Father of the Second A 30k Celestial Forge Story

by CallMeKingNobody

The premise of the story is thus: a guy from the modern world wakes up in the Warhammer 30k universe. Pretty basic, right? Here's the twist: he has no knowledge of Warhammer and is in possession of a heavily modified version of the Celestial Forge. Will he set the Galaxy ablaze? Will he laze around? Read to find out! Rating is because Warhammer is pretty dark.

12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12: The Artisan, Esau, Isaac

Trigger warning: A lot of awful things happen in this chapter. The Artisan especially is an awful, awful being who alludes to and does very horrible things in its POV. If you didn't hate the Artisan, you will by the end of this chapter. Body Horror abounds in this chapter. Also the AN at the end discusses stuff that could be triggering for some people so if you're in any way sensitive to that kind of stuff, avoid it please.

The Artisan:

To fulfil the Golden One's vision and their dreams, the people of the City of Bone had been charged with collecting lesser creatures, so that their god may feed and be sated. This was no small task, but it was not a task beneath their capabilities.

The most obvious source for lives to gift the Golden One was the vermin that littered the outskirts of the City of Bone, so the specialties of the flesh pits were put to task. Those ascended and enhanced through the arduous rites of the flesh pits, and thus been properly inducted into the Cult of Bone were gathered. They were to collect the vermin living in and underneath the mountains. Leaders of ten men groups were chosen, based on their knowledge of the mountains and the caverns that lay beneath.

The animals that lived there lacked the cunning to endanger any of the Ascended, of course, but it was best to ensure that all of the vermin were caught and brought to the Golden One. The Artisan was heartened by the knowledge that the disperate vermin would finally be destroyed, having outlived their purposes as emergency resources.

With the Ascended travelled the flesh tools – criminals who had been punished by having their very being altered into tools such as living incubators or collection vials. They would facilitate the collection of the vermin, and keep them alive, regardless of how...rough the Ascended were.

The preparations were quick and were without ceremony, despite their importance. A ceremony would be both a waste of time when the Golden One hungered. With that handled, all the City of Bone had to do was wait for the Ascended to return with their bounty, and their dreams would come true through the grace of the Golden One.

However, the Artisan was struck with an idea.

All they had to do was wait for the Ascended to return, but in the meantime, it could work to increase its standing above all the others.

The Artisan would be the first to provide nutrition to the Golden One, post revival. After all, there were many experiments in the flesh pits fit for destruction. The Artisan technically had no power to decide upon the lives of the experiments, bar his own, but who could deny it? It had been the one to revive the Golden One, after all.

Many of the experiments were below standard, barely worth the space they took up, but for the moment, they would suffice.

One experiment, a wretched old thing clad in chains, was brought to the Golden One where it sat upon a silver and iron throne the Artisan's rivals had constructed. The Artisan presented the creature to the Golden One, where it was consumed in a mesmerising display, its life force drawn from its eyes, nostrils and ears. The screams of the creature reverberated throughout the arena.

The Golden One was pleased with the Artisan's bounty.

The people cheered. Their god was pleased with them through the actions of the Artisan, and the Artisan was charged with bringing more to the Golden One. So the Artisan collected more of the oddities its fellows had created and gave them to the Golden One.

Very few of the cursed creatures resembled anything of the vermin they once were. Some were swollen in size beyond belief, while others had extra limbs or lacked limbs in their entirety. Some lacked vital organs, others had them in excess. All of them were wastes of time and space. One even had multiple heads, an experiment by one of the Artisan's premier rivals. Needless to say, it was corralled into the arena with all of the other creatures.

Again, the Golden One was pleased. Now it was time to cement its loyalty.

The Artisan delivered experimental copies carved out of what had remained of its own flesh.

They were painstakingly made, all ten of them. Each had represented a hope that it could one day return to a fully biological body. Unfortunately, like the Artisan, its copies had been afflicted by sicknesses of the flesh as many on Naufrag were. Unlike the Artisan, they had lacked brilliance and thus were wastes that the Artisan would have destroyed regardless. Truly, sacrificing themselves to the Golden One was the greatest act of their cursed lives and they had known it.

At its request, the copies of itself gave themselves to the Great One, where they had their life force drained, before they were then consumed by the gaping maw in the Golden One's chest. The display was as horrifying as it was mesmerising. Each of the copies had very clearly regretted allowing themselves to die, if their screams were any indication.

No matter, it served to elevate the Artisan's position once again. After all, everyone had seen it sacrifice its own 'offspring' to their deity. Who could best such a display?

Nobody could. They certainly tried, though, the poor fools. After the experiments were consumed, a morbid form of competition arose in the citizens of the city. All rushed forward, to offer a token of sacrifice in the vain hope that the eyes of the Golden One would turn to them in a zealous religious fervour. It was beautiful.

None could match its sacrifice, and those that could, would not.

The mountain clans, the most powerful and numerous of them, had given nothing, even as mothers had to be talked down from sacrificing their children in mad bouts of religious fervour. The mountain clans didn't sacrifice any thralls or guards either, even though the clans had both in excess.

Most had ignored this. The mountain clans were the ruling caste after all, but some had seen opportunity, as the Artisan had.

"Come now, my esteemed elders." The Orator began from where he stood atop the ziggurat, turning to where they sat in the stands surrounding the arena. He himself had sacrificed his thrall-wife to prove his own worth.

It was no great loss, she was his third. After all was said and done, he would get himself a fourth.

"Surely, you can sacrifice a token amount, to prove your fealty, my elders?"

There was a sweetness to the heresy in the accusation that the Artisan couldn't help but enjoy. The mountain clans were senior to all else who lived in the City of Bone and ultimately, what they said was law. Ordinarily no one, even the Orator, as outspoken as he tended to be, would dare call them unfilial.

On this momentous day, with their god in their midst, however? Well, the normal hierarchy had become...malleable. The Artisan had been first to see this, but it seemed that the Orator was not far behind.

Perhaps the clans were blind to the Orator's blatant schemes, or perhaps they thought themselves above them. Regardless, the clan elders were steadfast.

"We have given all that we can give. It is through our support that this day has come in the first place." said Gesh, the most senior of them. "And our ancestors have sacrificed more, besides. We will not give more than what we have already given. That is final."

This was more than enough to incense the people and the Artisan found itself suppressing a mirthless laugh.

The mountain clans were so senior to all the others because of the virtue of their ancestry. Their ancestors were part of the first explorers to crash land on this forsaken planet centuries ago. They had been the ones to discover the ziggurat of the Golden One mere kilometres from the crash site, half buried in sand. They had been first to dream of the Golden One and thus they had been the ones to convince half of the explorers to venerate the Golden One.

They were the ones who were ostracised from the explorers who decided to turn the ship they had arrived in into an underground city. A city none could attempt to enter, lest the mechanical sentries kill them and steal their bodies.

The mountain clans had also been the ones to decipher the ritual of revival from the ziggurat, and they were the ones who founded the order of the Sisters of Bone. The clan elders benefitted from the blood and sweat of their ancestors, and as a result, they held the greatest power in all the City of Bone. They had the lives of the city in their grasp through the control of the Rites of Resurrection, and thus none could make them do what they did not wish to.

Ordinarily.

The Golden One had sat patiently in its throne – a hastily created thing of sparkling silver stretched over a heavy framework of bone-metal – and watched the exchange, smiling all the while. Then at the words of Gesh, it put its hand up and the people quieted. A tension settled over all who were present.

Then the Golden One moved.

It had happened without any visible warning. With a single sweeping gesture, the mountain clans in their entirety were writhing in pain, their flesh visibly boiling in a horrible display. The Golden One hadn't stopped smiling. In fact, its smile was wider now, more feral, showing perfect golden teeth.

"You presume to deny me what is mine?" It began, its voice quiet yet somehow echoing throughout the whole city. "When all besides you have given their due to me, you choose to defy me?"

It stood up. Its smile was now so wide as to split its face in two. It gestured again, and Gesh's skin returned to normal.

"B-but weEe have gIvenn muchhh, my lOord." Gesh managed, convulsing on the floor, pain still visibly coursing through his system. The Golden One gestured again, and an energy with a green-blue hue seeped out of the eyes, nostrils. mouths and ears of the mountain clans, their elders, their thralls and their guard.

Gesh watched on, his old face twisted into a rictus of horror.

"Your ancestors gave much. You gave me nothing. Do you think your fellows are imbeciles to sacrifice their much beloved kin to me?" It asked, speaking to no one, and everyone at the same time. "Or do you presume yourself better, because your ancestors discovered me in the ruins of the accursed Slanni?"

The Artisan doubted that Gesh heard the Great One. His eyes were transfixed on his family.

"Your deaths shall disabuse you of the notion that you are better than Og'driada."

The Golden One snapped its fingers and in an instant, the mountain clans were dust in the wind. Their energies travelled into the maw at the heart of the Golden One, at the heart of Og'driada. None had survived besides Gesh, who began to laugh, tears wetting the sands beneath him.

His mind was broken.

In a single stroke, the structure of the City of Bone was forever changed.

The people were taken by stunned silence, and so was the Artisan. It had not expected anything like this to happen. Giving the Artisan the rabble of the flesh pits was a simple move engineered to elevate it. It was never supposed to lead to the destruction of those above the Artisan's station. It was only meant to cow them.

The Golden One sat down and continued to speak, in their silence.

"I am sorry for such a savage display, my friends." said the Golden One, affecting an apologetic demeanour that the Artisan knew it did not mean. "But, I will not abide by anyone who thinks themselves my better. I have seen civilizations rise and fall beneath my feet. I have fought in wars you can barely imagine. I have killed my own kin, crazed by the rigours of war. None of you are my equal, and none of you shall ever be. Do you understand?"

In lieu of an answer, the Artisan bowed. The action was followed quickly and instinctively by every able bodied man, woman and child in the city. The action was more robotic then it had been when the Golden One had first emerged. Most of the sycophants in the city had bowed in awe and admiration, despite the grisly display they had seen. Perhaps it was because of it that they bowed. Regardless, the Artisan had bowed for one reason and one reason only.

The Artisan did not wish to die.

If it was still capable of the action, it would have sobbed into the sands below it. The dream the City of Bone shared was dead, even if only the Artisan knew it.

The Artisan had freed the Golden One. It was the work of generations, but ultimately, the Artisan had freed it through a unique understanding of the technologies that were in play in the ziggurat. Others could have done the same perhaps, but they could not do it as fast as it had or as well as it had.

And it had done so for the status it richly deserved.

A status that was exceedingly showing itself to be dubious.

The Golden One had consumed the lives of hundreds in moments. And yet, the maw that sat where a heart should be looked hungrier than ever. The Golden One had promised their ancestors much, but somehow, the Artisan doubted that the Golden One would give them anything. For it was becoming increasingly clear that it did not need them for anything.

It was perfectly capable of consuming the lives of anyone it pleased. It had simply given them the task to gather lives in order to sate it because it could not bother to collect the lives itself.

The Golden One spoke.

"Rise, my friends." it said, radiating magnanimity. As if it had not called them all lesser just moments before.

"Do not be saddened. To learn that you are below me is no great tragedy. For to be below me is to be above countless races I have laid low. To serve me is to be greater than the Krorks, which I have destroyed by the score in battles that painted the stars green."

With each word it said, it became louder and more animated until each word was shy of a shout.

"To serve me is to be above the Aeldari, who I have slaughtered across planes of existence beyond your imagination. It means being above the Slanni, whose impudence at imprisoning me resulted in the birth of a second sun in this system under my command."

Almost instinctively, the Artisan grabbed at the sand below it. The Golden One was the one who had cursed Naufrag? The one who had them all stuck in lives underneath the baleful eye of an unforgiving sun?

Not noticing the Artisans actions or not caring, the Golden One continued.

"It means being above the remnants of the Necrontyr, the accursed Necrons who have sought to pervert my very being. I have yet to truly punish them for their actions in full but I intend to, when my strength returns in full. You, my people, will serve as my vanguard, of course. But I get ahead of myself."

It calmed down and gestured, its smile widening.

"Rise." The Artisan rose, followed by the peoples of the city, half by its own volition and half as if it was being pulled, like a puppet on a string. As they stood, the Golden One spoke.

"You, my people, have all proven your fealty to me, and so, you will be rewarded."

It snapped a finger. An unnecessary flourish, the Artisan realised. The Golden One did not need to gesture to draw upon its power. Yet it did, for the benefit of those watching it. The Golden One pointed a single finger upwards and all eyes were drawn to what it was pointing at.

Immediately, gasps rang out. What they were seeing was a cloud, grey and growing. The Artisan racked its brain. What did a grey cloud signify? Was it a portent of doom perhaps? None of them knew. They had never seen a cloud before, much less one so ominous.

The mountain clan elders would know, the Artisan thought idly, had they still lived.

Suddenly, the cloud stopped growing, as it covered the city in shadow, before a clear liquid rained down on the city in slow lazy droplets. The Artisan cupped its hand and examined the liquid as some ran as it touched them.

It was water. The Golden One had given them water, free flowing and clean, as the legends had said it would. Some of the others had realised it too, and bowed once again, deeply. This time there was no doubt. They were bowing in reverence, as if the Golden One hadn't just admitted to having cursed the planet.

The rain began to fall heavily.

"Good. Good." The Golden One said, before turning its face to the Artisan who stood, frozen in its gaze.

The sheen on its Golden body was infinitesimally dimmer, some of the the thrum of power disappearing almost invisibly.

"Now. I am famished, my friend." It said slowly, its tone anything but friendly. "Tell me. When will your charges return with my food?"

To its own horror. the Artisan found that it could not answer. The Ascended should have returned by now. What was happening?

As if to answer its question, a deafening sound like the tearing of metal rang throughout the city from the east before the ground below the Artisan began to shake.

Esau:

The preparations for battle were rushed, but thorough. The efficiency with which the preparations were made pleased Esau, even if the reason they were necessary did not.

The myriad abilities and tools available to both Esau and his companions were taken full advantage of. Esau's mechanical inclinations were used, with occasional help from his father's new ability to hybridise technologies, to create a juggernaut of a vehicle.

It was a large thing, at double the size of the compound Esau called home. More of a flying fortress than the hover vehicle it had started as, it was made to serve as a suitably armoured mode of transportation that would defend against almost any assault. Esau was calling the thing, because the vehicle lacked a description other than 'flying brick-like vehicle', 'The Box'. It lacked creativity, perhaps, but there was no need for creativity over practicality when you had to choose one over the other.

The Box could fly through the concerted effort of darkstar reactors, had a void shield, venting systems to keep the inhabitants cool and a variety of turrets made from Ork guns mounted onto it. Esau chose Ork weapons over the options the Drukhari weapons presented. Drukhari weapons were precise, but weak and lacked the intimidation factor that Ork weapons provided.

While Ork weapons lacked reliability as a general rule, that seemed to be a result of the Orks instinctively using their psychic abilities to make up for a lack of resources, along with the individual idiosyncrasies of the Ork who built the technology in question. Under the ministries of his father however, the Orks were significantly more reliable, and so was their technology. As far as Esau could tell, his father's control over the Orks was absolute. They would follow any order given with no question. Intriguingly enough, that was less interesting than how they did so.

Through a short series of experiments, his father had found that the Orks drew from both his considerable knowledge and their own instinctive knowledge when fulfilling orders. This meant that every single one of the sixty-seven uninjured Oddboyz in the horde was indispensable because each could build and maintain Ork technology to some degree instinctively. With his father's scientific knowledge and the resources provided by the build gun, each Ork could make technology relevant to their vocation accurately and with an efficiency only Esau could match. This gave them access to technology that Esau wished he had more time to look at, had he more time.

Unfortunately, he didn't. People were dying.

It was a shame, Esau thought as he entered the Box, following his father and the Orks. If they had more time, they could have had the Orks build mech suits for both him and his father. Instead, they settled for two sets of armour cannibalised armours of the dead Orks, fused with designs from the Drukhari. Each was bulky, but flexible and was made from iron and copper alloys that covered every inch of their bodies, with materials from Drukhari carapace armour providing articulation at the joints. Both armour sets also had something Esau recognised as a 'gob', a jaw-like protrusion from the chest of the armour that served as both neck protection and an intimidating accessory. His just about protected his neck while his father's was large enough to shield half his face from view.

An unconscious bias from the Orks, perhaps? Regardless, the quality of the armour was something Esau couldn't deny. Their personal weaponry, on the other hand, was much simpler.

Esau himself was outfitted with a splinter rifle, a knife for fighting in cramped corridors, an omni-tool and a build gun. His father was similarly outfitted; he had his spear, though modified to be shorter for cramped fighting, a dagger of Drukhari design, an omni-tool, a build gun and an Ork 'shoota'. The Orks themselves were given 'shootas' scavenged from the battlefield and were outfitted with simple iron armour made out of the remnants of armour that littered the battlefield.

After a check of their tools and materials, they made their way into the mountains, followed by a fleet of drones. The trip was slated to be relatively short given the approximate fifty kilometres of distance between their home and the mountains. It was relatively smooth, for such a rushed production. Esau mentally catalogued where improvements could be made for future models of the Box.

On the way, communications arrays were checked and adjusted. These arrays used technology taken from the cybernetic interfaces, and allowed communication over greater distances with less interference. His father installed these arrays underneath the 'gob' on their armours.

"Testing." his father said into the microphone in his helmet.

Esau, Kov and Kha replied that they had gotten the message. The communication system was working as intended.

That done, Kov and Kha sent Esau and his father their analysis of the situation they were travelling into. Even with their mental capabilities Esau and his father had barely analysed the situation themselves, instead opting to prepare their equipment.

Along with alterations to the Extremis virus.

The Extremis virus was strange. Before he had seen the formula, Esau could hardly imagine a substance that could elevate a human being by so much, but now that he had seen it, all he could see were the flaws. The virus would make any human exposed to it healthy and strong, true, but integration into the body was not guaranteed, and the virus would overwork the body's natural nervous system so much that overheating and death was a likely consequence of the formula.

So while he was working on the Box, his father had worked on the formula. Esau and his father agreed that it was most useful as a vector for injecting selected genes into an individual as it told the body to reform itself as needed. Using a modified Drukhari life support tank, his father had cultivated the virus as is, before mixing elements of the mutability formula into it. The pain of injection and transformation would be immense, but integration was now guaranteed.

The formula was then mixed with a formula of Drukhari design, made to create rapid rampant bone growth. It was altered to increase bone density and the production of both white and red blood cells in anyone injected with it, increasing blood and clotting factors, as well as strengthening the immune system to make up for the decreased regeneration speed. This version of the virus he called 'Chimaera' after a creature of myth from humanity's planet of origin.

This was then collected in vials, refrigerated and then transported into the Box for use as an impromptu medical supplement. A single injection would fix almost any conventional injury and cure almost any conventional disease, including most cancers. Diluted in water, the self replication mechanisms of the virus would be damaged, allowing for its use as a general one time 'cure all' medicine that would heal small wounds. Provided, of course, that the body had enough fuel to undergo the changes. If the body did not have fuel, death was guaranteed.

In cases such as those, his father had prepared a series of chemicals that would temporarily force the body into a medical coma for later, more intensive, care. It looked that these chemicals would see extensive use in the upcoming hours.

There was a lot of potential for the Extremis formula's use as a vector for Esau's genetic material so Kov could be enhanced, but as much as it irked him, his father was correct to worry for Kov's safety. They still had to decipher much of Esau's genetic structure. Kov could use the Chimaera virus if he wished, but they all agreed that it was better to wait until there was more time to monitor the changes to the body in a controlled setting.

Despite his disappointment, Kov's analysis of the western mountains were interesting, and so were Kha's annotations. From the look of things, hidden in the jagged crests of the western mountains lay an entire city, though Esau's father had called it small by the standards of the average city.

Both Kov and Kha agreed; Kov was from a planet with cities that could hold billions, while Kha was from a planet with cities that held millions. This city, in the mountains, likely held less than two hundred thousand people, though that number seemed to be buoyed by the thousands that lived in the mountains surrounding the city.

From afar, the city blended in with the surrounding mountains, hidden in a deep valley between four mountain peaks. Deep scans by the sensor drones revealed that the valley was largely artificial. Kov had suggested that the city was built in layers upon itself and Esau had to agree. There were underground routes feeding into the mountains, and then below the city that didn't make sense otherwise.

Interestingly, the underground routes were entirely devoid of life, and instead were filled with metallic structures. There were no significant barriers to entry that Esau had seen but even the mutated peoples who lived outside the city seemed to avoid the place. That suggested that the area was dangerous, so they resolved to look into the area more, after the crisis in the mountains was taken care of.

Still, the underground routes were interesting. The design methodologies of the structures were difficult to decipher even with a deep scan, but even accounting for cultural drift over time, they seemed to match the design methodologies of the city itself.

The remnants of a crashed ship perhaps? It seemed likely. The size of the area suggested a ship holding a crew of around a thousand people. Enough to start a new population but too small to start a thriving population in the hundreds of thousands with minimal genetic defects.

Especially not in the face of the pockets of radiation that permeated the mountain and the underground routes, likely as a result of the crashed ship.

That answered itself quickly enough when Esau took a better look at the warriors that the city had produced. The city seemed specialised towards biological modification - the soldiers of the city had obvious enhancements made on their bodies. Their proportions seemed normal enough at a glance, but prolonged observation made the hundreds of modifications obvious. Swollen muscles, enlarged and bent spines, misshapen skulls or hands.

They were all made for violence it seemed, but unlike the Orks it seemed to be a secondary concern. They lacked the optimisations that the Orks had. Instead the soldiers seemed like they were made to be labourers first, specialised to miscellaneous tasks and warriors second.

They would not present a challenge.

The challenge instead lay in saving the lives of the mountain peoples.

Men, women and children were being dragged from hovels they called their homes, kicking and screaming. Those most fortunate were beaten into submission by men and women too willing to unleash violence, while those more unfortunate had their limbs severed before being collected by what could only be described as living flesh prisons and dragged towards the centre of the mountains.

Scans of the city had revealed a central arena area, approximately a kilometre wide, with a large stone at the centre, where a significant portion of the city's population were gathered. His father's calculations suggested that this was where the golden light originated. Esau's own calculations confirmed it.

This was also where the mountain peoples were being dragged to, though it seemed that they hadn't reached the arena area proper. The 'flesh prisons' were slow travelling, even when running and Esau predicted that it would take them an hour to make it the full length of the distance into the arena. They, on the other hand, would reach the mountain in fifty minutes.

Esau found himself frowning. Fifty minutes still represented dozens of lives lost, on the low end. A month ago, he would have found the number acceptable. Now, he did not.

It was strange, Esau thought.

The change in his outlook was something he was having trouble understanding in full. It felt so sudden, yet when he reviewed his own thoughts, it became clear that the change was gradual. The result of observations of his father's actions, and how he had grown to understand and learn from them.

Sometimes, Esau found that he admired them, on occasion.

He still remembered the feelings of disappointment he felt when he realised his father could not understand him and his mind. In the stead of those feelings, he felt shame for doubting his father at all. The feeling made him squirm. Shame was close to disappointment, and he would never be a disappointment.

His father was not perfect to be sure - their companions could attest to that - but he had done much, Esau had to admit, by trying to understand.

That was something neither Kha or Kov had attempted to do, though Esau had to admit that Kov was coming close. The boy was still in awe of him to an almost sickening extent, but he was past praising him for his every idea and creation, no matter how inane. Now he could offer criticisms and hold debates against him. He still lacked much, but Esau felt confident that the Extremis formula and the Chimera formula were the keys to elevating Kov to match him.

The lady Kha on the other hand, was…grating. She was obviously capable and had a wealth of experience for Esau and his father to draw from, but she was also hiding much from them. She had been honest in every interaction she had with Esau, his father, or Kov - at least, as far as his senses could tell - but chose to keep information to herself until it became pertinent. That had the potential to be dangerous.

Despite this, she praised him incessantly and called him 'Great One', which was infuriating. The praise felt hollow, not because she didn't mean it, but because Esau had not yet earned a title such as that. He had achieved much, yes, but a deep seated instinct told Esau that he had not achieved enough. Not nearly enough.

Regardless, her input on the current situation was invaluable. She was the only one of them who had experience attacking fortresses after all, both as a leader and as a soldier.

"There is an opportunity here." she said, her voice crackling slightly with static. "From what I can see, more than half of the population is in the arena. And these abominations have yet to reach it."

This was true, while the soldiers had no doubt been working for hours at collecting and transporting people from the mountains into the city, the actual rate of transportation was slow. The terrain of the mountains and the arterial nature of the city streets slowed them down, but for people familiar with the area, they should have arrived at the city's centre by now. Then why?

"They're trying to keep their prisoners alive." His father said, answering his unspoken question. "That's the only explanation. The individual soldiers don't care about keeping their prisoners alive, but their masters in the city likely do. So the-"

His father's voice was tinted with disgust.

"-'flesh-men' are fast to leave any area with ongoing combat and then slow down in calmer areas."

It made sense, but did not bode well.

"That is disturbing." Kha said, confirming Esau's thoughts. "I have not sensed any changes to the currents of the Great Ocean, but I think that it's a fair assessment to say that allowing the creatures entry into the arena with their quarry would be a bad idea."

As if confirming her statement, the omni-tool bleeped again. The sensor drone they kept floating over the city, far from sight, had been set to alarm them if there had been significant movement spotted in the city.

Esau opened the omni-tool and was met with the metal beast that had vexed his drones, guiding what could only be described as creatures from the northern portion of the city into the arena through one of the entrances. Esau moved the drone down into the city, using the others to allow him to avoid the line of sight of all of the inhabitants of the arena to just behind an outcropping of rock to get a better look.

The…things being led into the arena were human once. That much was clear, but were so damaged and twisted as to become something far removed. Some moved on all fours. Some could barely move at all and had to be carried.

Esau shared the screen with his father along with Kha and Kov back at the compound.

The metal beast guided the creatures into the arena to the raucous cheering of the crowd. The beast spoke for a minute or so and then motioned for one of the men prodding the beasts to bring forward the most normal looking one.

It was an old man, thin and gnarled with what was no doubt years of hard labour. The man was brought in chains towards the golden being in the middle of the arena and to the jubilant cheers of the crowd, the man burned. His flesh boiled before a blue-green energy bled from his face. The energy floated in the air, before travelling into the golden being.

Even at a distance, the screams of the old man as he died cut through the cheers of the crowd.

For a moment, Esau saw red.

A hot rage filled his blood. The golden creature would die. The metal beast that vexed him, that undermined his abilities, would die. The people, no, the beasts that cheered on as an old man brutally died, would join him.

That was a promise.

Momentarily, Esau was startled by how all consuming this anger was. He was no stranger to anger - to his shame, many things angered him - but he had never felt anything of this magnitude. What he had felt were small angers, the result of frustration or irritation boiling over in moments of weakness. Instead, this feeling was hate.

He had never hated before.

The experience was strange, and almost intoxicating. The hate threatened to give him boundless strength, at the cost of his control. He could almost lose himself in it.

Almost.

"Now we know what happened to the bodies taken from the ship." His father said, bringing Esau back to reality, where he realised that he had tightened his grip over his knife so much that the grip was bent.

More people were dragged before the golden being where they died screaming as the old man had.

"The more time I spend on this planet, the more I come to hate it." He said in the silence, his voice smaller than Esau had ever heard it before. Esau faintly heard the grinding of teeth from his father before it abruptly stopped.

"What's the plan?" he asked, looking at the screen where a woman with three arms was killed. "I was thinking about attacking the raids in the mountains, saving the people and slowly working our way in but now I'm thinking about something like a direct attack on the arena itself and working our way out."

Esau agreed. Unfortunately, Kha did not.

"That would be foolhardy. We do not know the precise abilities of the golden being or the range of its abilities. We also have no idea what technology the people in the city have access to. We need more information."

While he was irritated by the response, Esau had to concede that a direct attack would be tantamount to suicide. They lacked information that they desperately needed if they were to attack the golden being. What were the limits of its instant kill ability? Was it an instant kill ability in the first place? How did it work? Did it have a limit on use? Could it be blocked?

They were twenty minutes away from the mountains and they had too many questions without answers.

"Fortunately, we have options." Kha announced, getting Kov to manipulate the information on screen for her.

"There is an immense tactical advantage to taking the city from within. Fortresses typically concentrate defensive measures on the walls and the surrounding areas, with their internal defences suffering as a result. The problem here is that it would result in what is likely to be the wholesale slaughter of the captured mountain peoples, as soon as they realise that we wish to save them."

Kov changed the images on screen to a top down view of the city.

"The placement of the city in the mountains makes a direct attack from the outside a nightmare that will bleed resources. It would also alert the inhabitants of the city to your presence and give them time to prepare. That being said, I have recommendations for an action which should nullify the disadvantages of both actions."

Kov manipulated the information on screen to show important or important looking portions of the city, areas where the city met the underground structures and the largest arterial routes through the city. Strangely, Kha's voice sounded morose as she explained the action.

"I recommend that we block or destroy all of these areas and hold the city hostage. Retrieving all of the people from these abominations is unrealistic. There are too many to stop all at once. Instead, by holding the city hostage, we have a chance of getting them back. The city either capitulates and gives the people to us, or they starve. There is still the chance that they die, but that's the best I have."

"How would we blockade these areas?" Esau's father asked. Kha was ready for the question.

"We get drones into the city. The Great One was already able to get a drone into the arena, which is currently the most densely populated area in the city. I don't doubt that we could get drones into areas which seem to have emptied into the arena."

This was true, vast amounts of the city were empty, with only the occasional sentry passing through.

"The city is so empty that I don't doubt that we could get Orks in." Esau mused.

"Well, why not?" His father asked. "If we get some Mekboyz into the city, they could sabotage important areas. Maybe block these 'flesh-men' from getting into the arena by collapsing buildings into the routes. If we get a Painboy or two in, we can capture at least half of the 'flesh-men'. I don't know how injured these people they captured are, but if we load the Painboyz up with some diluted Chimera serum, we could keep them alive long enough for transport. How does that sound?"

Kha hummed.

"That sounds like the best action here." She admitted, after a moment.

Esau pointed at the arena in one of the images. "That still leaves the arena and the golden man open. The golden man and his abilities are still complete unknowns."

"True." She answered as she had Kov highlight the entry points they had identified leading into the arena. "For the arena and the golden being, I recommend leaving those areas alone for now. If the worst case scenario arrives, we can always resort to long range artillery strikes."

After some debate, the plan was codified and their roles were defined into the following:

1. Create a base at the entrance to one or more paths

1a. Fortify and expand the base into surrounding paths until the mountains are completely surrounded if possible

2. Set up artillery at bases

2a. Make contact with the mountain peoples

2b. If 2a is successful, heal the mountain peoples wherever possible

3. Send Orks and drones into the city

3a. Use Orks to destroy or sabotage important buildings, monuments and supply lines

3b. If a connection has been successfully formed by the mountain peoples, work to ally in the destruction of important structures wherever possible

4. Open lines of communication with the city

4a. Barter with the city, using supply lines as leverage for them to leave mountain peoples alone

4b. If 4a, is not successful or is untenable, destroy supply lines and go to war

The plan was simplistic to be sure, and Esau hated certain aspects of it but Esau could not deny that it was the most efficient method of achieving all of their goals. Both Esau and his father would have preferred to enter the city themselves, but Kha's reasoning could not be denied. The danger was simply too great, even for Esau.

That was a concept Esau was having trouble processing, to say the least. He had never been in true danger since leaving his pod. The thought that danger would exist on a planet as decrepit as this one was…startling.

Soon, Esau had to abandon this line of thinking because they had arrived.

The Box was landed at the outskirts of the mountains where the fighting was thinnest. They had chosen this place because it looked like the easiest place to take. From drone scans, it looked like only a single four man group of soldiers had reached here, having been stalled out somewhere else, along this path. Using the shadow of one of the mountains to cover their arrival, both Esau and his father ran out, followed by the Orks. They were faced with a single mountain path that inclined upwards through labyrinthine curves and passages before declining into the city.

Just above the base of the pathway, a man was being beaten in front of children and a crowd of bloodied people. Both the man and the children were mutated, with elongated mouths reaching their ears and long, thin limbs. The creature beating the man was at least twice the size of a normal man, and was laughing uproariously as it did.

None had noticed their approach. Neither their landing or their exit from the Box. That was…strange to say the least. They had kept stealthy, but at such a close range, at least one person should have spotted them by the sound of their boots on the ground at least. Unless, someone had? Esau took a quick look at the bloodied members of the crowd while his father kept the Orks from turning the corner.

Many were looking him in the eye, through his helmet. Their eyes were devoid of life. Ah.

They had seen him and just thought he was part of the cities' army and had chosen to keep quiet because the beatings had demoralised them to the point of submissiveness.

Esau could not stand for that.

Without warning, Esau brought up his splinter rifle and shot at the creatures guarding the bloodied peoples. One shot was enough for all three of them, by Esau's reckoning. Each shot was filled with a cocktail of poisons that would make each person feel like their skin was melting, before passing out. A bit cruel, perhaps, but the weapon was chosen for its practicality. Many Drukhari poisons bypassed biochemical barriers inherent to biological creatures, no matter the physiology.

The fact that the pain it caused was excruciating, was pure coincidence.

By the unspoken signal of his rifle firing, his father ran up the pathway and met the beast savagely beating the man. The beast had stopped, and was standing still, frozen by confusion as all its friends screamed and collapsed in pain. With one punch, his father launched the beast into the air, breaking its jaw and giving the beast what was no doubt brain damage.

As Esau had thought, none of these creatures presented any sort of challenge at all.

His father offered his hand to the man that had been beaten and the man flinched away, crying as he did. He was afraid that his father would kill him and begged for the life of his daughters. The daughters in question stood bravely between his father and their own father.

Esau mused to himself that the reaction made sense. No one would assume a man as large as his father had become, with the strength he had shown, to be an ally. Perhaps, in their place, he would have reacted the same. It didn't make their dithering any less grating to deal with, however.

Fortunately, Esau had heard enough of their language to decipher it. A strange experience, given how innate it was, and translated for his father. His father nodded and removed his helmet, showing his face to the people.

"Tell them not to be afraid, Esau. Tell them that we want to help, that we are allies" he said, and Esau translated.

Whispers rang throughout the people. All of them doubted his words.

So his father asked Esau to take off his own helmet.

When Esau complied, gasps rang out throughout the crowd and his father asked him to repeat his words. This time, all fifty-one of the people collapsed to their knees, ignoring their injuries, and cried out.

A more self important person would be gratified by the results of such an action. A more prideful person might simply say that the people were recognizing his inherent greatness, but Esau saw it for what it was. It was the result of his creator or creators imbuing some form of Warpcraft into the essence of his creation. A Warpcraft that clouded their vision with an illusion of some kind. As far as Esau could tell, only his father had proven himself immune to the effect.

What this illusion was, Esau could not tell, but someone exposed to it always saw Esau as a great being of some kind. A clear challenge from his creator. Esau had to equal and match this figure they saw. His pride demanded no less.

The man Esau's father saved held the children close to him. They had seen their fathers reactions and had begun crying. As for the man himself; he couldn't keep his eyes off of Esau. Watching him, Esau saw him mouth the words;

"Are you a god?"

Esau froze. Briefly, he thought about ignoring the man. If anything, he mused, ignorance of the faithful was the most godlike thing one could do. The musing turned to confusion as he realised that he did not know where the thought had come from. Like his instinctual understanding of language and machinery, his disdain for 'gods' felt innate.

The implications for that were…interesting, and informative.

He was brought out of his thoughts by his father asking him what was wrong.

"He asked me if I was a god." he said. Whatever his father had expected, that was not it, as evidenced by his silence. His father stood there for a moment, before going down on one knee, so that he was at eye level with the man.

"Translate for me Esau: My son tells me you think he is a god." Esau translated for him. The man shook in fear.

"Please do not take offence, my lord. Your strength is divine, but all of us can see that he is blessed." The crowd made noises of agreement. His father laughed.

"I'm not offended. My son is gifted, as you say. No man can deny that, but he is no god."

"Truly my lord?" The man answered, his disbelief evident. "If he is not a god, then what is he, a demon?"

His father laughed again.

"No, my friend. He is but a boy, albeit a boy gifted with abilities beyond any man I have ever met."

Esau translated, and the man began to protest before his father put his hand up, stopping the protestations before they left the man's throat.

"He is stronger than any man. Faster than any man. Smarter than any man. Yet he is a boy, flesh and blood as you or me. He is the result of what great minds can achieve, not divine intervention." By this point in the translation, everyone was listening with rapt attention.

"His abilities are great, but they are not infinite. He is no god, and he is no demon. He is simply human, the way you or I am."

When Esau was finished translating, the people were silent, as if they were having trouble processing this. Hesitantly, the man with the elongated mouth spoke again.

"My lord," he asked. "If you speak the truth, can we be like you? Can we be strong?"

"Sure," Esau's father said, after a moment of thought. "You can be strong, but I will not make you strong."

The man flinched as if struck. The people seemed similarly devastated. Esau could see why. His father had dangled strength they could use to take their people back from their oppressors in front of them, and in that same breath destroyed hope that they could access it, Esau himself was surprised, he had thought his father would enhance these people. It seemed in his fathers nature to take people in and bring people to his level by giving them tools they would otherwise not have access to. Had he not done so for Kov or for Kha?

"Why, my lord?" the man asked.

"Because, no offence, but I don't know you. We don't know you. We came to help because we care about your plight, and it's the right thing to do. We will help you. We will heal you of your ailments, give you water, and give you ways to get food on this decrepit planet. But enhancements? Those will have to be earned, as will our trust."

Ah. The pieces fell into place. His father did not bring people to his level. As he himself stated, he was no agent of a divine power. Instead, his nature was to give them opportunities by which they could elevate themselves if they so wished. This is why he chose to create Chimera instead of just giving these people a perfected Extremis virus. The Chimera virus healed and enhanced, but did not enhance to the level of the Extremis. The result would be an extraordinarily hardy human being resistant to radiation and damage.

It would also make it easier to survive further enhancements, Esau realised. The fact that it would also limit the chance of being betrayed by these went unstated.

"That being said," his father continued in the silence. "-we will heal you of your ailments and give you strength that is the right of every human. If you're willing to accept, that is."

"As you say. You do not know us, my lord. Yet you choose to help us. Why?"

"Because when given the choice between neglect and doing the right thing, all men must strive to do the right thing. I myself struggle with this often, but sometimes, something pushes you forward."

Somehow, Esau felt that the second part of that statement was addressed to him.

"So you help, because otherwise, you feel bad?" The man with the elongated mouth asked, finally.

His father laughed again.

"I guess so."

"You really are just a man, my lord."

"I am." His father answered. The man nodded and finally grabbed onto his father's outstretched hand.

"I am known as Nimis, son of Nimis."

Needless to say, the people accepted. Interestingly, Nimis turned out to be the chief of the Foot Hill tribe, one of the hundreds of tribes that made up the mountain peoples. That explained the tribes' deference to him, and gave a good reason as to why he was beaten so savagely.

The tribe was small, at around eighty people, most of them young - the result of squabbles with other tribes over the finite resources available in the mountains. His tribe was relatively untouched by the city. The patrol Esau and his father had stopped was the first attack the city had made on this area.

With Nimis's help, the introduction of the tribe to the Orks was almost seamless. Interestingly, this was made easier by the fact that the Orks were green. Green was apparently an auspicious colour, for most of the people here. When questioned, Nimis admitted that it was because the 'green stuff' did not grow often in the mountains, often being the bounty of the largest tribes, which could grow to be a thousand strong.

In the planning phase of the operation, Kha had recommended food and water as a peace offering because every person they had met so far seemed emaciated. They lacked the amount of food necessary to feed the whole tribe, so Esau instructed Nimis and his tribe to procure organic waste material. It didn't matter if it was inedible, he had stressed, Esau would make it edible.

While the people were procuring the material, Esau's father obtained Nimis's blessing to create a base at the mountains. Nimis had agreed, when Esau's father told him why the base needed to be built.

After permission was granted, work began and in minutes, a small compound like the one back home was constructed, minus the underground routes. This would be built upon and serve as their main base in the mountains.

Nimis and the Foot Hill tribe were amazed, of course, by both their quick construction and the manner of the construction. Some had even begun to compare both Esau and his father to gods once again. Fortunately, his father worked to convince them against the notion.

With the base's construction, the sick and injured were collected and transported by Orks on stretchers, down the path and beyond the compound. Here, a group of ten Painboyz -the only Painboyz still living and well enough to make the trip westward - and three Mekboyz were working on the construction of medical technology and a reinforced field hospital in the shadow of the mountain opposite the Box.

Moisture collectors were also being constructed en masse. The shade the mountain provided made it easier to collect water, which would be important as a resource going forward. Kha's estimates for how long operations like these last varied, but it was clear that even the most conservative estimates meant a long time was going to be spent here.

The Painboyz would assist any sick or injured person, which mostly involved cleaning and binding wounds and, in severe cases, inducing medical comas. They lacked the material to do much more, because they lacked the materials to make nutrient IVs but Esau planned to change that as soon as everyone returned with biological material.

While the Orks worked, he and his father began construction of a series of gun-mortars, with stray Mekboys providing help. The gun-mortars would threaten the city by shooting ballistic rounds of ammunition at key points in the city at high velocities. One key point that Esau was aiming at was a arterial route where the most advanced of 'flesh men' were making their way through on their way to the arena. He would only shoot given the worst case scenario, but it was best to construct the mortars as soon as possible.

Soon, the rest of the Foot Hill tribe returned with biological material collected in plastic bags and rags. Most of the material was radiotrophic fungus which utilised radiation to drive their metabolism via radiosynthesis. All of it was inedible. Esau could see why; this particular form of radiosynthesis left radioactive minerals and isotopes in the fungal matter.

Esau could have consumed the fungus as is, but no normal human could. It was a matter of simple chemistry to remove these elements, and in an hour, Esau provided these people a feast of fungal soup - meagre by his own standards, but grand by these people's. The food tasted like rich soil, but that meant nothing compared to a full stomach.

After the operation was over, and conflict with the city ended one way or the other, Esau would have to introduce farming techniques to the Foot Hill tribe.

While the tribe ate, Esau began the construction of drones that would dismantle anything in their way by converting half of the present twenty maintenance drones. These dismantlers would destroy anything artificially built, in their path and store the material for use in later construction. Two of the drones were sent up the curving path they chose as their base, and the rest he sent up adjoining paths, joined by fighter drones.

While the dismantler drones used information Esau had programmed into them to perform their functions autonomously, the fighter drones were controlled by Kha and Kov and would harass the soldiers relentlessly.

Serums of Drukhari design would be injected into them, forcing them into unconsciousness, where they would be captured by drones and brought to the base and imprisoned with the other soldiers in four by four metre iron cages. They would serve as hostages, given time.

Unfortunately, the tribes they saved in this manner almost invariably chose to run away, back into their hovels. Esau and his father would have to visit these tribes on a personal basis, which they didn't have time for.

When destroyed, maintenance drones would simply fix and replace them.

It didn't matter if the city became alerted to their presence, because the city would soon have more on their plate than an assault from the drones. As the tribe ate, and Esau constructed the drones, the field hospital was completed.

This freed up a group of Orks, allowing his father to advance the plan and send a squad of ten Mekboys, along with five of the Painboyz to infiltrate the 'City of Bone' as the Foot Hill tribe knew it.

Typically, the words 'Ork' and 'infiltration' were not used in the same sentence, but the difference between normal Orks and these Orks was stark. Each was given a maintenance drone and to use as a vehicle and a mobile tool box.

They were carefully transported into the city, under Esau's watchful eye, using the mountain peaks adjacent to the city as cover, bypassing the labyrinthine routes to the city and the heavy guard presence at the gates, allowing infiltration to be completed without any complications.

Occasionally, the Orks would have to hide from odd sentry passing through an alley, but otherwise were free to move through the city.

Soon, the Orks began placing explosives near supply lines where possible.

As a secondary target, Orks were instructed to target places where the city met with the underground. If both the citizens of the city and the mountain peoples were afraid of the place, its use as leverage in a negotiation was likely to be immense.

Fifteen minutes into the infiltration process, the Orks ran into the first 'flesh-man' to make it through the mountains and into the city. With ease, a Painboy subdued it through a judicious use of force before injecting it with the coma inducing serum. The flesh-man collapsed in the Painboy's arms, where it was carefully placed onto a fabricated stretcher and transported surreptitiously out of the city.

The city seriously lacked anti-aircraft or anti-espionage defences.

Things were going well. So well, in fact, that Esau found it suspicious. He had not expected infiltration to be so easy, but their success could be explained by the city never having been challenged by an enemy with flight capability.

He had expected to be entrenched in fights as the base was discovered, but drones controlled by the combined abilities of Kha and Kov effectively neutered their forces. Drones would drop from the sky, inject unsuspecting soldiers with vials filled with coma inducing serums, causing them to collapse, then they would move on while autonomous drones would collect the bodies and bring them to the base to be imprisoned.

Already, over a hundred soldiers were captured, and dozens of tribes as identified by Nimis were saved, though hundreds of people were dead in skirmishes all over the mountain. They would need to be collected and given proper burials. Esau had to keep drones floating near the bodies in a few places to scare people away from attempting to steal them for consumption. After conflict with the city ended, Esau and his father would travel to each area and assess the situation each tribe lived under for themselves.

If the tribes were cannibals only because they lacked food, they would be provided with help. If they were cannibals because they enjoyed it on the other hand, aggressive actions would have to be taken. Besides being bad for the health of the cannibal and their enemies, cannibalism was a sign of some forms of daemonic incursion.

Despite hundreds of their soldiers disappearing off of the face of the mountain, the rest of the soldiers either didn't notice or didn't care. What was going on?

Was the 'City of Bone' truly so inept?

A conversation with Nimis, as his health was being checked illuminated Esau as to the reason.

"They don't have permission." he said as Esau looked him over with the omni-tool.

"They don't have permission?" Esau repeated, not understanding what his meaning was. Nimis nodded.

"There's no food or water out here in these rocks, but we are free. There is food and there is water in the City of Bone, but no freedom. You do what the man above you tells you to do, and the man below you does what you tell him. That's it. You do nothing else, and the man below you cannot do what you do not tell him to do."

A chaste system then, and an extremely rigid one at that. So rigid, that those at the bottom could not dream of countermanding an instruction from anyone higher up, even if that would give better results. It made sense, but seemed so…idiotic.

Esau looked over Nimis's scan. Simply put, Nimis was lucky to be alive. His body was filled with tumorous growths, both malignant and benign. He suffered from scoliosis, a mild form of scurvy and a variety of diseases related to nutrition. Truthfully, he should be incapable of moving, much less lead a whole tribe. The only thing keeping him alive was the mutation that gave him the elongated mouth.

His digestive tract was extremely efficient, absorbing more nutrients from a meal than what was strictly possible for a human being. Still, even with the mutation, he would not survive the year.

"How old are you, Nimis?"

"I have lived to see twenty growing seasons, my lord." He looked to be fourty at least.

"How old are your children?"

"They have seen five growing seasons, my lord." From a purely visual examination, they would not live to see their tenth year. They had all the visual signs of the diseases that their father had, except more advanced. A better diet and sanitation would let them live longer, but even then the damage was done.

The rest of the tribe was not in a better place. In fact, many of them were in worse condition. They had exposed sores and showed similar symptoms of malnutrition. The rags and plastics they were dressed in were filthy, and were likely carriers for disease.

Somehow, those that were captured by the Orks and cut from the flesh-sacs of the 'flesh-men' were even worse. They had all of the problems associated with long term malnutrition and exposure to radiation, but also suffered from grievous bodily harm and trauma. Most were missing limbs, and it was fair to say that many suffered from severe brain injuries. Only three out of the eighty one people so far caught did not need intensive care.

Esau revised his early estimates for the care these people needed. Most would do with a diluted Chimera serum, but Nimis, his children and about ten tribesmen would need the Chimera serum to be cured of all their illness. Some of the people cut from the flesh sacs only needed similar care, but many would need the Extremis virus - modified for only a short term boost in regeneration - or they would never return to their lives ever again.

Determination filling his veins, Esau set to work.

Each and every tribesman was given an IV, to offset the effects of dehydration for about an hour. The people cut from the flesh sacs were similarly taken care of. After that was done, the diluted Chimera serum was introduced to their IV. The serum went to work, as people visibly started to look healthier. Skin became smoother, cheeks rosier, and it was becoming harder to see bone through tattered clothing. In another hour, he would introduce the Chimera serum to those that needed it most.

That done, he would have to use the Extremis virus to heal the remainder of their griev-

"Esau!" his father called on the communication array, with an urgency he only heard his father express in battle.

Esau ran, weaving through Ork, man, woman and child alike. He came upon his father, sitting on a rock, his helmet on his knee. He was staring into his omni-tool.

"Father?" His father looked up.

"We have a problem."

"Were the Orks discovered?" His father shook his head.

"No, no. The gold man turned on his people. He's killing them."

"Ah."

Normally, that wouldn't be a problem. Infighting usually meant that the enemy was weakening themselves. The issue here was that the deaths weren't the issue. The issue was that their deaths were making the golden being stronger. They had already speculated as much when they saw the old man die in the arena.

"So what do you want to d-" Before he could finish his question, Esau smelt something he had never smelled before. He turned his head northwards and realised what the smell was. He knew what the smell was in theory, but had never experienced it.

It was petrichor, the smell of rain and it was coming from the city.

Somehow, a fully formed nimbostratus cloud was covering the entirety of the City of Bone, dark and heavy with rain. That should be impossible. Yet, there it was.

It did not take a genius to figure out the culprit; the golden man.

"You asked me what I wanted to do." His father said. "Well, it's clear we underestimated the forces at play here. We're not remotely ready, but we're going to have to advance to the next stage of the plan."

"Are you sure?" Esau asked.

"I am." His father replied. "What does home base think?"

"Go for it." Kha said, through the communication array.

"There's no point trying to fight three voices when you only have one. Go for it, sir." Kov said.

His father nodded and tapped a few buttons on the omni-tool. Immediately, an interface Esau designed for this very moment appeared. It was made up of a single holographic button, shaded red at his father's insistence. On the button was an image of a skull and crossbones.

His father pressed the button, and explosions rang out throughout the city.

His father exited the interface and brought up a different one. This interface controlled the drones. He brought the sensor drone into the arena proper, in full view of all that were present.

Esau took some pleasure in the gobsmacked looks on the faces of nearly everyone present. The drone floated gently, until it was just in front of the golden being, who sat on a silver throne in the middle of a rain soaked arena.

An interface popped up out of the top of the drone, showing a screen and a speaker. The interface was built as a calibration tool, for light and sound, but it would serve a different purpose today.

"Esau, translate for me please." Esau nodded. It would be his pleasure.

"Good day." His father said. "My name is Isaac Zulu, and I'm holding your city hostage."

Isaac:

"Oh? Do you now?" The golden man replied in perfect english. It's voice was smooth, like that of a singer or a voice actor. It sounded amused, though its face was passive.

"I do." I said, putting my hand up to stop Esau from translating further. This was not strictly true. The Mekboys hadn't been able to plant bombs throughout the city in its entirety, but confidence was key. It simply wouldn't do to show weakness to your enemy, especially when you aren't sure if they have a gun to your head or not.

"I must be confused then. Illuminate me. How are you holding my city hostage, friend?" Its tone was still amused, yet radiated an air of hostility. It was annoyed then, good. Hopefully, pushing on that would get me information

"I'll tell you, but you have me at a bit of a disadvantage. You know my name, but I don't know yours. Would you mind introducing yourself? I don't want to be a bad 'friend'."

I could hear gasps echo throughout the arena, with somebody speaking urgently just to the left of the drone. Based on passive scans by the drone, it was the metal creature that took the bodies from the ship.

"It's apologising for overlooking us, and is begging the golden being for the chance to redeem itself." Esau said, translating for me.

"Thank you. The golden man is ignoring it."

"You're welcome. It is."

Instead of replying to the metal creature, it seemed to be thinking about how to respond to me.

"You're a presumptuous creature, 'friend'. I hate presumptuous creatures. In fact, you might say I have made a habit of destroying presumptuous creatures. Just as I will destroy you." It said, finally. Somehow, I knew the last portion of that sentence wasn't just directed at me.

"Regardless, I shall do you the favour of giving you my name. Consider it an honour. Entire civilisations have died out without learning my name. You speak to Og'driada. Among many peoples, I am known as the Arisen."

Action: Meet a shard of the C'tan - Og'driada, the Arisen.

Reward: Super Science (Justice League Unlimited)

Immediately, the Forge granted me knowledge of science I could never have dreamed of before, along with the genius to utilise it. Intelligence was something difficult to quantify as a general rule, but I was now without a doubt the smartest man on this planet. For the first time, I was absolutely sure that I outmatched Esau intellectually, even without the increase in mental processing speed I received from the Orks.

With the increased processing speed? The possibilities had become staggering. I could now elevate any man to Esau's level both physically and mentally. I could even enhance Esau if I wanted to, when his genetic structure had been so frustrating weeks before. I also gained a new appreciation of Esau as a masterwork of both science and warpcraft.

My current working theory was that Esau was essentially an eldritch being, created in a laboratory and tied to a human body. This was why his genetic structure shifted when observed, why his mind worked better than his brain should allow, and why his presence in the warp was so great. He was impossibly both very human, and not human at all.

Honestly, that was both scary, and comforting. While it meant that Esau, and those like him had potential literally beyond normal human understanding, it also meant Esau would never die by conventional means. Unless his soul, and his connection to the warp was destroyed, all I would have to do to resurrect him would be to clone his body, creating a tether for his soul in the material realm and he would return.

Strangely, that was comforting. Especially since it looked like we were in real deep trouble. I was thankful for this new knowledge granted by the Forge, but it had given me a perspective I lacked regarding the power of the being I was facing that I would have rather gone without.

I had known that the golden man, Og'driada was powerful but I lacked the context to understand how insane its level of strength was. As part of the knowledge that the Forge had granted me, I knew a lot about identifying powerful people and intuiting how powerful they were.

From the scant displays of its power I had seen, I thought that this creature I was facing was maybe the strength of an average to strong daemon; problematic, but not impossible to beat. With my knowledge, I could tell the golden man was orders of magnitude more powerful.

Killing hundreds of people at once and altering the weather in a localised area were both things daemons could do easily enough, but they drew from the Warp - an almost limitless supply of energy - to do that.

Og'driada was not. It was using an internal supply of power to achieve the same. We were looking at something that would give high level daemons a run for their money.

Perhaps, its boast of having destroyed multiple civilisations wasn't a boast at all.

Presumably, this energy was obtained by absorbing the souls of the people it had killed, but this made absolutely no sense. Most christian dogmas made it so that an individual human soul had infinite value in the eyes of God. I happened to agree, but practically, this was not true when one tried to convert a soul into energy. Any energy a given soul had access to was finite. Even a thousand souls shouldn't have given Og'driada the power it had.

Unless it had an internal mechanism that multiplied the power it could produce given souls. That seemed the most likely explanation.

"Would I be remiss in assuming that even in this era, my name inspires fear?" Og'driada said, getting me out of my thoughts.

"You would be. Your name inspires nothing in me." I replied, with a confidence I didn't feel before turning to Esau and turning my microphone off.

"The Forge gave me some scary knowledge. This guy is a big deal, we're in trouble." I said, as urgently and as quickly as I could.

"What do you suggest? Should I get the mortars ready?" I nodded.

"Yeah, get the mortars ready and aim them directly at the gold man." I said, before thinking better of it. "Also, get the Mekboys and begin the production of vortex grenades. I've instructed them to follow any instruction you give them. Something tells me we're going to need them."

Vortex grenades were essentially grenades that, when activated, opened a portal to the Warp for a short time and transposed it on the material realm for a few moments. Needless to say, they were extremely dangerous to both make and use.

"This…Og'driada is that dangerous?" Esau asked, in disbelief.

"He is." Esau nodded and ran back into base.

I turned back to the omni-tool and Og'driada.

"Is that so?" Instead of being annoyed, it sounded amused. "We shall see if that attitude holds for much longer. Now, tell me how you have my city hostage."

I thought about giving it the runaround, so I could buy more time but I ultimately decided to tell it the truth. There was no need to aggravate it into doing something rash.

"I have had bombs planted in key areas around your city. I have bombs around your laboratories, your food stores and your water stores. I have destroyed all routes leading from the gates to the city to the arena and I have almost half of your soldiers hostage."

Gasps rang out in the background, followed by frantic speaking in a language I couldn't understand. Og'driada ignored all the commotion surrounding it.

"I see. Now tell me, how does this give you power over me?"

The commotion surrounding Og'driada stopped immediately. I blinked. What?

"I have almost half of the soldiers loyal to you as my prisoners-" That was an exaggeration, we had a quarter of their soldiers at most. "-and have cut off the city's access to its own supplies." This was true. "Your people will starve and die without access to them. You'll lose access to the people you want to eat."

Og'driada was unaffected.

"That means nothing to me." Og'driada stood up and walked to the drone. "You talk to me about my soldiers when their lives already belong to me."

It snapped its fingers and all through the mountains, I heard screams that confirmed the worst case scenario. I looked up to the mountains, and in the shade provided by the rain, I could clearly see globules of green energy float towards the sky and make its way to the mountains. The soldiers were dead. I saw their energies make their way into Og'driada's heart and a golden light filled its surroundings.

Og'driada didn't stop.

"You talk to me about the city's supplies." it said, before snapping its fingers again. I didn't need to pan the drone's view to see literal mountains of fruit and vegetables of many colours and sizes filling the arena. The cheers I could hear only confirmed my fears.

Again, Og'driada didn't stop.

"You talk to me about my hunger, when you've brought a meal to my very doorstep." It snapped its fingers before my connection to the Orks in the city vanished. I blinked. They were likely dead.

Og'driada paused for a moment before speaking.

"Is this what is left of the Old One's legacy?" It asked, looking at me through the screen.

My confusion must have been evident because Og'driada just laughed.

"Look at you." It said, laughing all the while. "You presume to challenge me, but you don't even know the basic history of your predecessors. It would be sad, if it wasn't so entertaining."

I scrambled for anything I could say, for anything I could do to nullify its advantage.

"I still have bombs leading underground, if you-"

Og'driada interrupted me.

"Oh, that old place? All that there is underground are the remnants of machines, carrying out the orders of creators long dead. That is no threat to me." Og'driada began laughing anew.

I cut the feed.

What could I do to counter that? Og'driada had nullified everything we set up with contemptious ease. I stood up, walked a few metres and fell to the rocky floor, failed by my shaky legs.

What could I do to counter something with power so absolute? What could I do against something that could kill me with a snap of its fingers? What could I-

I blinked. Wait, why hadn't it killed us?

Og'driada certainly had the power to pull it off, and had all the reason in the world to do it too. It could have just been too entertained to strike at us, but that didn't make tactical sense. It boasted of annihilating entire civilisations. If that was true, it had to have some tactical ability.

I regained strength in my legs, and walked towards the foot hill base.

"Kha." I called into my microphone. "Did you see all that?"

"I did. So did Kov."

"It was, um, a good effort, sir." Kov interjected. I couldn't help but laugh.

"I thought so too." I replied. I really did.

"So sir…are we going to die?" he asked, his voice small.

"We won't." I replied, automatically. My confidence was shaken, but not broken. "If we were going to die, we would have died by now."

"What do you mean?" Kha asked.

"Well, you saw that exchange. Og'driada had all the power. It demonstrably showed that it could have killed me anytime, yet here I stand."

"Perhaps it just has sadistic tendencies."

"It does, but it still makes no tactical sense to leave me alive." I paused. "Wow. That makes me sound full of myself."

Kha ignored the remark.

"Then it has a limit to its power.

"Or how it's used." I agreed. She caught onto what I was implying immediately.

"The void shield." I nodded.

"It can't affect anything inside one." Esau had the void shield on the Box moved to the mountain base. That decision was probably the only thing that saved our lives. "My current working theory is that it's because the void shield sends stuff into the Warp."

"I see. It makes sense, despite the deaths of hundreds, there have been no changes to the Great Ocean. That tells me that whatever this Og'driada is, its methods are anathema to the Great Ocean. So it would make sense that the Great Ocean is anathema to it. What do you propose?"

"We're going to hit it with long range artillery strikes. Esau's making the vortex grenades we're going to be using as ammunition."

"That is an awful idea."

"It is." I shrugged. "But it's the only idea we have."

I didn't need to look at the omni-tool to see her lips thin.

"I-" she said, before stopping herself. "-Goodluck, Isaac."

"Thank you, my lady." I said. "We'll need it." I cut the transmission off, and walked into the base.

Esau was hard at work. He had created an assembly line of sorts, where items were built and transferred before they were put together by him. In front of him, sat a crate with around five items the size of a fist in the shape of a skull in it. Upon hearing me walk in, he looked up.

"How did it go?"

"Well, they aren't going to be surrendering anytime soon."

He looked down at his work.

"Your levity is good, it relieves tension and the fear of death."

I blinked.

"Was that a Rise of the Machines reference?" Esau looked up at me again.

"I don't know what that is." he said. Hmm. Maybe the cybernetic interface transferred more than just knowledge. I would have to look into that later.

"So where's Nimis and his tribe. I don't see them."

"They're in the infirmary, alseep. The Chimera serum is still running its course."

"I see. The prisoners?"

"Still imprisoned."

"Good." That proved my theory. Og'driada made a point of killing all its soldiers. The fact that they still lived told me that it couldn't kill them through the void shield.

I sat down with Esau, helped him work and got him up to speed.

"So that's your plan?" He asked.

"It's the only one I have." Esau turned to me and looked me in the eye.

"Father. I just want you to know that if we die today, I'm proud to have you as my father."

Tears appeared unbidden in my eyes.

"And I'm proud to have you as my son."

We embraced, for what I hoped wouldn't be the final time.

…

Soon we were at the walls of the base, looking over the mountains.

I called the sensor drone for the second time today. On my screen, Og'driada appeared, as resplendent as ever. Many of the tiny cracks that lined his body had been fixed.

"Ah. The worm calls again." it said. I could hear laughs in the background. "Do you wish to tender your surrender?"

"No." I replied. "I'm willing to hear yours, though."

Og'driada laughed. It was a booming laugh that echoed ominously, even through the microphone of the drone.

"Ah. I take it you're serious."

"I am."

"You really are entertaining, worm. Take this as a "no"." I cut off the feed, and set off the rest of the bombs in the city. I didn't need to look through the drones travelling into the city to know that vast portions of the city were destroyed. I didn't need to look through the drones to see that the boundary between the underground and the city were destroyed and that machines were shambling out of the darkness. I also didn't need to look through the drones to see that Og'driada was unaffected.

That didn't matter. The point of the bombs was to cause pandemonium as man and machine fought in the city. From what I could tell, I had succeeded. Shambling machines that were nothing more than abominations made from moving mechadendrites and blades stretched over an endoskeleton climbed out of the darkness and began killing inhabitants of the city by the dozen.

Despite the horror I had unleashed, I found it hard to care. I would regret it later, but right now, I was just too tired to care.

Og'driada began incinerating the machines via pinpoint lightning strikes. Good. As long as its attention was on the machines, it would be off us.

"Fire." I instructed. Esau and the Orks set off a round of mortar fire into the air, filling the air with the sound of thunder and the smell of smoke. After less than a minute of travel, the mortars exploded, right in the middle of the rain cloud hanging over the City of Bone.

The cloud wouldn't dissipate. The force required to dissipate even a cloud that covered such a small area was orders of magnitude more powerful that what we could bring to bear. Instead, the point of the mortar fire was to create an area of calm, that would allow the next ammunition through without detonating it in the air. Even if it could assist us, we really did not need a vortex grenade detonating in the middle of a cloud.

"Loose Grenades." I instructed, and the grenades were fired in small packages that would allow them to detonate remotely. They flew in an almost lazy arc into and through the cloud. Esau and I were essentially eyeballing the calculations from here on, but I had confidence in our success.

When I judged the grenades to have made it through, I signalled for detonation.

Even from here, I could see the holes open up in the cloud, letting the harsh sun through. Some grenades hadn't made it through the cloud. Vortex grenades didn't really explode per se, they sort of opened up a portal which swallowed its surroundings. The result was as if a bite was taken out of reality.

It was strangely beautiful.

I waited ten seconds for the ruptures in reality to close before ordering more grenades be loosed. We hadn't hit Og'driada, but the first barrage should have opened up the second.

Unfortunately, we could only do this two more times before our supply ran out. Vortex grenades needed a very precise mix of metals and chemicals that ran out after thirty grenades were made, so we had to make it count. More grenades were loosed.

In seconds, more grenades were in the air. Their arc was cleaner than the arc followed by the first grenades. By my calculations, these would hit the arena directly.

"Detonate." I instructed, as soon as I did, my world shook. The mountains that supported the city on all sides were blown apart. I half expected debris to hit us, but it never did. They were swallowed up by the portals to unreality created by the vortex grenades. That was impossible.

Vortex grenades were powerful, but they weren't that powerful.

What happened? Had we hit Og'driada?

My only answer was a pillar of golden light that rose into the air. In it, a lone figure rose up into the air. It was missing an arm, its legs, and a significant portion of its torso. It was Og'driada and it was bleeding energy..

The air shimmered and I heard a voice speak as if it was right next to me. It was surprisingly calm, considering.

"I found you entertaining, worm. I see now that that was a mistake. Very few have defied me in the way that you have. Take pleasure in that, as you take your last breath"

The city shook, and I saw something squirm, hidden by what was left of the four mountains. Esau realised what they were before I did.

"Those are mountains of flesh." he said, his voice warping slightly in the suddenly too hot air. It took a moment, but I saw what he had seen, and I regretted it.

Skin, muscle, bone were moulded together in a horrifying display. Eyes, teeth and hair dotted them at random. I wanted to vomit at the very sight. The mounds started to combine into a bipedal humanoid form at least fifty metres tall. In the rain, it looked like some twisted god of thunder. It started walking to the base on unsteady legs, as it weight seemed to shift randomly.

I tried not to think about where all that flesh had come from and failed.

"You did this to yourself. Had you simply bowed to me, this could have been avoided." Og'driada said, still too calm. The quality of the sound told me that it was dazed.

Immediately, I ordered the Orks to fire on it while Esau and I tried to figure a plan out. Even the most powerful of their guns did nothing beyond annoy the creature, as damaged flesh simply switched places with untouched flesh.

"That thing is disgusting." I mentioned offhandedly.

"Nobody's perfect." he replied. I turned to him in surprise.

I swear to God, I love this kid.

"That's true, so what do you think? The rest of our vortex grenades would take it out, but then we'll still have to contend with Og'driada, and I don't know if we can take it on otherwise."

Esau looked the creature over for a few seconds before coming to a decision.

"I'll take care of it."

"You sure?"

"No, but I'll win anyway." His confidence was infectious.

"Fair enough. I guess that leaves me with Og'driada then."

"I'm afraid so."

Esau jumped down from the wall, and ran to the mortars while I ran to collect the rest of the vortex grenades. With Esau monopolising the mortars, I would have to throw them by hand. As I reached the grenades, I was suddenly swamped by shadow. I looked up.

Og'driada was floating over the base, and it had brought the rain with it. Immediately I threw a grenade into the air where it was. It simply floated out of the way, and the grenade exploded past it.

This wouldn't work.

The air was once again filled with the sound of thunder. Esau was shooting the mortars, good. Og'driada was also raining down lightning into our void shield. At this rate it would run out of power in minutes.

All I had to do was kill this one pain in the ass before then.

No pressure.

I threw another grenade into the air, which Og'driada dodged, before I ordered a Mekboy to provide me with cover fire. The bullets did nothing to Og'driada but it did distract it enough for me to get control of five drones, load them up each with a grenade and send them floating into the air.

Og'driada destroyed each with lightning before they got close, but that was another distraction. While it was dealing with the drones, the Mekboy and I climbed the tallest structure we could. Here, I gave the Mekboy a drone and two vortex grenades. I had one left.

Then I did the dumbest thing I have ever done. I picked the Mekboy up and physically threw it into the air at Og'driada. Even with my prodigious strength, the Mekboy fell short of the necessary height. So the Mekboy threw a vortex grenade at Og'driada. Og'driada dodged that by floating backwards. So, while the Mekboy fell, it released the drone into the air.

The drone made a beeline for Og'driada, so it struck the drone with lightning and dodged away from the expected detonation. Except, it never came. The drone had no cargo. It was instead, another distraction.

Calculating the expected flight Og'driada was taking, I threw the last void grenade as Og'driada was dodging backwards. It hit dead on.

A brilliant corona of light both real and imaginary exploded into the air, blinding me temporarily. I blinked, and the next moment, Og'driada was gone.

I ordered the Mekboy with the vortex grenade to throw it at the creature Esau was shooting at. Ninety percent of its torso, disappeared and it collapsed under its own weight. It was still alive, but in its current state, I had full confidence that Esau would take care of it.

I collapsed under the weight of my own armour, a deep fatigue taking me. The City of Bone was in disarray. Over half of its inhabitants were dead, or wished that they were and we had released mechanical monstrosities into the mountains but for the moment, we had won.

Action: Defeat a shard of the C'tan - Og'driada, the Arisen.

Reward: Dark Science (9 Jumpchain)

12.1. Perk(s) earned in this chapter:

Domain: Knowledge: Mundane - Super Science (Justice League Unlimited) (400CP): Technology is something a lot of people take for granted, unlike you hardly anyone ever stops to think exactly how a pyrokinetic super villain might be safely contained, or what you could use to reverse the mutation that transformed someone into a giant slime monster, or even what type of defences a group of superheroes would need to protect their headquarters from killer alien robots. Fortunately your wealth of knowledge on both emerging and modern day technology is such that you can easily come up with scientific solutions to deal with supernatural dangers, such as building power suppressing super prisons, creating chemical concoctions that can rewrite DNA, and constructing powerful energy weapons that can blast alien threats into dust. Your genius mind will also allow you to build weapons, equipment, and biological compounds for yourself in case you decide you want to become a hero or villain. Right now you're basically as intelligent and ingenuous as Lex Luthor or Gorilla Grodd but there's nothing stopping you from learning more or increasing your intelligence using technology or genetic engineering. Keep in mind however that while you may be able to upgrade yourself or others using science, there's nothing preventing your augmentations from failing or causing more harm than good.

Domain: Skills: Alchemy - Dark Science (9 Jumpchain) (600CP): You are familiar with the principles of alchemy, or 'Dark Science', which led to the creation of the Stitchpunks, The Machine, and the end of humanity. This knowledge lets you create devices which can interact with the mind and soul. This includes the one The Scientist used to copy his Intellect onto the Machine's core, as well as the one he used to gift fractions of his soul upon the Stitchpunks, not to mention how to properly prepare a core or homunculus to accept such things. It should be noted that homunculi with partial souls will have very exaggerated personalities, and creations imbued with pure intellect will be lacking a soul and the emotions that come with it.

A/N: Yeah, it's been a long time. I apologise, but life's been super busy. I also want to take a moment to thank everybody for supporting me so far.

Anyway, I think we have gotten to the point of the story where we can talk about Esau's 'canon' fate.

So, without Isaac to intervene, Esau crashes in the mountains, leaves his pod and starts to travel, like Ferrus Manus did. The Drukhari-Ork thing still happens and the ship crashes. A few Orks escape as they did in this story, form a small tribe (like twenty or so Orks) in the desert. Meanwhile, the Artisan finds the ship, opens up Kha's pod and Kha kills it. This stops the C'tan from awakening for months at least (The Artisan created a mechanicus situation where only it knew some functions of the Ziggurat). Kov also dies as a result. Kha leaves the ship, travels the planet for a day and encounters Esau killing an Ork.

Kha takes Esau under her wing and teaches him everything she knows including her rituals. They work together and survive, eventually destroying the rest of the Orks for the time being. In this timeline he is given the name 'Chandra Sekhar'. Chandra grows fast, and within four months, he is the size of a grown man.

They learn of the western mountains and travel to them, glad to meet other human beings. Unfortunately, they are met with roving tribes of mutant cannibals and savages in the mountains. There are places like Nimis's tribe that, mutations aside, are normal but those are the exception, not the rule.

Kha and Chandra take over a few tribes over the course of weeks and in the middle of a skirmish, Kha gets captured. Independent of the Artisans' intervention, the C'tan has woken up, and is hungry. It is less coherent than it is in this story due its revival being messed up, so the City of Bone is making a mad dash for bodies, lest they die painfully.

Chandra, of course, kills pretty much anyone in his way and makes it to the city where he frees Kha just before she is consumed. The C'tan shard is enraged, but is countered by Kha and Chandra working together. They are stalemated before the shard starts consuming people en masse.

In return, Kha sacrifices her life to form a city wide ritual circle, sacrificing the rest of the city and almost 90% of the mountain peoples to tear the shard apart. The shard explodes, and destroys the city, most of the underground structures and blows the mountains apart.

Chandra survives, but the ordeal leaves him broken emotionally. He leads the rabble that is still alive and forms a small society of people using the tech he scavenges.

Then the Emperor arrives.

I will not spoil who is with the Emperor, but Chandra's first meeting with Leman and Horus leaves him disliking both. He later makes up with Horus, but not with Leman Russ. He also gets a reputation as being gruff, humourless and being full of himself. So much so that Fulgrim finds him excessively full of himself.

As a side note, the legion is named: The Second Suns.

He does what Primarchs do best and takes over planets for the Imperium with an interest in exploring alien ruins, particularly those with Necron or Slann tech. Despite their many differences, they have some aesthetic similarities.

Here it becomes evident that Chandra has personality. Remember, Chandra is Esau, so he has his issues. He genuinely believes that he is superior to even most other Primarchs and has a distrust of anyone outside his legion except Horus and Sanguinius, but simultaneously does not believe he is worthy of the praise his legion gets.

Think of a reverse Perturabo situation.

Every victory is tainted by the sons he loses and the mistakes he feels he is too great to make. His issues add upon each other until he refuses to take assistance from another legion and gets cornered. He succeeds in destroying the Xeno threat, but his legion is cut in half in the process.

This destroys his confidence and he thinks that the Emperor cannot forgive his arrogance, because he refused help even with the Emperor explicitly ordering him to help.

This is where the heavy stuff happens.

Chandra decides to commit suicide. Yet, he can't bring himself to do it himself. He feels like a failure for this, so he and a few of his most loyal sons attack the Space Wolves.

This results in a duel between him and Leman Russ. They duel for days but at a critical moment, Chandra throws the duel and Leman kills him.

News of the duel reaches the Imperium and everyone believes Russ when he tells them that Chandra threw the duel.

Chandra's death results in his erasure from Imperial records, and his legion is given to Guilliman because his legion was the legion Chandra refused help from.

So ends the story of Chandra Sekhar.