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The Anchor of Vaul
745.M32
They couldn't fight a Grand Master of the Grey Knights and his warriors alone.
Mahlone had realized that much immediately. He still remembered how a single squad of Grey Knights had torn through the defenses of the Black Temple on Berrenos, and the other Chosen had hardly fared any better. Two Unbound, an exhausted Sorcerer Lord, a handful of mortals and whatever you wanted to count Marcus as would hardly fare any better.
So instead of standing their ground and fighting against unsurmountable odds like champions out of legend, they had run away, hoping to lose the Grey Knights in the maze, knowing this was supremely unlikely. The Anchor seemed to especially want Asim to die : it was the only explanation for how the Grand Master had caught up with him, despite needing to finish the fight against the forces of the Coven before giving chase. The Grey Knights had been guided, their way eased while Asim's was slowed.
As they retreated, they rallied several packs of Forsaken Sons to them – the opportunity to kill a Grey Knight commander more than enough to pull them from their own ambushes. For the first time since Berrenos, Mahlone found himself in command of Forsaken Sons veterans, not that he was in a position to enjoy that authority.
Eventually, they had to stop running. Despite Mahlone's guidance, the Grey Knights were still gaining on them, and this section of the Anchor was better than most for the Forsaken Sons to face their pursuers in.
Four-sided pyramids rose up to meet inverted ones descending from the roof, two hundred meters above, with some kind of spherical energy field crackling where they met. The room was filled with sixteen such pyramids in a four by four grid, each pyramid two hundred meters wide at the base. O course, all these measurements were rough estimates : it wasn't as if the original architects had used human units.
The Grey Knights came into view just as they finished settling into their positions. Two scores of Titan's sons, with, to Mahlone's slight surprise, a few squads of Inquisitorial troops still following them, having managed to keep up with the Astartes' pace. Against them, they had around sixty Forsaken Sons, an exhausted Sorcerer of Blood, and fifty-three mortal auxiliaries.
A volley of heavy weapon fire – plasma rifles, melta-guns and missile launchers – slammed into the first rank of Grey Knights. A psychic barrier held most of the onslaught at bay, but not all : silver armor cracked and blood and gore were spilled upon the black stone.
The melee combatants charged down the pyramids, their boots mag-locking with each step to avoid slipping on the utterly smooth surface. Raptors, who had been hanging upside-down from the ceiling, dropped down and ignited their jump-packs. They flew over the Grey Knights and landed among the Storm Troopers, igniting flamers and lightning claws. The sound of screaming soon echoed as the corrupted Assault Marines tore through the mortal soldiers, though the Inquisitorial goons fought back with great skill and discipline. Mahlone glimpsed their leader, an Inquisitor – the only one left in the group – in human-sized power armor, wielding a bolt pistol and a staff. He fought especially well, striking down a warrior who had stood on the walls of the Imperial Palace during the Siege of Terra, back when he had worn the colors of the Eighth Legion.
Warriors in black and silver fell, and though more of the former were slain than he'd like, Mahlone was still surprised. After all the trouble they had given the Forsaken Sons during the Black Crusade, he'd expected more from the Grey Knights. It seemed Arken's gambits had paid off after all.
The leader of the Imperial Astartes, the one Asim had told them was named Koios, wasn't hard to find. In the midst of battle, his aura flared so that even a non-psyker like Mahlone could pick him out in the crowd. After the first five Forsaken Sons had fallen to his blade without landing a single blow in return, the other Chaos Marines gave him a wide berth, letting him march straight toward the center of the room.
There, where the bottom of several downward slopes met – no one here was fighting on flat ground – Asim stood. The Sorcerer of Blood was serving as bait : even though he was hidden by the pyramids, his psychic presence could still be detected, and the Grand Master was more than able to do so.
The Unbound Lord and his brother attacked the Grand Master in a pincer movement, charging him as one from left and right. He reacted immediately, blocking Mahlone's overhead strike and kicking Ygdal in the chest. Augmented with psychic power, the kick sent Ygdal sliding up the nearest pyramid for several meters before he managed to mag-lock his boots and force himself back up.
In the meantime, Mahlone was forced to duel the Grey Knight on his own. He barely managed to survive the first few exchanges, relying entirely on his enhanced instincts to keep up with the Grand Master. At the fifth heartbeat, he jerked his head back just in time to avoid having his skull cleaved in two. The tip of Koios' power sword caught his helmet, cracking it in two pieces that fell away, revealing Mahlone's face to the Grand Master – a face that the almost perfect mirror of the Primarch Roboute Guilliman's.
There was the briefest hesitation in Koios' body language, lasting barely more than a hundredth of a second – too little for Mahlone to take advantage of. Then the Grand Master raised his left hand, and a burst of silver fire engulfed Mahlone's exposed head, burning away his face. The Unbound Lord stepped back, blindly lashing out in front of him with his power sword held in one hand, the other clawing at the ruination of his features, trying to put out the flames.
"Do you think," the Grey Knight snarled, the hatred in his voice audible even through the distortion of his helmet's vox-speaker, "that because I wasn't here when he fell, you can -"
Ygdal slammed his combat knife into the back of the Grand Master, the short blade punching through armor and bone. Behind his armored gauntlet, Mahlone's one remaining eye – the other had burst under the heat of Koios' psychic fire – caught sight of the opening. Forcing himself to ignore the pain, he went on the offensive.
At that exact moment, the entire wall to the right side of the Grey Knights' entry point vanished into motes of light, and the Avatar of Khaine that had been reported as accompanying the Eldar host strode into the room, bellowing its fury and followed by scores of xenos warriors.
So, thought Asim, this is how I die.
Caught between the Avatar of a dead god and the champions of a false one. Once again, the universe proved to possess a twisted sense of irony.
Of course, their predicament was no coincidence. The Anchor itself was responsible, seeking to use the forces of Order to eliminate one of the threats to its continued function. Unfortunately, knowing why they were doomed wasn't the same thing as knowing how to get out of this trap. The exits that weren't barred by the Grey Knights and Eldars had vanished, replaced by new walls they had neither the time nor the firepower to breach.
The Eldar warriors were falling upon the flank of the Forsaken Sons, attacking the ranged teams and catching the melee combatants in a pincer manoeuvre. Asim wasn't sure what would happen once the common enemy of the Imperials and the xenos was gone, but it wouldn't make any difference to them.
Koios was still fighting against Ygdal and Mahlone, but the Avatar was coming straight for Asim, its footsteps sending cracks running along the surface of the pyramids as it advanced, its burning gaze fixed upon the Sorcerer Lord. It was badly wounded : its helmet had been broken, its left arm ended at the elbow, and there was a deep gash on its chest from which droplets of lava-like blood fell in a steady stream.
It was still a towering figure of hatred and death holding a sword that burned his psychic sight, while Asim had no weapon except his sacrificial dagger. He still drew it, determined to get in at least one blow before he died, and opened his second sight fully, looking for the best point of attack.
As he did so, he found there was something odd about the Avatar. Something … familiar …
Oh.
The pieces came together in Asim's mind, and the Sorcerer of Blood laughed out loud like a madman, even as the Avatar of Khaine drew closer with every thunderous step. He held his dagger up, looking at his reflection in the blade.
+I know you are here, daemon.+
Indeed I am, father, replied the Herald of Blood, its horned visage flickering to replace Asim's reflection. Long have I been waiting for this hour.
+You know what I require.+
I do, and so do the Gods. And what do you offer, father, in return for this great boon ?
Asim smiled.
+Nothing.+
Nothing ?!
+Nothing. After all, if you do not accept, then you'll cease to exist as a paradox destroys you, Herald. I offer nothing but the consequences of this deed.+
"Help me, daemon," he said out loud, "or be undone."
Power couldn't be destroyed : this was a fundamental law, which applied both in the Materium and the Immaterium. It could only be spent, turned into something else.
With the Herald's assistance, Asim was breaking the Avatar of Khaine down, stripping it of the psychic energy that had accumulated around its core through the devotion of the Eldar warriors of Mian-Tor, and sending that energy back in time, to where a younger Asim had stood on Parecxis Gamma, ready to make the first of many bargains with the Ruinous Powers in order to teleport the inmates of the penal world to another world in the system.
The Avatar came apart in front of Asim, its power vanishing into the Aether, until all that was left was the shard of Kaela Mensha Khaine that had found refuge in the Craftworld after the Dark Prince had killed the Aeldari War God. Caught in the flow of energy, the shard was unable to return to the Shrine to which it was tethered, and was swallowed by the Realms of Chaos, where it would be remade into the selfsame spirit that had haunted Asim for decades.
That haunting was over, however. This, Asim knew : for the rest of his life, which admittedly didn't look like it would last long, what with the Eldars and Grey Knights still very much there and wanting him dead, he was free of his bond to the Herald of Blood.
Suddenly, Asim felt another hand – a small, frail and alien hand – reach out and snatches a fraction of the flow of power, weaving it into another spell, one similar to the one his past self was weaving –
Asim blinked. He wasn't on the Anchor of Vaul anymore, surrounded by foes bent on his destruction. Instead, he was … on the bridge of the Blade of Terror, with other black-clad warriors scattered across the room, in various states of injury. He saw Mahlone and Ygdal, badly wounded from their battle against Koios but still alive. He saw Morkoth, his black eyes wide open in shock at the sudden arrival.
"Thank you, Carthago," the Sorcerer of Blood managed to say, before mercifully passing out.
Alphon knew he couldn't beat Arken. The very idea was ridiculous. Experience might be enough to defeat the likes of the daemon-Astartes he had faced in the Archive of Loss, but this was a Chaos Lord, leader of a Black Crusade, swollen with the might of the Ruinous Powers and unlikely to underestimate his opponent.
His power sword could clash against Arken's claws without being shorn asunder, at least – the relic weapon was more than resilient enough. But any direct impact would rip it from Alphon's grip. For two whole seconds, Alphon managed to hold his ground – then he ducked down, feeling the lightning claws pass mere centimeters away from his scalp, and rolled underneath the Chaos Lord's extended arm. Despite the weight of his power armor, the motion carried the grace born of long practice, and the Perpetual came up to his feet with his back turned to Arken – and ran, straight for the command node in the center of the platform, covered in heretekal devices.
Reaching it, Alphon began to smash the unwanted additions off the pillar with his sword, while turning to look at Arken. The Awakened One was fast, despite the Terminator armor he wore, and could very well reach Alphon before he could finish the desperate ploy that was his only chance of stopping the release of the Nightmare Fleet.
Somehow, despite the clearly mortal wounds he had suffered, Janus was back on his feet. The flicker of Warp-light surrounding him betrayed the fact his body was moving as much through telekine power as it was his own strength. Blood still flowed from the holes in his armor, though the trickle had slowed as his transhuman physiology struggled to staunch the bleeding.
For a moment – less than a second – Arken hesitated, his gaze moving between Janus and Alphon. The Inquisitor was taking a gamble here, hoping that the Chaos Lord would prioritize the Supreme Grand Master as the greater threat. Given Janus' wounds, it was possible for Arken to kill Alphon before turning to finish off Janus – but if Alphon had read Arken's plans correctly …
With a roar of hatred, the Chaos Lord turned his back on Alphon and threw himself at Janus. The Inquisitor didn't know how much time the Grey Knight had bought him, but he wasn't going to waste any of it. The last piece of heretek fell off the command node, and Alphon placed his hand atop it, where the ancient Aeldari smiths would have interfaced with their creation, and opened his mind. He wasn't a true psyker, but all Perpetuals had a spark of psychic potential, which could be cultivated over the centuries. Having witnessed the horrors of the Age of Strife, Alphon had decided against it, which was probably to thanks for his continued survival : his soul shone less brightly than that of most Perpetuals, allowing him to hide from those who had hunted his kind to extinction.
With considerable effort, Alphon forced his thoughts into the language of the Aeldari. The difficulty didn't just come from the fact he hadn't needed to speak the language in thousands of years. Most of it instead was because it wasn't meant for a human mind, and had in fact been designed to be as unpleasant and complex to grasp as possible. For all the Imperium's xenophobia, it was nothing compared to the levels of cold contempt the Aeldari had displayed for all other races through arrogance alone.
Still, he managed it. He spoke to the Anchor in the tongue of its makers, and the Anchor listened.
The Anchor considered the words of the old soul.
Every spare bit of processing power it possessed which wasn't needed to maintain its purpose was dedicated to examining the proposal that had been made through the command terminal. First, the words were interpreted, run through the algorithms its makers had designed to allow it to understand the spirit as well as the letter of their orders.
The calculations this required would've taken the cogitators of an entire forge-world a thousand years to complete. The Anchor of Vaul completed them in eleven milliseconds.
With the proposed course of action understood, the Anchor examined it. It went against several of its secondary principles, but it did offer a chance to fulfill its purpose, and its makers had given it very few restraints where that was concerned.
One by one, it ran through these restrictions.
This course of action didn't endanger the Aeldari Empire, for the Empire no longer existed – this was the only explanation for the lack of contact by its makers in the last thousands of cycles.
It didn't put an unacceptable number of Aeldari lives at risk : only the descendants of the makers who walked within it would be endangered, if they were considered Aeldari at all, and there were far too few of them to be considered "unacceptable".
And it didn't risk the awakening of the ancient horrors, those that its makers had feared far more than the monsters it was its purpose to keep sealed away.
All three major precepts were validated. Twenty-three milliseconds after the proposal had been received, the Anchor accepted it, and bent its mind to make it a reality.
The lights around them shifted as Alphon removed his hand from the pillar. By that point, it was little more than charred bone held together by a few tenacious strings of tendon. The agony of the energy running through it had been indescribable, and the shock would've killed anyone else instantly. But Alphon had spent six days in the metallic claws of the Torment-Engines of the Unnameable Conglomerate during the war against the Men of Iron, and this was nothing in comparison.
Even so, the shock to his nerves meant that he stumbled as he walked toward the edge of the platform, fighting for every step. His power armor had been shorted out, as he'd expected – it was why he had made sure to unlock its joints beforehand.
With one last deep breath of the ozone-filled air, and a prayer to a God probably no one else in the galaxy worshipped, the Inquisitor leapt into the sphere of energy. There was a flash as his body was annihilated, and Alphon of Old Earth was no more.
The Anchor and the old soul became one. A mortal mind, with all the flexibility and freedom of thought, combined with the processing power and knowledge of the Anchor. Still bound by the same hard restraints the makers had engraved upon it, but able to wield what freedom it did have more creatively.
The gestalt mind looked out, to the altered ships of the makers. They were too far and moving too fast to be caught again in the dimensional oubliette, but not so far as to be out of range of its mechanisms entirely. The Anchor couldn't consider any course of action apart from capture, but the gestalt could.
Dimensions snapped and closed, and one by one, the daemonships were crushed and cut apart by blades that could only be seen as gravitic waves on panicking auspexes. The two ships of the Forsaken Sons, unfortunately, were too far to reach.
The situation within the Anchor was stabilized. The largest cluster of intruders had already left. Only one was left, the one who paused the greatest threat in the first place.
The Anchor couldn't enjoy what was about to happen. But the gestalt mind very much could.
The corpse of Janus laid on the ground behind him – Arken had chosen to take his time making sure the Supreme Grand Master was dead, and that there was nothing that could be done to restore him. That part of his goals had been accomplished, and nothing would change that … but right now, he doubted he'd have the chance to fulfill the rest.
Facing a newborn godling in the heart of its power had that kind of effect on plans.
The Chaos Lord watched with wide eyes as a humanoid figure of pure light emerged from the sphere. It looked down upon him, and for the first time in centuries, despite all the power that churned within him, the Awakened One felt helpless.
The figure snapped its fingers, and Arken burned in stolen starfire, until nothing was left.
The Warp
Date unavailable
He is still burning as he falls. Around him, the Realms of Chaos stretch into infinity.
This is the doom of Arken of Cthonia, the Awakened One, as his soul slips from his flesh and into the waiting grasp of the Dark Gods to whom he swore himself in return for the power to accomplish his goals.
He sees the Blade of Terror and the Eidolon of Regret flee to the edge of the artificial system and plunge into the Warp. Far from the Warp lanes of Azarok, it will take them a long tim to find their way to another star. Already the Eidolon is pulling away from the Blade, seeking to return to the Hell-forge of Argenta Primus. Guided by Asim and Carthago's ghost, the daemonship won't emerge from the Warp for centuries, but it will emerge eventually, and the Imperium will rue the day its Grey Knights failed to kill the two Chosen onboard.
He sees the corpse of Janus delivered to Koios' feet. He sees the grief of the Grand Master, and the retreat of the Imperial forces from the Anchor. He sees those few Heirs of Sanguinius who lived through the battle, and those Guardsmen who have survived plague and fire, not knowing they must now face the trials of the Inquisition. Few will be judged pure and untainted, and of them none will return to their former lives, for there is knowledge the Ordos won't allow to spread.
He sees the Eldars of Mian-Tor depart, not yet knowing that their Craftworld's Shrine of Khaine now stands empty, and shall do so forevermore. A shard of their dead god has been stolen and reforged by Khorne's machinations, and those who walk the Warrior-Paths shall be diminished without it.
He sees the Herald of Blood, born of paradox and mirroring bargains. The voice of Khorne, whispering into the ear of Sorcerers in the place of the Lord of Skulls, forging the pacts by which greater blood may be spilled. The hypocrisy of the Blood God does not surprise him, for all of the Four are liars.
He sees the unnatural alliance of the Eldars with the Imperium ending, and their clever Farseer orders an immediate departure, before the Imperial commanders' ingrained loathing of the xenos can reassert itself. Silent and stunned, their Autarch follows along, his heart broken by having been made to confront the truth of his ancestors. The descent he sought to avoid is inevitable now.
He sees the Azarok Sector, and the Imperial retribution forces pouring into it through Berrenos. One by one, its worlds are liberated, the cultists and warhosts of the Black Crusade slaughtered in brutal campaigns – and then, as the citizens rejoice, their liberators turn on them, purging all who bear even the slightest possibility of taint.
In the depths of Achillus, he sees something grow from the interrupted experiments of an heretek called the Spider. Even as the world is liberated and the Houses who took the Unfettered's gifts are hunted down to the last, this unintended legacy lingers, hidden from sight, a seed awaiting rain to grow and blossom. He sees Orpheus and his brothers in service to the Youngest God, taking what pleasures they can find amidst the mayhem before returning to the Wailing Storm.
He sees the prison of Serixithar, forged of his pact with the Dark Gods to sustain the Wailing Storm. It endures, despite the efforts of the Daemon Prince of Tzeentch to escape his bonds. The Wailing Storm will continue to plague Segmentum Obscurus for millennia to come, a haven for the heretics of Azarok and the neighbouring Sectors.
And in the depths of the Anchor, he sees a daemon-faced figure rise, broken but alive. Then, before he can see anything else, the vision is cut off, as the Anchor slips sideways through time, dragged beyond even the eyes of the Dark Gods by the power of its engines wielded by the ancient mind of a Perpetual. With it vanishes the hope of releasing the Nightmare Fleet upon the galaxy.
Yet Arken is satisfied. Janus is dead. He has accomplished his task, the one Abaddon gave him when they spoke. He has done something that matters, something which will influence the course of the Long War for millennia to come.
Now is the time to pay the price of that victory, which he has already made so many others pay in his stead.
But the price isn't what he thought it was.
When he made the pact with the Dark Gods, he believed that the price he would pay would be eternal torment, his soul consumed in the fires of Chaos until nothing remained but a single point of agony. And this was a fate he accepted, such are the depths of his hatred for the Imperium he once helped build.
But he was wrong. Such will not be his fate, he sees it now, with something approaching horror.
These are the wages of treachery. This is the fate waiting at the end of the Path to Glory.
This is the price of the Dark Gods' help in killing Janus, for all that the Four very much wanted him dead as well.
He will serve them. He will be remade into their instrument, a tool with which they will fight their meaningless wars in the Empyrean. He will lead and he will serve, and bring ruin and damnation to xenos species that have only just awakened to the existence of the Immaterium. He will dance from one set of strings to another, leading the hordes of one Power and then its rivals, fighting under one banner only to fight against it the next dawn. He sees that he, who sacrificed everything to fight a war that mattered, will be made to take part endlessly in the petty moves of the Great Game.
And, cruellest of all, he sees the hope of liberation, forever dangled just out of his reach, to drive him to give his best to his Gods-appointed task. A false hope, but one he will never be able to help himself long for.
AN : Merry Christmas, everyone ! The epilogue will go up right after this chapter, with the proper AN at the end.