The creaking scream of reality as it was bent and twisted into a portal between worlds sounded out through the great chamber. From this rip in reality the legions of hell came forth, lustful and eager to inflict pain and pleasure in equal measure the daemons of slaanesh paid little attention to the cultists that surrounded them.

They knew their purpose on the material plane and the target of their manifold predilections. They had felt the death screams of their sisters ripple through the warp, and they knew what had been done to one of the greatest of their kind. Changed and cut, destroyed and remade into a machine of war completely divorced from the once divine purpose it had held.

The prince of pleasure, most cognizant of it's siblings, most stable and resolute in its dealings and psyche, Eldar made and forged knew of the fragment that had been stolen from it and was filled with a rage so deep that were it not for the actions of its brothers in the great game it would have destroyed the planet and devoured every soul that resided upon it.

In the place of immense destruction however the great devourer called upon its legions and enhanced its followers in the Materium, giving them dread purpose and power. A purpose they did not fail as they opened up hundreds of portals into the warp, calling upon Daemons by their tens of thousands, summoning a force so great and mighty that in any other world its fate would have been sealed from the start.

Ulanir was not a normal planet however, the Fey hunters saw these dreadful enemies and laughed with glee, new and stronger prey a delight to their senses. While the guard was fully mobilized here, active and knowledgeable of the enemy it faced with the entirety of its arsenal ready and deployed.

The Daemons were met with sword and flame, death and destruction, their essence destroyed and sent back to the Immaterium, or harvested by the fey for their own uses.

It wasn't enough.

Even as thousands of Daemons were banished or harvested, tens of thousands more were summoned from the depths of the warp, such was the wrath of the prince of pleasure that he gave his legions freely and without limit. They were but a pittance compared to what he would use in the great game after all.

She despised it. Five decades of planning had been thrown out the window, her cult was under constant attack, her power was weaker than ever, and divisions were beginning to spread across the cult as a whole. Those that she had appointed to positions of power had been chosen for their competency this time around, not pure loyalty.

It had been a strategic decision, and one that she was already beginning to regret, they won victories yes, but that also made them ambitious and power hungry. She'd had to crush five coups already in the last month, though that was primarily because of the loss of the fifth spire and over a million of her men.

It had been a devastating loss, one that the cult still hadn't recovered from even as millions were rushed through the enchanting process to turn them into fanatical members of the cult's armies. She hadn't even tried to send her forces into the fifth spire, it was a wasted effort that she wasn't at all interested in.

Instead she spent her time reinforcing her positions throughout the rest of the hive, fighting off imperial incursions and building defenses that would surely come in handy when the green began its expansion into the rest of the hive. Things were going well, trenches were dug, forts and outposts were being constructed at a rapid pace, factories were secured to equip her armies, and hundreds of vehicles were stolen from the guard and corrupted through the divine power of Slaanesh.

It was unfortunate then that powers from beyond Ulanir had taken notice and begun to arrive, such as her latest guest. "You really should have called upon me and my brothers soon sorceress, these Xenos have proven themselves to be beyond your ability to fight." The corrupted angel spoke.

Ylithokeran had arrived through the same portal as the legions of her divine patron, his stride strong and boastful, full of a false confidence that could only come from the false notion of his own invincibility. With him he brought five of his brothers, marines one and all. Each of them was affected by varying levels of mutation showing the minor favor the Slaanesh had deigned to throw their way.

She hated them on sight. "And I've told you many times already that a handful of your kind is not nearly enough to face the green, you would need an entire warband at your back if you wish to have any true impact on the war effort." She spoke, her words going over the corrupted angel's head as if she wasn't speaking at all.

"You overestimate these aliens, and underestimate me and mine. Just because you have been unable to stop their advance does not mean it will be the same for us, of that you can be certain." He spoke, his words full of all the bravado and arrogance of a man who thought himself a gift from the gods. She hated him more with every passing moment.

"If you wish to face the Green I will not stop you, you can even go now if you wish to fight them and take any volunteers you wish from our ranks. I have tried to warn you of their power, perhaps a first hand experience with them will change your views, or maybe it won't. I care not. Now leave my sight." She said, her words full of annoyance.

The Marine did not take kindly to her words, stepping closer, trying to use his considerable bulk to scare the sorceress. "You will watch your words wi- AHHHH!?" His scream of pain sounded out through his helmet as she forced him to his knees.

Her hands glowed with a pink and amethyst light as she twisted the marine to the ground with minimal effort. She had not survived for over a hundred years on this world in prime condition by being weak. And the marine experienced her wrath first hand as she forced him to his knees, and with one hand on his helmet, and another on his chest crushed his body beneath her gaze.

Blood leaked from his helmet as she nearly scrambled his brain and forced his body to experience every painful sensation imaginable for a full minute. When she finally let go of him the corrupted angel sagged to the ground, weight causing a boom as he dropped. "Next time you wish to threaten me you will be wise to remember this moment cur. I spared your life this once, I will not do so again. Begone from my sight." She said, annoyed with his very presence.

It only took a minute for him to bring his body back under control and limp out of her office, glaring at her the entire way out, trying to physically let his hatred be known even with his mask obscuring his face.

As soon as he was gone she slumped into her chair, fighting against her beating heart and a raging headache. She was powerful, yes, but forcing a marine to kneel at her feet was not an easy feat. Especially with her so out of practise in the use of her more forceful abilities. She was a manipulator and a schemer first and foremost, power plays had never been her forte.

But she was glad that she had done so here and now, she knew the stories of how cults had been overtaken by the arrival of a marine or greater sorcerer from the warp. Replacing those that had built up the world changing force from its very beginning, and she refused to be one of those stories, even if she lost she would lose without having ever lost position.

She sighed and ran a palm over her face, she didn't even feel that all encompassing pleasure anymore, that call to indulge in her every want and desire. She was too busy, too stressed, and under far too much pressure. She wondered if this was how Zachariah felt even now, under endless pressure to succeed from within and without.

Sometimes she wondered what life might have been like if she hadn't made a deal with the gods, even if she knew it was an impossibility. She would trade all the decades she had lived now for even a single year of silence and peace. She ignored how her heart stung with those thoughts, her contract forcing her to steer away from those wants and desires.

Instead she turned to the desk full of reports and order requests. War waits for no woman, and this one was no exception.

-

She was reclined in a chair of pure green and gold artifice with her love's signature white sprinkled in along the hand rests. Really Dyrrath worried far too much about her, it wasn't like she was suddenly made of glass with the child in her womb.

Alas despite her protests she had insisted that she stay away from the front, and only participate in the war effort in the most minimal and least demanding of ways. It was more than a little annoying, she was a warrior! A sorceress and a slayer of men and Daemon both that had fought with the creator in a dozen and more battles.

Her place was on the battlefield, not in a far too luxurious and comfy chair being waited on hand and foot by a dozen mutters who had taken it upon themselves to volunteer to be her maids. Unfortunately the chair was far too comfy for her to get out of it and with how her magic was steadily growing weaker she just didn't have it in her to fight against her new predicament.

Of course she didn't tell Dyrrath about how her magic had been getting weaker, or how she was less physically fit, or even how her core was growing dimmer by the day. Even feeding on a soul daily wasn't enough to stop the steady drain and for the life of her she could only hope that the drain would come to a stop eventually.

She couldn't imagine leaving Dyrrath behind, lover and child both lost. She knew that she would have likely gone insane in his place were that to happen. She had figured out very quickly that their kind loved hard, every time she saw her love she just wanted to jump him, to ride him for days on end and become one with him.

Every day the distance between them caused her pain, physical and deep and his presence seemed to refill her, giving her a strength she never knew she had. Kinda like now. "What is on your mind my love? You've barely been paying me any attention." He spoke, a small pout on his handsome, roguish face.

She had to stop herself from swooning at his voice. "It's nothing love, I've just been thinking about what's to come. Being so far away from the war effort has left me a little out of date with the current situation so i've had to come up with new ways to occupy myself." She said, at the same time she conjured a small projection of a child.

"Recently I've been looking into our futures with foresight, admiring our child, looking forward to the day that I can hold them in my arms." She spoke, the emotion palpable in her voice. "I can't see yet whether they will be a boy or a girl but I can feel their presence, see their magic. They'll be beautiful. I know it's love." She said, and his eyes were fixed upon her stomach.

"What should we name them? I was thinking Cuves if they were a girl, Vyvithin if they were a boy." He said, his eyes and hands never straying from their position on her slightly plump belly. "Why those names?" She asked, curiosity consuming her.

"The Creator told me that Cuves means First Virtue, and Vyvithin means Green Dawn. Both hold significance because our child will be the first of our kind, not created with magic and a stolen soul, but born pure and real. Maybe even with a soul of their own, never in danger of the true death that threatens us all." He said, emotion incomprehensible to the human mind swirling through those kaleidoscopic eyes of colors beyond imaging.

She could only shake her head as tears threatened to spill from her eyes, her loves motives were so pure and wonderful she was once again reminded why she had fallen for him. He was the best of their kin, wonderful and powerful, kind and generous, wrathful and sadistic. He was everything she could have ever wanted.

Which is why she agreed to his names without complaint and settled back into her chair, basking in his presence for as long as he could stay with her. She wished this moment could never end.

-

I was surrounded by black, the void stretched out infinitely around me and my memories of my time here came to me freely, no longer constrained by the limits my contract had placed upon me. "Do thou remember the terms of thine contract mortal?" The void spoke, the only sign of the direction it might have come from being a single open and pulsing eye in the darkness.

"I do. I have kept to it for the last nineteen years, knowingly or not." I said, my back straight and my will resolute. I would not show weakness to these monsters in the guise of gods. I had fought and killed the aspect of a chaos god in single combat, I had created a species of my own, I was winning the war to secure a planet. I was not the same man they remembered.

The eye pulsed. "Censor thyself, you forget to whomst you speak mortal. It is by our will that thou continue to live thine new life, and it is by our power alone that thou has accomplished so much." It said as pain wracked my soul threatening to yank me into the void once more.

Even faced with death once more however I refused to bow my head, I was a king and a general, I bowed to no one. "Do not threaten me with what I am prepared to face everyday, instead tell me what you want. It's obvious that you didn't call me here for a little catching up. I already know you watch my every action, so you obviously have something to complain about." I said to the void.

The void was silent, the eye was closed and for a time nothing happened. The things from beyond were likely in communion with themselves. Finally the eye opened once more and the booming voice returned. "We grow bored with thy conquest, what should have been a conflict that lasted a month at best has turned into a grinding war of attrition that draws the eye of things far greater than thine small mind could ever imagine. While the creativity thou has shown is infinitely entertaining, infinite war is not our only want." The eye pulsed and suddenly I was looking upon the world from above.

Ships swarmed over the hive cities, Imperial battleships and cruisers by their dozens powered up their weapons slowly before unleashing a bombardment that wiped out entire hives in singular volleys before the contested cities could deploy their shields. "The war has gone on too long, and thine has advanced far too slowly with all that is available to thou. This is but one possible future and with it we have fulfilled our end of the bargain for now. Do not expect such again without a sufficient exchange. Begone." The void proclaimed, jettisoning me from the black and into my body once more.

-

I woke from my slumber with a pounding heart and a massive headache as I tried desperately to sort through the broken and fractured memories I had inherited. For a time I couldn't make out what I had learned from my meeting with my patrons, the void simply obfuscating it far too much for me to have even the slightest idea of what I had been shown.

Thankfully after a few hours of meditation and a quick transformation into my fey form I was able to slowly begin working my way through the memories of the void and the warning therein.

I was moving too slowly, too cautiously in the wake of my failure to face two spires at once. Hell I was still fighting for the fifth spire two months later when I should have long ago wrested control of it from the guard. I had been too focused on building up my forces and preparing for some nebulous offensive in the future.

Hell I had two battalions of panzers at this point and three-hundred thousand fey ready to go on the attack, with my titan repaired. I should have gone on the offensive weeks ago, instead I had been stalling, riding on the glory from my victory.

And what was my reward? Half the guard regiments on the planet were stationed in nafith, tens of millions of cultists were on the march, a hundred thousand Daemons were on the loose killing my soldiers, and five astartes had been spotted scouting out our lines. It was a mess full stop, and one I would no longer allow to go on.

"Dyrrath, Come to me." I said into the air, fey magic at work. Less than a minute later Dyrrath stepped from green mist, the first of my creations to have tapped into the wilds beyond myself, a discovery I would explore later. For now all I cared about was taking this hive once and for all, orbital bombardment meant little if the void shields were at work.

"You called for me my Lord?" He asked, expectation clear upon his features. "Yes, I realized that we have been idle for far too long. Muster the lords and have them meet me in the council chambers in one hour, the time for build-up is over. We go on the attack once more." I said, my voice full of confidence and commanding guile. Or at least that's how I hoped I sounded.

Dyrrath needed nothing more from me, bowing and taking a step back. "What my lord should I tell them is our goal so that they might prepare?" He asked, an attack was all well and good but he wanted to know if I had any idea of what our actual goal was to be.

"We take the hive itself, the spires were a start but the time for slow expansion is over. The time for a full takeover has come, hive Nafith falls or we do that is all they need to know for now." I said. He bowed one last time and left me to my thoughts.

I pulled up my ledgers and reports, a plan slowly forming in my mind. I had two-thousand three hundred panzers, three-hundred and fifty five thousand fey soldiers, and my titan at my beck and call. It was a truly mighty force, one that was predominantly newly made, a full half of my fey hadn't even been born before the grand assault.

I had faced millions of guardsmen and cultists that were well entrenched with a third of that number, no titan, and only three hundred panzers. It would be a slog, it would likely cost me nearly the entirety of my army but the hive would fall. Numbers could be replaced, tanks repaired or remade, and titans could retreat, in the end none of that mattered because this hive would fall.

The rest of the planet may burn from orbital bombardment, but I wouldn't. This I would make reality, even if it cost me everything.