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 am Ahzek Ahriman.
This thought, this name, I hold close to my heart as I walk in this endless darkness, in search of atonement. It is my pride and my shame, my strength and my weakness. As I walk into this endless dark, I hold onto that truth, to keep my thoughts from wandering into darker places still.
I am …
I am standing on the rocky ground of a world without a name, surrounding by hundreds, thousands of warriors clad in crimson armor, all immobile, all silent. Something has gone horribly wrong.
'Ahzek !' a voice calls out, filled with horror and fury. 'What have you done ?!'
I know that voice, even as I turn to face its source. It is Khayon, still wearing the black armor he wore when he defended our people from those who would destroy them. Even though I have never told him so, I am envious of him – I wish I had been there, at the end of Prospero. Perhaps having taken a part in its people's salvation would ease the pain in my soul of knowing it is lost forever.
Khayon's aura, always filled with cold wrath since I saw him on Terra, is now aflame with burning anger, all of it directed at me. If I were not in such shock already, I might fear for my life.
'You will pay for this, Ahzek,' he says, and I know in my soul that this isn't a threat, nor is it a promise. In that moment, Khayon is more than the great warlord and psyker he already is : he is the voice of destiny itself. I will pay for this sin against my Legion, over and over again, until I am forgiven at last – but I know, too, that I do not deserve such forgiveness.
'I will not follow you anymore, Ahzek,' declares Khayon, before turning his back and stalking away, back to his Thunderhawk – alone, leaving behind the silent warriors of his Company. 'You are not worthy of leading the Legion … what's left of it.'
No one tries to stop him. Not me, who knows all too well that he is right. Nor the others, who are still lost in their own horror. We have all accomplished so much, fought for so long against the forces of Chaos. We lost our homeworld, with only a few of us able to even fight for its defense. We fought in the Webway below the Imperial Palace, and witnessed the monstrosity of our erstwhile cousins. We sensed the Emperor's death at the hands of the Arch-Traitor, a psychic scream that echoes inside my soul still. We beheld the new form of Vulkan as he emerged from Hell itself on Pythos, a nightmare of dark power and desire of absolute dominion. We saw our father fall, victim of a daemon's spell, and we thought that this was the extent of our enemies' revenge. Then, we all felt our own flesh change, mutate under the strain of the energies we channel by the strength of our minds. Our brothers died, one by one, unable to endure the transformation or taking their own lives rather than become monsters. We sought a way to save them, to save the Legion, now that Magnus was gone and no longer protected us from the curse laid upon us by the Great Deceiver.
And now … this. Our Legion is ash, just as the Imperium's ideals are dust, and it is my fault. I thought I could save them, replicate our father's work. But I have failed. I have failed them all.
'Let this be remembered,' I say, my voice numb with pain and shock. Around me, my brothers turn, freed from their own horrified trances by my voice. 'Let my shame never be forgotten.'
I walk away from them, not hearing their calls, not knowing whether they are cursing me or trying to get me to turn back. It doesn't matter, in the end – I am the one who hates me the most.
I am …
I am walking into darkness, with naught but the distant light of redemption to guide me. The past is just that – the past. I cannot change what has happened, no matter how much it might haunts me. My failure – my sin – destroyed my Legion, even as it saved those of my brothers who survived – so few, so very few. And so I walk, searching for a way to save those I failed.
I am Ahzek Ahriman.
The Siege of Terathalion
Part Four : The Exiled Return
No soul bears such guilt as that of Ahzek Ahriman, the Exiled son of Magnus. When the Crimson King fell and his protection was removed from the Fifteenth Legion, it was Ahriman who designed the Rubric to prevent his brothers from descending into uncontrolled, insane mutation. But his ritual did not work as intended, and of the thousands of warriors who were affected, only a few hundreds survived while the rest became nothing more than silent ghosts trapped within their own sealed armor. Horrified by the results of his work, he left his brothers, seeking a way to undo what the Rubric had wrought. His quest has taken him from one end of the galaxy to the other, and into realms best left untrodden by mortal feet. But for all his regrets, Ahriman is still possibly the brightest mind of the entire galaxy, and one of its most powerful psykers. Of the many threats he has encountered over the millennia, none have managed to end his tormented existence. Yet there are places and times dangerous even to one such as the Exile, and as his path leads him to what may be his greatest hope of success, he will face challenges like never before – ones that he cannot hope to overcome alone …
Millions of years before life rose from the primordial muck of Old Earth, the race of aliens known only as the Old Ones ruled over the galaxy. Little is known of them, even in the most ancient legends of the Eldar, who inherited the stars after the Old Ones' disappearance. Along with most of the galaxy, the Children of Isha also claimed many of the Old Ones' relics. And of these, none was greater than the Labyrinthine Dimension, more commonly called the Webway. Created by the Old Ones at the apex of their power, the Webway connected the entire galaxy together, allowing quick travel across unimaginable distances. Though the Eldar barely understood the science underpinning it, they built upon the Webway, developing their own gates and expanding the network even further. For millions of years, the Webway allowed the Eldar Empire to dominate the galaxy all but unchallenged. Only the greenskins ever threatened their supremacy, with legends speaking of Warbosses the likes of which haven't been seen in the galaxy since – save during the War of the Beast. With their Gods to protect the Eldar from the Ruinous Powers, the aliens were nearly gods themselves, living in a golden age of prosperity the galaxy had never seen before or since.
This Age came to an end when, nearly sixty millions years after the Old Ones' disappearance, the Eldar proved unworthy of their ancestors' legacy. Their excesses and decadence festered into the Warp, and as the power of their old Gods faded, Slaanesh was slowly formed. The birth of the Dark Prince destroyed the Eldar Empire and Pantheon alike, reducing the once-proud race to a few scattered remnants. Of these survivors, some live on Craftworlds, denying themselves even the slightest taste of pleasure for fear of drawing the Dark Prince's eyes. Others live on savage worlds, in harmony with these worlds' god-like spirits. Still others hide in lairs deep within the Webway, such as the Dark City of Commoragh and the Kingdom of Shaa-dom. There, as they indulge into the same depravity and arrogance that doomed their species, their souls are slowly drained by the God they still serve, however unknowingly. By denying the Dark Prince, placing themselves beyond his reach, or feeding him the suffering of others rather than their own, these branches of the shattered Eldar race have endured the passage of the last ten millennia, in a fashion.
The Imperium knows of these three factions, and while alliances have occasionally been made with the Craftworld and Exodite Eldar, those who dwell within Commoragh's dark halls have ever been hated and hunted – for they are cruel raiders, seeking slaves to torment to fill the vacuum of their own twisted souls. And very, very few among the most exalted ranks of the Inquisition and the Adeptus Astartes know of another faction of Eldar still, who endure unchanged ever since the species' galaxy-shattering Fall : the Harlequins. Servants of the Laughing God, the only divinity to escape the birth of Slaanesh unscathed, they fight the slaves of Ruin at every turn, dancing to the tune of their master, sheltered from the thirst of the Dark Prince by his power. Many scholars, human and Eldar alike, have investigated the deeds and motives of these strange warriors. The Harlequins always seem to act in the Children of Isha's best interests, but they take the long view – even more so than the Craftworlds' Farseers. Over the millennia, they have been allies and opponents alike to the Imperium, striking select targets with uncanny precision.
But there is a fifth group, one so secretive and few in number that only a handful of humans have ever learned of its existence. They live in a secret realm, a unique Craftworld hidden deeper in the Webway that even Commoragh. There, behind wards that were old when the Eldar race was young, they protect knowledge most dangerous and vile – knowledge about Chaos, the Old Ones, and many more terrible subjects. Most who have heard of this place, Eldar and Inquisitors alike, think it to be a myth – few know it to be real, and those few rarely sleep well. They call it the Black Library, and it is said there is no secret that cannot be found there, if one is willing to risk one's soul and sanity. Beyond these proscribed lore, the Black Library also contains a veritable host of dangerous artefacts, relics of Chaos from a time before Mankind, when the Dark Gods corrupted and destroyed entire species in the shadow of the Eldar Empire. These are weapons and tomes imbued with all the hatred and madness of the races that crafted them, tools capable of bringing ruin to the very stars. Of all the other Eldar, it is said that only the Harlequins know the path to the Black Library, and they are the only associates of its mysterious keepers.
Even Ahriman himself knew not how long he had wandered in the Webway. The former First Captain of the Fifteenth Legion had entered the Labyrinthine Dimension after uncovering clues as to the Black Library's location, but these had soon proved insufficient to his needs. Built by the Old Ones to be outside of normal time and space, the Webway distorted the passage of time like the Warp itself, though in a far more regular and less dangerous manner. In ancient gardens that had flourished even without care, Ahriman found sustenance, and his powers kept his armor from falling apart or its power source from ever failing. The time dilation phenomenon meant that, sometimes, Ahriman would appear to age centuries, and have to force himself to continue to advance on aged, withered legs – and then, in the next section of the Webway, his youth and strength would return, until he looked exactly as he had when he had first been raised to the ranks of the Legionaries.
This made Ahriman's memory of his errance fragmentary, as entire centuries spent wandering in some sections of the Webway would fade from even his transhuman mind, becoming nothing more than nearly forgotten dreams. But throughout it all, Ahriman held on to his purpose : to find the Black Library, and within its halls, the way to undo what he had done and bring his brothers back from the silent death to which the Rubric had consigned them. In the remains of long destroyed Eldar kingdoms and upon the walls of forgotten Old Ones ruins, Ahriman searched for the path to the Black Library. In truth, it seemed as if the hand of Fate itself was guiding him, for whenever the Exile's last trail had failed, he would discover a new clue that would set him on his way again.
Finally, walking paths even the Harlequins and the custodians of the Black Library themselves had forgotten, Ahriman reached his goal – only to find out that war, his old companion, had found it first. The Black Library was under siege by a Chaos army, a horde of Slaaneshi daemons and a host of Blood Angels. The daemons poured in a seemingly endless horde from sections of the Webway that had fallen into the Warp, while the Blood Angels gathered reinforcements from other Nine Legion outposts across the galaxy, summoning them with sorcery and blood rituals. Hundreds of Sanguinius' sons were already present, and they had brought with them tens of thousands of their mortal cultists, deluded creatures caught in the thrall of their masters' unholy Glamour. Driven by the will of the Dark Prince, these two armies fought together to breach the walls of the Black Library and claim the power within it in the name of their unholy patron.
Should they succeed, Ahriman knew that the entire galaxy would burn, though he did not yet know the veritable scope of the threat. In truth, with the relics and lore of the Black Library in the hands of his servants, Slaanesh would simply win the Great Game of Chaos, and make all living things in the galaxy his playthings for the rest of eternity. The laws of the Materium would be shattered forever. Even the other Dark Gods would be destroyed or enslaved according to the Lord of Pleasure's whim. Reality itself would be unmade as the sin of the Eldar devoured all that was, spreading from the galaxy that had birthed it until the entire universe was remade in its image.
It had taken the Dark Prince ten thousand years to locate the Black Library, using his Blood Angels to hunt for it across the Webway without being aware of their true purpose. Even the path they had eventually found would soon no longer exist, however, for the masters of the Black Library held the power to collapse entire portions of the Old Ones' network should the need arise – as it had now. This was the one chance of the Youngest God to claim ascendancy over his elder siblings, and his divine pride beat in the twisted souls of the Blood Angels and the undying essence of the Neverborn in equal measure. Few among the decadent host truly understood what it was that drove them forward. Most sons of Sanguinius simply thirsted after the ancient blood of the Black Library's Eldar keepers, while the daemons hungered for their souls. Only the lords of the two hosts understood the true purpose of the attack, and knew what rewards would be theirs if they succeeded in their god-appointed task – and what punishments would be inflicted upon them, should they fail.
The Exile beheld a ruined city, spreading as far as the eye could see. The remnants were so old it was impossible to determinate what purpose they had served when they had been whole. Toppled spires laid on the ground along with fallen walls and shattered domes. The steps of Blood Angels and Eldar alike disturbed the powder that covered the earth – a mix of ground glass, dust, and other particles that seemed to glow in the battle's lights, showing glimpses of the city as it had been.
Above the city, Ahriman could see glimpses of an immense circular stairway, seeming to lead infinitely upward, to the black void above. The stairway was supposed to be invisible, but the energies being unleashed in the battle were interfering with the complex wards hiding it from perception as well as from conventional, three-dimensional space, and sections of it appeared to flash in and out of existence, suspended in the air before vanishing once more.
Around that strange construction, creatures clad in blood-red ceramite flew on feathered wings, clashing with Eldar jet-bikes. Ahriman watched as one of the Vampires caught a xenos by the leg and pulled him off his vehicle before biting him in the throat. In seconds, only a dried husk remained of the alien warrior. The Vampire Marine discarded it as he twitched in the air, caught in the throes of ecstasy as he consumed the memories of his slain prey. The Exile had seen such things before, when the Blood Angels had joined the attack on the Imperial Palace after the death of Horus at the fangs of their twisted Primarch. Even if the victim was a xenos, the memory still brought his old disgust and wrath to the surface of his thoughts, and a sort of clarity returned to his clouded mind. Anger and righteousness flooded his mind at the sight of such vileness. The weight of his shame lifted a fraction from his shoulders, and part of what had made Ahriman First Captain and then Legion Master of the Thousand Sons could suddenly be seen once more in his countenance. He stood straighter, more assured, and his hand tightened around his Black Staff.
'War, then,' he whispered to himself. Then he began to walk toward the city, his mind set on the destruction of his foes for the first time in ten thousand years.
In the shadows of the Webway, behind Ahriman, a cloaked figure watched with satisfaction.
Secretly searching the surface thoughts of the Blood Angels and their mortal minions, Ahriman quickly learned that the Slaaneshi host had been laying siege to the Black Library for almost a month. Thousands of daemons had already fallen, as had many of Blood Angels and their mortal thralls. In the dead Eldar city of Aien'rach, built by the Black Library's founders in the earliest years of the Eldar Empire, the Children of Isha fought against the spawn of Slaanesh. Armies of Eldar soldiers had arrived from the Craftworlds, summoned by the pleas of the White Seers, led by Autarchs and Farseers alike. Entire troupes of Harlequins danced amidst the battle, laughing in the face of the Dark Prince's servants. Ahriman even saw a handful of gigantic saurians, mounted by Exodite Eldar, crushing entire packs of Neverborn beneath their heels. Only the Dark Eldars of Commoragh were nowhere to be seen, and even in his near-fugue state, Ahriman wondered what their absence might mean. Surely even the decadent scions of the Dark City would know the perils of allowing the Black Library to fall to the slaves of Chaos. Had they been delayed … or had something happened that made even the White Seers unwilling to deal with their dark brethren ?
The White Seers
Long before the Fall of the Eldar, the wisest among the Children of Isha saw the true danger of Chaos. Even now, the legends of the Eldar speak of the ancient and terrible wars their distant ancestors waged against the Slaves to Ruin. To the Craftworld-born, these tales are seen as proof of their species' greatness and their duty to oppose the slaves of Chaos in all things – but the eldest among them know that it is not them that are depicted in these tales. In the past, thousands of Eldar holy warriors fought against the corrupted champions of the Dark Gods, imbued with the power of the Eldar Pantheon. But the Fall has crippled this august order : when Slaanesh was born, all those infused with the power of the Eldar Gods were destroyed. From the devastated collective psychic landscape of the Eldar, the Phoenix Lords would emerge in time, but the old champions of the Eldar Gods perished to the last. Only the keepers of the order, those dedicated to the containment of the Chaos artefacts too dangerous to be destroyed, survived. Their talents came not from the gifts of psychic constructs masquerading as Gods, but from intense training and force of will. These same talents protected them from the worse of the Fall's soul-scouring effects.
These scholars were known as the White Seers, and though they had lost the support of their divine champions their duty remained the same. They were the keepers of the Black Library, guardians of the immense knowledge it contained and gaolers of the dark treasures locked away in its vaults. But the Fall had changed the place of the Eldar in the galaxy – they were now a dying breed, hunted by the Dark God their arrogance and corruption had spawned. The White Seers hid the Black Library, severing all but the most secret paths of the Webway leading to it. The search for dangerous relics all but ended, with only the most galaxy-shattering artefacts drawing the White Seers out of hiding.
So it has been that, for ten thousand years, the White Seers have kept watch over the Black Library's accursed treasures. For a hundred centuries, they have maintained the wards and spells that contain the relics' dark power, fighting an endless battle against the slow decay of their forebears' great work. Most of the White Seers of today were already active when the Fall occurred, for their grim duty preserves them even from the slow ageing of the Eldar race. That duty has taken its own toll, however, and many White Seers are little more than spirits clad in white robes, wandering the corridors of the Black Library, whispering in languages known only to their kind.
Those few who remain corporeal, or who have been recruited into the order's ranks after the Fall, are charged with communicating with the Black Library's only reliable allies : the Harlequins. They share their visions and wisdom with the servants of the Laughing God, who in turn pass it on to the Craftworld Eldar. Since the Fall, the Craftworld Eldars have gone to war many times at the secret request of the White Seers, in order to help them recover some artefact of great power and danger. The White Seers themselves lack any true martial skill. Their training focuses on the one thing that is required of them : containment. Daemon-possessed weapons and other Chaos artefacts cannot corrupt them, and they even can shield others from their influence as long as they are carrying the item in question. They are also scholars of the forbidden, possessing extensive knowledge of the Ruinous Powers – the kind of lore that would shatter the mind of a lesser soul and leave a hollowed, Chaos-tainted wretch behind. Their assistance has been the reason for many successful missions of the Harlequins. On the rare occasions an Imperial agent has been allowed access to the Black Library, it has always been at the White Seers' command, in order to prevent some terrible doom from befalling the galaxy. It is more frequent for Eldar wanderers to be allowed within the Black Library, though even they are carefully monitored and kept from its most dangerous parts.
Ahriman's goal was to reach the Black Library, but in order to do that, he first needed to end the siege threatening it. Fulfilling his quest would mean nothing if the Library fell to Chaos moments after he was done, for he had glimpsed the thoughts of the Blood Angels and what passed for the Neverborn's consciousness, and knew their intent should the knowledge of the Black Library fall into their hands. Exiled or not, that was not something he could allow to happen. Besides, he didn't think he could break inside anyway : the defenses that kept the Dark Prince's armies from entering were likely beyond his ability to breach as well. To gain access to the knowledge he needed to undo his past mistakes, he must first prove his worth and good intentions to the Library's guardians. And so, the Exile descended into the ruined city, and let loose his power upon the servants of Slaanesh.
With Slaanesh's will lashing at their souls, the attackers had not established proper defenses against an attack from the rear. After all, what foe could possibly come here, in the Webway's deepest paths ? All of their attention was focused inward, on the ruined city and the ethereal stairway that rose from its center. Still, a camp of sorts had appeared at the city's outskirts, where stood the Webway Portals through which the invaders had come. There too were the circles of Blood Angel Sorcerers attacking the Black Library's invisible defenses, seeking to overpower its ancient wards by calling upon the choirs of the Empyrean for assistance. They had been maintaining their rituals for weeks, dropping out of the circles only long enough to replenish their willpower by draining a few of the mortal slaves the Ninth Legion had brought with it. Each circle was surrounded by hundred of corpses, with Daemonettes picking at the bodies, fashioning macabre trophies from the remnants and catching and devouring the occasional tormented spirit.
The Exile struck with care, hiding his blows behind the natural unbalance of the Sea of Souls. One by one, the circles lost control of the energies they manipulated. Many of the Sorcerers died, their souls torn asunder by the very daemons they had entreated for help, but enough survived to understand they were under attack from an unexpected direction. Banding together, they let loose their ethereal selves, hunting for the one who had disturbed their rituals. The Sorcerers' spectral aspects were terrifying in shape, reflection of the corruption that seeped through their souls. Though they were all unique, shaped by the debased minds they represented, there were still some common themes : gleaming white fangs, and a sensation of terrible thirst radiating from them. Like sharks in water, they hunted Ahriman, sniffing the thin traces of his power he had left behind despite all his care. At the head of this sinister pack was Mephiston the Soul-Starved, first among the Slaaneshi host's Sorcerers, whose experience in this peculiar branch of sorcery was legendary.
Mephiston the Soul-Starved
Even the Inquisition's archives contain little about the creature that now calls itself Mephiston. Some believe him to have been born within the Eye of Terror, on one of a myriad worlds bathed in the baleful energies of the Warp. Others think he was a child of the Imperium, stolen from a Black Ship and transformed into a monster. And a few whisper – behind closed doors and after casting glances around them – that he was once an Inquisitor of the Holy Ordos, who was captured by the Ninth Legion and transformed by the dreadful Warp-sciences used by the sons of Sanguinius to replenish their ranks. However the human that would become Mephiston joined the Blood Angels, the Sorcerer that emerged from the transformation sarcophagus took the name of Calistarius. For several decades, he fought under the leadership of Chaos Lord Dante, wielding his psychic powers and sorcerous talents to terrifying effects in raids against the Imperium.
Then, in the early years of the Dark Millennium, Calistarius took part in a Blood Angel raid against an Imperial hive-world. The sons of Sanguinius had poisoned the world's aristocracy with the worship of Slaanesh, and the planet was caught in a brutal civil war between the corrupt nobles' forces and the rebellious population when they arrived. Dante's warband rampaged freely, drinking the blood of both sides of the conflict as they indulged in the Thirst's worst excesses. Their indiscriminate slaughter eventually turned the tides in favor of the Imperial loyalists, and the warband prepared to abandon the planet and most of their noble allies as reinforcements from the Imperial Guard closed in on the system. But in the final days of the fighting, Calistarius and his squad were trapped by the Imperials in a concrete building that they collapsed on the Chaos Marines' heads. Calistarius' brothers died immediately, but the Sorcerer survived, trapped beneath hundreds of tons of rubble, locked inside his armor, unable to move even a finger. Presuming him dead, Dante left the planet with the rest of his warriors, his ships' holds filled with captured slaves.
Yet the Sorcerer still lived. Even as the Imperium arrived to help purge the heretics and rebuild the planet's infrastructure, the Blood Angel remained, buried deep below the surface. At first, his physiology and his armor's recycling system preserved him from starvation, but soon enough not even those could save him. He could have gone into suspended animation, using the Astartes' Sus-an membrane, but the Thirst had grown strong in the months since his burial, and his mind was too tormented to relent and go into a slumber from which he would likely never have awoken. Instead, Calistarius used his psychic powers to escape his buried body and wander the city around his tomb in spiritual form. Trapped as he was, the Sorcerer could not drink blood, and so he found another source of sustenance and sensations : he devoured the souls of the unfortunate who crossed his path. For hundreds of years, the hive-city beneath which the Blood Angel's body laid suffered from the depredations of the invisible, incorporeal predator stalking it from beyond the veil. Corpses were found in the streets, their faces frozen in masks of horror and agony. Psykers and astropaths wailed, speaking in riddles of the incomprehensible thing that haunted the hive. Several Inquisitorial teams were sent to investigate, but the Sorcerer was careful, and eluded all of their efforts – or devoured them in turn. So it went for hundreds of years, the Thirst of Calistarius evolving into something else entirely, something different but altogether not much more vile.
In time, a cult began to form in the hive's lowest districts, worshipping the invisible predator in the hope of turning its hunger away. At first, the Sorcerer was amused, but then he began to use his cultists, granting them "protection" and even following the instructions of his "priests" when they performed grand rituals designed to direct his wrath toward their rivals for control of the underhive. Eventually, that cult grew numerous and powerful enough that their patron felt safe in commanding them to start digging at the site of his fall – and, after much effort, they reached his buried body.
The thing that emerged from the makeshift tomb was Calistarius no longer. His helmet had been destroyed during his forced interment, and his face was pale and gaunt as that of a corpse. His eyes burned with the hunger that had all but consumed him, and Warp-fire burned in his veins, shining through his skin. His diet for the past hundreds of years had changed him nearly beyond recognition : he was more daemon than Astartes now, a thing that hungered for souls and emotions rather than any physical sustenance. The blood of the living that his brothers craved would never again be enough for him – his was a more potent and purer hunger, one that honored the Dark Prince well.
The Sorcerer took the name of Mephiston, and his first action upon reclaiming his freedom was to tear the souls from the bodies of his worshippers and devour them whole. With the power he gained from that betrayal, he sent out an astropathic message of such strength that the entire planet's choir of Warp-singers went mad, silencing the world's cries for help in what followed. Dante's warband heard Mephiston's call, and returned to the world they had despoiled centuries ago. This time, with the help of the newly titled Soul-Starved and his cult of fanatics, they emptied the entire planet of human life, leaving only a smoking husk behind them. Dante rejoiced at the return and transformation of his servant, and Mephiston quickly rose to become his second-in-command.
The Vampire Marines of the Ninth Legion are known to keep a wide distance from the Soul-Starved, as if something in them recognizes a greater predator. In truth, even "normal" Blood Angels tend to keep their distances from Mephiston, for they fear his power and know that he has already devoured the souls of several of their brothers who failed Lord Dante. To Mephiston, the soul of an Astartes is a meal like few others, surpassed only by the essence of an ancient Eldar.
As the 41st Millennium drew to a close and the Times of Ending approached, Dante's warband received the call to join in the attack on the Black Library. But Dante's monstrous pride kept him from abandoning his current endeavour – a campaign of pursuit and revenge against the mysterious Silent King – and the warband fractured. Mephiston turned from his lord, and took a third of the warband with him into the Webway, where they joined the Slaaneshi host toward Aien'rach.
The ghostly predators came upon the Exile as he sneaked through the ruins of Aien'rach, seeking to reach the base of the now-invisible stairway. They attacked Ahriman's psyche with claws of hunger and hate, and hit the walls of his will like las-bolt hitting Terminator war-plate. The Exile easily turned aside this first attack, which accomplished nothing beyond revealing the attackers to him. But when Mephiston and his pack returned, they had taken the measure of the walls defending Ahriman's mind. The full power of an entire coven of Sorcerers was bent on destroying the defenses of the Exile and lay his essence bare for the Soul-Starved to devour. Indeed, Mephiston could sense the power of Ahriman, the strength of his soul, and hungered to consume it.
The thing wore the aspect of a Space Marine, but Ahriman could see beyond that disguise. There were surface similarities between its mind and that of an Astartes, but those were merely leftover traces from an existence long ended. Whatever the predator leading this psychic attack had once been, it had abandoned all but the barest appearance of humanity. All of its intellect, knowledge and power served but one purpose : to feed its eternal hunger for souls. It was a vile thing, a reflection of the foul god it served. And it was strong – stronger than Ahriman had expected. It came at him, again and again, using its cohorts as distractions to be able to strike at Ahriman.
Ahriman's anger grew as the attacks continued. He had not come so far, had not endured so much, simply to end like this. He would not be the prey of some twisted spawn of Sanguinius' debased bloodline ! Not with the Black Library so close at last ! Not when he was finally in sight of the means to reforge his Legion's fate !
You will die here, said the voice of the soul-devourer. I will feast on your essence and grow stronger for it, while you embrace oblivion. Your quest has failed, Exile …
Ahriman reached out to the voice with his mind, his anger allowing him to ignore the pain of the other incorporeal spirits tearing at his psychic self as he stopped countering their attacks, and seized its aetheral form. It twitched and flailed in his grip, but he was stronger than it had ever been, even after his years of errance. It shrieked in disbelief, unable to accept that it was so weak compared to Ahriman, and it was music to Ahriman's ears. Part of him wanted to tighten his hold, to crush the soul-devourer and listen to its death cries. But the greater part of him knew better : one could not crush the void. He could destroy the thing's disguise, and perhaps its physical body, but all he would achieve in doing so would be to unleash its true form, which would be much more difficult to dispatch. For a moment, he considered his options; then he chose.
With a flare of psychic might, Ahriman stabbed deep into the soul-devourer even as he released his hold over it. He pushed on, and such was the power he unleashed that even the other spectres paused in their harassment. The soul-devourer screamed in agony now, and finally, the pain became too much for it to bear, and it fled, vanishing from the psychic landscape as it returned to its body. Ahriman let it go – but not without one last blow.
He opened the gates of his mind, and let a single memory go through, stabbing it deep within the creature's mind. The memory was of one of the most wondrous and horrifying things he had ever witnessed : the destruction of Sanguinius at the hands of the Mournival, all those years ago, near the end of the Siege of Terra and the Heresy of thrice-cursed Guilliman. Ahriman had seen it through the eyes of others, and felt its psychic echoes even from where he had stood in person, on the walls of the Imperial Palace, fighting the Space Wolves. It was more than a simple vision, more than an image or a pict-record. It was Sanguinius' defeat.
Screaming, clutching at his face with bony fingers, Mephiston stumbled backward – and did not see the edge of the summoning portal as he slipped and fell right in it, directly into the teeming madness of the Empyrean. There was a flash of red un-light, the sound of hysterical laughter – and then the Soul-Starved was gone, the ritual circle's runes burnt to bone-white ash. Of the portal through which he had vanished, no trace remained save for the faint smell of ozone and musk.
Kilometers away, Ahriman had to lean on his staff to not fall, blood dripping from his lips. That had hurt – but, by the Primarch's Eye, it had been worth it.
Though it seemed to Ahriman that entire days had passed, only a few seconds had ticked by during the spiritual confrontation. But despite the battle's quickness, it had left traces in the dubious reality of the dimensional pocket within which Aien'rach stood. Ahriman had prevailed against the Ninth Legion Sorcerers, but the psychic battle had revealed his position. The confrontation had shaken the very ground, kicking up storms of ancient dust, and packs of Blood Angels and Neverborn were now converging on the Exile. Under the cover of the clouds, Ahriman fought his way forward, attacking with overwhelming power before vanishing back into the shadows. The lack of visibility did not disturb him, for he had learned to rely upon his other senses long ago during his wandering through the Webway. With bolts of lightning, fire and kinetic force, he slew one slave of Slaanesh after another. Soon, however, he wasn't fighting alone : a troupe of Harlequins appeared at his side, killing the servants of She-Who-Thirsts with blade and pistol alike.
Though part of Ahriman was loath to do battle alongside xenos, he knew better than to listen to these age-old instincts – they were all allies here, against an enemy of existence itself. He remembered what he had seen when he had visited the Interex along with the Sons of Horus, what seemed like an eternity ago. Humans and aliens had coexisted peacefully there – and even in the Great Crusade, there had been several occasions when the Eldar and the Imperium had grudgingly tolerated each other's existence. Perhaps, he mused, the Black Library might even contain the truth of what had happened to the Interex during the Heresy and brought that civilization to extinction.
Soon, the warband encountered a new and most dangerous threat : the daemon known as the Masque of Slaanesh. Once the most favoured Daemonette of the Dark Prince, the Neverborn had been cast out and cursed to dance forever, re-enacting the greatest victories of Slaanesh for the rest of eternity. It had come to Aien'rach in the hope of redeeming itself in the eyes of its master by taking part in his ultimate victory, but Ahriman's arrival threatened that. Leading a pack of Daemonettes and mortal slaves of the Youngest God, the Masque attacked Ahriman, leaping from the shadows and forcing the Exile to the ground.
To the mortal eyes, the creature's appearance would have been constantly shifting, Ahriman knew. But his second sight pierced through these disguises, showing him what passed for the daemon's real face. It was an ugly thing of pink skin and purple chitin, with claws and teeth sharp enough to cut through even ceramite. Even through his helmet's filters, he could still smell the fiend's stench, fogging his mind and weakening his body. Worse of all was the creature's voice, speaking directly into his mind, promising things he could not even imagine if he would just surrender.
Turn from your fate, Ahzek. Turn from your doom. Abandon the path of self-sacrifice and, for once, choose your own good over that of others. Do you not deserve it, after so long ? Do you not deserve a rest, a reward for your service ? The path you walk leads only into more suffering for all …
'Your lies have no power over me,' groaned Ahriman, fighting through the creature's musk and psychic presence. 'I will not succumb to your deceptions !'
We offer you no lie, whispered the voice of the Masque as its claw caressed his chestplate. Only truth. You will be broken. Your name will be reclaimed. You will become the vessel for the coming darkness … The call will be answered. The call will be answered. The call …
'SILENCE !' shouted Ahriman, punctuating his scream with a blast of psychic energy that disintegrated the Daemonettes nearby and sent the Masque reeling backward, white smoke rising from its too-smooth skin. In his hand, his staff burned with the strength of his wrath – and only his wrath, he told himself as he faced the Neverborn champion of Slaanesh. 'I will not listen to your whispers ! You do not know who I am ! My fate is my own !'
The Exile marched toward the Masque, his mind aflame with fury. He wanted to rend this creature apart limb from limb; to rip its wretched soul apart, and cast the fragments of its beings across the infinite vastness of space and time themselves. He wanted …
A silhouette appeared between him and the Masque, seemingly coming out of his own shadow. Before he could react, the Shadowseer was on the daemon, his sword buried deep inside the creature's chest. The Masque trashed, all grace gone from it, before its physical form dissolved. The Shadowseer turned to face Ahriman, and performed an exaggeratedly apologetic bow before saying in heavily accented High Gothic :
'It was trying to get to you, son of the Crimson King – to make you lose yourself to anger. Remind yourself of the simple wisdom of your people, Exile. Remember their teachings. The Enemy seeks your soul for its own : do not give it any chance of success.'
Ahriman nodded, his fury cooled. Yet still a voice remained : The call will be answered …
With the Masque defeated, Ahriman and the Harlequins resumed their advance toward Aien'rach's center. They were halfway there when another attack came, in the form of a beam of searing psychic light that annihilated the entire party of Harlequins in a single blow. Ahriman himself would have perished had not the Shadowseer who had slain the Masque thrown himself in the path of the attack to shield the Exile, his energy shields overpowered in a fraction of a second. Then, flying on blood-stained wings, the leader of the Slaaneshi host besieging the Black Library descended : Rafen the Kinslayer, wielder of the Spear of Telesto.
Rafen the Kinslayer
Even amidst a Legion of betrayers and blood-obsessed monsters, Rafen the Kinslayer stands out in his infamy, ruthlessness and base cruelty. Born among the degenerate slave tribes that dwell within the Blood Angels' ships, Rafen was destined for a short life and a painful death, likely ending up devoured by one of his transhuman masters seeking relief from the Thirst, however temporary.
Rafen had a twin brother, Akio, and the two of them stayed together during their childhood, combining their meager strength against the darkholds' many dangers. For several years, they escaped the constant threat of death, until one fateful night when the Blood Angels came to feed. Abandoning the rest of their tribe, the two brothers hid alone, and managed to kill a Blood Angel by attacking him while he was drinking the blood of the boy's own mother. By cunning and luck, their makeshift weapons found his exposed throat as he consumed the last of the woman's essence, and the twins were baptised in the vitae of one of the godlings whose presence had dominated their lives. When the other Blood Angels came and found their dead brother, they laughed, and seized the boys, promising them that they would be rewarded for their heroism – and so they were.
The two progenoid glands of the slain Astartes were extracted, and one was implanted within each of the brothers before shoving them into the transformation sarcophagi used by the Ninth Legion. For months, Rafen and Akio suffered, their flesh transformed by the power of Sanguinius' tainted gene-seed, their minds broken and reforged by visions of the Angel and the Dark Prince he served. The two beings that finally emerged from the sarcophagi still claimed the names of Rafen and Akio, but little remained of the feral children they had been. Like all those who were chosen to join the ranks of the Ninth Legion, they had become true servants of Slaanesh, their souls bearing the brand of the Lustful Prince, the Thirst driving them to devour their erstwhile brethren.
The alliance that had allowed the twins to survive as children was one of the few things that endured their transformation. Their bounds now reinforced by the gene-seed coursing through their flesh, the twins could act in perfect unison, knowing each other's thoughts and often finishing the other's sentences, making even the other Blood Angels uneasy. Among the narcissistic Blood Angels, true kinship is rare, and having an ally that wouldn't betray them gave the twins a distinct advantage over the rest of the warband. They rose through what passed for the warband's hierarchy quickly, usurping leadership after only a few decades. In the centuries that followed, the warband grew, more and more Blood Angels drawn to the promise of sweet Imperial blood that Rafen and Akio were able to deliver through one successful raid after another. The twins ruled the warband together, and few among their warriors could distinguish between the two of them. Many of their slaves whispered stories of how they were one soul in two bodies, blessed by the Dark Prince with the ability to be in two places at once. The twins encouraged such rumors, relishing in their growing legend and the associated rewards from their divine patron. Their alliance remained strong, allowing them to defeat any would-be usurper to their own shared throne. In time, the brothers commanded a small flotilla, nearly a hundred Blood Angels and tens of thousands of slaves. Tales of the Twin Angels were told by Inquisitorial Acolytes and Imperial Navy officers across all of the Segmentum Obscurus, where the warband preyed upon Imperial shipping and isolated worlds.
Then came Ramius Stele, renegade Inquisitor and traitor to the Golden Throne.
Ramius was that most rare breed of betrayer : a heretic who had managed to infiltrate the ranks of the Holy Ordos, concealing the truth of his allegiances, and then to rise to the rank of Inquisitor, with all the power it entails. Born in a family of Imperial nobility who had secretly been serving Tzeentch for generations, the prodigal son turned against his forebears when he instead embraced Slaanesh's own corruption. His denunciation of his family to the Imperial authorities and the part he played in the subsequent purge drew the attention of his future master, who mistook his actions as devotion to the God-Emperor. After several years of using his position as Acolyte to bring the judgement of the Imperium upon Slaanesh's chaotic rivals, Stele poisoned his master and claimed his rosette of office. His destruction of a Raven Guard cult he had framed as responsible for his master's murder earned him the approval he needed for his ascension, and he then spent decades plaguing the Imperium in secret. When his true nature was finally uncovered, Stele barely escaped the retribution of the vengeful Inquisitors sent after him with order to capture him if possible and kill him with extreme prejudice if necessary. He then seemingly vanished for almost two centuries, before reappearing before Rafen and Akio, offering them knowledge about the location of the famed Spear of Telesto, one of the Ninth Legion's greatest relic, lost millennia ago.
Stele led Akio and Rafen deep within the Segmentum Obscurus, into parts of it controlled by petty, warring Ork empires. All the way during this odyssey, he worked to worm his way into the warlords' favor. Knowing that the power of the Spear could not be shared, he played upon Akio's ego, spinning grand tales of prophecies that foretold Sanguinius' glorious rebirth and insisting that the Blood Angel was destined to fulfill them. Helping these lies along were the two great feathered wings that sprouted from Akio's back during the journey, the first mutation he and Rafen had not shared. The twins grew ever more apart as Stele wove his deception around Akio, all of Rafen's efforts to convince his brother he was being lied to failing – until finally Rafen grew disgusted with the moral weakness of his brother and stopped trying. Instead, knowing he needed Stele to find the Spear of Telesto, Rafen decided to finally end his long alliance with his twin brother. Before the eyes of the warband's elite circle, he challenged his brother in duel. There, after several minutes of intense, bitter duelling, he ripped Akio's wings off, broke his back, and drank his lifeblood until his twin's desiccated body fell to dust within his armor, his essence consumed. The assembled Blood Angels knelt before their one master as he rose from his kill, eyes blazing with stolen power. In the room, Stele knelt also, knowing better than to defy Akio in any way. So did Rafen earn the title of Kinslayer, a name that would spread across the entirety of the Ninth Legion – sometimes spoken as a curse, more often in awe at the depths of Rafen's devotion to the teachings of Slaanesh.
Several years of brutal campaigning later, the warband finally reached its destination, an Ork world that had once belonged to Mankind and been then known as Evangelion. After a ferocious battle, the Blood Angels claimed the Ork stronghold, built upon the ruins of an Imperial city. There, as Stele had indicated, they found the Spear of Telesto, buried amidst the rubble of an era long since faded into myth. Rafen claimed the Spear, and as he held it aloft, his warband basking in its power, he received a vision from the Dark Prince – a vision of the Black Library, and of what he must do next to please his patron and earn the ultimate reward. Rafen led his warband into the Webway, and has hunted for the entrance to the Black Library for the last three hundred years. All that time, more and more sons of Sanguinius have been drawn to his banner, seeking to share in the Eldar blood his efforts have spilled – and, though few of them know it, heeding the call of the Dark Prince.
Rafen believes that, should he succeed in breaching the walls of the Black Library and claiming it for Slaanesh, he will be raised to first among the Dark Prince's servants, greater even than Sanguinius. Before claiming the Spear of Telesto, the Chaos Lord was a supremely skilled warrior and a great tactician. Now, he is something else entirely, and a threat to all that lives within the galaxy. Over the centuries of his quest, he has gained the same feathered wings once displayed by his Primarch and his brother, and they are never entirely clean of Eldar blood.
The Spear of Telesto
Few relics in the galaxy hold as much history, as much power, as the Spear of Telesto, and few have been sought after so ardently and by so many over the millennia. Crafted by the hands of the Emperor Himself after the discovery of His son Sanguinius and gifted to the Angel upon his taking command of the Ninth Legion, the Spear is a piece of archeotech whose most basic principles would baffle all but the most erudite – or heretical – of tech-priests.
Before his transformation into a Daemon Prince of Slaanesh, Sanguinius was one of the few Primarchs with active psychic abilities. However, he was unlike Magnus, who was in full control of his psychic powers. Sanguinius' grip on his abilities was instead more like Curze's or Lorgar's during his campaign against the Covenant of Colchis : erratic, prone to explosive bursts of power and haunting his owner with all manners of visions. It is possible that this was the cause for the Red Thirst that haunted the Blood Angels since their inception – but with the Ninth Legion's fall, answering that question is now impossible. Regardless, the Spear of Telesto allowed Sanguinius to channel his own power in a reliable manner. With it, he unleashed beams of destructive light that felled many xenos abominations and gene-spliced humans during the Great Crusade.
After the Isstvan Massacre, when Sanguinius abandoned his Legion and withdrew within his quarters, slowly descending into madness, Azkaellon had the Spear removed from his master's chambers. The Commander of the Sanguinary Guard feared that his distraught master might accidentally use the Spear and, in his troubled state, bring destruction to himself and possibly the entire Blood Angel flagship. But when the relic was discovered, Azkaellon was forced to lie about the purpose of its removal from Sanguinius' armoury lest he reveals the Primarch's state of mind to the rest of the Legion. He claimed that the Angel had ordered him to gift the Spear to a worthy champion, who would carry it into the rebellion's battles so that the sons of Sanguinius would know that their father hadn't abandoned them. Of course, that meant that Azkaellon had to actually give the Spear rather than keep it locked in a stasis vault. He chose High Warden Dahka Berus, who had become the spiritual leader of the Blood Angels since their Primarch's withdrawing.
Berus had taken well to the transformations of the Legion, speaking of the purity of the Thirst in sermons and guiding the Blood Angels further down the path of Slaanesh. While the Ultramarines were the ones who first introduced worship of the Dark Prince to the Blood Angels, it was Berus and the other Wardens that spread it across the entire Legion. With the Spear of Telesto, his influence on the Ninth Legion grew even further. As he wielded the weapon in the hunts for blood that brought the Blood Angels from one slaughter to the next, corruption flooded from his soul into the Spear, and it was reshaped as Berus had been. The power of the single drop of the Emperor's own blood contained within its tear-shaped ruby heart was tainted, consumed by Slaanesh. When Berus held it aloft, it shone with a light that bore into the minds of those who saw it, burning their wills with adoration for the High Warden. Entire worlds were turned to the worship of the Lord of Pleasure and Pain in this way, their population willingly offering themselves to the Blood Angels to be drained of their lives in sacrifice to their new blasphemous god.
And then, Berus vanished. His ship, his fleet, his entire army of followers – which counted thousands of Blood Angels and hundreds of thousands of human cultists – left the site of their last conquest and were never seen again. No one know where Berus took them, or what became of him or the Spear of Telesto. For ten thousand years, the Blood Angels sought after the relic of their Primarch, seeking to claim its power for themselves. Hundreds of champions underwent quests and made unholy bargains with daemonic oracles, but none succeeded. It was only when Ramius Stele came to Akio and Rafen that the Ninth Legion was finally set on the track to reclaiming its most potent weapon. During the journey to Evangelion, Stele revealed to Akio the truth of Berus' fate – and only to Akio. After the Blood Angel was slain by Rafen, Stele did not share this knowledge with Rafen, and the Kinslayer did not press the renegade Inquisitor. To him, the past of the Spear did not matter – all that mattered was the power that would be his once he had claimed the weapon. And so, the fate of High Warden Dahka Berus, last to ever hold this title in the Ninth Legion before its collapse into feuding warbands, remains shrouded in mystery – likely forever.
Ahriman turned his gaze from the burned corpse of the Shadowseer, his heart seething with anger, his mind aflame with psychic power. Ahriman gazed upon the Eldar's killer, and …
He was beautiful.
His perfect white wings spread out in benevolent welcome, and the spear he held shone with godly light. His face was the visage of beauty itself, pure and unrivalled. Ahriman wanted to weep as he beheld the majesty of the Angel descending from the heavens to grace the ruined city of the Eldar with his presence. Here was glory, here was divinity – here was forgiveness for his sins and failures. He had not witnessed such beauty since the Triumph of Ullanor, when the Emperor had gathered His sons to announce His return to Terra and the ascension of Horus as Warmaster. Sanguinius had been there, pure and radiant …
Sanguinius.
The name cracked the surface thoughts of Ahriman. It brought other memories to the fore – images of madness and ruin, of blood-stained wings and fratricide. It brought hatred and betrayal, and it brought the hideous truth. And with that truth, the beautiful lie was gone.
The Glamour shattered, and the true form of Rafen the Kinslayer was revealed to Ahriman – and to the Blood Angel himself. The pale, twisted face of the Chaos Lord contorted in a snarl of rage, and he raised his spear – now radiating baleful crimson light and psychic corruption.
Enraged by the breaking of his Glamour, Rafen struck at Ahriman with the Spear of Telesto. All of the Exile's psychic defenses could not protect him from the relic's power, and the Spear cut a deep gash into his armor and his chest, spraying his blood and sending him flying backward before crashing into the ground, breathing with difficulty, the psychic poison of the Spear eating at his very soul. If Rafen had struck down Ahriman at that moment, the Exile would have perished, and all hope might have been lost. But the Dark Prince was betrayed by the very hunger he had used to corrupt the Ninth Legion into his service. Rather than move for the kill, Rafen could not help himself, and licked the blood of Ahriman upon the Spear of Telesto's blade. Rich with psychic power and regrets ten thousand years old, Ahriman's vitae sent the Kinslayer into the throes of ecstasy – never before had he tasted blood as potent.
It was then, as Rafen was caught in the stolen recollections of the Exile's odyssey through the Webway, that salvation came for Ahzek Ahriman. For a fraction of a second, the Black Library itself flashed into existence above Aien'rach, and its gates opened, delivering a single warrior onto the battlefield. This warrior descended toward the two Space Marines like a fiery angel from the heavens, haloed in golden and purple psychic flames. The ground between Rafen and Ahriman shook with the strength of the impact, and from the crater rose one that had long been thought lost. Ahriman did not know the identity of his saviour, but Rafen recognized her, and shrieked in pain and horror as he beheld Ephrael Stern, the Daemonifuge.
Ephrael Stern the Daemonifuge
The Thrice-Born. The Martyred Daughter. The Abomination. The Bane of Slaanesh. By those names and many more is Ephrael Stern known, and they all speak of the terrible destiny that has hung over her since before she was even born. Ephrael's mother was a pilgrim to one of the Imperium's shrine worlds, Antigone's Harbour. The woman became pregnant on her way and pledged her unborn daughter to the service of the Adeptus Sororitas if the birth went well. Ephrael was born within the holy temple her mother had sacrificed everything to reach, and while she survived the birth, her mother did not. The infant was taken in by the Schola Progenium, and raised with the expectation that, in time, she would fulfill her mother's promise – for the woman had vowed to the God-Emperor Himself, and the religious populace of Antigone's Harbour would not dare to break such a vow, even if they were not the ones who had made it. Among those Inquisitors who study her past now, there are those who claim to have uncovered records on Antigone's Harbour indicating that many seers and astropaths on the planet reacted to her birth violently. But such was the religious fervour on Antigone's Harbour that the truth of their trances was lost almost immediately, every record made through the tinted glass of fanatical devotion to the God-Emperor.
During her youth, Ephrael displayed a mix of devotion to the Imperial Creed, ruthlessness and raw potential that drew the eyes of recruiters from several Imperial organizations, including, it is said, the Holy Ordos themselves. But the oath under which she lived meant that, from the beginning, she was fated to join the Sisters of Battle. Eventually, she became a member of the Order of the Holy Seal, and took her vow on Terra itself, along with several hundred other novices. Due to her exemplary service, she rose to the exalted position of Seraphim in but a few years, and for many heretics, the sight of Ephrael descending from the skies to bring the Emperor's retribution was their last. She was eventually promoted to Sister Superior, and was already being considered for the rank of Palatine, when the mission that would change her destiny called her to the world of Parnis.
Parnis was a desert world, where the only human presence was that of the small coven of the Order of the Blessed Enquiry. This non-militant order of the Adepta Sororitas belonged to the Orders Pronatus, tasked with the discovery and recovery of holy relics. The Order of the Blessed Enquiry was a small one, founded to study texts recovered from the Age of Apostasy in the hope of locating some of the many relics that had been lost during the time of Vandire's Reign of Blood. For nigh three hundred years, the Sisters of the Blessed Enquiry worked in near-total isolation, only sending periodic reports to their superiors in the Ecclesiarchy. Then, without warning, all reports stopped.
Imperial records tell that, on the year 651M41, Ephrael Stern directed an expedition to Parnis to discover the reason behind this silence. She alone returned, broken and mad, whispering of terrible things and speaking dark prophecies, her every memory of what had happened on Parnis gone. For nearly four years, she was held captive by her Sisters, desperate to understand what had happened to her – and what she had become. However, when she ripped another Sister in half with her bare hands, and slew the Slaaneshi daemon that emerged from the corpse, the Inquisition took an interest in her. Inquisitor Silas Hand of the Ordo Hereticus journeyed to Ophelia VII, where Stern had been assigned after taking her vows – and where she was now imprisoned. As the Inquisitor and his retinue arrived to the convent, the entire planet was suddenly attacked by a warband of the Ninth Legion. The Blood Angels had come, seeking to defile the convent and slay Ephrael, and with their coming many more Sisters revealed themselves as corrupted by the Dark Prince. The temple was torn apart by battle, with Silas seeking to find and rescue Ephrael. The Inquisitor eventually found the Sister, standing knee-deep in the bodies of corrupted Sisters and even those of three sons of Sanguinius. Together, they escaped Ophelia VII, which was later condemned to Exterminatus to purge the taint of Slaanesh from it – though the Blood Angels themselves were long gone by then.
Silas brought Ephrael – who by that point had begun to regain her faculties, though not her memory – back to Parnis, determined to find out what had happened to cause all this. Their journey there was tumultuous, the Warp wracked with storms as the Dark Prince sought to destroy them. When they reached Parnis, the Inquisitor brought Ephrael and his retinue to the ruins of the Blessed Enquiry's convent, the only structure on the entire planet. There, they found the truth, given to them by what had become of the Order's members : a grotesque thing of living flesh, with the skinned faces of the Sisters laid out on its surface, speaking endlessly the secrets that damned them. Silas, a psyker, was able to learn from these tormented spirits what had happened on Parnis.
Years ago, the Sisters had uncovered Chaos artefacts among the treasure trove they had been assigned to study. Knowing that the degree of study that had revealed the artefacts' corruption was already enough to damn them, the Sisters decided to learn all they could of the Archenemy, in the hope that this knowledge would be used against it in the future. For years, they worked, many of their number succumbing to the corruption of Slaanesh, the Dark God whose influence had created the artefacts. Eventually, these renegades managed to complete a ritual that summoned a powerful Keeper of Secrets, along with many lesser daemons. The Greater Daemon created the horror Silas and Stern beheld now, calling it the Screaming Cage. When Stern had first come to Parnis, her Sisters had succumbed to the daemon's lingering influence, forcing Stern to slaughter them all until she alone remained, wounded near unto death. The Sisters of the Screaming Cage, however, healed her wounds – in truth, they brought her back from beyond death itself, so far was she gone. They then sent her away, before the Keeper sensed her presence and came for her. But now, with allies at her side to defend her, the Sisters of the Screaming Cage could complete their work. They whispered to Silas and Ephrael, telling them how, in its arrogance, the Keeper of Secrets had not completed their breaking. Their spirits, though tormented near insanity, still held all of the dark lore their Order had gathered on the Dark Prince, Slaanesh. And more importantly, they were still pure, for the daemon had devoured the souls of all among them who had fallen to its influence.
And so it was that, with Silas and his retinue holding back the daemonic horde that soon manifested when the Keeper of Secrets Asteroth sensed this intrusion, Ephrael Stern was reforged. The Screaming Cage poured all of their knowledge of Chaos – and Slaanesh in particular – into her, and the power of that knowledge remade her very soul. Ultimately, as Asteroth itself emerged from the Warp, Silas gave his life to unleash an attack powerful enough to banish the Greater Daemon and its minions – and destroy the entire convent as well. Only Ephrael survived, sent away by the Inquisitor who sensed, despite his initial misgivings, that her destiny laid not with the Dark Gods. She had become a living repository of knowledge, the strengths and weaknesses of the Dark Prince inscribed onto her very soul. So was she born for a second time.
After several months of errance in the desert, Ephrael was found by a patrol of the Iron Warriors answering the distress call of Silas' ship, sent in the moment before it had been destroyed by daemons manifesting aboard it as part of Asteroth's assault. They brought Ephrael back to the Inquisition, thinking that she would be tested and, if proved untainted, returned to her duties. But the Inquisition's ways are dark ones indeed, and the Inquisitors saw her as a potential tool in their war against the Ruinous Powers, not as a human being and a servant of the Golden Throne. Warned by visions of Silas' ghosts of her fate should she fall into their hands, Ephrael escaped. It is said that her Fourth Legion keepers did not search very hard for her, for they had learned just what awaited her in the hands of the Ordos – and Ephrael had helped them fight off a daemonic incursion aboard their vessel during the trip to the Inquisitorial stronghold, displaying all the bravery of a true warrior. So was Ephrael Stern lost to the Inquisition, wandering in the dark places of the Imperium.
During that exile, Ephrael met an Eldar known only as the Pariah. Once a member of the Black Library's defenders, he had been cast out by his brethren, and would only be redeemed for his sins against them by bringing Ephrael to them. The Pariah brought Ephrael through the Webway, but again the newly-named Daemonifuge was targeted by a Chaos ploy : the Blood Angels who wander the Webway in search of a path into Eldar Craftworlds had been gathered to hunt her, and they captured both her and the Pariah. They plotted to feast slowly on the blood of the Eldar – Ephrael's own vitae, like her very presence, was poison to them, and the sons of Sanguinius planned to kill her in a grand sacrifice to Slaanesh. Before they could proceed, however, they were attacked by no less than three factions of the Inquisition, all of which had foretold Ephrael's importance and sought to use her in their own plans. Amidst the confusion, Ephrael and the Pariah escaped, but Ephrael, witnessing fellow Imperial agents turn on one another in order to be the ones to seek it, decided that this was enough. She would not live as a reason for servants of the God-Emperor to kill each other. And so, before the horrified eyes of the Pariah, she tore her own heart out, in full sight of the assembled combatants. The fight died out immediately – the Blood Angels had long since been defeated by that point. The Pariah vanished before the Inquisitors could capture or kill him, and upon examining Ephrael's body, the Grey Knights who had accompanied one of the factions could find nothing unusual about it. Therefore, it was decided by the Inquisitors – all of whom were feeling quite foolish about their own behaviour, and would go on to become voices of unity in the divided Holy Ordos – that Ephrael Stern would be granted a proper burial on consecrated ground.
Three months later, the site of Ephrael's tomb became the location of yet another battle between the Imperium and the forces of the Archenemy. Thousands of Imperial faithful fell, giving their lives against the tide of the Raven Guard's mutant armies. Then, as the walls of the mausoleum-turned-fortress broke, the ancient tombstone cracked, and Ephrael Stern emerged, alive once more, radiating power that was anathema to all disciples of the Dark Gods. Before the eyes of Silas' apprentice, Inquisitor Fazael, Ephrael unleashed the full power of the Daemonifuge for the first time. The sons of Corax leading the mutated host retreated in terror, while their army burned in holy fire around them, corruption suddenly bursting into flames. Fazael, believing Ephrael was an out-of-control psyker at best, and another Chaos abomination at worst, tried to kill her, going as far as to employing the Culexus Assassin he had brought with him. But Ephrael resisted even the soul-draining power of the Culexus, turning him to dust with but a touch. She then called out to the Pariah, who had been watching over her tomb, knowing her destiny was not complete yet.
The last Imperial record of Ephrael Stern is her words to Fazael before entering the Webway with the Pariah. She told him that the two of them were on the same side – the side of opposing Chaos – and this was why she was sparing his life. Nonetheless, Fazael swore that he would find her one day, and learn the truth of his master's fate from her – no matter what he has to do.
For all her blessings and dark lore, even Ephrael wasn't able to confront the Spear of Telesto's power. Rafen raised his weapon, and its energies swarmed the Thrice-Born, locking her in place even as they failed to penetrate her psychic halo. Wherever a bolt of sorcerous lightning that was turned aside struck the ground, the broken stones of Aien'rach were transmuted into a dark crystal, and whenever that crystal was struck in turn, it pulsed and grew, absorbing the Spear's energy. Perhaps in time, Rafen and Ephrael would both have been trapped by this strange material, locked in perpetual conflict as their powers clashed. But Ahriman had recovered from the Spear's strike, and rose to his feet.
The Exile had burned off the corruption, incinerating part of his own body to stop its spread. One of his hearts was gone, but he had been able to close the flesh over the wound, and even to seal together the pieces of his armor. The pain was terrible, of course, and the hasty healing likely meant that Ahriman would never be able to fully recover from the injury. But his true weapon had never been his body : that had always been his mind, both for its psychic powers and the knowledge it contained. Ahriman had seen the Spear of Telesto in action before, during a joint compliance with the Blood Angels. Twisted as the weapon had become, its core principles were still the same. The Exile brandished his staff, and, with a telepathic sending to the mysterious female who could somehow defy the power of Slaanesh, he acted.
The false light burned at his soul. It stabbed at his mind, at his resolve. It dredged childhood's emotions from his memory and sent sensations he had never known coursing through his nerves, causing pleasure and agony in equal measures. It whispered sensual nothings and shouted the truths of the universe. It promised him death, immortality, and everything in between, everything he desired and everything he dreaded, to relish and abhor.
Lies, all of it. Lies and deceit, the madness of a false god speaking with the voice it had stolen from the angel it had broken and ruined in its attempts to claim him, not realizing it would destroy that which made the angel so great a prize in the first place. Ahriman would not fall, would not succumb. He had seen where the Dark Prince's service led – he saw it even now, in the twisted, once-noble features of the warrior who held the Spear. Instead, he fought, and pushed the brunt of the Spear's attack away from the female warrior.
She rose, her sword flaring in her hands. Though she had faced the full onslaught Ahriman was now struggling to contain, she appeared none the worse for wear. Her aura was shining with confidence, with determination – with faith. This was the source of the golden light that was fused with the purple fire – the expression of her own psychic powers. Ahriman recognized the golden light also, though he had no idea how this woman had come to possess an aura so close to that of the Emperor Himself. In the end, though, it did not matter.
'In the God-Emperor's name,' declared the woman, her voice full of an executioner's solemnity, 'I, Ephrael Stern, daughter of the Master of Mankind and Bane of Chaos, declare you guilty. Thrice are you damned, by your blood, your deeds, and your beliefs. Face now your rightful punishment !'
'No !' screamed the Blood Angel – Rafen, Ahriman could read his name now, written in gold upon his chestplate.'I am Slaanesh's chosen ! I will not fall like this !'
The son of Sanguinius brought up the Spear of Telesto to parry the woman's downward strike. The blow hit the Spear's haft – then, incredibly, it kept on going, cutting through the priceless but corrupted archeotech, and stabbing deep within the Blood Angel's chest. There was a pause, as Ephrael ripped her blade free of the flesh of her foe. Instead of looking at her, the gaze of the Chaos Lord focused on something behind Ahriman, and the Exile sensed his sudden shock.
'Stele –' the warlord began, before Ephrael's flaming sword descended again, and severed his head from his shoulders. When Ahriman glanced at where the Blood Angel had been looking, he saw nothing – only more ancient ruins, now covered with fresh cracks from the battle.
Before he could think anymore on that mystery, his instincts screamed at him, and his sixth sense immediately told him why. Terrible energies were gathering in the broken pieces of the Spear of Telesto, reaching a critical point. Acting on reflex alone, he barely had the time to reach, pull Ephrael behind him and raise a kinetic barrier around them before the shattered relic detonated. An eruption of eldritch fire obliterated Rafen's corpse.
[See Nemris' illustration titled "The Angel Denied"]
The ties of blood between brother Legionaries are strong, and in no Legion are they stronger than in the accursed Ninth. When Rafen died, every Blood Angel fighting in Aien'rach felt it, so filled with the power of the Spear was he. In a grotesque repetition of the death of Sanguinius at the walls of the Imperial Palace, they wailed and twitched, sharing in their lord's death throes. Vampire Marines plummeted from the air, crashing gracelessly in the ruins below. The Eldar defenders of the Black Library seized this opportunity at once. Their counter-attack drove the leaderless Chaos Marines before them, and the Neverborn host, already disorganised by the banishment of the Masque, broke along with their Astartes allies. In moments, what had been a desperate battle to defend all of reality from the Dark Prince turned into a glorious triumph, and the Sea of Souls trembled from the displeasure of Slaanesh. The grand army that should have secured the Youngest God's ascension was slaughtered, its members rushing toward the few portals and Webway tunnels that remained open, putting themselves at the non-existent mercy of the Children of Isha.
As the Eldar army finished the destruction of the Slaaneshi host, the White Seers directed another group of Harlequins toward the site of Ahriman and Ephrael's battle against Rafen. The followers of the Laughing God dug the two Imperials out of the rubble beneath which they had been buried by the Spear's explosion, finding them both protected by a kinetic shield. During that time, Ahriman and Ephrael had talked, exchanging their stories. The Exile told the Daemonifuge of his quest to find the Black Library, feeling compelled to reveal the truth of the Fifteenth Legion's curse and what he had done in his desperation to stop it. Ephrael repaid this trust by telling him of her own trials, of the dark knowledge that dwelled within her mind and of the weight of destiny that she too felt upon her shoulders. A strange sense of camaraderie formed between them, for they had both been born as humans, but had become much more through the meanderings of Fate, and both bore heavy burdens. On a more prosaic level, they were also the only humans in Aien'rach, surrounded by Eldar forces. They had to stick together, if only out of instinct and well-ingrained Imperial habit, especially since neither of them had encountered a friendly human in a long time.
The Harlequins brought the two Imperials to the Black Library, flying toward the top of the mystical stairway that rose from the ruins of Aien'rach aboard an Eldar transport. Above them, the gates of the Black Library flickered into existence as they approached, and opened once more – again, only long enough for them to pass through, and then they closed behind them with a thunderous sound and a shift in the Aether that told Ahriman that they had passed the first layer of the wards that kept the Library safe from the Dark Gods and their minions.
Ephrael had dwelled within the Black Library for many years, but even so she had only seen a fraction of what laid behind its walls. Though the White Seers knew her to be a powerful enemy of their greatest adversary, they had little knowledge of her true destiny. Ancient prophesies spoke of the Daemonifuge's coming, but they were vague even by the standard of such things. The only thing the White Seers could agree upon where Stern was concerned was that she would play an important part in Rhana Dandra, the final battle against Chaos. And so, Ephrael had spent her time in the Black Library training, going endlessly through the routines she had learned during her time as a Sister of Battle.
She had also learned how to use her psychic gifts from Eldar experts the White Seers brought to the Black Library after having made them sworn oaths of secrecy so potent, they no longer remembered having ever gone to the Black Library once they had left it and returned to their people. Ephrael had not been a gifted pupil in that regard – she still regarded her own psychic talents with distrust, her mind shaped by the conditioning of the Adepta Sororitas and her own experience with the daemonic. But even if she would never be a true battle-psyker, she could use her power to devastating effect all the same, as she had proven this day with the destruction of the Chaos Lord Rafen. Her control over her abilities came from instinct, not study, and she focused her mind through her devotion to the God-Emperor.
The Thrice-Born told all of this to Ahriman as they crossed the final stretch of Ahriman's ten-thousand years long journey. Upon learning from the Sister how much time had passed in the galaxy since he had entered the Webway, the Exile had been shocked, though not nearly as much as by the changes in the Imperium Ephrael had merely hinted at. The kingdom of reason and order Ahriman and his Legion had fought to build had become ruled by superstition and tyranny, with those psychically gifted persecuted for the threat their presence posed. War on all fronts, against many foes, had stretched the strength of the Legions thin. The Imperial Guard fought on thousands of worlds, its soldiers dying by the billion simply to hold onto what already belonged to the Imperium rather than to expand its borders further.
The Iron Cages still kept the full might of the Traitor Legions contained within the Eye of Terror and the Ruinstorm, but warbands still found hidden paths out of their prisons, preying upon the Emperor's subjects. The Ecclesiarchy – and Ahriman had difficulties accepting that the worship of the Emperor as a god had risen to such levels, let alone that it had become one of the Imperium's pillars of stability - was constantly fighting for the soul of Mankind, beset by heresy and corruption. The picture of the galaxy painted by Ephrael's tale was a grim one, yet Ahriman knew that the Thrice-Born had only a limited knowledge of current events. What other horrors had happened that she did not know about ? Of the Thousand Sons, she knew only that they endured in their service to the Golden Throne, their numbers forever smaller than that of the other Space Marine Legions, their powers whispered of in dread by Imperial soldiers. A better fate than what would have happened had the flesh-change continued to afflict them, but not the one Ahriman had wanted for his Legion when he had set upon the path that had ended in the Rubric's casting. Was this the result of his actions, then ? Had he succeeded in preserving his brothers from their curse, rather than replace it with his own, how different would the galaxy be ? With the power of the Fifteenth Legion, even without its Primarch to lead it, and the influence of its scholars, how much more of the Great Crusade's dreams could have been preserved ? These questions danced in his mind, impossible to answer, taunting him with flickering images of what could have been.
Ahriman finally pushed aside these thoughts when the group reached the entrance of the Black Library. Whatever might have been did not matter anymore. Here, at last, was the place where he would find what he needed to make what was into what he desired. Within the Black Library's lore would be the means to undo the Rubric, to restore his ashen brothers, and to shield them from the flesh-change forever. The means to make things right, at long, long last. It required all of his self-control not to run out of the gunship when they landed, and instead walk out calmly, side by side with Ephrael, the Harlequins dancing around as they escorted them further. The group had arrived in a grand hall, its walls holding many Warp Portals leading to other sections of the Black Library. And awaiting them were three White Seers – and something else, something that had no place here, but was there all the same.
It had been a long road, reflected the thing known in the archives of Titan as the Changeling. Rarely had it needed so much time to perform the task appointed to it by the Great Mutator, but this was a most important mission, whose repercussions would echo far and wide unto eternity. It required dedication, it required cunning – more than that, it required inspiration.
The first face of significance it had taken had been that of the traitor, Stele, who had turned from the Changer of Ways and succumbed to the decadent, weakling song of the Lord of Pleasure and Pain. It had come to Stele during his flight from the wrath of the Corpse-God's servants, rising from the dregs of his ship and approached him in the guise of his steward, the man responsible for providing all the luxuries his master so craved. It had made sure Stele knew, before he died, that even in his betrayal he had still served the greater designs of Tzeentch. That had been the traitor's punishment and his reward, before it had consumed his essence so completely, even the Dark Prince himself had not noticed the replacement.
Then it had worn the face of Stele for year upon year, longer than nearly any other disguise it had ever assumed. It had been amusing to play the two brothers against one another, to weave lies in the mind of the winged one after a subtle spell had caused the mutation slumbering in his blood to blossom. When the wingless angel had slain the winged one, it had had to flee into the depths of the ship in order to hide its hilarity at the whole situation, masking it as Stele's rage at the destruction of his chosen warlord.
It had led the angels to the Spear, knowing it must be found in the end, for the Dark Prince would not allow such power to remain unused in the time of the Great Change. Then it had accompanied them in their search for the Black Library, and had worked to delay their quest as much as it dared without breaking its cover or drawing the ire of the Spear's wielder – for such was its power, even it would be nothing before it. For decades, it had made the scions of the False Martyr walk the paths of the Webway in circle, until the appointed time. Without its interference, they would have reached Aien'rach long ago, and the secrets of the Black Library would already serve the Dark Prince - which simply could not be allowed. Only Tzeentch had any claim to the Black Library's power, for He was master of all the arcane. But where the Profligate One sought to break open its walls with his armies, the Architect of Fate knew better, and sought to claim it by ruse, letting His rival exert himself in vain.
Now Rafen was dead, and again the Changeling had made sure he had known how he had been manipulated before his demise. This time, it had not hidden its presence, and it knew that the court of Slaanesh was filled with its dread master's fury. Already, legions of daemons were marching from the domain of the Dark Prince toward the Crystal Labyrinth, intend on punishing Tzeentch for His interference. It had known it would happen, and it knew Tzeentch cared not, so long as its mission was a success. Victory in the Great Game was worth any temporary annoyance – soon, Slaanesh would be forced to kneel before the God of Change.
After the death of Rafen - and, more importantly, the destruction of the Spear - it had finally shed the disguise of Ramius Stele, discarding the last trace of the man's existence, letting it dissolve into oblivion without so much as a final whisper. While the Harlequins had been busy digging out the two Fate-touched humans, it had taken the face of one of them, and returned to the Black Library along with the corpses of the fallen servants of the Laughing God. The wards of the Library would surely have detected it, had they not been weakened and shaken by months of assault by the Slaaneshi Sorcerers Ahriman had destroyed upon his arrival. It had all fit together quite magnificently, a scheme worthy of Tzeentch.
Inside the Library, it had needed to be careful, but it was well experienced in such things, and it had found its last face – the one it wore now – making the final preparations for his meeting with Ahzek Ahriman. It had taken no chance, had not revealed its presence or tormented its victim. There had been no time for such indulgences, and the powers of the White Seers were a threat even to one such as it if they were given time to react. Instead, it had simply slid a dagger into his heart, and emerged from his chamber wearing his face, all in silence.
'Lord Ahriman,' it said in the voice of the White Seer who had been chosen by his peers to speak with the Exile. 'We thank you for your assistance in the destruction of the force besieging the Library. Without your help, it would have taken much more time, and the lives of many of our allies, before the servants of She-Who-Thirsts had been defeated – if they could have been vanquished at all.'
Ahriman nodded silently. His self-control was extraordinary : even the Changeling's senses could only pick up the faintest hints of the emotional turmoil hidden within.
'We know why you have come to us,' it continued, 'though your path was long and difficult. You seek the means to undo what you perceive as your greatest failure, to restore your Legion to its former strength. That is a goal we share, for dark times are ahead, and all will be needed in the battles to come against the forces of the Great Enemy.'
'Indeed, time is too short for you to spend decades searching our halls for that which you seek. And so, we have prepared it for you.' The Changeling took a tome from his robes, an exact copy of the one the White Seers had actually prepared for the Exile. 'This tome is psychically sensitive,' it explained. 'Take it, and the knowledge within will pour into your mind, and you will know how to restore your lost brothers, how to perfect the Rubric.'
It was quite proud of it all, really. Here, at the end, this most beautiful of deceptions would require no lie. For it was speaking the truth : the tome did contain the knowledge to remake the Rubric, to free his brothers from their undeath and restore his Legion's glory. But by the time Ahriman had assimilated that knowledge, the other workings within the tome would have transformed him, reforged his mind and soul into what he had always been destined to be, before his Primarch had turned his back on the gifts of Tzeentch. Ahriman would become the vector for the Great Mutator's will, the agent through which they would conquer the Black Library from within. The accursed daughter of the Anathema would be the first to die, or perhaps she would be captured and made to serve the will of Tzeentch as well - any event past the taking of the tome by Ahriman was still to be decided. After the Black Library had fallen and Ahriman had claimed his rightful place as the Chosen of Tzeentch, they would leave and reunite with the Thousand Sons, now under the control of Sarthorael. With the armies of the Rubricae reshaped in Tzeentch's image and the relics and lore of the Black Library, they would conquer the galaxy in the name of the Great Mutator. Once again, the Fifteenth Legion would bring illumination to the galaxy, this time in a true god's name.
The Changeling knew that, in time, Ahriman would come to appreciate the humor of it all.
The Exile made to take the tome, clueless as to the damnation awaiting him – but before his fingers touched it, the air next to them shimmered, and tore open, revealing another place where the designs of Tzeentch were about to reach fruition. It showed the Sanctum of Magnus, on Terathalion, where the body of the Crimson King laid in state, surrounded by tens of thousands of his undead sons. It showed the war spilling into that holy place, and the Lord of Change Sarthorael ascending the steps of Magnus' pyramid, its beady eyes locked onto the Primarch's slumbering form. The Changeling cursed, recognizing the one power that could act within the Black Library without difficulty. The Laughing God was trying to interfere, to turn Ahriman away from his assigned path. And it was working.
'Father !' Ahriman shouted, his voice filled with horror, and he made for the portal.
'Lord Ahriman !' it called out in alarm. 'The tome ! Before you go to your Primarch's aid, you must take the tome, or it will all have been for nothing !'
Ahriman stopped, and turned back toward the Changeling. Slowly, his hand reached toward the tome. Yes, it thought. So close now. The plan could still work, despite the Fool's interference. There would be changes to the great design, of course - Ahriman could not be prevented from passing through the portal, not anymore - but Tzeentch revelled in such alterations. One moment's weakness, one surge of pride, one wish for his centuries of wandering in solitude not to have been in vain, and he would take the tome, and then …
'I see you, now,' said Ahriman, his voice calm and cold as the worlds of frozen gas that turned around dead stars. The Changeling heard its death in that voice. 'I see you, daemon.'
Before it could react, Ahriman's hand hovering above the tome had turned into a fist, and that fist rammed into the Changeling's face, sending it flying across the room. The tome fell to the ground, and as soon as it left the daemon's grip, its physical form began to devolve, the mutagenous energies within no longer contained. With a snarl, Ahriman released a stream of white-hot fire from his hand, and obliterated the gift of Tzeentch from existence. Behind him, the Daemonifuge drew her blade, while the three other White Seers retreated, raising their hands and speaking words of warding and containment that burned at its essence. The Harlequins drew their own weapons, spreading out in a half-circle. Ahriman gestured for them all to stay back, and marched toward the Changeling. Already it was losing its hold on the White Seer, reverting to the shrouded, hooded shape it assumed when all other disguises failed it. It looked up at Ahriman, unable to comprehend what had just happened. Where before there had been doubt and a desperate need to make things right, there was now a bright fire of conviction and resolve, ignited by the sight of Magnus' peril.
'I will never serve your master,' spat the Exile. 'I will never serve Chaos. You shrouded my mind with your lies, with the temptation of personal power and glory, but I see clearly now.'
'You … you have betrayed yourself,' mumbled the Changeling in a chorus of a hundred different voices. 'You spent so long seeking this power, and now, at the end, you turn away from it ? Why ? Because it will do harm to your brothers ? Your brothers are dead, Ahzek ! All of them ! All that remain are their descendants, whose minds are so different from your own you would never recognize them as sons of Magnus if not for their armor !'
'You understand nothing,' said Ahriman. 'I never sought this power for myself. Everything I did, I did for my Legion. For my father. For my brothers. And if I have to sacrifice everything I am and everything I have accomplished to save them, then I shall do so gladly.'
'This … this is wrong !' shrieked the Changeling. 'Why ? Why would you do this ?!'
'Because that is what it means to be a Space Marine,' replied Ahriman, before crushing the Changeling's head with his staff.
After the Changeling's destruction, Ahriman immediately made for the portal, but was interrupted by a new arrival into the chamber : a Shadowseer, identical in every aspect to the one who had given his life to save Ahriman from the Spear of Telesto's fury. But Ahriman recognized the figure's aura : this was the one who had led him through the Webway, on the occasions where he had lost his path completely and was close to succumbing to despair. He had a strong idea of who – of what - it was, and the reaction of the Harlequins confirmed it. They fell to their knees before the figure, as did the White Seers a moment after. Only Ahriman and Ephrael remained standing before the avatar of the Laughing God.
The avatar advanced toward Ahriman, moving with impossible grace. Without knowing why, Ahriman bent the knee, so that his face was level with that of the divine projection. The Laughing God placed one hand on each side of Ahriman's helmet, and the Exile's mind was filled with images, words and concepts that he could not yet understand, but that burned themselves into his eidetic memory, waiting to be called upon and used.
This is the gift of the Black Library : not the knowledge you want, but that which you need.
When Ahriman opened his eyes again, the Shadowseer was gone, and the portal remained. The Exile stood, and was joined in his march by Ephrael. When the White Seers called out to the Daemonifuge, she told them that she followed the will of the God-Emperor, and she could not believe He would not want her to go the help of His son. Ahriman welcomed her at his side, for already he knew what he must do on the other side – and that Sarthorael, who had laid low his gene-sire in ages past, would be more than he could handle alone.
And as all eyes watched the two champions of the Imperium pass through the portal that had been opened by the last free true god of the ancient Eldar pantheon, none noticed a figure emerge from another portal into the hall, farthest from gathering. Nor did they see the two burdens the figure carried : a small bundle filled with ancient tablets, and a single, tear-shaped ruby. The figure turned toward another portal, one whose runes of warding were marred by a single, invisible crack barely more than a few molecules wide, created months ago by a sorcerous assault of unusual strength. The figure touched the crack, and vanished.
The portal led Ahriman and Ephrael directly within the Sanctum of Magnus on Terathalion. It did so in blatant defiance of distance and the wards that protected the Fifteenth Legion's most precious location – though most of these wards had been destroyed by Sarthorael the Ever-Watcher so that he could set foot within the tomb of the Crimson King. Sister of Battle and former First Captain emerged on the stairs leading to the top of Magnus' pyramid, further up from the Greater Daemon whose presence despoiled this holy ground. Sarthorael sneered when Ahriman crossed the portal, but froze in shock when Ephrael did. Clearly, despite the Changeling's breakdown at Ahriman's refusal to claim the corrupt tome, the Court of Change had anticipated that possibility - but it seemed the coming of the Daemonifuge had not been part of the plan.
[See Nemris' illustration titled "Ephrael's Defiance"]
'Go to your sire,' said Ephrael, her gaze fixed on the winged daemon, her aura flickering with psychic fire. 'I will hold this fiend at bay while you perform your task.'
It hurt Ahriman's pride to turn his back on the creature that was responsible for so much of the harm his Legion had suffered over the millennia, but he knew she was right. With a nod and a pulse of gratitude, he began to climb the last steps of the pyramid, knowing what waited for him at the top – but unsure whether or not he was ready to face it.
For the first time in ten thousand years, Ahriman beheld his father. Even in slumber, Magnus was majestic, projecting an aura of power and wisdom. His chest rose and fell with regularity, and it seemed as if he might wake up at any time. But Ahriman knew better : the soul of his Primarch was gone, the body preserved from death only by its latent power and the enchantments laid across the bier upon which it rested. With a monumental effort of will, Ahriman cast aside his emotions, and, holding his staff in both hands, he began to speak the words granted to him by the Laughing God.
Lower on the pyramid, Ephrael Stern faced Sarthorael. The Greater Daemon had paused in its advance, considering the Daemonifuge warily.
'You should not be here,' said the Ever-Watcher. 'Your place is elsewhere in the Great Tapestry. Your presence here is an anomaly. Turn back now, little one. Leave, and I will spare you.'
'Your deceptions cannot trick me, daemon. I will stop you, and put an end to your schemes.'
'There is nothing you can do to stop me,' snarled the Greater Daemon. 'I am Tzeentch's chosen champion. The power that makes you anathema to the children of Slaanesh will not abide you against me. I am the Hand of Fate itself, the Doom of Primarch ! I. Cannot. Be. Defeated !'
'Liar,' said Ephrael softly, through the blood dripping from her mouth. Then she spoke louder, and it seemed the very walls of the Sanctum shook with the strength of her voice : 'Liar !'
She advanced toward the daemon, slowly, blade held low, and Sarthorael stepped back, staring at her with something akin to dread and incomprehension in its beady eyes. The blood from her wound was vanishing, turning into golden dust, while the rents in her armor were repairing themselves. Her eyes beamed with psychic light of colors that did not belong to the Materium.
'There is no place for you here,' she declared. 'Nor is there anywhere else ! You are naught but lies and deceit. You do not belong into this universe, nor any other ! You and all your kind are a plague, a cancer onto reality. You have hurt us all for far too long – but this will end !'
The Daemonifuge raised her sword, and it flared with golden light.
'We will purge your darkness !' she shouted, her voice clear and loud, ringing with the sound of true angelic wrath. 'We will free ourselves from your corruption ! In nomine Imperator Deus !'
The golden light of faith battled the darkness of rampant change, the two forces holding each other in check while around them, the entire Sanctum trembled from the unleashed energies. Sarthorael roared in disbelief as his power was held back, matched by that of the Daemonifuge.
'I will destroy you ! I will make dust of your dreams, and burn your ideals to ash !'
'I know where and how I die,' replied Ephrael, her voice straining under the effort of keeping the Greater Daemon's unholy sorcery at bay. 'You are not the one to kill me, daemon.'
As Ahriman recited the words of the Eldar ritual and Ephrael battled the Ever-Watcher, the war between Order and Chaos also spilled to the rest of the Sanctum. Ragnar Blackmane, the Young King, led the forces of the Black Crusade through the threshold of the Sanctum, following the Greater Daemon that had abandoned them to focus on his true mission – the destruction of Magnus and the corruption of the Rubric-stricken Thousand Sons. Blackmane expected this attack to be a slaughter, as his forces tore apart the immobile, statue-like Astartes and offered up their souls to Khorne, his divine patron. But he was wrong, for one servant of the Emperor remained to stand against him - Iskandar Khayon, battered and wounded near unto death by Sarthorael, but rescued from his demise by Madox the Undying.
Though his weapon had been broken by the Ever-Watcher, the Scourge of the Wolves stood defiantly against the horde of Ragnar. The fire of Vindicta, newborn Power of Retribution, coursed through his veins and his soul, its hold reinforced by Khayon's renewed conviction upon seeing Ahriman and Ephrael arrive. Even though he despised Ahriman for his arrogance and his unwilling destruction of the Legion, he knew him to be a true servant of the Emperor, and a mighty one at that. And Ephrael Stern … Well. He had met her once, several centuries ago, and they had parted as allies – perhaps even as friends. Her presence boded well indeed. Moments ago, Khayon had thought all hope lost, but now it had returned and he would fight until the end to protect it, fragile though it might be. He stood alone as the slaves of Ruin charged toward him, laughing and shouting oaths to their malevolent gods – and then, for the second time in minutes, a miracle occurred.
They laughed as they charged, for he stood alone, and there were hundreds of them - Space Wolves, Dark Angels, debased cultists and xenos mercenaries. They laughed because he held no weapon, and because the wounds Sarthorael had inflicted upon him were still visible - his chestplate was rent, his armor's black colored by his own blood. Even those who recognized him laughed, for they thought that this was their chance to lay low a lord of the Thousand Sons while he was crippled from fighting their betters, and earn great glory with little risk.
But they were wrong. He was far from weak, and he was not alone.
'Brothers !' he called out, his voice speaking for Vindicta itself. 'Rise ! Rise from the slumber of ages ! Rise and defend yourselves from those who despoil our homeworld !'
For one, terrible second, there was nothing. Then the suit of armor to his right, empty but for the handful of dust that was all that remained of the son of Magnus that had worn it in life, twitched. Then the Rubrica moved. He turned to face the Chaos army, raised his bolter, and fired. The gun did not fire a physical shell, but a bolt of psychic, pale fire, that caught a Dark Angel in the chest and sent him crashing to the ground. Then another Rubrica opened fire, and another, and another, and another - until there were thousands of them, turning from the pyramid of Magnus to battle those who had dared to invade their Primarch's sanctuary. Their eye-lenses blazed with a light that belonged to no color mortal eyes could see, and they fought in complete silence - except for Khayon, who was laughing at the center of it all, laughing for the first time in ten thousand years.
For ten thousand years, the Fifteenth Legion had hidden those of its members who failed to withstand the Rubric. With their bodies turned to dust, their minds destroyed and their souls reduced to the tiniest flicker, they still heeded the commands of their brethren, but could no longer think and act by their own. There had been those who had advocated using the so-called Rubricae on the battlefield, claiming that the Thousand Sons needed all the military power they could get, and that there was little practical difference between a Rubrica and a battle-brother from the other Legions, at least when it came to holding the line.
They had been denied, of course. The leaders of the Thousand Sons knew that such a move would reveal the truth of the Rubric to the wider Imperium. The initial decision to hide the Rubric's true cost had occurred not long after the Heresy, when the Imperial Creed was still being forged in the crucible of merciless wars of faith between the churches of the God-Emperor. Back then, the Legion's leadership had feared that some of these religious factions would denounce them as abominations should the truth leak out. Should that come to pass, the Corvidae among them foretold that the Legion would be destroyed – or worse. The Seers refused to speak of what dread futures they had witnessed, but their haunted mien convinced their brothers to heed their counsel and keep the truth of the Rubric a secret.
Even if these unknown worst-case scenari were avoided, while the Grey Knights and the Inquisition's highest ranks already knew the spell held no corruption, the rest of the Imperium would still react to the revelation with yet greater fear of the Fifteenth Legion. Recruitment, already a problem for the Thousand Sons, would become even more difficult. And though no son of Magnus would say it aloud, another reason for the continued hiding of the Rubricae was shame, shame for the imperfection in their gene-seed that had allowed the Great Mutator purchase upon them, and shame at their failure to counter the curse of the flesh-change as their Primarch had. Ever were the sons of Magnus prideful. But greatest of all was the shame of having all but killed their own brothers, a shame that had nothing to do with pride.
Khayon had not been present for these arguments, but he could imagine them well enough, and he agreed with the ultimate decision that had been made – to hide the Rubricae from sight, putting them to serve as the silent watchers of their slumbering Primarch. However, with the Sanctum breached and the silent brothers directly threatened, the time for secrecy was over. No single Thousand Son could hope to control so many Rubricae at once, but the Scourge of the Wolves did not need to. The vision Vindicta had shown the Heralds on Prospero was still vivid in his mind : the Rubricae enslaved to the Changer of Ways, used as a Legion of Chaos to bring ruin to the entire Prosperine Dominion. He used his psychic gift to share the rage and anguish the vision had caused him with the Rubricae around him, infusing them with Vindicta's own power so that they may move as if of their own volition.
The Chaos attack faltered as thousands of the previously immobile warriors opened fire on them. For the first time since the beginning of the Black Crusade, it was the invaders' turn to be outnumbered, and that was not a change they relished. Even the Power of Retribution could not animate the tens of thousands of Rubricae at once, but those it could were more than enough to slaughter the would-be despoilers of the Fifteenth Legion's sanctuary. Only Ragnar Blackmane himself was able to reach the Imperial lines, protected from the Rubricae's aetheric bolts by the favor of the Blood God and the power of the Axe of Morkai. The Young King had reclaimed the weapon from Logan Grimnar's headless corpse, and the daemon within hungered for revenge against the one who had slain its last master.
Ragnar came at Khayon with the Axe raised high, and the first Herald stood his ground, despite holding no weapon himself. Though the Space Wolf could not see it, Iskandar was smiling under his helmet, for he knew what was about to happen. As the son of Russ crossed the last of the distance separating him from the Scourge of Wolves, atop the pyramid of Magnus, Ahriman completed the spell imparted to him by the keepers of the Black Library.
As his brother turned the wheel of fate once more, Khayon was still laughing
There was madness all around him, the very substance of Chaos. His soul was drowning in it, and every second he spent here was a battle to hold onto his sanity. It ate away at him like acid, trying to dissolve everything he was and return it to the raging storm from which his soul had been created. Yet this was merely the Warp, the reflection of the material universe. This was not where his Primarch was, for Magnus would have escaped such a prison easily. Ahriman could see the abyss down which Sarthorael's curse had thrown his father's spirit. It was a pit of blackest despair, forged from every single moment one of the Imperium's subjects had simply given up.And here they were, the old enemies of reason, the faces of the Primordial Truth.
HE WILL NOT RETURN, declared the Four, with voices born of the universe's damnation. WE WILL NOT LET YOU. HE WILL FALL, FALL FOREVER UNTIL HE BURNS AT LAST.
'The choice,' replied Ahriman, with the calm of the condemned, 'is not yours.'
And he jumped into the abyss, after his father, and the Dark Gods howled their rage.
Fangs and claws tore at his soul as he plunged deeper and deeper into the darkness. He could sense them, even if no mortal eyes could ever hope to truly see them. Four terrible beasts, the malice of the universe rendered into vast, evil minds that knew nothing of mercy. They were all there, for all that it had been a Tzeentchian scheme that had lost the Crimson King to his sons. Each of the Four had its own reasons for hating the Cyclops, each its own reasons to dread his return. His mind nearly shattered under the strain of their mere presence, but he was strong, and eventually the four terrible entities resolved into shapes his brain could comprehend.
He had met them before – he had done this before. Once, ten thousand years ago, he had delved into the Realms of Chaos, acting on the intuition of a loyal son and the wisdom of a civilization that had not needed hatred to survive Old Night. What has been done before can be done again – the age-old aphorism gave him strength. He had saved Horus, and he would save Magnus.
But he had not been alone when he had saved the Warmaster. There had been four great wolves with him, the four sons of Lupercal who stood above even the rest of the illustrious Sixteenth Legion. It had been together that they had rescued Horus from the grip of the Ruinous Powers, the nobility in their souls keeping the darkness at bay long enough for Ahriman to reach Horus and rouse the Primarch's own righteous fury and immense power. Now he was alone, and the pain in his soul was immense as the Dark Gods ripped at his essence, seeking to undo everything he was.
No, Ahriman realized. I am not alone.
The knowledge was in him, one last gift from the Black Library's keepers. Words older than the Dark Gods themselves, a legacy from a time before the galaxy had been rent asunder – words that could reach beyond even the greatest of veils. He spoke them, and wove among them the names of those who had once been in his brothers in deed, if not in blood.
And his call was answered. From the darkness, three great wolves emerged, but these were not the corrupted, enslaved animals who had destroyed Prospero. These were the loyal wolves, the guardians of order and nature's balance. Their bodies had long since perished in the material world, and their spirits had dissolved into the Great Sea – but their descendants remembered them. Statues of them stood across the Imperium, keeping watch over the kingdom they had built and defended to the end. They were dead but not forgotten, and their actions echoed eternal within the Empyrean. It was upon these echoes that Ahriman called upon now, restoring the spirits of the long-departed for this one, most glorious of tasks. It concerned him that only three had appeared where there should have been four – but three would be enough.
In the psychic storm, the spirit beasts appeared to be made of silver light, with their light burning with golden fire. Each was unique, yet they all shared an undeniable kinship as they charged at the monsters that were keeping Magnus' soul beyond Ahriman's reach. The one with a scarred but noble face leapt at the dog-faced thing of brass and blood. The one who seemed to smile mockingly jumped for the throat of a bloated colossus of pestilent flesh and weeping sores, its claws tearing into its rotten blubber with joyful abandon. And the third, whose claws shone with the light of rightful vengeance, simply stalked toward the androgynous avatar of perfect sensuality – and the creature reeled back, as if suddenly remembering old wounds. Then the wolf flung himself toward it, and it screamed in agony and outrage as the hero's soul tore into its innards.
The wolves could not truly harm the Dark Gods, of course, and Ahriman wasn't foolish enough to believe they could. For all the strength of those they represented, for all the power of the legend they had become, they were still naught but dust compared to the cosmic might of the four abominations that held Magnus captive. But they could hurt them, hurt them in ways they had not been for far, far too long. And more importantly, they could buy him the time he needed.
Only one monster was left between Ahriman and his Primarch now, and it was an adversary Ahriman was familiar with. Unlike the other three, its shape was ever-shifting – a great bird with nine heads, a pillar of flesh covered in faces speaking the universe's every secret, a great fire that peered into the very soul of all who looked upon it and transformed it utterly. But Ahriman could see beyond every disguise, every attempt for it to hide its true nature. This one, of all the Dark Gods, he could understand. Not as Ephrael understood the Dark Prince, and he was grateful to be spared at least that burden. But he understood enough. By the Emperor, he understood enough.
This was the Legion's old enemy, the false god who had sought to deceive Magnus into giving up his soul. The tumor that laid at the heart of the Warp, born of every lie ever told. The madness that made mortals see patterns where none existed, the delusion that made them imagine great manipulators hiding in the shadows in their desperation to impose order onto a chaotic existence. The sick, twisted desire to abandon one's free will when faced with the immensity of choice, to become nothing more than a servant to some greater power, and find cold comfort in that servitude. To abandon one's responsibilities by telling oneself that it was all part of Fate's great plan.
Here was the Lie. Here was the Great Deceiver. Here was Tzeentch, in all his horrible majesty.
'I have fought you before," declared Ahriman,' and rescued a Primarch's soul from your grasp.'
'And so you have,' croaked the creature in a thousand different voices, each speaking the words with a slightly different meaning, each cutting into Ahriman's mind like razor-sharp daggers. 'But this time, you are alone. The wolf who helped you then is not here. He walks a different path, one that in time shall drown him in darkness. And just like him, you too will be called to serve … Already you have done my work by thwarting the designs of Slaanesh for the Black Library, even if I will need to punish you for your rough treatment of my servant there. For it is your destiny to be a pawn of Fate, Ahriman. It has always been, in every reality that ever was and ever could be. You cannot escape your strings, little one. No matter how much you struggle …'
'I am no pawn !' Ahriman shouted into the maelstrom, his mind screaming his defiance at the abomination that stood in his way. 'I am no slave ! I am no puppet ! I am Ahzek Ahriman !'
Exile no longer, Ahriman struck with the strength of all his anger, of all his will. He struck, and the God of Change screamed as he burned with the fire of a son's desire to save his father. Tzeentch screamed, and across the galaxy, slaves of the Architect of Fate felt their master's distress.
And the falling, burning shape of Magnus' soul heard his son's cry, and reached out in answer.
It was then that, atop the pyramid, upon the stone where he had laid immobile for thousands of years, the Crimson King opened his eye.
AN : Well, that one certainly wasn't easy to complete. Did you know that, when I started writing it, I was worried I wouldn't have enough stuff to make it of suitable length ? How foolish of me to forget the strength of my own imagination. Still, between me moving to a new place and starting my first actual job, the actual writing was certainly slowed down. I hope it was worth the wait - let me know in your reviews/comments.
As usual, thanks to Nemris for the amazing artworks for this chapter.
I would like to recommend to you the new story in the RH verse "Blood in the Void", by morion87. It can be found here on ffnet and is quite good. Nemris' own story, No Man's Storm, is also excellent, and comes with its own illustrations on Nemris' deviantart page.
Were you surprised by Ephrael's coming ? I have always thought she is a fascinating character, and it's a shame Games Workshop has banished her in the Retconnian, never to be seen again. When they announced the Times of Ending, I thought maybe she would make an appearance, but if she has, I haven't read or heard about it - and I pride myself somewhat on my research abilities when it comes to that kind of thing. To those who are afraid she might be too powerful and be a Mary Sue, I will assuage your concerns with this : the Imperium is going to need as many "cheats" as it can in order to even survive what I am going to unleash upon it in the future. The Siege of Terathalion, for all its horrors, is still a bright chapter of the Times of Ending, especially now that Magnus has awoken.
The next chapter is going to be fun to write, let me tell you. I am still unsure of the format it will take - I hesitate between continuing like before, or writing it all from Magnus' own perspective. In any case, you might already look for awesome music to listen to while reading it. For myself for instance, while I was writing Ephrael's scenes, I listened to "Ave Imperator" by the HMKids and "The Moment" by MiracleofSound.
What else to say ... Oh, Rafen and the Spear. Unlike many people, I quite liked the stories in which Rafen appeared in canon, perhaps because they were some of the first Warhammer books I read. When I saw the Spear of Telesto appear in the last novel of the Horus Heresy Ruinstorm, I was happy like a child, wondering what part it would play. The Black Library owes Rafen leading the attack on its walls to that book reminding me of the seed I planted back in the Blood Angels Index Astartes.
Alright, that's all from me. I have no idea which of my stories I will update next - all of them are at a very interesting point, all of them will require my full focus. I even have an idea for a short story that I think would be nice ... So much to write, and so little time to write it in - but then again, I know for experience that plenty of free time does not equate more writing for me. If you have questions and suggestions, don't hesitate to contact me, either by reviews/comments or by PM.
Zahariel out.