"The Devil :
Of all the arcanas, few are as ill-understood by the masses as that of the Devil. Despite popular opinion, this card does not necessarily represents evil. Rather, it shows violence, the exertion of power and extraordinary efforts bent to a singular purpose. It depicts the forces of predestination, the burden of Fate laying upon the reading. When reversed, however, it is very much its common interpretation, warning of weakness, pettiness, and blindness, all combining to lead to doom."
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 – Achillus System
745.M32
The room where Gerion Drachencraft's underlings gathered had been a ballroom once. It was located in one the wings of House Koenigreich's damaged spire, far above the pollution clouds that covered much of the planet, even after most of its industry had fallen to ruin.
There, for generations, the high and mighty lords of Achillus had danced and laughed and feasted on delicacies that each cost a month of their workers' wages. Now it was in ruin, but it still served, as a vast open space with little cover for assassins. The broken furniture had been cleared away, leaving those present to stand in a loose half-circle while Gerion towered over them from the balcony. The assembly was divided in three groups, each centered around a leader who answered only to Gerion himself. Each of them might have been a lord of their own, but instead, for various reasons, they had joined their fates to that of the Daemon Prince.
Outside, amidst the spires of Achillus, there raged a war of monsters. The pretense of civility to which the Houses had clung right after the rebellion had completely fallen apart in the wake of the Truthful Gate's destruction. Without the Unfettered's presence hanging over them, those who had been transformed by his ministrations had turned on one another in open warfare with distressing rapidity.
With no obvious culprit to blame for the destruction of the laboratory ship, accusations of treachery had flown back and forth, and paranoid leaders had launched pre-emptive assaults on the holdings of rivals. The hive-world's industry had slowed to a crawl as the war between the Houses loyal to the Unfettered's greatest creation and those who sought to rule on their own spread across the world. Millions who had survived the uprising and the rule of the Houses had perished, starving in their homes as supply lines collapsed. Millions more had died on the field of battle, press-ganged into service by the inhuman monsters who ruled over them and made to fight into a war whose motives and purpose they had no comprehension of.
Gerion would have preferred if the tenuous order had survived. It would have made his work easier if he didn't have to deal with the business of the ongoing war. He supposed that he could have come forward and revealed the truth of what had happened to the Houses – told them the identity of the Unfettered's killer. But he didn't think they would have taken the revelation that the Dark Gods themselves had opposed the Unfettered's work well. At the very least, they would have tried to banish him, regarding him as a rival to their own power. Their intolerance of daemons, instilled into them by the Unfettered, was now proving an obstacle rather than an asset.
He had tried, at first, to drag his benefactor's soul from the Warp, that he might learn the secrets of transfiguration directly from this shade, and perhaps even restore him to life. But all his attempts had ended in failure. He did not know if this was because the Ruinous Powers were even now opposing his goal, or because of some bargain the dead Fleshmaster had entered into during his life.
Either was possible, but he did not know enough about his former lord's past to do anything other than speculate.
Regardless, without the Chosen of Arken's ghost to interrogate, he had been forced to start from scratch, with only his own memories of the procedures he had undergone to use. This might have sounded easy – after all, he only needed to replicate what had already happened to him.
But for one thing, he didn't doubt that the process needed to be adjusted to every soul, in order to take into account its unique quirks. For another, his memories of the weeks preceding his ascension were confused at best, and outright missing at worst. The Unfettered had inflicted unspeakable torments upon Gerion, slowly stripping him of his humanity and replacing it with the power of the Empyrean. Even now, it was an effort to remember those days and nights without flinching away.
Not that he begrudged the Unfettered this : the Fleshmaster had been very clear as to the risks and prices involved, and Gerion had volunteered anyway. His body had been failing, even with the help of the Fleshmasters' enhancements, as the consequences of decades of practicing sorcery finally caught up with him. This had been his last chance to grasp true, real power, and it had worked beyond his wildest imagining.
Gerion owed it to the Unfettered to finish his work, and bring the secrets of transfiguration to the rest of the Forsaken Sons. He was also acutely aware that this secret was his only chance of assuaging the Awakened One's wrath.
The stockpiles of food and material that had been meant for the Forsaken Sons' Black Crusade had swiftly been expended as the conflict escalated. If – when – the Forsaken Sons returned, they would be … disappointed by what had transpired in their absence. Despite his ascension, Gerion was under no illusion as to how a confrontation between him and the Awakened One would end. One on one, he might – might – have a chance. But Arken was not alone, and the Sorcerers under his command would rend Gerion's immortal existence asunder, which wasn't how he wanted to spend eternity.
He was making progress. Painstakingly, he was rebuilding the lore through which the Unfettered had transformed him. Every broken soul he experimented upon was one more step toward that goal, and there were plenty of subjects for him to use on Achillus. But he needed more time, more resources.
He needed to have a space where he could work on reconstructing the Unfettered's work without being disturbed, as well as access to the resources of the Houses in order to get his hands on the more esoteric ritual components he required. If he could have done otherwise, he would have left the Houses to kill each other while hiding in some remote hole and scrabbling the reconstructed Empyric equations onto the walls.
Unfortunately, mere stone could not contain the knowledge he sought to recreate. It melted down after the first few symbols. Only powerful cogitators, protected with sorcerous wards, could hold onto the Unfettered's research into clawing transfiguration from the greedy hands of the Gods.
In order to have those, along with the sacrifices he needed to test his theories, Gerion needed a power base. Which also meant that he had to look after it.
Thankfully, he was familiar with the task of managing wildly clashing followers of the Pantheon after his time as the Betrayer of Eldur. Admittedly, the scions of Achillus' Houses were mightier than the mutant chieftains and mad cultists he had dealt with in his old domain. But he too was much more than he had been then, and he needed them if he was to accomplish his goals.
And so he had built this little kingdom among the ashes of Achillus. After clawing his way out of the wreck of the Truthful Gate, destroyed during his confrontation with his god-sent assassin, Gerion had swiftly gathered a following among the shocked denizens of the hive. By luck or the designs of the Powers, the ship had crashed into Hive Heringrad, and Gerion had been able to take over the resources of House Koenigreich, deprived of its leadership by Aleric's hunt of the Unfettered.
The fact that many other monsters created by the Unfettered's early experiments had survived the crash of the Truthful Gate and had spread across Heringrad had helped in that regard : the patronage of the Unfettered's greatest creation had been one of the best protections the weakened House could hope. It was the quest for strength that had driven the Houses to betray the Imperium, and it was strength that they respected above all else.
Houses Lorenos and Taroden, long-term vassals of the Koenigreich, had been added to his servants, and he had begun the work of making the broken spire of House Koenigreich into a suitable place for his research. He had personally led assaults on the long-time rivals of House Koenigreich, the Ogantrias, and wiped them out in a short and brutal campaign that had demonstrated his power beyond a doubt to his followers.
Gerion's daemonic body was strong : he was taller than the tallest Space Marine, with hands that ended in claws that could cut through ceramite, and he could toss around ground cars like they were made of wool. But it was his knowledge of the arcane that made him truly powerful. For decades, he had learned to manipulate the energies of the Warp as a frail mortal : now these same energies were what his incarnate form was made of. His mastery of sorcery far outstripped that of any of Achillus' magi, and it had greatly aided him in building his growing empire. He had ripped apart several Ogantrias with his mind, tearing their souls from their bodies before hurling them into the jaws of the Neverborn that still massed on the other side of the veil.
Despite the renewed warfare, Achillus still teetered on the brink of a full-scale daemonic incursion that would have transformed it into a daemon world. Gerion had toyed with the idea of precipitating that transformation, but had eventually decided against it. He needed the human population for his research, and the sundering of the veil would have decreased it dramatically.
With the raw power of the Empyrean held at bay, Gerion had ordered small temples built across his territory, where priests conducted ceremonies and sacrifices in his name, sustaining his presence in the Materium. They had been dragged from the hive, away from their congregations, and brought before Gerion, who had revealed to them a portion of his own infernal revelations.
Not all had accepted his message : those who had not, he had killed, while sparing those who had abandoned their worship of the Dark Gods and focused their devotion on him. For all that had taken place upon the hive-world, Achillus was no daemon world, and Gerion required these measures to remain corporeal. Despite his initial bluster when facing Aleric, he still very much feared the prospect of dissolution.
The Dark Gods may have failed to prevent his ascension, but he would rather not give them the opportunity to drag his spirit into their respective domains. Thanks to the Unfettered's ministrations, Gerion had become a Daemon Prince without the blessing of any of the Ruinous Powers, and the Chosen of Arken had discussed at length with him just how the Pantheon might react to this usurpation. As far as they knew, never before had an Unaligned Daemon Prince existed.
The Manufactoriums of Heringrad had been secured, along with the machines that produced a foul sustenance for the masses. Contact had been established with the mining tribes to secure a continued supply of raw material. Patrols had been sent out to secure the controlled zones from the monsters that roamed the ruins. Something like peace had descended upon Heringrad, and Gerion had returned to his work.
And then, only a few days after the fall of House Ogantrias, the attacks had started. Gerion had hoped that, by quickly asserting his authority and power, he would have been able to pursue his research in peace. But the other Houses had sent troops to Heringrad, making camp in abandoned districts and expanding outwards. Thankfully, they hadn't acted with any kind of unity, attacking each other as often as they did Gerion's forces, all of them hoping to capture Heringrad for themselves. After a few weeks, the situation had more or less stabilized, with each House holding onto what it had captured and sending scouts to probe for weaknesses.
Gerion was quite content with that status quo, but he needed to make sure that it would last long enough – which was why he had called his lieutenants, in order to be certain all of them were doing their job.
The aberrant Daemon Prince looked at each of them in turn, letting his gaze linger just long enough to make them uncomfortable. Gerion's four burning eyes had been known to utterly drive people mad or senseless on occasion, but his lieutenants were made of sterner stuff.
The most obviously powerful among them was Raksha Black-Clawed, clad in the black and gold power armor of the Forsaken Sons, whose arm made of blades shone in the light of the sun passing through the broken windows. He and the seven other Chaos Marines who had survived the crash were the leaders of Gerion's armed forces, from the defenders of his fortress to the hunting parties sent to search the unreclaimed zones for scouts and wandering monsters. Their presence at his side had done a lot to ensure the loyalty of Heringrad's Houses, for even now, the renegade Astartes were regarded with semi-worship by those who had traded their humanity for power.
As for why Raksha and his pack had willingly put themselves under Gerion's authority, the Forsaken Sons reckoned that siding with the Daemon Prince was their best chance to salvage something of worth from the situation on Achillus. No message had been sent after the Truthful Gate's destruction to warn the rest of the Black Crusade of what had happened : the means to do so had been lost along with the ship. But the eight Forsaken Sons didn't doubt that their lord would return, and they needed to earn the Awakened One's forgiveness for the death of the Chosen they had been tasked to guard. Helping Gerion recreate the secrets of daemonhood would achieve that.
Raksha had come to the meeting accompanied by two of his brothers, with no mortal attendants. They stood between the other two groups, who gave them a wide berth.
On Gerion's left was the flock of Ishbaal Koenigreich, the man he had chosen to lead the congregations whose rituals and sacrifices anchored his presence on Achillus. Ishbaal himself was sat in a wheelchair that was pushed around by a blind hooded cultist. When Gerion had first come to the Koenigreich spire, Ishbaal had tried to resist him. Gerion had broken his legs and his mind, before putting the latter back together in a shape that was more useful to him. Now Ishbaal was fanatically loyal to the Daemon Prince, seeing him as the pinnacle of strength that the Houses had pursued for generations.
Besides the servant that pushed his wheelchair around, Ishbaal had come with half a dozen scribes to note every word spoken by the dark god he worshipped, and a trio of hulking bodyguards whose cult robes hid an arsenal of weapons.
Finally, to Gerion's right, was the being whose name was hated by hundreds of thousands across Heringrad. Nrekkul Taroden was responsible for the continued work in the factories, as well as keeping the remaining human population of Heringrad under control. As the effective head of House Taroden, Nrekkul showed the full potential of that House's mutations. Of all the Houses of Achillus that had accepted the Unfettered's bargain, House Taroden's alterations were among the most obvious. Before the unveiling of their true loyalty, they had been the ones who had struggled most to keep their secrets.
The scions of Taroden were tall, heavily muscled humanoid – nothing that couldn't be explained by good breeding and vat-grown muscles. A strange affectation among the idle nobility to be sure, but not one that couldn't be explained as a simple eccentricity. But their skin was chalk-white, their eyes scarlet, and – more difficult of all to conceal – they all had horns. Big, black horns, jutting out of their foreheads like devils of antiquity.
The Unfettered had either been bored or tired when he had come up with the design for their transformation, but the Taroden had never complained. Their bloodline had been one of the most heavily affected by the War of the Beast, with only a handful of children surviving the carnage wrought by the Orks, and the raw, uncomplicated strength they had received had been exactly what they had wanted. They had used surgery to remove their horns when they got too big, and used a combination of wigs and head coverings to keep them hidden otherwise. Their strange colourations had been managed with powders and tinted eye-lenses.
The last of their gifts, however, had not been nearly so easy to conceal. The older the children of House Taroden got, the bigger they became. In the years leading up to the uprising, the House had been forced to resort to body doubles to hide their mutations, and they had been among the most fervent supporters of the rebellion, throwing their full might into the destruction of Imperial authority on Achillus. As a result, they had suffered great losses in the brief civil war, and been forced to become vassals of House Koenigreich in order to survive in the new order.
Nrekkul was over three meters tall, a veritable mountain of muscles and lethality. A great axe hung from his back. Gerion himself had gifted it to him, having engraved it with sigils of power : it was the weapon with which Nrekkul executed all dissenters and would-be rebels within Heringrad. Three of his kinsmen accompanied him, the tallest of whom only barely reached his shoulders, along with a single, terrified-looking slave carrying a bunch of reports.
"Welcome, all of you," he said at last. "Now, let us not waste anymore time." None of them mentioned that he had been the one looming over them for the last five minutes. "Raksha, your report, please."
"The other Houses have been quiet for the last three days," began the Forsaken Son, "since that business on the Concordance Avenue." Gerion remembered that well – it had taken three days before the psychic echoes had calmed enough that he had been able to return to his work without the risk of dragging the entire planet into the Warp. "I think they are recovering from their casualties and bringing in new scouts from outside the hive. The beasts are taking advantage of it, though : I have lost two patrols to them. I have sent Jabaal and Keryon to thin their numbers."
"Good. Make sure to send a copy of your brother's sketches to my quarters when he returns." Gerion had been pleasantly surprised by Jabaal's unexpected artistic talent, and the drawings of the former Son of Horus had granted him some insight into the patterns of Chaos over the last few weeks. "Ishbaal ?"
"The rituals continue apace, oh Great One." The voice of the arch-priest was barely more than a rasp – his vocal cords had been damaged from all the screaming he had done when Gerion had illuminated him, and he considered the wound a penance for his defiance and refused any healing. "Our pens are running low on stocked sacrifices, however. We are going to need resupplying before the end of the week, or we risk running out."
"Unacceptable. Nrekkul, are there any slaves you can spare ?"
"Hmm ... There are several Manufactoriums whose production isn't strictly essential", admitted the towering mutant. "If we cut the ration of painkillers given to some of the workers in half, I should be able to free a few more hundred souls. Would that be enough, priest ?"
"That would satisfy the needs of the shrines for another few months", nodded Ishbaal. "You have my thanks for your contribution to the great work."
"This isn't sustainable, though, Lord Gerion", interjected Raksha. "We cannot keep sacrificing our own workforce, not if we hope to maintain our holdings in the long term."
Gerion's daemonic features didn't allow him to raise an eyebrow, but he did not need facial expressions to convey his emotions – the very air of the room vibrated with his thoughts as they mixed with the aetheric energies that formed his body.
"What are you suggesting then, Raksha ?" he asked.
"Raiding parties", said the Forsaken Son bluntly. "I know I have already said as much several times, but while we still have hundreds of thousands of slaves we can use, sooner or later we are going to run out, or weaken our industry to the point where we are exposed to the other Houses. Me and my forces need the ammunition and material supplied by these Manufactoriums. Staying on the defensive is a mistake. We need to take the initiative and launch attacks of our own on the other hives – teach the Houses the price of defying the Forsaken Sons."
"You may have a point", conceded Gerion. The Daemon Prince had opposed Raksha's previous pushes for launching attacks out of a desire to avoid escalating the hostilities with the other factions of Achillus, but if the alternative was to slowly bleed his kingdom dry while he worked ... Well, it depended on whether he could finish his reconstruction of the Unfettered's equations before the tipping point was reached.
And Gerion wasn't willing to take the risk. For all he knew, it might take him years to finish his mission. Even if he hadn't completed his work by the time the Forsaken Sons returned, as long as he had demonstrably done all he could and produced some results, the Awakened One would hopefully be satisfied.
Surely the prospect of usurping the gift of daemonhood from the greedy hands of the Ruinous Powers was enough of an incentive.
"Very well, Raksha," said Gerion with a slow nod. "You shall have your way. Prepare a plan with what holdings you wish to attack, and what forces you will need to take with you. I will -"
The wooden doors of the ballroom, which against all odds had survived this far intact, shattered with a thundering noise, interrupting the Daemon Prince's next words.
Dozens of intruders erupted from the entrance, clad in the typical wargear of the House forces that warred within Heringrad and across Achillus : mismatched panoplies of scavenged equipment along with newer items taken from the stockpiles meant for the Black Crusade. They moved with the speed and discipline instilled in the survivors of Achillus' bloody warfare, where mere mortals had to rely on their wits to triumph over the empowered scions of the Houses.
Raksha and his brothers were the first to react, moving with the preternatural speed of the Astartes.
Nrekkul was only a few heartbeats behind them. The Astartes drew their bolters, answering the volleys coming from the broken gates with their own gunfire, while charging across the room. For all the terrible strength of their guns, they were far more effective at melee range, Raksha most of all. Nrekkul ran alongside them, sweeping his axe in front of him while drawing upon his House's mutation to infuse its blade with the power of the Warp.
Gerion could sense the sorcery around the attackers even as it broke apart from the unleashed violence. It had hidden them from him, let them thread inside his domain without the wards he had set up detecting them.
How was this possible ? Those had been the same wards he had used in his domain on Eldur, their potency increased eightfold by his transfigured nature. There shouldn't be anyone on Achillus with the skills to bypass them, and yet the evidence to the contrary was opening fire on his circle of lieutenants.
For a few more seconds, Gerion observed the battle. Then he leapt from the balcony, breaking apart the balustrade and landing straight in the middle of the fray.
The closest mortals – attackers and allies alike – recoiled from his sudden presence, overcome by his infernal aura. He didn't give them any time to recover, and struck at a ganger holding an autogun, tearing him in half with his claws.
He felt the mortal's shocked thoughts seep into the aether as his soul left his body. The man's horrified last moments fed his eldritch manifestation, and Gerion smiled, revealing a mouthful of fangs. Ritual sacrifices were all well and good, but there was something far more satisfying about inflicting pain and terror with his own hands. He turned to the next closest attackers, relishing the look of fear on their faces, and charged.
Las-bolts and solid slugs slammed into him, harmlessly bouncing off his daemonic form. A particularly courageous (or mad) attacker lurched at him with an industrial hammer the size of a mortal man, but Gerion caught the weapon's head in one hand and crushed it to dust in his grip, before breathing out a stream of Warp-fire that engulfed the man's head and sent him rolling on the ground, uselessly clawing at his burning head until only a charred skull remained.
Gerion laughed cruelly as he fought, letting his bestial side rise to the surface. Before his transformation, he hadn't fought in melee for decades : his old, frail human body hadn't been suited for it. But with his ascension, he had discovered that he actually enjoyed ripping his enemies apart with his bare hands. Nothing quite equalled the feeling of power that came with ending a life that way. Yet even as he revelled in the simple joy of slaughtering an inferior foe – while around him, the acolytes of his followers fought and died – he couldn't help but question how they were here, and what they were hoping to achieve.
As he decapitated a mutant with a second, smaller head growing out of its left temple, Gerion caught sight of the enemy leader.
He was using some kind of telekine ability to move with impossible speed across the room, dodging fire and cutting mortals apart with a chainsword. Gerion's daemonic senses told him without a doubt that this sword could hurt him if he wasn't careful. It was etched with powerful runes and imbued with the energies of the Warp. As he pulled another enemy apart from the inside out, Gerion kept two eyes on the enemy leader, and saw him jump up in the air to dodge a volley of bolt shells before suddenly changing angles mid-jump and fly toward Ishbaal.
The Koenigreich scion raised his staff of office to block the assault, his stick-thin arms moving with unnatural strength. But the rune-marked sword cut through the staff, before burying itself into Ishbaal's chest and gutting him a fish. Cries of horror and despair rose from the arch-priest's entourage, with the exception of the slave that had pushed his wheelchair. That one started to laugh madly, weeping tears of joys until the killer of his master absent-mindedly decapitated him.
The potency of the man's mutations spoke of a House lineage, yet Gerion didn't recognize those marks. Glowing eyes, black veins, fanged mouth, increased strength, levitation ... He didn't remember any of the Houses that had sent representatives to the Truthful Gate after the uprising displaying such features. Was this a base mutant, who had gained his power through the blessings of the Dark Gods, in return for ruining Gerion's plans ?
Besides his unnatural abilities, the mutant was strong and quick, and clearly knew his way with a sword. Many scions of the Houses relied on their mutant abilities to the exclusion of everything else – House Taroden was something of an exception in this.
But this one displayed a skill with the blade Gerion knew, from having observed hundreds of explorers in his old domain, could only be obtained from years of practice alloyed with experience gained in deadly battle.
More interesting than the origins of the foe, however, were those of the weapon he wielded. Sorcery on Achillus was still a stunted thing, a pale shadow of the teachings of Gerion's homeworld, and less than nothing compared to the powers wielded by the dread Coven. The chainsword was a sign of another power's presence on Achillus, and Gerion couldn't tolerate not knowing about it.
He strode toward the leader, and the tide of battle parted before him.
The swordsman turned toward Gerion, falling into a guard position. His eyes seethed with hatred as he glared at Gerion, seemingly unaffected by the Daemon Prince's infernal aura.
"That is no ordinary weapon you carry, boy," he called out over the dim of battle. "Who are you, to hold such a thing ?"
The battle seemed to flow around the two of them, both because none of the combatants wanted to interfere and because Gerion willed it so.
"My name is Lauk Delande", hissed the enemy leader.
Ah, yes. Now Gerion remembered. Understanding dawned behind his burning eyes, and he chuckled.
"A member of House Delande ! I thought you were all dead. Tell me," he asked in an approximation of a conversational tone, "what are you hoping to achieve here ? You must know that, even if you were to triumph, when the Forsaken Sons return, they will flay the soul from your sorry carcass for your defiance ?"
"To the Abyss with the Forsaken Sons !" roared Lauk. "It was them who murdered my family and blamed it on the Inquisition ! They will all pay for that, them and their lackeys !"
So he had figured it out. Well, it made sense that a survivor of House Delande would know the truth. While the other Houses believed the Inquisition had wiped out the Delande after their true nature was discovered by an Inquisitor, the reality was much different. It was true that the leaders of House Delande had perished at the Inquisitor's hands, incinerated in an awesome pyrokinetic display amidst the melted ruins of their spires, but the rest of the House had successfully fled to the lower levels of Hive Heringrad and hidden there.
But then, the agents of the Forsaken Sons had hunted them down and killed them all, making it look like the work of the Inquisition, all in order to drive the other Houses to take up arms against the Imperium lest the same fate befall them as well. Gerion knew this, because the Unfettered had shared it with him in between their 'sessions'.
Before the destruction of the Truthful Gate, keeping this truth under wraps had been of great importance. Now, however, the secret hardly mattered at all.
"The Houses were too skittish. Too afraid of committing to the inevitable. How long did you think you could hide your true nature ? You owed the Forsaken Sons for the gifts they had bestowed upon you. All that power, and you were too afraid to use it. It was only through the Forsaken Sons' efforts that you were finally free !"
"They played us false," snarled the mutant. "They manipulated us for their own gains, but we shall not be their slaves any longer ! Once you are dead, none will remain on Achillus to do their will !"
"Foolishness," mocked Gerion. "Everything you are, you own to the Forsaken Sons. And they are not the kind to let debts go unpaid."
"All I owe them and their slaves is death," spat Lauk, before hurling himself at Gerion in a burst of motion.
Gerion moved with preternatural speed, dodging the chainsword's blow that had been aimed for his throat, before riposting with a swipe at Lauk's head that was also avoided as the mutant pulled back, his psychic gift allowing him to completely cancel the momentum that should have shattered his skeleton to pieces.
The battle between Daemon Prince and rebel leader must have looked strange from the outside, he mused, for both combatants were doing their best to avoid being hit – Gerion because of the chainsword's eldritch power, Lauk because a single blow from the Daemon Prince would break him in two.
It was a good effort, Gerion had to admit. He could see why this Delande had survived when the rest of his House hadn't. For the first time since his battle with Aleric, Gerion found himself forced to employ the fullness of his abilities. Even more so than when he had confronted his old enemy, in fact, for Aleric had been badly hurt by his fight against the Unfettered when Gerion had encountered him.
Gerion's frustration grew as the two of them danced around each other. For all of Gerion's strength and speed, Lauk was using his bloodline's talents to the fullest, displaying a level of control sharpened by the months he had spent surviving in hiding, without the resources of his House to draw upon.
This was becoming embarrassing. Worse, by avoiding the blows of his foe, Gerion was implying that he feared being hit – which was true, but was still an intolerable display of weakness before his lieutenants. He couldn't let this go on any longer, and if he had to make sacrifices to claim victory, well, pain wasn't something he was afraid of anymore.
When Lauk struck next, Gerion didn't dodge out of the way entirely, as he had for the past twenty or so exchanges. He let the teeth of the chainsword bit into his flank, and felt the ghost sensation of pain as his incarnate form was breached. For a brief moment, triumph blazed in Lauk's eyes – then Gerion's hand closed around his outstretched arm, and with a single twist, the Daemon Prince broke the limb in three separate places.
To Lauk's credit, he didn't cry out in pain – merely anger. Not letting go of his enemy, Gerion instead pulled him closer, and caught his head between the talons of his other hand. He lifted the mutant up so that he could look directly into his eyes, effortlessly resisting his attempts to use his kinetic abilities to wrench himself free.
"Answer me. How did you get in here ? How did you elude my wards ?"
Lauk remained defiantly silent, sneering as he stared into the eldritch fire of Gerion's eyes. The Daemon Prince was impressed. Lesser men had been broken by such a sight, but Lauk's hatred gave him strength.
"Someone helped you get in here. Someone gave you that sword. Who, boy ? Tell me, and I will let you live. You have proven your resourcefulness this day, and I am loath to waste such promise. If you swear loyalty to me, I might even make you greater than any of your family ever dreamed to be !"
"I will tell you nothing," the mortal replied.
Gerion peered into the Delande's eyes and soul, and saw that he was telling the truth. More than that, he glimpsed the subtle workings that had been buried in his psyche, guaranteeing that even the attentions of his most skilled torturers would yield nothing.
"Very well."
He crushed the skull of the last scion of House Delande in his fist. Gore-streaked shards of bone fell between his fingers as he opened his hand, and the headless corpse fell to the ground.
Around him, the battle was finishing. The last of Lauk's troops were being cut down, a few attempting to flee at the sight of their dead leader, only to be shot in the back by Raksha and his brothers. Some of the mortals had perished, but apart from Ishbaal, there hadn't been any casualties of consequence. Gerion would need to find a replacement for his arch-priest, and ensure that the devotion he required from his worshippers didn't diminish in the wake of Ishbaal's death. Already the survivors of the priest's flock were wailing and weeping over his dead body, and Gerion wondered what use he could make of a martyr.
A stab of pain distracted Gerion from his contemplation. Blood, or something like blood, was still dripping from the wound on his side. The floor blackened where the droplets hit as if struck by acid. That the wound hadn't already healed was worrisome. Gerion glared at the chainsword where it had fallen, and crushed it under his foot – better not to let his loyal servants arrange for it to 'disappear' in the clean-up.
With the weapon responsible destroyed, Gerion focused, and stopped the bleeding, drawing more of his soul-stuff from the rest of his incarnation to cover the injury. This wasn't healing, not truly : the damage was still there, merely hidden from sight. But it would suffice for now. He had more pressing matters to attend to.
"They sneaked in," said Nrekkul, pulling his axe out of a messily butchered corpse. "We must have missed one of the secret passages of this bloody spire."
"Perhaps," replied Raksha, who was cleaning his claws from gore with a dirty curtain he had pulled from the wall. "Even so, how did they learn about it ?"
"Does it matter ?" asked Nrekkul. "Their leader was of House Delande, wasn't he ?" Wisely, the mutant didn't mention Lauk's revelation of the Forsaken Sons' manipulations of the Houses. "All it would take was one of his grandfathers getting it on with a Koenigreich daughter – that sort of thing happened all the time, even with the restrictions of the Unfettered's breeding programs – and the knowledge being passed on, 'just in case'."
"You will find out how they got in," Gerion ordered Raksha in a tone that brooked no discussion. "Whatever oversight or weakness allowed this, you will correct it."
"Yes," growled the Forsaken Son. He was just as furious as Gerion, perhaps even more so – his temper ran a lot hotter than that of the former Betrayer. The assault was also a personal insult against the Astartes' honor as the one tasked with the spire's defence. Gerion had no intent of punishing him : the strange immunity to the wards the attackers had displayed was at least part of the reason why they had made it this far into the fortress.
Of course, Raksha didn't need to know that. Fear, inasmuch as the Black-Clawed was capable of it, was a useful motivator. The desire to expunge the dishonor would drive Raksha to relentlessly hunt for the path that the attackers had used.
"I'll-"
Whatever Raksha had been about to say would never be known, because his head suddenly turned into a red mist, along with the entire upper-half of his torso.
A flash moment later, the sound of heavy weaponry reached Gerion, and he roared in renewed outrage, wondering if this was the second wave of the assassins, come to strike while their guard was down after dealing with their associates. That thought vanished the moment the Daemon Prince saw the source of the attack that had killed Raksha.
A gunship painted silver was visible through the broken window of the ballroom, hovering in front of the opening while painting the room with its main gun. As more of the survivors of the attack were caught in the spray of fire and obliterated, ten armored figures leapt from the aircraft, clearing the distance easily and landing inside. They opened fire from wrist-mounted weapons as they landed, adding their own firepower to the gunship's.
Gerion saw the gunship with the memory of mortal eyes woven around Warp-stuff, but it was utterly invisible to his infernal senses. This was the same veil that had shrouded the previous attackers, he realized. But how could this be ?
The mortal survivors of the first attack were cut down instantly. Gerion saw the scribe accompanying Nrekkul's party being obliterated by a shell that had missed its intended target. The shot hit the mortal in the chest, and everything above his hips simply vanished in the ensuing detonation. The mortal hadn't even had the time to notice he was dead before his soul was hurled into the Warp, and the waiting claws of the Neverborn that pressed on the other side of the veil, drawn by the previous carnage.
Despite their fury, Raksha's two surviving brothers held back from charging in melee, firing with their bolters instead. Nrekkul and his three kinsmen were far less restrained, something in the sight of the silver warriors igniting the primal instinct for violence that had kept them in the service of House Koenigreich rather than carving out their own domain. Two of them died before reaching their foe, their inhuman resilience overcome by concentrated fire. The last of Nrekkul's cousins perished with a blazing spear buried in his chest, his final act being to lash out at his killer with his own blade, which met one of the knight's – and shattered to pieces.
Nrekkul's axe was more effective. Fuelled by the alchemy of the Unfettered, the Taroden mutant towered above even the Space Marines. Shells slammed into his chest, and he faltered, but did not stop as they detonated on his armor. Red blood dripped from his axe as he cut a deep rent into the forearm of one warrior. The spillage ended quickly as the warrior's wound sealed itself with preternatural speed, but the fact that these foes could be wounded at all heartened the remaining defenders.
Before Nrekkul could deal another blow, two of the knights caught him in a pincer. As he parried the blow of one, the other rammed his spear, which glowed with energies that made Gerion's skin crawl, into the back of Nrekkul's neck. A twist of the blade later, the horned head of Nrekkul was sent flying.
While the knights were occupied with the three-meters tall horned monster in their midst, the Daemon Prince covered the distance between him and these newest intruders. With a roar, he threw himself at the lead knight, drawing as much power into his incarnate form as he could.
He struck, and his blow was repelled with a shower of blue sparks by the wards that covered the armor of his prey. He felt his hand burn, his daemonic essence recoiling from the protection.
No, he thought fiercely, forcing his mind away from thoughts that would, by his own nature, lead to their actualization. He would not fall here. If he died, if his was sent back to the Warp, there would be no returning to the Materium for a hundred years. By the time he found a way to claw his way back into reality, the Black Crusade would long be over, one way or another. He had gone too far, invested too much, to let that happen. After decades of efforts, he had finally ascended to the ranks of the gods he had once observed from afar, finally claimed for himself true power and authority. He would not let it all come to nothing here !
With a scream of hatred and fury, Gerion struck again at his foe, focusing all of his will and hate into the blow. This time, his claws tore through the silver ceramite, though Gerion felt agony spread up his limbs, and into the flesh underneath. Spreading his arms out wide, the Daemon Prince ripped the Space Marine in twain, tossing the pieces in opposing directions.
More bolt shells slammed into him, each one imbued with power that was anathema to Chaos. The pain was incredible, but it was just pain, and he had endured worse at the Unfettered's hands. Far more dangerous than the energy infused in the ammunition were the complex spells engraved on each shell – Gerion could not even begin to fathom the resources it must have cost to produce the thousands of them needed to equip a single squad of the silver-clad warriors.
But as those spells sizzled and vanished as they attempted to anchor themselves to him, realization dawned on Gerion. Because of his unique nature, the spells that had been designed to defeat the scions of the Ruinous Powers had little effect on him. The bolt shells were still explosive ammunition the size of a human fist, of course, but mortal weaponry could not slay a Prince of the Warp, not as long as his will remained strong.
And if there was one thing about Gerion Drachencraft that had remained true throughout all the many phases of his existence, it was that his will was strong.
He laughed. "Were those little spells of yours meant to hurt, knights ? Your ignorance has betrayed you. I am the first of Humanity's final form, and one day, all worthy shall rise as I have, to conquer the Realms of Chaos themselves !"
"You are a blight upon the Emperor's galaxy, and nothing more," spat one of the knights. Gerion answered his defiance by plunging at him, forcing the warrior to the ground before ripping his head off. As another warrior sought to strike at his exposed back, he pulled one of the surviving cultists in the path of the blow with a thought, sacrificing the mortal to slow the attack enough that he could move out of the way.
After the carnage caused by the Imperials' arrival, more soldiers were coming in, reinforcements finally responding to the Delande attack. The grey-clad Space Marines were strong, but there were thousands of troops Gerion could use as meat-shields while he killed the invaders one by one. It would be long, difficult, painful and above all costly, but Gerion was confident that he could win this battle, through sheer attrition.
A true champion of the Dark Gods might have tried to take the knights alive, to torture or even attempt to turn them. There would be much glory to be earned in the gaze of the Pantheon from the former, and Gerion suspected achieving the latter would be enough even for him to earn the regard of the Powers he had stolen his immortality from. But the Daemon Prince was no fool, and he cared naught for what pleased the Dark Gods.
"Kill them all", he shouted, his words burning into the minds of his followers and pushing them forward with renewed ferocity. "Let none of the Imperial dogs survive !"
His command was answered by a wordless roar of bloodlust.
Amidst the battle, the eight remaining knights were moving, silently communicating with each other even as they cut down the chaff Gerion was throwing at them. They weren't giving up or attempting to retreat, not that Gerion had expected them to. The gunship that had brought them down had retreated after its first volley, dancing through the polluted air as the fortress' anti-air defenses tried and failed to lock onto it.
One of the knights, whom Gerion suspected was their leader, strode amidst the slaughter, eyes fixed on Gerion even as he cut down all the mortals trying to swarm him. With a cruel chuckle, the Daemon Prince moved to confront this would-be challenger.
As one, four of the other knights moved to form a perfect square around Gerion and his opponent, while the other three unleashed a combined blast of psychic power that cleared a space around them.
Realization dawned on Gerion instantly. The warriors he had killed had sacrificed themselves, deliberately putting themselves against him even though they had no chance of survival, all to bring him here, at the center of this formation. Too caught in the joy of battle and the exaltation of his apparent immunity to their sorcery, he hadn't seen the trap until now, when its jaws were already closing on him.
The combined psychic might of the four knights slammed into him, and Gerion screamed. There was no cunning spell, no complex arcane formula woven into the attack – just raw, unrelenting psychic power. The Daemon Prince faltered, smoke rising from him as his incarnated form began to dissolve, his mind briefly unable to hold onto it.
"You … cannot … kill me," he forced the words out, clinging to the idea. As long as he believed it, it would be true. He pounced on the warrior in front of him, the one who had drawn him into this trap. His claws tightened around the warrior's arm -
The blade found his side. The blow was weak, robbed of its strength by the claws Gerion was closing in on the warrior's shoulder. But it struck exactly where Lauk's runic sword had pierced his skin, and the psychically active blade plunged into his Warp-wrought flesh.
With a pulse of will, the knight ignited his weapon, power coursing from his heart to his blade through his arm in the instant before Gerion ripped it out.
The Daemon Prince felt as if a star had been born inside him. All thoughts stopped, overcome by pain. Cracks spread across his being, and no amount of willpower would put him back together this time.
Gerion Drachencraft lost his hold onto corporeality, and felt himself die for the third time – once as man laying inside a ritual circle in the Truthful Gate, and twice as a daemon.
The reality of Achillus faded away. The stones of the Koenigreich Spire disappeared into shadow and smoke, lit by the soul-fires of those who dwelled within Hive Heringrad. Gerion let out a soundless scream that echoed in the nightmares of slumbering slaves all over Achillus, and caused the other Neverborn predators that had swarmed to the battle to retreat in fright.
He had lost. He had been defeated. But this wasn't the end, he told himself. It would be decades before he could incarnate once more, but his plans did not need to go completely to ruin. He still had cultists scattered in the temples below the spire, and they were mind-broken enough that they would follow his commands even as a disembodied spirit. Surely the knights couldn't kill everyone in the city.
And perhaps he could return before a century had passed. The normal laws that applied to defeated daemons needn't apply to him as well, for wasn't he already the exception to a far greater rule ?
Yes. He could still salvage this, could still save his research and continue his work. Who knew, perhaps working through living agents would provide some spark of inspiration that would let him succeed at last. After all, the Unfettered had been mortal when he had -
Did you think it would be so easy ? whispered a voice. Gerion extended his perceptions toward the source of the voice, though distance and direction meant little and less here.
"Aleric Heinrich," said Gerion in shock. For this was indeed who this new presence was, impossible though it may be. He recognized it, for their fates were intertwined.
Aleric no longer resembled the humanoid figure of eldritch energy that had confronted Gerion aboard the Truthful Gate. If not for his daemonic senses recognizing the core essence of his old foe, Gerion would have been ill-pressed to identify him.
The former fighter of Eldur now appeared as a kaleidoscope of blue mist and glass, with sparks of eldritch lightning bouncing off each facet in an endless cycle. There was nothing of the humanoid form that most Neverborn, ascended or spawned, embraced, and Gerion wondered just what had happened to Aleric to shape his essence into such an utterly alien aspect. The sorcerer in him longed to excruciate the entity to learn its secrets, even as the daemon was wary of what Aleric's presence heralded.
Hello, Gerion, whispered the shapeless thing that had once been a man. I have been waiting for you.
"It was you," said Gerion, though of course he did not say anything, merely projected his disbelieving thoughts to the other bodiless entity. "You were the one who hid the Delande and his forces from my wards … the one who kept me from sensing the knights' approach."
Indeed. I guided young Lauk, whispered secret lore into his dreams that he might craft his blade, and wove the strings of fate to keep you from noticing him … as well as the warriors of silver and light.
"You helped them ?! The sworn enemies of the Powers you serve ?!"
They were quite the convenient tool to finish my mission. All must play their part according to the will of the Pantheon, even those who struggle against it.
"… But how ? How can you be here ? I killed you ! I sensed your extinction when the Truthful Gate crashed !"
My life is a closed circle, whispered the shade of Aleric in response. When you destroyed my incarnation of crystal and fire, I was cast back through time, back to the age of woe, when the children of the Anathema were set against each other in reckless hate.
Images flashed in Gerion's mind as Aleric spoke. The two of them were far from the men they had once been : now they were both creatures of Warp energy, living memories empowered by forces beyond mortal ken. Communication was more than an exchange of words – it was a commingling of essences, however slight, and fragments of what Aleric was referring to were passing through that link.
He saw glimpses of the Horus Heresy, that mythical conflict that shaped the course of the galaxy to this day. He saw battles the Forsaken Sons muttered about when contemplating the past they claimed to have discarded. For the first time since his transfiguration, he felt how small and insignificant his deeds really were in the grand scope of things.
It wasn't a pleasant feeling.
I found the one you call the Unfettered, and traded his name for the boon of preservation.
And perhaps it was seeing me that first seeded the thought of mortal spirits transcending death in his mind. Would that not be ironic ?
He saw – a world of black seas and prairies covered in blue grass. A city burning in nuclear fire. Blue armor and eyes burning with righteous fury. The glint of an executioner's blade descending for his throat …
Then I waited, waited through the fall of Horus, waited through the flight of those who would become the Forsaken Sons. I waited, as the Awakened One set in motion the ruin of my world.
And when the Unfettered breathed his last, continued the spirit, I slipped between the moment of his life and death, and returned to this world even as my younger self departed it.
"Impossible ..." whispered Gerion. It had to be. It couldn't be that everything that had transpired on Achillus, everything that the Unfettered had sought to achieve and that he himself desired to restore, was simply part of another twisted and cruel paradox of the Warp.
That word means nothing to the Gods. Nothing is impossible : only not permitted by them. And you, Gerion, have transgressed against them ...
Claws of pure agony closed around Gerion's essence, and he felt himself dragged away. He tried to fight back, using every ounce of his power, but Aleric had spent much longer than he as an incorporate entity. By contrast, Gerion was too used to walking the Materium, whether as a mortal or as an incarnate Daemon Prince. He could not match Aleric, and was pulled under, deep into the Realms of Chaos.
There was a great deal of pain after that, as the soul-light of Achillus diminished in the distance, lost in the turbulent tides of the Sea of Souls. Time lost all meaning, and the things Gerion saw would have blasted the sanity of a mortal mind a thousand times over.
But eventually, the formless tides of Chaos receded, and shapes began to appear. It wasn't a place, of course, for there were no such things in the Sea of Souls. However, billions of slaves to Ruin believed that such a place existed, and this was the manifestation of that idea, shaped by all these countless beliefs.
Gerion was on his knees, with Aleric's hands strong on his shoulders. Around them rose row upon row of seats, making it seem like they were at the bottom of some depthless pit.
"This is ..."
"You know what this is." Aleric's voice was clearer now, and Gerion perceived his words as just words. "It has been a while since I was here last, yet it remains the same. Which is quite ironic, when you think about it ..."
And Gerion did know. This was the Court of Change, where the servants of Tzeentch gathered to plot and scheme and heed the commands of their deceitful patron. An infinite number of infinitely varied daemons looked down upon Gerion and Aleric, and though none of them were even remotely human Gerion felt the hunger in their gaze.
"Look up", said Aleric, and Gerion did, only to immediately regret it.
Above them sat Tzeentch itself, the Chaos God of Lies and Sorcery. It was … it was …
It was …
The Dark God of Change spoke, and the still too-mortal minds of Gerion and Aleric translated the words of the Ruinous Power into the whispering of a thousand mouths.
"GERION DRACHENCRAFT," said the manyfold voices of Tzeentch. "THE HOUR OF YOUR JUDGEMENT IS AT HAND."
"You did not create me," roared Gerion, fighting to maintain his composure in the face of the Dark God's overwhelming power. Despite the utter hopelessness of his situation, he would not give it the pleasure of seeing him beg. "I was elevated by the efforts of the Unfettered alone. You had no hand in my ascension. And as such, neither you nor any of the other Powers can destroy me !"
"NO," agreed the thousand voices. "WE CANNOT. THE LAWS BY WHICH WE AGREED TO BE BOUND IN THE TIME BEFORE TIME DO NOT ALLOW IT."
"BUT WE DO NOT NEED TO."
Icy talons closed around Gerion's heart, far more painful than Aleric's claws.
"WE CAN PUNISH YOU, GERION," continued Tzeentch. "WHEN LAST YOU CAME TO OUR REALM, THE PANTHEON WAS DIVIDED AS TO WHAT TO DO WITH YOU. BUT SUCH IS NO LONGER THE CASE."
"YOUR DOOM HAS BEEN AGREED UPON BY ALL THE POWERS. BARGAINS HAVE BEEN MADE; ANCIENT DEBTS CALLED DUE, AND NEW ONES FORGED. THOUGH YOU WERE NOT BORN OF ME, YOU ARE MINE NONETHELESS, GERION DRACHENCRAFT."
"AND I SHALL REMAKE YOU SO THAT THE CHANGES ALREADY VISITED UPON YOU SHALL PALE BEFORE TO THE TRANSFORMATIONS TO COME, UNTIL NAUGHT REMAINS OF WHAT THE TREACHEROUS SON WROUGHT FROM YOUR MORTAL ESSENCE. THEN AND ONLY THEN SHALL YOU BE RELEASED, AS THE INSTRUMENT OF MY WILL."
Gerion struggled, but it was in vain. Something his mind saw as a hand descended and caught him, and then it was too late. Too late to fight, too late to scream, too late to beg.
The first and only Unaligned Daemon Prince was thrown into one of the God of Lies' many mouths, and was silenced. The Court of Change erupted in riotous cheering, which was silenced a moment later, when the eyes of Tzeentch focused on the lone figure now standing at the bottom of the pit.
"ALERIC. OUR CHAMPION. OUR CHOSEN INSTRUMENT. YOU HAVE DONE WELL, AND SO WE SHALL GRANT YOU A BOON, ONE FREE OF HIDDEN BLADES. WHAT DO YOU DESIRE ?"
Silence fell on the Court of Change, as the daemons were stupefied by the generosity of the offer. All of them coveted the favor of Tzeentch, even as they, by their nature, were driven to overthrow and replace their master. To earn such a boon from the Architect of Fate, they would have orchestrated the doom of Sectors, sundered entire civilizations with lies and deceit – and this creature, this jumped-up mortal shade, was being offered such a gift for so paltry a task ?
But such were the ways of Tzeentch, and though they seethed with envy, the daemons didn't dare voice their protests.
"WE CAN GIVE YOU THE WORLD AND THE STARS", said Tzeentch. "WE CAN GIVE YOU THE ETERNITY LITTLE GERION USURPED. WE CAN RETURN YOU TO LIFE, MARKED AS OUR CHAMPION. WE CAN GIVE YOU VENGEANCE OVER THE ONE WHO BETRAYED YOU – HER SOUL IS HERE WITH US. WHAT IS IT YOU DESIRE ?"
"I ask for the same boon I once bestowed upon the heretic whose deeds brought us here", declared Aleric. "I ask for oblivion, Great One."
SO BE IT, said the thousand mouths of Tzeentch. LET IT BE DONE.
And so it was – and wasn't.
For Tzeentch was the God of Lies, and no gift it had ever bestowed had ever been straightforward. In the millennia to come, the gift of oblivion would be offered once more, to the one soul that had served the Changer of Ways better than any other – and even then, the Architect of Fate would relent at the last moment, and withdraw the gift from its unknowing recipient.
A great fire descended upon Aleric, who closed the dream of eyes and waited for annihilation. The flames of Tzeentch scoured his warped soul, burning memories and feelings away, until all that was left of Aleric Heinrich was a single spark of awareness. Tzeentch lifted that spark up, looking at it with an infinite number of eyes, and smiled, before hurling it back from whence it had come.
With the defeat of their lord, the mortal cultists fled, as did the two surviving Chaos Marines. Having slain Gerion Drachencraft and dealt with the threat to the Imperium foreseen by the Prognosticars, the Grey Knights took their dead with them aboard their gunship, which had landed higher in the spire. Within hours, they were back aboard their ship, which had slipped in the system past the sight of the void-clans occupying Achillus' mining stations with ease. Less than a day later, they had left the system entirely, leaving it to fall in pieces as the war of the Houses escalated ever further.
In time, the system would need to be purged, but that could be done by the Imperial forces that were even now advancing on Azarok to liberate it from the Black Crusade. The Grey Knights were confident that their actions had dealt with any threat that might spill over from Achillus to the rest of the Sector.
None of them knew that, in the ruined hive-city of Heringrad, something yet stirred that, had they known about it, would have concerned them greatly.
In the lair of a heretek who had been called the Spider before his demise at Aleric's hands, a creature born of the dead magos' disturbed experiments was growing. It would be many, many years before it reached adulthood – before it left its cocoon of debris and began to wander Achillus.
From the Realms of Chaos, the spark of soul-stuff that had been Aleric Heinrich plunged into the growing form of the creature and settled inside it. And on its throne of crystal and deceit, Tzeentch looked down upon its creation, and smiled.
AN : No, this story isn't dead yet ! I will finish it, I promise !
So obviously my plan to complete this story in 2020 ended up failing. In my defense, I would like to present the entire year of 2020. I am hoping to finish this fic this year (seeing what happened the last time I vowed to finish it, I am certainly not going to do the same thing this time around).
In the first draft of this chapter, Tzeentch was going to keep its word and simply obliterate Aleric's soul. But then I read the scene from Ahriman : Unchanged which inspired the offer again, and saw that (paraphrasing here) oblivion had "never been offered to anyone else before". Now, time in the Realms of Chaos is, as we all know, more a suggestion than a rule, but that was enough to make me reconsider Aleric's ultimate fate. After all, if there is one thing that is certain in all Warhammer stories, it's that the Dark Gods are lying bastards.
Some of the readers are wondering if the Forsaken Sons are ever going to win. Well, look at the results of the last chapters – more importantly, look at the progression of things. There are degrees of victory. Compared to Berrenos, where on that scale would you place what happened on Andros' Rest ? On Nerius Sanctus ? On Achillus ?
I was hoping to wait until this series of chapters depicting the Grey Knights' battles across Azarok was over, but I would rather not have readers give up on the story because the Forsaken Sons seem to be facing an invincible foe.
I have a storyboard for the rest of this story written down, though many of the details are yet to decide. We are looking at a minimum of 8 more chapters including the epilogue.
As always, please tell me what you thought of this chapter and what you are hoping to see next. Thanks you all for sticking with this story despite the long hiatus. (Is it a hiatus if the story is supposed to be updated ? I can't remember). I will try to have the next chapter finished by the end of this month (February 2021), unless, you know, a meteor hits Europe or something. Look, we can all agree it's been a crazy 12 months.
Zahariel out.