Maeleum Datum : 510.M34
Five years after its beginning, the war against the Pale Wasting had laid waste to entire Sectors. Scores of worlds and hundreds of billions had perished, harvested by the Necron legions or annihilated as their worlds were scoured clean of life by the terrible weapons of the fallen Dynasty. Those few Imperial souls who survived to see them being used came to call such weapons 'nightmare-engines', while the Necrons themselves were often referred to as a 'star-spawned plague' in the fiery speeches of the Imperial preachers accompanying the Astra Militarum forces.
Yet now, at last, things were beginning to turn in the favor of the Imperium. With its attention divided between two enemies, one of which made blatant use of the Warp and therefore earned the greater share of its anger, the strategic mind of the Nightbringer – which, among the Star Gods, had never been the greatest – began to make mistakes. As the Transcendent C'tan focused its attention on the Dark Mechanicum, dedicating more resources to tracking down and destroying the predator-moons, the forces of the Pale Wasting waned on other fronts, giving the Imperium its first real chance to push back.
Kelbor-Hal had chosen the destination of his predator-moons carefully, far from the systems reclaimed by the Imperium under Guilliman. Even so, the method of transportation used meant that their arrival was far from unnoticed. Psykers all across the Segmentum were haunted by visions of the horrors wrought by the Dark Mechanicum, and thousands perished in the resulting daemonic incursions.
Though this benefitted him from a strategic perspective, Guilliman wasn't so foolish as to be glad of the news. He had witnessed what the Dark Mechanicum was capable of, and doubted that the hereteks' methods had become any less monstrous in their exile to the Eye of Terror. Not only were the human worlds caught in the conflict between the renegades and the Necrons doomed to terrible fates, but the prospect of the dark magi succeeding in learning the secrets of Necron technology was a chilling one.
Unbeknownst to Guilliman, other factions had begun to take action against the Pale Wasting in the Eastern Fringe. After their scouts had failed to report, the Necron Praetorians had employed other methods to confirm the fate of the Larkorakh Dynasty. They had then brought word of this terrible threat to the crownworld of Mandragora, where the first nobles of the Sautekh Dynasty had begun to awaken from the Great Sleep. Though Necrons had left fear behind during biotransference, the idea of a Transcendent Nightbringer loose in the galaxy filled them with dread. The Praetorians ordered that those tomb-worlds in the path of the Pale Wasting be immediately emptied of all warriors and resources, with the other C'tan Shards taking absolute priority, regardless of the damage removing them might cause to the necropolises.
At the same time, small raiding parties of the Sautekh were sent to eliminate nobles of the Larkorakh Dynasty who had fallen under the thrall of the Nightbringer, to expunge the dishonor of such worthies of the Necron race being reduced to slaves of the Star Gods once more. For the first time since the end of the Secession Wars, Necron fought Necron, and in those few occurrences where Imperial observers were present and survived, the following reports that found their way to Guilliman's desk were very confused indeed.
Another party had also become interested in the events of the Eastern Fringe. Trazyn the Infinite, Necron Overlord of Solemnace, had learned of the Nightbringer's awakening and subjugation of the Larkorakh. The obsessive historian and collector feared the Transcendent C'tan as much as any other Necron Lord, but was unwilling to let such a momentous occasion pass without being present to record it.
Though none of the Alaitoc Rangers had returned, the visions of the Craftworld's Seers showed them the atrocities committed by the Nightbringer upon the human worlds, and the growing power of the Yngir, both so great as to be visible even through the shroud of psychic silence – especially as it was overstretched and slowly torn apart by the war against the predator-moons of the Dark Mechanicum. The Eldars cared little for the fate of mon'keigh, but they knew that the Necrons needed to be stopped. Craftworld Saim-Hann operated in the Eastern Fringe, though its warriors had remained far from the Pale Wasting. The Eldars knew that, should the Nightbringer learn of their Craftworld's presence, it would stop at nothing to hunt them down. In every future the Seers of Saim-Hann saw where the Transcendent C'tan realized the distant descendants of the Aeldari it had fought during the War in Heaven were within its reach, only doom awaited the Children of Isha.
The anti-Empyric matrixes meant that deploying the war hosts of Alaitoc was impossible : too much of the Eldars' technology and battle prowess relied upon the Warp. That the humans had managed to fight back against the Pale Wasting was a sign of how even primitives could have their use, or so the Seers of Alaitoc presented the situation to their prideful Autarchs.
After much discussion, it was decided that the human leader, the Primarch Guilliman, must be contacted and told of the true nature of the foe he fought, so that he could be directed efficiently against the Yngir before it feasted on so many souls as to become unstoppable. Farseer Kylian, who had led his peers' efforts in convincing the Craftworld's leaders of the necessity of this course of action, was named leader of this diplomatic expedition, and promptly departed for the Eastern Fringe alongside an escort judged large enough to guarantee his safety but small enough not to anger the humans.
Unwilling to waste more time wading through bureaucracy, Kylian went directly for Guilliman's location, on the very frontlines of the war against the Pale Wasting. The Farseer timed his arrival to follow the destruction of the anti-Empyric matrix deployed in this area, scrying the threads of the future at great personal effort and pain until his vision cleared, indicating the engine's destruction. Only when he was sure the monstrous machine had been destroyed did he order his ship to enter the system and reveal itself to the humans.
"Lord Roboute Guilliman, son of the human Emperor, enemy of the Scion of She-Who-Thirsts,
I am Farseer Kylian of Craftworld Alaitoc. I come in peace, bearing knowledge of the enemy you face."
Transmission from the Eldar vessel Blade of Kurnous to the Ultramarine armada
Guilliman knew the story of the Fall, and knew well too how many human worlds had suffered the depredations of the Eldars during the Age of Strife, when entire civilisations had been treated as larders by degenerate raiders who would return every generation to feed on the terror and pain of their victims before vanishing, confident that those they oppressed couldn't possibly fight back. He knew too of how the Craftworld Eldars, for all that they claimed to have renounced the violent way of their dark kin, still saw no issue with slaughtering billions of humans for the crime of having been born on one of the worlds the aliens claimed as theirs, despite centuries having passed since the landing of the colonisation fleets.
And of course, the Avenging Son knew too how the Eldars had made alliance with hundreds of Imperial commanders across the galaxy, claiming to be opposing the schemes of the Archenemy, only to abandon their supposed allies to fates worse than death the moment the safety of their own people was guaranteed. That they should come to him now, when the Imperium faced a horror spawned from antediluvian legend, was no surprise to Guilliman, and he knew better than to trust a single word from them. Yet he needed information, for though the Imperium held against the Pale Wasting, losses were mounting and there was no end in sight.
So it was that Primarch and Farseer met aboard the Maccrage's Honour, despite the objections of many on Guilliman's council. Kylian told the Avenging Son what his people knew of the Necrons and their terrible Star-God, and the fact that the Yngir would only grow stronger as it fed, until it grew so mighty it might well devour the galaxy entire. Learning that the Necrons weren't limited to the Pale Wasting but were in fact scattered across the galaxy, slumbering in their tombs where any fool explorer might stumble upon them and awaken them, was unwelcome news for Guilliman, but he absorbed them as he had absorbed so many more in his life. Kylian agreed that the rest of the Necron race was a threat : his people, after all, had fought a guerilla war against the tomb-worlds for thousands of years. There were even fragmentary records in the Craftworld from the time before the Fall, hinting that Alaitoc had inherited the duty of an older Aeldari order, though one that had been slowly crippled by the growing decadence of their Empire, as with so many others.
Yet those sleeping metal devils were a concern for later when compared to those awake and currently harvesting the stars to feed their hungry god. The distraction the Dark Mechanicum had presented to the Pale Wasting would not last much longer, warned the Farseer. The Nightbringer itself had abandoned its feeding to track down the predator-moons, and before its awesome power the sorcerous artifices of Kelbor-Hal's apprentices could not hope to prevail. One by one they would fall, though not even the Transcendent C'tan would be able to completely exterminate the mad things of metal and flesh that dwelled within. It must be stopped before that grim possibility could come to pass, but the technology which had held it captive for millions of years was beyond either of them – and with its increased power, it was doubtful the Necrons themselves had anything which could contain it.
Still, there remained a path to victory, narrow and treacherous though it may be. The Seers of Alaitoc could not predict the actions of the Nightbringer, save through the sudden ending that came to most threads that crossed its path, but they knew of a world where its arrival was inevitable. There, Kylian told Guilliman, they would have a chance at slaying the dark god at the heart of the Pale Wasting and defeat the blight that had spread across the Eastern Fringe.
The world's name was Kronus, and there legend would be written, as ever, in blood.
AN : Well, this ended up taking another week. On the plus side, I have been able to write ahead for this story during the week. As a result, the next chapter will come out tomorrow. It will be the last one in the "Pale Wasting" arc. After that, we will return to the titular Prince of the Eye, I promise.
As always, please tell me what you thought of this chapter and what you are hoping to see in the future.
Zahariel out.