I do not own the Warhammer 40000 universe nor any of its characters. They belong to Games Workshop.
Azarok Sector – Kemyros System
742.M32
With the slowness and inevitability of principles older than life in the universe, Kemyros turned around its star. From orbit, the world was beautiful. Its night side was illuminated by millions of points of light, in cities the size of the nation of Old Earth's distant past, in which dwelled billions of Imperial citizens. The side of it exposed to the light of its sun glowed as its unending cloud cover reflected most of the heat away at the same time it trapped that which did pass through. Poets had marvelled at the spectacle, speaking of the wondrous union of light and dark. Tech-priests too had found the scene beautiful, albeit for an entirely too different reason : they marvelled at the precise chemical composition of the cloud cover, designed in ancient times by men who had been conquerors of the stars, rather than heirs to an ever-diminishing empire. By carefully balancing the composition of the cloud cover, the adepts of Kemyros could prevent the world's temperature from rising to the point it had to be abandoned.
But these calculations had a price, and that price was all the beauty Kemyros had ever possessed when seen up close. The planet's ecosystem was dead, and had been dead for more than three thousand years. Between the cities, there was only dust, immense deserts of polluted ash and sand. Great storms that could strip the flesh from a man's bones raged there, and the cities of Kemyros were only spared from their wrath because of the walls surrounding them. Built during the Dark Age of Technology using secrets now lost and artificial materials whose origin had long been forgotten, these walls reached up to the limits of the planet's breathable atmosphere. Within these walls were the hallowed cogitators and machines that purified the cities' air, recycled their water, and preserved the delicate chemical balance of pollutants that prevented the world from turning into a furnace. Thousands of tech-priests dwelled in each of these mega-structures, maintaining their workings with rituals that had been passed down for generation before the Imperium had conquered Kemyros, and whose meaning had been forgotten centuries ago.
The walls prevented the storms from destroying the cities, but also cast a nearly permanent shadow over them. Days were short and nights long on Kemyros. And without the ability to expand outward, the cities had gone down, digging into the planet's mantle to build still more dens and Manufactorums. All travel between cities had to be done using orbital transports, for no vehicle could brave the storms, be it by land or air. Or at least that's what most of the population believed, and for the most part they were correct. Civilian vehicles couldn't, not reliably enough to be profitable. That didn't stop treasure hunters from wandering out, of course, seeking the riches that were said to have been left behind by the old masters of the world, before the coming of the Emperor. Almost none of them returned. And of those, none had ever found anything of value. But legends kept circulating among the millions of men and women slaving away in the Manufactorums, and every years, hundreds of would-be treasure hunters sacrificed their meagre possessions for dilapidated equipment and dubious ancient maps.
There was only one structure that stood outside of the walls' protection. A circular tower of black rock, two hundred meters high and utterly featureless. No one, not even the most crazed of treasure hunter, got near it. The dunes around it hid countless defences, auspex arrays and traps that could murder an entire army trying to make its way to the single door at the base of the tower. Even should someone reach the door, they would find out that it couldn't be opened, for it was merely a trap to lure them beneath guns with enough firepower to tear a Baneblade apart.
This, as everyone on Kemyros knew, was the Inquisition's headquarters on the planet, center of their operations in the entire Azarok Sector. They had other estates, buildings branded with their symbol in each of the planet's cities, and doubtlessly countless others that were hidden from all prying eyes, but this was where their power truly was. Behind those walls, the Lords and Ladies of the Inquisition held countless heretics and traitors, breaking them so that they could learn what they needed to know to do the Emperor's work. To be captured by the Inquisition meant to be brought to the tower, and to be brought to the tower meant that you were dead.
And that, of course, was a lie.
The tower was a decoy, just like its door. The true headquarters of the Inquisition laid on the other side of the planet, several hundred meters below the surface, and could only be accessed through five different entry points scattered through the desert, each at least a hundred kilometers away from the headquarters themselves. All five entry point were hidden, trapped, and once you passed them you still had to find your way through a labyrinth of tunnels where only one path led to the headquarters – where even more verifications would take place before you would finally be allowed in. Any failure to provide the correct credentials would result in immediate capture or elimination.
Such were the means by which the Azarok Conclave protected its privacy. In the last two thousand years since this place had been dug, there had been many who had argued that this was going too far, that other Conclaves in other Sectors didn't practice nearly as much paranoia in the defence of their headquarters. They pointed at the expenses, the burden of having valuable and trusted agents bringing in supplies from the outside when they could have been doing useful work. But these protesting voices were outnumbered by those older, more cynical souls that argued that in fact, these defences weren't enough and should be made even more draconian.
Thousands of souls called the underground fortress home. Many of them had never known anything else, born to bloodlines that had been in service to the Inquisition for generations, children inheriting the duties of parents whose union had been approved by their masters. Servants, guards, archivists, tech-priests, menials, all were marked with the stylised I upon their forehead, some on a metal ring, others tattooed on their skin. The fortress was their home, but none of them had seen it all, for there were parts of it that were forbidden to even the most exalted of their isolated society. Those were the places that were reserved to their masters, for the prosecution of their grim and solemn duty. They wondered at what might take place there, and told stories of the great deeds of their lords. An old tradition was for children to dare each other to go look what the lords did in these sealed chambers – and another, just as old tradition, was that absolutely none of them ever took the dare.
For their parents knew what the punishment would be for any who intruded upon the Inquisitors, even if they were but children pushed by curiosity.
No matter how many times Noriov Eldenswenn stood at the center of the many-tiered amphitheatre where the Azarok Conclave met, he always felt as if he were in an arena rather than a space for discussion and debate. He was at eye level with the highest tiers, risen from the ground on a small pulpit, prevented from the risk of falling by a waist-high silver fence. He could feel gazes on his back from the Inquisitors sitting behind him. By design, even the Lord Inquisitor who led the Conclave could not look upon all of his colleagues at once. It was unsubtle symbolism, but the Inquisition was not above hammering a point home using crude allegory when it could.
Only Inquisitors were allowed here, in this most secret and defended of spaces. Wards had been engraved on every stone to prevent sorcerous scrying, and the single entrance was sealed by a succession of three adamantium gates that each required a rosette and a pass-phrase to open. The construction had followed geomantic patterns and used special rock that disturbed psychic power – Noriov was feeling the beginning of a headache, and suppressed it with an effort of will. He could not afford to be distracted by pain – he never could here, not with such duties as the one he must bear. It often struck him as ridiculous that he was sometimes more relaxed on a battlefield that he was facing his peers, but by such ways was the Inquisition kept strong, and pure.
The pupil turned slowly in answer to his thoughts, and he took in the view of his gathering peers. They weren't all here yet, but the call had been given, transmitted through all the fortress into the private rooms of the Inquisitors and their retinues. All Inquisitors who would come to the Conclave were already on Kemyros – it had been more than six months since the gathering aboard the Blind Eye, and the astropathic summons had been sent and answered. More than seventy Inquisitors had come to the Sector's capital, bringing with them hundreds of Acolytes and other agents. That still left about thirty unaccounted for in Azarok. Of those, half had send word that they could not attend, while the other half had not given any sign they had received the summons in the first place. Perhaps they hadn't, and perhaps they were involved in matters so secretive and important they would not abandon them, even for a matter as dire as the one Noriov had implied in his call.
Of course, the eight who had met on the station had been far from inactive during these months. With a threat like the one they dreaded on the horizon, half a year was an unacceptable time to waste. They had sent warnings to their contacts across the Imperial branches of the Sector, called in favours and smoothed the gears for the administrative work that would be required in case reinforcements were needed. They had also made ready for war themselves, increasing the size of their retinues and arming them.
And they had continued to search for plots of the chained daemonhead. None of them could leave the system and risk missing the Conclave, and so Kemyros had enjoyed the watchful eyes of eight Inquisitors for the last six months. They had hunted mutants and heretics across the entire world, searching high and low, for experience had taught them that the enemy they hunted did not restrict its corrupt touch to a single segment of Imperial society. And they had found plenty of heresy to purge, for Kemyros was the heart of the Azarok Sector, a world of power and influence, and those bred heretics almost as much as the touch of the Wailing Storm did.
Gregory had broken a cabal of merchants who had used unlicensed psykers to try and predict the ebbs and flows of the planet's financial markets, unheeding of the terrible risks of daemonic incursions. Logan had destroyed a gang boss that had been corrupted by an artefact of xenos origin that had transformed him into a man-eating abomination that had used its influence in the underworld to keep itself fed for more than two decades. Lynessa and her Acolytes had hunted down and killed a beast that had haunted the underhive of Achritor for two hundred years – an unholy amalgam of flesh and proscribed cybernetics whose dissection would probably lead to some very pointed inquiries to the local Magos Biologis. Mathias had personally supervised the slow execution of a quartermaster for the local PDF who had purchased cheap, mutated meat to feed his charges and kept the remaining money for himself. Gaelis had dismantled a contraband ring selling fake remnants of Imperial Saints, some of which had indeed been relics – but dark and corrupting ones, tainted by the touch of Ruin.
But of the chained daemonhead, they had found no sign. And though Noriov would never have admitted it out loud, that scared him more than if they every heresy they had uncovered had born its mark. It seemed unlikely to him – and, he knew, to his colleagues as well – that the Sector-wide conspiracy they had unveiled would refrain from action on Kemyros. Either there was some reason that had prevented the heretics behind the symbol from doing that, or they had simply failed to find the plots that were there.
Still, their presence had other effects on Kemyros. The rich and powerful of the hive-world walked softly and spoke only after considering their words a few more times than usual. Word of the Inquisitors' presence had even trickled down to the underhive, and the last six months had seen a remarkable decrease in criminal activity. No one wanted to risk drawing their attention, even those who had done nothing more than extort "protection money" from small shops or kill someone from a rival gang. Noriov had seen the numbers with his own eyes, sent to him by the local Arbites. The lawmen were glad of the decrease, but those with half a brain knew that as soon as the Inquisitors left after the Conclave, things would go back to normal with a vengeance. They were actively stockpiling weapons and armor in preparation for the inevitable explosion of unleashed violence. Noriov had discreetly encouraged them – another small thing added to the preparations, but small things tended to pile up.
As for Silviana and Alphon, they had worked together to unlock the meaning of Marcus Helden's visions, a fact that had surprised Noriov. He hadn't expected Alphon would consider working with one of his peers, yet the two of them had come to Kemyros together and hardly spent a moment apart since. In the Tower of Astropaths, they had scoured records and questioned men and women who had spent their entire lives divining the meaning of riddles whispered across the stars. What they had felt confident enough to share with Noriov had worried him greatly. The visions of Helden had been far from isolated, and many astropaths had been lost in the last years, driven to insanity by horrifying visions.
All of them were here in the Conclave, leaving their ongoing investigations into the hands of their Acolytes so that they could be present at the gathering. Noriov wouldn't say anything they didn't already know, but it was important that they were here all the same, to provide support if some in the Ordos refused to accept that the danger was real. Obsession was a very real risk for all Inquisitors – the focus on one specific threat until all others seemed either false or secondary.
'Greetings, my esteemed colleagues,' Noriov began. 'No doubt you are all wondering why you were called here. I know many of you have your suspicions – you wouldn't be doing your Emperor-appointed task otherwise – so, allow me to cut right to the heart of the matter. Time, I believe, is of the essence.'
'The reason why I issued the call that brought you here was partly explained in the message itself. As it said, I have reason to believe that a new, Sector-wide threat has appeared. A succession of heretical plots across Azarok, each relatively minor in their own right, but all connected by a common thread, speaks of the power behind this threat.'
That got their interest. For all that they had various opinions and beliefs on the means by which the Imperium must be protected, or on which threats were the direst among the myriad that surrounded Mankind from all sides, all those in the Conclave had dedicated their lives, their souls, to that singular goal.
'I fear that war is coming once more to Azarok, hailing from the Wailing Storm,' he continued. 'The powers responsible for the creation of this infernal realm are returning, my brethren, rising from the pit of their own making to seek the destruction of all that we hold dear. Already they have struck to weaken the defenses of the Sector, to spread ruin and corruption among its rulers and dissension and heresy among its people.'
'There have always been attempts by the Ruinous Powers to subvert the rule of the God-Emperor,' called out Elydeos Akhaman, rising from his seat, 'and there will always be, until the stars go dark. What makes you think that these incidents you speak of are connected ?'
Unlike most other Inquisitors present, Akhaman stood alone, his peers leaving a wide space between him and them, with the closest being Alphon, who also stood alone. Tall and noble-looking, he was the very image of an Inquisitor, with his dark eyes and short, black hair lending him an intimidating air. Like almost every other Inquisitor in the room, he was dressed as if on a dangerous investigation in hostile territory, an habit most members of the Ordos picked up early in their careers, even those who operated by mingling with Imperial society – they were just more subtle about it. A plasma pistol whose strange design marked it as possibly older than the Imperium itself hung at his belt, and he held in his right hand a long staff of adamantium-laced wood that ended in a beautiful sculpture of a two-head eagle holding the Inquisition's sigil in its claws.
Belonging to the Ordo Malleus, Elydeos was extremely young for his station by the Inquisition's standards, barely fifty years old and only an Inquisitor for thirteen of those. He had received his rosette from the hand of his master as the man laid dying in the dirt of an underhive on Kemyros itself, mortally wounded by a daemon summoned by a Chaos cult that Akhaman had later hunted down and exterminated with all due thoroughness, proving his worth to his detractors.
His youth, however, wasn't the reason for his isolation, nor the priceless piece of archeotech he was flaunting – it was his open Radicalism that was responsible for that. Like his master before him, Akhaman believed that knowledge of the Archenemy was needed to face it with any hope of success. That much was accepted by most Daemonhunters, but Akhaman went further than that. He believed that the knowledge of the foe could, and indeed must, be used against it. He had actively studied the sorcerous books his master had taken from the cults he had destroyed, unholy works the old man hadn't dared destroy lest he release the fell powers contained within.
His knowledge of dark lore had enabled him to win several great victories against the minions of Chaos, such as his banishment of the Child of Anarchy, a powerful daemonhost that had been on the verge of plunging the entire world of Melliera into madness. Details about the battle were scarce, but from the reports Noriov had received, Akhaman had faced the creature alone after it had slaughtered his team and managed to emerge the victor, a feat made even more impressive by his lack of psychic abilities of his own. Of course, the entire city in which the confrontation had occurred had needed purging afterwards, but the few millions of lives lost were more than balanced by the billions that would have been damned if the Child of Anarchy's plot to spread a Chaos-infected metal meme across the planet's vox-grid had succeeded.
As far as Noriov knew, Akhaman hadn't fallen into the other traps of Radicalism – he hadn't employed the weapons of the enemy against it, nor wielded the sorcerous knowledge he had acquired for anything other than banishing already manifested daemons. In the older Inquisitor's opinion, that should have meant he wasn't a true Radical at all, having only broken the tenet proscribing the study of the Dismal Texts. But it was enough to draw suspicion upon him, with many believing it was only a matter of time before he slipped further, if he hadn't already done so and managed to conceal it. The Azarok Sector, after all, had a history with Radical Inquisitors and the consequences of their meddling in things best left unknown.
Akhaman's question wasn't a challenge to Noriov's authority, though many would have taken it as such – it was genuine curiosity, and a display of the young Inquisitor's deductive skills that he could guess there was more to the Lord Inquisitor's proclamation of a Sector-wide conspiracy. But even now, Noriov wouldn't expose the existence of the circle of the Blind Eye. Its existence didn't break any of the Inquisition's rules, spoken or unspoken, but exposing it would remove much of its usefulness in the future. It wasn't enough for the Lord Inquisitor to think of the current threat – he had to think of those who would come after, and preserve the assets that would be needed then.
He would spread the details of their investigations, of course – it was all too possible another Inquisitor would notice a pattern they had missed or recognize something from one of his own efforts against the enemies of Humanity. But he would be careful, first trying to see if any of the others had encountered the symbol that had linked all the occurrences before revealing the original sources. However, he needed to answer Akhaman's question – for surely many others were thinking it. Fortunately, he had been prepared for it. Yet before he could open his mouth to reply in vague but calming terms, Gaelis Serventas rose, unbidden, and a dark sense of foreboding fell upon Noriov.
'All of those were linked by a common symbol,' began Gaelis, 'found in different shapes : the image of an infernal visage surrounded by a circle of chain. The power of the Warp, bound into service by those with the will to reach out and seize it. The signs are clear, Elydeos. There is a new power rising in this part of the galaxy, one that has managed to avoid the Conclave's eyes until now. For long, it has gathered its strength, spreading its influence throughout the Azarok Sector, while we remained blind to its presence. And now ...' he took a deep breath before continuing, his voice growing stronger with every word until he was screaming the last ones, his expression suddenly twisted into a demented smile, his single flesh eye glowing with maddened fervor : 'now it is too late. None of you can stand against the coming night ! The end has come ! Kneel before the power of the Forsaken Sons, or know their wrath !'
As cries of outrage rose from the assembled Inquisitors as Gaelis' defeatist – treacherous – words, he pulled something from his vest. Noriov's eyes fell upon it, and time seemed to slow as both his mundane and psychic sight recoiled at what they beheld. The object was a sphere of translucent material, within which roiled black and crimson smoke in patterns that seared his soul. With a particularly loud shout of "Heretic !", a bolt pistol was fired from somewhere in the audience, but the shell crashed harmlessly against the sizzling sphere of energy that now surrounded the revealed renegade. A rosarius hanging around his neck flared as it dissipated the energy of the blow, and Noriov's heart sank as he recognized it as an Ecclesiarchy device, rather than one acquired from the Mechanicus through Inquisitorial channels. Gaelis rose the sphere above his head, and threw it down the amphitheatre, at the foot of Noriov's pedestal. It shattered with the sound of shrieking souls, and the sorcerous smoke that had been contained within grew, spreading in tendrils that burned out the warding sigils upon contact.
The strength of the explosion shattered the pillar of Noriov's podium, and the old Inquisitor deployed his powers to slow his fall, landing in the section of the amphitheatre opposite Gaelis. He shouldn't have been able to call upon his psychic abilities here, but reflex had made him try to anyway. Dread filled his mind at the implication, made even worse by the unholy words he heard from behind the curtain of smoke, that his experience identified as an incantation calling upon powers no sane human being should ever wield.
'What have you done ?' he roared, his voice echoing through the chamber as he drew in more of his power, acutely feeling the taint spilling across the room along the smoke, but willing to risk it. All around him Inquisitors were preparing for battle, rising all manners of weapons. No reply came, safe for a strange, demented laughter that could not possibly come from Gaelis – yet Noriov's mind recognized the voice as such.
Then the smoke cloud was suddenly parted as if by a gust of wind, revealing two figures standing at the bottom of the amphitheatre. The sight of the taller of them froze Noriov in place, for its size and shape were impossible to mistake for anything other than a warrior of the Adeptus Astartes. The Traitor Marine's armor was painted black and gold, and for a moment Noriov thought that, against all reason, the Black Legion had somehow managed to reach into the Azarok Sector, so far from their lair in the Eye of Terror. However the emblem painted on the warrior's right shoulder pad wasn't the eightfold star of Chaos with the eye of Horus glaring from the center, but the familiar image of the chained daemonhead. Further indicating the Astartes' corrupt nature was his archaic helm, which was crowned by a pair of horns that twisted together in hypnotic patterns, and the staff of black metal he held, still the blasphemous runes engraved upon its length still glowing with Warp-light from his sorcerous arrival.
Never before had Noriov seen a being of such psychic power – it surpassed even that of the Chief Librarian of the Heirs of Sanguinius, whom he had met once a hundred years ago, at the onset of a particularly gruelling campain of purification. His aura blazed in Noriov's psychic sight, seemingly alive with all the malevolence that dwelled within the Sorcerer's tainted soul. Pride, greed, and hate all mingled together in a repugnant mix, and a deep crimson shadow loomed over him. And yet, the traitor's might paled in comparison to the abomination at his side. Covered in a robe of what appeared to be black velvet, four glowing eyes looked out from the shadows of a long hood. Two four fingered hands emerged from the sleeves of the robe, their purple skin catching the light of the torches in patterns that seemed to cause the shadows around them to twist unnaturally.
At first, the old Inquisitor thought that it was some kind of mutant, but as he got a better view of the creature, he realized with horror that this was instead some foul xenos. What manner of perversion, he wondered, had led one of the Emperor's Space Marines, even one fallen into the Dark Gods' wretched embrace, to an alliance with such a wretched creature ?
'So,' said the Chaos Marine, making a show of looking at the gathered Conclave and shaking his head in mock disbelief. 'This is what has become of the Imperium, that it entrusts its safety to those such as you. A gathering of cliques and factions, more interested in their own interests than the good of those you claim to protect, united only in their desire to keep the truth out of the hands of Mankind. How very … Imperial of you.'
'Who are you,' shouted Noriov, now shaping the power he had drown to himself for one devastating strike, though he doubted that would have any effect on so powerful a duo of heretics, 'to dare stand before the Emperor's own agents ?'
'I am Asim,' replied the Sorcerer, bowing with a grand flourish that couldn't have made his mockery any clearer. 'Lord of the Coven, Chosen of the Awakened One. I would like to say that I am your death, but that title will come to my friend here. Introduce yourself, would you, my dear ?'
I am Carthago, came another voice, burning through his mind with every word, and the pain was so strong that his mind could barely connect the name to Logan's report. There was a feeling to the words, a taint, different from the mark of the Archenemy but just as vile, that marked them as emanating from the xenos rather than the Chaos Sorcerer. I am the sins of empires come back to punish those who committed them.
Then the creature raised its hands, and the doom of the Azarok Conclave began to unfold.
From his position in the amphitheatre, Alphon was able to see Noriov's demise. The first attack from the alien psyker came in the form of a deluge of kinetic blows, scattered across the entire amphitheatre. For a few seconds, Noriov held his ground, the air around him shimmering as he used his own power to hold back the blow directed at him – but then, all of a sudden, his efforts failed, and he was crushed into pulp along with an entire section of the amphitheatre. Suppressing a cry of anguish at the death of the old Inquisitor, who had been one of his few allies and friends in the Conclave, Alphon added the fire of his own weapon to the hail of projectiles aimed by the Inquisitors at the two monsters in their mist. None seemed to do any damage, turned aside by a shield of Warp-energy. Considering the fact that none of the Conclave's psychic Inquisitors had managed to kill the intruders yet – and Alphon knew for certain that several of them held quite considerable power – the inevitable conclusion quickly rose in his mind.
Alpha-class psyker. There were many things that gave Inquisitors nightmare, but these words were near the top of the list. Of all those with the dubious blessing of being able to draw upon the chaotic powers of the Warp, these were the most powerful, barely in control of their tremendous abilities more often than not. Mercifully, these individuals were incredibly rare, but each of them was a threat to the entire Sector blighted by their presence. They could enslave entire worlds, and when they inevitably succumbed to daemonic possessions their death didn't simply allow a very powerful daemon to manifest – it ripped a hole into reality through which entire infernal hordes could pour. The fact that the xenos didn't appear to be burning from the inside with its power was a meager comfort – the notion that it had found a way to control its power more than balancing any relief that no daemonic incursion was incoming. Even as he continued firing harmlessly, Alphon's mind was reeling with the implications of a Chaos force allied with a xenos psyker. It was hardly unheard of for the minions of Ruin to sully their souls further with such unholy alliances – the Black Crusade of Abaddon had been supported with creatures from various species. The taint of the Ruinous Powers was universal, even if they coveted the soul of Mankind more than any other.
The hail of las-bolts and other gunfire was suddenly reinforced, as Gregory Irwin, most powerful pyromancer in the Sector, unleashed a torrent of flames hot enough to melt ferrocrete at the foe. Before the fire could reach the protective shield around the pair of heretics, however, the Sorcerer raised his free hand. The stream of white-hot flames burst into several smaller streams that turned back the way they had come, reducing Gregory to ash before the Inquisitor could react. Blinking away the after-images the pyromantic display had left on his retinas, Alphon saw the traitor, Gaelis, jump over the barrier between the amphitheatre's seats and the central space, advancing toward the Sorcerer and xenos psyker with a repulsive expression of adoration on his face. More alarmingly, Alphon could also see Silviana rushing after the apostate, her metallic body not carrying visible weapons – but her bare hands had more than enough strength to rip Gaelis' head from his shoulders.
'Silviana !' he called out. 'Don't -'
Before he could finish his warning, Gaelis turned toward the cybernetic Inquisitor. He struck with his cane, and spat a single word that, even from this distance, caused Alphon's vision to swim. Five of Gaelis' teeth exploded with the word's power, and his left arm violently bent in the wrong direction with a sickening crunch. But the effect was much more dramatic on Silviana.
Like a cloth doll caught in the rotating blade of some agri-world harvesting machine, her body was torn apart by unseen energies the moment the cane touched her, shining metallic fragments cast in all direction. Her limbs and head were ripped off, and her torso savagely battered by invisible claws. Alphon's rage soared at the sight. In the last few months, he and Silviana had, during their work together, developed a respect for the skills of the other, and to see his colleague so casually destroyed made his blood boil. To his own mild surprise, he found himself moving to confront Gaelis himself, bolt pistol in hand without remembering having drawn it – only to be stopped by a firm hand landing on his shoulder.
He turned to see Elydeos Akhaman, his face set in a mask of cold focus, shaking his head.
'Don't do anything foolish,' said the Radical grimly.
'We have got to do something,' protested Alphon.
'I know. I have a plan. Stay close to me.'
There was something in the younger man's voice that convinced Alphon to heed his words, despite the anger he felt. Unbeknownst to the rest of the Conclave – even the late Eldenswenn – Alphon and Elydeos had been allies of a sort for a long time, with Alphon giving intelligence that Elydeos could best put to use to thwart the designs of the Emperor's foes. Never before had they been in an actual battle before, but Alphon suspected his junior still had much more experience in this than him. Besides, he was Malleus – this was his area of expertise.
Elydeos rammed his staff onto the ground, his lips moving wordlessly, and the sound of the impact echoed amidst the chamber far louder than it ought to. The noise drew the gaze of the Sorcerer, just as his alien pet annihilated the last members of the Blind Eye's circle. Logan, Lynessa and Mathias all perished together, their bodies reduced to pulp by the unbridled power of the alpha-plus witch, and Alphon's heart bled for them, to encounter such ignoble deaths after so long spent in illustrious service to the Throne.
'Ah,' whispered the traitor, his voice echoing through the amphitheatre, desecrating the acoustics of the chamber with the taint it carried. 'It looks like there is at least one of you who might be worthy of my time. But what do you hope to accomplish, little … magician ?'
Elydeos ignored the taunt of the fallen angel, instead continuing to weave the arcane symbols in front of him, his left hand abandoning its hold over the staff. Alphon could see the runes now, glimmering softly into the air in front of his colleague's crossed hands. He could also see that whatever Elydeos was doing, it was taking a toll on him – blood was dripping from his mouth, and nearly every muscle in his body was tense with unspoken effort and suffering.
'I encountered one of Malcador's twelve,' hissed the Sorcerer, his anger at being ignored plain to see, 'when Terra burned in the fires of Horus' rebellion. I battled him while my brothers tried to take back what your kind had stolen from my Legion, matching my power against his gifts while living gods battled above us. Compared to him, you are nothing but a child playing with powers you do not understand, unaware of both dangers and costs !'
'I am a servant of the God-Emperor,' shouted Elydeos, 'serving His will, blessed by His Light !'
The Sorcerer laughed, a bitter and mirthless laugh that spoke of betrayed hopes and ruined dreams.
'Do you really believe that ?' he said spitefully. 'The only reason you are able to defy me, instead of dying pointlessly like the rest, is because you possess the same knowledge me and my brothers were cast out for the crime of seeking ! You are no psyker, little man. These runes you are tracing … I recognise them well ! What do you think that rotten corpse on the Golden Throne would say if he could see you – and still speak, rather than moan his agonies throughout the Sea of Souls for the amusement of the True Powers ?'
'Do not seek to weaken my resolve with your insane delusions, slave of Chaos,' replied Elydeos between gritted teeth, his hands still moving at all speed to weave symbols in the air. 'I am no traitor. I seek no reward for myself, no power or glory, merely to do my duty. That is the difference between us, renegade. You fell because you placed your own selfish desires and thirst for knowledge above all else. Everything I do, I do for the Emperor !'
'SO DID WE !' roared the Traitor Marine, and Alphon believed that, amidst all the anger and hatred, he detected a note of genuine sorrow. 'But the Corpse-God doesn't care for motives, Inquisitor ! He never has ! All that matters to him is that you obey his orders without ever questioning them, even when they don't make sense, even when they lead to countless deaths ! What worth is there in following such a tyrant ? What honor, when you are naught but a tool in his eyes ? Would you serve a lord who punishes any initiative, any free thinking, with execution ?'
'Your lies mean nothing to me, heretic.' The air crackled with energy as whatever the Radical was doing reached its climax. Elydeos' voice rose in strength, as if he was truly the vessel of the Emperor's own wrath : 'Begone from His realm, and go back to your infernal pit !'
The sigils were completed, and the air before the Inquisitor shone with sorcerous power. Crackling energy leapt from the floating runes, hammering against the shield around the heretics. Where the onslaught of the rest of the Conclave had failed to inflict any damage, this attack had some effect : the Sorcerer swayed, barely remaining on his feet, and the xenos psyker shrieked in pain, rising its hands to its head. More bolts hit as Elydeos began to speak words in a long-dead language that set Alphon's teeth on edge, and the figures within the shield began to shimmer, as if they were faulty holo-projections. The Sorcerer roared his anger, and reached out with his free hand, unleashing a telekine bolt of his own that rippled through the air like heat distortion. All too aware that Elydeos was the only one with any hope of stopping the massacre, Alphon leapt in the way of the attack, taking the bolt right in the chest. Its power spread across his limbs, and he was sent flying, crashing several levels higher in the amphitheatre.
He felt no pain, which told him he was in a very bad state. From where he laid on his back, he saw the culmination of the confrontation between Elydeos and the creature that called itself Asim. With the time Alphon had bought, the Radical had been able to finish his spell, and Sorcerer and xenos psyker alike screamed in thwarted fury as the very streams of unnatural power that had brought them to this place now snatched them away. There was a flash of un-light, and the sound of distant, mocking screams, before the cacophony of battle abruptly ended, and nothing remained at the center of the ruined Conclave but cracked stone and scorch marks.
'Gaelis ?' croaked Alphon once enough of the shock had passed for him to breath, his gaze sweeping the ravaged amphitheatre. He could not see the foul traitor anywhere.
Just as he said the words, sensation began to return in full, and he moaned in delayed pain. His whole body was a tapestry of hurts, and his mind immediately began to catalogue them. Both his legs and arms were broken, and he felt that several of his ribs were now fragments grinding against each other with every breath he took. His head pulsed with a hateful headache, which was strange since he did not remember anything hitting it, and if the telekine blast had damaged his skull surely his brain would be spread out on the ground. Likely, he had been hit by a flying piece of stone during the fight. In the heat of battle, it was all too frequent to not notice one had been harmed until the fight was over and the adrenaline ceased to hold the pain at bay.
'Gone,' spat Elydeos. 'That sorcerer and its xenos pet took him with them when I reversed the sorcery that brought them here in the first place.'
The Radical was struggling to his feet, weighing on his frost-covered staff. Blood dripped from his mouth and ears, and his right eye was wide open was the left one was screwed shut, a pale liquid flowing slowly from it. He took a look at Alphon, and shook his head.
'Stay down,' he commanded, his voice gentle but firm. 'You will kill yourself if you try to move in your state. I will go and get help – if I can convince any of the aid to get in there, of course. Bloody security – I always said we were being too paranoid with keeping our secrets.'
'I somehow doubt any number of armsmen would have made a difference,' pointed out Alphon, despite the pain speaking caused in his chest.
'Maybe,' admitted Elydeos, 'but we would have medicae here sooner.'
While Alphon understood the need for secrecy and all the other arguments in favor of the Conclave meeting in the most isolated and well-hidden place possible, his current situation made him unwilling to argue the point. All he could do was nod weakly, and attempt to hold onto his consciousness – for he was fairly certain that, if he succumbed to the blackness creeping in at the edge of his sight, he would never wake again.
Even so, his awareness of what the next few hours entailed was fuzzy at best. After what seemed like an eternity but couldn't have been more than a few minutes, Elydeos brought back assistance from the rest of the fortress, having apparently convinced the thralls that the prohibition against entering the room was outweighed by the great need for assistance of their masters. Alphon remembered figures above him, and a sharp pain in his right arm, soon followed by a blessed release from his suffering as the painkillers did their work. Only then did he finally allow himself to fall into unconsciousness.
He woke an indeterminate amount of time later, covered in bandages, laying in one of the infirmary's beds, cut off from the rest of the room by a white sheet. The smell of blood, disinfectant and other medical products was strong, and he could hear soft wails of pain from his surroundings. A needle was still stabbed in his right arm, surrounded by an array of sensors, all linked to some contraption that started to beep as it registered his return to wakefulness. Alphon remained immobile, having been injured enough time to know that any attempt at motion he made now would only result in a brief flash of pain, quickly followed by a return to sleep as the machine pumped more drugs into his body in response to his agitation.
Some corner of his mind idly noticed that perhaps he should have tried to avoid gaining such experience in the first place – then the memory of what had led to him being here hit him like a brick, and he was almost drugged back into sleep anyway as his heart started pounding in his chest with delayed fear and grief. It took him a few minutes to calm down enough that he could think about what the attack meant – and the picture his mind painted was a grim one indeed.
Eldenswenn was dead, along with every other member of the Blind Eye's circle apart from him – and Gaelis, but the Emperor-damned traitor didn't count – and almost the entirety of the Azarok Conclave. He didn't know how many had survived like him and Elydeos, but that number couldn't have been high. The Inquisition's presence in the Sector had been dealt a terrible blow, perhaps even a lethal one. And the apparition of a Chaos Marine confirmed the worst suspicions he and Silviana had made when interpreting the signs : a Black Crusade was coming from the Wailing Storm, led by the very fallen angels of the Emperor. And in a single blow, before the hostilities had even truly begun, the forces of the Archenemy had crippled one of the main forces opposing them. Entire networks of informants and agents were now decapitated, and Alphon greatly doubted all – or even most – of the dead Inquisitors had taken adequate precautions to pass on their assets in case of their own demise. Strangely, despite the lethal nature of their job, most Inquisitors were still reluctant to consider their own mortality, especially when it meant sharing their precious secrets with someone else. Trust was ever in short supply within the Holy Ordos.
'This is a disaster,' Alphon whispered to himself.
'Quite so,' came a voice from the left side of his bed, and Alphon startled as he finally noticed Elydeos standing next to him. The Inquisitor was still dressed as he had been during the attack, the only difference being an eye patch of black fabric covering his left eye. 'I am glad to see that you woke up. Not many of the others did – the mental attack of that traitor damaged them more deeply than I thought.'
'How many ?' asked the bedded down Inquisitor to his peer.
'Apart from you and me, seven have already awakened, and we have a dozen still unconscious, though whether or not they will wake up at all is in the Emperor's hands now. I think you will be relieved to know that Silviana will make it through. Her body was almost completely destroyed, but her brain survived, and the tech-priests are confident they can rebuild it to her new specifications – it seems she wants more firepower added to it this time around.'
'I can understand that,' muttered Alphon, indeed feeling a surge of relief at the news.
'Me too. Eldenswenn was right : war is coming to Azarok. It's the only explanation, though it's clear now that the signs on which he acted must have been plants, bait to make him summon the Conclave and use their inside man.' He shook his head in disbelief. 'I still can't believe none of us caught onto the trap. Emperor's blood, there were more than seventy of us in that room, and none of us saw anything until it was too late !'
'Powerful backing,' replied Alphon, still not trusting himself to speak louder or longer without triggering fits of pain.
'Yes,' sighed Elydeos. 'That's the only explanation, isn't it ? Whoever is behind all this has access to resources we cannot imagine – because if we could, we would have taken precautions against them. All this paranoia, and it didn't help us a damn.'
'Maybe you can change it. Now you are in charge.'
'What ?' Elydeos startled at Alphon's words, and loomed over him, worry in his eyes, glancing at the machines on the other side of the bed. 'Alphon, what are you saying ? I thought these things were set to keep you asleep, not make you spout nonsense !'
'Not nonsense,' Alphon forced the words out, finding that they did so more and more easily, as if the mere weight of what he was saying was granting him strength. 'The Conclave needs leadership, now more than ever. You fought. You hurt them, forced them to retreat. The last man standing is the one in charge, that's how it works. You are Lord Inquisitor now, or you will be as soon as the rest of us are able to sign the papers and send the communiqué to Terra.'
'You can't be serious,' argued Elydeos stubbornly. 'None of the Conclave trust me, and more to the point, they should not ! The methods I use are dangerous, Alphon, and I am not gone far enough to not realize how fear of reprisal from other Inquisitors has prevented me from doing some truly stupid things over the years. I can't be in charge of the Conclave when it exists to prevent people like me from going off the deep end like the Horusians !'
Despite his wounds and the drugs circulating through his bloodstream, the reference to the renegade Inquisitorial faction sent a chill down Alphon's spine. That Elydeos dared to speak the name of the thrice-cursed was a sign of how shaken he was by Alphon's suggestion. Regardless, he still had a point – but circumstances were too dire to indulge his caution.
'To be an Inquisitor,' Alphon pronounced as gravely as he could, 'is to make the choice between a bad option and the worst one. Azarok must not fall to Chaos, and for that, it needs the Inquisition to stand against the tides of corruption. And for that to happens, the Inquisition needs you.'
For a moment, Elydeos' expression was frozen, as his mind desperately tried to find a way out and failed. Despite the pain, despite the grief, Alphon nearly giggled at the sight, more out of hysteria than genuine humor. Here was a man who had just stood up to a Chaos Sorcerer and an alpha-class psyker, scared at the prospect of becoming the leader of the Inquisition in Azarok.
But in spite of his current condition, Alphon was confident in what he had just declared. Radical as he might be, Elydeos was still loyal to the Emperor – if anything, his reaction at being proposed leadership of what remained of the Conclave confirmed it beyond doubt, unless he was a truly exceptional dissembler. His knowledge and power would be invaluable in fighting off these "Forsaken Sons" to which the Chaos Marine had claimed to belong. The traitor had escaped, after all, and it was likely the Black Crusade, when it came, would have more Sorcerers like him in its blasphemous ranks. With Noriov dead, Elydeos was one of the last few remaining psychically gifted Inquisitors, perhaps the last depending on who had survived the attack.
'Very well,' sighed Elydeos, giving up before the inevitable. 'If you can convince the others to go along with this madness, I will do it. But if you do succeed, I am appointing you as my right hand. I know how much Eldenswenn relied on you and trusted you, even if he did an admirable job to keep it secret. If circumstances are dire enough that I must take command, then they are damn well dire enough for you to step out of the shadows and into a more public role.'
Alphon considered, then nodded. He didn't have much choice, and Elydeos was right. It was time for their long alliance to come to the light, though what the surviving Inquisitors would make of it, only the Emperor knew. They would need to call upon all the resources of the Inquisition, too – this strike had proved beyond doubt that the foe possessed terrible power, enough to warrant the use of the Ordos' most secretive and dangerous sanctions. If the Traitor Legions were involved, then perhaps even the terrible things that had been done during the Scouring by the first Inquisitors might be performed once more. Alphon hoped it wouldn't come to that – purging an entire Sector was not something anyone sane would want to be remembered for.
Like any Inquisitor, he was loath to relinquish even the smallest of his secrets, but perhaps that was the problem in the Inquisition in the first place. Eldenswenn had tried to keep too many secrets, too focused on remaining prepared to face possible future threats to see the one right in front of him. Then again, he couldn't have guessed the true scope of the immediate danger – none of them had, until Gaelis had revealed his treachery. Perhaps, after seeing the entire Imperium nearly collapse during the War of the Beast, the plots they had uncovered hadn't looked like much to him. Regardless, he was dead now – there was no point pondering his motives, and speaking or thinking ill of the deceased was not just rude, it was bad luck.
'Alright,' he accepted. 'Here is my first recommendation : considering the nature of our enemy, who has both sorcery and xenos on his side, you should call for the militant arms of the Inquisition. The Imperial Guard and the Heirs of Sanguinius must be warned too, of course, but I doubt they alone will be able to stand against the coming invasion.'
'I know,' nodded Elydeos, his expression now firm and determined. 'As soon as I find the codes in Eldenswenn's chambers, I will send the astropathic summons.' He took a deep breath, as if the weight of his new responsibilities was settling on his shoulders, and said :
'It is time for the Deathwatch and the Grey Knights to come to Azarok.'
AN : and so the first open blow of the Black Crusade is struck.
This chapter was a long time in writing, mostly because I was working with my new story, The Fifteenth Ascendant. It was almost finished for more than a week, but I never had the time to complete it.
In the next chapter, we will follow Asim as he returns to his brothers, and see the Black Crusade begin from the point of view of the Forsaken Sons. I look forward to it - in fact, I already have several pages of it written down.
So far, no one has been able to divine the true meaning of the prophecies. I wonder if this chapter's events will make it clearer to anyone ... To be honest, I hope not. It would not do to spoil the surprise !
Regular updates should continue for The Fifteenth Ascendant, but I will keep working on the next chapter of this story as well, don't worry.
Zahariel out.