This is my first ever story - be strict with me!

For those of you too young to know of Malal, it is the fifth most powerful chaos god, a god of spite. It is driven by hatred and desire for revenge against the other chaos gods, and its servants are rare but dreaded. Each is aware of their damnation, and is granted power beyond any other chaos champion in return. All servants of chaos quake in fear at the coming of a new Doomed One of Malal...

Malal's holy colours are black and white, which explains the title.

Disclaimer: I claim no ownership of Games Workshop products, settings or characters mentioned in this story.

Black and White

A city of Slaanesh, a colourful, majestic yet loathsome thing. Every building was a temple to sensation, to pleasure and pain. Some pulsed like stone organs, others swayed like their dizzy occupants. People moved through the streets in droves like lifeblood, directed by lazy guards in silver armour. Even the streets were given to the power of sensation, the floor covered in tiny metal barbs that tore at the feet of the pilgrims, sacrifices, priests and workers.

There were temples of eternal pain, where sacrifices were made in their hundreds, continually, dragged screaming or herded willingly to simple blocks and gallows, guillotines, death-altars with their horrific drills and blades, bleeding-chambers and other hellish killing-machines. The blood of the dead was used to anoint those who entered the death temples like rain, a continual stream from continual, unceasing sacrifice.

There were temples of eternal pleasure, filled with writhing bodies. Many died here, unwilling to leave and eventually starving to death amidst the pulsing, hot bodies.

Buildings had been made to invoke wonder, confusion and other senses. Some blossomed like flowers or mushrooms, others clawed at the sky as though trying to escape the evil city, some twisted and coiled higher to outdo others. Dirigibles and balloons hung in the sky above them, crazed cultists jumping to their deaths for some form of truly perverted pleasure. Shanty towns huddled around the huge edifices almost as though for protection, but their protectors sent forth soldiers dressed in silver armour and silks to drag them to the sacrifices.

A palace was built in the centre, a marvel made of obsidian, marble, silver, gold, electrum, glass, crystal and whatever else had taken the fancy of its occupants. It was beautiful, but overly so, made by those with greater resources than taste. It looked as though they had mixed together countless famous building styles, the great main entrance hid behind fluted pillars and gothic arches, the palace's luminaries and hierophants gazing out from glass domes atop the great palace. Men looked out from huge silver spires, higher than anything else in the city, and they could see beyond it, to the farmlands distant, where people toiled by day and worshipped Slaanesh through their pleasure by night. What these watchers did not realise was that the toil was as worthy to Slaanesh as the pleasure.

The ruler of this city, this world, spent every second of its time in a fairly large room, a perfect sphere built out of perfectly polished silver that reflected everything within like a great mirror, as though the ruler was one among infinite identical creatures. A simple throne made of old wood, varnished to prevent rot, was hung in the room upon numerous chains, some made of human hair, of bone, one made of tongues that had spoken the spells that had helped make this chamber what it was.

Everything in this room had true history. The hair had been the hair of Slaanesh's fallen champions, containing a distant echo of every forbidden pleasure up to and including their death, the very throne was made from the wood a tree that was said to have stood at the centre of countless apocalyptic battles, feeding upon tainted blood and growing huge and black, absorbing the extremes of sensation only battle could bring. It mattered not the occupant of this room if it looked attractive or was expensive - gold was useless to it, steel more interesting in the uses to which it could be put.

A daemon of Slaanesh that never needed to move. It could control everything here, a spider in a web, controlling its small empire within the Eye of Terror. Here it soaked up the pleasures of the city and could taste a tang of those from outside it through the spells that saturated this chamber with the warp. The mirror-like silver was a window to the future, the past, through time and space. It could look anywhere, with enough effort.

The Eye of Terror was the cradle of Slaanesh, and the haven of chaos. Empires rose and fell, but a few endured, ruled by the very strongest and wiliest daemons. These were often fairly small, but powerful. Each of these daemons was an enemy, plotting against one another, but the power needed to depose of the others would have meant destroying their own empires in eagerness for war. These armies weathered Khornate invasions, frequent things, daemonic mistakes, the odd rampaging Greater Daemon and even the wrath of Chaos Space Marines. The master (or perhaps mistress) here had links with a Legion, it was an ally and supplier of the Emperor's Children

Its real name was secret, but it was called the Seraph by its allies, enemies and servants.

The Seraph had been mortal once, but that was so long ago. It couldn't remember whether it had been male or female, and it took both forms. When it spoke to its servants, it appeared in their mirrors as a man or woman depending on the sex of the watcher, and it was so perfect that it could not be disobeyed. In the times when it had fought, it had chosen the form of a great armoured creature, almost human but fiercely androgynous, smiling benignly as it slaughtered armies with its bare hands. Here, with none watching, it chose a form less beautiful to an untrained eye. Utterly naked, without a scrap of clothing or flesh, yet it did not bleed. Arteries pulsed as though skin was present. A heart beat slowly, bright blue eyes gazed from muscle-ringed eye sockets. Even the throne it sat was free of blood, bile, or any other bodily fluid that was so clearly visible.

The mirror-sphere was currently half in brilliant, perfect illumination, blazing white. The other half was the darkness within darkness, dark enough to be called dark light. It was the lightless colour only obtainable by a black hole. Perfectly half of the Seraph's body was dark, the other blazing light.

So. It was back, then, ready for revenge, what it lived for. It had stopped this foe in its youth, killed its fell champion with his bare hands.

It was a facet of true chaos. It embodied despair, stagnation, hope, change, pain, pleasure, rage and hatred. It was the one thing even his empire could be destroyed by. It had no political agendas, no empires of its own to guard, no greater quests to distract it from the Seraph, and it had power and intelligence unlike the hordes of Khorne worshippers who attacked and died, their lives once devoted to destroying sensation giving sensation to Slaanesh with the agony of their deaths.

Malal.

A Doomed One was coming. A mortal, more powerful than a daemon prince, perhaps even stronger than the Seraph itself, was coming. Was it simply for revenge, or was a higher agenda at stake here?

A watcher would have thought the Seraph would have tightened security, readied its empire for attack, but it did not. Few would understand initially that there was little point - A single Doomed One was coming, and only by its attack could anything be learned about it.

With a horrifying calm, the Seraph stared at the endless void and oblivion on either side of him, knowing he looked into the very eyes of the Hand of Malal.