The Throne of Heroes has been breached. The records meant to hold the greatest defenders of the World have been compromised.
The root of that infection occurred seven decades prior, but the poison was subtle, and stayed hidden until the cycle of war turned again and it could spread further. As a result, it was only ten years ago that the defense systems finally noticed, when the intrusion began to act. And by then, it was too late.
The three Kings are lost, and the three daughters of the Old Mother have awakened from the vault where their souls were laid to rest after the first king of Mycenae ended their torment.
But the World has reacted, learned, adapted. The confinement holds. The taint will spread no further, and while two of the three Kings are doomed, the third might yet be saved.
Old defense protocols have been activated for the first time in several ages of the World. The Warden has been notified of the threat; the Keepers of Mysteries have been set in motion; and the Alchemists are preparing for the ultimate sanction should the worst come to pass.
And it might come to pass, that much is ominously clear. A Pretender walks the World, an impossibility given form by usurped Mysteries, his mask of falsehood removed by the Foreigner who does not know himself. An obscene and primordial Truth animates him, and should he succeed in collaring the Foreigner again to the Enemy's will, the only path to salvation will lie in fire.
But all is not yet written. The Will of the World can guide and empower, but it cannot truly control the choices of mortals, cannot know all ends. There are none who can, especially those who claim otherwise among the Enemy's ranks. The free will of ensouled beings cannot be perfectly predicted.
And so, from his place of exile, the Magus of Flowers looks down upon the World, though he cannot intervene directly due to the alignment of the spheres. He prays that the son of broken dreams and the ashes of false miracles will make the right choice. He prays that the World will be spared from the hungry darkness that looms for another turn of the wheel.
And above all else, he prays for the safety and happiness of his beloved King.
November 26h, 2004 AD – Fuyuki Docks
It couldn't be.
But it was.
Kor Phaeron was an ugly man. It was an odd thing to think about in that situation, but he couldn't help it. He reminded Shirou of Zouken that way. Old people, as a rule, tended to look kind or at least harmless, but the Servant and Shinji's ancestor both managed to use their age to look even more sinister. Zouken had been more subtle about it (he had needed to interact with society from time to time, after all), but one needed only look at Kor Phaeron to know that here was a monster who had survived for decades despite all the universe had thrown at him to get rid of his existence.
Since Rin had come up with the theory that the Dark Angel whose power and fragmented memories dwelled within his souls had been brought into existence by the Second Magic going haywire at the end of the Fourth War, Shirou had been able to reassure himself with the thought that, no matter how horrible the visions were, at least they had never been real. The shikome had felt familiar, yes, but all that meant was that the World was haunted by its own monsters, and for all its horror the handmaiden of rot had still paled compared to some of the nightmares the Dark Angels had fought and later consorted with.
As long as the visions weren't real, then he could treat them as warnings, as object lessons about what happened when you didn't take responsibility for your own actions and embraced lies and delusions to avoid dealing with the consequences of your choices. Not too different from a morality fable, although not one he would have recommended for children.
But now Kor Phaeron was here.
Shirou had listed the titles of Pretender, and they had been true, each and every one of them, even if he couldn't grasp the details. Kor Phaeron had been responsible for the deaths of millions when he had been alive, and might have caused even more if Lorgar Aurelian hadn't killed him at the climax of the Wars of the False Priests. Instead, the Black Cardinal and all his works had been cast down, and his very name had been burned from all records by the cold rage of the Seventeenth Primarch.
Except … Except it hadn't been. There had been some records which had survived, and the First Legion had found them, and with that knowledge they – he – had –
No. No, this hadn't happened. This was nothing more than a might-have-been reality, a what-if the World had conjured in its exploration of the possible paths, and with all the horror his visions had shown him he could see why that path had been discarded. If this was where the Age of Gods might have led, then it was better for it to end, even if Humanity became weaker as a result.
And yet, Kor Phaeron was here.
If not for the fact he had so many people to protect, Shirou wasn't confident he wouldn't have collapsed under the strain. His friends thought him strong, but they didn't understand, because they weren't broken like he was. Because he was facing something from his visions, and he was awake.
And with that came a horrible thought :
What if it was all true ?
That doubt took root in his mind, and with it came the awful weight of the Dark Angel's guilt rushing back up from the pit of his mind where he had managed to lock it away for over a year. His hands held his sword in front of him – ceramite gauntlets drenched in the blood of his kind – blood, so much blood on his hands – the sins of the Dark Angels, forever Unforgiven -
"You are dead," he forced the words out, focusing on the present through a monumental effort of will. "Lorgar killed you at Varadesh."
"He did," admitted Pretender with a scowl. "That golden fool could have been the greatest champion of the Gods, if he had only accepted the truth. But the Gods did not let something as insignificant as my demise stop their plans, and they still had a use for me."
"He … killed you again," he mumbled, images and thoughts flashing in his mind before vanishing, each one feeling like a dagger plunging through his skull. "In Ultramar, during the Shadow Crusade … the Twelfth and Seventeenth defeated you …"
He stumbled, and his sword tip lowered.
"No. No, that's wrong … You aren't real ! You aren't ! You …"
"Shirou !" Rin called out. "Focus ! The Grail must have pulled him out of the same timeline it did the other one ! He's just another creation of the Second Magic, except it worked out better for the Grail than it did with you !"
A part of him recognized that, even now, Rin was being smart and avoiding giving more information to their enemy that she absolutely needed to by not saying the name of the Dark Angel aloud. The rest of him understood her argument, saw the logic in it, yet it couldn't shake the awful feeling that she was wrong – that they had all been wrong all along.
"Hmm ? Is that what you believe happened, young lady ?" Kor Phaeron's tone was clearly mocking now. "Ah, no matter. As I said, the truth will be revealed to you all soon enough."
As one, each of the nine figures (all of which were monsters like the one he had destroyed while Saber held its attention, though they hid their nature for now) held up a metallic disk above their heads. Each disk was engraved with glowing runes arranged in geometric patterns, and he knew immediately they had been crafted by Pretender back when he still had his mask of Caster.
Arcs of energy leapt between the disks, tracing geometric patterns above them, and only then did Shirou realize that the possessed Magi had positioned themselves at approximately the same height. Sigils that burned with fell light formed between the lines connecting them, forming what might be taken for a Formalcraft circle but which Shirou instinctively knew was something far more sinister.
"Stop them !" shouted Rin.
Joining action to her words, she blasted a curse at the nearest silhouette, only for her Gandr to crash against an invisible sphere of energy surrounding it. Archer fired an arrow at another, only for the same to occur – then, before anyone else had time to act, whatever Kor Phaeron had been doing activated.
"The time has come, my friend," declared Kor Phaeron. He raised his hand, and one of the Command Seals on it flared and vanished as the Black Cardinal called upon its power. "As you freed me from my mask, so shall I free you from yours, one servant of the Gods to another. By Their will and Their might I command you : remember who you truly are !"
There was a flash of light as nine beams of coruscating energy erupted from the disks and slammed into him from all angles, too fast for him to dodge or block them. He heard Sakura scream his name, and then there was only darkness.
Unfortunately, it didn't last, and what came next was much, much worse.
He is newly come to the Order, having been added to the ranks of its squires once his home town fell under the aegis of their protection as their influence extended all across Caliban. As he trained, he wondered if he would ever have the chance to use his skills, knowing that the Great Beasts which had plagued the world in all their history were on the verge of extinction. There were still monsters in the woods, and there were still people disappearing, but nowhere near the grim numbers recorded in the archives of the Order.
Now he knows, without knowing where that certainty comes from, that he will never run out of battles to fight.
He is standing in precise formation along with hundreds of other squires, with the anointed knights standing at the forefront. All those who can stand, who can be spared from the absolute minimum of their duties now that the beasts are all but wiped out across Caliban, have come. Any other day, the sight of so many noble defenders of their world would fill him with pride. Today, it seems pitifully little.
Above, a roaring beast of metal and fire descends. It is a machine, they are told, a transport carrying someone from the fleet of spaceships anchored in orbit above their world. To them, who have hunted beasts on horseback wearing suits of armor painstakingly maintained over generations using knowledge that has become more ritual than science, it would seem impossible if it weren't happening before their very eyes.
They believed the stories of Humanity having come to Caliban from the stars thousands of years ago to be just that : stories. The endless struggle against the Beasts left little time to ponder the question of where humans had come from, and the sages had their hands full keeping the lore needed to survive alive. Now the answers have come, and nothing will ever be the same.
This is the day the Emperor comes to Caliban for the first and last time. This is the day the Lion is reunited with his gene-sire.
But where the Master of Mankind should be, there is only a gaping hole in reality, a complete and utter absence. The memory has been excised, the face of Him on Earth purged. And as he sees the Lion kneel before the human-shaped void, all he feels is a sense of loss.
He was not permitted to retain that memory. His damnation to come reaches back into his past, burning away that which doesn't serve it.
At first, the thought that Caliban, with its Beasts-infested forests, was actually one of the luckier outposts of Mankind boggled his mind. But he has seen much since then, and he understands the bitter truth of it.
For five thousand years, Humanity has lived in terror as the Age of Strife reigned. Worlds were cut off from each other and at the mercy of mad witches, cruel xenos, and rogue technology. It is only now, with the Warp storms that prevented interstellar travel subduing, that the distant descendants of Terra's first galactic empire are coming back together, united under the leadership of the Emperor and His Great Crusade.
But though the light of Humanity shines once more across the galaxy, many horrors stand in the path of the Imperial Truth, and here, in the darkness of the galactic north, one such evil rises once more. Twice already it was beaten back, each time at a terrible cost that left the nascent Imperium weakened and scarred in a way that won't be surpassed until the Great Crusade ends in blood and treachery.
This is the apex of the Great Crusade. This is the Third Rangdan Xenocide.
This is where the First Legion bleeds.
Since leaving Caliban, he has grown stronger. The gene-seed of the First Legion has remade him into a transhuman warrior, building on the foundation of his time as a squire of the Order.
He is not the only one who changed. Luther, who was the Lion's father, mentor and comrade throughout their conquest of Caliban and the purge of the Great Beasts, who was too old to become a Space Marine but was granted the greatest gene-forging and other augmentations to be able to continue standing at the Primarch's side, does so no longer. None but the Lion know why he sent his closest advisor back to the homeworld : the Primarch keeps his reasons to himself, and none of his sons would dare question him about them.
Right now, however, he very much wishes Luther were here. The old knight might have an idea as to how they can get out of this situation. Already they have lost entire star systems, thousands of Dark Angels, and millions of soldiers to the Rangdan advance. World after world has been claimed by the Rangdan blasphemies and their mysterious masters, their human population subjected to unimaginable fates.
Where once a prosperous Sector stood, having endured the nightmares of Old Night, now there is nothing but an empire of corpses, where monsters feed upon the carrion left by their servants.
Yet the Dark Angels will keep fighting, no matter what. They will break the Rangdan fleets and wipe them out to the last. They will extinguish the taint of their presence in the galaxy, should it take the last drop of their Legion's blood, should it require the unleashing of all the forbidden weapons the Emperor entrusted to His First Legion, should their sacrifices be unremembered by the rest of the Imperium.
Humanity will survive. Humanity will prosper. The golden future promised by the Emperor is, must be worth all of this. This he tells himself, as he sees more and more brothers die around him, leaving him alone to rise through the ranks as a champion and lord of the Dark Angels.
He does not see the trap; how that conviction, forged into a shield to hold their sanity in the face of such horrors, can and will be used to break them and remake them into something vile and hateful, something which will drown the dream for which they fight in darkness.
The prisoner has been brought to his knees before Lion El'Jonson, stripped of his weapons and armor. He hasn't been tortured, but his flesh still bears the wounds from when his brothers had to subdue him, and he didn't go quietly. Several Dark Angels are still in the Apothecarion of the Invincible Reason, and two of them are unlikely to ever return to the frontline.
But then, Chaplain Nemuel was always a great warrior. He fought and survived the Rangdan Xenocide, leading his brothers from the front into the deepest pits of this horrible war. And when the Warp Storm trapped their fleet on their way back to the Imperium, when they were brought to the Ghoul Stars and there into the Crystal Labyrinth, he retained the strength of his conviction even in front of all the horrors that awaited them there.
Even now, as the Primarch of the Dark Angels gazes down at him from his throne, there is only defiance in Nemuel's eyes.
This is the judgment of the Angel who did not break. This is the defiance of Nemuel of Caliban.
This is where the last hope of the First Legion turning aside from damnation dies.
"Will you not relent, my son ?" asks the Lion, with uncharacteristic softness. "Will you not accept the truth we saw, and what we must do ?"
"Never," growls Nemuel. "The path you have set upon is one of heresy. It will only lead to the ruin of all that we hold dear, and it tears my heart that you are too blind to see it. The Emperor -"
"The Emperor lied to us," cut the Lion. "I always knew He did. I accepted it, seeing it as inevitable, necessary even. But until the revelations of the Crystal Labyrinth, I hadn't realized the scope of His deceptions. You saw it just as we did. He intends for us to conquer the galaxy for Him, only to use all of Humanity as fodder to fuel His ascension to godhood, while those of us who protest will be cast down and forgotten."
Nemuel laughs, a sound utterly without amusement or joy.
"You were always paranoid," rants the Chaplain, wide-eyed and straining against his bonds. "So obsessed with your own secrets you have to believe everyone else keeps them too. Because otherwise, you would have to consider that maybe the problem is with you ! If you could only accept, just for once in your damn life, that someone else might know better than you, you would go to Terra and asks your father to explain, and He would tell you what you would already know if you could just stop believing the worst of everyone : that the Labyrinth lied ! But you are too prideful, too stubborn -"
"Enough," says the Lion, and the two Dark Angels at Nemuel's side gag him once again. For a few more moments, Primarch and Chaplain lock gazes with each other, neither breaking eye contact.
He is impressed, in spite of himself. Even among the Space Marines, there aren't many who can withstand the ire of a Primarch.
"Take him to the cells," says the Master of the First at last. "He will see the truth, in time."
It is a moment of weakness, he thinks as he watches Nemuel being dragged out of the chamber. Later, there will be a need to purge those of the Legion who do not accept the truth, who did not see it with their own eyes in the Crystal Labyrinth. But right now, he cannot blame his gene-sire for it. They will need to commit such evils if they are to prevent the future they saw; avoiding the sin of fratricide, even once, surely must be worthwhile.
Nemuel will see the truth, he swears to himself. He will make him see it.
Ships are dying around him, broken by the wrath of those they thought to be brothers. The irony tastes bitter in his mouth, but he cannot deny its presence, nor the laughter of the Neverborn in his mind.
The Dark Angels have come to Caliban seeking reinforcements, ready to introduce the truth of Tzeentch to their exiled brothers. With their strongholds in the Ghoul Stars laid low by the Night Lords and their Prince of Crows, this is the only place left where they can find the warriors they need to break the walls of the Imperial Palace. Wielding the powers of a god, Lion El'Jonson at last believed he could bind the great power that dwells within the heart of the planet to his will.
For the end of the rebellion approaches, as the fleets of the rebel Legions and their slaves and allies muster for the final push to the Throneworld. The hour of the final confrontation on Terra draws near, and those who would see the False Emperor cast down rally to the banner of Roboute Guilliman, brother to Lion El'Jonson and the Arch-Traitor, bringing with them all the might at their disposal.
But the Lion was wrong. They were all wrong. The Space Marines on Caliban have already learned the truth, and they have spat upon it. The agents sent to turn them to Guilliman's cause are dead, shot down in orbit or killed the moment they made planetfall. The great power, the Ouroboros whose dreams shaped the Great Beasts that plagued this world since its machinations brought life upon its surface, is no more. Not simply banished, but slain by he who shouts his defiance of the Lion to the void atop the fortress of Aldurukh.
Somehow, impossibly, Luther has slain the Great Serpent, has destroyed the primordial sin of the Old Ones.
He has called for the Legionaries on the planet to answer his questions, and been met with only silence. Then the guns of the orbital defenses erupted with fire, while Luther sent a single message of defiance to his adopted son. Now the Dark Angels descend upon the so-called Fallen, who have fought their own terrible wars while the rest of the galaxy burned. He moves through the corridors of the Invincible Reason toward his drop-ship, his armor covered in frost from when the Primarch flew out of the bridge, breaking the occulus in his rage to confront Luther as soon as possible.
On the surface, battle is joined, as brutal as any fratricidal slaughter since this war began on Istvaan III. He is there, leading his brothers and killing them with blade and spell. He sees his reflection in their polished armor, sees the changes his allegiance and deeds have wrought upon him. He fights all the harder to banish the thought that he looks more like the monsters of the stories he was told as a child than the knight he once aspired to become.
This is the death of Caliban. This is Luther's last stand.
This is where the curse of the First Legion is born, from the shining blade of its Primarch's adoptive father.
They have lost. The Emperor and Guilliman have fallen, their bleeding and broken bodies carried away by their faithful sons.
The Traitors flee from the Palace, and the Loyalists fall upon them with righteous wrath. Aurelian and the Lord of the Red Sands are come, the slayers of daemon lords and tyrants burning with a fury to challenge the Gods themselves. The Night Lords, led by their Prince of Crows, freed the Emperor's Children from the trap of the Drukhari, and the mutilated Primarch of the Third Legion cut down the Arch-Traitor before he could strike down the False Emperor.
The threads woven by the Dark Angels to avoid the future they foresaw in the Crystal Labyrinth are coming undone. Their Primarch, grown so powerful in the Maelstrom, has been banished, defeated by the power of Magnus the Crimson King. There is nothing left to be done on Terra but die.
And so, with the taste of ashes in his mouth, he gives the order to withdraw. With the Lion banished, he, the Seneschal, takes command of the First Legion. For a brief moment of history, he wields greater power than ever before, yet he's also the most powerless he will ever be, for there is nothing they can do but run. The Dark Angels are not the first of the rebel Legions to flee from Terra, but that is cold solace.
This is the hour of the most shameful defeat. This is the end of the Heresy.
This is the time of the Scouring, the bloody days of reckoning. The castles of the rebels burn, the people they have conquered are freed or put to the sword where the taint of the Dark Gods lies too deep.
The First Legion runs, with him leading them in their father's place. He knows there is nowhere in the galaxy the Loyalists will not pursue, for even now a part of him remembers what duty and honor once meant. There is only one place where they can take refuge : the Eye of Terror, burning at the former heart of the Eldar Empire, whose decadence birthed the God of Excess and tore open a wound in reality that swallowed thousands of worlds in an instant.
He guides the fleet there, salvaging what he can from the systems they cross along the way. The storms are terrible, for the Dark Gods do not look kindly upon failure. But they push on, following the dark beacon of their Primarch's presence, and eventually they reach a world of mists and shadows, where great peaks rise above shrouded lands.
There, on the daemon world of Cysgorog, Lion El'Jonson awaits his sons. The moment they make planetfall, he calls his Seneschal to his side, to give him the orders that will shape the course of the Long War for the First Legion.
Once again, a prisoner is brought in chains before the Lion.
The captive is the first of the Dark Angels' treacherous brethren to ever be captured and presented to the Daemon Primarch of Tzeentch. In the ages to come, there will be more, as the entire Legion looks for the followers of Luther scattered across time and space by the destruction of Caliban. But for now, this one is the first, and he is the one to have captured him.
His father lifts his burning gaze from the captive to look at him. Once again, he sees the wound on the Daemon Primarch's torso, but doesn't notice it. The hooks of the Changing God are buried deep into his soul and mind, deeper than ever before, and Tzeentch won't let any Dark Angel realize that their gene-sire is crippled, forever bleeding from the wound dealt to him by Luther in his final moments.
The Lion speaks a word of praise, a rare thing even before his transformation. All around them, in the Warp, all three souls atop the Primarch's tower can feel the attention of Tzeentch, Chaos God of Lies and Sorcery, drawn by this pivotal moment in the Legion's history.
Suddenly there is pain, deep and monstrous in its intensity. He stumbles but does not fall as a god looks down upon him, examining every strand of his soul, every particle of his being. He does not understand what is happening, but he knows he will be undone if there is anything of him that would anger Tzeentch.
There is nothing. He hears the God of Change laugh, and the pain grows worse, and worse, and worse. Everything that makes him is remade, melted down and reforged – but those words fail to describe the change, as all words in all mortal languages fail to describe the action of a god.
When it finally ends (though it does not really ever ends), great wings of darkness stretch from his back as he stands, taller than before, though not the equal of his Primarch. He is mortal no more, but a principle of being, a prince of Chaos, an eternal being of the Primordial Truth.
His body is made of Warp-stuff, shaped by the memory of flesh into a humanoid form. His wings are made of the shadow cast on the cosmos by his sins. His sword is made of the screams of his victims, from the innocents he sacrificed to the Dark Gods to the Legion champions he slew in duels.
This is the hour of his ascension. This is the moment the first Dark Angel is elevated to daemonhood.
This is the rise of the first Archduke of Cysgorog.
He is the first of his blood to ascend, to be free of the shackles of mortality and bound by a different set of chains. The first to be named an Archduke of Cysgorog, that twilight realm of shadows and mist where the Dark Angels reign over an empire of slaves, witches and monsters. Others will follow in his wake, earning their rank through cunning and ambition, but he will always remain the first and greatest of them.
But nothing lasts forever, and all promises of eternity are lies.
Revelation is a process.
From atop his spire on Cysgorog, he watches the galaxy change. Like all of his Legion, he witnesses the Imperium's slow decay, the rise of ignorance and superstition that masquerades as faith in the God-Emperor.
And like all of them, he realizes that Nemuel was both right and wrong all those years ago. What they saw in the Crystal Labyrinth was both truth and lie at once. By trying to advert this future, they instead caused it.
The guilt of that paradox is heavy, and what remains of the First Legion's sanity bends under it. They lie to themselves, pretending that this was inevitable, that their and the galaxy's destiny was written by the Dark God they serve, and that there was never any choice in it. It is not that big of a lie to add to the ones they already told themselves to justify firing upon their cousins on the black sands.
He shouldn't feel that guilt, transfigured as he is, but Tzeentch delights in the torment of his slaves, leaving them just enough of themselves that, deep beneath the layers of masks they wear, part of them realizes what they have done and become.
Even so, it isn't until the battle of the Mortis Gate that he begins to doubt. When his spirit flees back to Cysgorog in shame, broken by the blades of silver knights wielding the embers of the False Emperor's power against the daemonic. Then, and only then, does he begin to question.
But his doubts are not turned on the path his Legion has followed, for that much free will is not allowed to him. Instead, he questions the leadership of Lion El'Jonson. He wonders if his sire made mistakes, if he failed to interpret the will of Tzeentch correctly. He wonders if he could do better if he were in command of all the First Legion's might, if he were first in the Architect of Fate's favor instead of the Lion.
Tzeentch watches this with delight, as the Great Conspirator does all blossoming treacheries.
"You disappoint me, Corswain."
He is burning.
The Name was a lie – the Name was wrong – the Name was a trap.
He thought he could surpass his lord. He thought he could rise above the Master of the First, bind him to his will with the power of his True Name, by which all beings of the Immaterium can be compelled. But the pieces he collected over the course of ages weren't enough. They were not the Lion's True Name at all, but that of something else.
In one moment, everything he built was gone. The Lion ripped the knowledge he had painstakingly gathered from him and, in a terrible instant of fury, summoned forth the entity bearing that Name to lay waste to the domain of Cysgorog's first Archduke.
It is a powerful weapon, and now it is the Lion's to command. Even in failure, even in betrayal, he serves. He cannot escape his chains, and the thought of it burns hotter than the fires of judgment. How long, he wonders ? How long has Lion El'Jonson been aware of his treachery ? How long has the Daemon Primarch manipulated him, blinded him to the true nature of the Name ?
How many more lies has he been blinded by ?
Now he falls, and burns, and screams. The sounds of his agony reach hundreds of worlds, driving psykers to madness and sundering the veil where it is most fragile. Millions perish or are damned in the echoes of his fall from grace, for such is the power he held.
This is the hour of judgment. This is the punishment of the failed betrayer, the would-be usurper.
This is the fall of Corswain, Seneschal of the Dark Angels, first of the Archdukes of Cysgorog.
Eventually, the fall stops, but the burning does not. He is but a shadow of a shell of his former self, stripped of most of his power and memories. Even his sense of self is fractured, leaving nothing but confusion and agony, and an all-consuming sense of loss.
This place is not Cysgorog, nor is it the churning tides of the Warp, where dwell all the Gods and daemons ever conjured by the deeds and emotions of mortal souls. It is of the Materium, and he cannot remain here for long, even if he were in the fullness of his power and not the crippled thing he has become. Beyond the rejection of the Materium upon his daemonic nature, the very air is full of a strange, eldritch fire that burns away at the remains of his essence.
True oblivion beckons, and while part of him might yearn for the quietude of annihilation, he's still possessed of his instincts to endure, to survive.
He searches for a way out, a way to hide from the flames that threaten to destroy what little remains of him. Empty shells litter the ground, but they are charred by the same flames that burn him. For a moment, something like panic flickers through his remaining mind, until …
There. A living, breathing body, laying down on the ground. Wounded, yes, damaged, yes, but still alive.
He plunges into it, seeking to make it his own, but he is too weak, and the flickering soul of the body's true owner is surprisingly strong. The usurpation, something he has done so many times in the past, fails. He is safe from the burning of the flames, but the heat is still too strong, born of something that exists in both the Materium and the Immaterium. His thoughts, his essence, melt and merge with the child's, until it is impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins.
This is the unmaking of Corswain of the Dark Angels. This is the final breath of a child whose name is lost to the fires of the Grail War, along with so much else.
This is the birth of Shirou Emiya, by miracles dark and bright.
When his awareness returned, he was alone in darkness, his mind a tangled mess of alien memories and revelations. Now at last, he remembered.
Corswain. At last, a name to put on the memories that had haunted him for so long. But with the name came so much more.
He remembered the Imperium, stretching across a million worlds. He remembered the fleets of the Great Crusade sailing the Immaterium to bring new civilizations to compliance, by diplomacy if possible, by blade and bolter if necessary. A glorious endeavour to reunite the realms of Humanity shattered by the Age of Strife, with not quite enough gilding to hide its foundations of blood and bone.
He remembered the Roboutian Heresy, the dark years of conspiracy that had preceded it and the still darker centuries that had come after the defeat at Terra. He remembered worlds burning, armies marching, cities being torn apart by rebellion, civil strife, and worse. He remembered looking upon the ruin of star systems in cold satisfaction, and hunting down his own brothers for the sin of refusing to join into his Legion's damnation.
Such suffering. Such misery. An eternity of war, oppression and torment, under the thirsting laughter of Dark Gods.
Is this the dream of Angra Mainyu ? he thought, his mind tumbling from one dreadful vision to another. Is this grim future what the Source of All Evils desires for Humanity ?
Perhaps. Or perhaps it was something else. He could not think properly, couldn't hold to his own words as they fell from his grasp. He was drowning, unable to resist the crushing pressure of Corswain's identity. But that was wrong. He wasn't Corswain. He was … He was …
Who am I ?
His memories, the memories of he-who-was-not-Corswain, felt like such small and insignificant things. How could they match the immensity of Corswain's memories, even ruined and fragmented ? And yet, he refused to accept it, refused to let himself become Corswain again. But that resistance could not last, and so he silently shouted that question into the darkness, desperate for an answer :
Who am I ?
"Isn't that obvious ?"
A match was struck, and a patch of light appeared, revealing the face of his father, looking just like he had when he had first seen him. His coat was battered and torn, his face gaunt with exhaustion, but his eyes were full of hope and love.
Not the Lion – never the Lion. The Lion isn't my father. My father is –
Kiritsugu extended his hand and pressed it against his chest.
"You are my son," said the ghost of the man who had saved him when he had given up. "And you alone, by your choices, will decide what that means."
Ahh … that's right.
I had forgotten.
Corswain had been twisted into a weapon to bleed Humanity's soul. But that blade was broken by Lion El'Jonson; its pieces had been melted by the fires of Angra Mainyu's thwarted rage; and its power recast within Avalon's mold.
I am not Corswain anymore than a steel sword is the lump of iron from which it was made.
And with that realization came another, purer memory :
I am Shirou Emiya.
The darkness screamed with a ninefold voice. It lashed out at him with unseen tendrils and claws, trying to drag him under, to drown all that made up Shirou Emiya under a torrent of Corswain's broken memories. But it had missed its shot. The vision of Kiritsugu, whether it had been his spirit or just Shirou's mind conjuring the image of the person who had rescued him from the annihilation of his soul last time, had been enough to renew his resolve.
He thought of his friends, who stood at his side against Pretender. He thought of his lovers, of his sister, of their Servants. He thought of all the people he knew across Fuyuki, all those whose continued lives and happiness depended on him being strong enough to protect them.
He thought of Kiritsugu's regrets, and the promises he had made, to him and to others, that he would strive for his own happiness as well.
"I accept this past," he declared to the roiling darkness, finding that he had a voice again. "I won't run away from it anymore."
With a thought, his greatsword was in his hands, and now he recognized it for what it was, what it had always been. It was the sword Corswain had been given upon becoming a squire of the Order of Caliban, and which had later been ritually reforged by the First Legion's Techmarines into the power sword he had carried during the Great Crusade. It had been defiled during the Heresy, tainted by infernal powers, and its memory had eventually followed its wielder into daemonhood.
He remembered its name now. Corswain had named it, back when he had still been a good man, before the horrors of war and the machinations of daemons had led him to make a terrible choice. It had been renamed after the Drop Site Massacre of Istvaan, and again after Corswain's ascension to daemonhood, but every time Shirou had used his Magecraft to Trace it, it had been in its purest form.
It was Radiant Moon, so named after the silver sentinel that had watched over Caliban from the skies, casting light even in the night to help the humans in their struggles against the monsters of their world.
"But I will not be ruled by it !"
There was a pulse, followed by a roar that was close to a pained groan, and the darkness coalesced before him into a towering figure. It was Corswain as he had seen him in the vision he'd shared with Saber, on the battlefield of the Great Game of Chaos. But the Archduke was ruined, his armor rent and rusted, his wings tattered and the eldritch fire of his sorcery guttering.
This was not really Corswain, he knew. Only a representation of him, conjured by his own mind in response to Kor Phaeron's spell forcefully awakening the shattered memories of a dead Daemon Prince. Shirou could have become the Archduke reborn, but only if he had given in, only if he had accepted the lie that Corswain was all he was and could ever be.
Shirou had rejected that lie, and now this revenant was one last-ditch attempt by Pretender's spell to accomplish its purpose. It would fail, but that didn't mean it couldn't hurt him.
"Corswain," he greeted the apparition. "It is over. You will not claim my body. I will not betray my dreams."
"It is the dreams you cling to that will betray you," said the revenant in a voice full of the bitterness of ages. "As ours betrayed us."
"You were deceived, and deceived yourself to avoid facing the truth," answered Shirou. "I will not make the same mistake."
"The hope you pursue is a lie," persisted the shadow of the Archduke. "All hope is a lie, for its light was stolen by Tzeentch long before either of us was born. Knowing this, you would still pursue that foolish path ?"
"I do not believe that the Dark God who enslaved you holds that power," he replied. "But even if that were so, then yes. No matter what, I will keep striving toward a better tomorrow. For my friends, for my family, for my loved ones, for my world : I will be a Hero of Justice."
The sword in his hand ignited, blazing with light that repelled the darkness, revealing a field of golden grass under his feet and a blue sky above his head. He felt grief, regret, and something that might have been relief from the echo of the Dark Angel.
"Then rise, Shirou Emiya," whispered the ghost of Corswain of Caliban as it faded away, banished by the light of Radiant Moon in Shirou's hands and Avalon in his heart. "Rise, and redeem us if you can."
Illya watched in shock as her brother fell to the ground, struck by nine arrows of something she didn't think could be called Magecraft. For a few heartbeats, he laid there unmoving, his wings of shadow having vanished along with the black lines of his unique form of Reinforcement. Saber rushed to his side, while Rin shouted for everyone to hold their ground and not give their enemies an opening – though the Servant, Kor Phaeron, seemed content to simply watch now that his spell had been unleashed.
Then Shirou stirred, and pushed himself up, his back turned to Illya as he looked at Pretender.
"Now, do you remember, Lord Corswain ?" asked Kor Phaeron.
"… you knew." Shirou's voice was flat, and Illya didn't know if that was good or bad.
"Of course I did," chuckled the Extra-Class Servant. "From the moment I saw you wield that power, I recognized your true identity. How could I not, when it was you who returned me to life that I may do the Gods' bidding in the Ruinstorm ?"
"… Yes. The Dark Angels returned you from the Sea of Souls in the Five Hundred Worlds, to pave the way for Guilliman's great sacrifice." Shirou raised his hands, looking down at them and flexing his fingers as if he didn't recognize them. "It was a grand feat of sorcery, made possible only by the fragile unity of the Four that then reigned."
"It was," admitted Kor Phaeron with a nod. "And it is a sign of the favor the Dark Gods held you and your Legion into that they gave you the honor of breaking the laws of life and death in their service."
"You are mistaken about many things, Kor Phaeron, but about one thing in particular."
"Oh ? And what is that, my friend ?"
"I am not Corswain," said Shirou forcefully. "Corswain is dead. I am Shirou Emiya."
"Shirou Emiya is nothing," dismissed Kor Phaeron. "Just a mask for the First Archduke of Cysgorog to hide behind as he worms his way into the perfect position to bring the Primordial Truth unto this world. Are you still confused ? I did design that spell within the constraints of this World; I may have made mistakes …"
"There were no mistakes, Kor Phaeron. You were always a great sorcerer, for all your other faults. I remember all that is left of Corswain's memories. But you underestimated the damage that was wrought upon his essence."
Once again, Shirou's skin was covered in black lines, except they were now edged in gold, and the wings of shadow that stretched from his back were less sinister and threatening, though Illya couldn't explain why. Inside her, the Traced copy of Avalon dissolved throughout her body seemed to pulse with energy, and she felt the slight muscle pains from their journey to the dock (no matter how good a pilot Lancer was or how comfortable her brother had tried to make her, her body was just not made for that kind of transportation), which had been left untreated due to the copied Noble Phantasm being busy keeping her condition from worsening, faded away.
"As I told you," said her brother, "no matter what else I might be, I am Shirou Emiya."
Kor Phaeron's eyes widened at the sight of Illya's transformed brother, before his mouth curled in disgust.
"Ah. How … pathetic. For one who stood so high in the service of the Architect of Fate to have been reduced to such an extent that he cannot even overcome the identity of one child is truly a tragedy. Yet if you truly have seen some of Corswain's memories, then you must realize that there is only one path open to you now, Shirou Emiya."
"Oh ?"
"The Grail already belongs to the True Gods," Pretender began to monologue, his eyes gleaming with a light that disturbingly reminded Illya of what she had sometimes glimpsed in the eyes of Jubstacheit when he had talked to her about the Einzbern's mission of reclaiming the Third Magic. "Through it, They will at last be able to reach this world and bring the Primordial Truth upon its people. Their victory is inevitable; if you truly remember even a fraction of Corswain's past, then you know that this is true. Only by devoting yourselves to them can you and your allies hope to thrive in the new Age to come."
"Do you expect us to willingly sacrifice ourselves to the Grail ?" mocked Euryale, surprising Illya. She hadn't expected the diminutive Servant to have the courage to speak up while they were surrounded, even if their odds had admittedly gotten a lot better when whatever brainwashing trick Kor Phaeron had tried on Shirou had obviously failed.
"It would be no sacrifice, but transcendence," claimed Pretender. "The Grail already contains most the energy it requires to activate, thanks to the peculiar circumstances of the last War's ending. Your essences would dwell within it only for as long as it takes to finish the ritual, for the Pantheon does not allow such potential as you all possess to go to waste. Upon the coming of the Dark Gods to this world, you all shall be reborn, no longer as spirits bound to the Throne of Heroes, but as champions of Chaos, avatars of the True Gods' might and leaders of their armies in the conquest of this world. All of you, all of us, shall be granted the ultimate reward for this, elevated above Humanity as Corswain himself once was."
His feverous gaze descended on Shirou. "Tell me, heir of the First Archduke. Am I lying ?"
"No," replied Shirou, and Illya felt her heart clench before he continued : "But just because you aren't lying doesn't mean you are right. The Grail might be able to bring the Dark Gods to this world, and they might reward us by making us all into Daemon Princes and Princesses. Immortality and the power to accomplish our wildest dreams and ambitions would be ours. That much I cannot deny."
Illya could feel the monumental 'but' that was coming. She wasn't disappointed.
"But I do remember Corswain's past, Kor Phaeron. From the moment he broke his oaths to his unmaking at the hands of the Lion and in the Fuyuki Fire, he was completely and utterly miserable. He felt no happiness, only bitter satisfaction, and he certainly wasn't free. He was a slave to darkness, a puppet made to commit unspeakable evil in service of the Power that had damned him. All of the Dark Gods' so-called gifts are hollow prizes, which only serve them, not the favoured slaves who call themselves champions and think themselves great. You would have us doom Humanity for a few moments of satisfaction, and none of us are stupid enough to accept that offer."
"What he said," added Rin, a scowl on her face. "We know enough about the Grail's corruption to realize it's a stupid idea to follow its will."
"The evil you serve kept me imprisoned for ten years," hissed Saber, "and broke my very self apart. I will see it burn, Pretender, if it is the last thing I do."
"Power and vengeance might have tempted me once, when I already thought myself damned," admitted Sakura. "But now ? I won't let you or anyone else threaten what I have, even your so-called 'Gods'."
"Fools, all of you," scoffed Kor Phaeron. His gaze moved across them, stopping on Lancer before it could reach Illya, for which she felt obscurely grateful. She didn't want those cold, evil eyes to look at her.
"And what of you, King of Knights ?" His tone had changed, reminding Illya of a snake. "I know your heart's desire. The others may be content with their lot, with blindly throwing themselves against the Gods, but you yearn for something that the World will never give you. But I can. Your child's soul still slumber in the Throne of Heroes. They could be brought back to life, true life. You could be reunited, given another chance."
Through her link to Lancer, Illya felt no hesitation, no moment of doubt or temptation. Only a spike of pain and grief, followed by unwavering resolve and cold fury.
"And all it would cost me is my soul ? I have seen the kind of monsters you have in your service, Pretender. I will not betray everything I believe in just to damn someone I already failed," spat her Servant. "You would know that if you understood anything about me."
"Indeed," said Shirou, raising his sword and pointing it at Kor Phaeron. "For all your dark lore, all your terrible wisdom, you understand precious little about Humanity. I swear this to you, here and now : the Chaos Gods will never claim this World."
"And who are you to stand against Their will ?!" All pretence of calm had vanished from Pretender's face, replaced by utter loathing and fanaticism. "You, who reject Their glory, despite all the boons they bestowed upon you, despite their generosity in offering you a chance to redeem yourself in Their eyes ! Who are you to dare oppose me ?!"
She heard the determination in her brother's voice, stronger than steel and far more unbending :
"Who am I ?"
He took a deep breath, and she felt as if the world itself was holding its own, waiting for him to speak :
"I am the blade that sunders the might of Gods."
Whenever Shirou spoke while he was drawing on his powers, his voice had an echoing quality that forced people to pay attention and made it obvious that whatever he was, it wasn't one hundred per cent human. This time, however, reality itself seemed to obey his decree. An invisible shockwave of something radiated from her brother, and when it reached the nine Demon Pillars standing on the crates around them, the disks they had each carried shattered while their bearers' bodies twisted in unnatural ways while shrieking like damned souls in agony.
Kor Phaeron was less dramatically affected, but he didn't get off scot-free either. Twin rivulets of blood ran down from his eyes, and he took a step back, glaring at Shirou with what Illya was pretty sure was fear in his eyes. Then the emotion vanished, replaced by apoplectic fury :
"KILL THEM !" screamed Pretender. "KILL THEM ALL, IN THE NAME OF THE GODS !"
With the same incredible speed they had displayed before, every Servant moved. Rider, Berserker and Saber leapt, each tearing the closest Demon Pillar to pieces before moving to the next. Euryale shot one of them in the middle of the forehead, the arrowhead erupting through the back of its skull, while Stheno sang notes that made another one plunge a right hand in the process of mutating into a razor-sharp claw straight through its own throat.
Two were caught in black and red ribbons stretching from the shadow of a suddenly white-haired Sakura, and with a shriek that couldn't be mistaken as anything else but terrified, they simply ceased to be, leaving nothing behind but drops of blood that hissed as they burned into the metal of the containers. Meanwhile, Lancer stayed at the Masters' side, ready to defend them against any attack.
If the Demon Pillars had been able to finish their transformation, no doubt each of them would have been just as redoubtable as Furfur had been, if not worse, since Illya doubted Kor Phaeron had used the strongest of his familiars as bait. But they were struck while their flesh was still twisting into their true, monstrous forms, and reeling from whatever it was Shirou had done that had triggered the fight.
As a result, they were utterly slaughtered. Considering the bodies they had found earlier, the people who had died just so that Kor Phaeron could bring them here and try to mind rape her brother, Illya didn't care that it wasn't a fair fight.
Meanwhile, her brother had jumped, or flown, or whatever he did when he used his wings to move, straight at Kor Phaeron himself. His sword went straight for Pretender's neck, but the Servant raised a hand and formed a mystical barrier just in time. The oversized blade slammed into the translucent obstacle with a clanging sound that made the containers around them tremble. Undeterred, Shirou swung his sword to strike from the other side.
Then Shirou swung again, and again, and again, each strike coming at a new angle, forcing Kor Phaeron to gesticulate wildly in order to create enough barriers to block them all, while also giving ground before Shirou's relentless advance. After a few frantic seconds, his feet reached the edge of the container on which the two of them stood.
"This isn't over !" snarled Pretender, before vanishing in a scarlet flash right before Shirou's sword could cut his ugly head off.
Illya recognized the signs from her training at the Einzbern Castle : this was the result of a Command Seal being used to teleport a Servant, though she wondered how Kor Phaeron (or the Grail itself) had managed to twist the rules like that. A Command Seal could be used to summon the Servant it was linked to, but that was to bring them straight to their Master, and the fate of Marisbury Animusphere and the other missing Magi from his Castle was obvious now.
With Kor Phaeron gone and the last of the Demon Pillars he had brought with him slain, silence descended on the corpse-strewn docks, soon broken by the distant sounds of police sirens. Shirou jumped down to the ground before cancelling his transformation, his face showing his frustration at Kor Phaeron getting away.
"Slippery bastard," he growled. "I shouldn't be surprised, really. For all that he's a poor tactician obsessed with theatrics and pleasing the Gods, it still took Lorgar years to corner him on Colchis, and just as long in the Shadow Crusade …"
"Shirou," asked Rin, nervously voicing the question they were all thinking (Illya could even see that Rider, despite all her teasing, hadn't fully dropped Gungnir yet), "what the hell did he do to you ?"
"Later," answered her brother. "I promise I am fine, it didn't work like he wanted it to. For now, we need to clear this area of all traces of Magecraft, burn the corpses of the Pillars, and get away before the police arrive. Even the Fujimura Group won't be able to keep them away from this mess forever."
Grudgingly recognizing his point, they set to work. They collected the shards of the disks (which even broken radiated a palpable sense of malevolence), and Shirou broke them down even further with his sword, dissipating the energy leftover within them before throwing them into the sea. The mutated remains of the Demon Pillars were burned to fine ash, which Sakura then annihilated with her Imaginary Element. Shirou didn't want to risk the police or anyone else stumbling on those remains, and just burning them apparently wasn't enough to be sure all risk of contamination had been dealt with.
"Ten down," noted Rin grimly, as they made their way back to their bikes. "Sixty-two to go."
AN : And here we are at last. I knew the identity of the Dark Angel before even beginning to write this story : it came to me while I was coming up with the concept, back when MalcadorLite planted the seed into my mind. If you check the background for the Archdukes of Cysgorog in the first part of The Terran Crucible in the Roboutian Heresy (39th chapter by ffnet's count), you'll even find a mention of Corswain and what happened to him. Now that the reveal is out, I wonder how many of you managed to figure it out before this chapter ?
In any case, I have been waiting to write the scene of Shirou learning the truth and overcoming it since I started writing this story. And yes, I know some of you will be disappointed Kor Phaeron didn't get dealt with immediately (I was actually surprised by the amount of hatred his character got in the reviews, though thinking back I probably shouldn't have been), but come on, people. This is the Grail War, and Kor Phaeron is the kind of creature that, in the canon 40k universe, has managed to survive for ten thousand years despite, I remind you, not even being a bloody Space Marine. His RH-counterpart, which is what Shirou and his friends are dealing with, even managed to get himself resurrected after Lorgar killed him.
That kind of villain doesn't go down in the first encounter. That's just not how the story goes.
I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and look forward to your reactions on what happened in it. I also tried to use the visions as an introduction to the Warhammer 40000 universe (or at least its Roboutian Heresy version), since I have gotten a few reviews and PMs from readers who came from the Fate side of things and don't know anything about 40K. If you still have questions about the setting, please list them in your reviews : I want to have the characters address them in-universe in the next chapter if I can.
I intend to focus on finishing the next installment of the Roboutian Heresy for now, and then ... I haven't decided yet. This chapter was the last of the current "bloc" of chapters, so I will need to write the skeleton of the next bloc before I can continue this story. I also want to actually write the Chaos Cain story I have been writing notes for since I finished Warband of the Forsaken Sons, but I also want to update Prince of the Eye since it's been more than a year since I updated it, and there are short stories that I have had in the works for months as well as more recent suggestions that really caught my eye ...
Ah, well. Those aren't bad problems to have, I think. Don't hesitate to tell me which of these stories you would most like me to focus on once my current backlog is cleared.
Finally, sorry about the lack of Omake for this chapter. I couldn't think of one that fit, and while I toyed with the idea of using an old Doom/Infernum crossover I have had in reserve for some time, it didn't fit with the chapter.
Zahariel out.