I do not own the Warhammer 40000 universe nor any of its characters. They belong to Games Workshop.
The Webway
745.M32
"Geller Field breached !" called out an officer. "Aetheric surge in deck three, section five-six ! Crew reporting minor manifestations !"
"Silviana !" shouted Elydeos over the dim of alarms blaring on the bridge of the Judgement's Will.
"I'm on it !" she replied, already rushing toward the doors, a squad of Tempestus Scions moving in behind her.
Unlike Elydeos and all of the ship's troops, Inquisitor Silviana hadn't put on armor, for she didn't need to. After her near-death at the destruction of the Azarok Conclave by the Chaos Sorcerer Asim and his pet xenos witch, her entire body had been remade. At over two meters high, she towered over all others in the room, a humanoid construct of augmetics and weaponry that, according to the tech-priests who had rebuilt her, could conceivably take on a Dreadnought and emerge victorious.
She had used that strength many times in the past few days. The Path to Nightmares, as their Eldar allies called this section of the Webway, had been breached by daemons centuries ago. It was now little different from the Warp, and the horrors that dwelled there hungered for the souls of those who dared to enter their conquered domain.
It was difficult to gauge a xenos' emotions, but the Inquisitor Lord was certain the Mian-Tor Eldars had been terrified when they had reached the great Webway Gate whose position Elythrea had gleaned in the Archive of Loss. Every sailor in the Imperial Navy feared the Warp, but the Eldars dreaded the Immaterium far more, to the point their ships never used it, relying entirely on the crumbling Webway network, supplemented by the Gates they could create themselves – much smaller echoes of the great portals their forebears had erected all across the galaxy in the age of their Empire.
Elydeos could see why they were so afraid. The Eldar ships were under at least twice as much pressure as their Imperial counterparts, the infernal hordes drawn to the bright souls of the xenos. Not that the Imperial ships had an easy time, of course – far from it. Every single ship in the allied fleet had been under almost constant attack since they had crossed the Webway Gate.
After their victory in the Archive, the Inquisitors and Farseer had recovered the soulstones that had been embedded in Tarek's arm – no other trace of their companion had remained. They had been sent to Mian-Tor to be studied by the Eldars, before a decision was made as to whether to add them to the Craftworld's Infinity Circuit or not.
With the soulstones recovered, they had begun making their way back to the surface. There, they had found that the Forsaken Sons had fled, their retreat from the system starting right at the moment Tarek had sacrificed himself to kill Mikail Korzhanenko. The battle in the void had been contested enough that they had been able to withdraw with minimal casualties, with a handful of lesser ships sacrificed as a rearguard while their masters escaped.
With the departure of the Sorcerer who had summoned them, the spectral Orks that had kept the allied forces at bay had vanished, and the trio had emerged into the light of day to find Autarch Irithiel Arthes and Chapter Master Raguel Alastores waiting for them, their troops trading dirty looks behind them.
The Farseer had left with her kindred, while Elydeos and Alphon returned to the Judgement's Will. Alphon had disposed of the still-living head of the hunter the Warp had sent after Tarek, securing it inside a stasis field further reinforced by blessings laid down by priests of the Ecclesiarchy. Later, when there was more time, maybe they would throw it into a star – once it had been properly studied and it was certain such would not free the entity to return, as daemons were wont to do.
Their final reinforcements had arrived at Nerel soon after, as the last transports returned from the surface. The Fire of Dawn had only exchanged sporadic communication with the rest of the fleet – as far as the other Imperials were concerned, the battle-barge was another group of Astartes added to their forces before the final battle. What the Eldars knew, Elydeos could only guess.
The allied fleet had ventured deep into the Graveyard, that Sub-Sector laid to waste by the War of the Beast. They had passed beyond the dead systems and into one that had been plagued by ill omens and Warp phenomena long before the rise of the Beast, the reason for that reputation revealed as the Eldars brought them to an abandoned Webway Gate floating in the void of space.
Unlike the other gates the Eldars had reluctantly led their Imperial allies through in order to catch the Forsaken Sons in time, this one led to a section of the Webway that had long since been overrun with daemons. Elydeos hadn't even known such was possible, but apparently it was, though extracting details from the Eldars was like pulling teeth. There was no doubt, however, that the Forsaken Sons' fleet had passed through the gate : Navigators and psykers both could feel the spoor of their corrupted ships lingering in the Aether.
And so, with no other choice, the Imperial ships had raised their Geller Fields and plunged through the Gate. Eldar ships lacked such protections, however – to them, travelling through the Warp was absurdly dangerous, and their knowledge of the Webway made it redundant. Now, they were forced to stay as close to the Imperial ships as possible, remaining within the envelopes of their Geller Fields with their own shields raised and weapons at the ready. It made an already difficult journey even more taxing for the crews, but the Inquisitor Lord knew they would need every ally they could get when they reached the Anchor of Vaul.
After all, none other than the Supreme Grand Master of the Grey Knights had confirmed it to him.
The Judgment's Will was small by the standards of Imperial ships. In truth, it was hardly suited to serve as the flagship of the Inquisitor Lord. But it had been Akhaman's ship long before his ascension to the rank of leader of the shattered Azarok Conclave, and Akhaman had insisted on remaining aboard it. Having seen some of the repositories and facilities Akhaman had built inside, Alphon could understand why.
Yet despite its comparatively small size, the frigate still held thousands of souls within its hull, and all of them were at risk. Many had already died, some of them by Alphon's own hand as they succumbed to daemonic corruption. The rest lived under siege, moving only in groups and with armed protection, ready to send word to their masters the moment they detected anything untoward. It had caused a number of false alarms, as tempers grew frayed the longer this state of constant vigilance went on, and terrible nightmares spawned from the well of existential horror the Nightmare Fleet had once inspired across scores of inhabited worlds haunted every moment of sleep. But it was the most efficient way to do it, which Alphon found disturbingly similar to how the Imperium operated on a greater scale with its billion worlds, each adrift and alone in the night.
Purging teams moved in response to calls for help, going wherever the greatest threats were, which was why Alphon was threading through knee-high sludge and firing repeatedly at a creature that looked like someone had taken a big canine, put its organs on the outside, and jammed a horn made of human bone in its skull. It, and others like it, had slaughtered an entire battery crew before fleeing into this section of the ship, where liquid waste was recycled. If they weren't destroyed, they would taint the water supply of the frigate, which would put further pressure on the crew as rations were cut to avoid further contamination.
Of course, the waste would still need additionally purification anyway, due to having been walked into by a pack of daemons that had also died in it. As always, the choice was between doing something with negative consequences and doing nothing, which would have worse ones in the long run.
Captain Terion fought alongside Alphon. Despite the wounds he had sustained at Silberstadt, the Heir of Sanguinius was still more than a match for the Inquisitorial troopers who battled the daemons manifesting across the ship, and Alphon would have needed to shoot him to keep him from joining the fray. In truth, his assistance was welcome. In the dim illumination of emergency lumens, Terion's ebony skin and silver and red armor gave him a sinister aspect, making him look like the fury of the Emperor rendered into flesh and ceramite despite their surroundings.
The Inquisitor and the Space Marine fought at the front of their purging squad, supported by the fire of a dozen Stormtroopers in the back. Despite their training, the men and women had been somewhat awed by their assigned officers – and, to Alphon's surprise, it hadn't been just Terion who had provoked that reaction. Stories of his return aboard the ship carrying the decapitated, still-living head of a Chaos Marine had spread among the crew.
That was worrying, for Alphon had many secrets that drawing attention risked exposing. It was why, even as an Inquisitor, he had tried to stay in the background, and had pushed Akhaman to assume a leadership role partly to keep attention away from him. At least the journey through the contaminated section of the Webway had given people plenty of other things to occupy their thoughts. Despite his extensive knowledge of the galaxy, Alphon didn't know how the Webway worked – no one did, really, not even the Eldars despite the use they made of it – or how it could become infested with daemons. It was probably something to do with the Eye of Terror, and the many entrances to the Webway that had existed there before the Fall.
The dog-thing recoiled from the impact of his bolt shells, then died when he plunged his sword through its repugnant skull. He moved past it, feeling a brief flash of heat as one of the Stormtroopers incinerated the dissolving corpse with a short-range flamer meant for close-quarter encounters and disposal. If he hadn't been wearing his freshly repaired power armor, the heat would have burned his skin to at least the third degree.
More of the beasts came, unfazed by the fate of their companion. These were bestial things, lacking the intellect the higher servants of the Ruinous Powers displayed. They were nightmares given awful reality by the stuff of the Warp, unleashed upon the Materium to feed the monstrous hungers of false gods. Alphon despised them with all his heart, though he didn't let that hatred affect his thoughts and actions.
He kept fighting, and they kept coming, until one of them managed to bite his left wrist. Its teeth should have shattered against his armor, made as they were of brittle bone, but instead they pierced through the metal, driven by unholy anima. He grimaced under his helmet as he felt the teeth pierce his skin, pain and a far more revolting sense of defilement washing over his senses.
Then the dog-thing leapt back, howling in pain, its jaws aflame. Its skull burst apart from a well-aimed las-shot from behind Alphon.
Holding his wounded arm close, the Inquisitor briefly glanced at Terion, then at the Stormtroopers. No one was saying anything – they had all seen far stranger things during this campaign. Yet perhaps it was time to start thinking about moving again, once this war was done and the Forsaken Sons were dealt with. The galaxy was vast, and there were a lot of places in the Imperium where he could put his skills to good use.
It would be far from the first time he had to do this, nor would it be the last. That tended to happen when you outlived everyone around you.
Irithiel ripped his sword out of the throat of a pale-skinned thing spawned by his ancestors' debauchery, severing its head before plunging the blade through the eye of another in one smooth motion. The bridge had been breached again. There had been no respite since they had entered this benighted section of the Webway, only brief instants between battles. Already scores of Eldar souls had been lost, their spirit-stones cracked and their essences drawn into the maw of She-Who-Thirsts.
His Void Stalker-class battleship, the Promise of Lileath, was the greatest vessel in Mian-Tor's fleet. Its crew numbered in the thousands, and almost all of them had needed to fight. He had been directing the defense of his ship from the bridge without cease, as well as giving advice to the other Eldar ships in the combined fleet. How the mon-keigh could possibly rely on their so-called Geller Fields to sail the Sea of Souls, he had no idea. He knew that their journeys weren't usually as dangerous : the nature of this place and the attraction of Eldar souls definitely played a part in their current circumstances.
But he was still convinced it was only sheer numbers that let their empire function despite the horrible danger of their method of faster-than-light travel, just as it was sheer stupidity that let the species continue to use that method in the first place. What manner of deluded lunatic thought ripping a hole through the fabric of the universe in order to physically enter a dimension populated by daemons was a good idea ?!
In this case, however, the mon-keigh's lunacy was serving their cause, though it was of course also the reason they were in this whole mess in the first place. Without the protection of their Geller Fields, however flawed, the Eldars would have been annihilated long ago, their entire fleet condemned to a fate infinitely worse than death. The fields kept most of the Neverborn at bay, though the sight of thousands of the Youngest Goddess' children burning themselves to dissolution against them so that a handful could pass through would remain in his memories until his death.
The Autarch hoped their quarry was equally beset, but he doubted it. The Forsaken Sons had proved that there was no depth to which they wouldn't sink, and it was all too likely they had some mean of ensuring their passage was free of attack by the Neverborn. They were, after all, servants of the Dark Powers who had created these horrors.
Another Daemonette launched itself as Irithiel. It was taller than the ones he had already slain. It held a long blade that seemed made of a single piece of glass in its six-fingered hand, the weapon deceptively fragile.
"Beloved child," it purred, with a voice as smooth as the finest silk. "The Dark Prince is waiting for you. Such delights we have prepared !"
It struck with its weapon. Irithiel pushed it aside with his own sword, before firing directly into the Daemonette's skull with his pistol. It moaned as it fell to the bridge's floor, moaning in pleasure mixed with pain. Its sword slipped from its grasp and shattered into a thousand pieces with a discordant sound that made Irithiel grit his teeth in pain.
"Why do you resist us, beloved child ?" it whispered as it dissolved. "We bring you everything you desire. Everything you ever dreamt of."
The Autarch didn't answer it. Engaging the spawn of She-Who-Thirsts in conversation was always a mistake. Irithiel was under no illusion as to the fate that awaited his soul should he perish here. Yet, for a brief moment, his thoughts turned back to the Sha'eilat they had faced on Nerel, and the notion formed in his mind that maybe, to what passed for the sentience of She-Who-Thirsts and her children, the eternal torments they inflicted upon the Eldar souls in their keeping were something to be grateful for. Had the Youngest Goddess not been created by the excesses of the ancient Eldars, as they sought new and ever-stronger sensations ? The agonies of the Silver Palace certainly were all that and more.
He banished the thought before its implications could sink in, aware that only madness and damnation awaited that way.
Elythrea sat cross-legged in her chamber. Her room laid deep inside the ship and was heavily guarded, for her soul shone even brighter than that of the other Children of Isha to the hungry eyes of the daemons. Her eyes were closed, all of her focus turned inward as she sought to perceive the Web of possible futures stretching out ahead of them.
It was all but impossible. Since the eruption of the Mar Daellae, that which the Imperium called the Wailing Storm, the Farseers had been severely limited, to the point the Path had been all but abandoned by the time Tarek had ended up on Mian-Tor. Things were even worse now, but there was value in identifying the reasons for that near-blindness if nothing else.
As far as Elythrea could tell, there were two reasons for the increase in difficulty of farseeing. The first was the nexus of corruption and dark power that led the Forsaken Sons, the Chaos Lord Arken. His existence was like a tumour in the skein, infecting viable futures and drowning them in madness and ruin. The shadow he cast over the future of this region of the galaxy was dark indeed, and what few details she could glimpse in that darkness horrified her. If the Riaway Noara was unleashed, Mian-Tor would fall : there was no doubt about it. The Craftworld would be torn apart, and the only survivors would be those who managed to flee through the Webway and claim sanctuary among other Eldar enclaves, whose number was ever-diminishing.
However, it was the second reason that worried her now. The Forsaken Sons, for all their evil, were a known quantity by that point, though why they thought they could possibly control the Riaway Noara was beyond her ability to understand. But it had been when the Imperials had met up with their latest reinforcements – a single, massive ship, bristling with weaponry and wards that kept her from scrying its contents – that her farsight had almost completely left her. There was one being aboard that ship, or possibly several, with the kind of power that bent fate itself around it, twisting the future in ways that made it impossible to predict.
It terrified her. Arken's power came from the Dark Gods he served, but the warriors aboard that ship most definitely had nothing to do with the Ruinous Powers; in fact, she was certain they had been created specifically to fight them. The daemons that attacked the rest of the allied fleet were reluctant to approach their ship : it hadn't been attacked at all, and the ships nearest to it had barely been troubled as well.
The notion that the Imperium still had beings of such might in its ranks after the end of their Heresy and the disappearance of their semi-mythical Primarchs was disquieting to say the least. It implied that the mon-keigh could somehow create such beings, though the process must obviously be so costly even their bloated empire couldn't afford to raise entire armies of them; otherwise they would have crushed the Primordial Annihilator long ago. She could only perceive glimpses of what lurked behind the psychic wards, but what she got wasn't reassuring : the blood of innocents, the destruction of individuality, the scourging of all memories, leaving naught but service to a distant and silent god that sat on His throne and -
She jerked awake, dragged out of her meditation by the merest glimpse of the God-Emperor's power that dwelled aboard the mysterious ship. Her heart was beating at speeds that were unhealthy even to a Child of Isha. It took her several minutes to calm down, and even then, her mind recoiled every time she thought back to what she had glimpsed.
Elythrea was aware of the tensions that existed between her people and the Imperium. Tarek had managed to bring them together by pointing out the horror that would follow failure, but he was dead now, and the battle of Nerel had hardly endeared the Eldars of Mian-Tor and the mon-keigh to each other. She didn't think things would come to blows while the threat of the Riaway Noara remained, but after that …
She started to plan.
Petronicus took a deep breath, savouring the burn as his three lungs were filled with various pathogens that immediately started trying to kill him. They stood no chance of success, but their futile efforts would spawn new, delightful contagions inside his flesh.
When the journey through the Webway had started, the nameless transport – a refitted cargo hauler taken as spoils during one of the many conquests of the Wailing Storm – had been packed full with over twenty thousand cultists, beastmen, and other bolter fodder. Those had been the very dregs of the hordes that had been gathered by the warband for the Black Crusade, the ones young Mahlone hadn't been able to find a use for in his holding campaign on Berrenos. They could have made a nice distraction on one of the worlds of the Azarok Sectors, but Arken had decided otherwise.
Instead, they had all been dragged into the cargo hauler, and Petronicus and the rest of his Nurglite brethren had been set to work making something useful out of them, using the latest plague samples dear Pharod had given them when they had returned to Parecxis. Decades of research had allowed the Reborn to perfect his formula, and this new version of the zombie plague that had laid waste to the hive-city of Talexorn was much more efficient. Rather than create hordes of mindless zombies with a handful of Plagueborn to direct them, this one was supposed to turn nearly every infected into Poxwalkers, which would retain their sentience and ability to use weapons while being blessed with Nurgle's resilience of body and will. Arken thought this would be a significant upgrade to the quality of the troops; having spent days in the transport, Petronicus agreed with him.
The first step had been to make sure the bridge was sufficiently sealed and supplied with everything the few essential crew would need to successfully sail the transport to its destination. There was no time to transform the entire ship into a proper Plagueship, not with the Imperials on their trail. Once that was done, Petronicus and his forty-one Plague Marines – half the initial number of Death Guards who had survived the Exodus from Terra, attrition having taken its toll even with the Nurgle-given endurance they enjoyed – had spread across the ship and gotten to work.
Food, water and air had all been spiked with the plague. Combined with the cramped conditions and lack of hygiene of the wretches, the sickness had spread obscenely quickly. The vast hangars where they had set camps were filled with the wails of the dying and the stench of rotting, still-living flesh. Attempts made by valiant souls to quarantine the sick and burn the corpses of those who succumbed to the disease were met with violence : the Plague Marines broke their legs and left them alive for the plague to take.
Ironically, Petronicus and his brothers spent much of the journey aiding the sick, bringing them tainted food and water so that they wouldn't die before the transformation was complete. Thousands still perished, their corpses becoming breeding grounds for hordes of vermin and new forms of sickness. The conversion rate was less than what had been reached in Talexorn, where nigh on every infected had risen again as a Plague Zombie. But Pharod hadn't lied when he had claimed the successes were much more useful.
By the time it was over, thousands of Poxwalkers infested the ship. The Plague Marines set on preparing them for the battle to come, giving them basic training and making sure they were all equipped with the bare minimum of weaponry. Their brains had been warped along with their bodies, and the cowardice and lack of discipline that had made them all but useless before had been replaced with a fierce devotion to Grandfather Nurgle and complete willingness to die in his service.
Lesser daemons of Nurgle began to manifest aboard, rising from the corpse piles and joining the Poxwalkers. Joyous rites to Nurgle were conducted on all decks, bloating the Poxwalkers with yet more contagious blessings. Several minor daemonhosts were created by seemingly random chance, becoming preachers of Nurgle that exalted the virtues of surrendering to the inevitable. The Poxwalkers had lost their fear of their transhuman overlords during their rebirth, and tried to drag them into their celebrations with varying degrees of success, which was a strange experience to the sons of Mortarion.
All in all, it made for a great time, and the Plague Marines enjoyed it as much as they could, all of them knowing and accepting that the next battle may well be their last. When Petronicus managed to get hold of Arken on the vox – the conditions in this section of the Webway made communication difficult even with the warband's advantages – the Awakened One was satisfied with the Plague Marines' work, and told Petronicus that he would be the one to lead the Nurglite contingent in the battle that would take place at the Anchor of Vaul.
Prince Erik of Theressar looked at the Knights arrayed in their hangar aboard the Hand of Ruin as the menials prepared them for war.
A heavy black cloak hung from his shoulders, on which his servants had attached strips of cloths marked with the emblems of the various enemies that had died by his hand. He wore an impeccable uniform of leather, and a ceremonial saber hung at his waist. His face remained unchanged, still displaying the noble bearing of House Lyrok – except for his eyes, which had both needed replacing with cybernetics after an engagement with a powerful witch had resulted in his cockpit being filled with warp-fire. The augmetic eyes – he had politely refused the Fleshmasters' offer of more esoteric
replacements – showed him the hangar with perfect clarity despite the dim lightning.
He cut an imposing figure, but in truth, he was fighting to keep himself from yawning.
He hadn't slept well, but then he never did these days. Since joining the Forsaken Sons on Theressar – selling his loyalty to the Awakened One in return for his support in overthrowing his tyrant father and leaving the rebellion to try and make a better place of their world – he could count the nights when he had slept peacefully on one hand. Nightmares haunted him every time he surrendered to sleep, some born from the war he had fought against his sire, others from the wars he had waged since, and others still – the worst of all – from other places and times entirely.
As the sole Knight pilot the warband had in its ranks to begin with, Erik's position had been a curious one. He was above the common rank and file of the mortal armies the Chaos Marines had assembled, and even the Forsaken Sons had treated him with respect, knowing that he would be the one piloting the giant of metal and death once battle was joined. But he was also a servant of Arken, bound to him by his oath, and while Erik had always taken those seriously he wasn't foolish enough not to realize his binding to the Awakened One was of a different nature. He was no slave to the Chaos Lord, no mere puppet unable to move unless he was ordered to, but neither could he rebel against his master, no matter what orders he was given.
To his quiet surprise, the wars of the Wailing Storm hadn't been all that dishonorable : by the time the Forsaken Sons reached a world, it had already sunk deep into corruption and madness, and more often than not the order the warband brought in the name of efficiency was actually a relief to the population. The battles had been brutal, but Arken had used Indomitable as a spearpoint, tearing through enemy vehicles and opening breaches for the rest of the army. Eventually, the Knight suits recovered from Theressar had been repaired, and Erik had been tasked with forming the pilots that would bind with them.
There had been many casualties, but eventually Erik had semi-successfully trained enough pilots for each of the repaired Knights. They had been put under his command, though they had rarely been deployed together after the first few missions – given the calibre of opposition they usually met in the Wailing Storm, sending in several Knights was grossly overkill and, more importantly, a waste of resources. Ammunition and fuel were always scarce, though Merchurion's ingenuity had allowed the Techno-Adept to work dark miracles on the Knights.
The battle ahead, at this place called the Anchor, would be the first time he actually fought Imperials. Arken had kept him and the other Knights in reserve during the Black Crusade, refusing their aid to the other Chosen – Mahlone in particular had asked for them, rightly pointing out that their assistance would be of great use to him in the holding action he had been ordered to perform.
Erik didn't know how to feel about it all. For all his prestige and power, he wasn't in Arken's command circle, but he had heard the rumors. He knew that the Anchor was supposed to hold the key to releasing some vast fleet of daemonships from Humanity's distant past, and that both the Imperium and the Eldars – he hadn't known anything about those until one of the Fleshmasters had explained the basics to him – would do anything to stop it.
Having seen the warband's daemonships in action, Erik could understand why. But he couldn't help but think he should feel … more. He should be horrified at the prospect. How many billions would die, if the Nightmare Fleet were freed ? How many worlds would burn ? And yet, he felt nothing. His service to the Forsaken Sons had slowly hollowed him, the horrors he witnessed eating out at his soul until all that remained was his code of honor, and that code demanded that he obey Arken's orders, no matter that the Awakened One was a thousand times worse monster than Emperor Augustus Lyrok had ever been.
It was the only thing he had left, the only thing that stood between him and all the living nightmares of the Warp. He would hold onto it and be damned, because he was damned anyway.
Bellarius knelt before the angel Mahlone, and waited for the divine messenger's words. A Lord he might be, shaped by the hands of the Gods themselves, but he was still a creature of flesh and blood, separated from their grace by the necessities of his purpose, while the angel was a luminous being, and a direct agent of their will. The Gods spoke through him, and it was Bellarius' duty to heed the angel's words so that he could then pass them on to his people.
The Separation had ended, and the people of Etharic had been reunited with the Gods. The fallen Lords of Etharic had been slain, their spirits freed from their corrupted bodies and reunited with the glory of the Gods. Only Bellarius had remained, but new Lords had risen in time.
On Etharic, Bellarius had guided his people to build great ships with which their armies could depart to bring the glory of the Gods on other worlds. Though Bellarius had defeated the Shadow three hundred years prior, and the divide between Etharic and its Gods had been healed upon his awakening as prophecy had foretold, there remained a great many evils in the cosmos, and the Gods had called upon their champion to fight in their name yet again.
He had answered their call gladly, and so had his people. When the angels had returned after their departure following the purge of the fallen Lords, they had found Bellarius ready.
Several of the younger Lords had been sent to a place called Meridior, to help the children of the Gods who suffered under the brutal tyranny of the Shadow, living miserable existences of abject servitude. But Bellarius himself, along with his close circle and most elite troops, had been marked for another, greater purpose.
"We will arrive at our destination soon," said the angel, his voice echoing like golden musical notes. His face was hidden under a beautiful mask, for only the Gods and the dead may look upon the true visage of their messengers. Another angel stood behind him, along with a blessed priest of the Gods, who had been so exalted as to be permitted to attend their messengers. Bellarius knew him : his name was Marcus, and he had been of great assistance to him in the months of their journey to the promised battle.
"We are ready, exalted one," replied Bellarius, kneeling before the angel with the tip of his emerald blade resting on the floor. Even in this position, his head was of a height with the angel's, for the Lords had been made tall, and Bellarius tallest of them all. "You need but give the order, and we shall crush all the enemies of the Gods in their name."
"Your weapons are prepared ?"
"Our blades have been blessed and our armor polished," said Bellarius. It was strange that the angel needed to ask such an obvious question, but then the messengers were exalted beings, whose understanding of mortal matters was limited. It was why the Lords had been created in the first place.
"The enemies we will face soon are mighty, Bellarius. Are your warriors prepared to die ?
"Of course !" Coming from another, the implication it could be otherwise would have been an insult, but the angels remembered that even the Lords of Etharic had failed in their purpose before. "There is no greatest honor, no higher glory, than to die in service to the Gods. Those who perish shall do so gladly, and we shall praise their deeds as their spirits are reunited with the Gods. I swear to you, there are no cowards among them."
The angel nodded. "That is good. Then we shall leave you to your final preparations, for there is much yet to be done."
The two angels and the priest boarded their glorious chariot, a construct of gleaming heavenly metal and holy fire, and departed. After watching them grow distant, Bellarius turned back. His duty was clear, and he wouldn't fail.
"That," said Ygdal as the ramp of the transport closed and the gunship lifted off the near-derelict carrying the mutants of Etharic, "was among the most disturbing things we've ever done, and I don't say that lightly."
Mahlone merely grunted in response. The madness of the mutants was disquieting even to the Lord of the Unbound – not that the title meant much these days, with his host slaughtered on Berrenos – but it did make them easier to manage than most of the troops he'd had under his command. After some of the things he had needed to do to enforce discipline, playing along with the delusions of Bellarius was positively restful.
"Despite his madness, Bellarius is still a capable commander," said Marcus from where he sat, securely strapped in his seat's restraints. As ever, the Riven looked utterly unperturbed by what they had seen, his scarred face the picture of serenity.
"His troops are still only mutants enthralled by the Changer of Ways' lies," pointed out Ygdal. "What if Bellarius is killed and they are forced to face reality ? I doubt that would go over well."
"I spoke with Dekaros before he left the Wailing Storm," answered Mahlone. If Bellarius dies, the other so-called Lords should be able to pick up the slack. "If they all die, however, the mutants will be stripped of their illusions, which, yes, will not be a pretty sight."
"You would think after generations, it wouldn't be a problem. None of them were ever human anyway, so it really feels like a cruel joke of Tzeentch to me."
"Most likely, yes," agreed Mahlone. "In any case, they will still serve. Even if they lose their minds, every body we can throw on the field of battle gives us better odds of victory."
"I suppose," conceded Ygdal, before settling down for the rest of the trip back to the Blade of Terror.
Daemons flew around the gunship, but didn't attack it. Runes had been carved into its hull and infused with the blood of sacrifices, reinforcing the pact that had been made before the Forsaken Sons had passed through the Webway Gate. Their pursuers wouldn't be so protected, of course, and the attrition they would suffer during the crossing had been taken into account by Arken when planning the Black Crusade.
Even now, the scale of the Awakened One's plan and the depths of his foresight awed Mahlone. Upon his return from Berrenos, he had been told the full extent of what Arken intended : the true nature of the Grey Knights and of Arken's plan to break their power on his knee and strip the rotting Imperium of some of its most powerful protectors.
Already, that plan had cost them greatly. Only two of the Chosen of Arken were among the forces sailing toward the Anchor of Vaul. Asim had managed to escape the Grey Knights at Kemyros, but the list of the others' fate made for a grim tally. Pareneffer, the Unfettered, Hektor Heker'Arn, Karalet – they had all died. The three Slaaneshi Chosen – Orpheus, Ezyrithn, and Mikail – had been left behind on Nerel, and given that the Coven had confirmed the Imperials and their xenos allies were in pursuit, their chances of survival were slim.
Dekaros had also remained behind, the Lord of Shadows tasked by the Awakened One to prevent the rest of the Imperial reinforcements sent to Azarok from interfering. Right now, he should be leading the traitor Navy elements into hit-and-run campaigns against the fleets that had broken the Unbound Host at Berrenos, and Mahlone wished his peer all the Dark Gods' favor in the endeavour.
Though the Black Crusade had slain billions, it had also bled the Forsaken Sons, costing them much of the strength they had accumulated in the Wailing Storm. But all of that would be irrelevant if they cracked the cage of the Nightmare Fleet open.
Aboard the forge-barge Eidolon of Regret, Arch-Heretek Merchurion toiled on his greatest work yet.
Elsewhere in the forge-barge, the flesh-mills of the Dark Mechanicum were working at full capacity. New battalions of skitarii were being spawned and equipped with newly-forged augmetics and weapons. The entire stores of biological matter and metal were being spent to raise fresh troops, new lives created only to die in the coming battle, knowing nothing but the imperatives of war that were burned into their brains at birth. In great hangars, daemon engines built on Argenta Primus and the hell-forge of Mulor Tertium were being prepared.
But none of this concerned Merchurion. He had his own task, along with the greatest adepts of the Argentian Mechanicum, including their leader Al-Zarak. As soon as the Eidolon of Regret had joined up with the Hand of Ruin, Arken had sent him over along with the elements that had already been built.
The Lamentation occupied almost the entire chamber in which it was constructed, which was vast enough to house Titans. It was made of metal and flesh, and daemonic intelligences dwelled within its components, bound there by the arts of the Argentian hereteks. The machine fed on power and blood, carried to it by great cables and sacrificial altars. It also bristled with transmitters, some of them freshly built, others scavenged across the Wailing Storm and refitted to run on Argentian Warp-born energy. The Lamentation was a speaking engine, designed to be able to communicate on every material and immaterial frequency. Some of the techniques that had been used to create the Metatrons that the warband had employed to keep in touch during the Black Crusade had been re-used in its construction, though it was much, much more complex and powerful than these early prototypes.
When the Lamentation was activated, the gods themselves would hear it speak. It would carry the word of Arken to the Nightmare Fleet itself, and make itself understood to the ancient sentiences that drove it.
This was what Merchurion had been prepared for. Only now, on the eve of their greatest triumph, did the Arch-Heretek finally understand. For decades, Arken had allowed him access to all manner of forbidden knowledge, encouraging Merchurion to gorge himself on the lore accumulated by the various illuminated cultures they encountered in their conquest. Wars had been waged where more diplomatic outcomes might have been reached so that he would be able to peruse sealed tomes and encrypted data-banks. He had looked upon the Primordial Truth of the Eightfold Omnissiah from a hundred different angles, gleaning a handful of new revelations each time.
All this time, the Awakened One had known what he would one day ask of Merchurion. The Lamentation, for all its dark majesty, was still only a training exercise compared to what awaited him once they reached their destination. The Arch-Heretek would accompany Arken in the dimensional locus that served as the lock on the Nightmare Fleet's prison. He would be brought before the devices that had bent reality and trapped the Nightmare Fleet into a dimensional oubliette, and he would bend them to his will.
None of the hidebound adepts of the Cult Mechanicus would have a chance of understanding the works of the ancient Eldars, but Merchurion had spent centuries studying machines built by madmen and geniuses, each with their unique approach. He had been trained for this, and he would not fail. The patterns of the Machine were known to him, and he would find a way. He would throw open the gates that held the Nightmare Fleet at bay, and the Lamentation would forge an alliance between it and the Forsaken Sons.
All who stood against them would burn, and the secrets of the Nightmare Fleet, secrets dating back to the Dark Age of Technology, would be his. And with them, he would build wonders amidst the ashes of the Azarok Sector as to make the false priests of Mars tremble in terror and awe.
In an isolated and reinforced section of the Hall of Asclepios, Fleshmaster Savarkan was hard at work putting the final touches on his latest work. His grandfatherly face was reflected in the panels of reinforced glass that covered several gestating pods, within which slumbered beings whose mere existence was heresy of the worst kind to all aspects of the Imperial Creed.
Soon after the beginning of the Black Crusade and the victory at Silberstadt, Arken himself had summoned him to his sanctum. The Awakened One had given him a data-slate and a decryption key of the type used to secure Exterminatus-grade weaponry, and told him this would be his job for the foreseeable future.
Inside the data-slate had been the notes of Pareneffer, when the fool had tried to clone the Primarchs – and, against all odds, actually managed to somewhat pull it off. His Children of Woe had been killed in battle, with the last one becoming Serixithar's vessel and almost killing Arken in the final hours of the war for Parecxis, but they had still been powerful assets, and Arken wasn't willing to hold anything back in the name of fulfilling the Black Crusade's goals.
For the first time in centuries – there was a reason a Terran-born had survived among the Night Lords long enough to join the Forsaken Sons – Savarkan had actually argued with a superior officer. But Arken hadn't budged, and eventually, Savarkan had agreed.
Even with the complete genetic code stored within the data-slate, it had been difficult, gruesome, but interesting work. Without the samples Pareneffer had access to, he had been forced to take shortcuts. Fortunately, these new Children of Woe were only meant to serve as disposable weapons, not long-term assets. Savarkan had plundered the research of his peers, requisitioning valuable materials as well as using daemonic assistance to fill in the gaps. There had been many false starts, and his bolt pistol had put down many of his own creations as they broke free and tried to kill him.
In the end, the Fleshmaster had managed to create seven Children of Woe, though one of them looked like it wouldn't survive for much longer. They twitched inside their pods, kept quiescent by powerful cocktails of tranquillizers. None of them were free of mutations, and it was all but impossible to tell which bloodline their genetics had originally been based on, before Savarkan's improvisations had defiled it to make it viable.
His work had been kept from the rest of the warband, and even from the other Fleshmasters. Even among the Forsaken Sons, there were lines whose crossing made the warriors uncomfortable, and this was most definitely one of them. The Forsaken Sons held no love for their failed fathers, but the innate distrust of cloning remained. There was no point in testing their tolerance, not when secrecy was so much easier.
The oversized weapons Merchurion had forged at Arken's request rested at the opposite side of the room, waiting for their wielders. There was no armor : the Children of Woe were too deviated from their original templates for that, their bodies wracked by unchecked mutation. Their innate resilience and regeneration ability would have to suffice.
He ran the final checks on each of the Children of Woe, seeing all values within acceptable parameters. Everything was ready; now all he needed was for Asim to do his part in the Awakened One's latest blasphemous scheme.
Asim stood in the presence of six Daemon Lords and waited for them to give their answer to his offer.
The Neverborn were not truly manifested : in the physical reality of the ritual room on the Hand of Ruin, the Sorcerer Lord knelt at the center of a complex ritual circle, with six objects laying on the edge. The circle served as an intermediary between his mind and the infernal essence bound within each relic, allowing him to make psychic contact with them without giving them access to his body and soul. He had called on the help of every member of the Coven to check the circle before beginning, to make sure not a single weakness remained.
The rest of the Coven were busy in other rooms not too dissimilar to this one, summoning daemons and binding them within the bodies of Imperials taken prisoner at Silberstadt. The repeated work would mean the bindings wouldn't hold for long, and the daemonhosts would need to be handled like unstable explosives, but they would still make for a powerful force if they could be aimed at the enemy.
Even after all that, it would still only last for an hour at best. He didn't have the same resources as when he had repeatedly made contact with the Imprisoned, but fortunately, these daemons were much more amenable than the ancient horror had been. Each of the six relics, from the bone knife engraved with glowing runes that had driven generations of priests to sacrifice innocents to the Dark Gods to the mummified head of the possessed Tyrant-King of Formorros, had been taken by the Forsaken Sons during their conquest of the Wailing Storm. Until now, they had been locked away in the vaults of the Awakened One, trapped within stasis fields and powerful wards.
After Asim had arrived on the Hand of Ruin from Kemyros, Arken had broken the seals and handed over the relics to the Sorcerer of Blood. If they were to stand a chance against the Grey Knights who would doubtlessly come for them, they would have to use every asset at their disposal. Which was why Asim's mind now lurked in the psychic shadows of the powerful daemons bound within the relics.
Each of the daemons was unique, for they stood high in the complex hierarchies of the Neverborn. Not so high as to be princes or favoured scions, the greater daemons whose thread made entire worlds tremble in terror, but powerful nonetheless, and possessed of their own identities. With the protections between him and them, Asim could only glimpse impressions of their true and terrible forms.
One cast the shadow of six wings. Another reeked of dirty swamp water, while a third gave off the smoke that rose from the pyre of the unjustly condemned. Two more were like opposite reflections of one another, with one shining with blinding light that formed impossible shapes and the other an abyss that swallowed all light as if it were a dead star. Most curious was the one who gave off only the impression of an empty throne : merely contemplating it, even through the many layers of protections, made Asim uneasy.
The bargain Asim offered the daemons was simple. It had not required the intercession of the Herald of Blood, which was fortunate given the creature had mostly left him alone since Carthago's ghost had attached herself to him. The daemons would be freed from their prisons and given new bodies to inhabit in the Materium, powerful ones that would be able to bear their power and that they could reshape as they pleased. In return, they would fight alongside the Forsaken Sons and each other in the battle against the Imperium and their Eldar allies. After that battle, they would be free to do as they pleased.
Powerful oaths would be required to seal the deal, the sort of pact that could not be broken without consequence. Of course, that also meant that if Savarkan failed to deliver the bodies they needed, Asim would still be compelled to procure satisfying alternatives lest he and the warband be the one to bear the backlash of the broken bargain. He would rather avoid damning six of his kinsmen by turning them into daemonhosts, but he knew Arken would give them to him if need be. The Awakened One was nothing if not ruthlessly pragmatic, and had proven beyond any shadow of a doubt he was willing to sacrifice his brothers in the name of fulfilling his goals.
Finally, just as Asim felt he would need to ask again, the first of the daemon lords answered. Its response wasn't couched in words, but Asim's mind interpreted it as such : "YES". And once the first of them had accepted, the others each did as well, unwilling to be left behind while the others escaped their confines.
The oaths were sworn, and Asim felt them tighten around what little remained of his soul after so many years of making deals like this.
Atop one of the dorsal spires of the Hand of Ruin, Arken the Awakened, Lord of the Forsaken Sons, stood with his unsleeping gaze aimed at the Warp-corrupted darkness of the Webway.
He was in the same chamber where he had opened the path out of the Wailing Storm, sounding the beginning of his Black Crusade at the cost of his own freedom and soul. Most of the relics that had filled this chamber were gone, taken elsewhere in the great ship to be put to use in the battle to come. Those that were left were so terrible or uncontrollable that using them was guaranteed to hurt the Forsaken Sons more than their enemies, and Arken had only kept them because destroying them would be even more dangerous.
Even with the Geller Field raised, looking directly outside was dangerous, but Arken was long since past such perils. He had rent reality itself asunder in order to open the way for his troops, and his soul was bathed in the energies of Chaos – what threat did the vista of the tainted Webway have to offer to one such as he ?
At least one, it turned out, though it did not come from the Ruinous Powers. As Arken watched the raging hellscape smashing against the Hand of Ruin's Geller Field, his mind began to wander, as it often did when he wasn't active. He might never sleep, but his mind still needed respite, and sought it in waking dreams and visions that were equally fuelled by his subconscious and by the Dark Gods to whom he had bartered away his soul. His surroundings faded from sight, replaced by a plain of infinite darkness, where clusters of pale stars cast shifting shadows.
He heard something from far away. A whisper, which then became a voice, repeating one word over and over :
Arken. Arken. Arken.
"I am here," he announced to the blackness. "Congratulations, you have found me. Now show yourself before my patience runs out."
A stranger who wasn't a stranger stepped out of the blackness. He was tall, taller than Arken in his Terminator armor that had long since fused to his flesh. He wore a simple cloth tunic, white with silver thread woven through in arcane patterns, and a sword was sheathed at his side. As he came into view, the shadows fled from him, leaving him standing on a patch of nothingness as he looked at Arken with mismatched eyes. Here, in this place of metaphors and nightmares, the left and right halves of his face looked like they belonged to two different people, yet moved as one.
"Janus," said Arken, his lips curling into a wolf's smile. "I was wondering if I would hear from you before the end."
The astral projection of the Supreme Grand Master of the Grey Knights remained silent for a moment, looking the Awakened One up and down.
"Have you nothing to say ?" taunted Arken. "We both know there is nothing either of us can do to the other here. This is not how our battle ends; the Gods would not allow it."
Janus met Arken's gaze and held it. The Awakened One had stared into the Realms of Chaos themselves, and fought against a Daemon Prince of Tzeentch alone. Yet even so, he still felt a twinge of discomfort at the depths of power, knowledge, and grief that lurked within the Grey Knight's eyes. This was the face of the Enemy, the great champion of the Anathema in the material universe, and the one Arken had sworn to kill.
Arken, he said again, his lips remaining sealed. Is that your name ? Is that all that you are ? No family. No bloodline. No clan. Just a name. Arken of the Luna Wolves. Arken of the Sons of Horus.
"It was common enough on Cthonia, even among those taken for the Legion. Our world didn't exactly lend itself to recording lineages."
Indeed. Is that why your gene-line is so obsessed with glory ? Because you fear your name will fade if you do not make your mark upon the galaxy ?
Arken shrugged. "Who knows ? Cthonia bred us strong, and we took that strength with us into the stars."
Cthonia. They burned that world, you know. They shattered it and turned it to dust. Of course, there weren't many left on it by then. The cullings and the purges of those disloyal to the Warmaster did most of the killing for them. And the children … How many children were taken from Cthonia during the war, Arken ? How many were torn from the hands of their mothers, to be gene-forged into instruments of Horus' will ? How many of these forsaken sons linger now, the cause for which they were remade but never understood nothing but ash ?
"Tens of thousands were taken, only thousands of whom survived the accelerated trials and gene-seed implantation," replied Arken. "As you well know. The Hand of Ruin served as a troop transport during the later years of the rebellion, when all Legions were becoming desperate to get new recruits. Since Cthonia was destroyed in the Scouring and most of my former Legion fled to the Eye of Terror, I may very well be the last Son of Horus to see our homeworld."
And what of the daughters of Cthonia ? What happened to them, in the dark tunnels where there was only war ?
Arken remained silent.
I know. I know what you did, when Horus sent you to bring more warriors. I know where the newborn Legionaries that were thrown at Dorn's defenses came from. Your sin wasn't forgotten. I know what was done to the children born female so that the Legion may have more sons to take, the forbidden technologies you employed to find more recruits to fill the ranks of the Sixteenth Legion. Death and life can both be sinful, Arken, when looked at through the lens of madness.
He laughed. "Is that it ? I have burned worlds and dragged billions of souls into the Warp. I have orchestrated this Black Crusade and schemes the unleashing of a force that might lay waste to the entire Segmentum. Yet you expect me to be shaken by what I did on Cthonia in order to get more warriors to throw at the walls of the Imperial Palace ? Blood is blood. Pain is pain. Death is death. The details don't matter; in the end, it all feeds Chaos."
Janus' face was a mask of righteous wrath.
Judgment comes for you, Arken. You cannot run from it, no matter how hard you try.
"I run from nothing," snarled the Awakened One. "I'll be waiting for you, Janus. Try to stop me, if you can."
With a pulse of will, the Chaos Lord severed the connection Janus had managed to establish between them, and found himself back aboard the Hand of Ruin, staring into the Webway. The whispers of the Dark Gods, which had been silenced during the vision, rushed back into his ears.
"Soon," he said, though whether he was talking to himself or his patrons, he didn't know. "Soon."
AN : Look, I don't know what's going on with my release schedule either. I think it's because I have forbidden myself from writing anything else until this story is finished, so anytime inspiration strikes it gets forcefully channeled into this fic.
I wasn't able to find a definite answer as to whether the Eldar use Warp travel in canon, so I eventually decided that they don't. I think that's the option that makes the most sense, though the fact they seem to be able to get everywhere they need to indicates that the Webway isn't nearly as deteriorated as it is made out to be. Well, it's not that important in that story anyway, but if you have sources that clarify this, please tell me.
And no, I'm not going to give more details about what Arken did on Cthonia during the Heresy. Just that it involved a lot of people, a lot of drugs, and some truly horrifying Dark Mechanicum-tech.
As always, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and I'll see you next time.
Zahariel out.