"The Hierophant :
A bridge between the mortal world and the divine, the Hierophant card represents the rise of illumination. […] It predicts the coming of an individual with the ability to inspire others, as well as to bind them, whether through concord or servitude. It is the card of the covenant, predicting an accord made between those of the mortal realm and the higher principles."
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 – Shrine-world Nerius Sanctus
745.M32
Just enough remained visible of Nerius Sanctus' past as the capital of the local Ecclesiarchical Diocese to make its current state all the more horrifying.
Karalet, once a Dark Apostle of the Word Bearers Legion, now Lord of Ash and one of Arken's Chosen, had come to the world more than a year before the beginning of the Black Crusade. Through the use of sorcery, he had inspired the creation of a cult among the miner clans that worked the asteroid fields near the system's edge. Their assistance had allowed him to cross the Warp and arrive to Nerius Sanctus months before Arken unleashed the Black Crusade upon the Sector.
The Dark Apostle had slipped onto Nerius Sanctus unseen, and begun to use the skills he had sharpened during the conquest of the Wailing Storm. Rarely had the Lord of Ash, working together with Dekaros, the Lord of Shadow, needed to wage war to conquer the worlds they had brought under the Forsaken Sons' aegis. Theirs were more subtle methods, and Karalet used every trick he had learned during his time in the Seventeenth Legion and perfected since on Nerius Sanctus.
The sacrifice of the planet's Cardinal to the Ruinous Powers, combined with the desecration of the tomb of Saint Nerius, had been enough to open the first breach in the Veil and unleash a host of daemons upon the great Cathedral that had served as the world's administrative and religious center.
Thanks to the subversion of Inquisitor Gaelis Serventas, the evil of the Lord of Ash had gone unopposed. The astropaths had been silenced, all traffic coming out of the system had stopped, with pilgrim vessels and tithe transports being assaulted right after emerging from the Warp by the now thoroughly corrupted miner clans. The sheer size of the Imperium had played in favor of Karalet there, as it would have taken much longer before anyone noticed the silence of even a Shrine-world. Sorcerous wards woven across the entire system by his followers had kept the disturbances in the Aether from spreading too much, and by the time the Imperium realized something had gone wrong, it was far too late – and the Sector had other problems to deal with.
Statues of Imperial Saints the size of Titans had been cast down or defaced, and in their place blasphemous monuments to Ruin had been raised by cultists and slaves – not that there was much distinction between the two groups after a few months of exposure to Karalet's dark works. The natives of Nerius Sanctus had been broken, their minds scoured by the awful things the Dark Apostle and his minions had unleashed upon their once-pristine world. No longer did they pray to the God-Emperor, dedicating their every breath to Him on Earth with the habit of generations : now they sacrificed at the altars of Chaos, shedding blood and sweat to continue in their work.
City-sized gardens carefully tended to by generations of devout worshippers so that the trees and flowers formed the emblems of long-dead heroes had been burned and despoiled, their greenery transformed into foetid marshes infested with disease-carrying vermin. The streets of the world's single city had run red with blood offered to Chaos with the stolen weapons of dead martyrs. The roads of contemplation and wonder walked by pilgrims were now marked by the crucified corpses of tens of thousands of Imperial priests, their tortured souls bound to their bodies by unholy sorcery so that their torment could continue. Small chapels and monasteries dotted across the Shrine-World's surface had been destroyed or transformed into darker temples to the Ruinous Powers.
In the Wailing Storm, the Lord of Ash had dreamt of a distant world, where the father he had abandoned lurked in brooding exile. For all that Karalet despised the weakness of Lorgar, he had found those visions of Sicarius beautiful, and sought to make Nerius Sanctus into a reflection of that most unholy of daemon worlds. His vision was well on its way to becoming reality, but sundering the veil separating reality from the Immaterium would take more than the desolation already unleashed.
Once the last pockets of resistance had been destroyed and the last temple of the False Emperor replaced by a monument to Chaos, the true conquest of Nerius Sanctus had begun. The initial site of the daemonic incursion, the grand Cathedral where the Cardinal of Nerius Sanctus had lived and addressed his people for centuries, had been remade into a temple to the Primordial Pantheon, the sections that had burned in the original incursion had been built anew, consecrated according to dark auspices. There, daemons walked freely, feeding on the despoiled faith that permeated every blood-soaked stone.
Each of the Cathedral's four wings was consecrated to one of the Dark Gods, and served as the domain of a High Priest of that god. The Lord of Ash had selected each of them from the throngs of followers of Chaos, looking for the signs of the Ruinous Powers' favor and reading the skeins of their fates to ensure they would suit his purpose. It was these four apostles of Ruin that directed the dark ceremonies meant to attract their patron god's favor, while in the Cathedral's central sanctum, Karalet wove the eldritch energies that flowed across all of Nerius Sanctus.
The rituals had been ongoing for weeks, and Nerius Sanctus was slipping closer to the Realms of Chaos with every passing day. The Warp spread from the Cathedral like a tide of madness, with the lesser temples of Ruin that it reached serving as relays to its corruption.
Soon, the cultists whispered to each other. Soon, the Neverborn roared on the other side of the Veil. Soon, thought the Lord of Ash as he beheld all that he had wrought and smiled.
Soon.
The knights in silver who came to Nerius Sanctus knew little of what had transpired on the Shrine-World before. Their information was fragmentary, formed of the reports of the remaining Inquisitorial presence in the Azarok Sector and the divinations of their own leaders. They did not know, for instance, that Gaelis Serventas had not betrayed the Imperium willingly – they did not know the horrors that the Lord of Ash had visited upon the Inquisitor in order to turn him. Nor did they know just how soon the Dark Apostle had come to Nerius Sanctus and begun his dread work.
But they did know that they didn't have much time. They could feel the pulsating power of the Warp, growing stronger with every beat of the ritual's blasphemous heart. All nineteen of them had sworn to prevent that potential evil from reaching dreadful actualization – sworn before the Supreme Grand Master himself, as the Grey Knights scattered across Azarok to deal with the fires lit by the Awakened One while Lord Janus went to confront the Chaos Lord responsible for it all.
They stood in a circle marked by the absence of one of their own – a brother they had lost before the call to gather at Azarok had been sent, with no time to journey to Titan to fill the void. Around them, tech-priests worked frenetically, reciting hymns to the Machine-God and making the final preparations for what needed to be done.
The warship Sliver of Atonement had managed to reach orbit unseen, her stealth systems proving more than capable of dealing with the auspexes and witches of the flotilla of transports and cult ships that drifted above Nerius Sanctus. She hovered thousands of kilometers above the nexus of Warp energy that, according to their maps, had once been the planet's foremost Cathedral. She could not get further down, nor could the gunships in her hangar be trusted to cross through the eldritch storms raging across the atmosphere.
There was no time for elaborate plans or investigation, and the Sliver lacked the armaments required to pierce through the planet's Warp-laced atmosphere and obliterate the root of the corruption from orbit. The Grey Knights would have to resort to the kind of desperate assault against all odds that very rarely ended well – but it was for that kind of warfare that they had been created.
And so, teleportation. Never a perfectly reliable method of transportation, even under the best of aetheric circumstances and with the relic technology available to the Knights of Titan, using it to pierce through the storms and the infernal wards woven in the Chaos Cathedral was going to be a trial like few others. But there was no choice, not if the Grey Knights were to have any chance of stopping the ritual before its dreadful climax.
And so they stood, divided in four quarters of a circle, holding their sacred creed in their minds as a shield against madness and corruption. The tech-priests had worked wonders in the few hours since the Grey Knights had discerned the ritual's pattern, and managed to divide the destination of the teleport – through five of them had wiped their own minds to expiate the shame of what they had needed to do to the sacred machine in order to make it possible.
Finally, all preparations were complete. A lever of brass encrusted with cogs was pulled, there was a flash of light – and the nineteen Grey Knights were gone … save for one, whose body was spread across the entire platform, armor and flesh broken and ground together by the enormous energies unleashed. Those same energies left entire sections of the machine in ruin, and over twenty priests and servitors dead in spite of the shielding that covered them.
But the eighteen surviving Grey Knights all made it to their destination, which was miraculous in itself. Whether it would be enough, however, remained to be seen.
Close to the nexus of Warp energy on Nerius Sanctus, things like directions and space tended to lose their meaning, replaced by intent and power. But before Karalet had ever come to the Shrine-world, bringing illumination and ruin in equal measure, the Cathedral's wing which had been dedicated to Khorne had been turned northwards.
The screams and clashing blades were so loud that the thunderclap of five Grey Knights teleporting in went almost unheard. The shrieks of outrage of the Bloodletter who first noticed their presence – quickly followed by a single shot that ended its incarnation and splattered its boiling vitae onto the already defiled floor – however, were heard by all.
All ranged weapons were forbidden within the arenas of the Slaughterprince, for melee combat was the one aspect of war most sacred to Khorne. A roar of fury rose from hundreds of throats at the Grey Knights' blasphemy. From the eight pits that had been carved into the floor, where crazed Frateris Templars battled with bestial mutants and skinless Neverborn amidst the dug-out bones of long-dead priests, those who spilled blood for Khorne sensed the Blood God's displeasure.
Atop his altar of skulls, the mutant warlord who was named Perdicass, the Slaughterprince, spat a command in the degenerate Low Gothic dialect of his Warp-torn homeworld. Less than one cultist in ten understood that debased language, but the intent behind it was clear to all of them. They screamed their own prayers to Khorne, and charged, heedless that the foe was taller and mightier than them by far, for they were lost to the rage of the God of War, and he cared not whence the blood flowed.
Within seconds, the Grey Knights found themselves under attack. First came the cultists who had been watching the arena fights with rapturous fervor, a howling mob that crashed against the silver ceramite only to be cut down by Nemesis blades in droves. These wretches were little more than chaff, found worthy only to add their mind-blasted devotion to the strength of the ritual battles.
The Grey Knights slaughtered them by the score, barely slowing in their advance toward the center of the vast room, where stood the altar of skulls of the Slaughterprince. The sons of Titan had immediately recognized it as the center of this particular branch of Nerius Sanctus' great ritual.
But soon enough, the actual fighters and champions of Khorne joined in the fray, having climbed out of the pits where they had duelled for the Blood God's favor. Hulking mutants and warriors clad in crimson warplate, monsters with teeth of steel and claws dripping with gore, all heeded the will of their dark priest and hurled themselves at the intruders in their midst. These were more powerful foes, and while none were the equals of the Grey Knights, they were far more numerous.
To defeat these greater heretics with haste, the Grey Knights began to draw upon their psychic might, only to find that access to the tumultuous font of energy that was the Warp was dulled. Even though the veil between reality and the Immaterium was thinning by the heartbeat, this section of the corrupted Cathedral was dedicated to Khorne, who abhorred sorcery in all its forms. While this ruinous benediction could not block them completely, the Grey Knights's abilities were hampered, and they were forced to rely on blade and bolter to fight off the gladiators.
The first Grey Knight to fall succumbed to a blow from a cultist who had once knelt before the image of Him on Earth and been anointed as a war-leader of the Frateris Templars. His power maul, covered in sigils daubed in blood, smashed through the ceramite helm of the son of Titan and pulped the skull within. The cultist was immediately slain by another of the Grey Knights, but the loss of their battle-brother disrupted their formation. All momentum was lost, and they were forced to stand back to back, surrounded by a growing bulwark of corpses.
Slowly, the Slaughterprince walked down the altar of skulls, his every step crushing bone underfoot. Perdicass was tall, but unlike many devotees of Khorne, his frame was spindly. His body was clad in a suit of iron covered in vicious hooks made to tear through the skin of his foes and cover him in their blood. In his hands he held two short swords with jagged edges, one made of bone and the other of black stone.
Even in the throes of bloodlust, the cultists parted before Perdicass, who came face-to-face with the Grey Knights. His blades clashed with the edge of a Nemesis sword, and for a moment the chosen of Khorne strained against the Emperor-given strength of the Grey Knight that wielded it, the air crackling with the confronting powers of these two champions' patrons.
Then Perdicass smiled, and his tongue leapt out of his mouth, striking through the Grey Knight's eye-lense. Its barbed tip pierced through the helmet and stabbed into the warrior's brain, killing him instantly. The Slaughterprince laughed as his mutated tongue returned to his mouth, and he tasted the brain matter of the son of Titan. It burned him, for the flesh of every Grey Knight was permeated with the Emperor's grace, but he did not care.
The fall of their brother energized the four remaining Grey Knights, who suddenly turned toward the Slaughterprince. Moving with such speed that the champions they faced were caught by surprise, they ran the Khornate priest through, two of their Nemesis blades piercing his guard and skewering his flesh before a third severed his head. Yet in the moment before the final blow, the Slaughterprince called upon his bloody-handed god, and was granted one final boon : his arm bent and twisted as a new articulation formed, and his sword of stone plunged through the hearts of one of the Grey Knights holding him impaled.
Though they had slain the chosen of Khorne, the remaining Grey Knights had exposed themselves to the now fully enraged gladiators. The slaughter that followed was nearly total, and only one Grey Knight survived the brutal melee, his armor covered in blood and rents as he forced himself onward, toward the dread nexus of the Chaos ritual unfolding across Nerius Sanctus.
The arched ceilings of the Cathedral's southern wing were filled with multicolored smoke from a hundred incense burners. Powders made of crushed human organs and plants that grew under the light of Warp-tainted stars burned or were ingested by the hundreds of debased Slaaneshi cultists who laid upon ornate cushions, lost to the depths of excess, their minds wandering into dark places and occasionally catching a glimpse of the Youngest God's Silver Palace.
There was not a single insect or vermin in the entire Wing of Sensations : a mere sniff of the smoke was enough to make them collapse on the spot, their tiny hearts bursting. Even the cultists of Slaanesh who gathered there to worship the Dark Prince could not last long before their own bodies collapsed. Daemonettes danced in the smoke, and the sound of their laughter echoed across the hall in unearthly ways as they caressed the skin of passed-out cultists with their claws, waiting for the moment of their deaths so that they could feast on their sin-laden souls.
When four Grey Knights teleported in from the Sliver of Atonement, the sparks of their arrival set the fog aflame. The firestorm engulfed the entire wing, burning hundreds of insensate cultists to death, while others were dragged from their stupor by the agony of being scorched alive. The Daemonettes screamed in outrage as the symbolism of the fog's inflammation, combined with the flames themselves, destroyed their incarnations and sent them shrieking back to the Realms of Chaos.
Flames remained after the initial explosion, and in that inferno the surviving cultists hurled their charred bodies at the silver-clad warriors in their midst. Laughter and cries of devotion came out of burned throats, and they struck with daggers and whips that had dripped with the blood of their wielders not long ago.
It wasn't enough. The cultists' weapons shattered against the Grey Knights' blessed war-plate, and the four sons of Titan cut down the slaves of Ruin without pause, advancing at speed toward the center of the Dark Cathedral. Even when black-skinned Neverborn rose from the burned corpses of the dead – daemons that had been born from the madness of men who, in ages past, had come to relish the sensation of burning themselves and others – the Grey Knights did not pause.
Not, at least, until they came before the altar of Slaanesh and the creature that presided over it.
The drug-addled cultists called their high priest It-That-Slithers. It had an actual name, but none of them could speak it, and merely hearing It-That-Slithers speak it aloud was enough to send mere mortals into convulsions – something to do with the way its many mouths spoke in soundwaves human ears were not meant to listen to.
The Lord of Ash had found the creature amidst the tombs of its people, desecrating their remnants in ever-more perverse ways to earn the favor of Slaanesh. For six days and night as measured on Old Earth, the Dark Apostle had fought It-That-Slithers, pitting his own knowledge of the daemonic against that of the mutated monster. It had surrendered eventually, laughing in ecstasy at the sheer pleasure of battle after untold aeons with only the dead for company.
Now It-That-Slithers reared back its reptilian head, discarding the cloaks of human leather sown with golden thread that had covered its form, and hissed at the Grey Knights marching toward it. The sound of it echoed across the room, and a fresh host of Neverborn emerged in response to this call. The Grey Knights found themselves surrounded on all sides, but their blades cut through the tide of pale, sensual, infernal flesh without pause as they carved a path up the steps of pristine marble leading to the altar's top.
One of the knights was cut off from his brothers when a horror with skin made of fingernails and eyes that glowed with the madness of tyrants fell from the ceiling, crashing into the warrior and bringing him down for a single heartbeat before it was caught and destroyed. With a shriek that only remotely resembled laughter, It-That-Slithers pointed an appendage at the isolated warrior. A beam of black light burst from its limb, and smashed through the Grey Knight's wards, which had turned from unbreakable fortress to merely almost impossible to break by his separation from his squad.
The beam struck at the warrior's helmet, and his head simply vanished. Deeply ingrained muscle memory kept the headless corpse fighting for a few more seconds, cutting a dozen daemons before it finally fell.
By that point the three remaining Grey Knights had made it to the top of the altar, and two of them turned to hold the infernal tide while the third duelled the Dark Prince's abominable priest. A dozen scaled tentacles rose, each holding a vicious-looking dagger, and It-That-Slithers leapt at the silver-clad warrior with surprising speed. In the moment before contact, the Grey Knight took in the full aspect of his foe – something like a grotesque amalgamation of snakes, with an enormous one serving as the main body and the tails of smaller specimens serving as its myriad limbs. Its skin was pale, translucent in places, revealing organs that glowed with the Youngest God's unholy blessings.
With daggers forged in the corpse-fires of its people and covered in poisons made from the same ingredients as the drugs its cultists had surrendered themselves to, It-That-Slithers struck at the Grey Knight. Half of its limbs fell before the blows could reach, severed in a single sweep of the Grey Knight's Nemesis halberd. But the others hit, and though the warded plate glowed with seraphic power it was not enough to deflect them. For though Nerius Sanctus was no daemon world yet, it hovered on the threshold of that apocalyptic transformation, and the gazes of the Ruinous Powers laid heavy upon it, empowering their minions in a way that made the slightest chance of harm a certainty.
Blasphemously blessed blades bit deep into transhuman flesh, and the Grey Knight grunted as pain beyond anything he had ever experienced flooded his body. Yet he was a son of Titan, broken and remade on that hallowed moon, and well used to pain. His sword arm did not pause, and he struck deep into the creature's flesh, skewering it before pouring one last burst of psychic energy through its entire body. Only then did he collapse, willpower no longer able to keep him alive.
As the corpse of It-That-Slithers fell from the altar, the daemons it had summoned in its last moments began to lose substance, their tether to the Materium sundered with the Slaaneshi lord's demise. Yet before dissolution could take hold, the ritual at the Dark Cathedral's heart pulsed once more, reinvigorating the Neverborn with its fell energies. At the same time, the corpse of It-That-Slithers twisted and burst as it hit the floor, cracking like a loathsome egg, and from it emerged an immense Chaos Spawn that snapped at the Grey Knights with blind, hungry mouths.
The two Grey Knights fought long and well, but when the last survivor stood atop the heaving corpse of the Chaos Spawn, he was too exhausted to block the claw that cut through his spine and left him to bleed atop a pile of dead bodies, surrounded by Slaaneshi daemons that still feared to approach his prone form until he finally breathed his last.
For what seemed like an eternity, the only sound within the Library of Truth had been the scratching of quills and the breath of a thousand and one scribes. Though billions of words were written upon the gathered records, not one was spoken aloud, for each of the scribes had ritually cut out their own tongues before being admitted into the Library.
Every book of prayer, every scroll and piece of parchment that had survived the flames of Nerius Sanctus' conquest had been brought here, where the scribes of Tzeentch could defile their contents. With a vast array of chemicals and tools, words of devotion and prayer were scrapped off, the text edited into a manner pleasing to the Bestower of Revelations – one of the uncounted masks of Tzeentch, which was venerated in the Library of Truth. The scribes worked under the light of glowing mushrooms that grew out of the bodies of the Library's previous custodians, who still lived despite the immense torment they suffered as the very light of knowledge was used to illuminate its defilement.
Once they were done with one book or scroll, the scribes brought it to their lord, the Shrouded One, who looked upon it and judged its worth. Its inscrutable decision would determine where in the ever-expanding library the text would be stored, with the shelves closest to the Shrouded One's pulpit being the one thought the most prestigious.
Of the four champions of Chaos appointed by the Lord of Ash to oversee the wings of the Dark Cathedral, the Shrouded One was the only native to Nerius Sanctus. In another life, it had been a lowly menial of the Ecclesiarchy, working in the archives, carrying piles of scrolls and ancient books from one place to the next, never given the time or education to look at the words it carried to its betters.
When Karalet had begun weaving his web across the Shrine-world, it had been among the first to join the ranks of the cults the Dark Apostle had fostered. Until the Lord of Ash had whispered fragments of the Primordial Truth into its ears, it had never been discontent with its lot in life – it had never known anything else, after all. Born into a life of servitude and told from the cradle that such a life was a worthy one, it had never given any thought to ascending beyond its appointed station.
All of that had changed as Karalet spoke to it and the others he had marked as potential recruits. The words of the Dark Apostle had planted the seed of ambition into its soul, and that seed had blossomed to transform the nameless menial into a towering shape of shadow, smoke and refracted light, covered within a shroud woven from the most sacred of scrolls. It was the foremost servant of Tzeentch on the entire world, and the architect of its former masters' doom.
Its greatest secret was that, even now, the Shrouded One did not know how to read. It was through other senses that he judged the merits of each work brought to it, dipping into the eldritch tides every time one of the scribes brought it their defiled manuscripts.
The arrival of four Grey Knights sundered the silence that had fallen on the Cathedral's eastern wing. Tottering piles of leather-bound books collapsed, and pages flying on the wind caught the sparks of teleportation and ignited.
As the inferno spread, the tongueless scribes scrabbled to defend their domain from the gigantic invaders. Mutations that had been hidden beneath heavy robes and deep hoods were revealed to all as the gifts of the Bestower of Revelations were unleashed upon the Grey Knights.
And still not a word was spoken. Even the Grey Knights were silent, communicating with one another through the telepathic bond they shared as they cut down the mutated scribes with blade and bolter. The flames licked their armor, turning blue and purple as they reached scrolls covered in unholy inks, but could not penetrate their blessed ceramite.
For all their divine gifts, the scribes were not meant for battle. They could not hope to defeat the Grey Knights with martial might, and the scraps of sorcery they had been bestowed could not pierce the wards engraved within their armor. In an irony typical of the God of Lies, the most powerful incantations that had coalesced within their corrupted minds required a tongue to be spoken – knowledge, in this case, was not power enough. Not on its own.
The scribes died in silence, their blood and fluids adding to the desecration of the pieces of parchment that had survived the raging fire. On its pulpit, the Shrouded One watched the one-sided slaughter of its minions. Its fingers crackled with eldritch lightning, which it unleashed upon the four Grey Knights, heedless of the scribes caught in the blast.
But though the sorcerous energy incinerated the scribes and burned the holy scrolls affixed to the Grey Knights' armor, it failed to penetrate the ceramite. The Grey Knights moved on with singular purpose, a blade of purification aimed at the champion of Tzeentch that had now revealed itself. Soon, the pulpit of the Shrouded One vanished in a hail of wooden shards as the Grey Knights opened fire with their mounted bolters, turning it to shreds. The Shrouded One leapt from its pedestal, landing amidst the flames of its Library, and found itself surrounded by the four Grey Knights, its remaining scribes too far away to cross the inferno and come to its aid.
Cornered and with no means of escape or triumph, the Shrouded One pleaded to its distant god, which had already granted it so much at the petty cost of its soul. It implored the Bestower of Revelations, begging the Dark God to grant it the strength to slay these enemies of Ruin that desecrated the Library of Truth with their violent actions. It thought of all the offerings the cultists had made, of the sacred lies they had written atop the Ecclesiarchy's hollow truths, and asked for the reward it was due for these worthy deeds.
In the Court of Change, the Architect of Fate heard this prayer, as it heard every prayer directed to it by the foolish and the deluded. One of its thousands of mouths smiled, and granted the Shrouded One the boon it had implored of the Chaos God.
Knowledge bloomed into the mind of the Shrouded One, the sort of knowledge that Sorcerers had destroyed entire civilizations to gain but a glimpse of. Understanding of one of the nine hundred and ninety-nine names of Tzeentch burned bright within the champion's soul, granting it a direct channel to the all-but infinite power of the God of Lies.
As the four Grey Knights converged on it, the Shrouded One opened dry lips, and spoke the secret name of Tzeentch. God-like power burst forth from it, shattering the wards of the Grey Knights' armor and turning their bodies to ash. Plates of charred ceramite fell to the ground, smoking as the remains of Titan's warriors were spread amidst the inferno that consumed the Library of Truth.
The Shrouded One had just enough time to revel in its victory, in its new, incredible might, before the cost of wielding that power was enacted. Not only had the Shrouded One spoken the name of a God, it had done so while breaching the sacred rules of the Library. Even as it burned, the precepts and curses that had been laid into the construction of this temple to the Bestower of Revelations retained their potency.
There was just a moment, long enough for the Shrouded One to fully realize the depths of its predicament – then the wrath of the Changing God fell upon it. The secret name it had been granted burned, consuming everything it was, had been and ever would be, obliterating its existence completely. With a final, wailing shriek, the Shrouded One disintegrated, not even condemned to the eternal flames of the Warp where an echo of its knowledge might be harnessed by those who desired the Architect of Fate's doom. Empty robes fell to the ground, soon consumed by the flames that ravaged the entire Library of Truth, turning the entire wing of the Dark Cathedral to cinders.
All as Tzeentch had willed it.
Before Nerius Sanctus had fallen to Chaos, tens of thousands had dwelled in the Cathedral : the court of the Cardinal, its attendants, and the countless menials who cleansed, kept records, and took care of a thousand other duties. Furthermore, over the centuries, billions of pilgrims had come to Nerius Sanctus, travelling from all across the Azarok Sector and beyond to bask in the glory of its temples and relics.
Such a number of people needed to be fed, lest faith be overcome by hunger and the pilgrims riot in the Cathedral's corridors. The blessed gardens produced some food, but all of it was reserved for the Ecclesiarchy's highest-ranking members – the rest of the masses were not worthy of tasting the fruits of so hallowed a world. Foodstuffs were imported by the megaton, ships carrying tithes of grain and meat from distant worlds.
The vast kitchens that had kept the Cathedral's inhabitants fed had been located underground, but as space twisted and entire sections of the structure collapsed and were rebuilt, they had ended up in the western wing. From the vats of soup distributed to the pilgrims to the fresh meat and fruits served to the Cardinal, all had been made there, sustaining the lives of millions – and so when the time had come to build a temple to Nurgle, Karalet's decision hadn't been difficult.
A new kind of cooks and assistants now ruled the kitchens. Ingredients were brought from all across Nerius Sanctus, from the merely repugnant to the esoterically revolting. Not many corpses, as one might have thought : as the planet's infrastructure burned to the ground, those had become one of the few plentiful sources of nourishment, and rarely made it to the kitchens. But the apostles of the Plague God wandered the world, harvesting rotten organs and tears from the eyes of those about to be sacrificed. Black-robed and dragging their sacks behind them, they were a sight dreaded all over Nerius Sanctus, for the oppose them was to invite the displeasure of the God of Life and Death.
And once their sacks were full, they returned to the Dark Cathedral, to the Wing of Plague, and emptied their dreadful harvests in the cellars before leaving once more. From these foul ingredients the cooks – each of whom bore the Mark of Nurgle on their flesh and soul – crafted mixtures that were part poison, part disease and part invigorating cure, tasting their brews for themselves before feeding it to the unfortunate souls that sat at the vast banqueting table at the center of the wing.
Seventy-seven diners were kept at the table at all time, eating the fruit of the cooks' labor on fine plates and with silverware stolen from the dead Cardinal's own suites. They had been drawn first from the prisoners of Nerius Sanctus' conquest – and, once that stock had run out, captured at random from the cultists of Chaos outside the Dark Cathedral by the collectors. Some had even volunteered for the position, offering themselves up to the collectors, their deluded minds believing that this would gain them Nurgle's favor.
Regardless of how they had come to the table, most of the diners died before finishing a single course, their bodies wracked by terrible fevers or dissolving from the inside. Their bodies were then taken off the table and tossed into the pit of liquefied organic matter that served both as a disposing hole and as a source of condiments for the cooks.
The truly unfortunate diners were either resilient enough to endure, or were twisted by the esoteric concoctions of the disciples of Nurgle until they were either released to join the cooks or transformed into something that could no longer be kept at the table. Such grotesque mutants were then gently guided outside, to spread the gifts of the Grandfather to the rest of Nerius Sanctus. A few were kept to assist in the cooking – either to carry particularly heavy ingredients and utensils, or to pacify unruly diners.
Malicia presided over the proceedings, grim-faced as she plunged another ingredient into her great cauldron. She was called the Brooding Sorrow by her minions, though never where she might hear them. The Lord of Ash had found her on a human world where technology had been destroyed by the Wailing Storm, its human population reduced to a medieval existence, with tribes living in the shadows, fearful of the monsters that stalked the land. Malicia had been one such monster – a dread witch of the woods, last of her tribe after she killed them all for the crime of mocking her ugliness. Her devotion to Nurgle was a simple, direct thing : the Grandfather alone had never mocked her, the Grandfather alone had welcomed her and told her she was beautiful to him.
Despite her many deformities, out of all the cooks Malicia looked the most human of all, for Nurgle's pestilent blessings had taken root in her mind and soul rather than her flesh. She could have walked into the less reputable districts of a hive-city and barely drawn a glance, if not for the aura of soul-blasting dread that cloaked her like the patchwork clothes she wore over her wizened frame.
When five Grey Knights manifested in her kitchens in a flash of lightning and ozone, Malicia did not rage or laugh. She frowned, and with an annoyed gesture, a snap of her fingers and a barked order, commanded her minions to deal with the intrusion, before returning her attention to her bubbling cauldron.
Black-robed collectors charged the knights, swirling their half-empty sacks as improvised weapons. They smacked against silver warplate with meaty sounds, and while they did not break it they leaked gruesome fluids over the engraved blessings, causing the armor to sizzle as it burned away the corruption. The sheer strength of the blows, however – for the collectors had been granted all the strength needed to carry their repugnant burdens across continents without pause by Nurgle – was enough to make even the Grey Knights buckle.
One particular bag, which had contained the bound souls of children, the desecrated bones of martyrs and the bile of a Chaos Spawn, reacted more violently to the Grey Knights' holy armor. The Neverborn that had been gestating inside was suddenly awakened from its foetal torpor, and lashed out with panicked claws made of tibias and spines. Surprised, its collector let go of it, and the newly spawned nightmare rampaged, striking and wailing with such vigor that, before the Grey Knights could put it down, one of them laid on the filth-covered floor, his armor and chest caved in by a blow from an amalgamation of holy skulls, the traces of faith lingering on the bones enough to go through the warded warplate.
The four remaining Grey Knights fought against the collectors, struggling to put them down. Unnatural resilience was but one of the many gifts Nurgle had bestowed upon them, but eventually the last of them fell – just in time for the lumbering abominations that served as the cooks' assistants to join the fray. Hulking masses of rotting muscle smashed and belched, releasing putrescent breaths. Blessed scrolls blackened and fell to ash.
And still Malicia kept stirring her pot, unconcerned. She heard the sound of battle, of blessed blades bursting through bile-filled bellies, of bolter fire and of her congregation screaming in wrath and praise to the God of Life and Death. Yet still she kept stirring, not lifting her gaze from her work – until one of the Grey Knights forced his way through the throng of diseased cultists and monsters, and brought down his Nemesis sword to cut off her head.
Malicia reached out with her stick-thin arm, and pushed. The Grey Knight was sent flying by her monstrous strength, went over the table and fell into the pool of decaying, bubbling organic matter. For a few seconds, the warrior managed to stay afloat – then the things that lived in the cesspool dragged him under, never to emerge again.
Seconds later, Malicia's cataracted eyes widened as she felt the shift in the pit's energies and realized her mistake. The pool of decayed corpses had been, until now, an offering to Nurgle – a great mix of poisons and diseases, the combination of thousands of leftovers. But the addition of the Grey Knight's untainted flesh, of his soul laden in holy scripture and words of seraphic power, reacted violently with the Warp energies that had been slowly accumulating in the pit.
The entire western wing of the Dark Cathedral was lost in the ensuing explosion, and the whole Dark Cathedral shook to its foundations. The Chaos ships in orbit saw the blast on their instruments, while witches and cult leaders across Nerius Sanctus froze and wailed as the earth trembled once more beneath their feet.
Karalet felt the approach of the Grey Knight long before the sound of the warrior's footsteps reached his ears. Here, at the nexus of the four wings of the Dark Cathedral, the presence of the Imperium's champion was a peal of discordant thunder in the careful symphony of Ruin the Lord of Ash had composed. Yet even that disharmony would be pleasant to the Dark Gods, if he could turn it into the prelude to the symphony's climax.
The Dark Apostle's face was bare, revealing the grotesque patchwork of scars, burns, and impossibly smooth skin that covered his skull. He had lost his horned helmet long ago, in the same fires that had consumed his face. Safe for his headgear, he wore his full panoply of war, painted in black and gold, covered in sigils that called to the Pantheon and holding his crozius in both hands, the weapon's head laying against the stone floor where he knelt in prayer.
Since Chaos had claimed the planet, only two souls had been permitted within this most blessed of grounds. Not even the four arch-priests Karalet had chosen from among the masses of the Lost and the Damned were allowed within what had been the most sacrosanct location of the entire Shrine-World.
The high, arched chamber was where Saint Nerius had been buried centuries ago. When Karalet had first entered it – after he had slaughtered the Cardinal and his guards and used the man's decapitated head to force open the biometric locks – the walls had been covered in mosaics depicting the deeds for which Nerius Gallionevos had been recognized as an Imperial Saint by the Ecclesiarchy upon his death. Those mosaics were gone now : Karalet had removed each of the ceramic pieces by his own hands, dipping them into unguents made of the tears of captive Neverborn before affixing them anew to form patterns pleasing to the Pantheon.
Abstract representations of the Four now looked down upon the altar to Ruin the Dark Apostle had made of the false Saint's tomb. Breaking the grave open had been the very act that had enabled the Neverborn to roam the Cathedral years ago. There was power in faith, even when it was hideously misguided, and by defiling the remnants of Saint Nerius Karalet had been able to subvert that power to his own ends.
The mosaics shifted now, rearranging themselves according to the whims of the Gods. In the last hour, they had shown Karalet what had happened across the rest of his Dark Cathedral. His priests were dead, their souls dispatched to the Ruinous Powers – or, in the case of the Shrouded One, annihilated by the divine power it had touched. But the slaves of the Corpse-Emperor had bled for their victories, and their succession of costly triumphs would end here.
The silver-clad warrior came from the north, if directions could be said to have any meaning left in this nexus of eldritch energies. He emerged from the scenes of blood-soaked carnage, his armor rent and cracked. Karalet shivered at the scent of his potent vitae, charged with psychic power that reflected that of the Emperor Himself. He remembered the taste of that power, from the time he had been forced to kneel amidst the ashes of Monarchia, and the Master of Mankind had judged the entire Seventeenth Legion through His servant, the Sigillite. It was much weaker now than it had been then, but the nature of it remained unmistakable to any who had felt the might of He On Earth.
"I am Karalet," the Dark Apostle called out as he pushed himself to his feet, raising his crozius and laying it to rest on his shoulder. "Chosen of Arken, the Lord of Ash, and conqueror of this benighted world by the grace of the True Gods. What is your name, Grey Knight ?"
There was no pause, no moment of shock rippling through the warrior's aura as revelation dawned upon him. The Grey Knight was far too disciplined for that. But Karalet perceived the sudden shift of his distant cousin's mind as he processed the words of the Lord of Ash and their implications.
Karalet chuckled. "Yes, Grey Knight," he repeated, making a mockery of the title. "I know what you are."
In truth, he knew little more than the name. The secretive Chapter had done terrible things to keep their history under wraps, and by and large, they had succeeded. The Awakened One himself had heard about them from Abaddon when the two had spoken through sorcery before the Black Crusade. Where and how the new Warmaster of Chaos had learned about the knights of Titan's existence was unknown to Karalet. It did not matter, though.
"Come now," he continued as the knight remained silent. "Do you have no manners ? We stand beneath the gaze of the Gods, Grey Knight. Well, mine, at least. Yours is as blind to what happens here as He is deaf to the screams of those who perished on this world."
"Heretic," the knight spoke at last. Despite his wounds, his voice was clear, full of wroth and contempt. "The Emperor sees all. I am His blade, and He is my strength."
"And does His blade have a name ?" Karalet asked mockingly, though not taking his eyes off the warrior in silver. "Or has even that most basic of rights been taken from the new defenders of the Imperium ?"
"When I send you to the foul abominations you call gods," spat the paladin, "tell them that it is Demetrius who purged the galaxy of your taint."
So confident. So righteous. Was this what the sons of Lorgar had sounded like to the other Legions, before the Emperor had broken their pride along with their faith ?
Blood of the Gods, they must have been insufferable.
The Grey Knight was looking at the chamber – specifically, his gaze kept returning to the gateways that led to the other wings of the Dark Cathedral. Karalet smiled.
"Your brothers are dead, sir knight, and will not be joining us here. You alone survived the trials of this Dark Cathedral. And so it must come down to single combat – a duel between the champions of our respective masters, to determine the fate of this world. Poetic, do you not think ?"
"The vile ritual you have perpetrated upon this world will be stopped," vowed the Grey Knight. "The might of the Emperor shall crush your corrupt workings."
Karalet gestured to the altar to Chaos he had made of Saint Nerius' tomb. The bones of the dead saint had been dug out of his stone coffin, and made into a suit of armor that covered the still-living form of the broken thing that had once been Gaelis Serventas. Almost nothing remained of the former Inquisitor, save just enough sentience and memory to suffer the full extant of his torment. His legs and arms were gone, and both his cybernetic and natural eye had been plucked out. Every inch of his skin that had not been flayed was covered in tiny Colchisian scripture, the black ink burning with Warp-fire.
The inspiration had come from the ritual Arken had used on Parecxis, where he had bound the essence of the Daemon Prince Serixithar as an anchor to sustain the Wailing Storm. Karalet's ambitions were much lesser in scale, however, and so a mere mortal had sufficed as a crucible. Even so, that mortal had needed to be exceptional – the potent soul of an Inquisitor, carefully broken over several weeks of the Lord of Ash's tender care, followed by the great treachery that had crippled the Azarok Conclave. By the time Gaelis had been returned to Karalet, brought to Nerius Sanctus aboard a small ship detached from the Black Crusade, he had been a worthy servant of the Dark Gods – and thus, a suitable sacrifice for Karalet's vision.
Sigils of wardings were carved into his bones. Without them, the incredible energies coursing through his soul would have transformed his flesh into an erupting mess as his genetic code succumbed to spawnhood. Even then, Gaelis' torso bore the stigmatas of mutation : patches of scales gleamed in the light of the shifting walls, and clusters of eyes blossomed between the exposed muscles, shining with infernal radiance.
"The ritual is almost complete," proudly declared Karalet. "The deaths of the four champions served as the second-to-last offering to sunder the veil across this world forever. If I kill you and offer up your death to the Pantheon, Nerius Sanctus will be remade into a daemon world. If you kill me … well. The Gods do not look kindly upon failure. My doom shall be terrible indeed, but this world's shall be no less so."
"So," he continued, raising his crozius and pointing it at the Grey Knight. "Shall we begin ?"
Without another word, Demetrius charged the Dark Apostle, and the warrior in silver duelled with the one clad in black and gold. The darkly hallowed crozius met the Nemesis blade, the weapons clashing in a shower of sparks as their wielders matched their strength and skill.
Demetrius was strong, even with his wounds, his physical prowess further enhanced by his psychic powers. But Karalet met every blow, blocking or dodging, a corona of dark power shrouding his armored body, filling the air with the scent of burned blood whenever it met the Grey Knight's own seraphic aura. The infernal sigils emblazoned upon his crozius glowed with fell radiance as the weapon clashed with the Nemesis blade, and every blow resonated with the Gods' heartbeat.
"Are you surprised ?" called out Karalet as the two duellists disengaged, putting distance between them as they circled one another. "Did you expect that you would slay me easily ?"
"You face not the discarded children of the Black Crusade, harvested by the Forsaken Sons and thrown to blunt the blade of Imperial retribution," Karalet went on. "I am a Chosen of Arken, a Dark Apostle of the Primordial Truth. I fought at Calth and Terra during the rebellion, and entire worlds have been brought to heel by my will alone !"
"Here, sir knight, you and your brothers fought the chosen servants of the Dark Gods." Under the scars, Karalet was smiling. "And they were forewarned of your strength, all of them. We watched as Berrenos fell, and listened to the words of those who escaped the wrath of the Imperium there."
"We have your measure now, sir knight." The Dark Apostle was laughing now, and the walls rippled as the Gods shared in his amusement. "And as you and your brothers fight and bleed across Azarok, desperately trying to stop us, Lord Arken continues his hunt for the greatest prize of all !"
Like the other Chosen – with the exception of the Blood Champion, who was too far lost to bloodlust – Karalet had been told of Arken's true goal in Azarok. The Black Crusade was merely a prelude, a cover for his true purpose. When the Nightmare Fleet was unleashed, the devastation already wrought upon the Imperium would pale in comparison to what would follow – and the daemon world of Nerius Sanctus would stand as a monument to the Forsaken Sons' triumph.
"Part of me longs to speak to you," Karalet breathed even as he ducked under a blow that would have cut his head clean off. "To extol the virtues of the Primordial Truth, to help you shed the blinders that have been put upon your soul to keep it from realizing its full potential."
He blocked another strike aimed at his left flank, before stepping back and forcing his mouth into a configuration no human lips had ever been intended to take. The infernal word that he forced through his vocal cords rang through the air, briefly battering at the Grey Knight's armor with the strength of a thunderstrike. A couple of teeth shattered in Karalet's mouth, and he grinned, blood flowing on his chin from ruined gums.
"But I was warned against that temptation," he laughed, tasting iron and ozone on his tongue. "It is not written that the first Grey Knight to turn against the False Emperor will be illuminated by my hand. To try would be to repeat the mistake Kor Phaeron made at Calth, when he could have cut Guilliman's thread but chose instead to try and bring him to our side !"
His words turned into a shout as he went back on the offensive. Again and again their weapons clashed. Karalet scored first blood, his crozius grazing the Grey Knight's right knee. The tip of Demetrius' sword cut at the Dark Apostle's left shoulder, sending a small growth of ceramite shaped like the extended claw of a Neverborn to the ground, where it began to twitch and crawl until the Grey Knight crushed it underfoot.
Words of power burned in Karalet's mind as he fought. He held nothing back, calling upon all the dark lore he had accumulated over the long years of conquest in the Wailing Storm. He assembled the fragmented names of daemons in his brain, calling upon the debts of blood and sacrifice that he was owed from the denizens of the Warp. He was stronger, faster, mightier than ever before – mightier than the silver-clad knight of the Imperium that stood before him, wounded and bleeding from the wounds inflicted upon him by the Slaughterprince's trials.
Most of Karalet's contributions to the cause of the Forsaken Sons had been esoteric in nature. He had brought the primitive civilizations of the Wailing Storm to worship of the Primordial Truth, had helped subvert regimes and bind mighty daemons to the warband's purpose. But he remained a warrior at heart, taken from long-dead Colchis and crafted into a weapon of war first and foremost. He exalted in his renewed purpose, in the purity of this moment. He and the other Space Marines of the Nine Legions had been discarded by the False Emperor, thrown aside and replaced by the likes of Demetrius – yet with the blessings of the Dark Gods, Karalet was winning, and proving that the Carrion God had chosen poorly.
The Lord of Ash's crozius smashed past the Grey Knight's and into his torso. The Dark Apostle heard the crack of ceramite and bone, and Demetrius stumbled back, falling to one knee. Karalet rushed forward, raising his crozius in a two-handed grip, aiming to smash the Grey Knight's skull before cutting him open and offer his entrails to the Powers. As he moved, the downed Imperial hero raised his storm bolter, aiming it square at Karalet.
With his Warp-enhanced reflexes, the Dark Apostle saw the shot coming long before Demetrius pulled the trigger. He dodged, hearing the projectile fly past his head, and -
- the bolt slammed into the skull of Gaelis Serventas, detonating once it had penetrated deep past the bone and into the soft brain matter underneath. The Inquisitor's headless corpse twitched, once, as his soul was released from his prolonged torment and destroyed in a single flash of warp-fire.
"N-" Karalet began to shout, turning toward the center of the chamber in horror.
But he never completed the word. For with the destruction of the catalyst for his great ritual, the wrath of the Dark Gods had descended upon Nerius Sanctus, just as the Lord of Ash had predicted – and it was terrible indeed.
The vast eldritch energies that had been accumulated through months of sacrifices and monstrous acts, meant to permanently sunder the veil between Materium and Immaterium, were suddenly released. There was not enough time for Karalet to even finish his own thought before his body was obliterated, along with that of Demetrius and the entire nexus chamber.
Outside the chamber, the Dark Cathedral erupted in warp-fire that spread from it in a hellish ring that went farther and farther, engulfing all of Nerius Sanctus and leaving naught but ash in its wake. Bodies of water were turned to vapor, and even the stone of mountains was incinerated. Clouds of ash rose in the sky in the inferno's wake, ascending kilometers before falling down in a crushing shroud that brought down the last structures that had survived the flames.
The flotilla assembled in orbit, whose ships had stayed perilously close to the world in order to share in its blessings when the ritual was completed, was rent asunder as columns of eldritch fire reached out hundreds of kilometers, drawn by the shining souls within the cult vessels. Burned wrecks came toppling down through the blazing atmosphere, their cataclysmic impacts raising even more clouds of ash across Nerius Sanctus' charred corpse.
Only the Sliver of Atonement, protected from the sorcerous onslaught by the wards carved into its structure, survived the hellish flames. Even with those holy wards protecting it, it was still damaged, and it took days to its crew to restore functions beyond the most critical of life-support. When this was done, the mortal shipmaster ordered its auspex turned to Nerius Sanctus, to find what had transpired and whether any of the crew's Astartes masters yet lived.
Soon, it was clear that such was not the case. Not a single life form remained on Nerius Sanctus that the ship's sensors could detect – yet there was movement in the ash covering the entire world. Probes dispatched onto the surface sent grainy picts of humanoid shapes formed of the uniform black ash wandering aimlessly. There were thousands of these ghastly revenants, with their number increasing as the probes drew nearer to the former location of the Dark Cathedral.
No probe managed to reach the cathedral's site : all of them glitched and crashed when they got less than a kilometer from it. At that distance, the pic-feeds showed many more ashen silhouettes – including one that was much taller than the other, and seemed to hold in its hand a long, mace-shaped object.
After failing to find any trace of the Grey Knights, the Sliver of Atonement left Nerius Sanctus, carrying word of its demise to the rest of the Imperium. It left the system dead in its wake, populated only by the ghosts of ash that haunted the devastated Shrine-World.
AN : And so, another of the prophecies of the Black Crusade is completed. "Statues of ash walking a barren wasteland ..." How long ago was it that Marcus Helden made that prediction on Apollo ? In universe, over four years. In our reality ... dear gods, over three years.
Well, this has certainly been a long time coming. At the beginning of the year, I fixed myself the goal of finishing this story in 2020, but, well, that was before ... everything. You know what I am talking about, I am sure. While global events continue to unfold, on a more personal level, I have recently returned to my workplace (yay !) which means that I haven't had as much time to spend writing as before (nay !). As a result, both this chapter and the next chapter for A Blade Recast got significantly delayed.
Still, I am going on summer vacation at the end of the week, so hopefully I will be able to get some writing done. I haven't abandoned my resolution to finish Warband of the Forsaken Sons this year, but I have had to realize that it would be difficult. We will see.
As usual, thank you all for your support. This story has had quite a lot of new readers recently, drawn to my work by A Blade Recast and staying to check out my other stories. I hope you all enjoyed this chapter, and look forward to your reviews.
Next up will be another chapter of A Blade Recast, if I can get past my current block on the last bits of dialogue I need to write for it.
Zahariel out.