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Azarok Sector – Cemetary-world Nerel
745.M32
It had been said, in the high spires of the Azarok Sector, that Nerel was covered in graves from pole to pole, and that catacombs extended from its surface to its molten core. This was something of an exaggeration : there were plenty of temples to the God-Emperor and monuments to the greatest martyrs of the War of the Beast as well, and even the engine-seers of the Mechanicus could only dig so far without the planet collapsing. But the sentiment behind it was correct. Nerel belonged to the dead, and the living were there only as caretakers.
For all that the planet was covered in graves and mausoleums, it was still home to a small living population of barely a million inhabitants, descendants of the survivors found across the Graveyard after the War of the Beast. Scattered in small settlements, each responsible for the maintenance of a district of the planetary graveyard, they were a grim people, dedicated to honoring the martyred dead so that their spirits may find their way to the God-Emperor's side. Sustained from supplies delivered every decade by the Ecclesiarchy, they worked tirelessly to honor their obligations, and had no idea of the calamities that had befallen Azarok – until the Black Crusade came for them.
When the Hand of Ruin and its accompanying fleet had arrived in orbit and unleashed their cargo of monsters, the Nerelites had rallied to stop them from desecrating the world that was their charge, despite knowing full well they stood no chance of victory or survival. The sheer size of the planet and their lack of technological advancement, however, ended up saving their lives : the Forsaken Sons were only interested in a single location on Nerel, and only a few hundred Nerelites were close enough to be caught in the attack.
Arken had led the assault on the cemetary-world himself, taking with him his own personal guard and a host of his veterans. These ancient warriors had cut through the Imperials with ruthless speed and efficiency, wasting no time on elaborate stratagems or torments, in order to deliver to their lord what he desired. Those they had slain had been granted deaths as clean as any of the Forsaken Sons' victims could hope for.
The Awakened One had little interest in the planet itself. He had taken his Chaos Marines with him into the labyrinth of catacombs spreading beneath Nerel's surface, and emerged a few days later, before returning to his flagship and setting course for the system's edge.
Once Arken was gone, the surviving Nerelites soon came to envy the dead. The Awakened One had left behind the part of his great host that was sworn to the God of Excess, and they intended to take their time with the planet's people. The Slaaneshi contingent gathered during the conquest of the Wailing Storm had been reinforced before the Black Crusade by the Sha'eilat, resurrected corrupt Eldar who ruled over the City of Screams on Parecxis, which they had remade into a vision of unimaginable decadence and horror in honor of the Dark Prince of Chaos.
The Slaaneshi xenos had more than honored their duties under the Accords when the Forsaken Sons had called upon them, though the Awakened One knew better than to assume they did so out of loyalty or gratitude. No, the Sha'eilat had come to support the Black Crusade in such force for their own reasons, something everyone involved in the Black Crusade's leadership was well aware of.
A full score of Sha'eilat Gene-Lords had joined the Crusade, led by the first of their kind, Ezyrithn, who had been resurrected centuries ago aboard the Hand of Ruin by the ministrations of the now-dead Fleshmaster Jikaerus. The Firstborn had left rulership over the City of Screams to his subordinates, having grown bored with the horrors he had performed there. With these alien nobles had come over a hundred of their Warrior caste.
The true number of the Sha'eilat's contribution, however, was in their slave troops. Even after all this time, the Sha'eilat had never been a numerous breed, few souls of the ancient corrupt Eldar being fit for resurrection after centuries in the Silver Palace of Slaanesh. The Gene-Lords had compensated for this with their creations, a horde of a myriad horrors given flesh by their dreadful genetic perversions. The sinister ships of the Sha'eilat had disgorged thousands of mutated creatures on Nerel that bore only the slightest resemblance with the human beings that formed the basis of their genetic make-up. Many of them bore further augmentations, devices crafted by the Sha'eilat using technologies even the descendants of their kin in Commoragh had long forgotten how to craft – or, in some cases, deliberately chosen to not use any longer.
One of the reasons for this degree of mobilisation was the desire to find new playthings, and they were indulging it now. The morbid death-priests of Nerel were hunted down for sport amidst their former domains, and those unlucky enough to be taken alive soon discovered the true meaning of horror and torment. It had been years since the Gene-Lords of the Sha'eilat had been able to experiment with untainted human stock, and they wrought dark wonders from the clay of human flesh in their field laboratories, with those truly unfortunate being carried back to their ships, never to emerge again – at least not in any recognisable shape.
Meanwhile, the cultists of Slaanesh gathered during the conquest of the Wailing Storm began the obscene work of consecrating Nerel's sacred grounds to the Dark Prince of Chaos. Icons of the God-Emperor were cast down and reduced to rubble, while the statues of dead martyrs were defaced, altered in ways both subtle and obvious to make them more pleasing to the cultists' demented aesthetic sensibilities. Sacrifices were dragged to altars were incense had been burned to the honored dead's memory and subjected to horrible torments before being killed, their tortured souls cast into the maw of the Youngest God.
The Chosen of Arken Orpheus, Sorcerer of Slaanesh, had led the dark rites, while his peer Mikail Korzhanenko descended into the depths to carry out a mission received from the Awakened One himself. The Slaaneshi host's base of operation was centered around the entrance to the catacombs down which Arken and Mikail had gone, and every passing hour thinned the veil between Materium and Immaterium there. The surviving people of Nerel desperately fought back, but it was a battle they couldn't hope to win. Within a few days, they began to flee from the positions of the Chaos invaders, abandoning the graves their forebears had tended for generations, their faith overcome by terror.
Then, just as the Hand of Ruin and its escorts left the system, a new force arrived to Nerel, bringing with them the salvation of the cemetary-world. They emerged from the deep blackness of space, without the reality-sundering cataclysm that had accompanied the Forsaken Sons' entry into the Warp, for they had arrived using a different path.
Lord Admiral Francesco Del Baranthir, who had rallied the shattered pieces of the Sector's navy after the slaughter of Silberstadt, had spent ships he couldn't spare to support the Inquisition's operation. Reinforcements from the rest of the Imperium were beginning to arrive now that Berrenos had been liberated, but the battered remnants of Battlefleet Azarok were still engaging the Forsaken Sons all across the Sector. The battle-group of the renegade Admiral Von Kriegerich was harassing Imperial assets in every Sub-Sector, and the dozen warships Del Baranthir had sent to the Ordos' aid were ships that wouldn't fight in other engagements, which would lead to more Imperial lives being lost.
But, faced with the Inquisitorial rosette, the Lord Admiral had no choice but to obey. Agents of the Ordos had been spread on the bridges, tasked with ensuring the Navy officers followed orders – including those who asked that they ignore a lifetime of Imperial conditioning and fight alongside filthy xenos. Alliances with Eldar weren't unheard of in the Imperium, if kept quiet by high command, but none of the Sector's voidmen had ever even encountered one of this alien breed's ship.
The Inquisitorial flotilla had met with their reinforcements two Warp-jumps away from Nerel, and then made full speed toward the location given to them by their Eldar allies, where they followed their xenos associates into the Webway, travelling to Nerel in mere days instead of the weeks regular Warp travel would have taken them. The journey had been disturbing, for even the hardened veterans of the Imperial Navy were unnerved by the alien silence of the Labyrinthine Dimension, but the advantage of its speed couldn't be denied.
Yet even so, they were too late. A quick scan of the system revealed that the bulk of the Forsaken Sons' fleet had already departed. Some Imperial commanders argued for immediate pursuit, but that course of action was quashed when the Navigators of the entire fleet categorically refused to give chase. The Warp, they explained, had been thrown into complete disarray behind the Forsaken Sons' flagship, a deliberate attempt to stop them from following their trail through the Sea of Souls. Merely entering the Empyrean again before it had settled down would be dangerous; trying to pursue the Hand of Ruin would be suicidal.
The leaders of the unlikely alliances of Humans and Eldar, those few souls trusted enough to know the Forsaken Sons' intent, recognized what the Hand of Ruin's departure meant. The Forsaken Sons had found what they needed on Nerel, and left part of their force behind to stop others from finding it too. Why they hadn't destroyed the clues to the Nightmare Fleet's location wasn't clear, but there was half a dozen possible explanations – they didn't have the time, they couldn't destroy it, they didn't know for sure if what they found was the only source of that knowledge on the planet …
Regardless, with the Chaos forces already in control of the Archive of Loss, the initial plan to sneak a team onto the surface to recover the information had to be amended. Besides, both allied factions were eager to engage the enemy at Nerel – the Imperials because they had already suffered too many losses, the Eldars because they recognized the taint of their ancient enemy upon those who had been left to guard the cemetary-world.
Within hours of the allies' arrival, they engaged the Chaos fleet in orbit above Nerel. The traitor warships were twisted things of metal and mutated flesh, armed with strange heretek weaponry. They matched the allied fleet in numbers, which meant neither side could hope to claim orbital supremacy swiftly. The two fleets engaged in battle, the attackers clearing sections for the troops they carried to begin the descent toward the surface.
Hundreds of tombstones and monuments crumbled to pieces to make way for the landing crafts of the Imperium. Many more would be destroyed before this was over, but it was a lesser desecration compared to the ongoing presence of the Forsaken Sons' army. Meanwhile, the forces of Mian-Tor deployed using mysterious means that didn't show on the Imperial auspexes, the Children of Isha returning to Nerel for the first time since long before the Fall of their own empire.
Only the barest attempt at coordination was made between Eldar and Imperials, the two landing on opposite side of their target, so that there wouldn't be any interference or not-so-friendly fire. And so, as the skies of Nerel burned, the Imperial and Eldar forces began their advance toward the enemy camp.
Raguel Alastores went to war for the first time since his rebirth, and found that it brought him neither joy nor comfort.
The lumbering shape of his Dreadnought chassis marched in the wake of his brothers, who were charging straight into the fray, forming the spearpoint of the Imperial onslaught. Imperial Guardsmen came behind them, running to keep pace with the Heirs as best they could. The Inquisition had recovered a handful of Astra Militarum units from the rest of the Azarok Sector, bolstering their numbers. Squads of elite Stormtroopers were mixed with the thousands of Guardsmen, serving to reinforce their will to fight – like the Imperial Navy ships, the Guardsmen had been taken from battle zones where hundreds of their comrades had perished, and their morale had been shaky at best. Commissars and preachers were doing their best to rouse the Guardsmen's fury, pointing out the desecration of the sacred land around them by the foul traitors.
All around them stretched the graves of Nerel. From a tactical perspective, the environment wasn't that different from urban combat, although if an Imperial city had been built so inefficiently, the Arbites would have shot those responsible. Visibility was blocked by towering monuments, and the paths that sneaked between the rows of graves for the Nerelite caretakers were entirely unsuitable for the Imperium's advance.
As a result, the Heirs of Sanguinius were leaving a trail of crushed stone in their wake, charging right through the monuments like ceramite-clad battering rams. The damage they were inflicting to this sacred place was regrettable, but unavoidable. Once the Forsaken Sons' foul minions had been crushed by the hammer of Imperial retribution, they would make sure to repair and resanctify these graves. The best Imperial architects and servitor crews would rebuild this world once it had been freed of taint, and the priests of the Ecclesiarchy would re-consecrate it.
That wouldn't be Raguel's responsibility to organize, however. As a Dreadnought, he couldn't be the Chapter Master of the Heirs of Sanguinius anymore : such was proscribed in the Codex Astartes, and for very good reasons. When this war was over, there would be a conclave of the surviving Heirs, few as they now were, and a new leader would be chosen from among them, while Raguel would join the Chapter's Ancients – if he survived, of course.
But that was for later. Right now, at last, was the hour of retribution. The hour of battle, after months spent teetering on the brink of death, even after Lord Inquisitor Akhaman had dragged him back to the land of the living with his strange device.
Those Heirs of Sanguinius who had survived the disaster at Silberstadt had been recalled to participate in this battle, and the ones that would follow in order to prevent the Forsaken Sons' mad plan to reach fruition. Not all of the Chapter's surviving brothers had been able to make it – some had been delayed, stranded, or unwilling to abandon allies who desperately needed their help on other fronts of the Black Crusade.
The fortress-monastery of the Heirs of Sanguinius had miraculously not come under attack by the Forsaken Sons, even though the Traitors must surely know its location. Raguel suspected this was deliberate, as half a Company were forced to stay there just in case, lest the precious stores of gene-seed, armaments and lore that rested there were attacked in their absence – thus depleting the Chapter's fighting forces without costing the Traitors anything.
Even so, over three hundred Heirs of Sanguinius were now marching together, around two-thirds of the Chapter's remaining strength after the disastrous losses they had suffered so far in the Black Crusade. As the old saying went, such numbers could conquer star systems, but Raguel had painfully learned not to underestimate the Forsaken Sons and their servants.
"You are approaching the heretics' position," said Captain Terion over the vox, his words carried directly into Raguel's brain by the cybernetic augments that made him one with his chassis. "According to Medele's report, there shouldn't be any outlying defenses."
Captain Medele of the Tenth Company had brought his Scouts with him. They had landed ahead of the main force, serving their function as explorers and examining the enemy positions for weak spots. Meanwhile, Captain Terion was back in the fleet, collating the intelligence they gathered and coordinating the advance of the Imperial forces. The Captain of the Fifth Company had wanted to join the fight in person, but his wounds from Silberstadt had been so grievous they were still not fully healed, leading him to instead assume this position, where he could do the most good.
"Are there still no reports of the Forsaken Sons ?" asked Raguel.
"No," replied Terion, his voice carrying the same frustration Raguel felt. "Only their slaves."
"Ever have the craven fled from retribution's fire. So be it." With a thought, he shifted from a private vox-link to his speakers, addressing the warriors around him : "We shall expunge these wretches from this sacred world, before hunting down their vile masters, wherever they may hide !"
Three hundred Heirs of Sanguinius roared their agreement, and the Battle of Nerel began.
The heretics had had ample warning of the Imperials' approach. They may have been too busy with their depraved pursuits to build proper fortifications, but they had gathered to meet the Imperial assault. Any sane enemy would have flinched at the sight of the charging Space Marines, but these were the Lost and the Damned, who had long since abandoned sanity in exchange for the embrace of the Ruinous Powers. They counter-charged the Heirs of Sanguinius, throwing away their lives in the vain hope of stopping the Astartes – or at least slowing them down.
Bolt-shells and las-beams flew all around Raguel's hulking form. Within seconds, dust clouds of dirt and stone kicked up by the battle choked the air, but his sensors easily pierced through, giving him a clearer image of the foe than anyone else.
With his flamer, he incinerated cultists wearing gas masks and drug injectors. Whatever they were pumping into their bodies was making them fearless, and they rushed the Dreadnought without hesitation, running over the charred corpses of their brethren. Raguel's audio sensors could pick up their muffled screams, but they spoke a distorted dialect of Low Gothic he had never encountered before, and he could only make out one word they were saying in ten. It was still enough to know that, whatever chemical stimulants were being pumped into their veins, they weren't designed to make the experience pleasant.
Further ahead, mutilated humans clad only in loincloths were daubing canvas of stretched human skin with blood, excrement, and other disgusting substances with paintbrushes, their faces set in expressions of horrified ecstasy. As Raguel and his brothers approached, the ignoble paintings rippled as if struck from behind, before tearing open and becoming gateways to the Immaterium, leaking its corrupting madness into reality. Dozens of pale-skinned daemons with purple claws and horns emerged, the firsts embracing the cultists before cutting them apart with languid grace.
A pack of those Daemonettes swarmed Raguel, climbing over his armored form and stabbing at him with their pincers. Alarms started to ring in his ears, but before his attackers could do too much damage, targeted shots picked the hellish creatures off him.
"Thank you, brothers," said the Dreadnought to the Heirs who had come to his aid, before redirecting his fury upon the daemons.
Raguel charged through the Neverborn, smashing them against his chassis until he reached the blasphemous portals still disgorging more of them onto Nerel. With his power-claw, he ripped the grotesque fabric asunder. By destroying the material base for the Warp portals, the hole between the Materium and the Immaterium was shut down. The Daemonettes converged on him to stop him from destroying all of the gateways the mad artists had created, but the other Heirs of Sanguinius struck them in the back, and within a few moments every Warp-gate had been sealed and every daemon banished.
The Space Marines resumed their advance, but there were still thousands more of cultists of Slaanesh and other horrors, culled from all the damned worlds of the Wailing Storm by the Forsaken Sons.
No, there would be no comfort to be found on this battlefield for Raguel. But in the pursuit of duty, there was satisfaction, and that would be enough.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the heretics' position, the host of Craftworld Mian-Tor was going to war for the first time in over two centuries.
The ships in orbit had brought with them the components required to build small Webway Gates, through which the Eldar forces had marched straight from the Craftworld. For many of them, this was their first ever real battle, as Mian-Tor had successfully stayed away from the turmoil of the galaxy since its escape from the Fall, apart from the incident during the War of the Beast. Each wore the colors of the Craftworld, a pale grey with obsidian markings and a red faceplate.
Autarch Irithiel Arthes watched from his customized command Fire Prism as his troops advanced toward the enemy position. Hundreds of Aspect Warriors had already passed through the Gates, and there were many more still on Mian-Tor. In the cycles since the bestial Orks had breached their sacred home, a greater portion of the Craftworld's population had joined the warrior Paths, determined to prevent another such calamity from befalling their people. Each of the Aspect Shrines was represented, while squads of grav-bikes flew ahead and heavier vehicles brought up the rear.
Here was the might of Mian-Tor at his command, yet Irithiel was bitterly aware that this host, for all its grandeur, was only a pale shadow of the greatness his people had once possessed. During the preparations for this war, the Autarch had delved into the Craftworld's archives to find all that was known of the Nightmare Fleet. His research (aided by the archivists and historians of Mian-Tor) had revealed far more than Nerel's importance.
Since the Fall, the Eldars who had rejected the decadence of their kin had heavily censored what knowledge of their empire had survived the disaster. Irithiel could understand their motive : the birth of She-Who-Thirsts had clearly been a traumatic event for the Children of Isha, and escaping the maw of the dark goddess had been their sole objective.
But in his eyes, they had gone too far in rejecting their roots. They had condemned their descendants to be little more than vagrants, their territory reduced to the Craftworlds, their technology and power crippled. The Asuryani had been on the decline since their very founding, and though it may take millennia, eventually they would all perish, and the only Eldars left would be the vile Drukhari and the irrelevant Exodites.
To Irithiel, who had spent centuries on the Path of Command, this was unacceptable. For the longest time, he had believed there was nothing he could do about it, except fight with all his might to protect Mian-Tor and enforce its isolation, so that the Craftworld might endure longer.
Now, however, he had glimpsed a priceless opportunity. The prison of the Riaway Noara held within it more than just the mistakes of the mon-keigh : it also held the lost secrets and relics of the Eldar Empire, along with the warriors who had ensured their race's dominion over the galaxy. Of course, Irithiel didn't intend to release the Nightmare Fleet just to also free his ancestors – such would have been the height of foolishness.
But once the corrupted mon-keigh had been dealt with and the ignorant Imperials were content that the threat had been averted, the Autarch could return to the prison, and find a way to selectively release those imprisoned within the dimensional oubliette. It would be difficult, likely the work of centuries, but even a partial success would give Mian-Tor an incredible advantage in the pursuit of survival. And yes, his ancestors hadn't done it themselves, but then, by the time the mon-keigh had been able to leave their homeworld, Irithiel's people had already been far on their way to the Fall. It was just as likely they just hadn't bothered to free their captive kinsmen that they hadn't been able to.
For now, he would keep these thoughts to himself. Tarek had already shown he could listen even on psychic communication, and he didn't want to risk the mon-keigh learning of his intent. For all that Mian-Tor and the Imperium were currently allies, the Autarch was under no illusion as to how long that alliance would last once the threat of the Forsaken Sons was dealt with.
Of course, all of his grand plans for the future would come to nothing if they couldn't find the Archive of Loss, which returned his full focus on the unfolding battle.
At first, the Eldars encountered only the deluded worshippers of She-Who-Thirsts, and they were easily cut down by the vanguard, the swift riders running circles around the mutated mon-keigh. But as word of their presence spread among the Chaos forces, one particular element of the Slaaneshi horde rushed to meet the Craftworld's army.
These were the creatures Tarek had told them about during their first meeting on Mian-Tor. The resurrected souls of the most wretched of sinners : the very Eldars whose corruption had caused the Fall. The Sha'eilat, the Children of Hell, who had ruled over the world called Parecxis during the centuries between the Fall and the Great Crusade, making playthings of the human colonists who had the misfortune of landing into their clutches.
Back on the world the mon-keigh had called Parecxis, Tarek had known of two kinds of Sha'eilat : their warriors and their flesh-crafting nobles, engineers of abomination and torment. Now the warriors of Mian-Tor faced both, along with a horde of monsters. The Sha'eilat were very few, but with them came a horde of gene-forged horrors, each crafted by the Gene-Lords from the clay of human genetics and diabolical inspiration. Blind, mewling masses of muscles fitted with pain collars that only abated their torment when they killed their masters' enemies; six-limbed pale figures with distended jaws that crawled across the battlefield with inhuman speed; screeching furies flying on membranous wings : these were but a sample of the menagerie of nightmares the Sha'eilat had bred in their City of Screams, now unleashed upon the descendants of their more honorable cousins.
The sight of it all was viler than Irithiel's Path-bound mind could ever have imagined possible – which was the point of the Paths in the first place. Even from aboard his Fire Prism, the psychic miasma of the Sha'eilat and their creations made the Autarch feel sick.
Was this what all our ancestors were like ? He thought, and the idea filled him with dread.
But no. Surely not. If the entire Eldar Empire had been in the Sha'eilat's image, society would have collapsed long before the Fall, and not a single Craftworld would have been constructed. No, just like Irithiel's forebears had completely rejected their roots out of fear of the decadence poisoning them, the Sha'eilat were the greatest deviants, the worst monsters spawned by the Eldars during their aeons-long reign over the galaxy.
The thought was poor consolation, however, when confronted with such a display of corruption. Was this what the mon-keigh felt when facing their Chaos-worshipping kin ? If so, Irithiel may have to revise his view of their Inquisitorial allies, who faced such things constantly.
As the vanguard of grav-bikes reeled from this psychic malaise, the Sha'eilat struck. Tentacled horrors tore pilots from their seats and hurled them to the ground, slamming them against the broken stones of mon-keigh graves with enough strength to shatter their bones. There, the rest of the Gene-Lords' menagerie descended upon them, tearing them apart with horrendous screams. Within seconds, nearly the entire vanguard had been wiped out, with only a few managing to escape in time.
Once the initial shock passed, however, Mian-Tor's warriors were filled with righteous fury, and not just at the sight of their fallen comrades. The very existence of the Sha'eilat went against every ideal the Paths stood for, and the Aspect Warriors threw themselves in the fray with a determination that bordered on madness.
"In the name of Asuryan," Irithiel shouted, his words carried to every warrior of the host, "my brethren, kill these abominations !"
Irithiel yearned to join the fray himself, to draw his blade and fight against these vile reflections of his people's glory. But he couldn't. He was the only full-fledged Autarch of Mian-Tor, the only soul who had any experience on the Path of Command. The Autarch Council had been decimated during the War of the Beast and hadn't recovered yet – it took much longer than two hundred cycles to train a new Autarch, and few souls were ever called to that Path. And with the Council of Seers still recovering from their disastrous divination attempt, the burden of leadership in this campaign had largely fallen on his shoulders. His life didn't belong to him but to the Craftworld, and he couldn't risk him, no matter how much it galled him to send others in a battle he couldn't join.
All he could do was fulfill his role as Autarch and direct his troops. It quickly became apparent that the Sha'eilat lacked any sort of coordination or leadership, each of them doing as they pleased with their cohort of abominations.
Sha'eilat Warriors were surrounded by squads of Howling Banshees and attacked from all directions while Dire Avengers fired from afar, even their eldritch armor eventually giving way under repeated blows. Warp Spiders moved among the horde of beasts, never staying in one location for more than a single heartbeat, and though many were still caught and slain, they left a trail of dead and bleeding monstrosities in their wake.
The Gene-Lords themselves were surrounded by scores of their most redoubtable creations, and clad in daemon-inspired equipment that made them all but invulnerable to conventional weapons. To stop them, conclaves of Warlocks pooled their energies to unleash devastating psychic workings, creating illusions that ensnared the feeble minds of the Sha'eilat's creations, exposing their masters to focused fire from the Engines of Vaul in the backline.
For a long moment, the battle hung on a knife's edge, then it became apparent to the Autarch that they were winning. The sons and daughters of Mian-Tor were overcoming the incarnation of their people's old sin. Irithiel let himself smile – and then the horizon darkened, as a new foe joined the fray.
It was tall, taller than the Ork walkers Irithiel had seen despoil the tranquil gardens of Mian-Tor two hundred cycles prior. A humanoid torso rose above six bladed and segmented legs, covered in thick black chitin that seemed to have been carved into the shape of screaming faces. Glowing purple lines ran across its body, pulsating in time with the arrhythmic beating of an unseen heart. In one hand, it held a club covered in wicked barbs, while the other arm ended in a biological canon. Worst of all was its face, which was sculpted into the aspect of an Eldar of obscene perfection and beauty, its smile making even the bravest warrior hesitate in fright.
Its cannon took aim and fired, releasing shots of mixed plasma and warp-fire, each obliterating entire squads of Aspect Warriors from existence, their spirit stones shattered by the blast and their spirits sent screaming to She-Who-Thirsts. Irithiel felt a shiver run down his spine as the Goddess breathed out in exaltation, having swallowed the souls of the children of Mian-Tor that had been denied her for so long.
He refused to let the terror overcome him, however, and instead channelled it through the lessons of the Path of Command, turning it into anger. With a scream of outrage, Irithiel commanded the Engines of Vaul to open fire on this new abomination. But when the smoke cleared, the six-legged biomechanical monstrosity still stood, seemingly unaffected by the full might of the host's heavy weaponry. It swooped down with its cub, catching a trio of Aspect Warriors and sending them flying, while two of its legs impaled Howling Banshees in the torso, the warriors still twitching as the limbs moved again to propel it forward.
This was not a foe they could defeat with the weapons they had deployed thus far, the Autarch realized as he gave the order for his forces to withdraw from the path of the Sha'eilat walker. There was but one recourse if they were to triumph over their enemy. Irithiel had hoped to keep that particular asset in reserve, for tactical reasons as well as spiritual ones. But he couldn't hesitate now. It would take several minutes at best for the asset to make its way through the Webway Gates, and every moment that passed sentenced another denizen of Mian-Tor to eternal torment.
His voice thick with cold anger, he gave the order that would damn the soul of one of his comrades-in-arms. As the Exarch of the Dire Avengers Temple replied with grim confirmation of the order's reception, Irithiel once again swore that he'd make all these sacrifices worth it.
Ezyrithn laughed as he killed, safe inside the chest of his great war-construct, floating inside a pocket of liquid, connected to his engine through cables made of living nerves and bone. The Firstborn of the Sha'eilat revelled in the easy slaughter of these pathetic echoes of the Eldar Empire, feeling a jolt of pleasure for every soul he sent to the Dark Goddess that owned his own.
Every Craftworld Eldar who perished had their soul hurled into the maw of Slaanesh, while the gates of the Silver Palace were opened to welcome the Sha'eilat who lost their bodies. There they would dwell in blessed excess, until they returned to the flesh on Parecxis, or aboard the dark ships the Sha'eilat had directed their slaves to build.
He took his time, determined to enjoy this rare opportunity. It had been centuries since he had killed his own kind, and no matter how weak the Craftworlders had become they were still Eldars.
Once they had dealt with these fools and their Imperial allies, perhaps they would hunt down the Craftworld from whence they had come. What great reward would the Goddess bestow upon them for such a sacrifice ? What bliss, what agonies would She grant unto them as they defiled one of the last remnants of Her defiant people ?
The ground shook, drawing his thoughts away from his contemplation. The air trembled. Thoughts of bloodshed and wrath pressed against Ezyrithn's mind and filled those of his lesser kindred, driving them to frenzy while some of his brethren turned tail and fled, sensing the doom that approached long before it arrived.
The host of Mian-Tor parted to let a figure of blackened brass and lava pass, heading directly for Ezyrithn. For a moment, the Firstborn thought he had gone mad, then he realized what had actually happened – which did little to diminish his disbelief.
They had done it, Ezyrithn realized. The Craftworlders had awakened the War-God.
The Avatar of Khaine was as tall as the Firstborn's living engine, a towering shape of burning wrath and power. It was only a shard of Kaela Mensha Khaine, that ancient god the Goddess had slain when She had first awakened, but even the shard of a god still held power beyond what mortals could conceive of. The wrath of the defeated god still radiated from it, and the creations of Ezyrithn's colleagues fled from it, driven by instincts so deep even all the terrible things that had been done to them couldn't suppress them.
But Ezyrithn was no mere mortal. He had witnessed the birth of Slaanesh, and served Her for centuries, before dying and then being resurrected by another champion of the Dark Gods. He had witnessed the glories of the Realms of Chaos, and the sight of a fragment of a dead god would not scare him.
He blocked the god-shard's blow with his club, feeling the heat burn through the outer layers of the living weapon's skin. The club's intellect was a small and stunted thing – it hardly needed more than that to fulfill its function – but even it felt fear now. Ezyrithn raised his other arm and fired point-blank into the Avatar's perpetually snarling face, bathing it in hellish fire. The meeting of two opposite energies caused a violent detonation that forced the two giants apart, as well as sending every troop in the vicinity to the ground.
Then a fist-shaped meteor slammed into his torso's lower half. The flames dissipated, revealing the face of Khaine, damaged but alive. The god-shard punched him again, cracking his armor and forcing him to stumble backward a few steps.
The Firstborn's mind was full of the pain of his engine, but his will was strong enough to fight through it. He lashed out with his club, only for the Avatar to catch the weapon mid-swing with its free hand. Lava-like ichor dripped as the club's barbs bit into burning flesh, melting the broken stone where it landed.
In the same moment, the Avatar raised its blade, placing the tip on the crack its fist had left in Ezyrithn's armor – and pushed.
There was resistance : even damaged, his armor was strong, as evidenced by the fact none of the Eldars' other weapons had breached it. But this blade held the might of a dead god's wrath, given form by the sacrifice of an exalted soul to the hungry, hateful fires of the War-Given-Form. It broke through and plunged all the way to the hilt, bursting out of the construct's back.
No, Ezyrithn panicked. No, no, no, no ! This couldn't be ! Not like this ! Not after everything he had -
There was fire, and pain that brought no pleasure as the flames of a god the Gene-Lord had betrayed devoured his physical form. His blackened soul screamed, searching for a purchase in the Materium, a way to stay alive. As death approached, it lifted the veils his own mind had placed upon his post-mortem memories to protect itself, and the remembrance of what waited for him made him even more desperate to avoid going back. In the final moments of his existence, Ezyrithn remembered that the maw of Slaanesh and the gates of the Silver Palace were one of the same, and that all Eldar souls were treated the same by the Dark Prince of Chaos in the end.
But there wasn't anything he could do, and he finally fell from life and into the Warp's burning tides.
Orpheus breathed in the war-stained air of Nerel, savouring the mix of old dust and fresh blood. It was a unique and potent melange, and one the Chosen of Arken revelled in like a fine wine. This world had brought him many new experiences since he had come here.
The Sorcerer of Slaanesh stood alone. Unlike most of the Coven, he had never used acolytes to assist him in his work, finding that doing so diluted the pleasure that came from manipulating the raw stuff of the Warp and bending it to his will. The few cultists of the Youngest God who weren't throwing themselves at the foe stayed clear of him, preparing the final defenses for the enemy assault while calling for the Dark Prince to look upon their works and welcome them into His embrace as they gave their lives to the cause of the Forsaken Sons.
A worthy endeavour, but futile. If the enemy armies reached them, then the battle was already lost. The position they occupied, the one Arken had ordered them to hold, was hardly defensible. It was one of ten thousand memorials, standing atop an entrance to the catacombs below Nerel's surface. Orpheus hadn't even bothered to have the other former Emperor's Children and other Slaaneshi Chaos Marines stand with him : instead, they had stayed in orbit, to try their hand at boarding the ships of the Eldars while their main force was on the ground. He had only kept a handful with him, to serve as his personal guard as well as witnesses of what he was about to do.
Meanwhile, Mikail had gone down below, to try and destroy the clues Arken had found so that no one else could use them. Orpheus doubted he would succeed : if it were so easy, doubtless Arken would have destroyed them himself. But perhaps the Gods would smile upon the other Chosen, as they had many times before. It wasn't exactly common, after all, for a renegade Imperial trooper to rise to the heights of power Mikail had achieved. The man had come very far since Parecxis, and wore the favor of the Dark Prince openly.
Orpheus' enhanced senses were already starting to pick out the noise of the enemy, still several kilometers distant. He could feel the powerful souls approaching – the bright spirits of a few Space Marine Librarians, and the delicious souls of the Eldars.
Ezyrithn's death, and the summoning of the Avatar of Khaine, had drawn the gaze of the Dark Prince to this battlefield. The Sorcerer of Slaanesh shivered in pleasure under his deity's attention, as well as in anticipation of what he was about to do. From the moment Arken had told him what was expected of him, the Sorcerer had barely been able to contain himself. The Awakened One had known Orpheus' talents made him uniquely suited to this particular battlefield, and he wouldn't disappoint his lord, not when he had provided him such an exquisite opportunity.
Slowly, he extended his will downward, past the confines of his flesh and into the earth of Nerel. The temperature around him dropped, crystals of ice forming on defiled gravestones as he drew upon the energies of the Empyrean, letting them flow through him, sharpening his psychic senses as he looked for …
And there it was, just beneath the surface of all these boring prayers and funereal rites. A depthless reservoir of terror, pain and hatred, drawn from all the horrible ways in which an entire Sub-Sector's worth of people could die. The Graveyard had earned that name in blood, spilled at the edge of Orkish blades.
There was so much of it. The Orks of the Great Beast had slaughtered billions in Azarok alone before being defeated, and many more in the rest of the galaxy, in a genocide of such scale it rivalled the Heresy. Orpheus tasted the terror of the dead, and drew upon that reservoir, becoming a conduit between it and the Warp.
"Greetings, little ghosts," he whispered as the very power of the Gods passed through him and into the graves of Nerel. "I am afraid your nightmares are not yet over, for I have a use for them."
Through Orpheus, the power of the Warp gave form to the tormented memories of the dead. Silhouettes began to emerge from the shadows of the graves, tall and simian, with small red eyes and too-wide maws.
Orks. Orpheus had summoned an army of spectral greenskins, giving false life to the nightmarish last memories of the dead of the Graveyard. The Chosen of Arken laughed as his creations began to run outward, to where the Eldar and Imperial forces were closing in on the memorial. They were not daemons, not really, but close enough that it made little difference from a tactical perspective.
The allied forces quickly overcame the surprise of seeing translucent Orks before them, especially once the first ranks were torn to bloody pieces. As was the case with manifested Neverborn, their weapons still worked on the specters, but there were just too many of them. Even the Avatar of Khaine was stopped, unable to advance as a sea of ghostly Orks swarmed it. It cut swathes of them down with each swipe of its blade, and their own weapons and claws could do little harm to the divine fire that burned inside it, but it couldn't advance either.
The ghostly Orks couldn't get too far from Orpheus without starting to lose their substance, not that they paid any heed to that. The echoes of the xenos brutes were far too bloodthirsty to let a little thing like dissolution stop them. Fortunately, more continued to appear as they faded away : even the thousands Orpheus had brought into existence were but a drop in the ocean of memories that dwelled on Nerel.
Their foes were too disciplined to break, even when faced with such a seemingly limitless enemy, but they did retreat in good order, holding the line right at the edge of where the Orks started to dissolve too much to fight properly. No doubt their leaders were already considering their options and preparing a plan – though Orpheus was hoping this setback would throw a wrench in the relations between the Imperials and the Eldar. Unless the Imperium had changed a lot in the Forsaken Sons' absence, that tie must be tense already, and if it could be broken, this might turn from a holding operation into a true victory.
For now, he would remain here. He had come prepared and rested : he could maintain the summoning spell for days easily, and weeks with a little aid to keep his body nourished.
Far above the battlefield where the living fought the dead, aboard the ship Judgement's Will, Elydeos Akhaman stood with his eyes closed. His mind was empty of all thoughts save that of the spell he was about to perform, his mental voice repeating the mantras that set his psyche in the correct pattern. Absolute concentration was required, for the slightest lapse could and would result in a painful and ignominious death.
In his hands, he held a long staff of adamantium-laced wood topped by a beautiful sculpture of an Aquila holding the Inquisition's emblem in its claws. It was a focus of power, but not like the staves employed by Librarians of the Adeptus Astartes and sanctioned psykers of the Schola Psykana. Elydeos, for all his lore, was no psyker : he held no power within him, forever threatening to burst forth from his flesh and damn his soul.
His fellow Inquisitors had many words for what he was, none of which were flattering. Witch, warlock, spell-slinger, ritualist, heretic, Radical, along with many other, cruder appelations – the members of the Ordo were not above petty insults when their tempers were raised. If not for his continued successes in the struggle against the infernal minions of the Ruinous Powers, he might have ended up burned at the stake by his peers for wielding secrets they considered too dangerous for anyone to wield. Even success wouldn't have protected him from the doubts of his Puritan brethren forever.
But he was Lord Inquisitor now, leader of the Azarok Conclave, even if that rank had only been bestowed upon him out of desperation after the Conclave had been decimated by the betrayal of Gaelis Serventas and the sudden strike of the Sorcerer Lord Asim and his xenos ally Carthago. His forbidden secrets had been the only thing that had kept the slaughter of the Conclave from being total, and with the influx of daemonic activity across Azarok that had accompanied the Black Crusade, leadership from one of the Ordo Malleus was sorely needed. He had led the survivors of the Conclave to Cardinal Station, had returned the Chapter Master of the Heirs of Sanguinius from the dead and learned from him the name and face of their foe. He had directed the resistance to the Forsaken Sons and their slaves, and made alliance with the Eldars of Craftworld Mian-Tor when they had come to bring warning of the Nightmare Fleet.
He would not fail now.
The chamber had been cleared at his order weeks ago, just after the Inquisitorial flotilla had left Cardinal Station. He hadn't known for sure they would need it, but there was no such thing as being over-prepared when one was an Inquisitor. Candles made from the corpses of priests who had died peacefully after spending their lifetimes in contemplation of the Emperor's glory were the only source of illumination. They lit up a complex circle drawn in chalk mixed with Elydeos' own blood and the ashes of dismal texts recovered from the workshops of the madmen who had brought the Child of Anarchy into the Materium, several years before the mark of the Forsaken Sons began to spread across Azarok. Even now, some trace of the cultists' insane genius lingered within the ashes, lending their power to what the Lord Inquisitor was about to attempt.
Only three other people stood in the room with him, though ten souls in total occupied it. To his left was Alphon, who had first put forward his name as Lord Inquisitor, and who knew things even Elydeos didn't. Like Elydeos, the Inquisitor wore a suit of human-sized power armor, and carried a power sword and a bolter an unaugmented man would have struggled to lift, with various other tools hanging from his belt. The ornate wargear made for a stark contrast with its wielder, who was, in all aspects, an utterly unremarkable man, an image the other Inquisitor had gone to great lengths to cultivate. Alphon was usually more comfortable hunting down the intrigues that took place in the halls of power, but the time for subtlety had passed, and his face was set in a determined expression.
Next to him was Elythrea Minias, the only xenos in the room (not that her people had been happy about letting her come alone). The Farseer was clad in her panoply of war, her ornate armor covering her from head to toe while she held a bladed staff in her hands and a shuriken pistol hang from her waist. She had glanced at his preparations and given a single nod – high praise, coming from one of the arrogant Eldar. In truth, Elydeos suspected she had no idea what he was doing – she was a psyker after all, and her skills ran in a different direction from his. Still, one never knew with the Eldars.
Finally, completing the circle to Elydeos' right was the being who called himself Tarek, despite having little left in common with the sea captain who had once borne that name. Power blazed from the six soulstones fused to his arm and soul by the trials they had undergone together. He wore no power armor, having never been trained in its use, but a suit of simple combat fatigues and flak armor, the kind worn by Imperial Guardsmen across the entire Imperium, with a chainsword and laspistol hanging at his belt. Tarek didn't need those weapons to be dangerous, but it was always best to have options, and keep the eldritch power at his disposal in reserve for desperate situations.
Elydeos would have liked to have more people here. Inquisitor Silviana had to stay behind to direct the war effort and provide an Inquisitor's perspective, but he would have loved to take a squad or two of Stormtroopers or Heirs of Sanguinius. Hells, he would have liked to have an entire army, or better yet a troupe of Grey Knights – but the Knights hadn't arrived yet, and the spell he was going to use had limitations. Limitations that, in truth, he was already stretching by including Tarek, but not bringing him along would have been foolish. His destiny was entwined with that of the Forsaken Sons, and his power was beyond doubt, even if he had yet to demonstrate it in Elydeos' presence.
The battle on the surface had been going well, until the Forsaken Sons had unleashed the ghosts of Nerel upon them. Now it was all the combined forces of the Imperium and Mian-Tor could do to keep the spectral Orks from overwhelming their positions. Eventually the ghosts would fade away – no Sorcerer could maintain such a working forever, especially since their divinations had revealed this was the work of a single heretic. But every day, every hour lost brought Arken one step closer to victory. They needed to act now, to break the foe on Nerel and gain access to the secrets hidden there that led to the Nightmare Fleet's location.
Which was why they were here, with Elydeos about to transport them directly into the catacombs leading to the Archive of Loss, under the center of the traitors' position on Nerel.
It would be dangerous, difficult, and potentially damning. But when had that ever stopped a true member of the Holy Ordos ?
Elydeos finally spoke aloud the words burning his brain, bending his own mind in patterns no human thought should ever take. The candles flared and guttered out, reality twisted in on itself, and then -
- they were gone.
AN : What ? An Avatar of Khaine actually winning a fight ? And then going on to survive the battle it's deployed in ? What dark sorcery is this ?!
Seriously, the fact that almost every appearance of an Avatar of Khaine in canon ends with them getting their ass kicked by the bad guy du jour is a little aggravating to me. Not as much as the fact the Ultramarines are presented with Grey Knights-level incorruptibility, as illustrated by the fact I haven't started a series running for seven years about the Avatars kicking ass (by the way, here is a freebie if any of you are looking for a fanfic concept) but still. If I have an opportunity to redress the balance somewhat, I will take it.
On another note, something I have noticed is that Farseers get all the press in fiction as leaders of the Eldars. Seriously, the Autarchs are the ones supposed to lead the armies of the Craftworlds, but can any of you name a single one of them ? I understand why, of course : the Farseers are much more interesting from a narrative perspective, since they can be all mysterious and all-knowing and inevitably ally with the Imperium after first trying to solve the problem by themselves (which is another reason why I decided to have the Imperium and Mian-Tor work together from the start in this story, to avoid that particular cliché).
Also, I had the idea for the ghost Orks long before I ever heard the word "Orktober".
By complete chance, I have just learned that there is a new submission window for the Black Library, this one about stories set in the Age of Sigmar setting during the Dawnbringer Crusades. If you are interested but hadn't heard about it before, here it is - I am going to try myself, even if none of my previous attempts amounted to anything, if only because I would always wonder otherwise. This shouldn't delay my other writing projects too much : a 100-word summary and 500-words excerpt are hardly going to keep me busy for too long. I am going to have to catch up on all the AoS new lore, though, since the Crusades take place after the Broken Realms arc.
I am still aiming to finish this story before the end of the year. As always, if you have comments, suggestions or complaints, please leave a review. Since we are in the final stretch, especially if you have a favorite character whose ultimate fate you are curious about, mention them. It is entirely too likely that I have forgotten about them, despite my best efforts to go back and read this entire story again (which, oh gods, this is not something I recommend to any author who has a story running for several years).
Zahariel out.