"The Chariot :
As beasts are bound to the will of a rider, so does the Chariot arcana represent mastery over brute forces through cunning and ingenuity. Yet the card also foretells war, struggle, and revenge. [...] Whether it is reversed or not, the Chariot warns of a decisive action that will dramatically alter the course of fate, for good or ill."
Extract from the Treatise of Divination, a text describing the meanings of each of the seventy-eight cards of one of the most widely used versions of the Emperor's Tarot, author unknown, M31.
Azarok Sector – War-world Andros' Rest
745.M32
"This outpost was occupied by the Tularkan 282nd when they turned renegade and attacked Inquisitor Eloric and his retinue. Is that correct, General ?"
"Yes. We purged the last elements of the 282nd when we retook the area after the Inquisitor departed. There were only a few of them, and not enough bodies to account for all of them. Later on, we encountered the rest of the Regiment among the natives as they attacked us. We have managed to hold this outpost and others like it across the world, but pursuing the enemy in the woods is all but suicidal."
"The hostilities intensified after Inquisitor Eloric's departure ?"
"Not immediately. Once the turncoat elements were purged, the situation more or less calmed down. The Chaos Marines appeared around the time Silberstadt fell, even if we didn't notice any ships arriving in the system."
"And what of the other Tularkan Regiments deployed on this world ?"
"They all encountered the same fate as the 282nd. It was a ploy of the natives. They targeted all Tularkan Regiments because of their traditions. There were other cases, but the heretics focused their efforts on those Regiments. We learned from interrogating captured tribespeople that this was done at the behest of their 'angel with broken wings'. Apparently, their heretic priests had received visions marking those specific Regiments as 'worthy' of their master's favor."
"And how exactly did the natives corrupt the Tularkan ?"
"This outpost has a fresh source of water flowing from underground. When we retook the outpost, I suspected it may have been the contagion vector and sent a team to investigate. They found a shrine to the Chaos Powers underground, as well as a tunnel the heretics had used to reach it. Inquisitor Eloric and his retinue drank from their own supplies during their time on the planet, and were unaffected while the Regiment was driven insane.
"After we removed the heretical icons, I … I used prisoners sentenced to death for various offences as test subjects. While I rationed our reserves of water, I made one prisoner drink from the sources every five days. When they stopped becoming violently insane, I stretched our reserves as far as I could, and eventually allowed our supply corps to use it again – after running it through every purifying technique we could think of and having our preachers bless it."
"And the other outposts where Tularkans were stationed ?"
"After we found the icons, I contacted the officers who retook them and warned them of what we had found. They discovered similar shrines near sources of water, food, and even in the air filtering machines in one case. That last one appeared to be the work of an inside traitor – at the moment, our best guess is that one of the Guardsmen who returned from the front had been corrupted."
"I see. We will need to examine you and your men, General, to make sure that you do not bear any trace of the corruption. But you do realize that, even if your methods worked, you will still personally face judgement for exposing the souls of the God-Emperor's subjects to corruption, even if they were criminals ?"
"I understand, Inquisitor. I … I welcome it. I pray that the Holy Ordos' judgement may cleanse my soul of guilt."
A hand clad in silver-painted ceramite closed into a fist as the transmission ended. This was the only sign of emotion displayed by any of the ten Grey Knights in the gunship as it finished its descent toward the jungles of Andros' Rest, where the forces of the Imperium had been battling the local tribes for years before the Black Crusade had set the Azarok Sector ablaze.
"The Inquisitor is lying to them," said one of them over their shared vox-link. "None of them will be allowed to leave Andros' Rest alive."
"They might be. There are plenty of battles left to fight in Azarok : plenty of opportunities for the Guardsmen deployed here to earn a worthy death fighting the Emperor's foes. The Inquisitor might decide against wasting the lives of other Imperial soldiers when there are those already condemned to death to send instead."
"That is for the Inquisitor to decide, brothers. Not us. Our task is restricted to the destruction of the entity leading the Chaos incursion on this world."
They could all sense it, pressing on the wards of the aircraft and their own prodigious mental defenses. The veil between the Materium and the Warp was thin, and growing thinner as the carnage across Andros' Rest continued.
"We still don't know what started the contamination. During the War of the Beasts, the degeneration of the local inhabitants was fast – too fast. You don't expect nobles and their servants to be able to fight off an Ork invasion, especially the kind of greenskins that appeared back then."
"Inquisitor Eloric was investigating that very possibility when the signs of the Black Crusade first appeared. He left the planet when he thought the source of the Tularkan soldiers' madness was linked to them rather than the world itself."
"That was a mistake."
"Yes. But we will not speak ill of the dead, brother."
"Andros' Rest is one of the convergence points identified by the Supreme Grand Master. Whatever the Forsaken Sons seek to achieve here must be stopped at all costs. The war against the tribes and their turncoat Guard allies is of secondary importance. It is a distraction, meant to hide the true purpose of this incursion."
"You think the 'angel with broken wings' is our target, then ?"
"It is the most likely possibility, yes. And that makes the presence of the Heirs of Sanguinius here … concerning."
For over a thousand years, the Chapters of Space Marines descended from Sanguinius had struggled to keep their shameful secret hidden from the Imperium, but the Grey Knights knew everything about the Red Thirst and the Black Rage. They had each read the intercepted reports sent from the battle-brothers on Andros' Rest to their officers, speaking of the struggle to contain these twin curses while fighting against the heretics alongside the Imperial Guard.
"There are over a hundred Heirs left on this world, and most of them will be fighting in the offensive on our target's estimated location. If we are lucky, they will be too far from the epicentre to be affected … but that isn't certain."
Though the gunship was still high in the air, the Grey Knights began to hear the sounds of the battle raging below them, as well as perceive the psychic emanations from the conflict as thousands of Imperial soldiers advanced onto what orbital scans combined with psychic readings of the planet had revealed to be the likely location of the Forsaken Sons' base of operations on Andros' Rest.
Soon, they would know whether their theory was correct – whether this was indeed the fulcrum of this particular theatre of the Black Crusade, the location of the threat Janus had foreseen.
We are Hektor Heker'Arn. Once we were two, mortal and daemon. But such a distinction means nothing anymore. Now we are one, unified in our blood-soaked devotion to the Throne of Skulls. The pyres of the Wailing Storm broke the two we were apart and welded the pieces together.
We are the Blood Champion, Chosen of Arken. We are the death of worlds, the slaughterer of nations. We stand mightiest among the Forsaken Sons. In the uncounted thousands who have rallied to the banner of the chained daemonhead, there are none greater than us with a blade, none stronger or more resilient.
We are a broken thing. Our wings, which once spread wide and dark, were ripped from us by the Steel-Wrought in his last act of defiance before death claimed him. All that remain from them are splinters of bone jutting from our back, blood endlessly dripping from the rent in our fused armor and flesh.
We were born of the storm, and we bring it with us whenever we go. The earth of this world cracks and bleeds under our feet. The skies scream and the dark jungles twist and burn without end.
This is good. This is as it should be. This world … it calls to us, even in its slumber. It knows bloodshed of old. It remembers the War before all wars, a conflict to vast and terrible even we can barely glimpse its echoes in the Sea of Souls. Violence, madness, SLAUGHTER ! The slaves of the Corpse-God tried to cage it with a name, to bind its true nature with their pretty words and to make it a place of peace, but the world remembers.
When the war-cry of the Beast reached this world, it awakened its memories. Those who pursued their petty pleasures in isolation drowned in dreams of antediluvian carnage, and were reborn as true servants of the Lord of Skulls. With his blessing, they purged this world of the greenskin tide, and when the slaves of the Corpse-God came, they continued to fight.
But as the echoes of the Beast's great cry faded, so too did the world's memories. They linger still, in the deep bones of the earth, yet as they diminished so too did the tribes.
Then we came. Rage calls to rage, blood calls to blood. Our arrival sent ripples through time, and the shamans heard our footsteps long before we departed the Wailing Storm. They prepared the way for us, marking those worthy of service to the Lord of Skulls and culling the rest. They offered their own blood along with the skulls of their foes to open a path on which we and the other Secondborn walked.
With our chains removed, we slaughtered and laughed, we revelled in this unfettered carnage. And when the world answered, we followed its voice here, to these ruins that were old when Humanity first climbed out of the slime.
Others of the Forsaken Sons joined us, following other paths through the Sea of Souls. Diabolists, their armor covered in runes and prayers. The spawn of the Dark Gods cling to the trails of their souls, waiting for them to cut apart the Veil and let them manifest. They too seek to place their words upon the truth of this world, to make its primal simplicity into something they can understand. They will fail, but their attempts nudge the world ever closer to awakening.
The war raging around us also helps stir the world awake. The slaves of the Corpse-God have found us, and in spite of their ignorance they sense that they must stop us. From their limited point of view, they are right to fear. But it is only their ignorance that makes them rush toward us. Soon, they will understand …
For we know where we are. It does not matter that the writing in the stone has faded, that nothing remains but smooth rock and dust. Time means nothing to the Warp. All that has been, all that will be, is. There is no breaking the pattern, no eluding the inevitable. The galaxy has burned, burns, and will burn, forever and ever. Blood and doom are the only constants in this universe.
We laugh at the thought, throwing our head backward to stare at the sky. And there, we see a glimpse of silver, and we laugh harder. For we know what this portents. We remember the words the Awakened One whispered to us before we were sent to this world. We remember the question he asked of us.
"They are coming," we howl, and the mewling, chittering hordes that have massed around us like moss around a stone screech in response to our voice. "Prepare yourselves, brothers ! Blood for the Blood God ! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE !"
The gunship descended, and the Grey Knights' perception of the power accumulating below became clearer. Through the psychic mist of bloodshed, they finally saw the shadow of their quarry : a vast figure of power and carnage with broken wings, towering above the battlefield with a great daemonic axe in its hands.
On the ground, Guardsmen fighting the cultists saw the silver aircraft, and rejoiced at the arrival of reinforcements.
This is the place, one of the warriors sent to his brothers telepathically. The other nine sent back the psychic equivalent of a nod of approval. This is our target.
"Nebula of Retribution," the Justicar called out to the ship in orbit that had carried the squad to this world from the Berrenos system. "We have confirmation of the coordinates. Open fire."
Hundreds of kilometers above, a single shell was loaded into the main gun of the Inquisitorial vessel. It was not ammunition typically used by the Imperial Navy, for its applications in space combat were limited. It had been designed by the tech-priests indentured to the Holy Ordos, each instance of its design crafted according to exacting specifications so that they could only be fired by the ship for which they were meant. It was a necessary safety precaution, for within that shell was confined the burning wrath of the God-Emperor.
The gun aimed and fired, and the shell descended through the atmosphere of Andros' Rest like a streaking comet. It hit the ground in the middle of the ruins where Imperials and heretics were battling, and unleashed a fiery apocalypse upon that battlefield.
Chemical components salvaged from workshops dating back to the Dark Age of Technology were mixed and ignited by devices built from schematics no one living truly understood, and a storm of flames spread outward from the point of impact. It engulfed cultists and Guardsmen alike, making no distinction between those faithful to the Golden Throne and those whose ancestors had been turned from the righteous path by the madness that had descended upon Andros' Rest during the War of the Beast.
The ancient stones reddened and cracked under the sudden increase in temperature, and the remnants of structures that had withstood the passage of aeons tumbled down as their supports were melted to slag.
Within fire-proof suits of ceramite, the Heirs of Sanguinius watched in silent horror as soldiers they had fought alongside for months were incinerated in seconds. Diabolists clad in black and gold warplate cursed as their pawns and sacrifices were taken from their grasp. They could not even offer up the souls of those consumed by the blaze to the Ruinous Powers, for the incendiary bomb had been blessed with one of the Emperor's own divine tears, and its shell forged from metal cooled within holy water and covered in seraphic invocations.
This power was not enough to affect the Possessed Marines who had been scattered among the mortals beyond an unpleasant tingling, but it had effectively deprived the Forsaken Sons of a large chunk of their resources on Andros' Rest in one single strike, while also crippling their aims on the war-world. Yet few would have called it a victory.
Clouds of black ash filled the air, blocking sight and making thermal imagery completely useless. Within that fog of the dead, the Secondborn were drawn to their remaining foes by senses beyond mortal ken. Their bloodlust, already considerable from the fighting, was heightened even further, and they fell upon the Heirs of Sanguinius, forcing the Space Marines into a desperate fight for survival.
Overcome by the sudden demise of their allies and the onslaught of the Possessed Marines, several of the Heirs succumbed to the curse of the gene-line, slipping into the Black Rage as their surroundings faded from view, replaced by images of the Vengeful Spirit and the fateful confrontation between Sanguinius and Horus Lupercal. They roared their hatred in response to the Secondborn's own howls, and met their attack with equal fury.
And at the center of the scorched ruins, surrounded by the ashes and blackened bones of his mortal followers, the Blood Champion laughed in a singular and terrible voice.
There is fire all around us, and the scent of burning flesh and wood. The last scream of the humans is silenced as the air within their lungs burn, while amidst the inferno our mortal brothers stand untouched, wreathed in auras of power as they attempt to draw upon the torment and death our foes have unleashed.
And they fail, one by one. There is something to this inferno beyond mere fire. The flames lick at our armor before dying out for lack of fuel, and though they do not burn us, we still feel pain at their kiss. There is something of the Anathema in this weapon our foes have deployed, and though it threatens to ruin all that we seek to accomplish, we cannot help but laugh.
"This can still be salvaged, oh mighty one," one of the Diabolists calls to us from what he thinks is a safe distance. Fool. It does not matter how close or far he is : all that keeps him from our wrath are the runes etched upon his armor and daubed in the blood of the Awakened One himself, willingly given at the dawn of the Black Crusade. "If these interlopers are slain, we can bring in more tribesmen from elsewhere on the planet and continue our work !"
We do not answer. We do not need to. The silvery gunship opens fire as it descends, and the Diabolist is silenced as high-caliber rounds pierce through his armor and turn him to pulp. The side doors of the gunship open, and from them jump ten warriors in silver clad, wielding halberds and sword that blaze with anathema fire.
We roar and lift our axe, and our lesser brethren heed our call. As we charge toward the leader of the silver warriors, the one whose soul burns brightest of all, the Secondborn come upon them as well.
At last, a worthy foe !
The Possessed Marines who attacked the Grey Knights outnumbered their foe three to one. Even with the support of the gunship hovering above them, this was a numerical advantage that, combined with the dark gifts their unholy communions with the Neverborn had bestowed upon them, would have seen ordinary Space Marines overcome in moments.
But those were no mere Space Marines. They were Grey Knights, the sons of Titan. Every trace of human weakness had been hammered out from them through decades of training harsher than anything a Space Marine aspirant ever went through, their mortal identities bled from them through treatments that could not be called anything else than torture.
With Nemesis blades the Grey Knights stood their ground against the Possessed, while their leader, haloed in seraphic light, charged through the ash-clouded ruins and toward the towering shape whose infernal glow could be seen even through the smoke. The Justicar raised his blade just in time to turn aside a mighty blow, as the Blood Champion struck with its daemonic axe.
The weapon hit the scorched earth, biting deep into soil and stone before the Chosen of Arken ripped it free in a shower of rock shards. As it did so, it swiped at its foe with its free hand. The Grey Knight stepped back, and the tip of the Blood Champion's claws barely scratched the blessed ceramite. Smoke rose from where the armor had been touched, as it did from the Blood Champion's fingertips.
"Titan's son !" it roared, eyes blazing with eldritch fire. "Tell me, which blood is it that flow through your veins ? Do your ancestry lies with those who remained bound, or those who broke their oaths to their masters to kneel before the False Emperor once more ?"
"Only the Emperor's Gift runs through my flesh, daemon," spat the Justicar, his sword coming up for another blow, aimed at the Blood Champion's leg. It bit deep, cutting through warped ceramite, muscle and bone in one swoop. Blood gushed from the wound, and the Blood Champion stumbled, but remained standing.
"Is that what they told you ?" it sneered, striking again. "That you and your brothers sprung whole from the Corpse-God's loins ? Surely your slave-masters must be subtler than this."
This time the Justicar dodged the axe blow entirely, but wasn't fast enough to avoid the kick that the Blood Champion unleashed in his direction with its wounded leg. Even with the damage it had suffered, there was plenty of strength in the blow that hit the Grey Knight square in the chest, sending him flying back and crashing on the ground, lifting a cloud of ash.
Ripping its axe free of the earth once more, the Blood Champion limped toward its fallen foe. As it advanced, it swirled the monstrous weapon like a mortal man might a rapier, and it cut the air with a sound like the screams of innocents.
"You are not so different from us," it continued. "You are Space Marines into which something more was poured, and it burned away everything you were until only the instrument of a Power was left. The only difference is that the God we serve does not lie to us like yours. And while the False Emperor hoards His power on His hollow throne, Khorne is most generous with his !"
The Blood Champion stood, towering above the fallen Justicar, and raised its daemonic axe.
"When this world awakens," it proclaimed, "all who stand upon it shall receive the blessing of mighty Khorne. As it was before when the Beast walked the stars, they shall witness the glory of the Skull Throne, and be reborn in blood and doom eternal !"
The Blood Champion smiled as it looked down upon the Justicar, blood running freely from its glowing jaw.
"We wonder : will you and your brothers be reborn too ?"
"We are Grey Knights," shouted the Justicar, rising to his feet. "No evil shall ever touch us, for the Emperor's Gift is proof against all such blandishments !"
"Then you will die !" roared the Blood Champion, and it brought its axe down.
In that moment, the Justicar, who had been telepathically linked with the rest of his squad, each warrior amplifying the others' precognitive powers, saw his opening – his chance to end the threat that had been foreseen by the Supreme Grand Master. It was small, for all that he had wounded the monster before him and taken little damage in return so far. The creature would only grow stronger as the confrontation went on, for such was the way of the Blood God's servants.
The Justicar abandoned all thoughts of defense or dodging. As the axe came down, he pushed forward, focusing all of his own psychic might and all that he could draw from his battle-brothers into his Nemesis sword. The blade ignited like a caged star, and as the Blood Champion's weapon tore through ceramite and flesh, the Justicar's sword plunged into its chest.
The seraphic power charged within the blade met the infernal energies saturating the Blood Champion's body, and the two forces, anathema to one another, detonated. The Blood Champion was hurled off its feet as arcs of pure Warp energy leapt from it and buried themselves into the ground, turning the ash to black glass where they earthed themselves.
The Justicar's left arm hit the ground a second later, severed at the shoulder by the Blood Champion's last blow. But though it had come at a price, the Justicar now stood over the broken form of the Blood Champion, his sword still held in his right hand, bloodied but victorious.
The other Grey Knights rallied to their leader. They had triumphed over their foe, slaying the Diabolists and the Secondborn who had broken from fighting the Heirs of Sanguinius to come to their Chosen lord's assistance. They, too, had suffered for their victories : their armors were rent and blood flowed from cursed wounds, and one of them had to be carried by another, rendered half-unconscious by a blow that had all but eviscerated him.
Still, despite the grievous injury dealt to it, the Blood Champion stirred. The daemon with which he who had been Hektor of the Twelfth Legion had been joined had been mighty even at the time of their union, and had grown even stronger as it feasted upon the plentiful slaughters of the Forsaken Sons. Already the Possessed Lord's wounds were closing as it drew upon its power to repair the damage that had been inflicted upon it.
But the Grey Knights would not give it the chance to finish healing itself. Methodically, with an ease come from centuries of practice, they set to the grim business of dispatching their foe.
Our body is broken. They cut off our arms and shattered our legs. Our spine is severed in three different places, and there is a bolt round in our skull, kept from exploding merely by our own will. They stand in a circle around us now, reciting insipid prayers that still hold enough strength to burn us. Do they know where those words they speak first came from ?
We are already dead, and we know it. At long last, the death we inflicted upon so many has come for us too. As we knew it would. As we knew it must. As we know it should.
And yet, we struggle still. We defy the reaper, holding the end at bay with howling rage.
We laugh in their perfect faces, hidden beneath their helms. They do not appreciate it. They stop their little chant.
"It is over, monster," one of them shouts at us. "Your scheme has failed. Your power is broken !"
"Over ? It is never over, little knights. The slaughter will never end. The Blood God wills it so."
"It is the Emperor's will that shall prevail. All your foul gods will perish, in the end, and the galaxy shall be cleansed of their impurity !"
There is such certainty in his voice. Such belief. He truly believes in what he is saying, this machine of metal and flesh that thinks itself a man.
But he is wrong, and we will make him see before we die.
"It is this galaxy's purpose to bleed !" we roar to the skies, throwing our head back. "It is the nature of every living thing to fight and die. You cannot deny Khorne his victory, little witch. He has already won. He won from the moment the first ape-like human picked up a rock and used it to bash in his brother's skull ! The entire species … the entire galaxy … belongs to him. The Corpse-Emperor is nothing but a pretender who tried to deny reality – and failed."
We smile. "But you understand this, don't you ? You, who rained fire and death upon us, uncaring of those who were caught in the flames of your judgement. You know that only death can move the stars, that blood is the only currency that matters in this broken universe we inhabit."
"There truly is nothing left of human in you, isn't there, abomination ?" the knight spits, his words laden with contempt. "Nothing left of whoever you were before you gave yourself to the Ruinous Powers. Just like the rest of these 'Forsaken Sons', you have abandoned everything that once made you worthy of fighting in the Great Crusade."
Something flares inside us, some emotion we haven't felt in a long time.
"IT WAS THE EMPEROR WHO FORSAKE US ! It was HIM who lied to us, who deceived us and made us die for His ambition, for His dream. It was a pretty lie, the Great Crusade. To claim that there was something more than bloodshed to existence … But it was only ever a convenient lie the False Emperor used to manipulate us. He knew, even then, that only through war could His vision be realized."
We laugh again, even though there is little joy left. "This world knows the truth. We would have shown it to you … to all of you …"
The knight does not say anything more. He walks to us, and plunges his sword into our chest once more, right next where it struck us first. We feel its tip pierce through our armor-skin and into the warped bones and organs under it. It burns us with a hateful fire, and we feel the strands of our existence snap one by one. We cannot hold on.
We try to lash out, to bite at his throat with our teeth, the only weapon left to us. But he is strong, and our strength has been broken. All we manage is to make the sword dig deeper, and our blood flows from the wound. This, too, is pleasing to Khorne, we know.
We have always known, from the moment the Nails were pounded into our skull. War cares not for whence the blood flows, only that it does. Why should Khorne be any different ?
We are Hektor Heker'Arn, and this is our death.
Please, let this be our death …
Fifteen hours later, the Nebula of Retribution reached the system's Mandeville Point and vanished into the Warp. On its way there, it did not answer the hails of the other Imperial forces demanding an explanation for their actions, and the callous slaughter of thousands of Imperial Guardsmen. Even the furious demands of the Heirs of Sanguinius, whose warriors had reached the center of the scorched ruins with their blades red with Secondborn blood only to find the swiftly-decaying corpse of the angel with broken wings they had spent months hunting, were met with silence.
Knowledge of the event was swiftly suppressed. The death of the Guardsmen was attributed to a last-ditch weapon employed by the heretics in order to avenge the death of their leader, the so-called 'angel with broken wings'. Any questioning this or bringing up the last transmissions from the battle-zone, speaking of a silvery aircraft seen above, were quickly silenced by pale-faced Commissars.
The leaders of the Heirs of Sanguinius received a letter, sealed under marks not seen by any of their blood since the Chapter's foundation. The letter was burned after reading, and the Space Marines, too, put the matter behind us, regardless of the shame they felt in doing so.
In the days to come, the tide of the war on Andros' Rest would turn in the favour of the Imperium once more, as the tribes withdrew from the frontlines and back into the jungle, fleeing from the Heirs now that they had no counter to the Space Marines' might. Soon, the Chapter's officers met with those of the Imperial Guard, and informed them that they needed to leave the war-world : now that the situation there was back under control, the spear of the Adeptus Astartes was required elsewhere in the Azarok Sector.
The only trace that the Nebula of Retribution had left – beyond the scorched earth where the antediluvian ruins had stood – were the Inquisitorial personnel now deployed alongside the Imperial Regiments. With the destruction of the Blood Champion, the cases of Warp-related insanity among the troops had swiftly diminished.
Eventually, the lead Inquisitor decided that they would continue to observe as the Imperial Guard fought against the tribes of Andros' Rest. There were tens of thousands of Guardsmen left on the planet, and while they could do much good elsewhere in Azarok, the possibility they might be compromised meant that it was best to simply leave them on Andros' Rest for now.
Of course, this wasn't the explanation given to the officers and passed down to the troops. Instead, the faithful soldiers of the God-Emperor were told that though the schemes of the tribes had been broken by the Space Marines, their defiance of His will could only be met with total eradication. Only when the heretics were completely wiped out would the Guard withdraw from Andros' Rest.
Whether such a cleansing would be achieved by the strength of the Guard or unleashed from the heavens as Exterminatus was yet to be decided.
AN : What's this ? Two chapters of Warband of the Forsaken Sons in a week ? What sorcery is this ?
Yes, as it turns out, being trapped inside your appartment on mandatory leave from work does tend to leave one with a lot of free time. I would ask you to give thanks to the Plaguefather for his blessings, if it wouldn't be in so astonishingly poor taste - and also, screw you, Nurgle. I swear to the True Powers, if my grandparents get sick, the revenge I shall wreak upon the Iron Hands of the Roboutian Heresy shall be legendary. Do not test me, you pile of sentient tumors.
... I may have been going a bit stir-crazy when writing this, so take that into account. Still, I am quite satisfied with how this chapter came out. A return to form, so to speak : an "episodic" chapter that still advances the plot.
And the character deaths continue to pile up. Yet let's be honest : was Hektor Heker'Arn ever going to go out any other way ?
As I said before, the next few chapters are going to be like this one. Right now, my next writing project is an Interlude for the Roboutian Heresy. There is a list of them planned before The Angel War, introducing the various participants of that particular mess.
After that ... well, maybe I will focus on those Interludes for a time, or maybe I will go back to A Blade Recast. Hell, maybe I will go back to Prince of the Eye for a while.
Since I still have a few days of free time to occupy myself in, which of my stories would YOU like me to focus on in the immediate future ?
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this chapter. As usual, please tell me what you thought of it, what could have been done better, and what you are hoping will happen next.
Zahariel out.