AN : and here it is ! Only one left to go and the Seeds of Ruin will be complete. Gods of the Warp, if I ever decides to do something as foolish as set in stone what the next four chapters are about, smite me with Your might anger !

So, this chapter is dedicated to Khorne. Not much more to say, so I will just thanks those who review my stories, be it this one or the Roboutian Heresy - I got a lot of positive reviews for the chapter about the Dark Angels, and I am going to do my best for the next ones.

Concerning Spider's question in his review ... well, answering it would be spoilers, but the possibility has most definitely been considered. That's all I can say for now.

Next chapter's release is yet unknown, but I would say somewhere in two to three weeks. I want to finish the Seeds before doing anymore of the Roboutian Heresy.

So, read ! Enjoy ! Review ! Pile up the skulls for the Skull Throne !

Zahariel out.

They were millions. A legion of souls, cast aside by the rulers of Humanity, and emprisonned below the surface of a forgotten world to serve and rot there. Drawn from all Parecxis system and the rest of the entire Trebedius Sector, they were those who had forsaken the Imperium's dream of a peaceful society or had been forsaken by it. They were thieves and murderers, rapists and political protesters. Some had been sent here for only a few years, and should have been back to their home by now. But the galaxy had erupted in flames as demigods waged war amongst themselves, and they had been trapped here. There had been no ships available to bring them back, and the civilians authorities of the nearby worlds had flatly refused to receive them on their soil – they had enough problems already.

So they had remained in the darkness of what looked more and more like the underworld of ancient faiths with each passing cycle, toiling endlessly in the promethium pits that had been established when the system had been brought into the Imperium. When the civil war had started, the cadence of work had dramatically increased, and security measures had been more and more put aside in order to fuel the many needs of the Parecxis system.

Countless prisonners had died in accidents or from poisonning by the subtances used, and many more bore the scars of the overseers' whips. The war was over, now, or so the damned had heard – the Tyrant of Terra had apparently triumphed, and the rebellious Warmaster slain. But things hadn't changed in the darkness. The inmates had continued to feed the enormous war machine of the Imperium with the blood-tainted promethium. All because one inhuman bastard had decided that Parecxis Gamma's denizens deserved nothing but to work and eventually die in these pits, and should feel honored that their work and sacrifice helped protect and preserve this fragment of the Imperium.

Balthazar had vowed to track down and kill the miserable frakker. He had marked his flesh with a piece of metal he had found in his work station, and had reopened the wound each time he was released from his work to collapse in his cell. The wound was a constant reminder of his goal, the blood he shed an offering so that the spirits may bless his hunt. There were forty-three other such marks on his body, though those had healed a long time ago. Each corresponded to a target Balthazar had successfully killed as a hitman before he had been betrayed by one of his contacts and captured by the Arbites.

He had almost gotten Magos Numerian when the riots had kicked out. He had come so close – less than ten meters from the cursed, half-living automaton – but the coward had run away, and the sealing doors of Section Twelth had been closed. The directors of the penal world had reacted to the planet-wide riots by cutting off the sections that had been considered lost, and focused the forces at their disposal into the remaining ones. Information was scarce, but from what Balthazar had been able to gather by spying on what little data still passed through the isolated sections' remaining cogitators, almost half of the complex was in the hands of the prisonners themselves.

It was beautiful, what had happened when the gates had closed. Even now, two full months after the beginning of it all, Balthazar couldn't think of it without a smile. It had been magnificent. The true face of humanity, the one Balthazar had always known was here, hidden just beneath the thin veneer of civilisation, had shattered like glass. Blood had flown in rivers, and many, many had given their lives in the utter chaos of the first forthnight.

It had started like any other cycle in the dephts of Parecxis Gamma. Balthazar and the rest had been woken up by the sirens that heralded the end of the work for half the workforce and the start of it for the rest. He had gotten up in his individual cell – a small luxury that he owed to the unfortunate deaths of his five previous cellmates – and eaten the tasteless gruel that had been poured through the feeding tube in one corner of his small personnal space. Then the door had opened, and he had been tossed out by the overseers, their armor and long, electrified whips quelling any thought of escape before his reflexes could force him into action.

He had gone to his work station, hauling burning promethium from the pits, taking a barrel of the stuff from the prisonner before him and handing it over to the one behind. It was tedious work – it was horrible work. But the pit had been recently dug, and with the restrictions of material, the prison's directors didn't have the means – nor the will – to install the automated chains that would make the whole process so much safer. Instead, a pump down the pit drained it from its precious content, and dumped it into barrels that had been descended by the thousands when the pit had been dug. Every day, prisonners fell and burned to death in the promethium, but what did it matter to the overseers, when literally millions more could be called upon ?

Hours had passed. One barrel. One more. Another. It was so woefully inefficient that Balthazar had difficulty believing an actual Priest of Mars had invented the system. Weren't the cogboys supposed to revere practicality and efficiency above all else ? Breathing was hard, the toxic fumes that rose from the deep only barely filtered by the masks of tissue they had been issued. He could feel tears in his eyes, and his lungs struggling to expel the foreign elements.

After a period of time that Balthazar would have been unable to precisely identify, there had been a scream, long and terrified, coming from lower in the pit. Nothing unusual. It had been followed by a splash, and yet another, more horrible scream, though that one had been cut abruptly. Again, nothing unusual. The barrels stopped coming, the chain interrupted the moment one of its links had failed in its purpose. Taking advantage of the short pause, and knowing it wouldn't last long, the workers collapsed against the walls of the pit, resting their sore muscles as best they could. That, too, was not anything out of the ordinary – just one more cycle of work, one more death to feed the Imperium's thirst for promethium.

Then the scream had started again, except this time it hadn't been a scream. It had been the sound of reality tearing itself apart under the pressure of Hell. The stench of blood, always present in the air from the countless cuts and coughs, had intensified a thousandfold. The entire complex had shook, as if trying to disloge itself from the earth it was buried under. Balthazar had thought he could hear the very walls screaming, and then he had seen the faces that had appeared on the rock, and understood that he was hearing them screaming.

The scream had been taken up by the prisonners. For a moment, Balthazar had stared, unable to process what was happening, then he had started screaming too. Everything had gone red. There had been no thought given to preparation, to planning or to survival. All of a sudden, thousands of captives who had spent years toiling under the whips of merciless overlords had screamed in hatred, rage and bloodlust, and had risen against the ones responsible for their pain. They had tossed away their buckets and started climbing up, toward the top of the pit, from where the overseers looked down on all of them.

Balthazar had been one of the first to emerge in the vast room where this section's pits led, thanks to having been placed high in the chain this time – a mere product of chance, as positions were decided only by the whim of whoever was in command of the pit that day. The overseers had been on the ground, writhing helplessy while clutching their heads, squealing like pigs at the abattoir. Balthazar had looked at them, and then he had acted to make that image more real.

It had been the same all across the section, and the rest of the world as well. The fury had spread like a wave from the pit where the prisonner had fallen, hole after hole suddenly being filled with enraged psychopaths instead of broken captives. They had torn apart their erswhile jailors, taken their weapons, and gone on the hunt for more. Only after a half-hour had any form of resistance started to build up, and then things had gotten interesting. It had remembered Balthazar of the gang wars back home. Barricades, the shooting at each other in thight corridors, the slow progress 'street by street', the screams, the smoke, the sheer rage of it … Yes, it had been just like home. It had lasted for days before the directors had given up and closed the gates. Without a common enemy, the prisonners had turned against each other. Factions had formed, territories had been claimed, and the bloodshed had abated, if not stopped completely. The urge to kill was still here, unnaturally powerful, but it was possible to push it down with an effort of will. Balthazar's sources had taught him that a Warp Storm was raging outside, and it didn't take a genius to understand that the powers of the Immaterium had a hand in what was happening in the penal world.

Now, two months later, things were starting to heat up again. The stores of food that had been raided at the beginning of the riots had been emptied, and with resources thinning, the bloodlust was rising once more. It wouldn't take long, by Balthazar's estimation, before battle started again in earnest. But by then, if his plan worked, he would be long gone.

It was time to make a journey to Hell.

'You want me to do what ?!'

The incredulity in Asim's voice was clear, even through the filters of his helm's mouth grille. Like all members of the Coven, the former Thousand Son hadn't taken off his helmet since the unleashing of the Storm – it was a psychic hood, and the discomfort it caused was nothing compared to the protection it granted against the touch of the neverborn. Without it, they would all have gone insane in a matter of weeks. Yet Asim was wondering if he hadn't turned mad without noticing it anyway. It was one of the few possible explanations for what he had heard his liege lord say. But no, Arken kept looking at him, visibly not surprised by his outburst, and nodded.

'I thought you would react like that, Asim. Do not worry : I am not insane. Not yet, not that way.'

'With all due respect, sire, you know that is exactly what you would say if you had. How much time did you spend in the Oracle's Chamber lately ? Even a mind such as yours cannot endure these conflicts of will for too long. If you are not careful …'

Arken held up his hand, and Asim went silent at the reminder of who was in control here. They were in the strategium of the Hand of Ruin, the place that was, more and more, coming to be known as where the Awakened One called his warriors when he had a particular task for them, one requiring their special talents and that had been inspired to him by his frequent mental battles against the imprisonned Oracle. The two of them were alone, though Asim could still feel the aura of Damarion's two warriors at the door, keeping watch even here at the heart of their master's power.

Both of them were wearing their power armour. The lord of the Forsaken Sons was enconsed in his Terminator Armor. During their journey to the Parecxis system, the daemon head painted in gold on his breastplate had risen from the ceramite and become a relief that seemed to look at all before the armor's wearer with eyes burning with hatred and rage at its confinement. All aboard knew of that change and the forces at work behind it, yet none spoke of it. They had all changed since Terra, just like they had changed during the Heresy itself.

Asim's own armor had changed, too. Despite the sorcerer's best efforts to keep himself pure from the Warp's touch, the power of the Sea of Souls permeated the entire vessel, and it had reached the ceramite that had protected him since long before Prospero had burnt. While it had once been red, now it was blue. The paint had simply shed away, revealing the new color beneath. He knew without needing to ask the Awakened One that this was now the livery of his Legion. The armor was proof that, regardless of his reject of Magnus' authority, the Crimson King's many failures still affected him. This wasn't the only change : three horns had sprouted from his helmet, twisting above his head and forming elegant forms that drew the eye and distracted the mind with the sheer impossibility of the forms they took. He was fairly certain the horns' configuration changed each time he allowed himself to rest, in the protective circles raised by the Coven to guard their minds from the warp-born while they slept. Asim had thought about ripping them out, but had given up after the fifth attempt had almost destroyed the helmet entirely. Besides, it seemed that they amplified his psychic powers even further than the psychic hood did. And if he was to accomplish the seemingly impossible task his master had set up before him, he would need every scrap of power he could gather.

The leader of the Coven spoke up once more, carefully measuring his words :

'You want me to go to Parecxis Gamma, a world still held by the servants of the False Emperor. Then, somehow, you want me to teleport every single of the inmates of this penal world on the hive-world the other side of the sun ?'

'That is what I asked of you, yes,' said Lord Arken, his stare kept fixed upon Asim without blinking.

'And how am I supposed to do that ?! My lord, you probably know more about the arcane than any non-psyker in the galaxy. You know the quantity of power such a feat would require, and I am nowhere near powerful enough !'

'I know that, of course. But I saw that you could do it. Surely you can understand the tactical value of such a move.'

'I …' Asim paused. Yes, he could see it. Parecxis Alpha was still standing, still firmly in the hand of its rulers. Unlike the Mulor system, it hadn't fallen to anarchy and madness when the Warp Storm had reached it. Its defences were strong, and it had tens of thousand of soldiers to call upon to protect itself from the invaders that had appeared in their sky. And while the Forsaken Sons could win such a war without a doubt, it would cost them time and lives, and the Awakened One wasn't inclined to spend either for a mere hive-world. Warping the inmates of Parecxis Gamma would cause chaos and confusion, and they would be able to capitalize on that.

Yes, Asim could see the logic behind the Awakened One's reasonning. However, that still didn't tell him how he was supposed to do something that reminded him entirely too much of what Magnus had done when Prospero had burned. He asked hesitently :

'You saw this … in the Oracle's Chamber ? You saw me doing … this ?'

'Yes. But I didn't see how. Serixithar blocked that information from me. Still, it means that there is a way. Think, Asim. Now that you know it is possible, how would you do it ?'

Now this was something he could do. Solving aetheric problems and equations was one of the Thousand Sons' specialities, and though he no longer considered himself part of the Fifteenth Legion, Asim still possessed the skills of Magnus' sons. He focused on the challenge offered to him, speaking his thoughts aloud :

'How to teleport the prisonners isn't difficult. The Coven and me have worked on such spells for a long time, and we practised them during the space war for this system. I should be able to cast the sorcery, but the problem lies in actually powering it. Even if all the Coven worked together, such a working would be beyond our reach …'

'What if you call upon other powers ?' suggested Arken. 'The whole planet is bathing in the power of the Empyrean. Couldn't you draw some of this power to yourself ?'

'The world is in the hands of the Blood God's servants, sir. The warp-born will not look kindly upon my interference in their games.'

'Even if what you will do would cause far more bloodshed ?'

'You know better than to assume daemons act with any semblance of logic, Awakened One.'

Arken nodded slowly. There was a logic to Chaos, yes, but that logic only existed to the higher levels of power, where the Gods themselves decided the fates of billions in each blink of an eye. The lower minions of the Four Powers, however, were only barely sapient, and almost entirely driven by instinct alone.

'Then how can you persuade them to listen to you ?'

Asim hesitated. The lord of the Forsaken Sons saw right through him, however, and followed immediately :

'You have an idea. I can see it. What is it ?'

'It is dangerous, my lord. Not just for me, but for you as well. The Khornate spirits will not tolerate my presence, but if I tell them I am negociating on your behalf, in your name, they may relent and consider hearing what I have to offer. You are not without some reputation in the Sea of Souls, my lord. The neverborn whisper your name and sing your praises across all the Trebedius Sector as they feast upon the souls of the mortals you made vulnerable to their claws when you unleashed the Storm.'

'How is it dangerous ?'

'If I were to fail, not only would I be destroyed by the backlash, the rage of the neverborn could even spread to you, and through you to the entire warband. This … gamble could destroy the warband !'

'Do you intend to fail me, Asim ?'

'Of course not, but …'

'Then don't. I know you can succeed, and by the blood of slain Sanguinius, you will. We don't have time to waste fighting a conventionnal war on Parecxis Alpha. You must succeed.'

'Why do we have to hurry ? The Imperials are trapped here with us. Their two remaining ships are hidden at the system's edge, and we will destroy them the moment they try to act. What do we have to fear ?'

The Awekened One stayed silent. After several seconds had passed without an answer, Asim shook his head, and said :

'Very well. I will do it. But first, we must discuss what you are willing to offer to the Empyrean in return for this to work.'

The touch of the Warp could be feel everywhere. The walls had changed, some of them turning into bleeding meat – some fools had tried to eat it, and what had happened to them had not been pretty – while many of them now showed the same stone faces Balthazar had first seen in the pits, figed in an eternal scream. Deep down the pits themselves, it was no longer promethium that flowed, but a thick, red liquid that smelled entirely too much like blood yet still burned just as well as it had prior to its transformation. The groups of rebellious inmates still drained from it, using it to protect themselves with great, ever-burning barrers.

Balthazar didn't belong to any of the factions that had formed in the rebellion's aftermath. He had raided a supply chache just as the initial fighting had died down – a closed filled with food for the guards' meals, actual food, not the paste they had been fed – and that had kept him well-fed since. He had also taken a magnetic card to a small storeroom where he had made his lair. He was not burdened by the other inmates – no one wanted to cross Balthazar. He had been feared even before the riots, and even the unnatural bloodlust that had filled them all wasn't quite enough to make them attack him – at least not as long as easier prey remained.

While the gangs waged war against each other, he had studied what the inmates called, with a lamentable lack of imagination, the «cracks». A testament to the Warp's growing influence on the penal world, the cracks were just as feared as they were revered. Each was a scar, a wound upon reality itself. At first glance, they looked like slits of crimson light, reeking of ozone and blood. But if one looked long enough, one started to distinguish the hellish space behind the crack, filled with visions the human mind refused to accept and process. And, as the rebelled inmates had discovered soon after the stalemate had begun, they could be used to cross through space and reach other cracks.

Some said the cracks refleted their yearning for freedom. Others, that they were the sign the planet would soon collapse into the Warp entirely. Balthazar didn't know the truth, and he didn't care. All that mattered to him was how they may help him reach his target. There was no reason to believe the cracks hadn't spread across the rest of the planet, includong the sections of the complex still in the overseers' hands. Some gangs had used the cracks to appear in the territory of their rivals, though the losses to the Warp had been high enough to disencourage further attempts. But Balthazar had kept walking the cracks, pushing his will to lead him where wanted to go. Now, he believed himself ready : he could cross the Warp without being anything more than a little unbalanced at his arrival. Furthermore, this morning, he had finally intercepted a report about a crack appearing in Numerian's proximity. Had his target been anyone but an member of the Adeptus Mechanicus, no doubt he would have gotten away from the yawning tear in reality opened into hell, but the cogboys were not ordinary men and women.

Then again, Balthazar was the same. The crack he intended to use to escape the blockade of the Section had appeared in his very lair eight days before, and he had taken it as a good omen. Now, it was time to go and kill the one responsible for his years of torment in the pits. With the skull of a guard he had killed held up in one hand – he had noticed that, for some reason, the item made travelling through the cracks easier – and the dead man's weapon in the other, Balthazar crossed the treshold and entered the Warp.

In the end, he did not go alone.

Asim and the Awakened One had discussed at length, before finally deciding on an offer that the lord of the Forsaken Sons was ready to make and that his chief sorcerer knew would please the daemons that lurked on Parecxis Gamma. They had then used orbital images to shoose the most appropriate location for the ritual, where the currents of power flowing on the penal world would be the most potent. Several points had been proposed and studied before Arken had recognised the one he had seen in the vision, where the ritual had the most chances to be successful.

Of course, it had been in the middle of the penal world's administration center. Of course. If there was one thing all members of the Coven agreed upon, it was that the Dark Gods who ruled over the Sea of Souls had a pervert sense of irony, and enjoyed it almost as much as they enjoyed the sufferring of mortals.

Asim didn't know how long his work would take him, but he would be entirely defenceless during the process. Since there was little hope that the mortals would ignore a Traitor Marine in their mist, the sorcerer would go down with an escort that would protect his mortal shell while his mind wielded powers that could burst the planet apart.

Which was why Asim now stood on the platform of Merchurion's recently repaired Teleportarium, alongside a pack of Forsaken Sons who had once been members of the Sixteenth Legion – the Sons of Horus. Led by a warrior named Lucian, the nine Marines wore the colors of the Forsaken Sons, the Eye of Horus on their shoulder guards painted over in black. Asim could feel the taint on the leader – his armor was slowly consuming him, turning his soul into a concentration of hate turned against everything around it. He would need to be prudent with this one.

That Arken was honoring him with a guard of his own blood-brothers was not lost on the psyker. But while he had no doubt they would protect him from the human defenders, the warriors' presence did nothing to alleviate his concerns for his immortal soul. It had been claimed, back before the Heresy, when the Legiones Astartes still all fought side by side under the Gread Crusade's banner, that Space Marines knew no fear. The capacity to feel that debilitating emotion was said to have been removed from the Legionaries. Yet, during the battles of the Heresy, when brother had turned against brother and the galaxy had burned with the wrath of vengeful demigods and spiteful daemons, many Astartes had felt fear. Asim had felt fear when the Wolves had come to Prospero : he had feared the destruction of his Legion and all they had ever created. Then, on the Planet of Sorcerers, he had feared the devolution of his body, feared that the flesh-change would turn him into another mindless mutant or a monster with its mind as twisted as its body, just like so many of his brothers.

Now, he feared for his soul. He was about to open his soul to spirits of the Immaterium which abhorred the use of the higher powers, and he would have to beseech them for assistance. That filled him with a cold, very real dread. One wrong step, one loss of focus, one show of weakness, and he would be dead, his soul torn apart and devoured – if he was lucky. If he wasn't …

No. He had to stop thinking like that. Doubt would weaken him, and turn his fears into self-realizing prophecies. He was Asim of the Forsaken Sons, Lord Sorcerer of the Coven. He had bested hundreds of daemons during the Exodus, and been part of a conspiracy that had defeated a Daemon Prince of Tzeentch. The lowly warp-born that fed upon Parecxis Gamma's bloodshed would not be the ones to end him. He would succeed. The Warp would bend the laws of space, and the worms of Parecxis Alppha would scream in terror as he unleashed the hatred of millions of souls against them. The will of the Awakened One would be done.

Asim opened eyes he hadn't realised were closed, and looked at where Merchurion stood, behind a command panel outside of the Teleportarium's platform. To his second sight, the former Techno-Adept of the Adeptus Mechanicus was shrouded in black light and blasphemous energies. Minor creatures of the Empyrean lurked in almost every component of Merchurion's mechanical frame, twisting and altering their base functions to modify their host's body even further. In his veins, filtered warp-energy ran alongside tainted, black blood, mutating what little flesh remained, creating cancers that were almost instantly rejected by Merchurion's inner repair systems, and organs of unknown purpose. There had never been much humanity in the Techno-Adept, byt now, the being that the warband trusted with the direction of their technical operations had no longer any right to be called a member of the human race.

Then again, did any of them ?

'Adept,' he called. 'I am ready. Begin the transfer, if you please.'

'Aknowledged, Librarian Asim,' answered Merchurion in his synthetic voice before starting reciting the litanies of activation.

There was something wrong to it, though. Asim had been deployed by teleportation before, but he didn't recognise the words Merchurion was using. There were a lot less appeals to the machine-spirit of the device, and a lot more threats directed at its components and supplications adressed to the Dark Gods – though the Techno-Adept referred to them as the «Eightfold Omnissiah» in his prayers. He wondered if Merchurion had even noticed the changes in his philosophy, or if he just did not care. Truly, they had all changed.

He felt the Teleportarium powering up. Energies both natural and unnatural were being combined, drawing strength from the Warp Storm around the ship to make an insult to the laws of physic a reality. Asim thought, for a second, of what would happen when the Hand of Ruin left the Warp Storm, or when it finally abated. Would Merchurion have to reconfigure the Teleportarium, or would another power source be found ?

There was a flash of light, and the question no longer mattered. Asim and the nine warriors passed through a tunnel of insanity and horror, and emerged on the other side to find themselves surrounded by gun stations and turrets.

The crack was no different this time than any of the others he had crossed. The trick was to close your mind. Keeping your eyes closed was obvious – but it wasn't nearly enough. The visions imprited themselves on his retinas with impossible neatness. You could plug your ears, but that did not help much when the screams also came from inside of you. No, the only way to avoid being driven insane by a thousand blasphemies against the human psyche was to close your mind completely, and focus on where you wanted to go while moving your legs regardless of the presence of solid ground beneath them.

Balthazar had trained himself to focus on one thing and discard all others when he had learned to snipe. While he was nowhere as proefficient with a long-distance rifle as his reacher, he had gotten the concentration trick right. He marched through the madness in utter blackness, a spot of terrifying stillness amidst the Sea of Souls. That made for a rather boring and exhausting mode of travel, but the hitman would rather be bored and sane than entertained and frothing from the mouth. He had seen what the cracks had done to others, and had no whish to share that fate. Their rage consumed them from within, stripping away their intellect and turning them into ravening beasts.

Something chimed in his mind, and he knew he had arrived. His eyes snapped open as his mind unclenched and his hand lifted his gun. There was a man standing before him, staring at him with an open mouth, unable to accept what he was seeing. Before the guard could move for his weapon, Balthazar shot him in the head. Only then did he look around him.

He was in his target's private quarters, as he had intended. The room did not look like a living space at all : there were half-built devices set on workbenches all around, and tools suspensed from the ceiling, where a tech-priest's mecha-dendrites may seize them at a moment's notice. The air reeked of oil and machinery – and Balthazar noticed with a certain disquiet that he missed the smell of bloody promethium. Apart from the man he had just killed, the room only had one another occupant, who was turning from his work to face him.

'Greetings, adept,' snarled Balthazar, a leer forming on his bloodied face. 'And farewell.'

He hadn't expected this. Which, in hindsight, was a really embarrassing failing of his part. Only the fact that the Awakened One hadn't mentionned it either diminished his shame to bearable levels. The Legionaries that escorted him deployed instantly, opening fire on the human defenders while Asim stood motionless, still berating himself for his foolishness, more irritated as his mistake than by the fire directed at him. Of course the humans would have set up a trap here. The whole planet had been in the claws of the Warp for weeks, and this was a nexus of psychic currents. After the first time a daemon had used it to manifest, the guards had obviously set up a trap for the next one.

Still, they were no match for a pack of Forsaken Sons, especially one accompanied by a sorcerer of Asim's power. With but a thought, he projected a wave of kinetic energy that passed through his comrades harmlessly but sent the guns and those manning them flying in the air. They crushed against the walls in wet crunks of meat and bone. Impressed with the casual display of power, the former Sons of Horus nodded at the sorcerer.

'You know what to do, Lucian,' he told the former sergent.

'Aye. May the Powers be with you, sorcerer.'

'I certainly hope they are,' answered Asim, and he opened his mind to the Warp.

It was like bathing in liquid fire. He could feel claws gnawing at his soul, hear the hateful screams of a million daemons as they howled their fury at him. The Empyrrean was teeming with the neverborn, drawn to this world by the violence of its denizens and the never-ending bloodshed caused by ruthless exploitation of its natural resources. Their presence was causing the physic laws to break down, tearing openings through the fabric of space and time that threatened to engulf the whole planet into the Sea of Souls. He could feel how the warp-born thirsted for that outcome, how much they longed for the time they would be able to hunt and feast upon the many souls of Parecxis Gamma.

+Wanderers of the Sea of Souls,+ sent Asim through the aether in the non-language of the neverborn. +Predators of the Empyrean, roamers of the Immaterium. I am Asim of the Forsaken Sons, and I have come to you to bargain for power on the behalf of my lord, Arken the Awakened One.+

The pressure on his soul diminished, and the answer came to Asim not in words, but as a myriad of variations in the psychic tapestry of the Sea of Souls. His trained mind struggled, forcing the message into a form his Astartes' brain could comprehend. In old ages, oracles and seers had done the same to interpret the messages of their gods, and the Fifteenth Legion had rediscovered their secrets during its hunt for arcane knowledge and power. But where these men and women had almost always gone insane, Asim's power and discipline enabled him to render the daemons' intent into his native tongue of Prospero without any more damage than a burgeonning headache.

+Speak, witch, and be quick about it. Your master's name, for all the power it carries, can only make us bear your presence so long. Tell us : what do you want ?+

The actual message wasn't that simple, of course. There were a lot of threats that the leader of the Coven had dismissed : promises to rend his flesh, maim his soul, drink his blood and take his skull … Khorne-aligned daemons weren't any more imaginative than their mortal followers – not that he would ever say so in the face of the Blood Champion.

+I ask that you lend me your power. I ask you help me send the touched ones upon this world to the land beyond the sun. I ask that you assist me in ensuring the slaughter of the weakling servants of the False Emperor that there dwell. I ask that you aid me make their blood flow for glorious Khorne, and burn their world in the pyres of holy war.+

The request had been carefully phrased to appeal to the daemons' instincts, but it still caused disquiet in their ranks.

+Long have we waited for this world to fall in our grasp, witch. The touched ones have spilled much blood in the name of the Bloodfather, and walked far upon the Eightfold Path. The moment of their reaping is at hand – why should we deny them their rightful reward ?+

+Because in return for this boon, my lord offers you the chance to hunt in the world of the flesh.+

The neverborn roared, and Asim staggered. Daemons always wanted to walk the physical world, where they could experience sensations that, as beings of pure emotion, were denied to them in their native realm. It was the reason behind the union that the Word Bearers had called 'Gal Vorbak', and later 'Unburdened'. It was also why the Warmaster had been able to gaint the support of mighty osts of warp-born in his war, sending seemingly endless hordes of infernal creatures against the loyalists. Drawing mortals in the Immaterium was well and good to the neverborn, but hunting them on their home ground was far more satisfying to them. When the tumult eased and a message was sent once more, its tone was a lot more cautious and eager at the same time :

+How ? Does the Awakened One wish to let us wear the flesh of his brothers as we go to battle ? Does he desire to follow the path of the Bearers of the Word, and that of so many of his blood-kin within the Great Eye ?+

+No,+ replied Asim with finality. +He does not.+

They had discussed it. Possessed Marines were powerful, but the presence of the primitive intellect of the daemon drove them to insanity and megalomania, not counting the fact that, despite all the enhancements brought to the process over the years, the rate of survival was still low. Arken wasn't about to whore out his warriors to the Ruinous Powers, though, like all the few scruples the Awakened One retained, this one was motivated more by pragmatism than by any remnant of morality within his blackened soul.

+Then how do you propose to let us roam the Materium, witch ?!+ scowled the daemons, disappointed and infuriated by the refusal.

+The touched ones,+ sent Asim, using the warp-born's expression to designate the inmates. The actual meaning was a mix of «prey», «blessed», «cursed», and «food». + When their flesh crosses through the Gods' realm, you will be able to merge with them and wear their skin as you hunt the abundant prey of the world behind the sun. With my skill and the support of my master's influence over all souls dragged halfway through the Sea of Souls by the strom he unleashed, I shall consecrate a thousand of the touched ones' souls. Grant me the power I desire, that you may enter the kingdom of matter and wreck havoc and slaughter the sheep of the Imperium.+

+Do we have a deal ?+

Nemurian's reaction was immediate. Unlike the guard of the crack, he didn't waste any time gawking or trying to rationalize what was happening before him. But in the fraction of second before the battle began, Balthazar took in Nemurian's appearance. It was the first time he saw him in person, after all, and not behind one of the pic-screens that had been used to broadcast his insipid sermons before they had been destroyed in the riots.

Nemurian wasn't the most augmented cogboy the hitman had ever seen. He had cybernetic eyes and an array of mecha-dendrites, perhaps a few implants in his skull, and that was all. His bald head had youthful features, and possessed some kind of cherubine beauty that only outlined the ugliness of the insect-like eyes in its middle. He wore the robes not of a high-ranking servant of the Adeptus Mechanicus, but of the lowly menial he had been before the civil war, tasked with maintenance and supervision of the planet's crew of servitors. He had only risen to the station he now occupied as supreme administrator of the penal world thanks to his ideas about how to increase promethium production. Rumors amongst the convicts – and the guards out of his earshot – had it that Nemurian had augmented himself with the mecha-dendrites without permission from his superiors. It was apparently a heavy transgression to the uncomprehensible rules and ethics of the Cult of Mars, and one that could very well destroy the man's career and life if the rest of the Mechanicum learned of it.

Regardless of their legality, however, the mecha-dendrites were the most immediate threat. There were a total of six of them, and Balthazar's estimation put their range at three meters – and he was only two meters from the tech-priest. He tried to shoot, but one of the appendages, still holding what looked like an instrument of torture from a darker age, knocked his weapon away. A second later, a second hit him in the stomach with enough force to send him flying across the room.

Balthazar crashed on one of the workbenches and rolled to the other side of it, scattering fragiles pieces of technology as he did. Looking at his foe, he saw Nemurian on his back, trying to lift himself up with his human arms while his mecha-dendrites wailed around uselessly. Here was, mused Balthazar, the reason why only already heavily modified tech-priests were installed with mecha-dendrites : Nemurian simply wasn't heavy enough to absorb the kinetic backlash of his hit.

And this was how he could kill him. The mecha-dendrites were strong but Nemurian's flesh was ridiculously weak and vulnerable. Looking around for something, anything he could use as a weapon, Balthazar's eyes stopped on a plasma torch. He grabbed it and pressed the activation rune. Nothing happened. He swore, and pressed harder. This time, a white light appeared at the torch's extremity, and Balthazar felt himself starting sweating and his eyes beginning to hurt at the proximity of the super-heated flame. He released the rune and the miniature sun disappeared. Good, he thought. He could do this.

Balthazar jumped over the workbench and sprinted toward Nemurian, ignoring the pain in his guts from where the bastard had punched him. The tech-priest had managed to rise to his feet, and an alarmed expression formed on his face when he saw what Balthazar was holding. He tried to block the inmate's advance with his mechanical tentacles, looking like some creature from the deep oceans trying to protect itself from danger. Balthazar took several glancing wounds, and blood started to drip from the cuts caused by the tools, but he didn't stop. Just as it had been when he had walked the crack, Balthazar's mind was entirely focused on his goal. He had slipped into the full-focus mode without effort – indeed, without even meaning to or realizing it.

Lowering his center of gravity, he crashed into Nemurian headfront. His skull impacted into the tech-priest's nose, breaking it with a crunch of pulverized bone just as they both tumbled on the ground. With a groan of outraged pain, Nemurian moved his mecha-dendrites, rage fueling him. He was going to rip this miserable low-life apart …

His movements stopped. His brain was suddenly overwhelmed with an agony beyond all mesure. Balthazar had pushed his fusion torch against the tech-priest's ribcage and activated it. The tool was burning its way through flesh and melting bone. Due to their metallic nature, the mecha-dendrites channeled the extreme heat, and their systems died instantly.

Despite the burns he was sufferring from being so close to the torch with no other protection than a few layers of rapidly consuming biological tissue, Balthazar didn't move. He watched the death of tech-priest Nemurian with morbid fascination, hand still clung to the weapon and still pressing the rune. He was still watching, though his quarry had finally died a few seconds before, when the crack behind him exploded and engulfed him in a blood colored light.

Before, he had been bathing in fire. Now, he was the fire. Power unlike anything he had ever known flowed through him. A million daemons were lending him their power, all for the one in a hundred chances that they may seize one of the consecrated souls during the transfert.

The pain was beyond imagining, and yet … it was glorious. Such power … He felt as if he could accomplish anything. For an insane moment, he felt the temptation to using this power to cast himself back in time and prevent the death of Prospero and Magnus' mistakes. But the temptation died quickly. The past was the past, and only fools tried to change it. He had to think of the future, for only in the future could vengeance be exacted upon those who had betrayed the Legions.

And for the people of Parecxis Alpha, the future held only pain, fear, and sorrow. Their blood would be spilled by frenzied criminals and a legion of possessed, and it would make the Forsaken Sons more favored in the eyes of Khorne.

Once, Asim would have been horrified by this prospect. He would have fought and died to prevent it, to protect the humans and stop other Astartes from offering sacrifices to the lords of the Warp. But that had been before Prospero. Before the Imperium had proved that it did not care for those who fought, bled and died for it. The Thousand Sons had brought countless worlds into the Imperial fold during the Great Crusade with their psychic powers, only to be cast down by the Edict of Nikea, and then by the coming of the Wolves. Yes, the whole thing had been manipulated by the powers of the Warp. But in the end, did that really count as a deception ? The Emperor had not been manipulated at Nikea. He hadn't been manipulated when He had sent the Sixth Legion to punish the Fifteenth.

The Imperium had rejected the Thousand Sons, burned their world, and reduced all of their achievements to dust. And for that, its people would suffer and die until the day the False Emperor was finally cast down the Golden Throne and the kingdom the Legions had built was finally destroyed.

Asim's hatred and fury were stoked by the power he was channeling, and the sorcerer knew that. But he didn't care. Too long had he lingered, lamented what had been lost. Now, for the first time since he had run to the Hand of Ruin after the fall of Horus, he felt filled with purpose, with clarity. What he had believed had been a new beginning when Arken had shown the Forsaken Sons the path to vengeance paled in comparison to what the revelation he was experiencing now, wielding the power of a god.

This, he thought as he directed the energies of the neverborn. This is power. This is revenge. This is what I will do to all of them, those who betrayed the dream of my Legion and cast us into the dark. They will all suffer, they will all die, and their souls will be tortured by daemons for all eternity.

More and more psychic might gathered, within Asim and all around his spirit in the Empyrean. He held it, and drew yet more to him, until the point was reached where anything more would destroy him utterly. Then, he unleashed it through the channels of his will, following the pattern of an improved version of the spell that had been used to teleport the Astartes aboard the enemy fleet at the beginning of the Parcxis system's invasion. The planet screamed as apocalyptic powers coursed through its surface and dephts.

Asim could feel every soul on the planet. He had known there were many prisonners – for all its vaunted prosperity and righteousness, the Imperium sure bred its lot of discontents and criminals – but he hadn't expected them to be this numerous. There were tens of millions of inmates scattered through the hive-like complex – far more than its had been built to accommodate. It took the sorcerer a moment to understand why : beneath the maddened blood-lust, he could detect the familiar sensation of rebellion. This world had been used as a dumping ground for those who had sided with Horus or tried to claim independence during the Great Heresy. Real criminals formed the core of the penal world's population, but the overwhelming majority of it was composed of those the Imperium called «traitors».

The irony of the situation was not lost to Asim. To the people of Parecxis Alpha, it would seem the renegade Astartes had freed the rebels out of some sort of kinship in treachery, while the truth was that they simply did not care what the inmates were in for. Their use in the Long War was the only thing Arken – and by extension, all of the Forsaken Sons – cared about. Those who survived Parecxis Alpha would probably be rounded up and welcomed aboard the Hand of Ruin and the other ships so that they may spend their lives on another battlefield.

Asim refocused on the matter at hand. The transfer was ongoing, and the spell didn't need his supervision anymore – once unleashed, there was little to be done except shielding himself and his escorts from its effects. It was time to offer payment for the Warp's blessings. The former Thousand Son hardened his heart, and he prepared to sentence a thousand souls to damnation of the worst kind there was this side of the veil.

It wasn't easy. Asim had studied the writings of Lorgar with his brothers of the Seventeenth – a delightful heresy that would have set their former superiors screaming – and learned much about the union of the human and the 'divine', but he had never accomplished the ritual himself, let alone on such a scale. Still, what he had told the daemons was true : there was power in Arken's name. All the souls within the Trebedius Sector had been marked by his deed on Isleas, and with his lord's permission Asim was able to exploit that connection to bypass the usual protections that a soul had against unwilling possession. He was aided by the fact that not only were they all within a Warp Storm, the souls he was consecrating had been heavily touched by the Dark Gods and their servants.

One by one, in an eternity outside of time, Asim bound Neverborn to Human soul, allowing ten times a hundred scions of the the Empyrean to walk the Materium.

I lie down amidst dozen of corpses, on a battlefield that was once the marketplace of the habitation bloc. I cannot move, and there is blood on the rubble beneath me. I am responsible for some of the carnage that surrounds me : it was I who killed six of the men before I fell. I wonder if this is the end of me. It seems like it would be fitting, somehow.

I came into existence some thirty years ago, on this very world, back when the galaxy was burning in the flames of war. My first memory is one of death, death at the hands of one's own kind : the man who was holding me, laying on the ground, his chest torn open and his blood covering me. I think, sometimes, that this moment shaped my entire existence into what I am today.

I have killed traitors who had sided with Horus Lupercal, common thugs who sought to profit from the confusion, and crazied hivers driven to fury by the storm above. But those are not the ones I have killed today. Today I have killed five members of the Arbites. Defenders of the law, protectors of the people. Why did they have to die ? As I lie on the ground, soaked in blood, I realize I do not know.

Suddenly, there is a flash of light in the skies. That is nothing new – the skies have raged ever since the storm's arrival. The light is the color of blood – again, nothing new. But then the light descends upon the world. It falls from the heavens, making the light of the evening sun pale in comparison. As it comes down, it separates in millions of lightning bolts. Some of them aim at this side of the planet, while others arch to reach the other face.

One of them strikes amidst the dead. The ground erupts at the impact, corpses are sent flying. The smell of blood and ozone fills the air. Through the smoke of the crater, a human emerges. His face is pale and drenched in blood, just like the torn fatigues he wears. A skull hungs from his hip, half bone and half metal. His eyes are wide open and bloodshot, yet a smile forms on his lips when he sees me.

He walks toward me and lifts me from the dead hands of the man who claimed in a similar fashion. With expert hands, he checks my ammunition counted and smiles a bit wider when he sees my clip is full – my last owner died from his wounds just after reloading me.

'Well, aren't you a beauty,' he says while softly stroking me. 'My name is Balthazar, by the way. Nice to meet you.'

I wish I could answer, I wish I could present myself. I wish I could tell my new owner that I am a high capacity laser rifle of Maxim Pattern, assembled in the usines of Hive Meltayon. But I cannot. So I stay silent as Balthazar starts walking through the ruins.

'Now, now,' he says to himself – or perhaps to me. 'Whatever just happened … ' he turns, to take a last look at the devastation caused by his arrival, before turning back while shaking his head, 'it doesn't matter now, does it ? I am free, I have a weapon … Let's find something to kill, shall we ?'

I wonder how this one will last.

The weight of the weapon was familiar and reassuring within Balthazar's hands as he walked amidst the rubble. The former prisonner didn't understand what had just happened – one moment he had been watching the last of Numerian's life vanish from the bastard's bionic eyes, and the next, it had been as if he had been thrown through a crack without preparation. The pain had been agonizing, and yet he bore no wounds. The scratches he had endured at the tech-priest's mechanised limbs were gone, leaving old scars behind, and even the grievous burns he had sustained had vanished. Clearly, something within the Warp had taken an interest in him, and he suspected, though he did not know how, that he knew what and what it wanted as payment for its help.

He could see other strikes of red light like the one that had brought here. In fact, judging by the number of arcs of light … it seemed that all of them had been brought. The thought made Balthazar's smile – which hadn't faded since Numerian's death – widen. All the millions of enraged inmates, released amidst the civil population of a hive-world … it would be glorious. Clutching the rifle he had been so lucky to find, the hitman kept walking. He needed to find water, food, and a lair. Then …

Then he would hunt, he thought. Hunt, and collect skulls – skulls for the Skull Throne, to which he owed his life.

It was done.

Forty-six millions, three hundred and sixteen thousands, and eight hundred and twenty one former prisonners of Parecxis Gamma had been spirited away, brought to their intended destination. Of those, exactly a thousand now harbored a daemon within themselves, their life expectancy drastically reduced by the unholy union they had been forced into.

Seven thousand, one hundred and sixty-two various Imperial personnels had died horrible deaths, and their souls were now dragged into the Warp, still shrieking in agony – sport for the amusement of the Neverborn. The planet itself was on the verge of collapsing, the energies wielded upon its soil having set its promethium reservoirs ablaze.

He was breathing with difficulty. His hearts were beating faster than if he had just spent weeks fighting with his bare hands, sending cold blood through tightened veins to irrigate painful muscles. His whole body was trembling, and his head felt as if he had been shot in the face at point blank with a bolter and denied the peace of death. And yet, the only thought to cross Asim's mind as he laid down, his brothers carrying him to the transport that had just descended upon the now defenceless world, was that it had been magnificent. He had, for a moment, stood at the heights of gods, and shaped the destiny of billions with his every effort of will. He already missed the feeling of omnipotence he had experienced, and knew he would start planning ways to reach it again as soon as he could think without his brain being on fire.

The last thing Asim heard before succumbing to unconsciousness was laughter that was not his own, coming from within his throbbing skull.