Early 36th Millennium, dawn of the Plague of Unbelief
Ceg Y Neidr
After contacting the Stormtroopers and The Resolute, Basil and Siân headed back into the Webway. Basil carried the Singing Spear he was gifted in hand, as he had his staff in the past, with his golden bow slung over his shoulder. Basil glanced at Siân but the warm face he had grown accustomed to was gone, replaced by the featureless grey mask she wore the first time he saw her and she carried her Witchblade in hand. They picked up their pace along the route Basil had chosen, his eyes were drawn to the Webway floor by the vision etched into his mind, while Siân followed him, watching for danger.
After only a handful of hours, Basil came to a stop.
The Webway wall on the right side of the walkway bore a great golden rune as tall as Basil. Its form was that of a circle with two hash marks, separated by a gap, that protruded inward from the top arc. An open mouth of a snake, Basil told himself. The rune for Ceg Y Neidr. Following the instructions he had received from Mistress Ilronanna, Basil grasped the Warp and channeled a trickle of power into the rune. The wall shuddered and then the sound of grinding stone followed.
The gate cracked open, followed by a rush of air.
The first thing that caught Basil's attention was the smell of ozone, followed by moisture in the air. As he stepped through, his eyes rose to the sky. Low and dark clouds rolled by, threatening rain and lightning. Basil pulled his gaze down to the landscape that surrounded him. The ground was covered by coarse grasses and broken by short scattered shrubs. Shrubs and grasses that grew around, and even on, ancient engines of war. A single tree rose in the distance.
But there was something else too. He felt it.
"War has left powerful impressions in the very fabric of this planet," Basil said. "And so has something else," he added. "My mentor, Inquisitor Matthias, may he rest with the Emperor, told me that his mentor managed to traverse the Webway and visited this planet." Siân looked at him doubtfully. "Ipabog's notes said that, during our Great Crusade, an Interex vessel crashed here somewhere, along with a Hemlock-class Aeldari destroyer. And they were followed by a portion of a fleet belonging to the Sons of Horus, but the planet was already populated by Slann."
"And, years later, this Fires of Purgation you think carries the Condenser landed or crashed here?" Siân glanced at Basil, waiting a moment for him to divulge more information to her, then quickly returned to scanning for trouble. "Will this voidship be an easy mark to recognize?" she asked.
"It should," Basil replied. "It is, or perhaps was, a strike cruiser of the Void Spectres space marine chapter. Several kilometres in length." Siân simply nodded while continuing to look for trouble, as well as signs of the Purgation.
Basil squatted and touched his palm to the ground.
Orks surrounded him. The green-skins were of varying sizes and breeds, with hulking bodies and overgrown canines. Some held primitive stone axes while others held ork rifles and still others held stolen lasguns. Oddly, they appeared surprised and ill at ease rather than angry and ready for battle. In that moment he realized the source of what he had felt, the residue of a powerful psychic presence.
"This is the planet where War Boss Ulthric led his ork horde before he invaded the Thulean Sector," Basil said as he glanced up at Siân. He knew she was listening, even if she was not looking him in the eye. "Where they stole the Condenser from, after one of their mythic Brainboyz, perhaps an Old One, arrived and told them to leave and take nothing."
Basil returned his concentration to the ground and reached back farther.
Thunder buffeted his ears, mixed with exploding ordnance that shook the ground. Heavy rain cascaded down from the sky. Forms darted all about with speed that was difficult to follow. Everything froze for an instant when lightning lit the sky.
Rolling past, frozen in time by the flash, was an enormous green battle tank set upon giant tracks with a sponson mounted quad lascannon on each side.
A Spartan Assault Tank, Basil realized. Then he saw it.
On the side was painted a red runic eye, the symbol adopted by the Luna Wolves after Horus Lupercal was named Warmaster of the Great Crusade. Adopted after they assumed the name Sons of Horus, shortly before they betrayed the Emperor.
In the sky were three craft, hovering in place with no apparent propulsion system, golden in colour and bristling with weaponry pointed at the Spartan beneath it.
In an instant, darkness returned, and with it motion.
The Spartan's machine spirit roared to life as it turned, trying to keep up with the low flying craft. A quadcannon fired and a bright blast of light struck one hovercraft, momentarily illuminating the vehicle before it exploded. But the other two fired their weaponry, lascannons too. One burst destroyed one sponson, along with its mounted quadcannon, while the other struck the heavily armoured top of the Spartan but appeared to do nothing.
Small forms moved all around too, though small was a term relative to the Spartan.
Space marines in sea-green power armour, dwarfed by the Spartan, sought targets with their bolters and found them, amphibious figures, with enormous clawed hands, that danced about in leather armour. A bolter fired and exploded on one of the creatures, but it was already gone and reappeared next to the Space Marine. It swiped with one of its giant claws, a blow that passed right through the power armour and into the marine's chest.
Instant teleportation? Basil questioned himself in surprise. They appeared primitive but had displacer field technology, and power field weaponry. These creatures must be the Slann that Ipabog told Matthias resided here.
His mind refocused on reading the past.
The moor was mostly deserted and, although clouds threatened overhead, the rain had stopped. Wreckage was everywhere, belonging to Slann and Sons of Horus alike. Half-destroyed Slann walkers alongside Spartan Tanks. Weapons and bits of armour. The amphibious creatures were moving about, gathering their dead.
But something was missing from the field as he felt across it with his psychic senses. Something akin to a great hole that Basil felt. The Sons of Horus, Basil said to himself. They weren't defeated, they just vacated the battlefield. Left so quickly it's as if they vanished. Then it dawned on him.
Only one thing could have called them away so quickly from such an important battle.
They had received word the Horus Heresy had begun, word of the Civil War which set the Milky Way ablaze. Which side did they choose? Basil asked himself. Were they loyal to the Emperor, space marines who would die at the hands of their own brothers in defense of that loyalty, or were they loyal to Horus, the Arch-traitor, the foremost son of the Emperor, the Primarch from which their genetic modifications were derived? Perhaps they chose no side and fought as Blackshields. Perhaps these battle companies had their loyalties split just as the differing legions were split from one another.
Basil did not know the answer. He just knew that the Slann were there when the battle ended but had left before the orks arrived millennia later, left before the Fires of Purgation arrived. Where did they go, and why? Were they called away too?
Then he saw it and knew why he had been drawn to the spot of the battle he had just witnessed.
Basil quickly stood and glanced over at Siân. "I know where to go," he said and took off at a run to the only tree on the moor.
"Do you actually think a strike cruiser is hidden behind that tree?" Siân asked with a laugh as she ran after him.
"Not behind it," Basil said as they both rounded the tree. "Over it."
In front of them was a tall instrument, jet black in colour with countless vines entwined along its surface. Its base was a large hexagram shaped pedestal and from the edge rose a tall arm which bent overtop the device and pointed down at it like a gun.
"It is a Slann teleportarium," Basil said. "After the Sons of Horus were called away from this battle, the Slann left this world too, with some using the Webway but many others teleporting away to their vessels in orbit. Teleporting with this device, and others like it scattered throughout the planet." He turned from the device and to Siân. "The Fires of Purgation is above us in orbit. I can feel it," he said.
"Is the device still operational and, if it is, can you use it properly?" Siân asked.
"It appears to have withstood time and the weather here remarkably well," he answered. "I believe there is some type of ward protecting it." Basil began to clear vines away from the arm. "Here," he said and pointed to a series of runes inscribed onto the black surface of the arm, then tapped on the first and largest. "This rune is a ward of preservation. I believe it was created from the language of Creation. The rest of the runes are operating instructions in the Slann language." He stared at the runes another moment. "It appears to me the Slann were, perhaps still are, a wise and ancient race. At least some could use aspects of the language of Creation and this device is activated by psychic energy."
Basil reached out his hand to Siân. "Come," he said. "I will take us to the vessel. With any luck, the life sustainers will still be operational as the Purgation arrived here not too many years ago." He did not bother to tell her it fled, damaged, from a space battle. "If not, we will be forced to channel the Warp to protect ourselves." Siân took his hand and stepped onto the platform with him.
Basil channeled a trickle of the Warp into the arm and they vanished in a flash of blue light.
