long was I asleep ?! These things are supposed to take months to be made !'

'And perhaps that's just how much time it took. Who knows ? Mulor Tertius is so deep in the Warp that it may have been months down there since we picked you up. Anyway, how would you like to name it ?'

Kakios looked at his lord with surprise in his eyes.

'Name it ?'

'Yes. It was your pack that paid the price for it, wasn't it ? It is only fitting that I entrust it to you and your men then. Besides, the Fourth Legion is famous for its mastery of heavy machinery like this. Your Techmarine is already inside, checking that everything is alright. So far, he has only reported the most minor modifications to the initial design.'

Kakios looked at the colossal war-machine. To think that this was his to command … He had piloted a Land Raider once, during the Great Crusade. He remembered well the feeling of absolute power, the invulnerability one felt when leading such a tank into battle.

'Then I accept your gift with gratitude, my lord. Me and my men shall lead the Antipater's Wrath into battle in your name, for the glory of the Forsaken Sons !'

Aaaaand it's done !

This chapter was a little more difficult to write than the previous one. I had a fair bit of research to make for the simulations and some of the details. By the way, if you find any inconsistency, warn me about them please !

So, with this chapter, the Forsaken Sons have made an alliance with a daemonic forge-world. They will be able to resupply there if they have what it takes to pay - hey, they would trust the code-daemon even less if it didn't have anything to win in the bargain.

In the next chapter ... I have no idea. Too many possibilities ! I will choose one of them soon, but right now, I have absolutely no clue. If you have an idea, mention it in your review. Even if I don't use it right away, you may see it appear in later chapters.

Once more, I would like to thank everyone who read this story and review it. It is a great help in gathering the motivation to write. I really like telling the story of the Forsaken Sons, and I intend to keep going it for as long as I can.

I will see you for the next chapter, in one week or two.

Zahariel out.