I do not own the Warhammer 40000 universe nor any of its characters. They belong to Games Workshop.

Inquisitor Alphon strode purposefully through the corridors of Cardinal Station, doing his best to ignore their unsettling nature. Though its walls had been covered by Imperial steel in most places, the original walls could still be seen in places : pale, curved, and entirely inhuman. Cardinal Station had been built by an unknown xenos species millions of years ago, and had been discovered by Lord Inquisitor Elydeos Akhaman years ago. The Radical had immediately seen the potential utility of such a hidden sanctuary, and had arranged for the station to be quietly upgraded and retrofitted for human uses. With the fall of Silberstadt and the terrible war that had engulfed the Sector, Cardinal Station had become the center of operations for Imperial efforts throughout the Azarok Sector. It was big, almost five kilometers wide, and located in a star system accessible only if one knew the appropriate, singular Warp route. How exactly Akhaman had discovered those in the first place was unknown, and given the situation, no one was willing to waste time finding out.

A small flotilla was anchored in the station's orbit, made of the personal ships of the Inquisitors aboard and the few Imperial Navy vessels whose crews and officers were trusted enough to help guard this vital Imperial outpost. The ships turned around the station just as it turned around the system's star, a white dwarf without any natural satellites. Why the aliens who had built Cardinal Station had come here in the first place was but one of the many mysteries of the structure.

In the last ten months, Akhaman and Alphon had worked tirelessly to put the shattered Imperial armies back together, using astropaths and a network of courier ships to establish contact between the dispersed remnants of the Silberstadt armada. The halls of Cardinal Station, once home only to working servitors, their overseers, and the ghosts of its builders, were now bustling with activity. Twenty-nine ships were anchored around the station, and more work was accomplished each week toward its rehabilitation than had been in the entirety of Akhaman's knowledge of its existence before the war. There were still sealed chambers that had yet to be explored, and agents of the Ordo Xenos had taken to the task with all the devotion that was to be expected of them. Useful as Cardinal Station was, no one wanted to risk there being something else aboard it with them.

Alphon himself was on his way from one of the data-centers, where cogitators brought in from all across the Sector were made to work together by teams of tech-priests who seemed positively shocked at the crude work they were forced to perform. But, crude or not, the union of the thinking engines with the data-banks had been necessary. There was too much information that needed to be processed, with more brought in every day as reports arrived from the front. There was still far too much the Imperium did not understand about the vile foe they faced, and the data-slate in Alphon's hands contained one more piece of that puzzle – one that the survivors of the massacre of Kemyros' Inquisitorial fortress had wondered about for nearly two years. A small thing perhaps, when weighted against the desolation unleashed, but in Alphon's Inquisitorial career, he had learned that the key to success was often found in the smallest, easily ignored details.

Such was the size of Cardinal Station that it took him half an hour to reach his destination on foot, and then he had to wait another five minutes as security scanned him and checked that he really was who he appeared to be. After the treachery of Inquisitor Gaelis and Admiral Von Kriegerich, as well as the rebellions and cult uprisings taking place all over the Sector, the Imperium wasn't taking any chances, even here at the heart of its operations. Though Alphon wasn't sure if these precautions were useful for much beyond reassuring everyone. If such august personages could be turned to the enemy's cause without anyone noticing it until it were too late, then there was little normal scans could do. Which was why there was a bound psyker next to the door passively scanning his surface thoughts, of course, but even then … There had been many psykers among the Conclave, some of them incredibly powerful, yet none had caught on Gaelis' treachery until it was too late.

In the center of the war room hovered a three-dimensional hololith projection of the Azarok Sector. All around it were rows upon rows of console, arranged in concentric circles, behind which slaved dozens of tech-adepts and data-savants, with a flurry of aides moving in between them, carrying data-slates as well as refreshments for the less augmented members of the intelligence group. Many had been Acolytes before, working as analysts for their Inquisitorial masters before they had been drafted into a more open kind of war against the enemies of Mankind.

Here, the leaders of the Imperial war efforts received reports from all across the Sector, compiled the information, and made decisions that would shape the fates of billions. Representatives from all branches of the Imperial military were also present, though none of them were of an important rank – these individuals were all busy fighting their own part of the greater war, communicating with Cardinal Station through encoded messages and the very rare hololithic transmission, when the Station's psykers were able to maintain contact for long enough.

The one exception was Captain Terion, of the Heirs of Sanguinius. The Space Marine had narrowly avoided death at Silberstadt, but his body had been ruined beyond repair by the wounds he had taken fighting the Forsaken Sons. It would take months to grow all the replacement organs he needed, and in the meantime, the cumbersome cybernetics attached to his armor made him unable to fight. His mind was still as sharp as ever, though, and so he had been sent to Cardinal Station, to serve as his Chapter's voice. The Heirs of Sanguinius had been scattered across Azarok along with the rest of the Imperial armada, with individual Companies fighting everywhere they could against the Black Crusade. Their positions were shown on the map by a simplified version of their emblem, a tear in a circle. As ever, Alphon absent-mindedly thought that the symbol mirrored the chained daemonhead used to represent the known Forsaken Sons Chaos Marines forces nicely.

Half the worlds of the Sector were aflame with rebellions and cults uprising, a situation not helped by the abrupt stop of the flow of resources from the Abyssian Marches that had followed the fall of Silberstadt. Famine had spread, and with it disorder. Most of these uprisings weren't in any position of actually overthrowing Imperial authority, but they kept the military forces of these worlds occupied, unable to provide help where it was desperately needed. These worlds showed in orange on the hololith, but it was the red dots that were truly concerning – those were the worlds where one of the Forsaken Sons' splintered armada had arrived. The mighty host that had broken the Imperium's backbone at Silberstadt had split into several smaller warbands, though Alphon knew better than to hope this was because the enemy leader had lost control of his forces. No, this had all the hallmarks of a well-planned campaign.

In some cases, like on Meridior, the hand of the Forsaken Sons in the rebellions was more overt. The hive-world's mutant population had risen again, once more led by a twisted lord whose inhuman charisma had united the freaks despite the purge they had so recently endured. At the same time, a fleet of ramshackle transports had arrived in the system, and unleashed another swarm of mutants onto the planet, led by a dreadful court of the huge abominations that seemed able to remove all fear of death in their followers. The Manufactorums had ground to a halt as war had spread across the entire planet, with the Arbites and the PDF barely holding their ground against the teeming, fanatical hordes.

On the forge-world Zethirion Alpha, the missing Fabricator Kieral Mazer had returned to the abandoned city of Zethirion Nine-Six. Or at least, they thought the thing that had emerged from the Warp portal that had suddenly torn open in the ruins of the lost city had been the Fabricator. Within a few hours of its arrival, the forces left to guard the city had been butchered, and a host of abominable half-machine, half-daemon constructs had started to flow from the breach in reality. Now, the entire planet was at war, with the other forge-cities fighting with all they had just to contain the corruption to the hellscape Zethirion Nine-Six had become. The battle had spread to the entire Zethirion system, as a fleet of Dark Mechanicum warships laid siege to all of the Martian installations in their dominion. Zethirion and the neighbouring systems had been turned into a battlefield where machine fought tainted machine, with no place for the weak flesh to interfere. The Mechanicus would not take part in the rest of the war until they had cleaned their own house, and all forces sworn to the Red Planet in the Sector had flocked to that theater of war, abandoning all their allies in their haste to answer their overlords' call for help. As had always been the case, the sons and daughters of Mars would first look to their own.

The hive-world of Achillus had become the playground of monsters. The lords of House Delande, it turned out, hadn't been the only ones to have been tempted into casting off their humanity in pursuit of power. The more Alphon learned about what was happening on the planet, the more certain he became that the late Inquisitor Gregory Irwin had been allowed to discover about the Delande's treachery partly to hide the true extant of the corruption. A dozen noble families and even more gangs had suddenly revealed that they had been led by inhuman monsters for Emperor knew how long, and their terrified underlings had been forced into helping them seize control of the world. Planetary order had collapsed, and the only reason the planet wasn't marked as lost on the hololithic display was that the various breeds of monsters had turned against each other as soon as they had destroyed the main Imperial forces. Now Achillus was a world torn apart by guerillas, with the citizens cowering from the monsters in their midst or mounting desperate resistance cells, seeking safety in numbers. The Forsaken Sons' presence in the system was limited to a single ship, the Truthful Gate, which sat in orbit above the planet, safe from the planet's defenses thanks to the utter chaos that had spread below. From there, the being known in fearful whispers as the "Unfetteredˮ took the people abducted from the surface by his servants and transformed them into more unholy monsters, before unleashing them back onto Achillus to observe the results of his work. So far, all attempts at infiltrating the Truthful Gate had failed.

On Andros' Rest, the angel with broken wings Inquisitor Mathias Eloric had heard of in the dying gasp of a blood-crazed Guardsman had arrived. It had come in the jungles in fire and fury, as the savage tribes of that war-torn world had been driven to new peaks of violence by its presence. From the terrified, babbling testimonies of the few survivors, Akhaman had recognized it as a Possessed Marine of immense power, that the Heirs of Sanguinius had encountered during their ill-fated boarding of the Hand of Ruin. How it had arrived to the planet was unclear : neither the ships in orbit nor the system's space stations had detected any new arrival, though every astropath had sensed its coming. The Space Marines had two whole companies on the planet, helping the Imperial Guard forces hold back the maddened tribes while kill-teams hunted the infernal abomination. Only the Astartes could hope to match the creature's unholy strength, or resist its corrupting influence.

Six systems were linked by a crimson line in the hololith, marking the stars lost to the advance of the Unbound Host. This splinter of the Black Crusade had driven deep within Azarok, leaving nothing but dead worlds in its wake until they had reached the other border of the Sector. They had used appalling weapons in each system on their path, not interested in conquest, only in not leaving any enemy alive behind them. Then, hundreds of Chaos Marines and millions of Ruin-touched soldiers had seized the Berrenos system, which stood between the Azarok and Ekontyr Sectors. Berrenos was a fortress now, inhabited by all manners of horrors and commanded by a Chaos Marine who called himself Mahlone, the Unbound Lord. And as long as Berrenos held, then all the forces that were gathered from the Ekontyr Sector could not reach Azarok, cutting off one of the Imperium's main avenues of reinforcement.

They had finally learned what had happened to the shrine-world Nerius Sanctus, where the traitor Gaelis Serventas had told the Watchers that the Cardinal had been driven to suicide. An astropathic message, sent by the last survivor of Gaelis' team but delayed in the Warp by the same sorcery that had prevented psykers across the Sector from sensing what had occurred on the planet, had arrived a few weeks earlier. In it, the dying Acolyte had described the horrors they had found on Nerius Sanctus, from their arrival into the system to the daemonic incursion when Gaelis had called for the Cardinal to face him in the planet's main Cathedral. The Acolyte had thought his master dead, but Alphon and Akhaman knew the truth : Gaelis had been captured, and turned to the enemy. Knowledge that their peer hadn't broken his oath to the Golden Throne of his own free will had done little to assuage their fury, however : Gaelis would still need to be executed. As for Nerius Sanctus, it had become a den of daemons and heretics, its population sacrificed to the Dark Gods or enslaved to topple the monuments to the God-Emperor and raise new ones dedicated to Chaos. The Acolyte's report mentioned that a Dark Apostle led the enslaved masses into their dark worship, but with the Warp around the world seething, it was impossible to send help – or rather, considering how lost the planet must be by now, an Exterminatus fleet.

Kemyros, capital of the Azarok Sector, should by right have been the heart of Imperial command. The hive-world was well defended, and far away from the Abyssian Marches that it should have taken years for the Black Crusade to reach it. Unfortunately, as the frigate Judgement's Will had left Silberstadt, its astropaths had received a dire warning. The Inquisitorial headquarters on Kemyros had fallen, the Tower reduced to rubble and all contact lost with the facilities below. After the disaster at the Conclave, there had only been a minimal presence left there, but the loss of even one Inquisitor wasn't something they could afford right now. Worst, the Tower's underground had been where the Ordos had stored some of the prizes from centuries of keeping Azarok safe. Not all of them, of course - the Inquisition had a dozen vaults scattered across the Sector. But when Alphon thought of the things that were now in the hands of whatever dark force had claimed the stronghold. The one good new from Kemyros was that the Lord Sector was proving far more competent in war that he had been in peace. Helians von Lextark was single-handedly keeping the system from falling into anarchy as cults rose in every city and abominable things crawled out of the Tower's ruins. According to the reports, no one was more surprised by the fat man's sudden courage and competence than the Lord Sector himself, who had risen to his position through intrigue, bribery and intimidation. He was accompanied by Inquisitorial guards everywhere he went, just in case, and a group had been sent to discover what had happened in the old headquarters. Some of the files in the archives they had salvaged before the destruction had raised very disturbing implications, which was why they were using Cardinal Station now.

And yet, for all the devastation, no one had seen the flagship of the Black Crusade, the infamous Hand of Ruin. The ship of Arken the Awakened One had vanished after the battle of Silberstadt, and hadn't been sighted since. Whatever the Chaos Lord was up to couldn't be good, yet for all their efforts, they had yet to find a clue as to what his next move would be. Akhaman was convinced there was a greater pattern to Arken's actions, some vital piece of the puzzle they were all missing. And he might very well be right, but the rest of the war still needed to be fought, even if it was only a giant, blood-soaked distraction.

As Alphon crossed the threshold of the war room, he was met by cold, suspicious gazes. Despite his close ties with the Lord Inquisitor (he had been the one to insist Elydeos claim the title in the aftermath of the disaster at Kemyros, after all) there were many who were distrustful of Alphon. Even among the Inquisitors, he had always been a lonely figure, belonging to neither one of the main Ordos nor claiming allegiance to one of the minor branches of the Inquisition. Inquisitors lived to uncover mysteries, but none of them had been able to find out anything suspicious about Alphon : his exemplar service to the late Lord Inquisitor Noriov Eldenswenn had shielded him from more thorough investigations. Which, of course, had only made him more suspicious in their eyes, and that suspicion had been passed on to their servants. As for the military personnel, well, anyone whom the Inquisition looked upon in that manner was clearly someone to be wary of.

Alphon didn't blame them. He would have been offended if they had not been suspicious, and worried that they were slipping. The survivors of the carnage had accepted his push to make Akhaman Lord Inquisitor, because he had been the one to save them from the Sorcerer, but once tempers had cooled, institutionalized paranoia had returned.

The only two people who seemed pleased to see him were Elydeos himself, sitting tall and commanding on his throne above the slowly rotating map, and Inquisitor Silviana, in her new, rebuilt mechanical form. Her previous shell had been all but destroyed in the attack on the Conclave, and though her new one was still disturbingly human in shape (down to a face of flowing metal capable of duplicating emotions with unerring accuracy) Alphon knew that the tech-priests had built in a number of powerful weapons. He had read the medical reports : only her brain was left, preserved by the safeguards of her old body. The other organs had been lost, and cloning new ones would have taken too long. Their mechanical replacements were a bit bigger, resulting in a new body that towered more than two meters high in order to fit them all in under the thick armor plating that covered her body. Even her face was just a mask on a hard shell, and her brain was held secure within her chest, behind enough protection to withstand a nuclear blast at point-blank range. Silviana was determined that, when she next faced the scions of the Archenemy, she would not be disposed of so easily again. Alphon could empathize : he too had taken to carry a few more weapons than he used to, including one he would not have admitted to owning under torture.

Alphon walked directly toward them, and the circle of aides parted to let him pass.

'We found something,' he whispered, handing the data-slate to Elydeos. The Lord Inquisitor took it and began to read, his eyes moving down the text faster than any unaugmented mind could thanks to a discrete cerebral implant, and his face turned into a scowl as he read.

Alphon already knew the contents of the data-slate, of course. It was the result of months' worth of research in the archives, trying to find anything related to the xenos creature that had decimated the Inquisitorial Conclave at the dawn of the Black Crusade. They hadn't had much : only its name, Carthago, the words it had burned into their minds before unleashing its terrible power, and those shouted by the population of the agri-world Pormaces, after they had been driven mad. But that had been enough, in the end, to find something.

Carthago had been the name of a city of Old Earth, in the Antique Times before Mankind had first left its birthworld. For a long time, it had been a rival of the ancient Romanii, until they had decided that they didn't want to share influence over the Mediterranean Sea with them anymore. Carthago had been burned, razed to the ground by Romanii Legions, and the earth and ashes had been salted to ensure nothing would ever grow there again.

I am the sins of empires come back to punish those who committed them, the alien witch had said …

There was more to the report. Before Carthago's destruction, one of the Romanii senators had grown obsessed with the rival city. His name was lost to history, but for years before the final destruction, he had ended every speech, no matter on which subject, with the words "Delenda Carthago" : Carthago must be destroyed.

Vengeance for Carthago, the madmen of Pormaces had shouted. Delenda Imperium …

'So,' said Akhaman once he had finished reading the report. 'This xenos witch uses a name from Mankind's distant past. We already suspected it was responsible for the events on Pormaces, though how it drove the population mad is still unknown … Do you think it took the name itself, or was it given to it by the Forsaken Sons ?'

'The traitor who accompanied the alien at the Conclave was once of the Fifteenth Legion,' answered Alphon. 'Our analysis of his armor is clear on that. And the sons of Magnus the Red, may he burn forever, were famous for their knowledge of ancient lore.'

'A persona, forced upon it by the Forsaken Sons to help it control its powers ?' thought Akhaman aloud. 'Or something else, something more sinister … Dammit, I wish we had the Sisters of Silence on our side. Any news on that front ?'

'Nothing,' replied Silviana, who was monitoring every incoming transmission at once through her inner cogitators. 'We have sent messages through the ancient protocols and contacted the rest of the Ordos to do the same, but not a single response. It's as if they have all vanished since the War of the Beast.'

Tempting as it was to believe that there was a great hidden conspiracy responsible for the slow disappearance of the Sisters, Alphon knew the explanation was far more mundane. The Sisterhood had been instrumental in defeating the Great Beast and saving the Imperium from the Orks, but the accolades of history weren't for Pariahs. Their mere presence made people uneasy, and slowly, imperceptibly, their support had dried up, until only their presence on the Black Ships remained, and only because no one else could possibly manage them.

'As for the Chambers Militant,' continued Silviana, 'we have received confirmation that they received our call for help, and that they are coming. The Deathwatch operatives in the Sector are leading operations against the enemy warmachine where they can, but they are trained to fight aliens, not Traitors. Last we heard, they were preparing to move to Meridior to hunt down the mutant warlords there. And the Grey Knights … well, I am not sure we would know even if they were already here. They fight the kind of things not even us should know exist.'

'The Forsaken Sons are definitively in league with the Ruinous Powers,' mused the Lord Inquisitor. 'And not just one of them, like most Traitor warbands. Arken was able to see me through Time, and I sensed his power as I watched him through lord Raguel's eyes. He and the Hand of Ruin are still missing, along with a significant fraction of the ships seen emerging from the Wailing Storm at Silberstadt and the entire battlefleet of the traitor Kriegerich. These forces could help break any of the ongoing battles, so they must be used for something. Once again, we go back to the question of what his overarching purpose might be. Everywhere the Forsaken Sons are involved seems to have some goal behind it, whether to cut us from reinforcements or to perform monstrous experiments on vast populations. So, surely, the missing forces must have their own objectives. But what is it ?'

They were still pondering the question when the alarms started. A ship had been detected on the system's edge, appearing out of nowhere without any of the warning signs a conventional vessel would have caused. Warp technology, for all that the entire Imperium depended on it, was a clumsy and brutal thing, consisting of making the Materium and Immaterium meet by forcefully breaking through the barriers that existed between the two. There were more stealthy Warp drives – the Inquisition often made use of them – but these were generally coupled with other stealth systems. The newcomer wasn't, or at least if it was, it hadn't turned them on.

'It's an Eldar vessel, my lords,' said the auspex officer after a few moments of shouting had been calmed down by Terion loudly clearing his throat. For all that the Captain was crippled, he was still taller than anyone else in the room and looked more than able to rip in two anyone he thought had failed in his duties. 'They are holding position at the system's Mandeville point.'

'Bring up the auspex of the vessel,' ordered Akhaman, rotating his chair to face the giant screen covering the wall behind him. The image that appeared was as clear as Cardinal Station's sensors could make it, and all three Inquisitors recognized the pattern, if not the exact ship. This was indeed an Eldar vessel, thinner and more elegant than any Imperial ship of the same tonnage could ever hope to be. It was the length of a frigate, with few visible weapons, and its colors were not those of any Craftworld Alphon could remember.

'We are being hailed, my lords,' called the auspex officer.

'On screen,' replied Akhaman.

There was a moment of static as the Imperial vox-receivers locked onto the frequency used by the xenos, but when the image appeared it was unnaturally clear. There were two figures on the screen, standing tall and proud against a backdrop of bone-white wall. One was unmistakably Eldar, clad in the elaborate robes and armor of one of their Farseer. Judging by the curves of the armor, Alphon thought it was a female, but he wasn't sure. He was much more interested in the second figure. After all, it wasn't every day that you saw a human stand side-by-side with an Eldar.

The man was tall, and wearing white and featureless clothes that had been cut with inhuman precision around his frame. A mane of silver hair fell onto his shoulders, and though his face was shaved and clean there was no hiding the gleam in his eyes, like that of a prophet come down from the mountain to bring terrible, unwelcome truths. The right sleeve of his garment had been removed, exposing the limb's pale skin - and the six glowing jewels embedded in the flesh, linked to each other by black, shining paths of foreign material. Alphon recognized the nature of the jewels : soulstones, and judging by their glow, occupied soulstones, with the spirit of a dead Eldar bound within them to avoid the horrible fate that awaited in the Warp.

'I am Farseer Elythrea Minias of Craftworld Mian-Tor,' said the armoured alien. 'I come in peace, to discuss the threat to both of our people that has come into this region of space.'

'I am Tarek of Parecxis,' said the man, and Alphon could hear a few muffled gasps at the mention of one of the worlds lost to the Wailing Storm centuries ago. Information on the lost Trebedius Sector had been suppressed for a very long time, but with the coming of the Black Crusade most of the Station's intelligence crew had received higher clearances. 'I fought against the Forsaken Sons at the side of the Sons of Calth, and I come to help you defeat them where we failed, before the dreadful ambitions of the Awakened One come to fruition.'

'I am Lord Inquisitor Akhaman,' said Elydeos, his voice firm and stern. 'How did you learn of this station's existence and location ?'

'With great difficulty. You have warded your lair well, servant of the Emperor. We had to walk the Web of Fate, to follow the threads leading from the broken fortress to here.'

'You have been to Silberstadt ? When ?'

'Not too long ago. We must speak face-to-face, servant of the Emperor. There are things we know that you must be told if there is to be any hope of stopping the one known as Arken before his madness dooms us all.'

There was a tense silence as Akhaman silently considered his options. Alphon knew what he was going to say, though : the prospect of some answers was far too tempting to refuse.

'Very well,' said the Lord Inquisitor after a few seconds. 'You can come aboard Cardinal Station; we will guide your transport to one of our flight decks. Only you two will be allowed in, though : anymore of your kind will be put down immediately, as will the both of you if either breaks faith with us. The Azarok Sector has suffered too much from xenos and traitors for us to take any chances.'

'As you wish,' replied the Farseer. Tarek didn't seem to mind either : his face had kept the same expression during the entire conversation, his eyes passing on everyone visible on his end of the transmission. There was an intensity in his gaze, as if he were more than just human – and considering the things embedded in his arm, perhaps he was. Certainly that would explain why the Eldar, a species famous for their arrogance, tolerated his presence at their side.

The transmission shut down, and an uncomfortable silence descended on the command center as the crew turned to look at one another, wondering what it all meant. Alphon barked a short command, and the work resumed while he, Akhaman, Silviana and Captain Terion left the room, a quick word from the Lord Inquisitor stopping the rest of the Imperial representatives from following them. Technically, Terion shouldn't have come with them either, but no one was going to say no to a Space Marine, even wounded as Terion was. Besides, if this Tarek had truly fought alongside the long-lost Chapter of the Sons of Calth, then Terion deserved to hear about it first-hand.

As promised, a single gunship left the Eldar vessel, which stayed at the edge of the system while the craft crossed the vast distance between the Mandeville point and Cardinal Station. It landed under heavy guard, with Inquisitorial storm troopers surrounding it, weapons at the ready. In an adjacent room, a group of psykers were linking their minds, watching the two guests for the slightest hint of Chaos corruption. They reported through their lords' earpieces that they couldn't sense any in the Farseer, but that the silver-haired man's soul and mind were so incomprehensible they couldn't get anything from them apart from a distinct sense of otherworldly power.

The Farseer and the human descended from the craft and were quickly brought into a chamber set aside for private discussions. The six of them sat around a rectangular table of black marble – a priceless artefact from a world that had been destroyed during the Horus Heresy, and that Akhaman had claimed from the villa of a heretic noble years ago. The four representatives of the Imperium occupied on side of the table, while the Farseer and the silver-haired man sat on the opposite side.

'Alright,' said Alphon, breaking the tense silence. 'We are as isolated as we can be. Now, you have introduced yourselves already, so I think it's only polite we return the favor.'

The Inquisitor did a quick round of introductions, though he had a feeling both "guestsˮ already knew who they all were. Eldars had a reputation for knowing that sort of thing, and whatever Tarek had become, Alphon had little doubt he had more in common with the xenos than with his own species now. After a while, since none of the others were saying anything, he sighed and continued :

'So, you told us you came from Craftworld … Mian-Tor, correct ? Which, by the way, I don't think any of us have ever heard of, which is ever so slightly annoying as Inquisitors and Space Marine. Why come out of hiding now, after Emperor knows how long successfully staying out of sight ?'

'Because the time has come,' replied the Farseer. 'Hiding will no longer protect us from the galaxy. What the Forsaken Sons will unleash will find us no matter where we run.'

That got a reaction out of Akhaman, though Alphon doubted anyone as familiar as he had become with the Lord Inquisitor would have noticed.

'You know what they are after,' said Akhaman, rather than ask. 'You know what their main objective is – the one for which all the other horrors are but mere distractions ?'

'We do,' said Tarek. He was eerily calm, despite being in the presence of three Inquisitors, one of which had a body of metal, and a Space Marine.

'Tell us, then,' pressed Akhaman. 'We have searched for months, and we have found nothing.'

And so they did. Alphon doubted that they told them everything, but they told them enough. Tarek told them of Parecxis, his homeworld; how he, a simple sea captain, had ended up fighting alongside every able-bodied man and woman of that world against the Forsaken Sons. He spoke of the nightmares the Traitor Marines had unleashed, of the sacrifices the Imperials had made and the damage they had inflicted upon their hated foe – but it had not been enough. His voice remained steady as he spoke of horrors no man could hope to face and retain his sanity. He told them of the Sha'eilat, these degenerate Eldar who had sold their souls to Chaos with wild abandon, and been brought back from rightful extinction by the Forsaken Sons' flesh-smiths. The Farseer intervened there, telling the old story of her people about the exiles of the Eldar Empire, who had been cast out because their corruption was too great even for the decaying morals of their stellar dominion.

And finally, Tarek told of the crown of Eldar soulstones he had torn from the skull of a witch in the final hours of the war for Parecxis. He told them of the inhuman killer sent after him, and how the spirits in the stones had saved him by casting him into the Warp, where he had wandered, protected by their power, until he had reached the Craftworld – alive, but changed.

'So,' said Terion when the tale was over. 'The Sons of Calth are truly dead.'

'They are,' replied Tarek in a solemn tone. 'They died as heroes, each and every one of them. I fought by their side in the city of Talexorn against the hordes of the undead, and again in Asthenar as we made our final stand against the forces of Chaos. And never once did any of them recoil from the danger, even when none of us could see any hope in the darkness.'

'We must inform the Ultramarines. The fate of the Sons of Calth has haunted the scions of Guilliman for centuries – they will be relieved to know their brothers died with honor.'

'And we will, Captain. But we must first deal with the current threat we face. An astropathic sending to Ultramar could be intercepted by our enemies, revealing that we know more than they intended us to.'

Elythrea took over then. She spoke of the disastrous attempt of the Farseers to scry the intent of the Awakened One, and the terrible cost it had exacted. Much of what the xenos witches had learned in their final moments was nonsense, but Elythrea had been able to interpret enough of their rambles to identify the true goal of the Forsaken Sons.

Riaway Noara. Nightmare Fleet. The words sent a shiver down Alphon's spine. A fleet of sentient ships, possessed by Neverborn – truly the fleet deserved its name, because it was the combination of the two darkest nightmares of Mankind. Abominable Intelligences and daemons, forged together during the time of Humanity's greatest technological accomplishments and lowest morality. Even the horrors of the Heresy paled in some respects compared to what had been wrought during the Dark Age of Technology, when science had been unbound by the Emperor's holy decrees and techno-lords had sought transcendence at any cost, uncaring of the monsters left in their wake.

Already Azarok burned, but if the Nightmare Fleet was released from its ancient prison, the entire Segmentum – possibly the entire Imperium – would be at risk. And that was without taking into account the other fleet imprisoned within the Eldar's ancient prison, even if no one at the table was talking about it aloud. The idea of an entire battlefleet from the glory days of the Eldar Empire being suddenly returned into the modern era was … disquieting, to say the least. The Imperium had only legends of what the Eldar had been capable of in those long-lost days, but even accounting for the inevitable hyperbole, the xenos had been far beyond even the peak of the Dark Age of Technology in terms of science, dominion, and psychic power. Though how these ancient warriors would react to a galaxy where their race's souls belonged to the Dark Prince …

Yes, came a voice directly into Alphon's head. It would be better for everyone if we never found out.

The Inquisitor's eyes widened. The voice hadn't been that of the Farseer – it had been male, and human. His gaze fixed onto Tarek, who was smiling ever so slightly while Elythrea continued her explanation of how she and the silver-haired man had gone to Silberstadt and traced the Lord Inquisitor's path to Cardinal Station.

You read my mind ? asked Alphon, unable to keep the alarm from his thoughts. There were so many secrets in his head, so many things he had sworn to take to his grave … But no psyker should have been able to get pass through his mental blocks, no matter how xenos-touched !

No, replied Tarek in the same silent voice. Only your surface thoughts, which echo in the Empyrean around us. Elythrea can't even do that – your blocks are quite remarkable. But I have a human's sensibilities and the psychic powers of several Eldar – I am capable of things neither could do on their own. I can also sense your disgust, Inquisitor. Yes, I know I am an abomination : a thing half-man, half-alien, anathema in the eyes of the Master of Mankind. But even if your mind is closed to me, there is still one secret of yours that I can tell. We are not as different as you would like.

I am nothing like you, sent back Alphon, almost savagely. Tarek sent back the mental equivalent of a shrug.

As you wish. I will keep your secret. But the time for any of us to hide our true capabilities draws to a close. Soon you will have no choice but to reveal it yourself.

There was something unsettlingly prophetic in Tarek's sending, and Alphon tore his gaze from the man's silver eyes, forcefully ending the connection. He had many secrets, as did every Inquisitor, and he was damned if he would let the words of whatever Tarek had become dictate his course of action. He would do what he had always done : what his duty to the Imperium demanded. The others were still talking, none of them having noticed Alphon's discomfort.

'We both want to stop the servants of the Great Enemy,' Elythrea was saying. 'You do not know where the Riaway Noara can be found, and we do not have the strength to defend it on our own. An alliance between our people against this common foe is not just logical, it is necessary.'

'Your kind has proven, time and again, that it cannot be trusted,' grunted Terion. 'How many times have you used this "knowledge of the future" to manipulate Imperial forces into doing your dirty work for you, only to abandon them once you didn't need them any longer ? Oh, I do not doubt you want the Forsaken Sons stopped : they are as much a threat to you as to us. But what proof do I have that this Nightmare Fleet is even real, and not a fanciful story you invented to make us send our fleets where you want them ?'

'I was there when the Farseers of Mian-Tor peered into the paths of Fate,' said Tarek, and the glow of his eyes and the jewels in his arm diminished as he spoke, making him seem much more human all of a sudden. 'I saw them die, struck down by the power of Chaos, and listened to their dying words. I saw the records of the Nightmare Fleet in the Craftworld's archives. You have my word, Captain, that Lady Elythrea speaks truly. I swear it upon the memory of my comrades who fell against the Forsaken Son.'

There was a moment of silence as Terion stared into Tarek's eyes, both entirely unfazed by the inhuman nature of the one they faced. Akhaman stepped in :

'We know there is another objective to this Black Crusade, Captain. The Nightmare Fleet is a perfect explanation, though I am still at a loss as to why Arken wants to unleash it. Is he insane enough to think he can actually control it ?'

'Arken's madness is a cold one,' said Tarek, finally breaking his tense glaring contest with the Heir of Sanguinius to look at the Lord Inquisitor. 'On Parecxis, his strategies were vicious and cruel, but effective. He wields the other slaves of Ruin like instruments to his own ends with great skill. If he seeks the Nightmare Fleet, then he definitely has a plan to deal with it once he breaks its prison.'

'He must have learned about it from these Sha'eilat creatures you described,' mused Silviana. 'But would they know where the … dimensional prison can be accessed ?'

'We do not know,' admitted Elythrea. 'Our own knowledge of these events is limited. The location of the final battle between the Empire's fleet and the Riaway Noara was removed even from Mian-Tor's archives, to prevent any future fool from trying to free our imprisoned heroes. But we do know where that knowledge can be found, and it is a place the Sha'eilat would know of as well. Mian-Tor is already on its way there, and if you agree to an alliance, then I shall guide you there as well, that we may stand together against the forces the Forsaken Sons are sure to send. Even if Arken already knows the location of the Riaway Noara, he will send his fleet there to make sure we don't gain access to that information.'

'I see,' said Akhaman. 'And of course you won't share that information with us unless we do agree to your offer of alliance … Captain Terion, I share your reticence, but we have no choice. This is our only lead on where Arken may be going, and the mere possibility of the Nightmare Fleet being real is too terrible for us to take any chances.'

'I understand,' replied the Heir of Sanguinius, nodding curtly.

'As Lord Inquisitor of Azarok and leader of its Imperial forces, I agree to your offer, Farseer Elythrea. We shall be allies until the Black Crusade has been defeated. Is that acceptable ?'

'It is,' agreed the Eldar, with Tarek smiling slightly at her side. 'If you could bring us to a star map, I will show you where we must go. If you agree to it, we will use the Webway to reach our destination. Even though that will require several jumps, it will still be faster than your own method of galactic travel, especially with the Sea of Souls as turbulent as it is now.'

'Very well,' said the Lord Inquisitor, rising from his seat. 'Follow me. I will bring you to our command center – though I am sure you understand, my people will hide any confidential information not directly related to the Black Crusade before we get there.'

'Of course they will,' murmured Tarek as he too stood up.

Several minutes later, the group of Imperial and Eldar representatives were in the command center, quickly emptied for the occasion and with every terminal shut down. The cogitator running the map had been programmed by a very remorseful tech-priest so that it wouldn't remember anything that was happening to it. It had taken the threat of bodily harm to convince the cogboy to even perform the oblivion ritual, and he was going to spend weeks in penance for it.

Alphon was at the controls, moving the view at the directions of Elythrea, who was staring at the floating map, converting Eldar navigation charts into the (no doubt vastly inferior in her mind) Imperial standard. Eventually, she indicated a single system, isolated far from the main Warp routes of the Azarok Sector, deep within what was unofficially known as the Graveyard – a region of Azarok that had been entirely devastated during the War of the Beast.

'Here,' she said. 'This is where the Archive of Loss lies.'

There was a pause as the Imperials in the room glanced at each other, recognition flashing in their eyes. Then Alphon brought up the system's data, displayed in glowing red letters next to the star :

+++IMPERIAL RECORD 556E38F-GZ3A6 +++

+++ SYSTEM NEREL +++

+++ WORLD : NEREL PRIME – CEMETARY-WORLD+++

+++ POPULATION : 12,025 – CARETAKERS AND SUPPORT STAFF +++

+++ NOTABLE ASSETS : NONE +++

+++ ACTIVITY CENTER : CATHEDRAL OF ST DUCIUS +++

'A cemetery world,' murmured Tarek. 'Of course it would be on a cemetery world. Where else ?'

'I do not know what that means,' admitted Elythrea. 'What have your people done to that world ?'

'It is sacred ground,' explained Elydeos. 'Where the dead of the war against the Orks from all across this region of Azarok were buried centuries ago. Billions of people were laid to rest on Nerel Prime, and the planet is a monument to the losses of the War of the Beast. The entire planet is covered in tombstones !'

'The Archive of Loss was buried deep beneath the planet's surface,' said the Farseer, 'and protected from detection by the best technology of the Empire. It makes sense your own systems wouldn't have found it. But … we will likely need to dislodge some of the tombs to access it.'

There was something in Elythrea's voice that, in a human, might have been regret, but Alphon didn't believe it. What did this xenos witch care for the remains of the Imperium's honored dead ? Tarek was parading the very souls of her own kind on his arm, and she was apparently fine with it.

'So be it,' declared Akhaman. 'We cannot let our concern for the dead outweigh the importance of the living. It will take some time for us to be ready to follow you, however.'

'Then we will return aboard our ship,' said Elythrea, 'and await your signal. But make haste, servant of the Emperor. Our time is running short.'

'Elydeos,' murmured Alphon several moments later, once the Farseer and Tarek were back aboard their transport and had left the station. 'If the Forsaken Sons' missing forces really are at Nerel, then we don't have the numbers to face them there. We can't count on the Eldar to do all the work for us, and our own forces are stretched thin across the entire Sector – disengaging any of them will cost us billions of lives !'

'I know,' replied the Lord Inquisitor. 'But this is an information gathering mission. We don't need to defeat the Forsaken Sons at Nerel, only hold them back long enough to get what we need from the Archive and leave. Hopefully by then the blockade at Berrenos will have been breached and we will have more troops to join us on the journey toward the Nightmare Fleet's location.'

'And if it isn't ?' pressed Alphon. 'If the blockade holds ?'

'Then we will pay the price in worlds if needs be,' said Elydeos, his expression grim. 'But we cannot let the Forsaken Sons unleash this evil upon the galaxy, even if the entire Sector must burn.'

There was nothing Alphon could say in response. Necessity, as always, was a most cruel mistress – and for all their power and authority, the lords of the Ordos were still her slaves.

Seven we were, one we are …

They spoke of this, the seers who died when they saw the spoke of the burning tombs, of the Hand of Death and the Hand of Sin fighting among the ruins of the past. This can mean only one thing …

They know, the sons of ruin. They know of this place, and they will come to stop us.

Destiny comes. The Hunter comes. Doom is coming for us once more.

Seven we were, one we are. But for how much longer ?

Oh Emperor, let it end soon …

Hours later, Elydeos was alone in his chambers. His quarters were bare of all luxuries, with nothing but a bed, a desk, and the single metal chair on which he sat, his head resting on his crossed arms. He was thinking back on the day's events, and whether the alliance with the Eldar was a mistake. Seemingly, the xenos were the answer to his prayers : they had told him the true purpose of the Black Crusade, and a way to fight against it. And yet he couldn't help but doubt. If the Forsaken Sons knew about the Nightmare Fleet, then they must also know about Mian-Tor. Would they not have taken the Eldar into account in their plans then ?

Furthermore, though he did not believe Tarek had lied to them, he distrusted the man – if he could still be called that. Tarek's experiences had removed him from Humanity, and it was the creed of the Inquisition that such beings could not be tolerated. Even a Radical like Elydeos, who believed that some of the tools forbidden to the common people of the Imperium could be used against its enemies, knew that there were very good reasons for this policy.

He was still brooding over these matters when a transmission came in on his desk's receiver. The signal's frequency was only to be used for messages of extreme urgency, and he immediately pressed the appropriate rune on the device to open the channel.

'Yes ? What is it ?'

'My Lord Inquisitor,' came a breathless voice. 'We have received word from Berrenos. The Imperial relief fleet has just arrived in the system and has engaged the Chaos forces there. And according to the astropaths' interpretation of the transmission, they are led by the Grey Knights !'

AN : And we are back ! It's been months since this story has last been updated, but I am not abandoning it. We are currently in the last arc, and I am damned if I am not going to finish it. Not a lot of action in this chapter - I had an entire scene where they fought against a Chaos infiltrator, but then I realized the implications of the Forsaken Sons knowing about Cardinal Station and I erased it. 1,500 words, lost in a single moment ... But it was necessary, which I think is quite funny considering the chapter's title and theme.

There is one thing I noticed from the last time Tarek made an appearance : apparently, a lot of you think he has been turned evil by whatever happened to him, and he is a covert agent of the Forsaken Sons. I think that's because I made the glimpse of what's going on in his head a bit too creepy. But to clarify things : no, he is not evil. His mind is a total mess, though, as you would expect from the gestalt of one human soul and six Eldar psykers who have spent Gods know how long being used as a power source by Chaos-worshiping madmen. What the rest of the world sees when they interact with Tarek is the surface of the gestalt, but underneath, well ... Minds were not meant to be fused in such a fashion.

Hopefully the next chapter won't take as long to write. I am still not sure where it will take place (I am hesitating between the big battle of Berrenos, or a shorter glimpse of the situation on one of the war-theaters described in the chapter).

As usual, please tell me what you thought of this chapter and what you would like to see in the future.

Also, shout-out to Tobi14, who wrote a review for every chapter of this fic in the last few days. Thank you for your support, Tobi !

Zahariel out.