NB: For those new to the Warhammer 40000 universe, please bear with me. This chapter will contain unusual and unfamiliar terms and concepts. These and more will be explained in Chapter Three when the characters themselves have a chance to learn it. For now please just allow this chapter to set the scene :)

XOX

The city was in ruins. Bombardment by both orbital and ground Imperium of Man forces had left only burnt out shells and rubble ghosts cloaked in billowing smoke. Most of the inhabitants of the city had been innocent of the crime levelled against them, harbouring Heretics and base-born nascent Psykers.

How many had truly known? None of them, in truth. Only the members of the Cult of Change knew, and even then only one of them was a true native, the rest were born of distant worlds, all drawn to this place by the twisting, unknowable plan of the God of Knowledge and Magic, The Great Changer and Deceiver, Tzeentch. And all of them dead, except one, the native who knew this city better than the back of his hand, all is streets and alleyways, vents, ducts, gutters and sewers.

XXX

Xaphian ran. He ran harder and faster than he ever had. His knowledge was used up, and the kill teams were closing on him. He suspected that they must have a psyker with them, someone who could sense the touch of the warp upon him, able to smell the stink of sorcery.
His head ached, he had had nothing to drink in hours, and it had been days since he had anything more substantial than a sip of gutter run-off. All the running had made him sweat, he was dehydrated. Thankfully there were so many rats or he'd be hungry too. He had to stop, there was no other choice. He would catch his breath and then fight whatever came for him. His hope was that it was Tzeentchs plan for him to survive, just as he had done during the initial purge.

Xaphian dashed across an open parade square. The central fountain smashed apart by the now wrecked Taurox armoured transport The once beautiful mosaicked walls, depicting the feats of the Great Crusade over ten millennia ago, were smashed apart by gun fire and bombardments. The young sorcerer dived behind a piled mound of rubble, and pressed himself face to face with the mosaic representation of the Primarch Sanguinius. Xaphian chuckled internally as he tried to moderate his gasping breaths.
"Once again you shelter Psykers, oh creator of the Librarius. Once more to your folly, Angel."
Xaphian knew the truth of the age of darkness the Imperium called the Horus Heresy, when the Emperor's most exalted son turned away from his Father to embrace the light of true Gods. The knowledge had been imparted to him through visions and text granted to him by a Greater Daemon of Tzeentch during the bonding ritual he had partaken in when he had joined the Cult of Change. No more than an orphan boy with a thirst for knowledge and truth, burning to know why the Inquisition had tortured and burnt his parents alive for protecting and hiding him. That had been fifteen years ago, and now he was back home, with more knowledge than he ever would have dreamed of. The veil had been pulled from his eyes, exposing the myriad of lies of the Imperium of Man, and what they would do to keep their oppression of the Imperial Citizens firmly in their control.
Xaphian knew that the Chaos Gods were cruel, but at least they did not hide that behind a shield of lies, instead they rewarded people for acting in their nature, and giving gifts to those that serve.

His breath now quieted, Xaphian strained to listen for the approaching Kill Team. He fancied he could hear them in the distance. The sound of a voice, distant but closing. He couldn't make out the words but he recognised the rhythm, prayer to the God-Emperor,
"Corpse-God" Xaphian thought bitterly, "As good as dead for ten thousand years if not for the thousand souls of my kindred a day his survival consumes."
It would be pleasing to his God to dispose of the preacher and whoever followed him, but he would not act rashly. He would wait them out and ambush them if possible, though he would have to try and hide his mind from whatever witch-seer they had.
He cleared his mind and focused, summoning his will to shroud his presence and his mind from those searching. He knew a psyker would be able to identify that a psychic power had been used in the area, but he hoped the mask would be good enough that they would not be able to pinpoint its origin.
He heard them draw closer, they were approaching by the same road to the parade square that he had run down. He wasn't able to judge the distance, that wasn't his specialty.

Suddenly the sky split with a blinding flash and a hideous keening screech. For a moment Xaphian thought a bombardment had begun anew, that was, until he looked up at the smoke choked sky.
A rift in real space yawned wide and jagged, showing the unreal colours of the churning maelstrom of the Warp. It looked like a portal made by a spacecrafts warp engine during translocation in or out of the Warp, but there was no ship. For the first few agonising moments, nothing came out of the rift. Suddenly it was raining rock and earth and great chunks of masonry.
A massive section of what looked to be ancient Grekan ruins from the illustrations of ancient Terra, came crashing down in the direction he had heard his pursuers. There was a scream, and then he felt a presence he hadn't even realised was there wink out from his perception.
"Just as planned," Xaphian thought, mentally quoting one of the many catechisms of his God.
Free of the psychic tracker, he had to move now, while the confusion of the Warp rift could mask the more mundane methods of pursuit.

His return to movement became perilous almost immediately, the falling earth, crashed to the ground close enough to spray him with gravel and dirt as he ran.
He ducked down a street, hoping to get back to the sewer system, but to his horror, the street had changed, the buildings either side of where the sewer entrance should be, had caught a direct hit from a bombardment shell. The blast had collapsed buildings inwards, blocking the sewer cover as well as the rest of the street. He made to double back, but he saw that a huge intact grassy asteroid was pushing through the Warp tear right into the path that he planned to run. There was no time to run a different direction, all he could do was to press himself hard against the unexpected cul-de-sac and pray to his dark Gods.

XXX

Everything tumbled and the laughter rang in their ears. The roiling madness around them felt both scalding and freezing at the same time. Sonic thought he saw faces flash past his own as he spun, faces contorted in pain and horror. He also felt like he was fighting his own body, like it was trying to suddenly change from his blue hedgehog form to something else, something less cool, he was sure. He also swore he heard whispers, in the voices of Mobians from his past, but he couldn't quite make them out no matter how hard he strained his hearing against the roar of this mad realm.

Just as he thought his mind couldn't take it anymore, they were out, pressed hard against the grass of Angel Island as it fell out of the skies. The others were with him, even Knuckles although he had entered ahead of them. Sonic shook himself, trying desperately to get his wits back before looking around.
They were on a large fragment of the island, the rest of it coming out of the portal behind them in disordered fragments. There was even a chunk of the temple still anchored to the ground. Smoke filled the sky around them, but it lacked any familiar landmarks. He had no idea where they were, and from the look on the faces of the others, neither did they.

With an almighty smash the Island fragment hit the ground sending up clouds of dirt, dust and rubble into the already choked air.

For an awful moment Sonic felt as if he had been paralysed, his whole body betraying him, his lungs burning, until he managed a struggled gasping breath, finding that he had only had the wind violently knocked out of him.

"Gah!"

Gingerly the others stood, trying to get their bearings through the cloud of debris. Sonic, recovering quickly, could hear voices, harsh and shouting, but he wasn't surprised, he'd be shouting too if a floating island had fallen on top of him.

"Hey Guys! Come on, there's people over there, maybe they can tell us where we are"

Tails, bedraggled, was the last to pull, himself to his feet,

"Uh … sure … woah," The young fox wobbled unsteadily, "Ugh … how about you go on ahead … I think I might need to sit down again …"

Sonic was already halfway to the edge of their Island shard before he came to a screeching halt,

"No," it was Shadows voice that caused him to stop, "Either we go together or not at all. We don't know what is out there or who is a friend,"

"Aww lighten up Shads, you think Egghead is going to have had this all set up? Or are you just basing the feeling on your normal ability to make friends?"

"Sonic, don't be mean, and besides Shadows right." Sally put in, "We need to be cautious. Even if Robotnik has not got this planned out, doesn't mean there won't be dangers," ever the voice of reason.

"Alright, fine, but let's get going soon, I'm already twitching from standing around"

Knuckles stayed silent observing, but offered a terse shake of his head.

It took a few minutes, but the group was eventually ready to move, and Sonic could finally stop tapping his foot impatiently on the ground. The voices had gotten louder, and the others had noticed them too. Sonic was still convinced the voices were the best place to start, and that's where he lead them, though did concede to go carefully, sticking to the shadows.

They got their first glimpse of the owners of the voices from behind a broken wall and through dispersing smoke.

There were four of them, all humans. The first wore dirty cream coloured robes, festooned in long strips of parchment attached by blobs of red wax. He wore the silliest hat Sonic had ever seen. He was carrying an over large book in one hand and what looked like a chainsaw with a sword grip in the other. At his hip was a large pistol holster. He was reading loudly from the book, his eyes wide and staring, like pearls in chocolate, but Sonic was already bored by his tone of voice to pay the words much mind.

The second was a woman, pale with short cropped brown hair. She was dressed in grey and black combat fatigues and body armour that was unfamiliar to him. She carried a long, thin rifle of some kind.

The third was a man, aged and frail, but still carried a pistol of some sort, along with a long sheet of parchment that a quill pen was automatically scribbling notes onto. He was wearing dusty grey robes, with a pole sticking from his backpack displaying a stylised letter I with an eye in the center of it. A thing was flying over his shoulder, it looked to Sonic like a bizarre mutated and partially robotisised dead human baby with wings. He decided not to look too closely.

The fourth, he wasn't sure of their gender, but they wore a skin tight leather jumpsuit and carried two very sharp swords. At times it seemed hard to look at them.

"They look dangerous," Knuckles commented.

"So do you Knux, at least before you've finished waking up in the morning" Sonic quipped back, "I think we should try talking to them, that one at least likes to talk," Sonic nodded toward stupid hat.

"I agree with Sonic," Sally stated,

"Y'do?"

"Yes, Sonic. If we can avoid a fight, it would be better for all of us."

Before any of them could respond to that, there came a high pitched beeping from the armed group. Leather jumpsuit pulled out a device from chaos only knows where from and muttered something to silly hat, who looked straight at where the Mobians were lurking.

"Come out now and we shall grant you with the Emperor's mercy!" Silly hats voice had turned from dreary rhetoric to stern, sharp command. Authority that Sally would be proud of.

Sonic looked Sally, who nodded, and then stepped out from behind the wall, the others trailing out behind him.

"Uh, hi, guys we …"

"Most disturbing" grey robe muttered,

"Xenos creatures! Men, the God Emperor suffers not their like to live. Cleanse and purify!" Silly hats shouted wildly, abject hate crept into his commanding tone.

"Woah, now hold on …"

There was a whip crack as the woman's gun spat a bolt of red light at Sonic, who only just managed to dodge aside.

"Hey!"

Suddenly he noticed that leather jumpsuit had moved almost as fast as he would and was flying through the air at him.

"Wha'?"

"CHAOS SPEAR!"

"Shadow!?"

The blast knocked leather jumpsuit out of the air, a hole blown clean through them.

"Chaos!? I was wrong! These are no Xenos! They are Daemons sent to protect our quarry from holy purging! Suffer not these damnations brothers! Send them back to the Immaterium! Take the Canticle of Detestation into your hearts and take vengeance for Clade Adept Verak!"

Silly hat, through his mad frothing had dropped his book, that Sonic now saw was chained to him, and drew a large, heavy pistol and fired it in his direction.

The round that came at him was big, and left a trail of flame behind it. Sonic snapped out of the way, but the propelled ammunition sped past him and struck Tails in the shoulder.

Sonic watched in horror as the shell bit deep into his adopted little brothers flesh, then detonated inside of the wound. Gobbets of blood and viscera filled the air, as Tails arm and shoulder were ripped apart by the mass reactive shaped charge, spattering both Sally and Knuckles with gore.

The twin-tailed kitsune whimpered in shock,"Son-?" he gasped before his eyes rolled back, then his legs gave out and he collapsed forward, blood pumping onto the floor.

Sonic gaped, his mouth hung open in shocked horror, the fight forgotten. Knuckles pushed past him, interposed himself between Sonic and the fight. A flash of red was reflected off the smoke, and Sonic heard Knuckles grunt in pain, and smelled singed flesh.

"Sonic! Do something" Sonic heard the words, but he didn't know who said them. Maybe Sally, maybe it was his own voice inside of his head.

He spun round, his face contorted from the slack horrified expression, into pure rage. He fixed silly hat with a cold stare.

"Chaos Control!"

From the others perspective, Sonic became a spinning blur, and a second later the three remaining humans ruptured like overripe fruit. Great saw-blade like gashes opening up on their fronts. As one they collapsed to the ground, dead and unmoving, leaving Sonic stood before them panting, his blue quills slicked with deep red blood.

Sonic's expression changed from the feral rage that had overtaken him, once again turning to horror at what he had done. It was all he could do to slump to his knees and stare at his hands numbly.

"What have I done?"

XXX

Xaphian had watched the fight from a convenient vantage point. He had no idea what these humanoid animals were, but he could feel their power, each one of them were touched by Chaos in some way. In some ways they reminded him of descriptions of the Kinebrach, but they were all simian like, rather than these myriad of creatures.

However it was time to stop musing and time to ingratiate himself with the powerful potential new allies that Tzeentch's plan had put in his path.

XXX

A young adult human in blue robes walked out of the smoke behind them. This one was pale of skin and had black shoulder length hair. His arms were raised, palms towards them in a gesture of submission, but neither Knuckles or Shadow wanted to take the chance, both moving forward to block the newcomers path.

Sally was on her knees trying desperately to staunch Tails' wound with her jacket, and Sonic was still catatonic on the floor by the dead humans, it was up to them to do something.

"You, human," Shadows tone was icy, "Here to die too?"

"On the contrary, those people you fought, they were hunting me too," his tone was easy, deep and warm, unlike the raving tone of the cream robed human, "We can help each other. I can help your friend, and help you get somewhere safe,"

Shadow narrowed his eyes, searching the human for signs of falsehood, "Why should we trust you?"

"If you don't, your friend will die, the bolt pistols mass reactive shell has seen to that. Also, without me you will be stuck in this dead city until the Imperium begins orbital bombardment again."

"Shadow, we're losing Tails, if he can help, let him help!" despite her voice being full of emotion, Sally's commanding tone cut through the air with all the royal authority she could muster.

Shadow raised an eye ridge and turned aside with a grunt, "Fine, but I'm watching him."

The robed man hurried forward, getting to his knees in front of Tails. He held out his hands and began to chant in a language that Shadow didn't recognise, but it sounded old, and the words made his skin crawl.

Tendrils of wispy lightning flowed from the man's fingertips, curling it's way towards the dying form of Tails.

Shadow and Knuckles could feel the flow of chaos energy from him, steady, controlled and powerful.

The vicious wound began to clot and then knit closed. Life began to pour back into the fox, his breathing became more regular and less pained. Tails' eyes began to flutter open, before immediately trying to scurry back from the human looming over him, wincing in alarm and receding pain.

"Be still, Tails is it? I have healed you, but your wounds could still tear a fresh."

"Huh? Wha'? … Wh… Who are you?"

"It's OK Tails, he seems to be a friend" Sally scooted forward, hugging him protectively, "But he has not given us his name yet."

"Hmpf, nor has he told us how he can manipulate chaos energy like that," Shadow added gruffly.

"Ah, my apologies. I am Xaphian, orphan of Hive City Signious Magna, Lorekeeper of the Hidden Historians, this worlds one and only Cult of Change. As for the rest, that's a long story, but I will tell it once we are safe. For now, you can know that I'm a psyker." His words were met with a blank look, "Really? A magi, a sorcerer, a witch, a Warp dabbler, a daemonologist," he grins at the last one, "All the same to me. The Chaos Gods grant me the power to manifest their realm, their will and energy, into the materium, that would be real space to you."

"Your right, this will be a long story,"

"Shadow!" Sallys warning tone gained a grunt and a wave of a hand before the black hedgehog turned to walk towards the blue one, who was still on his knees staring at his hands, "That all sounds fascinating Xaphian. I am afraid we are not from around here. I think we will need more than a little catching up. However, you are right, we need to get somewhere safe first."

Sally turned her attention to Tails, "Are you alright Tails?"

"I … I'm not in pain anymore Aunt Sally, but … my arm …" The kitsunes pained expression was obvious as he looked down at his ruined shoulder, "How am I going to help with only one arm? Or … or build anything or fly the Tornado?" tears started to roll down his face, sobs choking his words.

Xaphian was quick to interject, "While I can not give you your arm back, I do know people who can help. If we can help each other get to the Spaceport, we should be able to reach them,"

That small amount of hope seemed to fill Tails with determination. His expression changed as he buried the shock and sadness, becoming more resolved.

XXX

Meanwhile, Shadow had hoisted Sonic to his feet,

"Come on, we're going,"

"Huh?"

"Leaving. Now."

"I … I killed them …"

"Yes, well done. Very efficient."

"I killed them all Shads …"

Shadow sighed "I know I was there."

"But … That's… That's not me … I … what have I done?" Sonic was shaking,

"You took vengeance for Tails, who is alive by the way. You stopped anyone else getting hurt. You did what needed to be done."

"But …"

"But nothing. Get up, get safe, mope later."

"But …"

Shadow grabbed Sonic by the shoulders and shook him once, "We'll talk through this later. Right now you are going to get your quills in gear, and you are going to help me watch this new human as we get your people out of here!"

"Our people."

"Hmpf, our people," Shadow conceded with a single nod, "Come on." without waiting for a further response, he turned back towards the rest of the group, letting Sonic shakily follow behind him.

XXX

Shortly thereafter Xaphian started to lead the group of sentient anthropomorphic animals back into the ruins. He knew there would be more kill teams out there but he no longer had to fear them. The only thing he had to worry about is how to get his five new companions past the Imperial defences of the Spaceport.