AN : 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.
There shall come a time
When four kings rise from their silent thrones
And judgement stirs in innocence's grave.
From the depthless abyss shall come
Twin curses, born in ancient times,
One of eternal hunger, one of twisted ambition;
One wholly unknown, one lost to the mist of ages.
The prince who sees all will return,
And refuse the power that is his by right of blood,
To take his appointed place within his father's plan.
From the grave of empires will come
The nameless, fatherless ones,
United under a banner of blackness,
United under the will of the one who is many.
Others will follow in their wake,
Bringing rage and despair,
And the great lie shall be revealed
At light's end.
The newborn children of the stars shall seek their kingdom,
Guided by promises and faith long rendered hollow
To break the chains holding the darkness at bay.
Shadows shall gather from all sides,
Seeking to crush the embers of hope
And usher in the Age of Chaos.
Then, at the crossroad of fate,
The firstborn shall make alliance with the serpent,
And together forge salvation from doom.
The dead shall know death,
And the damned, damnation.
Excerpt of the prophecy of the Rhana Dandra, the Eldar legend of the End of All Days
Times of Ending : The Rise of Ynnead
Ever since the Fall, the descendants of the few Eldar who rejected the corruption of their race have lived in fear, clinging to relics of a distant past even as they seek to distance themselves from it by walking their Paths. Though their number diminish with every passing year, the Children of Isha have endured against the many forces that seek their annihilation. But not all are satisfied to merely survive : some seek more. Some seek, if not a return to glory, then the means of fighting back against their race's promised doom, to defy the cruel fate written for them by their ancestors' sins. Among those, none are more determined than Eldrad Ulthran, Farseer of Craftworld Ulthwé. Now, as the Times of Ending descend upon the galaxy, the old seer's plans are about to reach fruition – or be smashed down forever by his many enemies …
The planet hung in the void, surrounded by a massive armada. It had no name, because it did not exist in any Imperial record. Nine thousand years ago, it had been chosen as the site, because of a combination of unique aetheric alignments and more physical properties, and subsequently wiped out of the Imperium's collective memory. Such a total and utter suppression of information had been the work of decades, even with taking advantage of the confusion that had followed the War of the Beast and the catastrophic losses the Imperium had suffered. To this day, there were still operatives whose sole function it was to ensure that the planet remained unknown, none of them knowing why, only that it must be done. And so, the system had vanished from the maps of the Segmentum Tempestus, knowledge of its existence kept within a very small and select group.
Surveys were quietly modified, reports were lost, astronomical measurements were updated. Every so often someone would find out, and they would be silenced – if possible, the memory would be expunged from their minds, if not, they became martyrs for a cause they had no idea existed. Such were the grim necessities of the war fought against the Archenemy, whose servants were spread everywhere and whose minions could pick the thoughts from dreaming minds. The agents of the Hydra consoled themselves in the knowledge that the Inquisition's methods were much more brutal than theirs, even if they were all-too-often justified.
That masquerade, however, was at an end. There would be no concealing the massive army that had landed on the world. Even wiping it all out in some Exterminatus-grade apocalypse would not erase the gigantic data trail such a gathering had created. The Alpha Legion leadership had known, and they hadn't even tried. It would have been a wasted effort. The army had been brought here because the sons of Alpharius knew that even they were not infallible, and they fully expected someone to have heard of what would take place here and try to interfere. Even if all their precautions had worked perfectly, the magnitude of what they intended was guaranteed to draw attention from beings who were unbound by the limitations of time. An attack would come : all the various auguries the Cabal had access to confirmed it.
The nature of that attack, however, was unknown, which was why, after much deliberation, the army had been brought to held fight it off. Whatever the threat would be, it would be big, and so the Twentieth Legion had pulled all the stops, making full use of the influence it had cultivated across every branch of the Imperium. Half a Battlefleet's worth of ships covered the planet, some in stationary orbits, others patrolling the system. Millions of Imperial Guard troopers were garrisoning the planet, taking post around the immense fortress that had taken nine millennia to construct piecemeal, each stone placed at a precise angle to act both as a martial stronghold and as a mystical catalyst. Only the Legionaries and their allies were allowed within the fortress proper. Entire phalanxes of skitarii had been deployed, and with them several groups of Titans, who towered above the thousands of transports, tanks and artillery pieces the hundreds of Regiments had brought with them. Rogue Traders belonging to the Coils of the Hydra had brought their private armies, thousands of mercenaries and household troops equipped with the finest wargear money could buy.
All of the troops brought together had but one thing uniting them all beyond their ultimate allegiance to Him on Earth : the fact that, at some point in their martial careers, they had fought alongside the Eldar xenos against a common enemy. For most, that enemy had been the Slaves to Ruin, but others had fought with the Children of Isha against Orks, Tyranids, and even the Eldars' own dark kind from Commoragh. When presented with a chance to ally with the Eldar, however temporarily, their officers had chosen to risk censure in order to fulfill their duty and protect the troops under their command. That the Alpha Legion had managed to find so many of them spoke more of the sheer number of armed forces under the Imperium's banner than of any tolerance among its people of the ancient xenos breed – there were countless more Regiments and armies that had faced destruction rather than accept a truce with the Eldar.
It was a muster of a strength not seen outside of the Imperium's Crusades. If no one came, then the Alpha Legion would effectively have taken an enormous amount of troops away from important assignments for no reason, and there would be a reckoning. Without these ships and soldiers, entire wars would be lost, or at the very least not won when they should have. The death toll was going to be staggering even in the best of cases, and the Hydra's sons knew better than to expect the best case. They had run the numbers, calculated potential losses, and the cold, cruel calculus of war had rendered its verdict : it was still worth it all, to ensure they succeeded. As things stood, the Imperium would inevitably fall to the Ruinous Powers, if it did not succumb to another threat first, like the Orks or the Tyranids. Therefore, the situation had to be changed, dramatically.
That cold knowledge had been the root of the Twentieth ever since Alpharius had returned to Terra in the aftermath of the Isstvan Massacre and spoken with his father. The Emperor's great plan for Mankind, freedom from the Warp through use of the Webway, had been ruined beyond repair by the folly of Leman Russ. In its place, another plan had been hatched, slowly, painfully, through an alliance that ran against the very precepts of the Great Crusade. A plan that would shake the stars themselves and rewrite the skeins of fate. A plan whose first step was finally about to be completed. Hopefully the ones that came after wouldn't take nearly as much time. Preparations had already been made for them, should this first step prove successful.
And what a first step it was. Together, the Alpha Legion and its allies among the Craftworld Eldars sought nothing less than to engineer the birth of a new god.
Ynnead, the God of the Dead
Once nothing more than a glimmer of possibility across the weave of fate, the Whispering God has become a real entity in the Sea of Souls through the combined efforts of the second Cabal. Under the leadership of Eldrad, the Eldar side of the conspiracy has encouraged the spread of the Slumbering God's legend, cultivating belief within the Children of Isha. Even Eldrad himself does not know, however, whether it was the Cabal that started the legend of Ynnead, or if they merely discovered it deep within Eldar mythology and spread it among their kin. Most current believers of the God of the Dead belong to the Craftworld, for the Exodite still have their world-spirits to worship and the Dark Eldar laugh at the very idea of worshiping anything but their own glory and self-indulgence. Still, there are exceptions in both groups : individuals who fear the pull of She-Who-Thirst upon their souls, or visionaries who reject the way of their people and search for something more and find themselves drawn to Eldrad's vision of a resurgent Eldar empire.
According to Ynnari myth, Ynnead dwells within the collective Infinity Circuits of every Craftworld in the galaxy. Thus is the Whispering God formed from the union of all the billions of souls that have found refuge within them over the course of ten thousand years, host to all of their power and knowledge. According to the Farseer Kysaduras the Anchorite, Ynnead grows in strength with every Eldar death whose soul isn't claimed by Slaanesh. As such, the Whispering God gains nothing from the Dark Eldar, whose spirits are devoured by She-Who-Thirst the moment they fail to sustain themselves through the suffering of others. Kysaduras' prophecies on the Whispering God were of tremendous use to the Cabal, but before they could recruit the Anchorite to their cause, he mysteriously vanished during his travels, and not even the Hydra could pick up his trail. Nevertheless, the work continued, and in the last century Farseers unaligned with the Cabal have begun to perceive the echoes of Ynnead's potential existence across the Web of Fate.
Meanwhile, the Alpha Legion has used its influence and resources to secure all that would be needed once that legend had sufficiently grown, and the slumbering god had to be roused to full awakening. Securing the nameless world that would serve as the location for the ritual of Ynnead's awakening was only part of their contribution, for they also helped protect Craftworld where the worship of Ynnead was strong, turning aside xenos attacks and even Imperial conquerors. There are some among the Hydra who fear that, should Ynnead awaken and free the Eldar from the threat of Slaanesh, the xenos will return to their ancient ways and seek to restore their galaxy-spanning empire. But even the dread possibility of the Aeldari ascendant is nothing compared to the shadow cast upon Mankind's future by Chaos in its myriad forms, and so the Alpha Legion is willing to take the risk. If worst comes to worst, better slavery under Eldar rule with a chance to rebel and reclaim freedom than total corruption by the Archenemy or extinction within the Great Devourer's maw.
The plan to create Ynnead was first formed after the disastrous War of the Beast nearly destroyed the Imperium. For the thousand years between the Roboutian Heresy and that most terrible conflict, the Hydra and its alien allies had been drifting apart, pulled by separate allegiances and concerns. But the near-annihilation of the Imperium at the hands of the Orks shook the Twentieth Legion to its core, with Omegon returning from his travels to reorganize the Legion and give it one new, united purpose. With knowledge gleaned from his battles against the corrupt members of the Cabal, Omegon had helped Eldrad set up the grand design that would ultimately result in the creation of a new god. The Primarch vanished soon after setting plans into motion, his instructions faithfully carried out since then by his sons, with Omegon only appearing from time to time, and even the Alpha Legion not knowing for certain that these sighting were real.
To create a god was no simple undertaking. To create one with the power to defeat She-Who-Thirsts and save the collective soul of the Eldar race from her maw was nothing short of impossible. To even think about attempting such a thing was simply insane.
But Eldrad had learned long ago that he did not live in a universe that obeyed sane rules. After all, in no sane universe would his people be on the brink of extinction, dragged steadily closer to the abyss each year as their enemies hunted them down. And in no sane universe would the best hope of avoiding that creeping doom be an alliance with beings that, he knew, the immense majority of his own people regarded with nothing but naked contempt. Despite all that had been lost since the Fall, the Eldar were still prideful.
Prideful. Eldrad knew that what he intended would not be called that by his detractors; no, they would use much stronger terms. Foolish. Arrogant. Insane, yes, of course. Heretical. Treasonous, even. An insult to everything their people stood for. And yet …
And yet here he stood, at the center of a fortress built by the hands of humans at the exacting standards of a child of Isha, along with the rest of his kindred who had joined him in this endeavour. There were few of them – so very few. The millennia had not been kind to the members of the hidden alliance between Mankind and the Eldar. After the war that the humans called the Heresy had been declared over, Eldrad and the Hydra had hunted those surviving members of the corrupt Cabal, suffering great losses as they battled beings that, for all that they had fallen in the end, had schemed and fought against Chaos for thousands of years. Even then, they had not killed them all, and those survivors of the first purge had prosecuted their vengeance from the shadows ever since, drowning ever deeper into darkness as they did. New souls had been recruited, but the Eldar were a diminishing breed, and it was difficult to convince those who were too young to truly understand the scope of what was at stake, too young to see past the pride to which they all clung so desperately. Eldrad was the last one left who remembered the Fall – well, the last one left who was mortal, at least.
Twelve of the brightest minds of the Eldar – including his own – stood in a circle around a pillar of psy-resonant crystal that had been reclaimed for this exact purpose four thousand years ago. The material was disturbingly similar to that of the dozens of crystallized statues that were arranged around the circle. Like, the pillar, the statues had required great effort to claim – much more, in fact. Each was the shell of a Farseer, whose power had transmuted his or her body from within until the soul could no longer be anchored within the flesh and had joined the Infinity Circuit of the Farseer's Craftworld. There was at least one statue from every Craftworld in existence within the galaxy, and it had taken millennia to gather them. Millennia, and the lives of many, both human and Eldar. The Craftworlds' guardians had rarely looked kindly upon the Cabal's need, and more of the crystallized seers had been acquired through violence or deception than had been through honesty and alliance. Eldrad could feel the psychic gaze of the souls entrapped within the statues, their anger at him for daring to remove them from their resting places. He had communed with each of them over the course of entire months, pleading the necessity of what he and the Cabal intended. He had managed to convince the ghosts of the Farseers of his sincerity, and they had agreed to help him – but they had not forgiven him. Nor did he seek their forgiveness, for he knew full well it was unlikely their spirits would survive the ritual's demands.
So many sacrifices, just to arrive to a point where hope could once again be glimpsed. He would not allow it all to be in vain. No matter the price he must pay, he would awaken Ynnead.
The Cabal's analysts agreed that the most likely source of attack was the forces beholden to the Dark Prince of Chaos, Slaanesh. Priests and daemonologists of the Ordo Malleus had placed wards upon the ships of the armada and granted blessings to the assembled armies, while operatives of the Twentieth Legion were scattered through their ranks, watching for any sign of spiritual corruption. Veterans of conflict against the scions of the Lord of Pain and Pleasure had been brought into the army to bring their experience to bear. Along with several Culexus Assassins, newly designed null devices had been deployed, both having proved able to disrupt the seductive aura of daemonettes and the Glamour of Blood Angels alike. In a stasis pod deep within the battle-barge Epsilon, one of the Imperium's Living Saints slumbered, kept out of time so as to avoid psychic interference with the ritual's incredibly complex workings unless his power was absolutely necessary. From the Eldar, groups of Harlequins and Aspect Warriors had arrived, none among them younger than a hundred years and all having already faced the corruption of the Arch-Enemy and held fast before it.
The allied forces of Mankind and Eldar were as ready to face the legions of Ruin as they could conceivably be. But the attack, when it inevitably came, did so from a nearly completely unexpected source. Psykers who had been braced for the onslaught of the Youngest God's corruption felt nothing, for it was the mundane auspex arrays scanning the system that picked up the first trace of the arrival of those who sought to prevent Ynnead's awakening.
One moment, all was calm on the bridge of the Tyrant-class Cruiser Watchful Dominion. The vox-officer had just finished reciting the appropriate identification codes to another patrolling ship, and the data-magos had confirmed that the ones they had received in reply were also correct. If either of the ships had made the slightest mistake in transmitting the million-digit-long keys, the other would have opened fire at once, just in case the first ship had been compromised or replaced. So far, no such mistake had been made during the entire operation, but the tension kept everyone on their toes and prevented them from thinking too hard on what was happening here. Idle minds had a tendency to wander and wonder, and of the thousands of souls that dwelled aboard the Watchful Dominion, only her master had the clearance needed to know at least a fraction of what was going on. Of course, even Captain Leopold Beauchelier did not know much : only that the Alpha Legion was responsible for the massive gathering of Imperial forces, and that the Eldar were involved somehow. And that was all that he wanted to know, thank you very much. He might have led his Cruiser in battle in a tentative alliance with the pointy-eared xenos once or twice to protect the Jeremiah Sector from Chaos-worshipping pirates, but he knew better than to trust the Eldar.
Suddenly, a voice erupted from every vox-speaker on the bridge, utterly devoid of humanity and lacking the static that accompanies even the closest ship-to-ship transmissions. Despite himself, Leopold shivered. He had heard servitors speak with more emotion than this voice.
'Eternity is ours,' it said, 'and ours alone. None may pry it from our grasp. None may challenge our immortality. For your trespasses against our dominion, submit to your rightful judgement, and die.'
Every alarm on the bridge started to scream as dozens, hundreds of new contacts were detected by the auspexes, seemingly appearing out of nowhere, far from the system's Mandeville Point. Strange energy readings flared near these strange, crescent-shaped ships, and the same instincts that had seen Leopold survive a hundred void battles told him that these were the signs of an imminent attack, even if none of the tech-priests could understand their significance.
'Raise the shields !' Leopold shouted, desperate to be heard above the dim of the alarms. 'Raise -'
The Watchful Dominion vanished in a flash of light and energy, nothing remaining of the ship but particles of dust. Her crew did not have time to feel anything before the Necron weaponry ended them. Nine more ships were destroyed as the Necron fleet materialized back in the Materium from whatever impossible realm it had crossed to reach this location, obliterated without being able to do anything but shout, however briefly, for their comrades to hear their death-cries.
For many years, the galaxy had been preparing itself for vast and tremendous changes. The first of these to reach fruition had happened on Prospero, where Vindicta, Power of Vengeance, had arisen from the depths of the Warp, brought forth by the wrath of Magnus the Red and the prayers for justice of trillions of souls throughout ten millennia. Then the Crimson King himself had risen from his slumber, defending his Legion's adopted homeworld of Terathalion from the minions of the Changer of Ways. Though the galaxy still rang with the echoes of these momentous events, they were but precursors to greater transformations of the galactic game, such as the one the Cabal hoped to achieve. The Alpha Legion knew of several other great schemes, and the Hydra's high command did not doubt for a moment that there were others they knew nothing about.
But as new powers stirred, old evils were also on the rise. While Human and Eldar worked to forge their salvation, horrors that had slept for aeons awoke. Over the last century, all across the galaxy, the ancient race of the Necrontyrs, reduced to the soulless automatons known as the Necrons by their alliance with the god-like C'tan, had slowly emerged from the Sleep of Ages. These antediluvian lords of the galaxy had found their dominion much changed, their empire gone and countless lesser races dancing upon its ruins, ignorant of the noble legacy they were desecrating.
Though they had reacted to this new state of things in varied manners, all had shared the same rage at being so usurped, and the same contempt for the living. With their simulacrum minds often damaged by their long sleep, many reacted by striking out, emptying whole worlds of life or enslaving their inhabitants. Others were utterly mad, consumed by curses cast upon them by the betrayed Star Gods before they fell, and those set out to exterminate all life, driven by an eternal, soulless hate. One Dynasty had even been wiped out entirely as a result of solar storms, and was now nothing more than an extension of its defective main computer, an Abominable Intelligence calling itself the Sarkoni Emperor and seeking the assimilation of all other Necrons into itself.
Over the course of the Dark Millennium, more and more of the Necron tomb-worlds had awakened, and each of the great factions of the galaxy had encountered the ancient xenos. The Imperium had been slow to realize the emergence of this new threat, for once not because of its colossal size and inertia, but because none of the first encounters with the Necrons left any survivors in its wake. Whole colonies were emptied overnight with no sign of struggle left behind. At first it was small settlements, then larger one, until the entire world of Sanctuary 101 was harvested, every Battle Sister of the Fortress-Convent flayed and slain, with records only showing them fighting flickering shadows.
That horrific event had finally made the higher echelons of the Imperium realize the threat, and in the following years signs of the Necrons' increasing presence had been detected. Agents of the Ordo Xenos reported the appearance of strange creatures of living metal wielding technologies of a potency beyond anything they had ever encountered, and the Imperial Guard fought against silent adversaries more tenacious and unrelenting than even the Traitor Legions themselves. With the help of their Eldar allies, whose records spoke of the Unliving Ones and the terrible wars their ancestors had waged against them at the behest of the Old Ones, the Alpha Legionnaires were able to identify the threat and shared their intelligence with the organizations concerned, though they themselves had little contact with the Necrons.
During the Great Sleep (the duration of which encompassed the entire span of both the Eldar Empire and the Imperium, which is to say, a staggering sixty million years), many of the Tomb Worlds had been destroyed or were otherwise lost. This was something for which the species of the galaxy could be thankful - for had the Necrons roused with the full might at their disposal before entering the Great Sleep, all would have been swept aside before them. Even so, the great Necron Dynasties remained powerful, but they were also disunited, separated by ancient rivalries, madness, and the absence of the Silent King, sole ruler of their race and the one who had given the order for them to enter the Great Sleep at the end of the War in Heaven. Each Dynasty was led by its own Phaeron, or in his absence, by a fractious court of ambitious warlords and nobles, who were the only ones of the Necrontyr to retain even a fraction of their personality during the bio-transference process. Even before losing their souls, these individuals had been cruel and tyrannical, ruling over their parts of the Necrontyr Empire with a ruthlessness born from generations of bitter war.
It was such a Dynasty that had come to Ynnead's potential birthplace. Frantic analysis of the heraldry on the xenos ships – which after their sudden apparition did not even bother to hide – revealed them to belong to the Akerazon Dynasty. As the fleet approached, every leader in the Imperial army quickly learned as much as they could about their coming foe, some, like the Adeptus Mechanicus overseers, much more quickly than the others.
The Akerazon Dynasty
Long before Mankind first left Old Earth, the Akerazon Dynasty took a great part into shaping the fate of the entire galaxy. Of course, no Imperial scholar knows this tale. The Ordos Xenos and the Mechanicus know precious little of the Necrons at all, and their knowledge of the Dynasties is little more than a collection of heraldry, names, and traits noticed on the battlefield by the traumatized survivors of encounters with their superior technology and unrelenting numbers. To the Imperium, the Akerazon Dynasty is a powerful clan of Necrons who, in the distant past, spread across over a quarter of the region of space now known as Segmentum Tempestus. Only the Eldar's oldest records contain hints of the Akerazon Dynasty's true history and its terrible consequences.
Millions of years ago, the Necrontyrs rose from the muck of their radiation-poisoned homeworld. In time, they escaped this planet, achieving space flight despite the fact that their lives were dramatically shortened by their dying homeworld, bathed in the radioactive light of a star approaching its end. Made bitter by their short and painful existences, they sought immortality by accomplishing great things, and building immense tombs that would ensure their legacy endured forever. They spread across the stars, growing in number and strength if not in wisdom, and began a centuries-long conflict against the Old Ones and their children. Dynasties formed from the Necrontyr ruling classes, each overseeing a portion of the Empire. Wars of conquest raged against the other races of the galaxy, or between rival Dynasties, as Phaerons sought glory at any cost.
According to some tales, the Necrontyrs became jealous of the Old Ones, the first sentient beings of the Milky Way, wielders of god-like psychic powers and long-lived beyond our comprehension. The Necrontyrs demanded that the Old Ones share the secrets of their immortality, and the Old Ones refused, for reasons long since lost to time. In their rage the Necrontyrs declared war against them, vowing that if they could not live forever, then no one else would. Other tales suggest that the lords of the Necrontyrs saw their species driving itself to extinction in destructive civil wars and sought a way to unite their people under their leadership by starting the war on false pretences.
But while the Necrontyr Empire had grown strong, they were still but children compared to the Old Ones, and soon found themselves facing extinction. For the atrocities committed by the Necrontyr generals against the Old Ones' lesser allies – or perhaps because of visions of what their foe would become in time – the ancient reptiles were determined to wipe the entire Necrontyr species from the galaxy. World after world fell, and the Necrontyrs grew increasingly desperate as everything their civilization had built was erased from the stars. Even the immortality the leaders had thought to achieve through monuments and tombs was threatened, as the Old Ones destroyed everything.
It was then that an explorer of the Akerazon Dynasty first made contact with the entities that would later come to be known as the Yngir, the C'tan, the Star Gods, and countless other names across a million cultures. Following strange anomalies in the fabric of the cosmos, he found several C'tans surrounding a binary system, feeding upon its twin stars. He found the god-like creatures and brought news of their existence to Szarekh, the Silent King of the Necrontyrs. Under the command of their sovereign, the Necrontyr Crypteks found a way to communicate with one of the Star Gods. Calling itself Mephet'ran – later to be known as the Deceiver – this entity made an offer to the Silent King. And Szarekh, driven by desperation at the state of the war against the Old Ones, made a pact with the C'tans that he would regret unto eternity. He sold his people in exchange for power.
The covenant was forged, paid for by the Necrontyrs crafting bodies of living metal for their new gods. In return, they were rewarded with their help in their war, as well as insight into the inner workings of the universe, granted to them by beings that had witnessed the Big Bang, billions of years ago, and the secret of immortality. The Necrontyrs shed their flesh, using bio-transference to gain new, immortal bodies of living metal, the same as their alien gods. The Akerazon Dynasty was rewarded by Szarekh for this discovery, which finally turned the tides of the long, bitter war the Necrontyrs had been waging against the Old Ones – though the godlike reptiles regarded their self-proclaimed foes as little more than petulant children before. The power of the C'tan and the techno-sorcery they taught to the Necrons did not come from the Warp, and the Old Ones were nearly powerless against it. For aeons, the War in Heaven raged, leaving scars in reality that endure to this day, until the Old Ones were finally defeated and the Necrons became masters of the galaxy.
For a time, the lords of Akerazon ruled over a quarter of the region of space known to the Imperium as the Segmentum Tempestus in the name of the Necrontyr Empire. Initially a minor noble family from the Necrontyr homeworld, the Dynasty grew in power during the war against the Old Ones thanks to the Silent King's favor, conquering vast swathes of space and using their resources to raise armies for the empire's warmachine. The ruling family was torn by bitter conflict, as the power they had always coveted was finally bestowed upon them – at the terrible cost of their allegiance to the C'tans. Then came the Great Betrayal, when the Silent King looked upon what had become of his people – lifeless, soulless abominations enslaved to the whim of cruel, hungry gods.
At the command of the Silent King, Ur-Pharezon, Phaeron of the Akerazon Dynasty, joined the rebellion against the Star Gods. The C'tans were shattered and imprisoned within the great Tesseract Vaults. Szarekh then led his people into the Great Sleep, using the great technology of the Necrons to hide their lairs from the lesser races. Why the Silent King forced his people into hibernation can only be guessed at : some theorize that he feared the power of the Old Ones' heirs (a theory most often supported by the Eldars, not coincidentally), while others believe that he sought a way to reverse the process of bio-transference and give his people new living bodies.
Since then, the Akerazon Dynasty has slumbered, awakening only in the final hours of the Dark Millennium to join the Necrons' campaign of reclamation. Though entire tomb-worlds have been lost, the capital of their domain remained hidden from all eyes, along with much of their treasures, artefacts, and military forces. And now, after millions of years, only in the Black Library itself is spelled the name of that Necrontyr explorer who discovered things that would have been best left undisturbed and brought forth the end of the Old Ones and the advent of Chaos.
None knew how the Necrons had learned of the Cabal's plan, and their motives for attacking could only be guessed at from the single transmission they sent before starting to kill the servants of the Emperor. Their fleet appeared in the middle of the system, behind several of the Imperium's lines of defense, and immediately opened fire. The admirals of the fleet reacted quickly, having been prepared for an attack ever since they had come to the system, and soon the skies above the nameless world were filled with the light of lance-beams and torpedo trails, as well as the strange, eldritch energies unleashed by the Necron ships. But while the war in orbit raged and soon reached a bloody stalemate, the battle soon spilled to the surface. Thanks to their technology, the Necrons did not need to secure orbital supremacy in order to land their troops on the planet : they could simply teleport them there by the million. Soon, the plains surrounding the Imperial fortress where the ritual of Ynnead's awakening was taking place were filled with ranks of silent Necron warriors and humming warmachines. The fortress was surrounded, with Necron battlegroups advancing in from all directions like a dark tide closing in on an isolated island.
The situation was made even worse by that fact that, as the space-time continuum was rent apart by the mass teleports' energies, vox-communication across the entire world grew increasingly unreliable. Only the Mechanicus' reliance on the ancient technology of the noosphere allowed their network of skitarii troopers and tech-priests overseers to continue to function despite the interference, though the senses of the augmented soldiers were still perturbed by it.
Cold, pale lights shone in the heavens, an aetheric storm that raged above the fortress. The Emperor alone knew what was happening inside those walls. Well, He, the Alpha Legion, and the pointy-eared xenos. Certainly Colonel Gregory Droyl of the Thracian 136th Regiment had no intention of learning more than what he absolutely had to know. Things were already disturbing enough out here without adding unwholesome knowledge. Let the xenos do whatever they planned to do away from the eyes of pious servants of the God-Emperor.
With a disgusted grunt, Gregory threw down the vox he had been trying to make work for the last minute. He hadn't believed static could sound sinister until today, but now he was forced to admit that what came out of every communication device at his disposal was somehow managing it. Well, if technology failed them … He turned to the Regiment's Primaris Psyker, a hunched woman who looked to be in their nineties, even though she was less than forty years old, fifteen of which she had spent in the 136th. Loyal and friendly enough, for a spook.
'Talk to me, Emmanuelle,' said Gregory, as kindly as he could. 'What's going on ?'
Emmanuelle had started shivering hours ago, when the Eldars had started … whatever it was they were still doing, and hadn't stopped since. Now she was standing, immobile except for the shivers, staring directly in the direction of the approaching invaders with sightless eyes.
'There is nothing there,' she whispered, low enough that Gregory had to bend over to hear. 'No emotion, no thought, no soul. Just … a black void, where their lights should be. But … no. There is something in that void, something unlike anything I have ever seen … It hates us, Gregory … no, not hate, too hollow for that, but … It wants to stop the whispers, prevent them from growing louder, and it sees us as nothing but obstacles in its path. I think … I think it's afraid ? Afraid of the whispering one, afraid of what he may do.'
'Thank you, Emmanuelle,' said Gregory, keeping his feelings off his face, before gesturing to the nearest Commissar. 'Now, why don't you have some hot recaff before things get ugly ?'
The Commissar gently led the psyker away, and the Colonel returned his gaze to the plains. The outriders of the xenos army were almost upon them – ugly things of black metal and greenish light that floated above the ground in eerie silence. Without functioning vox, it would fall to each gun crew to decide the optimum time to open fire ...
Gregory blinked. For a second, he had thought he saw a raven flying ahead, between the advancing army and the fighters dancing in the skies. But that was impossible. There had been no life on this planet – according to the briefings, even the breathable atmosphere was the result of careful engineering by the Alpha Legion's Mechanicus allies. A chill spread across his body as he tried and failed to find the bird again. He tried to tell himself that he was being foolish, that the sight had just been the result of the pressure he was under … But the feeling of dread would not leave him, and for once it had nothing to do with the prospect of his imminent death on the battlefield. Everyone in the Imperium knew that ravens were bad luck, even if very, very few knew why.
But they couldn't be here, couldn't be involved in this. They couldn't. He had to have imagined that raven. Hopefully, the battle would focus his mind …
The Necron army marched onto the fortress in eerie silence, and the Imperial artillery opened fire, raining metal and fire upon the deathless ranks of the xenos legions. Most of the bombardment was blocked by vast mobile energy shields that flickered above the marching army, projected by the enormous Monoliths surrounded by groups of Crypteks and their minions, ensuring the engines remained operational under the strain. Ahead of the millions of Necron warriors, Tomb Blades and Wraiths raced toward the fortress, while the skies were filled with the aerial ballet of Doom Scythes battling the fighters of the Imperial Navy.
The first wave of attackers was met with concentrated fire from the multi-layered lines of trenches and bastions that guarded the fortress' actual walls. The las-weapons of the Imperial Guard needed to focus the output of many weapons in order to take down the Necrons, while the tools of the Mechanicus performed with varied efficiency. Volkite weapons were soon revealed to be utterly useless against the xenos' unliving bodies, but gravitic weaponry could still tear them apart. But the weapons that performed the best against the Necrons were the handful of Photon Thruster cannons, recovered from the mass graveyards of the Heresy by the Alpha Legion and part of the Hydra's gift of ancient technology to the scions of Mars in return for their assistance in the Cabal's efforts.
Not all of the first wave was struck down before reaching the Imperial lines, and the Wraiths rampaged within the trenches, turning immaterial and passing through the earth before emerging elsewhere and cutting entire platoons to bloody ribbons. Thousands died as the ghastly constructs were pulled down and destroyed one by one, but by that time the rest of the Necron army had reached the outer trenches. The shields that had protected them from artillery fire faded as the first line of Necron warriors opened fire, and the battle was joined in earnest.
Under the leadership of the Alpha Legion, the Imperial defenders had many plans and stratagems in reserve, each officer having been made to learn all of them. When the Necrons launched a spear thrust aimed at breaching their lines, led by a Necron Lord, they appeared to break and retreat, allowing the Necron force to penetrate deep within Imperial lines – and then, at a synchronized signal from Alpha Legion agents scattered across their ranks, the seemingly panicking troops turned back, while buried charges detonated and artillery pieces opened fire on the isolated Necrons. Within moments, an entire host of the silent xenos was wiped out, and a shout of triumph rose from the Imperial defenders, their confidence renewed by this small victory.
Then, to the shock and horror of the Imperial forces, a circle of Crypteks activated a strange, towering device. A wave of energy burst forth from the apparatus, and everywhere it reached, time was reversed. Destroyed Necrons rose back to their feet in reverse, while the corpses of fallen men and women returned to life, screaming as their souls were torn from the Warp and replaced within their flesh in brutish fashion. Entire squads of skitarii suddenly stopped as their cogitators tried and failed to make sense of the time-reversal mechanism, their loaded algorithms unprepared for such an occurrence. It only took the tech-priests a few seconds to find an appropriate protocol in their data-banks, dating to a war against a species of Warp-wielding aliens, but that lapse was enough.
Cyclopean killers holding elongated, pulsating rifles suddenly materialized within the Imperial ranks, and opened fire upon the Alpha Legion agents who had suddenly found themselves back at their infiltrating positions. Using the information gained from their reveal during the now erased timeline, the Deathmarks slew the Hydra's children with casual ease, before vanishing back into whatever shadowed hell they had come from. Confusion and terror spread through the ranks, and the Necron army resumed its advance, the trap it had fallen into now removed from its path. All it had cost the Necrons was the Lord which had led the first attack, whose spirit had been removed from the planet by his safety protocols upon the destruction of his physical shell. The very paranoia of the Necron Courts which had made the Lord shield himself from the Cryptek's time-manipulation technology also meant that he was not returned to his body along with the rest of his army : his body reassembled itself, but fell to the ground, inanimate and soon trampled by the feet of thousands of Necron warriors.
As the Imperial defenders reeled, the leader of the Necron incursion advanced. Ur-Pharezon, Phaeron of the Akerazon Dynasty, strode forth, clad in a golden panoply and wielding a staff glowing with eldritch energies. At his side marched an host of Lychguards, elite bodyguards of the Necron nobility and wielders of dimension-cutting blades. They cut through an entire Regiment of the Astra Militarum like a scythe through wheat, until they and their master stood before the walls.
Ur-Pharezon raised his hand, holding a glimmering device whose sight caused nearby Guardsmen to turn away, shouting in sudden pain and confusion at its impossible shape. A wave of un-light burst from the apparatus, and a perfectly circular hole appeared in the citadel's wall. Pieces of bodies fell when Guardsmen had been caught on the edge of the phenomenon, and no trace remained of those who had been fully within it. The fortress' walls trembled under the sudden shift in pressure before stabilizing, the superior architecture and special materials of the walls preventing a total collapse. But the Phaeron cared not that the gun emplacements on the battlements continued to rain destruction upon his forces : all he cared was that the way was open for him. Slowly, steadily, the master of the Akerazon Dynasty began to walk the path he had opened across the Imperial lines, striding forth like a conquering king down the streets of a captured city.
Between the disruption of communications, the sudden reversal of time and the unleashing of Ur-Pharezon's weapon which had so easily pierced shields and walls alike, the morale of the Imperial forces was dangerously close to collapsing entirely. Deep within the fortress, the defenders' leader saw all that which was transpiring, perceiving the battlefield in ways no mere mortal could comprehend. He sensed the shift, and acted before it became too late. His order went out, carried by messengers and communication lines proof against the Necrons' interference.
Less than five minutes later, the command reached a tech-priest standing atop the fortress' walls, next to a massive stasis casket surrounded by a group of tech-thralls monitoring it and Ecclesiarchy's preachers reciting endless prayers of purification and strengthening. The Martian adept acknowledged the order and, with a single push of a rune, unlocked the casket, releasing the Living Saint which had spent almost the entirety of the last five decades entombed within.
Icarael the Kind-Hearted
In the year 945M41, the Cardinal World of Salem Proctor was caught in the fires of heresy when its Cardinal was revealed to be a traitor by the Ordo Hereticus and sentenced to death. The Cardinal (whose name was wiped out of all records with such care that it cannot be found anywhere even a mere few decades after his ultimate demise) escaped the Inquisition's first efforts to deal with him by raising an army of heretic fodder from the ranks of the population, driven to adore him above all else by years of carefully-crafted sermons. After the Inquisitorial team was wiped out, the Holy Ordos gathered a strike force to reclaim and purge the world, led by (in)famous Puritan Inquisitor Fyodor Karamazov, the Pyrophant Judge of the Ordo Hereticus. Karamazov set off with the firm intent to cleanse Salem Proctor of the taint of heresy with fire. But upon his arrival, rather than a bastion of darkness, he found a world torn apart by civil war, as the people of Salem Proctor rose against their corrupt master, led by a young man named Icarael. The lowly priest had retained his true faith in the God-Emperor, and according to many witnesses, was capable of performing miracles by calling upon the power of the Master of Mankind. Already there were those who were calling him an Imperial Saint, these souls gifted with a fraction of the Emperor's divine Light.
Between the faithful forces of Icarael and the Inquisitorial task force of Karamazov, the heretic Cardinal was quickly put down, along with thousands of his followers, their pyres illuminating the smoke-filled skies of Salem Proctor for weeks. But before the flames died down, Karamazov turned his gaze toward Icarael himself. The masses who had rallied to his banner were revealed to have mutants in their ranks, doubtlessly infiltrated by agents of the Ruinous Powers hoping to corrupt or manipulate the nascent Imperial Saint. Karamazov saw this as evidence that Icarael himself was a tool of Chaos, his powers daemon-granted witchcraft clad in a pleasant glamour. The Puritan Inquisitor decided to execute Icarael, but before he could do so, the Alpha Legion intervened. Under the cover of the night, they faked the death of Icarael, making it look as if he had been slain by the remaining mutants hiding among his followers. There had been plans to simply kill Karamazov, whose fanatic pursuit of his own view of the Emperor's will had clashed with the interests of the Twentieth Legion many times, but cooler heads prevailed, claiming that the Inquisitor Lord still had a part to play in the Emperor's design – his single-minded devotion to the Emperor would yet serve.
Icarael was taken by the Hydra, under heavy psychic and physic surveillance. After much examination, the Alpha Legion determined that Icarael was indeed an Imperial Saint, a vessel of the God-Emperor's power. Icarael was trained in the arts of war and leadership, and then willingly submitted himself to being placed in stasis – a trump card for when the Alpha Legion needed his powers. As the plan for Ynnead's awakening neared completion, his stasis casket was brought to the ritual's location, heavily shielded to prevent the Living Saint's power from interfering.
The Kind-Hearted rose, and through him the Light of the Emperor descended upon the battlefield, and all servants of the Throne felt a renewed surge of strength and purpose. Soldiers whose mind had been teetering on the brink of panic in the face of the Necrons' shattering of the universe's most basic laws tightened their grip around their weapons and went back into the fray, determined to wipe out these affronts to the natural order. Officers called to their subordinates with voices filled with the authority of the God-Emperor, and discipline reasserted itself. The Imperial lines reformed, and the advance of the Necrons stopped. Only where Ur-Pharezon and his Lychguards fought was the xenos attack still progressing, the Phaeron's power too great for mere mortals to stand against him. Entire squads were wiped out in seconds, cut to ribbons by shimmering blades, while tanks were reduced to smouldering ashes with a single blow of the Necrons' phasing weaponry.
Within an hour of the Necron appearance on the planet, Ur-Pharezon stood before the walls of the fortress, facing the last line of defense : an entire company of Alpha Legionnaires. One hundred sons of the Hydra stood against the Phaeron and his elite guard, each of them a veteran of decades of covert warfare and responsible for the death of untold numbers of the Emperor's enemies. They had been scattered across the Imperial lines, lending their support to the allied forces, but had pulled back together to stand against the advance of the xenos war leader with the force only Space Marines fighting side by side could bring to bear.
Faced with this new, more powerful foe, Ur-Pharezon raised his staff, and the orb embedded within it glowed brightly enough to outshine the sun for a second. When the glow receded, a new force had appeared at the Phaeron's side : a company of Triarch Praetorians, these Necron elite soldiers who had never entered the Great Sleep, instead spending sixty million years fighting to ensure the safety of the tomb-worlds, with varying degrees of success. How Ur-Pharezon had been able to secure their services for this battle was unknown, but they engaged the Alpha Legionnaires with all the skill and ruthlessness that could be expected from such ancient warriors.
As the battle raged all around him, Ur-Pharezon continued to advance, unperturbed, his deathless gaze fixed on the opening he had made in the fortress' walls. Sensing the Phaeron's advance, Icarael disengaged and flew over the battlefield, shielded from all attacks by a sphere of impenetrable light.
When the gaze of Icarael fell upon the Phaeron, the Living Saint's aspect suddenly changed. Gone was the kindness that had given pause to armies in the past – he was now the avatar of the God-Emperor's divine wrath. Something in Ur-Pharezon angered him beyond imagining, and he swore that the Necron Overlord would pay for his many and terrible crimes, his words hinting at some ancient and horrible sin. He descended upon Ur-Pharezon like an avenging angel, but then the Phaeron raised a hand and spoke a single word, and on the other side of the battlefield, the restraints that had kept the patron of Akerazon captive for millions of years slipped away, releasing the old evil calling itself Elru'mokoth onto the galaxy. The Tesseract Vault was opened, but the C'tan was still bound to obey Ur-Pharezon's commands, compelled by ancients pacts and technologies from which even its hatred of those who had imprisoned it could not free it. A dark cloud descended upon the field of battle, cloaking the light of Icarael as the Living Saint and the diminished C'tan clashed, and Ur-Pharezon seized the opportunity to advance and finally enter the fortress.
Elru'mokoth, the Playwright
Among the C'tans, Elru'mokoth (whose name can loosely be translated to "Eater of Hope") was one of the weakest in terms of raw power, but its intellect and cruelty rivalled those of the more infamous Star Gods such as the Deceiver and the Nightbringer. Its name is written in the archives of the Eldar, and every tale that mentions it is one of tragedy and suffering. Like all the Star Gods, being granted a body exposed Elru'mokoth to the pleasures of soul-devouring, but the Playwright's appetites were more refined than the rest of its kin. It revelled in the consumption of souls already broken by despair, and inflicted great horrors upon the Necrontyrs, manipulating cosmic events so that billions of Necrontyrs went into the chambers of bio-transference willingly, their souls crushed by despair and dread, ready to be consumed by the ravenous Star God. These heinous deeds are the source of Elru'mokoth's nickname as the Playwright : a weaver of tragedies on a cosmic scale.
After the bio-transference was complete, Elru'mokoth's hunger was appeased somewhat, and it encouraged the selfish desires and ambitions of the Necrons under its influence, increasing its own challenge by forcing itself to never lie to the lesser creatures. The higher echelons of the Akerazon Dynasty were ravaged by scheming and betrayals, even as the War in Heaven raged, until Phaeron Ur-Pharezon managed to rise through a pact with the C'tan – feeding it his own extended family until he alone remained of the royal bloodline, now made immortal by his body of necrodermis. Ur-Pharezon was Elru'mokoth's favourite, though the C'tan was only preparing the Phaeron for its own consumption at a later date – anticipating great things of the taste of a soul that had known such dizzying heights of power and prestige before being cast down and made into fodder for its gods.
But Elru'mokoth did not foresee the Great Betrayal at the end of the War in Heaven, nor did it realize that Ur-Pharezon had known about its plans for him all along. When the Silent King gave the order to the Necrons to turn against their alien gods, Ur-Pharezon already had plans in place, carefully prepared over the course of entire aeons. In a single strike, the Phaeron broke the C'tan's power, using a weapon that consumed the lives of thirteen stars in order to nearly exhaust Elru'mokoth's energies before binding what remained of the Star God into a single Tesseract Vault.
For sixty million years afterwards, what remained of Elru'mokoth was used as a power source in the coreworld of the Akerazon Dynasty, feeding power to the central computer and ensuring that the planet remained hidden from the lesser races. When the Dynasty went to war against the Cabal, Ur-Pharezon ordered the Tesseract Vault be exhumed and brought into battle, in case the strength of the broken C'tan was required to put the upstart mortals in their place.
Inside the fortress, Ur-Pharezon faced yet more defenders, elite agents of the Hydra and the Inquisition gathered from all across the galaxy. Calling upon his technology once more, Ur-Pharezon summoned more Necron warriors from his Dynasty's nigh-limitless reserves.
A greater obstacle to the Phaeron's progress was the fortress itself. The inside of the keep had been constructed from a scavenged ship from the Dark Age of Technology, recovered in the deep void by the Alpha Legion. Walls moved and corridors shifted, guided by the Intelligence of the ancient vessel, which had been one of the few of its kind not to turn against Humanity in those distant days. Millennia older than the Imperium itself, the ship had lingered in the dark for ages, unable to return to its makers, knowing they would destroy it. The Alpha Legion had persuaded it to resume its ancient duty to protect Mankind, and it did so now, serving as a sentient battlefield that granted every advantage to the defenders. Ambushes erupted from previously impenetrable walls, while warning sirens blared to prevent the defenders from being caught unaware by Necron killers.
Eventually, Ur-Pharezon realized the truth of the fortress' nature, and sent a direct attack onto the Intelligence itself. Jamming his staff into the ground, he sent his own consciousness throughout the fortress' hidden circuitry, and after a brief confrontation with the Intelligence and an exchange that occurred at the speed of thought and during which the Intelligence refused to submit, the Phaeron obliterated the ancient machine consciousness, silencing it and ending the defenders' advantage.
As the Whispering God was drawn ever closer to awakening by the coaxing of Eldrad and his peers, the Sea of Souls shook with the echoes of the ritual, and they were heard across the galaxy. Perhaps the Farseer had known what the unintended consequences of his work would be, perhaps not – and perhaps, if he did, he did not care, or consider them an acceptable price to pay.
On Craftworld Iyanden, the many, many dead poured into the Wraith-constructs without prompting from their living kin, thousands and thousands of them suddenly moving, from the most humble Wraithguard to the immense Knights and Lords of the silent undead. With so many spirits leaving its Infinity Circuit at the same time, the Craftworld trembled as its wraithbone structure suddenly became weaker, and entire sections of the continent-sized ship collapsed. Thousands of Eldar perished in the catastrophe, and when their bodies were dug out days later, it was discovered that the Spirit Stones that should have safeguarded their souls were cracked and empty.
In the Eye of Terror, the dead of a world that had not known peace since the birth of Slaanesh rose as one, drowning the Legion warbands that fought one another across its surface under a sea of vengeful bones, dragging warriors of all of the Four down before tearing them to bloody shreds. At long last, the thunder of bolters and the clashing of blades had been silenced, and the dead were finally able to rest, their shades slipping out of the Dark Gods' greedy grasp and into oblivion.
In the psy-kingdoms of the race that called itself the Je-Koth, the crystalline towers whose unique properties had helped the species attain sentience shattered, and each shard drew to it the soul of one of the Je-Koth, extinguishing the entire race in a single moment, their spirits added to the maelstrom of psychic energy from which Ynnead was emerging.
In the xenos ruins buried deep beneath the surface of a crowded hive-city, a creature which had slumbered for thousands of years after becoming the last of its kind in a self-extinguishing war awoke, filling the dreams of the population above with unnameable horrors as it began its long journey back up, hungering for flesh and souls.
In Aelindrach, darkest of all districts of Commoragh, Kheradruakh lifted his gaze from the skull of his latest victim. For a moment, he remained immobile, sitting in the center of his chamber, surrounded by the flayed and cured heads of his most worthy kills. Then he rose, threw the skull he had been holding to the ground, where it shattered into a hundred pieces, and shrieked. His cry was picked up by one Mandrake, then another, and then another, until the whole of Aelindrach echoed with their screams, and the Dark City trembled as the children of shadows prepared for something.
And in the deep darkness, far removed from the ritual's location in both space and time, an ancient evil was awoken by the echoes of Ynnead's birth. That which had long lay dead woke once more, and turned its hateful gaze upon the stars, as its ancient hunger was kindled anew. Years before the Hydra and the Children of Isha gathered on the nameless world to perform the ritual of awakening, this antediluvian evil felt the tremors of Ynnead's birth rippling across space and time, and it grew wrathful. For it had conquered death, and would not accept any others following in its steps. And so, that evil began to stir in its grave, and reached out to the stars from which it had been banished once already. Across ancient battlefields and long-forgotten tombs, its servants and tools heard the call, as did many of the living, who went mad under the horrible revelation. Predators everywhere, alien and human alike, felt the rising tide of darkness, and a star the color of blackest night shone its baleful light upon world after world, bringing damnation to sinner and innocent alike.
So were the Yu'vath raised from their slumber. So began the Last Calixian War.
As the ritual's preparations neared completion and Ur-Pharezon drew ever closer to the fortress' center, the Phoenix Lords revealed themselves. With Asurmen leading them, they appeared in the fortress, arriving through paths known only to themselves, and the fell upon the Necrons with all the fury of the dead Eldar Pantheon come to protect the birth of their younger sibling.
The Phoenix Lords
In the wake of the Old Ones' fall, the Eldar Empire ruled the galaxy for sixty million years. None could challenge them, for they wielded both unrivalled psychic power and magic-like science inherited from their vanished predecessors. Yet in the end their empire fell and their dominion waned, as they all must in time. Corruption drowned the soul of the Eldar race, and birthed Slaanesh, She-Who-Thirsts, the Youngest God and Dark Prince of Chaos. The pantheon of the Eldar Gods, psychic constructs of immense power that had protected the species from the depredations of Ruin, was decimated. Weakened by the moral decay of the Eldar, the Gods were slaughtered by Slaanesh, only three of them surviving, and only one doing so unchanged. Isha was captured by Nurgle, forced to endure an eternity of torment within his Garden, while Khaine was shattered into shards that dwelt within the core of each Craftworld, as well as in other secret places, still full of the dead god's rage. Only the Laughing God, Cegorach, survived intact, mocking Slaanesh in His face when the Dark Prince slaughtered the gods of the people who had created Him.
But while the Eldar Gods were dead, not all trace of them was gone. Asuryan, greatest of the Eldar Pantheon, had performed one last gambit before the Youngest God slew him and devoured his power. Reaching out to the ruins of the Eldar Empire, the Phoenix King granted his power to ten peerless warriors, turning them into immortal avatars of the Empire's ancient values and ideals. Each became the embodiment of a particular martial art, and founded the Aspect Temples that are the foundation of the Craftworld Eldar's military to this day. First of those was Asurmen, who witnessed the Fall from the very heart of the Eldar Empire and survived with his body and soul intact. Amidst the madness and destruction, Asurmen found wisdom, and shared this Path with nine other warriors, who were in turn imbued by the embers of the Eldar God's power.
Thanks to that lingering divine power, and the quasi-worship of generations of Eldar warriors, the Phoenix Lords became immortal, capable of returning from death through the sacrifice of an Exarch from their Temple. By wearing the armor of a fallen Phoenix Lord, an Exarch's composite personality and soul will be absorbed by the Phoenix Lord's own essence, and that Phoenix Lord will rise again, restored to life by the sacrifice of the Exarch. Such a fate is regarded as the greatest honor among the Exarchs, who believe that those who sacrifice themselves in such a way live on forever as part of their species' greatest warriors.
Of the ten Phoenix Lords, only three manifested on the nameless world. Leading them was Asurmen, first of that august order and first to have joined the second Cabal during the distant days of the Roboutian Heresy, to atone for the sin he had committed against the King of the Night. At his side were Jain Zar, his first apprentice and the founder of the Banshee Temple, and Karandras, lord of the Striking Scorpions, who had not been Asurmen's disciple but had replaced his master Arhra after the latter's fall to darkness and betrayal of the Phoenix Lords. These three warlords had not been reunited since the fall of the Temple of Ahsur, where Asurmen had first taught the Path to the surviving Eldars. Each of them was a great warrior on their own, but together, they were nigh unstoppable. Had all ten Phoenix Lords manifested, the Necrons would not have stood a chance, but just as the Eldar people were divided on the subject of Ynnead's awakening, so were they.
The Phoenix Lords did not come alone. With them came Aspect Warriors from their temples, summoned from every Craftworld by bonds of allegiance stronger even that those they owed to their people. This new host joined the fortress' defenders, and the tide turned once more, each force locked in brutal battle within the fortress' labyrinthine corridors.
Asurmen sought Ur-Pharezon, burning with the desire to strike down the Phaeron, his rage driven by similar motives as that of Icarael. But Ur-Pharezon was cunning, and avoided the Phoenix Lord, sending his Lychguards to slow him down instead. The Phaeron had pulled the fortress' plans from the Intelligence's collapsing mind, and was able to elude Asurmen's wrath, finally reaching the ritual chamber with only a handful of his guards remaining. There, between him and the Eldars performing the ritual, stood a single green-armoured warrior, holding a glowing spear. Ur-Pharezon sent his minions to dispose of this final interloper, but they were dispatched in seconds, cut down by the warrior's strange weapon. His interest peaked, Ur-Pharezon addressed this strange warrior.
'I am Ur-Pharezon. Phaeron of the Akerazon Dynasty, a lord of the Necron Empire. After our long slumber, my people have returned to reclaim that which is ours. You thieves will not be allowed to trespass upon our domain with impunity any longer.'
'Oh, I know who you are,' answered the armoured warrior. 'You are the midwives of Ruin. It was your arrogance, your greed, your envy, that started the war that shattered the universe's balance. Your quest for immortality is the reason this galaxy has been burning for millions of years.'
'How little you know, mortal,' said Ur-Pharezon. The warrior shook his head.
'I am no mortal, metal thing. I am Omegon. For ten thousand years I have watched over my father's empire from the shadows, protecting it against all threats. What have you accomplished in the last ages ? You were mighty once, that is true … But this is a new age, and it has no place for those like you within it.'
Ur-Pharezon laughed, and charged. His staff clashed against the relic weapon Omegon carried, and sparks erupted between the Necron weapon and the Pale Spear. For several seconds, Primarch and Phaeron duelled, filling the air between them with the sound of clashing weapons, until they came face to face, weapons locked as they attempted to push their foe off-balance. Omegon disengaged and struck again, and this time, the spear passed through Ur-Pharezon's defense and stabbed into his chest, but he caught the Pale Spear by the shaft. The weapon was blocked, and cracks spread along its shaft, glowing with the same baleful green energy as the Necron Phaeron.
See Nemris' illustration on deviantart : First Among Eldar and Last Among Primarchs
'You asked me what I had accomplished,' said the Phaeron. 'Let me tell you ...'
Ur-Pharezon leaned forward, forcing Omegon back, until the Necron's face was mere centimeters away from the Primarch's own. Then, the Phaeron spoke seven words, and behind his helmet, Omegon's eyes widened in shock, horror … and then, burning, incandescent hatred.
'You,' he growled, and there was very little human in the sound. 'You !'
With a great cry, Omegon forced Ur-Pharezon back, his strength ignited by the rage that coursed through his very soul. The Pale Spear detonated in his hands, and a storm of shards erupted, tearing gouges in both lords' armor. But Omegon did not appear to notice, even as his blood dripped from the rents in his warplate. His hands tightened around Ur-Pharezon's skull and, still screaming incoherently, Omegon bashed the Phaeron into the ground, again and again, tears of whit-hot fury running down his cheeks. And despite the damage inflicted upon his body, Ur-Pharezon laughed as Omegon beat him to pieces, the sound a hollow parody of emotion.
After a minute or so of brutal beating, Omegon reared back, and the Pale Spear reassembled within his hands as he towered above the broken, already repairing shell of Ur-Pharezon's consciousness. The ancient blade glowed with eldritch energies, the damage it had sustained already gone.
'I have already won, princeling,' said Ur-Pharezon, eyes glowing with sick amusement at the sight of Omegon's fury. 'This is but a setback. You cannot kill me ! Nothing can ! I am eternal !'
'With that spear, I have already slain a being older even than you,' replied Omegon, his voice cold as the void, 'and far more powerful. I wonder whether it can kill you as well … Let us find out.'
Omegon stabbed downward, and the Pale Spear pierced through the Phaeron's necrodermis armor and into the power core at the center of his chest. There was a great, inhuman scream and a flash of light powerful enough to momentarily blind Omegon even through his helmet's lenses. By the time his vision returned, no trace remained of Ur-Pharezon but a silhouette scorched into the stone.
Outside the fortress, Elru'mokoth and Icarael were still fighting. The ground shook and the air trembled as the fragments of two gods clashed, releasing energies not meant for mortals to witness, let alone wield for their own. The two of them were surrounded by a vast circle of broken earth and ruined bodies and machines, and not even the fearless Necrons dared to approach. Icarael was bleeding from a dozen wounds, droplets of golden blood falling onto the dry ground, while the C'tan's form was yet more diminished, its hold onto existence weakening under the strain of the Living Saint's assaults. If not for the souls of fallen Guardsmen that it snatched and devoured to sustain its waning power, the C'tan would already have succumbed, weakened as it had been by its millions of years of imprisonment. As for Icarael, his psychic strength was fading, for while it would have been easy for the Living Saint to draw upon the energies of the millions of humans defending the fortress, such an act was abhorrent to the Kind-Hearted. But still he fought, uncaring that he risked death. After all, his demise had been all but certain when he had risen against that corrupt Cardinal, in what now seemed like another life entirely. Why should he be afraid now ?
Then, within the fortress, Ur-Pharezon was defeated by Omegon, and the bonds on Elru'mokoth shattered. The C'tan shrieked at its new freedom, a sound that contained nothing of joy at its release, only bitter hatred and rage that it had been denied the chance to strike its tormentor down itself. Enraged, Elru'mokoth abandoned its battle against Icarael, vanishing through the broken walls too fast for the Living Saint to stop it. If it was to be denied the right to claim its vengeance in person, then the Star God would make the one who had taken the opportunity from it suffer instead.
Gold and black flames clash upon silver sands –
Three shapes rise from the ruins of empires to challenge the abyss' jaws –
The blade of the greatest betrayer falls upon his own blood –
A tide of darkness rises in the lightless realms –
The eyes of the Beast gaze upon a shard of purest light –
Eldrad screamed as his mind burned under the strain of the titanic effort required to keep his balance, to not drown into the Web of Fate and dissolves across its infinite pathways. He screamed at all the horrors he glimpsed through it, and laughed at all the wonders, and those who heard could not tell the two apart. So long had he been blind, unable to perceive events beyond what would occur on this world. He had thought that meant his death, in so complete and absolute a fashion that even his ethereal self could not go further in time.
Perhaps he had been right. It certainly seemed less likely than it ever had before that he would survive this. But what he saw now that his vision was unhindered once more ...
He wept and laughed and screamed, and wove together the threads of the Whispering God as the doom of the galaxy cracked his mind to pieces. Far away, something vast and powerful shrieked in anger. Or perhaps the terrible echo was actually laughter – Eldrad could not tell.
As the Farseer's psychic sight soared higher and higher, his mortal eyes opened, and he saw the ritual chamber breached. He saw the Yngir towering above Omegon, saw the terrible power the ancient creature commanded, and knew that for all his strength and that of the weapon he wielded, the Primarch would not be able to win this battle . Omegon had always been the lesser of the Emperor's sons, half of his power lost with his fallen twin. Omegon was going to lose and die – and the Cabal would die with him. The alliance of Man and Eldar would end. And then …
This could not be allowed to happen. Long ago, before Guilliman had even revealed the truth of his betrayal to the rest of the galaxy, Eldrad had walked the paths of the future, and seen that in every future where the Children of Isha and Mankind did not stand together, both of them would fall. The humans needed the Eldar's knowledge and legacy of power, and the Eldar needed the humans' determination, their numbers and even their, for lack of a better word, "innocence". The Eldar had already had their chance at defeating the Primordial Annihilator, and they had failed most spectacularly. Rhana Dandra was their last chance to make things right, and so Eldrad acted.
The Farseer reached out and, with a great scream of pain and regret, pulled the threads of Ynnead's burgeoning power into himself. Agony flared across his body and soul, and every crystal statue in the chamber burst into shards as the souls of the Seers contained within were forcefully dragged out and into the newborn Avatar of the Whispering God, screaming in horror all the way.
Eldritch light glowed within Eldrad's eyes. Half his body had been turned into the same crystal as the petrified Seers, merged with his flesh in a fashion made possible only by the power of the Whispering God coursing through him. He floated in the air, kept aloft by wings of crackling lightning, and looked down at the Star God with a gaze entirely devoid of mercy.
He spoke in a voice of thunder, and said : 'You have something that does not belong to you.'
The being that had once been Eldrad Ulthran gestured, and all the souls the C'tan had devoured during its rule over the Akerazon Dynasty were ripped out of its essence and swallowed by the nascent Ynnead. Drained by millions of years of being used as the power source for the Dynasty's tomb-world, including the enormous power consumption required to awaken them upon the end of the Great Sleep, it was simply too much. The Star God shrieked piteously as the last of its strength faded, and then, a creature which was as old as the universe finally vanished from existence.
The souls of the Necrons had been weak when they had been alive, but aeons of being slowly consumed by a Star God had reduced them to mere embers, and upon being removed from Elru'mokoth, they flickered and died. And across the entire world, the hosts of the Necrons fell and perished by the million, as Ynnead's power reached through the lingering connection between their metal bodies and the remains of their spirits. Only the most powerful and self-aware of the Necron nobles were powerful enough to reclaim their souls and survive, and, upon seeing their army collapse around them, they immediately fled, calling upon their ancient tech-sorcery. Within moments, the forces of Akerazon were gone, even the hollow shells of the Necron warriors vanishing in a haze of greenish light.
In the ritual chamber, for a moment, the avatar of Ynnead remained in the air, clad in the mantle of its terrible might, and Omegon feared that he and the rest of the Cabal might have made a horrible mistake and created something none of them could control. Then the light faded, and Eldrad fell to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut. Asurmen moved, suddenly emerging from a corridor and catching the Farseer before he hit the stone, and gently helped him to his feet. It felt strange to see the avatar of martial prowess assist Eldrad like he was an infirm, though also strangely appropriate.
The Primarch approached cautiously. Eldrad's body still bore the changes it had undergone when possessed by the Whispering God, and his eyes still glowed with the same inhuman light that had scoured the Star God from the galaxy, hopefully once and for all. But there was blood dripping from his mouth, the scent filling Omegon's nostrils with its alien potency, and he was trembling, apparently of exhaustion, but perhaps because of violent emotions as well.
'Ynnead lives,' he said, not looking at Omegon or anyone else in particular. 'He … He hasn't woken up yet, not fully, but He lives.'
'What happened ? What did Ynnead do to you, Eldrad ?'
It was Asurmen who answered : 'Eldrad made himself the vessel for Ynnead to act in our reality, much like Asuryan chose me and the other Phoenix Lords. But the Whispering God was less … subtle, less careful than Asuryan ever was.'
'I am become His avatar,' said Eldrad, his face wearing an expression of religious fervor Omegon found entirely at odd with his usual arrogance. 'His Hand in the Materium, until He wakes fully from the sleep of growth, ready to claim His crown. I doubt I will be able to wield His power in such a fashion again before a long time, but I can still hear Him.'
There were many things Omegon wanted to say, many questions he wanted to ask, but he suppressed them all. Only one thing really mattered at this stage.
'So … it worked. The ritual of awakening was interrupted, which resulted in your current state, but the principles behind it, the theory of god-forging … it worked, didn't it ?'
Eldrad finally raised his head to stare in the Primarch's eyes, his burning gaze filling Omegon with discomfort for several seconds before he answered :
'Yes, son of the Emperor. The theory is sound. Our common work to create Ynnead was a success.'
'You must hurry. At the ritual's apex, I saw … many things, most of which I barely remember, but I do remember this : your brother Magnus has awoken, and journeys even now to Terra.'
'And the sword ?' pressed Omegon. 'Did you see where it is ? Did you see him ?'
Eldrad shook his head, and the crystals in his face shone with reflected light at the motion.
'The protections around it were too powerful, even with Ynnead's blessing. Which is reassuring, since I doubt our enemies are able to pierce them either. Do not worry, Omegon. Its carrier will bring it to Terra in time. That ... was the one part of our plan that was never in doubt.'
'Then I must go. We are so close now … I must be on Terra to help direct the final step.'
Eldrad watched Omegon turn and call to his warriors, already making preparations to deal with the battle's aftermath, disperse the Imperial fleet where it was most needed, and then set a course to Terra, where the fate of Mankind – of the galaxy – would soon be decided. There the second step of the Cabal's grand plan to defeat Chaos and bring harmony to a shattered galaxy would take place.
Eldrad's ability to feel emotions, already eroded by ten thousand years of cold calculations, had been further deadened by his fusion with Ynnead's nascent power. But even so, he was unable to find it in himself to tell Omegon what their plan would truly bring about.
With the destruction of Elru'mokoth, the forces of the Necrons were nearly wiped out, and their fleet vanished from the system faster than the Imperial ships' sensors could track them. With the last of its strength, the Star God had taken its vengeance upon those who had brought it so low, letting loose a pulse of energy that scrambled the circuits of nearly every Akerazon Necron. Millions of Necron warriors were now nothing more than hollow shells, unable to even answer the commands of their betters, while the ranks of the Necron nobles were decimated, as few were able to withstand the strength of Elru'mokoth's final curse. The power of the Akerazon Dynasty was broken, likely forever, even if the Dynasty retained its mighty war-engines and most of its fleet.
Within a few days, the forces of the Cabal were ready to depart. The Imperial armies were brought aboard their ships, their members sworn, if not to silence, then to discretion, while the Eldars vanished through the Webway, bringing the avatar of Ynnead that Eldrad had become with them. The fortress was scoured of anything of value, but the Cabal made no effort to conceal what had happened there – such an effort would have been beyond futile. The Warp resonated with the echoes of what had transpired here, and likely would until the last star of the galaxy grew cold. Still, the crystalline dust of the destroyed Farseers was recovered, and the lines of the ritual circle erased, lest someone manage to find a weakness in the newborn God of the Dead through them.
Of Omegon, no trace remained. The Primarch departed immediately after the awakening of Ynnead, and if the Alpha Legion knew where their gene-sire had gone, they remained silent.
'Lord Ur-Pharezon,' said an impossibly distant voice. 'Can you hear me ?'
There was pain in his chest, a burning sensation that sent him trashing and kicking, panic spreading through his struggling awareness as it grew worse and worse.
'Breathe, my lord,' said the voice urgently. 'Breathe !'
Breathe ? He hadn't needed to breathe in … so long, he didn't actually remember. How …
Instinct finally took over, and he forced air into his lungs – lungs ? He had lungs ? How ? The pain was excruciating as the organs fulfilled their function for the very first time. The burning in his chest abated, and he took several more breaths, until it faded away almost entirely, replaced by a constant need to keep up the breathing, lest it return.
His vision was blurry, and he felt pain in his eyes. He blinked – another thing he hadn't done in a very long time – and his sight became clearer. He was lying down in a warm liquid – how was he feeling that warmth ? A silhouette stood before him, clad in black armor similar to that of the warriors he had faced what seemed but moments ago, but twisted and warped.
He recognized this being. With that recognition came understanding of his situation, and with that understanding came a sense of wonder the likes of which he hadn't felt since he had beheld the C'tan in their natural form for the first time, when he was but a mere explorer of the Akerazon Dynasty. He took another breath, and managed to force a single word out :
'W… Why ?'
'Because that was the deal we made when we told you of Ynnead's rise, of course.'
'But … I failed. The God of the Dead has risen.'
'We never wanted you to prevent its awakening completely – only stop it from being complete, and you achieved all that and more. And so, as promised, we have honored our end of the bargain : a new body of flesh and bones, for you to experience all the sensations you lost so long ago.'
'I … live again ?'
'You do indeed. Rest now, lord. You must regain your strength. Then I will bring you back to your people, that you may bring word of the miracle we have granted you. Let all of your brethren now that our offer of alliance is genuine, and that the gift we bring to you is real.'
'I … I will ...'
Chief Apothecary Vincente Sixx of the Raven Guard watched as the grey-skinned xenos fell back into slumber. He could still sense the soul contained within that cloned body, and allowed himself a sigh of relief that stank of things not found in any sane universe and which echoed in the chamber like the distant screams of damned souls. He hadn't been certain at all that this would work. The Necrons were old, old things, and their souls were withered dregs, drained almost dry by the C'tans they had served for so long. Corax himself had demanded that Vincente journey to the Akerazon coreworld and made contact with their Phaeron, but the Chief Apothecary hadn't been sure he would be able to bring Ur-Pharezon back to life. Cloning the body in itself had been a challenge, more because finding Necron DNA had been all but impossible. It had been the prospect of adapting the rituals that allowed the Nineteenth Legion's Purebloods to cheat death time and again that had daunted even one as expert in them as he was. And yet, in the end, when the time had come, it had been almost disturbingly easy to pluck the Necrontyr's soul from the aether.
Something had happened. He could feel it in his body and soul, both equally changed after ten thousand years within the Eye of Terror. The Veil between life and death was thinner now.
AN : The Veil thins ...
Done ! I have worked on this for weeks, and it is finally complete. Initially, I had planned for this chapter to take place later, but then I realized something, and I just had to put it now. It will all make sense later, I promise. I was able to put a lot of foreshadowing in this chapter - I look forward to your interpretation and theories about what this all means for the future of the RH-verse. I think I would have been able to make that chapter much longer if I had wanted to, but I really wanted to get it done this week.
So, Ynnead lives ... kinda. The Whispering God is nowhere near its full strength, and Eldrad is unable to wield the entirety of the power Ynnead has right now anyway. At least in this timeline the God's avatar is someone the rest of us have actually heard about before he was chosen, heh ?
And the Raven Guard is involved, as well. You may wonder how Corax was able to command Vincente considering his Legion's index seemed to indicate he has spent the last ten thousand years torturing his former tormentors, to which I reply : time means very little in the Eye of Terror, and nothing on the Nineteenth Legion's homeworld. That place is bad, people, bad enough that I try not to think about it unless I really need to for the story.
And yes, Ur-Pharezon has truly been brought back to life. Not a daemon in disguise, not a duplicate, his real self, in a truly Necrontyr body. If you know me, you will find that far more worrying than any of the alternatives I just mentioned.
If you have questions, don't hesitate to ask me. I will answer any question whose answer isn't a spoiler, and will provide infuriatingly vague prophecies for those which are.
Next up, we will finally go to Maccrage (at least in terms of story. I have another surprise first for my readers on ffnet). I am going to need a lot of time to write the first part of that particular book, because I have an idea, and it is one that requires a lot of planning and anticipation.
My thanks to Jaenera Targaryen for beta-reading this, and to Nemris for his amazing artwork.
Zahariel out.