I do not own the Warhammer 40000 universe nor any of its characters. They belong to Games Workshop.
Inspired by the Dornian Heresy, by Aurelius Rex.
I can hear their screams as I fall.
Their souls are broken, their minds are gone, but some shard of who they once were remain, buried beneath the tide of corruption and madness. Millions of shards of purity, of sanity, screaming their horror into the void. They never chose to fall – they weren't even deceived into bowing to the evil that lurks within the Empyrean, as nearly all of the Lost and the Damned are. They were drowned in this abyss, forced down under by the hands of those who were first turned to the darkness. They choked on the corruption of Chaos, until nearly all that they had been died in this terrible dark.
I can hear their screams … so much pain … so much horror … They beg for release, they beg for death, they beg for salvation – for oblivion. And I wonder, is this what my brother could hear as he walked the stars and witnessed the most terrible fates inflicted upon Mankind throughout the Age of Strife ? Is this the plea for mercy that haunted his every waking moment, driving him to isolation among our kin ? Mortarion … brother … I am sorry. Now I finally understand why you were willing to do the things you did, but I will never have a chance to make things right between us …
The war goes on. My people will stand, they will fight against the darkness as they have always done. I hear their defiant cries, their oaths of moment and their prayers to my distant father. They call out to the light I can no longer see, but my father is far away, and much weaker than he once was – yet still far more powerful than his enemies believe.
The Wolves, the Wolves have come again, shouting their hatred across the void, unable to see the strings that manipulate them into doing the bidding of the very forces they thought we would unleash. I hear the howls of their souls, the snarls of the beast riding within their blood. They who were once the foremost guardians against corruption are succumbing to its pull at long last, the outer darkness they wield as a weapon strengthening the one within. In their blind quest for vengeance, they have endangered the last shreds of their honor, the last fragments of their sanity. The Enemy will claim them all in the end, and the Wolf will be broken within the crucible of Chaos, reforged into a beast of mindless hatred and bloodthirst …
The knights of my deceived brother have come too, led by one who knows nothing of truth. Pawns and slaves one and all, the puppets of the one who orchestrated the doom of my sons. They dance to a meaningless tune, speaking the lies that are whispered into their minds. I hear them too, these falsehoods spoken by the Great Deceiver. I hear the hollow promises, the threats of a future where Mankind is extinct, annihilated for refusing to kneel. I hear the cries of broken heroes facing the horror of their fate and submitting to their tormentor in order to justify their past sins by making them part of some grand, illusory design.
So many souls lost to the dark, driven by their masters to bring ruin to my world. So many lives whose light was extinguished and replaced by hatred and madness. Stolen, not through any fault of their own, but because of the legacy of an evil older than our entire species. There is no justice in it, because you and your kind murdered justice long before my father was even born amidst the grass lands of Old Earth, shattered the balance of the universe and claimed dominion over all …
… is it what you want me to think ? Is this how you think to break me, after so long ?
You will fail, in this as in all your other attempts. You will not break me. You cannot break me.
I am Magnus the Red. I am the Crimson King. I am the Primarch of the Fifteenth Legion, and a son of the Emperor of Mankind. These words, these names, they remain in my mind even as the rest of my thoughts burns away, turning into smoke carried away on aetheric winds. They are who I am, and you cannot take them away from me – only try to deceive me into giving them up, like you deceived my lost brothers. But I have seen through your lies with my single eye. I know the secret my father discovered when you unwillingly set him down the path that led him to his throne of broken hopes, burned dreams, and eternal defiance. I know the truth you do not want the mortal races of the galaxy to know, hidden behind your power, your slave armies and your daemons. I know that terrible and wonderful truth, that shatters the will of champions and reforge them into heroes freed of the illusions woven around them for their own protection. I know what you are.
Oh yes, I know what you hide behind your masks and your echoing laughter. I know the truth …
You have no power over me.
The Siege of Terathalion
Part Two : The Tides of Damnation
With the orbital defenses of Terathalion breached by sorcery and treachery, the forces of the Black Crusade were able to land on the Fifteenth Legion's homeworld by the million. Daemons, Dark Angels, Space Wolves, xenos and cultists – all came to the lost city of Lutaketh, driven by the will of the Crusade's master, Sarthorael the Ever-Watcher. Never before had so numerous a host despoiled the surface of Terathalion, never before had one of the great cities of the Thousand Sons fallen to the slaves of Ruin. Still, courage yet burned within the hearts of the mortal defenders of Terathalion, whilst the sons of Magnus were inhabited by a great fury at the sight of the desecration of their homeworld, ancestral memories of Prospero's doom rising in their minds. Though Lutaketh had fallen, fourteen great cities still stood, and the greatest of them was Ahat-iakby, built around the Thousand Sons' fortress, where their Primarch's body rested. For all their dark magics and cowardly tools, the forces of Chaos would not find the conquest of Terathalion an easy one …
Horror filled the defenders of Terathalion as word of Lutaketh's terrible fate spread across the planet. On the walls of the fourteen remaining cities, men and women of the Spire Guard trembled, before the words of preachers and Commissars shook off the nameless dread that had descended upon them. The Thousand Sons scattered among them deployed their telepathic powers, easing the fears of their human comrades by sheltering their souls from the unnatural corruption the Black Crusade had brought to their homeworld. In Ahat-iakby, Madox the Undying himself spread out his consciousness across the city's walls, manipulating the defenders' physiology to prevent panic.
From orbit came the warning of the Lady Admiral : the tech-priests had evaluated the damage done to the two Ramilies-class Spaceforts on their way to join the battle against the Chaos fleet. It would take six days for them to arrive, and during that time nothing could be done to stop the flow of heretics, traitors and xenos that landed in Lutaketh. An attack on the fallen city would be suicide, such was the foe's numerical advantage. The Imperials must trust in the defenses of the remaining cities, built in concert with the Iron Warriors in ages past. Yet these defenses hadn't been enough to resist treachery, and a wave of suspicion, mistrust and paranoia swept across Terathalion as soldiers began to doubt the loyalty of their comrades-in-arms.
For ten thousand years, the Thousand Sons had believed their telepathic abilities allowed them to uproot all infiltrators and traitors in their midst, but Sarthorael's corruption of Lutaketh had proven that the Greater Daemon had found a way around this. The exact circumstances of Lutaketh's fall remained shrouded in mystery, for none of the city's defenders had managed to escape the catastrophe – something that was quite unlikely given their number. To the Imperial analysts, this indicated that the Ever-Watcher had made great efforts to prevent any survivors from revealing the details of his victory to the rest of the Thousand Sons. That in turn made them doubt there was any risk of a repeat performance – the Greater Daemon must have invested a lot of resources into infiltrating the cultists who had driven Lutaketh's population to madness. However, nothing was certain where the daemons of Tzeentch were concerned, and the guard around the other shelters was reinforced just in case – taking precious soldiers away from the walls, which was likely what Sarthorael had intended in the first place. But they couldn't take the risk not to do so.
Less than a day after the disaster at Lutaketh, the flow of troops from orbit ceased. Aboard the Word of Magnus, Lady Admiral Sarkath looked upon the combined auspexes of her fleet, and frowned. Sensors aimed at the fallen city were failing one after the other, until only direct observation through reinforced domes showed any result. A dark cloud had risen above Lutaketh, an unnatural storm that blinded all instruments. By sorcery or dark technology, the forces of the Black Crusade had shrouded themselves from orbital scrutiny. Over the course of the next three days, the clouds grew in size, finally stabilizing at more than two hundred kilometers of diameters. Then, to the shock of officers throughout the fleet, it began to move – on a straight line that would take it directly to Ahat-iakby. Communications between the ships in orbit and the Thousand Sons on the ground grew more and more erratic, as the storm interfered even with telepathy.
On Terathalion, Madox and his brothers quickly divined what had happened. With the Imperial fleet closing in on their ships, the heretics couldn't rely on their vessels to protect them from orbital bombardment during the long trek to Magnus' sanctuary – it was inevitable that the Lady Admiral would be able to get some shots at the moving army during the days-long trek. But the dark clouds they had summoned would grant them protection from that. Psychic probing at the darkness in the heavens revealed that it was indeed the product of sorcery, and those who had faced the forces of Logan Grimnar before recognized the aetheric signature of the infamous Silent Callers.
The Silent Callers
Though Logan Grimnar is seen as the one responsible for summoning Rogal Dorn to Armageddon in the 40th millennium, it wasn't the Wolf Lord himself who performed the unholy ritual. Instead, he had gathered a group of the most powerful Rune Priests of the Sixth Legion, along with Sorcerers from other Legions and especially powerful mortal wizards – even including a few fallen Inquisitors. On the plains of Armageddon, hundreds of them performed the ritual that shattered reality and allowed the Daemon Primarch to leave the Eye of Terror. Most of them died, their lives consumed by the ritual's demands, their souls burned to ash by the power they were calling upon. Of those who survived, none did so unscathed. The ritual cost them all their voice, both physical and psychic, and ravaged their mortal frames. After the First War of Armageddon ended, they attached themselves to Grimnar, who alone seems to be able to hear them – he is often seen discussing with them, but onlookers can only hear his side of the conversation. Now known as the Silent Callers, they hide their faces at all times, the Traitor Marines among them with their helmets, the mortals with masks or other headpieces. No one knows what they hide beneath.
Despite the price they paid to bring forth Rogal Dorn, the Silent Callers remain very dangerous warp-wielders. They specialize in daemon summoning and are capable of bringing entire infernal armies into existence if given time to prepare and work their foul magics – and are still dangerous psykers if attacked directly, without time to prepare. At the command of their lord, they have damned whole planets, giving them over to daemonic legions simply to deny them to the God-Emperor. Over the centuries, the Imperium and rival Chaos forces, combined with the innate dangers of their vile craft have whittled their number down. By the time Logan brought his forces to Terathalion, only six of them remained. All that time they have remained at the side of the Wolf Lord, and there are many who suspect that their relationship with him isn't as simple as it looks. There are also many rumors that the Silent Callers actually died on Armageddon, and that only creatures from the beyond now dwell within their bodies, hiding their changes from sight beneath their armor, masks and hooded cloaks. Should that theory prove true, it would cast a disturbing light on Grimnar's recent rise among the sons of Russ. Inquisitorial spies and analysts have revealed that the Old Wolf is driven by hatred against the Imperium for the destruction of Fenris and the fall from grace of the Space Wolves, conveniently ignoring the sins that led to the Rout's excommunication. It is this hatred that has led him to gather a warband of traitors and xenos alike, his burning desire to see the Imperium fall overpowering the disgust for the alien bred within all Astartes. The purity of this hate has earned him the respect of most Sixth Legion warbands, and many see him as the leader Bjorn the Fell-Handed can never be due to his obsession with bringing Leman Russ back. But if Logan Grimnar is in truth nothing but a puppet of daemons masquerading as trusted advisors, then the prospect of the Rout reuniting under his command is even more distressing than it already was.
Soon after the cloud began to move, the amassed Chaos fleet began to move away from orbit, fleeing the approaching wrath of the Imperium deep in the unthinkably huge void of the system, too far for the Ramilies-class Starforts to pursue them with their engines still damaged. Yet they also remained close enough that the Imperial fleet was forced to remain watchful for another attack, unable to scatter to cover the entire surface of Terathalion. Lady Admiral Kiya was forced to establish a blockade to prevent them from interfering with the war on the surface. Though it chafed at her honor and sense of duty, she could do nothing more for the defenders of Terathalion.
When the storm's edge reached and then passed over Lutaketh, the city once again became visible to orbital auspexes. What had once been a bustling metropolis was now a hollow ruin, nothing living remaining within its broken walls. Corpses were piled in the streets, but no vermin feasted upon their flesh. By some foul artifice, Sarthorael had frozen Lutaketh in time, turning it into a grotesque monument of the Thousand Sons' failure to protect their people – one more insult to add to the tally of bloody debts the sons of Magnus owed the Ever-Watcher. But the bodies were nowhere near numerous enough to account for the whole population, and it soon became evident that most of the twenty million souls that had inhabited Lutaketh now marched alongside the forces of the Black Crusade, a mass of twisted, insane bolter fodder to further bolster the ranks of Chaos.
At first, the defenders of Terathalion thought to send all their forces to Ahat-iakby, as it seemed the enemy was focusing their attack on that greatest of cities. But before the decision was made, it became clear that Sarthorael had planned for that possibility. Smaller armies emerged from the storm, led by lesser warlords of the Black Crusade's host, one for each of the thirteen other cities of Terathalion. Though each of these hosts was but a fraction of the whole, they still counted hundreds of thousands of soldiers and warmachines. To gather all of Terathalion's defenders on Ahat-iakby – or even just the Thousand Sons – would have been to abandon the people hidden in the shelters to the terrible fate reserved by Chaos Lords to those unable to defend themselves, never mind the logistical nightmare such an operation would have represented. The sons of Magnus refused to make that choice – they would not abandon their people to save themselves.
One by one, the leaders of the defending forces of each city vowed to come to the others' aid once they had dealt with their would-be invaders. Yet the Imperials were not content to simply remain in their cities and await the coming of the foe. The enemy's fracturing into fourteen different warhosts opened new opportunities of attack. Terathalion had many minor settlements spread out across its surface, which had been evacuated in the coming of the Black Crusade, emptied of all resources that could be looted by the enemy. A lifetime living in the shadow of possible raids by Chaos forces had hardened the people living away from the protection offered by the main cities, and each settlement had its own militia. Most of those had added their strength to the defenders of the great cities, but there were those who had remained behind, to scout the enemy army and provide invaluable intel to the Thousand Sons. Such assignments had been purely voluntary, for they were extremely dangerous. Each man and woman in these groups carried several ways to commit suicide should their situation grow desperate – anything to avoid being taken alive and brought to the Dark Angels.
The shroud of darkness had made these scouts even more important to the war effort, but as the Black Crusade splintered, some of the groups decided to do more than spy on the foe. They mounted raiding attacks, striking under the cover of night, killing a handful of enemies before retreating, drawing their pursuers into prepared ambushes. Traps were laid in the path of the armies, bridges were rigged and water sources poisoned. Logistics, rarely a strong point in any Chaos army, became even more of a nightmare, thousands of cultists dying every day from starvation and thirst. Squads of the Spire Guard's elite were sent to bolster these efforts, along with psykers and even the occasional Thousand Son to help those who had the unenviable honor of attacking the main force. Without psychic assistance, no raid or ambush could succeed against an army led by one of the most powerful Greater Daemons of Tzeentch and counting one of the Grand Masters of the Dark Angels in its ranks. Even with it, many of those brave soldiers were lost, but those who escaped grew more and more experienced at this kind of guerilla warfare.
Of the twelve-men squad that had knelt before the Thousand Son and received his blessing before leaving the safety of the city and returning to the wild, only five remained. The other seven had died over the last two weeks, and their remaining comrades comforted themselves with the knowledge that none of them had been taken alive – even if it had taken a long-range shot to make sure of it in one case. Now they hid in the ruins of a small tower, leftover from the world's distant past, before the Thousand Sons had come to Terathalion for the first time and made it a library-world.
'We have to get back to Geryiadha,' whispered the first soldier into his vox. Even here, none of them dared to raise their voice – or they were simply too exhausted to. 'We can't stay out there any longer. We barely got away last time, and their pursuits get closer to us every time.'
'You swore the same oath we all did,' replied his squadmate. 'Our lives for Terathalion.'
'Yes, but we would accomplish more by dying on the walls … wait. Did you hear that ?'
Before anyone could answer, the night's quiet was shattered by a horrible sound – something similar to a howl, but twisted and perverted. Another followed, and another, and another, coming from all around the ruin. The survivors raised their weapons, falling into a circular formation with an ease born of practice and desperate survival. Their thermal visions showed them shapes running up toward them, moving faster than any living thing they had ever seen. They opened fire, and the air was filled with the scent of burned fur and flesh – but not one of the creatures stopped. If anything, their fury seemed to grow as they were hit, and their screams grew even more vicious.
The last shot was fired four seconds after the hunting pack of Wulfen reached the ruins. But the last member of the squad took seventeen minutes and thirty-four seconds to die.
Eventually, these small blows began to accumulate, and Sarthorael was forced to take action lest his entire army fall apart as it tried to hunt down the elusive ghosts that tormented it. The Greater Daemon called upon Logan Grimnar's circle of sorcerers once more. Together with the Ever-Watcher's own coterie of Lords of Change, the Silent Callers performed a grand ritual that sacrificed a million of Lutaketh's insane people and tore through the Veil. An immense Warp Portal opened within the ritual circle, soon followed by other, lesser openings across the surface of Terathalion. Hordes of feral Neverborn belonging to all of the four Dark Gods poured through these gateways, guided by no common tactic but driven by their hunger for souls and suffering. The squads that had been performing the hit-and-run raids were forced to retreat, abandoning the countryside and withdrawing to the cities lest they fall prey of the Neverborn hordes. Only a few actually made it to the relative safety of the walls, however – the rest was caught and devoured by the daemons, fighting to the end against the Warp-born abominations.
Though the cities were able to withstand any attack from these disorganised hordes, the countryside of Terathalion was ravaged. The corruption of Chaos followed wherever the Neverborn marched, twisting wildlife and tainting the very earth. Beasts of nightmare emerged from the forests, repugnant hybrids of animals and daemons. Graveyards across the planet erupted in aetheric storms as corrupt echoes of the dead were brought into existence, born of lingering memories. The earth trembled with tectonic fury as the power of the Warp interfered with its natural cycles. Earthquakes and tsunamis scoured the land, but the cities of Terathalion had been built by the best architects in the Imperium, and they endured the upheaval with only minor damage. Ancient wards, inscribed upon the walls by the Thousand Sons millennia ago, flared to life, preventing the corrupting touch of the Warp to creep inside the cities and helping keep the daemon hordes at bay. In the underground shelters, priests of the Ecclesiarchy led the faithful in prayers to the God-Emperor, millions of souls calling upon the light of Him on Earth as one. Where no single soul could have resisted the pull of madness, together they held firm as their world shook in pain.
The forces of the Black Crusade also suffered from what they had unleashed, with daemonic warbands attacking their forces and the destruction of the landscape swallowing entire groups of cultists. But the interference of the Imperials had ceased, and fear of the Neverborn kept the army from falling apart, which was all Sarthorael cared about. The Ever-Watcher drew hosts of Tzeentchian daemons from the manifested legions to his side, driving them ahead of his army through his indomitable will. Not all could cross the wasteland they left in their wake, and thousands more cultists and crazed civilians were lost, their death rattles birthing new daemons. All the way, the power of Tzeentch suffused the survivors, twisting them into new shapes, until it was impossible to tell where the daemon ended and the mutant began. When the Black Crusade finally came within sight of Ahat-iakby, nothing human remained in the millions of crazed civilians Sarthorael had brought from Lutaketh's ruins. The Thousand Sons and the mortal Gifted had to shield their minds against the pressure of so much madness from so many hosts, and even then the Commissars had to execute a few psykers who failed to retain their sanity in the face of such horror.
Ahat-iakby, the Warriors' Mourning
Greatest of all the cities of Terathalion, Ahat-iakby was not part of Magnus' initial plans for Terathalion when the planet went from being a library world to the new homeworld of the Thousand Sons. The city came into existence later, after Sarthorael's first attack on the Prosperine Dominion. When Magnus fell to the Greater Daemon's sorcery, his spirit banished from his flesh, the Thousand Sons recovered their father's body and entombed him within a great pyramid, built for that express purpose. In the days following the loss of Magnus, his sons still hoped to find a way to bring him back, and they built a fortress around the pyramid to protect their slumbering father. In time, the fortress became the center of the Legion's activity on Terathalion, and a city was built by the human inhabitants of the planet around the Legion's fortress. Pilgrims came from the entire Dominion and beyond to pray for Magnus' soul, even though the Thousand Sons allow none to lay eyes upon his body, fiercely protective of their gene-sire and the secrets hidden within his mausoleum. Still, the local Ecclesiarchy presence has recorded dozens of apparitions of the Primarch's ghost in the dreams and waking visions of the faithful, bestowing advice and commands before vanishing. Many priests believe that, even in his diminished state, the Crimson King still acts as an agent of the God-Emperor, imparting His will to His faithful followers. The Thousand Sons are tight-lipped on what they think of these "miracles", and no one is brave or foolish enough to insist on the subject. To them, the quasi-worship of their Primarch by the Imperium's common folk is an uneasy subject, especially when that adoration extends to the Thousand Sons themselves. The Legionaries have tried very hard to keep the population of the Prosperine Dominion to the levels of education and morality that were the norm during the Great Crusade, but even they have not been able to completely suppress the slow spread of faith and superstition over knowledge and morality.
Nonetheless, the Warriors' Mourning, as the city's name loosely translates to in Low Gothic, was built in accordance with the Thousand Sons' ancient principles and the Iron Warriors' fortification techniques. The leaders of the Fifteenth Legion knew from the beginning that their Primarch's body would be a target for the forces of Chaos, and the fortress-mausoleum is circled by a first ring of defenses. The city itself is surrounded by its own fortified wall, and hosts more than thirty millions people. Part of the training for Aspirants of the Fifteenth Legion takes place within the city, where they must learn to block out the thoughts of the masses in order to track down specific individuals.
It is also within the fortress-mausoleum that the final initiation of the Aspirants take place, once every organ has been implanted and the training is complete. Very few succeed in this final trial, and the fate of those who fail is not spoken aloud by the sons of Magnus, though there are many rumors circulating in Ahat-iakby and the rest of Terathalion – and even the wider Imperium.
The first wave of attack was made of the daemons Sarthorael and the other sorcerers of his host had gathered from the Silent Callers' summoning. As the Ever-Watcher held back the rest of his army, all manners of Tzeentchian Neverborn launched themselves at the city's outer wall in a tide of aetheral flesh and fiery sorcery. Many daemons fell to the city's wards, losing their hold over the Materium as their power was sapped by the ancient spells. But more and more came, climbing over the dissolving forms of their predecessors. In fact, the destruction of so many Neverborn weakened the dimensional barriers even further, and, to the horror of the defenders, towers of crystal and bronze rose from the morass, high enough to reach the battlements. Atop each of these infernal siege towers was a giant green-orange jewel that glowed like baleful eyes – the gemstones that were Terathalion's pride, twisted into vessels for the Warp's unholy power. Daemons climbed up the towers as they approached the walls, and though the defenders' guns brought several of them down, many more came crashing against the fortifications, unleashing their daemonic passengers onto the battlements. Battle was joined on the battlements of Ahat-iakby, while reports came in through distorted vox-transmissions that the other cities of Terathalion were also under attack. War erupted across the Fifteenth Legion's homeworld, and the fate of the entire Dominion laid in the balance.
The Greater War
Though the forces of Chaos were mainly focused on Ahat-iakby, thirteen hosts also laid siege to the other cities of Terathalion. These are the troops that were deployed against each of the great cities.
Geryiadha : Space Wolves, Wulfen and mutants. Led by Wolf Lord Morak the Headhunter.
Meorades : Dark Angels and cultists. Led by First Legion Sorcerer Lord Elikas the Whisperer.
Nilehos : Daemons of Tzeentch and mutants. Led by the Lord of Change Azziyeral.
Nuerams : Host of Khornate daemons, which slaughtered the army sent by Sarthorael. No leader.
Arz-Tanok : First and Sixth Legions Astartes, along with cultists. Led by unidentified robed figure.
Yevorak : Human and xenos enslaved thralls. Led by the Psyker Overlord Gerex.
Purverec : Human and xenos pirates and mercenaries. Led by Hiestus Haelok the Fourth.
Nosdimir : Dark Mechanicum war cohort. Led by Exagramus, Arch-Magos of Hellsmount IV.
Zirhammor : Rak'gol horde brought by the Sixth Legion. Led by the Abomination Xirkxellion.
Brekzari : Dark Angels, Chaos Knights and cultists. Led by the Daemon Prince Belphegor.
Selder-Nox : Cultist army identified as "The Liberated". Led by Interrogator-Chaplain Sheol.
Heiraketh : Ten Regiments of Traitor Imperial Guard. Led by renegade General Telrion.
Ferhaen : Unknown. Storms blocked out all transmissions, and the city had vanished by the time they stopped. All that was left in its place was a giant hole that went several kilometers down.
Soldiers of the Spire Guard fought side by side with the Thousand Sons, but they were not alone. Others had heeded Terathalion's call for help. Regiments from all over the Imperium who had been transiting through the Prosperine Dominion when the Black Crusade fleet had been sighted, Adeptus Mechanicus skitarii cohorts descended from the orbital docks and the nearby forge-worlds, and hundreds of the Daughters of Magnus, all stood upon the walls of Terathalion's cities, ready to lay down their lives in defense of the world. Psychic lightning rained down upon the foe along with las-bolts and conventional ammunition. All manner of sorcery was unleashed, and the veil between reality and the Warp thinned more and more with every passing hour.
The Daughters of Magnus
The relationship between the Prosperine Dominion and the Adeptus Astra Telepathica can best be described as "tense". The Thousand Sons' ways of psychic training are far from being as restrictive and soul-searing as those employed by the Adeptus, and the psykers they produce are far more powerful and versatile – but the training also require far more resources, and the guidance of one of the few sons of Magnus who can be spared from the battlefield. As a result, the Fifteenth Legion can only take in and train those male psykers of great potential, leaving the rest to be harvested by the Black Ships – to be trained in the ways of the Adeptus, or give their lives to fuel the Golden Throne and the Astronomican. Over the centuries, some Thousand Sons have argued that this culling of the psychic population is holding back Mankind's evolution into a psychic species, but the archives of the Legion are very clear : the dream of Humanity becoming master of the psychic realm died when the Emperor's Webway Project was destroyed by the self-righteousness of the Space Wolves. Any attempt at breeding more psykers will only result in disaster.
Yet while the Thousand Sons provides a place for the strongest male psykers, the female ones cannot hope to join the Legion. For reasons known only to Him, the Emperor designed the Astartes to be created solely from male Aspirants, and any attempt to adapt the gene-forging process to female subjects would require an absurd amount of heretical modifications. But the Fifteenth Legion was ever loath to waste psychic potential. And so, soon after the end of the Scouring, when the Thousand Sons were finally able to focus on the rebuilding of the Dominion, they created the various orders that are collectively known as the Daughters of Magnus. Initially, the orders were led by Prosperine refugees who had particular talents in one of the many branches of psychic powers and had been taught within the Prospero's famous academies. Some of them are battle-oriented, while others are dedicated to healing. Most of the psykers within the Spire Guard come from the Daughters, though there are also sanctioned psykers of the Astra Telepathica – and no little tension exists between the two groups. The indoctrination undergone by those trained by the Schola Psykana makes them regard the Daughters as dangerous for their lack of soul-binding, while the Daughters consider sanctioned psykers to have been deeply broken by their training.
In the forty-first millennium, there are many who believe the Daughters of Magnus to be a branch of the Adepta Sororitas, but nothing could be further from the truth. For one thing, the Daughters of Magnus are a far older organization that the Sisterhood, which was only founded after the Age of Apostasy and the Passive Decree. For another, the Sisters of Battle are violently anti-psyker, banishing those of their number who are revealed to hold psychic abilities and often executing them after prolonged "atonement" that can more accurately be described as "torture". The various orders that make up the Daughters of Magnus worship the God-Emperor and Magnus as His son, and believe whole-heartedly into the prophecies that the Crimson King will one day return from his slumber. They follow the Imperial Creed, but it is only their close relationship to the Thousand Sons that prevent them from being declared heretical for their psychic practices. Even with that protection, the Inquisition is ever watchful of them, since they lack the power of the Rubric of Ahriman to keep them safe from the Warp's depredations. Few of the Daughters have ever succumbed to the lure of Chaos, but like the Thousand Sons themselves, the few who have became some of the most dangerous foes of the Imperium to ever plague the galaxy with their existence.
The Thousand Sons were most numerous on the walls of Ahat-iakby, ready to die to defend their Primarch's resting place. Members of the Pyrae swept the battlements clean with streams of aetheric fire, while those of the Raptora cult tried to force back the infernal towers. But the daemonic crystals atop each structure radiated a malevolent influence that shielded them against psychic attacks, and eventually the sons of Magnus relented, preferring to use more conventional methods to tear down the Warp-spawned siege-engines. For hours the defenders of Ahat-iakby fought against the daemonic tide, until finally the last of the towers was brought down and the last of the Neverborn having set foot upon the battlements was banished back to the Realms of Chaos.
The daemon that landed before Madox as he ripped his staff free of a thing of blue flesh and betrayed hopes was a twisted hybrid of raven and man. It stood on two legs that ended in talons, its body was covered in black feathers, and its upper limbs were wings that ended in three-fingered hands whose pink skin was entirely too human. But it was its head that disturbed Madox the most as he rose his power staff in its direction, preparing to strike. Two human eyes looked at the son of Magnus from a beaked head, blue as the skies of Madox' near-forgotten homeworld.
'Doom,' croaked the daemon, tendrils of shadow rising from it. 'Doom comes for you, boy.'
Madox charged, but the Neverborn evaded his first strike and struck back with a blow to his side that nearly sent him to the ground. With a grunt, Madox turned and struck again.
'The Young King comes for you, Madox the Undying. His blade thirsts for your life as his destiny thirsts for your soul ! The old grudges between your lines will be your shared damnation !'
Madox ignored the daemon's taunting. There was nothing to be learned from listening to the lies of the Neverborn – this was one of the first lessons ever taught to any Aspirant of the Fifteenth Legion.
'Listen to Tokugra !' shrieked the daemon, suddenly furious at Madox' refusal to acknowledge its words. 'Doom comes for you and all your kind ! The blood-soaked raven will come for you all, anointed in the power of the Lord of War ! Your father cannot save you ! Nothing can save you !'
The shadows of the daemon's sorcery clung to Madox, trying to pry his armor as well as his mind open, but he fought them off through the focus brought about by the Enumerations. And he wasn't alone in that fight, for other shadows fought against Tokugra's spell, drawn to Madox by the hatred burning in his soul. The wails of the vengeful dead were blocking out the tempting whispers of Chaos, and Madox finally managed to hit the crow daemon. The base of his staff pierced through its chest and pinned it to the ground, writhing and shrieking. Madox looked down upon the creature, his helmet revealing nothing of the expression hidden behind it. But he knew the daemon could still feel his anger, and his contempt. The creatures of Tzeentch had spent thousands of years trying to corrupt the sons of Magnus, and the Fifteenth Legion knew well how to resist their deceptions.
'I care naught for your false prophecies, spawn of the Lord of Lies,' he spat, and channelled his power through the staff, burning the daemon's essence and sending it back to the Sea of Souls.
But the daemonic assault had only been the first and lesser part of Sarthorael's forces. Without giving the defenders time to recover, the Ever-Watcher sent forth the second wave : the grotesquely mutated inhabitants of Lutaketh. The Thousand Sons and their allies looked down in horror upon what had become of their own people, but they did not feel fear, for they could not conceive of any way these unfortunate wretches could threaten the walls. Ahat-iakby's outer ring of fortifications had suffered from the daemons' attack, but the Fourth Legion-built walls were still holding strong. Many among the Imperial officers thought this new attack to be a mere ploy to force them to waste ammunition and damage their moral by forcing them to slaughter their erstwhile compatriots. Doubtlessly this was part of Sarthorael's plan, but the Greater Daemon had another purpose in mind for the corrupted humans he had brought with him from the city he had murdered.
Once again, Sarthorael and his circle of Lords of Change gathered, and wove a ritual that took effect as the mass of twisted flesh reached the base of Ahat-iakby's walls, stepping on the broken, dissolving remnants of the infernal army. When the infernal siege towers had been brought down, the gemstones atop them had broken apart, their shards spreading across the killing field. These shards now reacted to the ritual, the power that still lingered within them answering the call of Tzeentchian sorcery. They began to glow, and the mutagenous energies flowing through the mutants' twisted bodies reacted in turn, like calling to like, following one of the oldest principles of the Great Sea. Like a tidal wave, the mutated people of Lutaketh rose, their flesh melting together, and struck a point of the wall. At the moment of impact, there was a terrible flash of eldritch light that melted the eyes of those who stood closest to it, and the entire wall trembled. When visibility returned, the purpose of the ritual became clear : the flesh of tens of thousands of mutants had been transmuted into one giant, hideously shaped statue of gemstone.
The hardness of the material combined with the force behind the living battering ram before its transformation had proved to be enough to overcome even Iron Warriors' construction, and a spider web of cracks spread along the wall. The Thousand Sons shouted for those nearest to the blow to flee, but soon the inevitable happened and an entire section of the wall collapsed in a deluge of debris that crushed thousands more mutants, but also created a direct stairway to the streets of Ahat-iakby. The remaining mutants started to climb it at once, crushing the shattered pieces of the great gemstone statue under their feet. From the battlements, Madox looked upon the devastation, and gave the order to withdraw. The outer wall was lost, and with it likely the city itself as well. But the fortress holding the great sanctum and the Thousand Sons' base of operations on Terathalion remained, as well fortified as any other Imperial stronghold in the galaxy. And the wards on these walls were strong enough that Sarthorael wouldn't be able to pull that trick again.
Then, within the ranks of the Traitor Astartes, Sarthorael raised his staff, and the forces of the Dark Angels and Space Wolves began to advance, while the Ever-Watcher took to the skies. The rest of his circle of Lords of Change joined him, as did a flock of Chaos Furies, twisted gunships, and Heldrakes. The earth trembled under the impact of thousands of ceramite boots, tanks, and the steps of Chaos Titans. Now that the defenders of Ahat-iakby had tired themselves fighting the daemonic and mutant chaff, and the walls had been breached, it was time for the elite of the Black Crusade to march. Deep below the surface, in their shelters, babies began to wail, their innocent souls sensing the breach of the city's wards and the intrusion of the evil they had kept at bay for so long.
"Behold, he is coming with the clouds, the slave of the Deceiver and lord of the deceived.
On white wings does he flies, and doom follows him in a storm to cast down the works of men.
With him come the knights and the wolves, their purity of old tainted by his dark will and power, to extinguish the light that was promised, to break the chance which took aeons to create.
Cry out for the dead, whose vengeance was long delayed !
Cry out for the lost sons, who wander into the dark places between the stars !
Cry out for the exiled children, trapped in the labyrinth built by those who came before !
For only together can they preserve the hope of salvation from the Deceiver's cruel talons."
Excerpt from the Terra Apocrypha
The Imperials began to abandon the outer wall, retreating in an orderly fashion while a rearguard formed to hold the breach as long as possible. Those who volunteered for this duty knew there would be no coming back – they stood alone against the might of a Black Crusade, and it fell to them to sell their lives dearly. The sons and Daughters of Magnus stood alongside the children of Terathalion, five hundred in all, and they fought atop the rubble, using the higher ground to their advantage. For nineteen minutes, they held the breach – long enough for the Imperial forces to evacuate the walls and finish the preparations for the next phase of the siege. Hundreds of Chaos Marines fell while attempting the climb, but eventually, Sarthorael himself descended.
He could feel the awful power of the Empyrean, pressing at the Rubric coursing through his body and soul, searching for weaknesses and finding none. The Warp was never clean, never that, even here on Terathalion, the center of the Thousand Sons' efforts to spread knowledge and morality. But now it was festering with the foulness of Chaos, and the entire world was under the gaze of the God of Lies. Every spell, every gout of fire that incinerated the mutants and cooked the traitors' flesh within their armor, was more difficult than the last, as the poison accumulated around his soul like a crust. Never had he had such respect for the human psykers who fought at his side, without the protection of the Rubric. They were facing the full horror of the Great Ocean, and they did not falter. There was courage here greater than anything the sons of Magnus, whose fear had been ripped out of during Ascension, could ever display. It inspired him. It gave him strength.
He would not fall, as long as one of them stood. He owed them as much.
And so Brother Ezorath fought, unleashing all of his Pyrae arts against the enemy. Wolves, Angels, daemons, corrupt mortals – it did not matter. They all burned in the end. He was the Primarch's wrath made manifest, the fury of Terathalion let loose against those who would defile the world's greatest city. He was levitating now, kept aloft by the energies he was channelling even as they ravaged his body. He could taste blood, and feel it drip from his nose, ears and eyes. He had already lost all sensations in his limbs, his nerve endings destroyed by the power he was wielding. His consciousness was fading, darkness creeping at the corners of his sight.
Still, he continued to fight, even as his mind finally lost the focus of the Enumerations and the pain spiked to new and horrible heights. Then a shadow fell upon him, and he rose his face to see the giant figure of Sarthorael come down and land right before him. Ezorath focused the stream of fire coming from his hands in an unending flow on the daemon, but he had grown too weak. With a cruel chuckle, the Greater Daemon extinguished the flames, before reaching out and seizing Ezorath. The Rubric flared at the daemon's touch, protecting the flesh of the son of Magnus even as his armor twisted and bent, its metal corrupted by Sarthorael's aura.
'So much potential,' growled the winged Neverborn, its grip tightening on the warrior's torso, ceramite cracking under the strength of the deceptively thin claws. 'Wasted, just like your father's, just like your Legion's. You could have been the chosen servants of the Architect of Fate, and ruled over the stars in his name. Now, just like your sire and grandsire, all that you have built will fall to the wrath of the true God you denied. Now, as the end finally comes for your grandsire's failed empire, you will all be remembered as great warriors, who died … for nothing.'
'For the Emperor,' spat back the son of Magnus, and then the Ever-Watcher closed his fist. There was pain, sharp and immense, and then a flash of light – and then …
Atop the ruined wall of Ahat-iakby, Sarthorael screamed in rage as the soul of his victim slipped through his grasp. Even in death, something, someone was protecting it from him.
'But not for much longer,' he promised, looking toward the fortress of the Thousand Sons.
The defenders of the breach fell, slaughtered to the last by the power of the Ever-Watcher, but none of them took a single step back as they died. With the time they had bought, the defenders had been able to turn the entire city of Ahat-iakby into a gigantic trap. Tens of thousands of Spire and Imperial Guard troopers and skitarii waited in ambush, ready to bleed the Chaos army every step of the way, while more forces withdrew through the streets toward the Legion fortress at the city's core. Ahat-iakby was a huge city, hosting more than thirty million souls without resorting to the typical architecture of a hive-city, and spread out across thousands of square kilometers. Entire districts had been trapped, towers set up to collapse at a moment's signal, and those were only the mundane dangers awaiting the invading army. With any thought of collateral damage thrown out the window, the Thousand Sons had activated ten thousand years' worth of arcane traps, some of which even they did not know the purpose of. But while these measures would help deal with the infantry and heavy vehicles Sarthorael had gathered to his cause, they would do nothing against the greater threat of the Chaos Titans. With the outer wall abandoned and its guns silenced, the traitor God-Machines had torn their own way in, blasting huge sections of the fortifications apart with infernal weaponry. One by one, they crossed the rubble and entered the city, crushing buildings underfoot.
The being that had once been known as Indias Cavalerio, Princeps Senioris of Legio Tempestus, laughed as he killed. His laughter boomed from the massive vox-speakers on the shoulders of his Warlord, who had once been known as Deus Tempestus but was now called Ker'ktas'nox by the millions of Dark Mechanicum tech-thralls who lived on the Titan's homeworld, deep within the Eye of Terror. To them, the name was that of the chief god of the pantheon they worshipped, the splinter of the Legio that had remained alongside Cavalerio after the shattering at the Siege of Terra. He still remembered that battle, the glory and scale of it along with the pain when his previous Titan had been destroyed and the Ultramarines had dragged his body out of the ruins before implanting him within the nearly-ruined Deus Tempestus, forcing both of them to return to the frontline with their sorceries. He had never forgiven them, even though they had helped make him the god he was today, his body and mind fused to Ker'ktas'nox in a way the thralls of the False Omnissiah couldn't possibly hope to understand. One day the Thirteenth Legion would pay for the lies of its sire and the indignities it had visited upon Cavalerio – but for now, there was a battle to enjoy.
It had been Azrael who had brought the Chaos Titans to the Black Crusade. The Lord of Lies had appeared in orbit of their daemon world and called upon ancient debts owed to the First Legion, using words of power agreed upon in ages long past. What unnerved Cavalerio was that the Grand Master with whom the pact had been made had died mere days after, slain along with his entire force when a pack of Warp-born leviathans had devoured his fleet. For centuries, Cavalerio had believed that the compact had been voided – then Azrael had shown up, and there had been no escaping the mystical bonds he had placed upon himself in return for the First Legion's help.
Aboard their transports, the Titans had followed the Dark Angels out of the Eye, sailing paths through the storms that had burned themselves out of the memory of their Navigators. And now, here they were, part of a Black Crusade against the homeworld of the Thousand Sons themselves. Ker'ktas'nox still bore some of the scarring the sons of Magnus' power had inflicted upon its hull at the Palace's walls. Under the banner of a Daemon Lord, they had come to bring an end to Magnus' legacy, and Cavalerio was going to relish every moment of it. The defenders of this miserable city were as insects before him, and he would slaughter all those who stood in his way – then he would crack open the Thousand Sons' fortress and watch as the Crimson King's body was destroyed. There was nothing that could stop them …
A booming horn drew his attention to the city's center. Vast sections of the fortress' walls were collapsing, revealing hollow spaces hidden within their structure. And within these spaces were towering forms, each as tall as Ker'ktas'nox, glowing with the power bound within them.
'The Wardens,' Cavalerio whispered, something very much like fear growing within his withered heart. 'The Thousand Sons have awakened the Wardens !'
The Wardens of Ahat-iakby
Crafted in the image of Prospero's ancient gods, the Wardens of Ahat-iakby are a set of Warlord-sized Titans whose creation was commanded by Magnus the Red in the late days of the Great Crusade, when the technological mastery of the Mechanicum was at its peak. The Wardens were created using a fragmentary STC recovered by the Thousand Sons on a world that had been scoured clean of life by violent solar eruptions. It took many tech-priests many years to extrapolate the missing parts of the schematic from the remaining data, as well as insights from the Crimson King himself and the dedicated help of his sons. However, their construction was halted by the eruption of the Roboutian Heresy and the need to focus resources on fighting the hordes of the Arch-Traitor.
The Thousand Sons reclaimed the pieces of the project on forge-worlds that had been devastated by Guilliman's armies, and the Wardens were finally completed during the Scouring. Their first battle was the siege of the Fang, on Fenris, where they fought against the Titans whose services the Sixth Legion had managed to retain. The Warhound packs of Legio Fulcrum were torn to shreds thanks to the Wardens' unique ability : their capacity to wield psychic power as a weapon on a Titanic scale. Using priceless archeotech, the Wardens can channel the energies of the Warp safely and unleash devastating attacks, capable of annihilating entire companies of warriors no matter how well armored they might be. With purifying fire and kinetic blasts, the Wardens hold power far greater than that of conventional Warlords – the tech-priests estimate each of them is worth five Warlords.
However, there is a price to pay for the use of the Wardens on the battlefield. The machine-spirits of the Titans are even more prideful than those of other God-Machines, each having taken on traits of the ancient god in whose image it was shaped. As such, no mortal mind, not even one trained by the Collegia Titanica, can hope to master them. The only way to awaken the machine-spirit of a Warden is for a son of Magnus – or a human psyker of equivalent power and discipline, which is incredibly rare even in the Prosperine Dominion – to sacrifice himself to serve as princeps. The Warden will drain the essence of the sacrifice, ultimately killing his body and reducing him into one more spiritual echo within the Titan's core. There can be no avoiding that fate once the connection has been made and the Titan has been roused from its slumber – any attempt at severing the connection will result in the immediate death of the princeps. Because of this, the Wardens are only awakened in the direst of situations, and spend the centuries – sometimes millennia – between their awakenings within the walls of Ahat-iakby. Only when war comes to the Prosperine Dominion in terrible scale were the Wardens roused. One such occasion had been during the War of the Beast, when the Wardens had fought against the Ork Gargants throughout the Dominion.
By the time of the Siege of Terathalion, the Wardens were legacies of a distant age that were still religiously maintained by a dedicated order of tech-priests that the rest of the Adeptus Mechanicus regarded as forever walking the line between orthodoxy and techno-heresy. There were rumors of other Psi-Titans in existence, used during the Great Crusade only at the Emperor's own command and against the most terrible of enemies, but those hadn't been seen in ten thousand years, and should they exist the Inquisition would doubtlessly keep any trace of them under utmost secrecy.
His heart bleeding, Madox had ordered the Wardens to be roused from their slumber, knowing full well the price this required. All of the Thousand Sons in Ahat-iakby volunteered to give their lives to join with the Titans, forcing the Undying to choose the sacrifices from among their ranks. He picked those whose minds would best direct the God-Machines' enormous power, and promised to each of the twelve warriors that, should he survive the coming battle, he would use all of his talents in the healing arts to try and save them from the doom awaiting them. They smiled and nodded, but each knew just how unlikely that was. There was more to the Wardens' price than anyone understood, the connection between them and their pilots more than merely physical.
The Chaos Titans of Legio Tempestus were met by the Wardens of Ahat-iakby, and the ground of the city trembled under the battle of giants. And in their shadow, the forces of the Black Crusade met the dogged resistance of Terathalion's defenders. A thousand heroes were born in this battle, laying down their lives in defense of the Imperium and rallying broken units to stand their ground against the darkness. Yet for all their strength and courage, there was no doubt that eventually the traitors would reach the fortress. Sarthorael's sorcery had brought down the city's outer walls far before the estimated time, and his army was far more powerful than the defenders could hope to defeat on their own. The Silent Callers were tearing more rents into reality, their eldritch might overpowering the ancient wards and bringing armies of daemons into the streets of Ahat-iakby – weakened by the runes laid down by the Thousand Sons' ancestors, but still dangerous. Packs of Wulfen were let loose by their Space Wolves masters, hunting by a sense of scent keen enough to pierce any illusion. The airspace above the city was filled with explosions as the fortress' cannons fired at the swarms of Chaos flyers. War had come to Ahat-iakby, total and absolute.
Contact with the other cities was still impossible – Madox could only communicate with the Word of Magnus thanks to his special psychic connection with his brother aboard the vessel. Asim, one of the Legion's greatest Apothecaries, had been one of Madox' teachers in years long past, and the bond between tutor and pupil remained as strong as ever. Lady Admiral Sarkath was forced to listen to the reports of her guard, unable to do anything to influence the course of the battle. Street by street, the forces of the Black Crusade were getting closer to the Fifteenth Legion's greatest stronghold, paying a bloody toll for each step – but, crucially, one their master could afford.
Then, from the madness at the system's edge, a new fleet manifested, passing through the wound left by the Black Crusade. The lost sons had come back, and the Dark Gods themselves trembled.
The fleet came through the same wound in reality that had spat out the Black Crusade fleet, but these were no traitor reinforcements. For one thing, the first auspex scans indicated no corruption of the vessels' Imperial construction; for another, the Chaos ships were reacting to their arrival with what could only be called complete panic. Intercepted vox-traffic between the various elements of the Black Crusade revealed that witches and wyrds across the Chaos fleet had started to go mad the moment the first vessels had emerged, screaming about the doom that had come for them all. With the leaders of the Black Crusade all down on the planet, the seconds they had left in command were struggling to maintain control, but already lone ships were fleeing, abandoning their comrades in their desperation to escape what they could sense aboard this new armada.
On the bridge of the Word of Magnus, Lady Admiral Kiya Sarkath looked at the auspex readings coming in, listing the numbers and types of the incoming fleet. The data didn't make sense. There were merchant vessels, Imperial Navy frigates, Rogue Traders ships, and a handful of Legion warships whose last recorded sighting in the archives was centuries – sometimes millennia – ago. Furthermore, there were dozens of ships in the new fleet, but that wasn't nearly enough to justify the panic that had seized the Chaos armada. Even if Kiya took her own ships out of orbit and successfully pulled off a pincer manoeuvre, the Black Crusade's fleet would still outnumber them.
'Transmission coming from the lead ship, Admiral !' called out one of the vox-officers from his post.
'Patch it through,' commanded Kiya, her hands tightening on the arm rests of her command throne.
The voice that came from the bridge's vox-speakers was deep, cultivated. This was a voice that was used to making speeches, a voice whose smoothness reminded the Lady Admiral of velvet. Yet the words it spoke were hard as adamantium, and filled with enough rage to ignite a star. She imagined that this was what the angels of retribution spoken of in legends sounded like. The voice spoke only three words, slowly, carefully, and Kiya somehow knew that these words were coming out of every vox-speaker aboard the entire Chaos fleet, their meaning burning into the minds of the tainted.
'We are returned.'
[Check the illustration made by Nemris for this chapter on Deviantart : We Are Returned]
AN : Thanks to Jaenera Targaryen for beta-reading this, and thanks to Nemris for his amazing work. It's rather important you go check the illustration for this chapter if you haven't already - it contains quite a big reveal for the story.
I do not have much to say, this time. Just thanks for your support, and please be sure to leave a review/comment on this chapter. I have to decide whether to continue this or go back to Warband of the Forsaken Sons for a bit, and if you would rather have one over the other, make sure to let me know.
Oh, yes, there is something I should mention. This story will focus on the battle of Ahat-iakby, but once the "book" is over, if anyone wants to write stories about the other cities of Terathalion - whose fate is only lightly touched upon in this part - I will be glad of it. Don't hesitate to contact me about this, though again, you will need to wait until I am done with the Siege of Terathalion, to avoid contradictions and spoilers alike.
Zahariel out.