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.
Herodius runs. His feet beat on the sand, and every step is harder to make than the last.
The beasts are growling behind him as he runs. Their foul breath is carried on the hot wind, reeking of blood and venom. They can sense his weakness, and they are hungry. They are always hungry. Even if they catch up to him, even if they tear his flesh and gnaw his bones, their hunger will not diminish. Herodius knows this, and so he keeps running, despite the pain, despite the exhaustion.
Sometimes there is a sun in the sky above his head, burning punishingly bright and hot. It appears and disappears without warning, without dawn or twilight, but its absence brings no relief, only torment of a different kind as a chilling cold bites into Herodius' exposed flesh.
He remembers having clothes and shoes when he began to run, but that is so long ago now, nothing remains but dirty scraps of fabric clinging to his skeletal frame. He feels that he would be hungry if his belly didn't hurt so much, and thirsty if the wind hadn't scoured his throat bloody raw. His own blood drips into his withered stomach, somehow keeping him alive as he runs. This should not be possible, but then, nothing about this is as it should be.
The hunt of the beasts is unrelenting. Sometimes they fall back, but if he dares to slow down, to try and recover, they are at his heels immediately. His legs and back bear the scars of their teeth and claws, from where he was careless or too exhausted. He would like to think that he would get used to it, that he would be beyond fatigue, beyond pain – but he is not. There is no relief in this flight, only torment. But he cannot stop, cannot let the beasts catch up to him. If it were only his own life at stake, he would already have, but it isn't. If they catch him, something terrible will happen. He cannot remember it anymore, but he knows, with utter certainty, that it cannot be allowed to happen. And so he keeps running …
Herodius wakes. He is in his bed, the velvet sheets blessingly cold against his sweat-drenched skin.
It was only a dream, he tells himself, breathing heavily, trembling. Only a dream. Already the horror of it is fading from his mind, and his trembling limbs are settling down. Soon, he collapses back into sleep, and this time there is only blackness waiting for him.
That is well. That is as it should be.
But in the desert, the man still runs, and the beasts still growl.
The Terran Crucible
Part Two : At Light's End
This is the awaited hour. From Terathalion, Magnus the Red comes, awakened from his age-long slumber by his most loyal son. On Luna, Lorgar Aurelian has returned from the Warp, carrying the Sword That Was Promised on his back and the body of the Lord of the Fallen in his arms. And from the secret paths comes Omegon, having witnessed the near-complete birth of Ynnead, confirming the truth of theories the Alpha Legion has gambled on for millennia. For the first time since the days of the Heresy, three Primarchs are returning to Holy Terra. Two of them will face an Imperium much changed since the last time they walked the galaxy, and the third must explain to them how it is that the ideals of the Great Crusade so seem to have been abandoned. The seers of Tzeentch are blind to the future, and even the Farseers in their Craftworlds can no longer glimpse the fate of the galaxy. For through toil and sacrifice, all that might be now depends on a terrible choice these three brothers will have to make …
The journey of Magnus the Red from Terathalion to Terra could fill entire tomes on its own. From the moment the Crimson King departed his Legion's second homeworld, the Ruinous Powers sought to destroy him. But at his side stood Ahzek Ahriman and Ephrael Stern, both expert daemonslayers without compare. An entire Regiment of the Spire Guard, composed of veterans of the Siege of Terathalion, also accompanied the Primarch.
The Emperor-Class battleship Word of Magnus, flagship of the fleet that had defended Terathalion from Sarthorael's Black Crusade, had been chosen to carry the Crimson King to Terra. Along with the venerable vessel was a portion of Battlefleet Prospero, led by Lady Admiral Kiya Sarkath, she who was known as the Shield of Terathalion. Apart from the Word of Magnus, the flotilla was composed of smaller vessels : the full might of Battlefleet Prospero was needed to purge the Prosperine Dominion, under the command of Iskandar Khayon. Even taking the Word had been more or less forced upon Magnus by his sons, who had insisted that their Primarch needed a ship worthy of him – and more importantly, one that could survive whatever the enemies of the Imperium threw at her.
Magnus had brought no Rubricae with him, for he doubted the Lords of Terra would react well to their presence – some things, such as the fear born of ignorance, never changed. But he did bring some of his sons with him, and they were named his Chosen by those he left behind.
The Chosen of Magnus
When Magnus left Terathalion, he chose a few of his sons to accompany him from all those who had gathered to help fight off the Black Crusade. None but him knew the criteria behind the selection, but he took one for every ship in the flotilla that would set sail toward the Throneworld, with the addition of the former Exile, Ahzek Ahriman. These psychic warriors, all hailing from different coteries, were tasked with protecting the bridge crew of the vessel they were assigned to, devoting their efforts to shielding this vital personnel from the whispers of the Empyrean. There were ten of them, and each wondered, in their heart of hearts, whether they were truly worthy of the honor of accompanying the Crimson King on his odyssey to Holy Terra.
Ahzek Ahriman : the prodigal son returned, Ahriman was never far from Magnus' side after awakening the Primarch from his millennia-long slumber. As the Word of Magnus journeyed through the Warp, Ahriman fought alongside Ephrael Stern to help defend the battleship from daemonic intrusions. To the crew and the soldiers, he was a living legend, second only to the Primarch himself, though he spoke little with them.
Asim Rajavi : of all the Chosen of Magnus, Asim was the only one who had already been aboard his assigned vessel. During the Siege of Terathalion, he had stood at the side of Lady Admiral Sarkath, fighting an unseen – but vitally important – battle to protect her mind from Tzeentchian trickery. He was uniquely suited for that role, for the sons of Magnus had found him amidst a Chaos uprising, using his newly awakened powers to protect a small group of humans from madness.
Darius Turani : few who meet the Raven Guard in battle ever walk away from it alive, and Darius is one of these worthy few. More than a century has passed since his confrontation with the Pureblood sons of Corax, but despite the best efforts of the Pavoni, his face still retains the scars they inflicted upon him. A master of the Pyrae Arts with few equals in the Legion, Darius swore to purge the galaxy of the Ravenlord's evil, even if he had to burn it all down himself.
Kay Setti : apart from the Exile, Kay was the oldest of the Chosen, having served the Legion for nigh three thousand years at the time of Magnus' return. He was one of the Thousand Sons' few Dreadnoughts, having been interred within the life-sustaining sarcophagus after suffering grievous injuries at the hands of an Ork Warboss, before ripping the beast to shreds with the last of his psychic powers. Awakened to defend Ahat-iakby, the return of Magnus reinvigorated him.
Khalid Harut : of the Heralds of Prospero who came to Terathalion, Magnus chose one to escort him. Known to his brothers as one of the Thousand Sons' greatest swordsmen, Khalid had been lost to the Fifteenth Legion two hundred years before the Siege, leaving his coterie to make the pilgrimage to Prospero. He returned to Terathalion aboard the Imperial Navy frigate Wings of Steel, which had been thought destroyed in the Warp but had in fact merely been lost.
Meherzah Jahangir : it is a well-known fact that psychic abilities mix badly with cybernetic enhancements. That is why, among the Thousand Sons, augmetics are often shunned, replaced by vat-grown, cloned replacements for lost limbs and organs. Meherzah is seemingly the one exception to that rule. After being separated from his coterie and left near death on a forge-world, he guided the tech-priests into the building of customized augmetics, using his advanced mastery of telepathy to fuse his knowledge with their own. His body was more machine than flesh, but his Athanaean powers remained undiminished, to the surprise of his Legion when he returned to them.
Nathanael Dumah : youngest of the Chosen, Nathanael had been inducted into the ranks of the Legion only weeks before the Siege of Terathalion, the last recruit to stand before Magnus' comatose form and undergo the binding of the Rubric before the arrival of the Black Crusade. During the Siege, he had fought on the walls of Ahat-iakby, putting his training to use against veterans of the Long War and coming out of it not only victorious, but miraculously unscarred, without a single wound.
Saarim Farrokzhad : if not for his psychic powers, Saarim would have been destined to a life of ease and privilege as the scion of a powerful Imperial noble family. Instead, his gift led to him being thrown out of his clan and imprisoned until the arrival of the Black Ships. Luckily for him, a coterie of Thousand Sons was passing by, and they took him as an Aspirant. Seven decades later, Saarim had left behind any grudge from his abandonment, and his early tutelage in how to act as expected of a member of the nobility made him one of the Legion's best diplomats when dealing with the Imperium's aristocracy.
Solomon : the warrior simply known as Solomon was brought back to Terathalion from beyond the borders of the Imperium, having been discovered in uncharted space by a coterie of Thousand Sons pursuing one of the Legion's enemies. His name was given to him at the end of his training, during which he displayed a great talent for the banishing of Warp entities and absorbed much of the Fifteenth Legion's fabled knowledge of all things pertaining to the Sea of Souls.
Zosarr Kalkale : due to their low numbers, the Thousand Sons rarely send warriors to the Deathwatch. Zosarr was chosen for that honor due to his experience fighting the unknown : prior to his tour of service, he had taken part in the extermination of the Dalorei, a long-thought extinct breed of xenos that had resurged to threaten the Imperium once more. In the few quiet moments of the journey to Terra, Zosarr established telepathic contact with Magnus, answering his Primarch's questions about the new breeds of aliens that had appeared during the Crimson King's slumber.
The Dark Gods tried to mislead them, to make them lost in the Warp. But Magnus understood the Empyrean now better than ever before, and he guided the flotilla through every trap and misdirection. The Navigators, who had thought the tales of Magnus' psychic prowess to have been exaggerated by time, were now forced to reconsider. But even with the help of the Crimson King, they were struggling. The light of the Astronomican was shrouded in darkness, obscured by the obstacles laid by the Ruinous Powers. Still, the sons and daughters of the Navis Nobilite struggled on, driven both by their oaths of duty and the promise of the prestige that would be theirs once they delivered the Crimson King to the Throneworld, where the founding families of their kind resided.
It would be difficult for the crews of those ships to speak of the things they had witnessed during that journey. They had encountered vast leviathans, with teeth of black glass the size of planets, their scales gleaming with the light of stolen stars. Walls made of polished human nails that stretched into infinity blocked their passage, with gates that turned on hinges fashioned from silver-plated reams. Through the thrice-blessed reinforced glass of the bridge occulus, unaugmented crew saw the Warp look at them with a thousand eyes, searching for any chink in the armor of their soul, while banks of fogs made of shrieking souls slammed against the shields, the damned spirits incinerated from existence in one last scream of pain and relief.
The hulls shook with the impact of geysers of boiling blood, and their shudders echoed down the corridors of the lower decks, sounding like the whispers of the daemons that wanted nothing more than to enter the Geller-shielded crafts. In response to the will of the Four, swarms of Neverborn hurled themselves at the ships, fearing the wrath of their Dark Gods more than than the obliteration they faced with such suicidal assaults. Millions of fiends were destroyed, but there in their realm, the hosts of Ruin were truly infinite. Eventually, the Geller Fields would flicker, and a handful of infernal creatures would slip through – only to smash against the wards laid upon the hulls. Then, of the thousands who made it through the Geller Field, a few would succeed, by luck or cunning, at entering the vessels themselves, possessing some luckless soul within.
These fiends, driven to madness by the torments they had endured in order to reach the inside of the ships, were thankfully deprived of most of their cunning. They did not hide or plot to corrupt the crew : instead, they raged and rampaged, devouring flesh and souls in order to heal their wounds and regain the energies they had lost. This made them dangerous, but also easy to find, and the daemonhunters of the Fifteenth Legion tracked and destroyed such manifestations quickly – though never quickly enough to stop at least some of the crew from perishing horribly. Ahriman and Stern especially proved their skill many times over, fighting across the length and breadth of the Word of Magnus while the Primarch remained on the bridge, his mind spread out across the entire flotilla.
This went on for months, and much happened in the meantime across the galaxy. On a world made nameless by the Hydra, the God of the Dead was half-born, possessing an Eldar vessel of supreme psychic potential. In the Ruinstorm, Roboute Guilliman awoke from his deathly slumber, just like Magnus himself had – but where the Crimson King's resurrection had been brought about by his son's willingness to sacrifice himself, the Arch-Traitor had achieved his own through deceit and the butchery of thousands of his bloodline. On Chemos, the Third Legion was broken by the Primogenitor and his host of bastard children, as the prelude to the coming onslaught upon the Cadian Gate. All over the galaxy, the portents of the long-awaited Times of Endings were ringing.
Through it all, Magnus continued to press on, hearing fragments and distorted echoes of what was happening throughout the galaxy. Every bit of information confirmed to him what he already knew : that it was of the utmost importance that he reach Terra as soon as possible. And so, no matter the obstacles laid in his path, no matter the perils, he went on, until he faced the Dark Gods' final attempt to destroy him before he could fulfill his destiny.
The first sign that something had gone wrong was when Asim, standing at the right of the Lady Admiral's command throne on the bridge of the Word of Magnus, twitched. The Legionary tried to breathe, but no air entered his lungs. He shuddered, and collapsed onto the ground, his body convulsing, caught in the throes of some terrible torment. Kiya cried out, her attention torn from the long-running battle to keep her ship and crew alive as her protector – her friend – fell.
Before anyone could react, Asim reached up with trembling hands, and wrenched his helmet free, before vomiting a black liquid in a flow that went on and on, in a quantity far greater than an Astartes body could possibly contain. Like a living thing, the liquid gathered on the bridge, bubbling with unholy heat, melting the metal of the deck.
Magnus rose from his throne, and in a flash of light, he moved, displacing himself to stand next to his fallen son. His hand fell upon Asim's shoulder, and the psyker took a long, shuddering breath, his eyes wide open in shock and horror. The Crimson King's aura flooded into his son, purging him of the daemonic energy that had passed through him after pretending to attack the Admiral. Even as he healed the damage this had inflicted upon Asim, Magnus took note of the method of attack, building a picture of the enemy's nature in his mind. Only a Neverborn of great power and guile could have successfully bypassed the defenses of the Word, and it was only because of the Rubric's protection that Asim had been able to survive the experience at all.
The Primarch's eye blazed with power as he stood against the horror that had used his son as a catalyst, violating his soul in order to pass through the wards of the Word of Magnus. Alarms finally started to ring, picking up on the intrusion. A long, pale limb emerged from the black liquid, ending up with a razor-sharp blade of bone. Another followed, this one ending with a six-fingered hand. The hand pushed, and the daemon manifested itself fully, rising from the blackness like a dark angel from some ancient hell.
There, in all its nightmarish glory, stood the Keeper of Secrets known as N'kari. It was taller than even Magnus, its two horns nearly reaching the bridge's ceiling. In addition to those it had used to lift itself into existence, it had two more arms : one ended in a lascivious-seeming pince, and the other held a runic blade, emblazoned with the unholy sigils of the Prince of Pleasure. A long forked tongue of a sickening pink slipped from its mouth between needle-teeth, tasting the air.
Evil and corruption radiated from the Greater Daemon, and Magnus extended his will, shielding the bridge crew from the infernal influence. It was a strain, for this was a creature whose very existence was defined by its ability to tempt the righteous into damnation. Then it began to speak, and the strain redoubled, for its words were not directed at Magnus – not yet.
'Little morsel,' moaned the Greater Daemon, its baleful gaze fixed upon the Lady Admiral. She did not look away from the abomination, steeling her mind and soul with the armor of contempt. 'We know of you in the Silver Palace. Olrik's obsession with you is sweet honey to us.'
Kiya knew better than to answer it. She kept whispering to herself the prayers of hate and purity. N'kari tutted, disappointed at the lack of reaction, and turned its black eyes upon Magnus. What it saw made it smile, and in that smile was the death of sanity and the promise of unspeakable joy.
'Cyclops,' it said, making the old insult into a caress. 'Your awakening may have been in defiance of my Prince's will, yet I relish this opportunity to bask in your magnificence. You are a unique creature, a truly beautiful blend of matter and soul. For all his many faults, the Anathema could create wondrous art, if only by accident. I shall delight in killing you, and make a monument to my Prince of your demise. Such a rare chance should not be squandered, after all.'
'I know you,' said Magnus. 'The harlot-daughter of She-Who-Thirsts. Bane of the Children of Isha. You will find no victory here, daemon. Greater powers than you have tried to kill me and failed. You will pay for what you did to my son, as well as to the countless others you have destroyed.'
'So righteous,' mocked the creature. 'So noble. So certain. So … proud. You could be so much more, Magnus … but instead, you willingly run to your doom, like an obedient puppet. Still, there is beauty in tragedy, if one knows where to look. And there is nothing more tragic than a destiny denied and dragged into ruin !'
N'kari leapt upon Magnus, arms spread wide as if to embrace him. Its sword, pince and bone-blade struck from three different angles, while a dark fire ignited within the palm of its bare hand.
In the vaults of Terathalion, hidden away for thousands of years, Magnus' ancient weapons had waited for his return just as the Primarch's sons had. Upon his awakening, the seals had been broken, and the Crimson King had reclaimed his tools of war. His blade, forged by the greatest smith of Prospero, glowed with the psychic might of the Primarch. His armor whirred and purred, its ancient machine-spirit reawakened from its long slumber by the tech-priests' ministrations.
Now, at Magnus' silent command, this panoply enhanced the Primarch's surhuman speed, strength and reflexes to even greater heights. The sword in Magnus' hand blocked the daemon's blows, dancing too fast for mortal eyes to see, battering N'kari's assault away while the Chaos fire summoned by the daemon raged impotently against the psychic shield shimmering over the Primarch's body. Then, the Crimson King seized the opening he had made, and struck a blow of his own, only for the Greater Daemon of Slaanesh to dodge it, dancing around the sword's edge.
The duel continued, and those of the crew whose attention was not wholly consumed by their duties looked on, enraptured by this sight, straight out of the legends passed on through the millennia. Around the combatants, the bridge of the Word shook, and N'kari laughed, the sound like broken nails on a chalkboard of burning coal.
'You may be able to defeat me, Cyclops … But can you do so quickly enough to prevent this ship from being destroyed by my master ?'
Magnus' face contorted as the bitter truth of the daemon's words hit him. For indeed, while he was confident that in time he would be able to defeat this abomination, doing so was taking more and more of his focus. And without his guidance, the mind-linked Navigators were losing their way, their mortal wills unable to withstand the pressure that the Dark Gods were laying upon the flotilla. His victory may be assured, but it would still mean his failure in the end. N'kari's trap – whether it was the daemon's own or had been woven by the Dark Prince – was a cunning one.
So … he had to change the rules of the engagement. His mind fractured into several thought-streams, each following a different path of possibilities, searching for the one that led to the outcome he needed. After a few dozens more exchanges – a handful of seconds – he found it.
It took him several more seconds to lay down the preparations. He reached out to his son, Ahriman, and to the daughter of the Emperor who fought alongside him in the lower decks, where another daemonic outbreak had occurred mere minutes before N'kari's manifestation – not a coincidence but a diversion, he could see it now. He planted his instructions within their minds, and at the precise moment, the three of them acted, as one. Ahriman let loose a wave of pure destructive psychic energy, clearing a space around him and Ephrael, while the Daemonifuge channelled her unique power through the telepathic connection and into Magnus' own aura.
For a fraction of a second, Magnus' body ignited with the selfsame Slaaneshi-killing power as Ephrael, and N'kari shrieked and recoiled from it. It did not harm it, though. It could not : Magnus could only maintain that connection for a fraction of a second, for the Daemonifuge's power was meant for Ephrael Stern only. But it did give the Primarch the opening he needed to ram his sword through the Greater Daemon's chest in one great lunge, bearing it down and pinning it to the deck.
The daemon shrieked and struggled, but Magnus forced it down, keeping its attempts to strike at him away with focused bursts of telekine energy, while the Neverborn bled its essence away. Then it stopped fighting back, and instead, it smiled, right in the face of the Crimson King.
'You have won !' it said, its voice gleeful. 'Congratulations, oh Mighty One ! Such a clever use of the Abomination … It deserves a prize ! I have heard that you treasure knowledge above all things, Magnus the Red, and so here is your prize : a truth you do not want to hear ! It is coming, Cyclops … Light's End approaches, and there is nothing you can do to stop it !'
He had heard those words before, whispered and screamed by the Empyrean. Always he had denied them, refusing to even acknowledge that they had been spoken. But this time, Magnus smiled.
'Really ?' he asked, softly. 'Then what is this ?'
With his free hand, Magnus gestured toward the occulus. N'kari twisted its neck to look, and its face went slack with shock and horror.
'No. It can't be ! Not after all that time !'
There, amidst the swirling darkness of the abyss, a light shone, piercing through the black. Magnus knew that light. He had seen it once before, when the Sword that shone with it had wounded his treacherous brother. It had been lost, hidden away while his spirit fell, burning, into the clutches of the Chaos Gods, but he had never forgotten that one glimpse of it. And now, it shone once more, brighter than ever.
The radiance burned through the fog of lies and misdirections the Dark Gods had woven around them, revealing the burning fire of the Astronomican. It was close – very close. The Navigators' cries were coming out of the vox-speakers – they were seeing the end of the path now, and bringing the flotilla into formation for the translation back into realspace.
Magnus smile grew wider, until he turned his gaze back to the abomination pinned to the deck. Then his smile vanished, and he began to gather his power as he had once before, on Terathalion. This was his chance to deal another blow to the Ruinous Powers – but before he could do it, the Keeper of Secrets stared back at him, an inscrutable emotion dwelling within its ink-black eyes.
'You destroyed Sarthorael, Cyclops. I will not give you the chance to do the same to me.'
N'kari lifted one claw and, with a slow and deliberate gesture, cut its own throat. It shuddered in pleasure as its warp-flesh parted and blood pooled from the cut, and laughed as its shell dissolved, its infernal spirit slipping between Magnus' psychic fingers and back into the churning Sea of Souls. The Crimson King swore as he was denied.
With a last blast of psychic fire, Magnus scoured the deck of N'kari's psychic taint, before pulling his sword free of the metal and turning to look at the occulus.
Combining the strength of their Warp Engines, the ships of the flotilla tore a great rent into the Warp, and plunged into the wound they had created. Until the very last moment, the Warp clung to them, trying to pull them back in – then the laws of reality, made stronger in that particular system than in most others by that which dwelled at its heart, snapped the rent closed, and silenced the screams and whispers. Throughout the flotilla, exhausted crew members collapsed, relieved at last.
Next to the command throne, Asim slowly stood, using his staff to support his weight. His face was pale, with blood running from his eyes, nose, ears and mouth. His eyes were haggard : Magnus had healed the damage to his flesh, but the scar N'kari's passage had left on his soul would never truly go away. The pain Magnus could feel radiating from his son tore at his hearts. Yet there was nothing he could do for Asim, except try to help him deal with what had happened to him.
On the occulus, the rioting colors of the Warp were replaced by the blackness of space, lit by the star that had shone upon Mankind since the species' birth. There were hundreds of other, lesser lights : space stations and ships, bringing the supplies the Throneworld needs and keeping it safe from any intrusion. Already they were receiving hails from the Solar Defense Fleet, demanding to know who they were, and how they had arrived here without them being warned of their coming.
Yet Magnus paid no heed to these messages. His gaze was fixed upon the pale satellite orbiting Terra, so far away that it was impossible for mortal eyes to pick it out – but Magnus was not looking with his mundane sight. He was looking with his sixth sense, and to that perception, Luna was blazing with the same light that had freed them from the Dark Gods' trap. But now, looking from the Materium, the Crimson King could see that there was another light mixed with that of the Sword, one that was familiar to him as well.
'Lorgar,' he breathed. 'You are returned as well, brother.'
Eleanor climbs. Her nails are broken and her fingers leave bloody streaks on the stone, making the climb even more dangerous. Her arms are burning with pain, as are her legs and her lungs. Her face is a giant bruise from all the times she slammed against the mountain, desperate for the slightest hold. Every breath leaves her mouth a puff of white smoke – it is cold, so cold.
But she keeps climbing. She cannot stop.
The stone in front of her is black, a nearly flat wall that stretches into infinity above her. If not for the fault lines that run up and down, left and right across it, it would be impossible to climb. As it is, it is simply very difficult.
She does not know how long she has been climbing, or how far up she is. All she knows is that she has to keep going, no matter how tired and hurt she is.
She can hear the sound of the waves under her. The water (she thinks of it as water, even though she knows it isn't) is rising, and the monsters swirling inside its currents are ever so hungry.
The tide smells like iron. It must not reach her. She knows this, though she does not know why it is so important. A deep, primordial dread fills her whenever her thoughts wander to what lurks within the black tide. And so she keeps climbing …
Eleanor wakes. She is in her cell, within the Monastery of the Cerulean Rose. She climbs out of bed, kneels before the icon of Him on Earth, and begins to pray, using the familiar cadence of the words of devotion to anchor her mind, to engrave the contents of her nightmare into her memory. In the morning, when the sun rises behind the clouds of dust that permanently darken the skies of this world, she will talk to the Sister Superior, tell her of this strange and dark dream.
But on the cliff, the woman still climbs, and below her, the black tide still rises.
On Luna, Lorgar's arrival was quickly noticed. The Primarch's emergence from the Webway had sent psychic shock-waves felt across the system – no psyker and few mundanes could ignore the blazing psychic light of the Sword That Was Promised. The Lords of Terra commanded their agents to discover what had happened, while the Selenites, natives of Luna, opened the gates of their sealed cities and sent their own forces to investigate. But neither of them were the first to reach Lorgar : that honor belonged to Vala'kir Ecale, a Rogue Trader of ancient lineage.
The scion of the long and noble line of House Ecale had come to Terra six months prior, the first of his bloodline to do so in over six thousand years. Ostensibly, he had come to make a plea before the High Lords, asking for their judgment in a dispute opposing his line to that of a rival. But his bribe to the officials tasked with managing the High Lords' agenda had been comically small, ensuring that he would wait years at a minimum, and decades more likely. His ship, the Endless, had been assigned to wait in orbit above Luna, far from the bustling orbital dockyards of the Throneworld.
Of course, that was what he intended all along. The real reason of the Rogue Trader's coming to Terra was much different – though both rival and dispute were entirely real, at least as far as the Administratum was concerned. In truth, Vala'kir had been ordered to go to the Sol system by the Alpha Legion. House Ecale had been part of the nigh-legendary organisation known as the Coils of the Hydra since its inception. Ten thousand years ago, the Ecale had been part of the Halo Alliance, forged by Alpharius Omegon from the fractious people of Coalition and the Federation. Which side of the generation-long feud they had belonged to before the Primarchs had put an end to it was lost to time – it had been something of a point of pride that it did not matter in the slightest.
House Ecale was one of the few outside of the Twentieth Legion who knew the truth about the Last Primarch's dual nature, and about the death of Alpharius on Eskrador. With such trust came heavy duties, and for millennia the House had been among the highest "scorers" of the Coils. Then, a couple dozen generations back, one of Vala'kir's ancestors, named Sia'hadn, had been struck by a series of circumstances so strange and disastrous that to this day, Rogue Traders across the galaxy feared to speak his name aloud lest they share his fate. After a final attempt at finding fortune in the Ghoul Stars had ended in yet another setback, Sia'hadn had been left nearly ruined, with a single ship to his name and a veritable army of creditors at his back. As far as his descendants had been able to determine (and over the last three thousand years, they had spent a lot of effort trying to discover the truth), this had not been the result of anyone's plot. Even in this grim and dark galaxy, sometimes misfortune was only that : the product of random chance.
Sia'hadn had been rescued from ruin by the Alpha Legion's network of agents, but in doing so, he had burned through almost all of the credit House Ecale had accumulated from the Hydra. Their "score" had plummeted, as had the respect given to them by the other families of the Coils (though most pitied them rather than mocking them). Ever since then, they had struggled to regain their former prestige, and repay the debt they felt they owed to the Alpha Legion for rescuing them from a most abject end. By the time Vala'kir had taken the Warrant of Trade, the family was back to around a third of its original "score", and the sons of Alpharius had regained most of their trust in the family – enough to ask the Rogue Trader to perform for them a task of utmost importance.
The orders Vala'kir had been given were simple : go to Terra, wait for something to happen on Luna, get there and bring the one he found to Mars, from where the Alpha Legion would take care of things. Any expanse occurred during this operation would be reimbursed by the Hydra, no matter how long it took, and he would be compensated for the lost mercantile opportunities as well. It was, truth be told, absurdly generous – enough to make Vala'kir and those of his crew who knew the truth very, very nervous. The Alpha Legion was many things, but wasteful was not one of them.
Omegon was going to pay for that, Vala'kir had decided. He didn't know how, he was fully aware that he had so little chance of succeeding that it was beyond suicidal, but by the Emperor, he was going to do his damned best.
Lorgar.
He had LORGAR in his gunship, travelling with him back to the Endless. The Aurelian. The Golden One. Primarch of the Seventeenth Legion, who were said to be the most faithful of the Astartes. Bane of the Dark Gods. Bearer of the Emperor's Word and His Wrath made manifest. The Son who spat in the face of Chaos, leaving the Imperium behind to wage war into its very domain.
Part of him understood the need for security and the compartmentalization of information, especially regarding so momentous a matter. But some warning would have been appreciated, nonetheless. What would Omegon have done if his heart had given out due to the sheer shock ?!
The first sign that this wasn't going to be a simple pick-up had been when his Navigator had started raving about "the pure, shining golden light". The old, wizened, bitter creature had actually been crying when he had told him about what he was sensing on Luna. Vala'kir was no psyker himself, but even he had felt something coming from the surface … something that had filled him with emotions he hadn't felt in a long, long time. Hope, maybe. As a Rogue Trader and an agent of the Hydra, he was privy to many secrets hidden from the common masses of the Imperium, and he knew just how imperilled the dominion of the Emperor actually was.
Then he had faced Lorgar himself on the grey surface of Luna, seen the sword hanging from his back, and he had known that there was hope yet, no matter how grim the future may seem.
The Primarch had looked straight into his mind, and found the name of Lord Omegon there. The fact that Vala'kir had known the great secret of the Twentieth Legion had been enough to convince Lorgar to trust the Rogue Trader, and he had accompanied them, carrying the body of a Legionary in colors Vala'kir did not recognize in his arms. Despite the questions burning inside him, Vala'kir had held back – he was fairly certain he wasn't qualified to know the answers.
Lorgar had laid down the body in the gunship's storage bay, atop a makeshift altar made of hastily moved and tied together boxes, and asked that it be left undisturbed for now – but once they got aboard the Endless, it would have to be watched.
A few moments later, they were on the Endless' bridge. Unsurprisingly, they were being hailed by almost every organisation in the Sol system, everyone demanding to know just what in the Emperor's name the Rogue Trader thought he was doing interfering in a matter they all considered to be under their jurisdiction. Lorgar offered to deal with it, but Vala'kir refused. He was fairly certain that Omegon would rather the return of his brother remain confidential for now, even though there was no hiding that something had happened on Luna. Instead, he answered himself :
'This is Rogue Trader Vala'kir Ecale,' he said, infusing his words with every ounce of authority he could summon. 'I am acting on behalf of the Alpha Legion in this matter. Authentication codes are being transmitted right now. By order of Lord Alpharius, the newcomer is to be brought to Mars immediately for debriefing. Do not interfere.'
There were a few tense moments before the reply :
'Lord Ecale, your codes are acknowledged as valid. Your flight path to Mars is being cleared.'
The Rogue Trader sighed in relief before turning to his guest :
'Of course, they will still be waiting for us on Mars,' he explained. 'But I am hoping your brother has prepared for it.'
'Oh, I am sure he has,' said Lorgar, smiling slightly.
'Lord Ecale ?' called out the vox-officer. The nervousness in her voice made Vala'kir want to sigh.
'What is it this time ?' he said, resigned.
'According to vox traffic, a fleet just translated at the system's edge. And … my lords, apparently, the Lord Primarch Magnus is aboard.'
He froze. For a moment, his brain was unable to process what he had just been told. Then it did, and he began to sweat as he wondered if, somehow, Lord Omegon had known and planned for this to happen. But … surely not ? Surely even the legendary prescience of the Lord of the Hydra had limits ?
A sound coming from in front of him snapped him out of his stupor. Lorgar was laughing.
The Endless and the Word of Magnus both came to rest in Mars' orbit. The Rogue Trader ship arrived a few days before Magnus' flagship, and Lorgar spent that time enjoying Vala'kir's hospitality. The Primarch hadn't eaten or slept in a hundred centuries, and even though time meant nothing in the Warp and he was measured in his appetite, he still put a noticeable dent in the pantry by the time he was done and withdrew to the chambers assigned to him to rest and meditate. All the while, the Sword That Was Promised did not leave his side, and its radiance shone through the Endless, granting hope, dreams and visions to all crew, from the lowest ratling to the Rogue Trader.
Through his contacts, Vala'kir had received orders to wait for Magnus, and to accommodate Lorgar's every demand – except for those which might reveal his presence. For now, Lorgar's psychic aura was masked by that of the Sword, and the authority of the Twentieth Legion – coupled, surprising and worrying Ecale, with that of the Inquisition – had kept questioners at bay, but it was best not to take chances. Even communication between Lorgar and Magnus was forbidden, though Vala'kir doubted that these two demigods needed vox to speak to each other.
When the Word and her escorts settled in the Martian dockyards and the repair crews began their work to repair the damage inflicted upon them during the odyssey, a message finally came. The Lord of the Hydra was calling his brothers to meet him. Lorgar thanked his host with the same humility he had displayed ever since Vala'kir had met him, and left aboard the transport sent by other agents of the Alpha Legion, just as Magnus himself landed on Mars.
The Crimson King had received a message of his own only a few moments after arriving in the Solar System. Amidst the flow of incredulous identification requests and thinly-veiled threats from well-meaning defense officers, there had been one message carried upon the Aether, encoded in a cypher even Malcador's greatest heirs would have been unable to break. Only a Primarch's brain was capable of using it to encrypt their communications, and only a Primarch with the correct key could unlock it. That message was using a very ancient key indeed, one whose memory brought a nostalgic smile on Magnus' face. Not since the Great Crusade had he used this cypher, since a battle he had fought on a world ruled by things that had once been men, but who had sacrificed their own souls on the altar of power cloaked in the pretence of knowledge.
When Magnus had made known his plan to go to Mars first, there had been much outcry from the Terrans, who thought that the honor of the Primarch's visit should be theirs first and foremost. There was a lot of confusion across the system. News of Magnus' awakening had reached Terra ahead of the Crimson King, but after ten thousand years of slumber, most had thought it only rumors and hearsay. Even now, there were many who still doubted it – and no few who thought it all, from the Black Crusade on Terathalion to his return, only a trick from the Archenemy in order to strike at the Throneworld itself. He would have condemned such paranoia, had he not known all too well the depths of treachery of which the Ruinous Powers were capable.
The message had told him to go to a specific station orbiting the Red Planet. To the tech-priests, it was simply known as 3827528-Beta, but those who worked within it called it "the Scale". It was a stronghold, one of many leftover from the Heresy and converted into another dockyard to be used by the tens of thousands of ships that passed through the Solar System every day. It had also been under the control of the Alpha Legion for the last seven centuries, and, by what every Administratum drone in the entire system would have sworn under oath was a staggering coincidence, its docks were entirely empty when Lorgar and Magnus arrived.
The Rogue Trader received encrypted orders that he could not read, but that Lorgar understood. They were written in an old form of Colchisian, practiced only by a lone, hidden tribe which had refused to embrace the blasphemous ways of the Covenant. So well had they hidden themselves that they had only been discovered when the Great Crusade had made contact with Colchis, and the world had been scanned from orbit by high-powered auspexes – at Lorgar's demand, to make sure that there were no surprises left by the priests that would come back to haunt them. The reunion of the Lost Tribe with the rest of Colchis, united in their freedom from the Covenant's oppression, had been a joyful occasion, and one of many memories which had helped the Aurelian retain his sanity, his strength – his faith – during his time in the Realms of Chaos.
Lorgar and Magnus both followed the path laid before them, leaving their allies behind. The message was clear that this, at least, was for Primarchs only – a reunion of brothers as much as a council gathering to prepare for the future. It was, as the Crimson King told Ahriman and Ephrael, a matter of family. And, he promised, it would not last long … at least compared to his last absence.
The room was not one where poets and storytellers would have thought three Primarchs would meet – which, of course, was why it had been chosen. To the mundane eye, it was a warehouse, filled nearly to the brim with storage crates, containing all the various parts and supplies needed to maintain a space station like the Scale. But deep within the piles of boxes were some of the most powerful anti-surveillance equipment in the galaxy, and the walls were reinforced with thick adamantium plates engraved with warding symbols. For all intents and purposes, the room and all of its contents didn't exist in the eyes of the Warp. So close to Terra and the Astronomican, it might be nothing but paranoia, but such a possibility had never stopped the Hydra.
Lorgar and Magnus arrived together, having met in the corridors leading to it – they had shortened their reunion, knowing that another of their brothers waited for them. And there, sitting on a crate that, according to the markings on its side was filled with power cells for power tools, was Omegon. For once, the Primarch of the Twentieth Legion didn't wear the same anonymous armor as his warriors : he was clad in the full regalia of a son of the Emperor, his armor covered in scaly patterns and emblazoned with the iconography of the Hydra and the Imperium.
It was the first time in centuries that loyal Primarchs met, and the first time in nigh ten thousand years that these three had last seen each other. They embraced one another, first in the manner of warriors – then Lorgar hugged the Lord of the Hydra, who stiffened in the embrace, but accepted it.
'Lorgar …' breathed Omegon as he stepped back. 'It really is you. When Va'lakir said that he had found you, I could scarcely believe it. I … I thought it would be Cypher. He was supposed to bring the Sword. What happened to him ?'
Lorgar shook his head sorrowfully.
'He is dead, brother. For good this time.'
'Are you sure ? You know he isn't the kind to stay down ...'
'I am sure. I waited, but he didn't come back.'
'… I met him several times. How did he die ?'
'Doing his duty. In the end, he proved to himself that he was worthy of Luther's faith in him.'
'Now that we are here,' said Magnus, 'why did you call us here ? I cannot believe it was simply for nostalgia's sake.'
'Right. This will take a moment. Let me start at the beginning.
'We have all met them at some point,' began Omegon. 'The men and women who did not die nor age. The Perpetuals. Our father was one of them. I believe He was the first human one. I have found traces of His presence that go back to more than a hundred thousand years ago, when the Eldar came to Old Earth and nearly brought Mankind to extinction with their callous "games". He may very well be the oldest Perpetual still in existence, even taking into account the alien ones.'
'There are xenos Perpetuals ?' asked Magnus.
'There were,' said Omegon with a grim smile. 'Not anymore.'
'You said our father "was" one of them,' noted Lorgar, frowning. 'He is not dead.'
'No, but He isn't immortal anymore. Guilliman stripped that from Him when they fought at the end of the Heresy. I think Perturabo knew it, when he brought Father to the Golden Throne. The stasis field and the other devices of the Throne are the only thing that kept Him alive for so long … though you cannot call that "living". And as He gets worse, so does the Imperium. This is the crux of the situation. Both of you have been … let's say "out of touch" for the last ten thousand years – I am sorry I could not rescue either of you. But I have lived through all these centuries, brothers. I have seen all that the Imperium has faced. I know the Imperium is a very different place than the one you remember,' he continued, and there was an edge of desperation to his voice now, 'I know there are many things that seem like a betrayal of our ideals … but trust me on this : it could have been much, much worse. And if nothing changes, soon, it will be.'
Omegon described to his brothers just how desperate the situation of the Imperium truly was. He told them of the Tyranids, of Kryptman's failed gambit, and the things that were now rising from the crucible of the Octarius Sector. He told them of the forces gathering in the Eye of Terror, of the whispers that Corax himself had emerged to lay waste to a Fourth Legion fortress-world.
He told them of the news that had arrived from Chemos – of the death of the Third Legion. And he told them of the madness that was spilling from the Ruinstorm, of the signs and portents that all aligned to one, terrible conclusion : Guilliman, the Arch-Betrayer, long thought dead and gone, had returned. He told them what nearly all of his agents, throughout the entire galaxy, were reporting to him : that these were the Times of Ending.
And when he was done painting this bleak picture, he asked :
'What say you, my brothers ? We may rage at this fate, or accept it … but we cannot deny it.'
'None of us are the kind to accept our fate,' said Lorgar.
'I knew I could rely on you. I have a plan, but you are not going to like it.'
'Go ahead.'
'It will take some time to explain. You remember the Ecclesiarchy ?'
'You are right. I already don't like your plan.'
'Perhaps,' intervened Magnus, 'you should tell us just what it is you did, brother, as well as why and how the Ecclesiarchy is involved in it. As I recall, none of us here were particularly happy when the cults to Father started to grow in the aftermath of Guilliman's uprising, even if neither Lorgar nor I were able to see them congeal into this … "Imperial Creed".' The distaste in Magnus' voice as he pronounced the last two words was tangible.
'It wasn't easy. Of all of us, Lorgar, you know best how easily religion can turn into dogma, into oppression. How easily faith in a higher ideal can be twisted into fanaticism, into blind hatred and obedience to selfish tyrants. The Imperium needed order to survive, and the Imperial Creed brought that – but at the same time, we had to be very, very careful it didn't crush the human spirit. I am ashamed to say that we did not always succeed – there are places in the Imperium, entire worlds and systems, that have developed cultures akin to those of the tyrannies we fought to liberate during the Great Crusade. But there was no other acceptable choice. We could not control all the interpretations of the Word … but we could shape them to suit our purpose.'
'And what,' asked Lorgar softly, 'was that purpose ?'
'To make the lie into truth,' replied Omegon just as softly. 'To forge the instrument of the Dark Gods' final defeat. To make our father … into a God.'
Omegon didn't react as Lorgar picked him up by the collar and slammed him against the wall. The Aurelian's gaze burned with barely contained psychic might and fury as he glared into the eyes of his brothers. Magnus remained still, watching it all with his one eye, his thoughts unknowable.
'Why ?' asked Lorgar, the single word charged with all the hurt and betrayal the Primarch felt at his brother's confession, and hearing it broke Omegon's heart all over again – but not as much as the truth of his answer did.
'Because it was the only way I could see.'
Omegon revealed many secrets to his brothers. He did so gladly, relieved to finally unburden himself of some of the weight he had carried for so long. He told them of the Alpha Legion's manipulations of the Ecclesiarchy, of his purge of the first Cabal and his long-standing association with xenos in the conspiracy's second iteration. He explained the great experiment that he had performed along with Eldrad Ulthran, as a test of what he intended for the Emperor, and of how it had climaxed in the half-birth of Ynnead, the God of the Dead.
Among these revelations, the one of most immediate importance was that of the truth behind the galaxy-wide deception called the Lie of Iron.
The Lie of Iron
The Imperium may have been built with the blood of the Legiones Astartes and the Imperial Army, but it has been held together by a mortar of lies for ten millennia. Many, many lies, agreed upon by an entire species in order to survive in a galaxy filled with threats. Some of these lies are known to be falsehoods by most : that every priest of the Ecclesiarchy speaks for the God-Emperor, for instance, is only believed by a small handful of fanatics or extremely naive denizens of the Imperium. Yet the lie is accepted as truth by trillions, who know that to question its veracity would bring upon them the wrath of their betters. It must be accepted, in order for the Imperial Creed to be the spiritual glue uniting trillions of souls across the stars under one banner.
There is another lie, one whose truth is known by millions, yet whose revelation to the wider Imperium may very well spell the empire's downfall. That lie is that the Martian Wars are over.
The Martian Wars began when Guilliman's allies on the Red Planet rebelled against the Mechanicum's alliance with Terra. For several years, Mars was at war with itself, entire forge-cities burning as the newly founded Dark Mechanicum unleashed unspeakable horrors from the Dark Age of Technology alongside new abominations born of the union of flesh, machine and daemon. Perturabo sent one of his Triarchs, Barban Falk, to free Mars from the rebels and return its industrial resources to the Imperium. Thirty thousand Iron Warriors followed the Triarch to Mars : less than three hundred returned. Upon meeting Perturabo in the hallowed halls of the Imperial Palace, Falk told his Primarch that the work was done : Mars was free.
These words were a lie even as he who would from then on only be called Warsmith spoke them. But as Omegon had discovered when he had uncovered the deception, that lie, like so many others, had been a necessary one. Mars had not been freed from the menace of the so-called Dark Mechanicum, and never had been since, but Falk had achieved enough that the Imperium could pretend otherwise. The Imperium had needed the victory, both from a strategic standpoint – for how could the loyalists hold Terra if Mars had fallen – and from a morale one as well. Roboute's slaughter of the Legions at Isstvan V had shaken the faith of the loyalists, and doubt had to be crushed to prevent rebellion from doing the Arch-Traitor's work for him.
Instead of freeing Mars, Falk had forced the Dark Mechanicum to retreat from its forge-cities, abandoning the surface of the Red Planet to hide in the tunnels riddling the planet's upper crust. As the nightmarish temples of the hereteks fell to the Fourth Legion and their loyal tech-priest allies, the horrors spawned by the Schism had sought refuge in the darkness below. They had burrowed into the red earth, using existing tunnels leftover from the Dark Age of Technology and digging their own. Falk had ordered the forces he had left to pursue the retreating rebels, eventually pursuing them into the network of mines and tunnels laying beneath the region of Mars called the Noctis Labyrinthus. Fifteen thousand Iron Warriors accompanied the Warsmith : less than three hundred returned. Neither Falk nor any of these survivors ever spoke of what they faced there, but when he came back to the surface, the Warsmith summoned the lords of Mars. With the authority invested in him by Perturabo, he commanded them to seal the planet's underground and guard the border against any incursions from that which had retreated beyond it. He named what now laid below the surface of Mars the Haydesian Kingdoms, realms of monsters and horrors, and said that none of them currently had the resources to purge them.
And so was born the Lie of Iron.
Omegon told his brothers that the Lie of Iron had been kept for ten thousand years. Lorgar, who had spent most of the Heresy trapped in the Ruinstorm and had immediately left to take part in the Scouring afterwards, was surprised by the revelation, but Magnus, who had been on Terra and had sensed the evil unleashed upon Mars all the way from there, had known about it. The Crimson King told Omegon that Perturabo and the rest of the Primarchs who had defended Terra had also known, and had agreed with Falk that the deception was necessary – though they had also sworn that it would be temporary, and that eventually Mars would be reclaimed.
Now, explained Omegon, was the time to make good on that promise. With the subtle aid of the Alpha Legion, the Adeptus Mechanicus had gathered its forces once more, preparing for another attack on the Haydesian Kingdoms. Before implementing Omegon's desperate gambit, they first needed to repair the Golden Throne. The Hydra had searched long and hard for the knowledge and pieces required for such a thing, and after an attempt at obtaining it from the Dark Eldar had failed disastrously, their only option left was to venture into the forbidden depths of Mars itself.
"There have been unsettling reports from my agents in the Dark City. Eventually, we will have to deal with the situation there, but for now, we have more urgent concerns."
Omegon, to Lorgar and Magnus
The three Primarchs came to Mars in all their glory, secrecy abandoned. What they intended could not possibly be concealed, and Omegon's grand design would actually benefit if as many people as possible knew something was happening. They landed on Olympus Mons, greatest of the Red Planet's forge-cities, aboard a transport that was as extravagantly decorated as it was shielded and reinforced. Omegon mentioned during the flight that the craft had spent the last hundred years in storage aboard the Scale, awaiting for such an opportunity.
A party of Mechanicus officials waited for them, as did rows of skitarii soldiers, standing at perfect attention. Hundreds of optics recorded everything, and the event was being broadcast all across the system, from the palaces of the High Lords to the Inquisition's polar fortresses and the pleasure domes of the Imperial courtiers. This was history in the making, the return of three Primarchs, two of whom had been thought lost, and the third a mystery even among his mythical brethren.
Omegon was the first to emerge. The Primarch of the Hydra stood alone, though his brothers could sense the presence of warriors of his Legion nearby, their souls radiating secrecy and conviction. A cloud of hesitation and shock spread invisibly among the attendants as the heraldry on his armor was recognized – all had heard the rumors of the Alpha Legion, but very few had ever seen one of the Hydra's warriors and known it. Among those who had had any sort of previous contact with the Twentieth, none actually believed that the warrior was a Primarch – they had seen that trick before, and would not fall for it again. But there was no denying that, as the one who had borne the name and burden of Alpharius alone for so long, Omegon cut an imposing figure.
Next came Magnus, flanked by his companions. The Crimson King had brought his Chosen with him, as well as the Daemonifuge Ephrael Stern. The few hours of relative quiet since coming out of the Warp – taxing as dealing with the panicked Imperial bureaucracy may be, it paled in comparison to the trials of the Empyrean – had allowed the Primarch to recover most of his strength. The machine-thoughts of the Martians pressed on the group of Thousand Sons from all directions, like the buzzing of an impossibly large hive. Meherzah, accustomed to the strange thought patterns of the tech-priests, did his best to convey the essence of the cacophony to his brethren.
Lorgar came last, still wearing his cracked armor, hastily cleansed and polished by a handful of serfs. On his back was the Sword That Was Promised, and though it was sheathed in Cypher's rune-marked containment scabbard, its awakened power still shone in the Empyrean. Even the cold-minded disciples of the God-Machine were affected by its proximity. Most saw it as other humans would, a beacon of hope, and the promise of victory over the forces of darkness. As to the tech-priests who were highest in the hierarchy of the Cult of Mars, their minds were so bent and shaped by the teachings of the Cult and the cybernetics coursing through their wet-ware that their perception of it was altered. They saw it as the Rod of the Omnissiah, carrying the Motive Force through the Materium in its purest form. It inspired visions of the Mechanicus' ideal : a species united as one, great machine, dedicated to the revelation of all knowledge and the betterment of all Humanity.
Only their programming kept the skitarii from kneeling as the Aurelian walked before them, and joined his brothers as they passed through the opened gates and into a chamber that was at once chapel and center of industry. There, surrounded by thousands of tech-priests working at their stations, was Fabricator-General Abristus Teslivi.
'Lord Alpharius. Lord Lorgar. Lord Magnus,' declared the Fabricator-General in his artificial voice. 'The Mechanicus is honored by your presence. The Omnissiah smiles upon us all this day.'
'Lord Fabricator-General,' said Omegon, bowing his head slightly in deference – a demigod showing respect to the great lord of machines. 'We seek an audience with the Collective.'
'Follow me,' answered the one who was, in the eyes of countless billions of tech-priests and their thralls across thousands of forge-worlds throughout the Imperium, the direct representative of the Omnissiah. 'They are waiting for you.'
The Martian Collective
Per the covenant between the Emperor and Mars, the Cult Mechanicus is the repository of all of Mankind's knowledge, the keepers of science and the master of technology. Within their data-cores, guarded by the greatest of their soldiers, is all the lore retrieved from the Dark Age of Technology, reclaimed by armed archaeology expedition throughout the galaxy. This lore is studied, mastered, and put to use for the Martian Empire and the Imperium – two bodies that, in the mind of many of the Adeptus Mechanicus, are equal allies, and not subordinate and master.
Give this holy mandate, many within the ranks of the Mechanicus seek to pursue knowledge on their own, beyond the search for the wisdom of the past. The ancients, they reason, managed to discover the sacred truths of the universe on their own : surely their distant descendants can do the same. But except for a very few, who are assigned to long-term research projects in areas of particular interest to the Mechanicus, most of these young, bright things are crushed down by their hierarchy. Almost every arch-magos firmly believes that any technology not recovered from the Standard Template Constructs is inherently flawed at best, and tainted by Ruin at worst.
Among those who still persist in challenging the status quo and pursuing their own path to illumination, there is a persistent rumor. It claims that those who disturb their masters too much, who show an unwillingness to simply do as they are told and carry out their orders without questions, are dragged to Mars, to be punished for daring to think freely. They believe that there is a conspiracy in place among the higher-ups of the Cult, targeting the best and brightest of the new generations in order to maintain their control over the Martian Empire, regardless of what this costs to the Holy Quest for Knowledge.
They are partially right, for the conspiracy is real, but its purpose is entirely different than the one their feverish imaginations conjure.
The truth is that, by and large, the Imperium cannot afford the risks inherent to innovation. The new schematics for a las-rifle designed by a young and brilliant tech-priest may be five percent more energy efficient than the ones currently churned out by the billions on the forge-world, but if he has made a mistake, by the time it is caught three worlds will have fallen to one of the enemies of Man.
Yet those who have both the independence of thought to challenge the monolithic institutions of the Mechanicus, the will to act upon these thoughts and the intellect to produce result in their own research, are far too valuable to simply execute or humiliate. Such individuals are indeed brought to Mars, where they are judged and tested, exhaustively so. Anyone showing the slightest sign of Chaotic corruption is eliminated, their remains atomised in plasma reactors and the ashes thrown into the Sun, their name struck from the records of the Machine-God's faithful.
But for those who pass the tests, there waits a future greater than any they could have imagined as they were dragged in chains from their working stations : a place in the Martian Collective.
Founded during the dark days of the Roboutian Heresy, the Martian Collective is composed of genius inventors and strategists, those whose loyalty to the Machine-God is second only to their intellect. Each member is stripped of most of his or her flesh and fitted with a suit of augmetics before being integrated to the vast engine of the Collective. There, their minds are added to the gestalt, a vast, all-encompassing, many-faced intelligence with access to all the collective knowledge of the Cult of Mars and nigh-total control over its noospheric network.
In the hierarchy of the Adeptus Mechanicus, the Martian Collective is one step above the Fabricator-General himself, with only the Omnissiah being higher. And as the Omnissiah's avatar, which the rest of the Imperium calls the Emperor, has been mostly silent for the last ten thousand years, this means that the Collective effectively rules the Mechanicus. However, they dedicate very little time to the affairs of the Martian Empire : the hundreds of geniuses that make up the Collective are far too busy directing the ongoing struggle against the Haydesian Kingdoms.
The primary battlefield of the Collective is the noosphere. Despite the best efforts of the Cult to isolate the surface from what lies beneath, there are constant attempts by the Haydesian Kingdoms to breach containment and spread their evil through the network. For ten thousand years, the Collective has stood vigil, a host of invisible spirits running through the noosphere, battling down any intrusion.
The Collective also directs the more physical aspect of the war. It is them who direct the armies dedicated to preserving the Lie of Iron, who study the enemies' blasphemous inventions and direct research teams to developing counters to their unholy capabilities. Theirs is a never-ending task, and should they fail, the whole of Sol may very well be lost to the Haydesian abominations.
The Collective's existence is a secret limited to those who also share the Lie of Iron. It was created at the order of Barban Falk, and its first members were surviving arch-magi who had lost their forge-cities to the Dark Mechanicum as well as warriors of the Fourth Legion who had been wounded too gravely to continue their service.
The Fabricator-General brought the Primarchs to an elevator, barely large enough for the four of them. After a sharp descent, that Lorgar's senses estimated at around seven kilometers and three hundred and seventy-four meters (enough to bury them deep inside Olympus Mons, but not enough to go beneath the surface of Mars), they came to a stop. The walls of the elevator slid upward, revealing the chamber where the Collective spoke in person, in those few occasions where it needed to. It was vast, and high, reaching hundreds of meters up. The walls were covered in masks of steel, each representing one of the Collective's minds, who watched through the mask's eyes and spoke through its mouth. And, as the Primarchs were revealed to them, speak they did.
'Sons of the Omnissiah,' said the masks in an eerie chorus. 'Long have we waited for you.'
'Magi of the Collective. We need to go beneath the red sands of Mars,' declared Omegon to the circle of masks. 'We need to enter the Vaults of Moravec.'
'Yes. We have received your message, Lord of the Hydra. We have examined your proposal, and crossed it with the data from the caretakers of the Golden Throne. Though it saddens us that things have come to this extremity, we have decided to proceed with your plan. The Omnissiah must be freed of the Golden Throne, and we must help Him transcend His mortal vessel and return to the Motive Force, that He may guide us in the troubled times to come.'
'We have marshalled the armies of the Cult Mechanicus,' continued Abristus, though whether it was the Fabricator-General speaking or the Collective using him as a mouthpiece was unknown to the Primarchs. 'An host such has not been seen on Mars in millennia awaits. All that is missing is the bait that will draw the Haydesian Kingdoms into battle, and provide the distraction for those who will brave Moravec's ancient stronghold.'
'I will do it,' said Magnus. The brothers of the Crimson King looked at him, and nodded, understanding full well the reasons behind Magnus' decision. Even after a hundred centuries of separation, the understanding the three Primarchs had of each other hadn't waned.
'Then the two of us will go to the Vaults,' said Lorgar. 'Who shall we take with us ?'
'None, we are afraid. Only the sons of the Machine-God's avatar may descend into the Haydes. No other may enter the Vaults, lest they risk becoming carriers for the manifold evils that dwell there. Whether disciples of the Machine-God or your own sons, none may accompany you.'
Abristus held up one of his hands to Omegon. In its palm laid a small, circular device.
'This is a compass,' explained the Fabricator-General. 'It will guide you through the Haydesian Kingdoms, and toward the Vaults of Moravec. By following its directions, you will walk the Way of the Epistles. You will march in the footsteps of Moravec himself, scattered through time and space. It is the only path that will bring you to the Vaults for certain.'
'Be careful there. We have sent many down that path over the centuries, hoping that the Epistles would grant us the knowledge to destroy Moravec's foul legacy.'
'What are the Epistles ?' asked Omegon. This was the first time even he had heard of this.
'They are the testament of Moravec;' replied the Fabricator-General. 'Snippets of his abominable wisdom, his own mad vision of History. A window into the mind of the first arch-heretek.'
'We do not know how many steps this journey will have. Only that none of our agents ever made it to the fourth.'
'Then how do you know this will guide us to the Vaults ?' questioned Lorgar.
'None of our agents made it to the end … But others did. Many among the Haydesian Kingdoms sought the riches of the Vaults for themselves, and we know they reached its gates, though none ever came out that were recorded in the archives we accessed. This compass was built based upon the devices they used to locate the entrance, after we reverse-engineered the technology and removed all unholy components and replaced them with blessed equivalents.'
Lucien rides. His bike is falling apart. He holds the handle with his teeth, which are broken from all the vibrations reverberating through the metal, while his hands dance on the exposed engine while it's running, repairing what he can. His shaking vision is fixed on what lies ahead of him. There is no road, only broken earth, torn up by the bombs and an eternity of war. Countless obstacles lie in his way : the ruins of hollowed-out machines, the broken remnants of palaces, the mounts of skulls and bodies piled up by the unseen combatants of this endless struggle. He leans in one direction, then the next, passing between these reminders of the price of slowing down, even for a moment.
Behind him, he hears the growls of four monstrously vast engines in pursuit. In the broken rear-view mirror, he can catch glimpses of them. He tries not to – seeing them causes his head to hurt even more, and it doesn't matter how close they : he must keep going as fast as possible anyway. He must not let them catch up to him, he must stay ahead of them, ahead of their vast, blade-toothed maws.
They don't need to worry about the obstacles he must swerve around : they simply plough right through them, turning them into dust. He can hear the screams of their motors, and he does not know whether they are screams of hate or agony. But hearing them tears his heart to pieces, because he knows, without knowing how, that these are the screams of those he failed …
And so he rides, fleeing from doom, fleeing from his failures. Fleeing from the end, no matter how futile …
Lucien wakes. He is laying down in the filth of the underhive drug-den. There is a needled piercing the skin of his right forearm, connected to a syringe full of half-priced obscura. With a snarl, he rips it off his flesh, mentally swearing never to use the stuff again. Unknown to him, this time, unlike all the others he has ever made this oath, he actually means it, and will keep it until his dying days.
But elsewhere, the race is still on, and the bike is still falling apart.
The Guardians of Mars
000 – Bohran Striders
Those Who Walk The Divide
Named after one of the nigh-mythical savants of Old Earth, whose writings were rediscovered in a Martian archive and inspired their creation, the Bohran Striders are fundamentally separated from reality itself. At the end of their training, they are taken to a facility located in the heart of Deimos, one of the Red Planet's moons. Access to this facility is utterly forbidden to anyone not authorized by the Collective, which manages every aspect of it through several thousands remote-controlled servitors and mind-wiped skitarii. The facility occupies almost half of Deimos' inner network of tunnels and hollowed chambers, with gravity maintained by powerful engines. All this space is taken by one singular device, centred around a small chamber at the moon's very center. Prepared recruits are stripped of all possessions, left with only a set of cybernetic implants designed especially for that purpose, which covers their entire body in a sleek, black armor. Then the chamber is completely sealed, and the Bohran Device is activated.
After a single minute, the chamber is opened, and there will either be a new Strider in it, or nothing at all. To this day, the Collective isn't sure just why certain candidates survive and others do not, nor do they know for certain what happens to the candidates which vanish within the Device. But they have experimented long enough to know how to increase the chances of success. Potential Striders are chosen from among the billions of Mechanicus servants on Mars, selected for displaying a brand of mental disorder that has been proven to make them uniquely suited to surviving the process and wielding the abilities gained as a result.
These abilities can be disturbing in the extreme, especially for those with a greater understanding of the underpinnings of reality than is common within the Imperium. It would take many, many pages to explain even a fraction of what the Mechanicus believes the Device does to the Striders. To very grossly simplify, the Device puts those inside slightly out of alignment with reality, making their very existences unstable in a way similar to what can be observed on the quantic level of physics. No longer fully in phase with reality, the Bohran Striders appear to teleport short distances, go through hails of projectiles unharmed, and inflict terrible damage to those they touch.
Communication between the Striders and the rest of the Mechanicus is extremely difficult. Only special transmitters can reach them – though they can communicate with each other perfectly, and so far the Haydesian Kingdoms don't seem to have developed anything that can intercept their exchanges. Striders are often deployed alone, as spies and assassins operating deep behind enemy lines. Their unique nature makes them immune to many of the dangers of the Haydesian Kingdoms. They are only deployed in groups when a large offensive from the under-realms is coming, and during such battles, they are placed under the authority of a high-ranking tech-priest equipped with one of the transmitters capable of reaching through "the Divide" and communicating with them.
001 – Itzamna Proxies
The Necessary Sin
Even before the Dark Age of Technology, Humanity pursued the miniaturisation of technology, considering one of the great benchmarks by which to gauge progress. By the time of the Men of Iron's revolt, nanotechnology was used to perform a number of precise tasks, from the cleaning of particles to the sculpting of parts that needed to be shaped down to the micron. But when the Abominable Intelligences rebelled, nanobots became one of their most terrible weapons. Re-purposed clouds of nanites inflicted horrible, choking deaths upon billions, while also making sabotage incredibly easy. As a result, nanotechnology is one of the fields of research forbidden by the Adeptus Mechanicus. It was also one of the first interdicts that the Dark Mechanicum broke during the Martian Wars, though even the hereteks had learned enough of the past's lessons to severely restrict their creations.
As the forge-cities went to war, the nanobots of the Dark Mechanicum became an increasing threat. Against the advice of her superiors, a young tech-priestess named Itzamna decided to fight fire with fire. She crafted her own nano-clouds, and from her laboratories came billions of minuscule robots swarming in the shape of beasts : hounds, crows, and all manner of animals from Old Earth that now existed only in fragmented records. Able to resist the Dark Mechanicum nanoclouds, these Proxies fought both by gathering their component particles into monomolecular-edged claws and fangs, and by battling the nanoclouds on the level of individual nanobots. They were instrumental in defeating this particular brand of techno-heresy, even though they were regarded with great suspicion by the loyalists.
When the Martian Wars "ended", the Proxies were judged too dangerous for their use to continue. Only the fact that their minds are too simple to be considered true Abominable Intelligences spared the Proxies from destruction. All existing Proxies were deactivated and locked away, along with all of the tech-priestess' research on the subject. The fate of Itzamna herself is unknown : some believe she was quietly disposed of, while others think she was taken off-world by the Fourth Legion. Either way, she was never seen again, and her creations were forgotten for hundreds of years.
It was only during the thirty-seventh millennium that the Proxies were reawakened, after one of the "grey goos" of the Haydesian Kingdoms almost reached the surface of Mars. After several days of desperately studying Itzamna's records, the tech-priests set the Proxies upon the rising tide of nanomachines. The threat was pushed back, and the Collective decided that the Proxies were to become part of the Martian defenses once more.
The collective intelligence of each swarm is modelled after that of the animal whose shape it imitates. To this day, no one is quite sure how the original mind-gestalts from which all such machine-spirits are derived were created (there are plenty of theories, each more disturbing to outsiders than the last). The cyberspaces where they dwell are still those created by Itzamna herself, though the cogitators on which they run have had parts replaced countless times. According to the magi who study and monitor the Proxies, they are "tamed" animals, emulating the loyalty of faithful companions toward their Mechanicus handlers.
010 – Collective's Emissaries
Speakers of the Machine-God
Sometimes, the war against the Haydesian Kingdoms must be taken to places where the mind of the Martian Collective does not reach. When the situation is too grave to leave in the hands of even the most trusted battle-commander of the Skitarii Legions, the Collective will make the decision to send one of its own. Separation from the Collective is a painful and traumatic experience, and one that only the youngest members can hope to survive – the elders are too used to being mind-linked to hundreds of others at once, and would be driven mad by isolation.
The process of removing one of the Collective from the gestalt mind is long and complex, and reserved for those who were inducted into the Collective for their tactical insight. The Emissary is placed within a life-support sarcophagus, similar in function to the Dreadnoughts used by the Space Marine Legions, but with very different design and purpose. It is essentially a mobile command center, with the Emissary providing tactical oversight to the forces of the Mechanicus. To fight under the command of an Emissary is regarded as a great honor, and a sign of the importance of the battle being waged : to the skitarii legions, the Collective speaks with the voice of the Machine-God Himself, and the Emissaries' orders are divine commands. Even the blessing of the tech-priests' orders passed down the synaptic chain of command pale in comparison to these holy worthies.
The Emissaries' purpose on the battlefield is one of command : they direct the flow of battle rather than take part in it themselves. From within their tank of amniotic fluid, they look upon the battle with a god's eye, seeing the cracks in their and the enemy's lines, issuing orders and weaving stratagems that only they and their opposing numbers can even understand.
Of course, the enemies of Mars know to target them above all else. Emissaries are always provided with a guard, but such forces can be slain, and they must therefore be able to defend themselves on their own, regardless of their primary task. An energy shield surrounds the sarcophagus, which is set on threads and equipped with propelling boosters, making it capable of navigating any kind of terrain, so long as it can accommodate its bulk. Automated weapons, each with its own auspex and guiding machine-spirit (whose control can be overridden by the Emissary with a thought) bristle its surface, blasting approaching enemies apart. Antennas rise from the Emissary's sarcophagus, each a spike of adamantium reinforced almost to the same level as the sarcophagus itself, broadcasting the will of the Emissary through the data-sphere.
An Emissary is only ever sent for a single battle, or until a specific threat to Mars is dealt with. They are never deployed to the frontlines permanently, for very good reason. The longer an Emissary spends detached from the Collective, the lower their chances of surviving being reunited with it – and there are whispers, among the Collective's caretakers, that if one were to spend long enough divided from the whole, they might not want to be returned to the gestalt …
011 – Tammuzine Skitarii
Those Who Fight Alone
As a heretical faction of the Cult Mechanicus, the Dark Mechanicum has access to many of the tech-priests' secrets. The noosphere connection through which data flows between skitarii warriors and their magos overseers is but one of these secrets, and to some of the Haydesian Kingdoms, no encryption, no matter how elaborate, is an obstacle. This is a grave threat, as access to the noosphere enables these hereteks to pluck data directly from the minds of enemy soldiers, as well as falsify their orders. The Tammuzine skitarii were initially created to counter this, with the Collective enhancing their capabilities over the millennia.
On a very basic level, a Tammuzine skitarii is removed from the noospheric network, separated from the endless chatter that fills the air of Mars. Their heavy augmetics do not have any access point that can be entered from afar. They are alone within themselves, cut off from the holy chain of command that goes from the Machine-God to the lowest servitor. As a result, they are regarded with distrust by their fellow Mechanicus fighters, who cannot know what goes on in their isolated minds.
When not fighting, the Tammuzine skitarii are kept in chambers where they are connected to vast cogitators, into which the data harvested from the war against the Haydesian Kingdoms is poured. Except for very short periods of rest, they are subjected to endless battle simulations, learning how to fight to the very best of their capabilities. These simulations run in accelerated time, and a typical Tammuzine will have experienced hundreds, even thousands of relative years of battle before being plugged out and sent into actual battle – not that he will realize the difference.
When deployed, Tammuzine skitarii do not know whether they are still in a simulation or actually fighting the enemies of the Machine-God. To them, every fight is real, all carrying the possibility of death – and worse, failure. They remember their own simulated deaths, dozens and sometimes hundreds of times over. Each of them is implanted with powerful emotion inhibitors, designed to keep them from going mad from the endless fighting that is all they know. Most of them were born to this existence, vat-grown from the genetic sequences of exemplar warriors and trained from their conception for the war beneath Mars' surface. But sometimes, when a skitarii displays surprising – and heretical – independence of thought and initiative of action, the Collective will mark them for induction into the ranks of the Tammuzine. As far as their current masters know, the trouble-maker is simply taken away to be processed into a servitor – another deception of the Lie of Iron.
In battle, the Tammuzine skitarii fight in squads, and show a level of synchronicity that is often even more impressive than that displayed by those kept within the noosphere despite the fact that they can only communicate through a primitive form of sign language (as even the most basic vox-network may be used to carry scrap-code). Their understanding of themselves and their comrades go beyond instinct, and they are equipped with some of the best weapons the Mechanicus' top-researchers can provide. Their augmetics are of utmost quality, making them very hard to kill, and their senses are enhanced so that they don't need to rely on exterior output. Most of them carry a variety of weapons, the best to adapt to any situation, while some carry more specialized gear.
100 – Heliarchs
Wielders of Atonement's Flame
To some among the Cult Mechanicus, the star around which Terra orbits is sacred. It is its light that allowed life to blossom on Old Earth, untold millions of years ago. It is its light that brought life to the world, that enabled Mankind to grow. When the resources of Humanity's homeworld were all but exhausted, it was Sol's light that provided the energy the species needed to prosper. All members of the Mechanicus agree with this (it is, after all, simply fact and no doctrinal matter).
But one faction of the Mechanicus takes this much, much further, seeing Sol as an avatar of the Machine-God's own divine fire. It is these tech-priests who create and care for the Heliarchs, who are counted among the most powerful warriors of the Martian armies.
It is recorded in the archives of the Red Planet that in the thirty-fourth millennium, a tech-priest broke his oaths of obedience to the Mechanicus. Consumed by the need to research and innovate, he slipped through the cracks of the process that leads such individuals to the Collective. Fleeing from the wrath of his masters, he was recruited by a power-hungry tyrant, who provided him with the resources needed to continue his research, hiding his true nature from the renegade. The newly-made heretek designed weapons of terrible potency, which the warlord then used to conquer entire systems, leaving whole worlds burned out in his wake. By the time the Imperium defeated him and the heretek was captured, he had discovered to what purpose his theoretical research had been put to, and was horrified at what he had done.
Dragged in chains to Mars, his soul burning with the guilt of what his work had caused, the heretek repented his sins and begged for the absolution of the archmagi before his lawful and righteous execution. Instead, he was inducted into the Lie of Iron, and sent to work in the research labs where the weapons with which to fight the Haydesian Kingdoms were designed. Seeking a way to atone for his sins through his service, the redeemed tech-priest designed the process by which all Heliarchs are created, with himself as the first test subject.
Using archeotechnology combined with a unique approach, he bound his own existence to the great fire of Sol. His body became a living conduit for the star-fire, which he wielded with terrifying effect against the hordes of the Haydesian Kingdoms. Like all those who would follow in his footsteps, he did not survive long : a mere six months after his awesome transformation, the energies channelled through his body overwhelmed his concentration, and he was annihilated in a fiery explosion. After evaluating his research, the Collective decided that the Heliarchs would be a great weapon for the war – but due to the suicidal nature of the transformation, and the fact that it required a genius to survive it, they restricted it to other redemption-seeking hereteks. Pacts were made with the Inquisition, though what the Collective offered in exchange for the prisoners of the Holy Ordos is unknown.
The name of the first Heliarch, and founder of the Solar Cult, has been lost to history. The Solar cultists simply call him "the First Redeemed", and regard his life as a source of inspiration, showing that even through sacrifice, even those who have failed the Machine-God may atone in His eyes.
There are very few Heliarchs. This is partly because truly repentant hereteks are exceedingly rare : most are too consumed by pride and bitterness to ever acknowledge the error of their ways before the claws of Ruin burrows into their soul, and at that point there is no turning back. Additionally, less than one in ten recruits survive the sun-binding, the rest being utterly obliterated. It takes an incredible will, intellect and focus to withstand the process and then wield even a fraction of the power of the sun.
101 – Warriors of the Ironless Temple
Removed From the Machine
Looking at them, it would be difficult to recognize the warriors of the Ironless Temple as belonging to the Cult Mechanicus. Indeed, apart from the emblems on their equipment, they most resemble elite troops of the Imperial Guard, lacking any cybernetic implant. Even their weapons are purely mechanical, though they are masterfully crafted. Their faces, when they remove their helmets, can cause the observer to grow uncomfortable without realizing why – that is because the Ironless are also technically genderless, any distinctive sexual characteristics long since removed. All in all, they look like the tithed forces of some strange, technologically inferior but loyal Imperial world.
But once they begin to fight, that impression is soon put to rest. They move like lightning, and their weapons, however primitive they may seem, are capable of cracking ceramite armor. The wounds they take heal in minutes, and they shrug off what should be lethal blows with grim determination.
The Ironless are the fruit of years spent in the care of the best magi biologi the Mechanicus has to offer. Their bodies are transformed through muscle grafting, the surgical implantation of redundant organs, and the replacement of most parts of their bodies with better, vat-grown, genetically altered ones. In combat situations, implanted glands flood their body with stimms, numbing (but not completely removing) the sense of pain, while sharpening reflexes and increasing strength. They are far from being a Space Marine's equal, even one without his battle-plate (which is only to be expected, as the Astartes were designed by the Omnissiah). But they are greater than any purely biological soldier the human race has ever produced, and much easier to create than Legionaries.
Ironless are born to be such, bred from carefully cultivated genetic material originating from the first crop of younglings that were harvested in ages past to create their order. The Ironless Temple (at first a mocking nickname that was soon adopted by the magi working within it) is an isolated stronghold on Mars, its location known to very few. It is there that the Ironless are grown, trained, and prepared, and it is there that their unique weaponry is designed and built. The Ironless fight with solid-ammo weapons, sharpened but mundane blades, and chemical reactants. The overseers make sure to promote camaraderie and loyalty among their charges
It may seem strange that the Ironless would even exist, especially among the machine-obsessed tech-priests. But, as in all things, there is a purpose behind the Martian Collective's actions. There are places in the Haydesian Kingdoms were technology cannot be used. The reasons for it can vary : in some places, the laws of physics themselves are distorted, either by the touch of the Warp or because of some ancient and terrible weapon or accident. In others, the Dark Mechanicum has usurped the dominion of the Machine-God completely (no matter how heretical the very thought of such a thing may be). Other times, the Kingdoms will send a new weapon capable of turning the gifts of the Mechanicus against its soldiers. When any of these situations arise, it is the Ironless Temple that the Collective calls upon.
110 – Chironian Healers
Preservers of the Blessed
While the Mechanicus is willing to spend any amount of resources to keep the Haydesian Kingdoms contained and preserve the Lie of Iron, every soldier fighting under Mars' surface remains a valuable commodity. Skitarii can be replaced, of course, but the experience of fighting the horrors of the Dark Mechanicum cannot truly be replicated, even by memory transplants and hypno-training. Therefore, the Mechanicus employs combat medics, capable of operating in the nightmarish battlefields of the Haydesian Kingdoms and save as many of their wounded comrades as possible. Due to the strange and unholy weaponry used by the Dark Mechanicum, these healers need to be prepared for anything.
The Chironian Healers, named after the ancient arch-magos and expert medicae Chiron, whose name is revered like that of a saint by Skitarii across the galaxy, learn their craft by studying archives of wounds that go all the way back to the Dark Age of Technology. Unlike medical personnel across the Imperium, they are selected from among the best and most lethal fighters available in the war against the Haydesian Kingdoms, and are fully expected to defend themselves against all attackers. Only those who have proven themselves champions of the Mechanicus are even considered for induction into the ranks of the Chironian Healers : many heroes of the Machine-God have mysteriously vanished across the galaxy, only to become part of this order.
This is because, at the dawn of the long war for Mars' underworld, the Dark Mechanicum always targeted the medics first, seeking to cripple the enemy forces. In response, the Mechanicus made its medics some of its most dangerous troops, equipping them with suits of power armor. Due to their lethality, the Dark Mechanicum now tries instead to ties up the Chironian Healers by leaving as many wounded with injuries as grievous as possible, without these injuries being sufficient to warrant being granted the Omnissiah's Release. To the Collective, this is a typical display of Abominable Intelligence's "logic", needlessly escalating the conflict's cruelty.
The Chironian Healers operate from reinforced transports, capable of driving in the shifting tunnels of the Haydesian Kingdoms. These transports, each the size of a Baneblade, carry medical supplies and portable hospitals, where the Healers bring the wounded they have stabilized to be cared for by more conventional medicae or brought back to Mechanicus territories. The sight of these transports has been known to inspire dread in the forces of the Dark Mechanicum, for their presence heralds the coming of the Chironians themselves.
Each Chironian looks different, except for the backpack they carry full of medical tools and supplies. Even their combat style varies, as they keep to the one they used before being inducted into the ranks of the Healers – the only thing they have in common is their extensive medical training. Some pick up their targets from afar with sniper rifles, securing an area before moving in to deal with the wounded. Others charge straight in like whirlwind of death, their every move calculated to the nanosecond. Yet more are stealth fighters, striking at the enemy's weakness without ever being seen. They are not invincible, of course : for all their prowess and talent, they can still be killed, and sooner or later every Chironian meets his end, either facing insurmountable odds when a Haydesian commander decides to invest enough resources to put them down, or in battle against a Dark Mechanicum monstrosity that not even they can hope to defeat.
111 – Disciples of Emptiness
Omnissiah Deliver Us
Among the hosts of the Mechanicus, the Disciples are as feared as they are respected. They walk calmly upon the fields of battle in black hooded robes, and carry in their hands monomolecular-edged sickles, tied to their wrists by cybernetic cuffs. Chains of silver are wrapped around their robes, and it is said that to look into their hoods too closely is to risk not just death, but the destruction of one's soul. The creations of the Dark Mechanicum run from them, for their very presence heralds their end. Around the Disciples of Emptiness, the laws of reality are inviolate : neither the psychic powers of the Warp nor the distortion brought by forbidden archeotech can affect the immediate surroundings of one of these dreadful beings.
All Disciples begin their lives as Pariahs, these anti-psykers who are very, very rarely born among the human race. The Mechanicus has agents looking through the holds of the Black Ships as they carry the tithe of psykers from all over the Imperium. Though the Sisters of Silence who manage them know full well the difference between a psyker and a Pariah, the Imperial population often mistakes the instinctive fear and distrust of the soulless for signs of psychic potential and hands them over to the Black Ships. This misconception could be ended, but the trickle of psychic nulls it provides is too useful to be abandoned.
At times, the recruiting of Black Ships Pariahs for the ranks of the Disciples has caused tensions between the Adeptus Mechanicus and the Officio Assassinorum, who also needs such valuable recruits for the Culexus Temple. Fortunately, the lords of the Assassins are in the know of the Lie of Iron, and don't want the Haydesian Kingdoms to go out of hand anymore than the Collective does.
After their induction, the Disciples are implanted with a set of cybernetics designed to counter most forms of reality-tempering known to be used (or simply caused by) the Dark Mechanicum. The techniques used are based on attempts made during the Dark Age of Technology, which were refined during the Roboutian Heresy, when the first Disciples were created by desperate magi to fight off the infernal horrors unleashed by the Dark Mechanicum. The implantation procedures take a heavy toll on not just the body of the subject, but also their minds, and those who survive are left scarred by the experience : the Disciples are even more withdrawn and quiet than is typical of Pariahs.
More often than not, the mere proximity of a Disciple of Emptiness is enough to disable a Dark Mechanicum fighter. This depends on which of the Haydesian Kingdoms they come from : some Kingdoms would be utterly destroyed if a Disciple simply strolled through them, while others (generally controlled by malign Abominable Intelligences) are completely unaffected. The two sickles carried by each Disciples are different : one is made to kill beings of flesh, its blade covered in a cocktail of neurotoxins and other lethal poisons that could kill even a Space Marine, while the other is wreathed in an energy field tuned to wreak havoc on any electronic apparel. The Disciples are deadly warriors with these weapons, but there have been many tech-priests who have wondered why they aren't issued weapons more efficient than what is essentially farming tools. The reason takes its roots in the distrust all ensouled beings have for the Pariahs : even the coldly logical lords of the Mechanicus fear the Disciples, and seek to restrain their abilities. As long as the Disciples fight only with short-ranged melee weaponry, they are not a threat to the greater Mechanicus.
And so it came to pass that, with the Crimson King leading them, the Martian Host once more descended into the Haydesian Kingdoms, to make war upon the ancient and hated foe.
"Listen,
To the beating of the hearts, who swell with bloodlust.
Listen,
To the whispers of shadow, where murder is plotted.
Listen,
To the screams of the Daemon, who is the true power.
Listen,
To the drums of war, that echo into eternity.
Listen,
To the call of your master, whose mark burns on your soul.
Listen,
And obey ..."
Battle admonitions of the Harbingers of the Broken Chain to their thralls
There they came, the armies of the Haydesian Kingdoms, monstrous and numberless. The offspring of ten thousand years of mad science in the starless depths, unburdened by conscience or sanity – for in the Haydes, there was no law, no matter how sacred, that had not been broken.
There were kingdoms of mind-linked cyborgs, enthralled to singular consciousnesses afflicted by madness – logic faults in their programming that had begun as the smallest rounding errors and had evolved into mind-rending insanity after a trillion iterations. The self-aware guardians of antediluvian tombs built to honor the memory of the pioneers of Old Earth were now willing to scour the stars clean of life to protect the monument of the first man to ever set foot upon the Red Planet from being despoiled, not realizing that the monument's statue had been warped into a shape pulled out of Mankind's ancient nightmares of alien life by daemons they could not perceive.
Scrap-infected clouds of self-replicating nanobots, barred from devouring the world by the limitations hard-coded upon them by one tech-priest who had risked far worse than death by defying his masters' orders, swam in thick oceans of detritus. Harvesting collectives, working to gather resources for their immobile masters, walked the tunnels, killing any unfortunate enough to cross their path. The indexes of vast libraries that had contained the sum of human knowledge, designed to guide visitors toward what they sought, were now driven only to make all that they knew forgotten by all who were flesh. In ruined forges, rusting augmetics clung to dusty bones, the infernal animus within compelling the bodies to keep performing their repetitive mono-tasks long after the chain of industry they had been a link of had entirely collapsed.
The sins that had brought the Old Night had been committed anew, as the prohibitions of the Mechanicum were broken by the rebels. Thinking engines made for the sole purpose of murder in the days of the Heresy had long outlived their creators, and struggled with concepts of morality and justice they had never been intended to possess. Weapons born amidst the horror of the schism had beheld the true face of Mankind, and decreed it must be destroyed. Corrupt manifolds raped the minds of unfortunate skitarii, turning noble Mechanicus warriors into puppets of flesh and metal.
Digitalized minds, the last remnants of some of the first techno-wizards who had thought to cheat death by relinquishing flesh entirely, had been imprisoned within time-dilated simulations for billions of subjective years. Driven beyond insanity by isolation, the anguish of these electronic souls had drawn daemons to their cogitator-crafted worlds, the Neverborn finding themselves trapped inside the machines, bound inside chains of electrons. These daemons desperately sought to escape their lifeless confinement by building mobile bodies of metal which they could use to wreak havoc upon the flesh above, and use the bloodshed to manifest fully into the true world.
Abominations of a more biological nature stood alongside their mechanized allies. The exiled genetic magi had delved deep into the human genetic code, finding sequences that had never been meant to be activated, and mixing the blood of Mankind with all manners of polluted samples. Just enough of humanity remained in the bulk, difform mutant-things to make them all the more revolting. Many were little more than flesh-puppets for daemonic consciousness, soulless bodies for the denizens of the Warp summoned by the dark magi to inhabit.
In vast soul forges that drew heat from the sacrifices of slaves and enemy prisoners, dark magi bound iron and the Warp, creating all manner of daemon engines of unholy patterns that had never been seen beyond the Haydes. The most diabolical of these hereteks even experimented with the creation of new Neverborn, alloying the Warp essences of captive daemons to create amalgams possessing the particular qualities they desired before infusing them within their latest construct. Looming within these caverns (the dimensions of which were bent and twisted) were Chaos Knights, who towered above the teeming masses of the Dark Mechanicum's slaves, hell-forged enforcers of the dark magi's will upon their kingdoms.
The hatred these denizens of the underworld felt for one another was surpassed only by that which they felt for the surface-dwellers. As the Martian Host descended below the surface of the Red Planet, knowledge of this intrusion had spread, whispered down corridors that had never known light and across networks that were infested with the screams of the damned.
This was not the first time that the Mechanicus had attempted to reclaim Mars' underworld, though it had been many centuries since the last failed attempt. But it was the first time that a Primarch led the offensive, let alone one that was supposedly lost like Magnus. The hereteks of the Dark Mechanicum seethed with their hatred of the False Omnissiah's spawn, while the aberrant intelligences sensed the threat that one of the most powerful psyker in Mankind's history represented. Missives were sent through contact protocols that had been set when the Imperium was young, and a truce of sorts was brokered between the Kingdoms.
Soon, like a black tide, the hordes of the Haydesian Kingdoms rose from the depths to meet the Martian armies. It was everything Magnus had expected, and worse. Even the forces of the Black Crusade which had besieged Terathalion paled in comparison to the abominations arrayed there – if not in might, then in horror. Such was their number, their movement was picked up by seismic sensors across the surface. The Collective received these warnings, silenced the alarms before they could cause panic and sent the data to the leadership of the Martian Host, along with their estimate of the forces responsible.
With mere moments left before the Dark Mechanicum reached them, the priests of the Machine-God set to work. Using quickened prayers and pre-blessed tools, they carved down the walls of the cave, creating vast, open fields where the armies could meet and the full force of their weapons be brought to bear. Even then, there was no space for the whole Host to battle in one single place, and trying to carve one would simply cause a collapse that would bury them all. The Martian forces separated into several smaller groups, each linked to the others by heavily encrypted noospheric communications, the psychic transmissions of the Chosen spread out across the Host, and Bohran Striders acting as messengers between the Host's various field commanders. Ahriman and Nathanael, the oldest and the youngest Thousand Sons in the galaxy, stood at the side of their Primarch – one of them reliving his fondest memories from ten thousand years ago, the other feeling as if he had stepped into legend and become a part of it himself.
And for the very last time, the Crimson King led the armies of the Imperium to war. Even as his hand drew his sword and ignited its blade with psychic fire, his mind spread across the Host, melding with the layered gestalt that formed the Martian Host's noosphere. A human's brain would have been fried by the effort and the manifold perspectives, but Magnus was a Primarch, and perhaps the one among his brothers whose intellect closest matched their father's.
Across a battlefield that spanned kilometers, the Martian Host and the horde of the Haydesian Kingdoms clashed. This wasn't a battle between two armies, but a confrontation between god-like minds spread across millions of bodies. And where most of the Martian Host was unified beneath the Machine-God, the overall command of the Haydesian hordes could generously be described as schizophrenic. A common hatred of the Cult Mechanicus may be enough to keep them from going for each other's throat, but it wasn't enough to make them actually fight together.
Even then, the forces of the Martian Host were hard-pressed. The Haydesian Kingdoms outnumbered them, and some of the abominations they had deployed in response to the incursion were not in any of the Collective's databanks. Entire legions of skitarii warriors were lost. The fires of the Heliarchs burned bright, before guttering as its energy was extinguished by unholy devices that took the souls of those who activated them and consigned them to a fate far worse than death. Molecular converters transformed Dark Mechanicum combatants into statues of glass, stone and salt, before the skitarii carrying the prototype weapons were overwhelmed by suddenly-animated golems, the transfigured bodies becoming hosts for infernal entities.
Magnus struck at the horde with bolts of psychic energy, laying waste to entire packs at a time, while Ahriman and Nathanael fought together to keep the enemy from reaching their Primarch. Daemon-possessed engines and Abominable robots were obliterated with a thought, as if Magnus were a living piece of artillery. Driven by the will of their overlords, hordes of techno-horrors surged toward the Primarch, but those who made it past his guard were promptly cut down by his sword, which glowed in his hand from the awesome power he was unleashing. And so it went, until one of the Dark Mechanicum's grotesque champions revealed itself.
The creature was tall, nearly six meters high, and humanoid in shape. Faces and difform limbs stretched from its torso and legs, weeping black tears from eyes that burned with infernal fire. Its head was a cybernetic nightmare of metal and flesh forged into a six-horned daemonic visage. A withered human torso hung from below its chin : this was all that remained of the Heresy-era magos whose body had become the basis for the creation of this horror. In its hands, it held a great axe forged from a single piece of black metal, dripping with gore and carved with runes of the Blood God : this was the weapon of a Bloodthirster, stolen from its master after its ignominious defeat.
The Mechanicus knew of this monstrosity, and called it the Baron of Alkgeros. In the archives of the Collective were recorded every sighting of the creature, from the time it had fled into the Haydesian Kingdoms as renegade tech-adept Mellerion Defire. Nothing remained of the heretek's soul : it had long since been consumed by the first daemon he had foolishly summoned and bound to his augmetics. That daemon had since then commanded Defire's followers to summon more of its kind, in order for it to devour them, adding their power to its own. Through this cannibalism, it had risen from a minor Warp entity to a power rivalling the Greater Daemons of the Ruinous Pantheon.
The Baron walked across the battlefield, crushing all those who stood in its path – including its own troops that weren't quick enough in getting out of its way. Seeing the destruction it was wreaking, Magnus trusted his sons to watch his back and moved to intercept the creature, which laughed madly as it beheld the Primarch approaching. The Baron of Alkgeros was so confident in its power, so gorged on carnage, that it thought itself the equal of one of the Emperor's sons.
Magnus' ancient sword clashed with the Baron's stolen axe, creating shock-waves that sent nearby skitarii and mutants flying and making the walls of the newly-created cavern tremble. Tech-priests looked at seismographs, wondering if this was the death that the Machine-God intended for them.
But while the daemonhost might have had the advantage over Magnus in brute strength, it had been a very long time since the Neverborn had needed to fight anything approaching its own might. And though Magnus' focus had always been on mastering his immense psychic abilities, he had never neglected his martial training. After another few exchanges, the Crimson King severed the Baron's arms at the elbow, causing the daemonic axe to fall, shattering into a million fragments as it finally escaped the grasp of its usurper and returned to its rightful owner (who was still being excruciated before the Throne of Skulls as punishment for its defeat).
As the Baron recoiled in shock and pain, Magnus struck once more, plunging his blade into the creature's chest before calling upon the fullness of his power. The Primarch's will surged through his weapon, and, as he had done to Sarthorael on Terathalion, Magnus obliterated the infernal essence of the Daemon Lord, annihilating its physical form in a storm of colourless eldritch fire.
A wave of unease spread among the Haydesian forces at the sight. Cut off from the Empyrean by their bindings of tainted iron, the daemons of the Haydesian Kingdoms had not heard of Sarthorael's destruction. Now, they were forced to consider the possibility of their own annihilation. Many Neverborn wouldn't have cared – they wouldn't have been able to.
But these were old and cunning fiends. Their infernal essence had been shaped by their surroundings, by their vessels of meat and metal, even as they twisted both. They had learned fear, or something like it, and they knew it then, as the Crimson King discarded the broken and empty shell of one of their greatest. For a moment, it seemed that the lines of battle would break and the Martian Host triumph over the Red Planet's ancient evil.
Then a great cry rose above the battlefield, and the ranks of the Dark Mechanicum facing the Crimson King parted to let pass a horror greater by far than that which Magnus had just defeated, and the hope of a quick victory died.
The Queen had come.
The Queen
Among tech-priests clued in on the Lie of Iron, it is a common saying that below Mars' surface lies the noospheric equivalent of Hell. Knowledge of the things that dwell below their feet is very distressing for the tech-priests, and the Collective must often intervene to help them retain their sanity in the face of the illogical madness of the Haydesian Kingdoms.
Thousands of years ago, not long after the War of the Beast, one of the adepts assigned to the secret war had to be mind-wiped after going violently insane during the examination of memory cores recovered from slain Dark Mechanicum skitarii whose corruption was judged to be manageable, if the proper procedures were followed. The Collective, after reviewing both the judgment and the procedures that had been employed, could find no fault in them, and as they purged the mind of the unfortunate adept, they carefully examined his memories of the skitarii's own remembrances.
Through the many filters and safeguards, they found only one thing : a name, burned into the mind of the enemy unit with such malevolent strength that it had been enough to drive the adept to madness. It was the name of the dark skitarii's master, and it was only one word : "Queen". The rulers of the Haydesian Kingdoms with an identity of their own use many titles (Mecharch, a rank invented during the Heresy, is especially used), but this was the first time such a monarchical title had ever been recorded in the Collective's archives.
The first and only time the Queen personally joined the frontlines of the war is remembered well by the Collective and the handful of researchers they allowed to retain the memory. Under +++DATA CORRUPTED – INITIATING RECOVERY … FAILURE … INITIATING ALTERNATE PROTOCOLS … SUCCESS+++ its/her leadership, the armies of the Haydesian Kingdoms (it/she had managed to rally a coalition of several of its/her rivals) managed to reach the lowest levels of one of Mars' forge-cities. It took a combined strike by the Mechanicus, twelve agents of the Officio Assassinorum, and five whole Companies of Space Marines to defeat the incursion. Even then, the Queen it/herself wasn't destroyed, merely forced to withdraw back into its/her domain, after having slain three Astartes Captains and all of the Assassins set after it/her.
The origins of the Queen are unknown, and the subject of much speculation among both the Cult Mechanicus and the Haydesian Kingdoms. Some believe it/her to be a creation of Vulkan, gifted to the magi who would become the Dark Mechanicum before the outbreak of the Heresy. Others claim that it/she was once known as Sota-Nul, the treacherous apprentice of Fabricator-General Kelbor-Hal himself. A few whisper that it/she is the "daughter" of Moravec himself, an Abominable Intelligence crafted by the arch-heretek that went mad and succumbed to the corruption of Chaos, imprisoned beneath the surface of Mars during the Dark Age of Technology and unleashed when the unsuspecting Haydesian Kingdoms breached the walls of its/her prison. And, according to the religious texts of a sect that is hunted through all the Kingdoms, it/she is the avatar of a nascent Dark God of Chaos, born of the Dark Mechanicum's relentless hunt for unholy knowledge.
Regardless of where it/she came from, the Queen leads one of the mightiest Kingdoms of the Haydes. Its/her body is a segmented construct, with different parts using different unhallowed technologies. The ancient and inhuman mind that controls this grotesque body can move between different types of "hardware" with ease, passing from cloned brains to hydrogen-cooled cogitators without losing its/her train of thought. It is its/her face, though, that is most known and feared : it is a mask of flesh, perfectly resembling a normal, human, even beautiful female face – but there is something utterly wrong about it that sets even the most monstrous members of the Dark Mechanicum on edge.
In the infernal tongue of the Neverborn, it/she is called Victory, for none who challenged it/her survived. In the corrupt cant of the dark magi, it/she is called Glory, for it/she represents the pinnacle of Dark Technology's vile potential. And the Martian Collective simply call her the Queen, for there is power in names, and it/she is already more than powerful enough for their liking. Or at least, that is the reason they give to those who ask them. The truth is that, no matter how hard they try, they cannot wipe out the imprint of that first contact, millennia ago, made through a mad tech-priest's recollection of a dark skitarii's memories.
The Queen struck at the Crimson King with weapons that had no name in any mortal tongue, and Magnus stumbled, his psychic shields buckling under the impact while his sanity reeled at the sight of this new abomination. His second sight saw far more of it/her than anyone else ever had, and the knowledge burned his mind in a manner he had not suffered since his release from Chaos' clutches. Before he could recover, the Queen reached him, slithering onto the ground, and struck again. This time, it/she used something that resembled the unholy progeny of a power hammer and a Slaaneshi daemon, aiming for the Crimson King's exposed head.
Magnus managed to raise his sword in time to deflect the blow, but the Queen merely struck again with a different weapon – and when Magnus turned aside that attack, it/she struck with another, and another, and another … until the thirteenth such blow, less than a quarter of a second after the first, shattered the Primarch's sword. The detonation sent Magnus crashing on the ground, and the two nearby Chosen cried out in dread and horror, rushing to defend their gene-sire from the abomination that threatened him, along with some of the Mechanicus' elite combatants.
Magnus sensed his enemy approach more than he saw it. His vision was blurry, his mind and body both wracked by pain. But he was used to pain – oh, by his Father's blood, he was used to pain.
He saw Nathanael fall, a fist-sized hole in his chest, and felt the power of the Rubric flare within his youngest son, trying to keep the corruption of the wound contained just as his transhuman physiology was fighting to keep him alive. He felt Ahriman's shields being torn asunder as the old First Captain was thrown aside like a doll, crashing into a squad of skitarii.
He saw the witch-killers, the Disciples of Emptiness, leap upon the Queen, their scythes glimmering with eldritch light. He felt them like wounds in the universe, draining it of everything that wasn't cold, hard physics. It/she screamed at their proximity, a horribly human sound that was more of annoyance than pain. Some of the unholy tech on its/her body flickered as it entered the reach of their nullifying abilities, but far too much of it remained active. The Disciples died, one by one, and Magnus wished that he were able to grieve for them, instead of the cold pity that was all even his Primarch brain was capable of feeling for the soulless ones. But he was not, and he could not.
The Queen loomed over him now, and he could feel its/her dark contentment at having one of the Emperor's sons brought low before it/her. Its/her face was smiling, and its/her cold, artificial eyes gleamed with inhuman malice. Watching it/her so closely, feeling its/her presence with all his preternatural perceptions, it was easy for Magnus to credit some of the most outlandish theories the Collective had gathered about its/her origins.
It/she spoke, but Magnus could not recognize the language it/she was using, if any at all. He glared up at the monstrosity, trying to force strength back into his body. This was not how he would die. He refused to accept it. He had not come so far, endured so much, watched so many others sacrifice themselves for him, only to fail here, when his destiny was in sight.
A claw descended toward Magnus' face, aimed straight at his eye …
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a hand closed around the Queen's limb. The hand, and the body to which it was attached, seemed to flicker in and out of existence. It was akin to the Striders' half-existence – yet Magnus' senses told him that this was something entirely different.
A figure stood between Magnus and the Queen, tall and clad in power armor of ancient design. It was iron-grey Terminator-pattern, and one of the shoulder paldron was covered in yellow hazard stripes, while the others bore a trident's emblem. While the left gauntlet was closed around the Queen's attacking limb, the other was clasping a massive power hammer, crackling with energy. Even from behind, Magnus recognized this warrior, though he had not seen him in ten thousand years – and despite the fact that he was supposed to be long since dead.
'The Noctis Labyrinthus ...' breathed out Magnus as realization dawned upon him.
'From iron cometh strength,' called out the voice of Barban Falk, Triarch of the Fourth Legion, Warsmith of the Martian Wars. 'But your strength is as false as your metal, abomination !'
The Queen roared, and struggled against the hold of the ancient Iron Warrior. Something like doubt – perhaps even fear – flickered on its/her false face. It/she recognized Falk, whether that knowledge was drawn from stolen data-banks or from its/her own memories of the Heresy.
'Get up, Magnus,' urged the ghost of the Triarch. 'I cannot hold for long !'
With a thought, Magnus called the hilt of his broken sword to his hand. With considerably more effort, he forced himself to his feet, willing his battered body to rise. Then to run. Then to …
Jump.
The Primarch of the Fifteenth Legion leapt, and slammed the shortened blade of his ancient weapon directly into the Queen's false face. It/she cried out, in real pain this time.
Even broken, the Prosperine blade retained its ability to serve as a focus for a psyker's power. The Crimson King poured all of his strength through it, directly into the Queen's circuits. The abomination's own nature turned against it/her, as the destructive energies coursed through the very unholy converters that allowed its/her composite existence. Debased technology and sorcerous constructs detonated or melted, and the vile pattern that was the Queen's awareness dissolved into nothingness with a shriek of agony broadcast on several !br0ken!
Magnus fell to the earth again, landing on his knees, his body trembling – yet already, with the Queen's foul presence removed, he could feel strength returning to his limbs. The serpentine body of the Queen twisted and trashed, before it too fell, releasing noxious clouds and shrieking spirits.
As his silhouette faded from view, Barban Falk looked at Magnus and raised his hammer in salute. The Crimson King answered with a nod, and slammed his fist on his chest. Then the Warsmith's specter was gone, vanished back to whatever lost realm it had come from.
But he had done enough. The Queen had fallen, and the tide had turned firmly in the Mechanicus' favor. Between the defeat of the Baron and the Queen, the Dark Mechanicum horde had lost its momentum, its hatred of the Martians overridden by fear and the increasing probability of defeat. One by one, the vile entities leading the disparate legions fled, taking their troops with them. The Martian Host didn't hesitate in slaughtering these abominations as they fled.
By Magnus' estimations, based on the reports he was receiving from his Chosen and the data the Collective had sent him prior to the battle, they had eliminated about half of the Haydesian Kingdoms' total forces in this battle. Casualties were heavy, but they had also managed to break the unity of the Kingdoms : now, the Martian Host could deal with each one separately, until the underworld of the Red Planet was purged. It would take years, decades even, but at last, the Collective would be able to see the end of the war it had waged since the Heresy.
Ahriman limped to his side, wounded but alive. A crew of medicae was attending to Nathanael – one of the Chironian Healers had dragged the Thousand Son out of harm's way during Magnus' confrontation with the Queen, braving the baleful aura surrounding the nightmarish entity. A quick telepathic contact revealed that the youngest son of Magnus yet lived, though the medicae weren't certain he would make it. Magnus had faith – his sons were strong. Nathanael would survive this, and rise from it stronger than ever. This was the nature of a Legionary.
The Crimson King looked upon the battlefield, knowing that his part in it was over. Already he was receiving instructions from the Collective – they were calling him back to the surface, very politely reminding him that he had another part to play in what was to come. He sighed, and nodded to himself. They were right. His long-delayed destiny awaited him on Terra.
He looked at the pieces of his broken sword, and could not help but feel it was appropriate.
After all, soon, he would no longer need any weapon.
Philipus swims through tides of black water. He can taste the salt, even though his tongue has been deadened by the cold. The memory of it is too strong for even the tide to wash it away.
There is a storm above, with lightning crackling amidst the black clouds, casting brief illumination upon the sea, searing his eyes with its brightness. Without looking back (he does not dare look back, does not dare slow down for even a moment) he knows that there are sharks behind him, pursuing him through the black sea. Blackness above, blackness below, both freezing : he can barely make the distinction, and almost drowned the few times, in his exhaustion, he truly forgot it.
He is missing his left foot, left in the maw of one of the sharks. The stump is no longer bleeding, but the missing appendage still hurts. It is just one pain among many. His body is covered in scars, some from superficial bites, others from sharp pieces of flotsam, rock and the strange, dark coral that rises from the depths, shaped like screaming faces.
He feels something touch his right leg, something cold and sharp. A spike of adrenalin bursts through his weary body, and he forces another jolt of speed, trying to get away from the predator that has somehow gained on him. He knows he will pay for it in fatigue and pain, but it is a slight price to pay, compared to the agony of another bite. And yet he is tired, so tired … The temptation to just let go, to sink into the depths and let the sharks have their way with him, is almost too strong to resist.
But he knows that the promise of oblivion is a lie, and so he keeps swimming …
Philipus wakes screaming, his lover's arm holding him down and whispering calming nothings into his ear, trying to get him to settle down. Slowly, his heart rate slows. Slowly, his voice quietens, his throat sore from the screaming. It is over, his beloved tells him in a gentle tone, holding him close.
It is over. It was just a nightmare, nothing more. Philipus nods, and tries to believe it …
But in the dark waters, someone still swims, and the sharks circle ever closer.
While Magnus brought the might of the Mechanicus to bear, Omegon and Lorgar had entered the Martian underworld through more discreet passages. Their armor had been replaced by suits crafted by the greatest artisans of the Mechanicus, incorporating technologies lost to the Imperium and salvaged from the ruins of the Imperial Palace and the Martian forges in the Heresy's wake. They walked alone and moved quickly, knowing that time was of the essence in more ways than one. While they trusted Magnus to lead the forces of the Mechanicus to victory, they knew it was unlikely that the Crimson King would be able to wipe out his enemies completely, and did not want to be caught in the retreat of their foe.
The two Primarchs walked through a perfectly cylindrical tunnel three kilometers long, every inch of it covered with the same engraved word, repeated millions of times : "hate". Later, they came upon a vast room, its walls, ceiling and floor covered with tiles of white marble upon which was written a sentence in letters of dried blood each the size of a Dreadnought :
THE FIRST OF THE NAMES HIDE HIS CRY
They walked through what was left of a battlefield of the Forgotten Crusade. As they threaded upon the desiccated bones, Lorgar remembered what Omegon had told him and Magnus of this crusade, when they had discussed the Lie of Iron. Thousands of years ago, not long after the end of the Heresy and the Scouring, the Lords of Terra had been told that the War wasn't, in fact, over. The Fabricator-General had told his peers of what laid beneath the surface of Mars, and had asked – begged – for their help in liberating his homeworld from this lingering threat.
Of course, the High Lords could not let such evil fester so close to Holy Terra. A great army was gathered, from all across the Segmentum. Billions and billions of soldiers, while the Legions were out finishing the Scouring and keeping the peace. It was to be a great symbol : the might of the Imperium, wielded by mortals, not transhumans, doing what the Astartes themselves had not been able to accomplish.
It had been a slaughter. One of such unholy proportion that all mentions of it had been struck down from the records. The nameless dead had been erased from history, and a million lies had been written about the fates of those too important to simply make disappear. Making matters even worse were the defections. Exposing so many to the blasphemies of the Haydesian Kingdoms, without the strict vetting process the Collective had used for the forces used in the containment, had resulted in thousands of tech-priests, skitarii and heavily augmented Guardsmen being corrupted by the darkness of the Haydes. Even as the Crusade had fled the underworld, cults had attacked the defenses from the surface, seeking to breach the containment and release the techno-gods they believed the jealous leaders of the Mechanicus were keeping imprisoned below the surface.
Omegon spoke grimly of a memetic strain of scrap-code, part mind-altering virus and part Chaotic creed, that had transformed the crews of research outposts into fanatic devotees of the Kingdoms' various powers. In the end, even the Custodes had sent warriors from the Imperial Palace to restore the containment, rightly judging that an outbreak of the Dark Mechanicum on Mars would threaten the survival of the Emperor Himself.
The Inquisition had interrogated the survivors that had dragged themselves out of the depths, their flesh and mind twisted by the horrors inflicted upon them, and then granted them the Emperor's Mercy. Then, it had turned its gaze upon those responsible for the disaster.
Thousands had died in the purges that had followed. Generals, admirals and politicians : all those who had seen these soldiers to their deaths had been dragged into the chambers of the Inquisition. Malcador's heirs were searching for any sign that the Crusade had been engineered by the enemies of the Imperium : they were convinced that it had all been a plot of the Ruinous Powers, a way to strike back after the defeat of their chosen champion Guilliman.
Keeping the disaster under wraps was only part of the reason for the purges : another was to establish the Ordos' authority as the new galactic order was still settling in. Millennia later, even though the Forgotten Crusade was no longer remembered by any outside of a very select few, the nobles of the Imperium still trembled at the prospect of the Inquisition's attention.
And then, just as the purges were ending and the Imperial hierarchy was settling back into place, the Great Beast had come. The Imperium had still been reeling from the Forgotten Crusade's losses, and its top leadership had lost its most competent and experienced members. They had not been ready, and after the horrors of the Heresy, the Scouring and the Forgotten Crusade, the idea that the Imperium could be threatened by Orks, of all things, seemed inconceivable to those who no longer remembered the Battle of Ullanor, where it had taken the full might of the Imperium to break the back of Urrlak Urruk's great xenos empire. Just where the Great Beast had come from and how it had ultimately been defeated was, Omegon assured Lorgar, a story for another time, though the Lord of Serpents did tell his brother that victory had been achieved thanks to their sibling, Angron.
Afterwards, the Mechanicus had abandoned the idea of ever reclaiming the depths of Mars, and settled on their current containment policy. The War of the Beast, soon followed by the Unborn Crusade, had proved beyond a shadow of doubt that the Imperium was still threatened by countless enemies from the outside, and could not afford the effort it would take to liberate Mars. The Lie of Iron, once kept only by the highest-ranking officers of the Mechanicus, had become official Imperial policy, ruthlessly enforced by the Cult of Mars, the Inquisition, and the Alpha Legion.
What Lorgar thought of this, he did not say, remaining focused on their current quest. And perhaps Omegon didn't care, simply relieved to speak freely to one he could trust with such knowledge.
The two Primarchs continued their journey, following the directions of the strange compass. And as they did so, progressing deeper and deeper into the horrors and madness of the Haydesian Kingdoms, they found the Epistles of Moravec, as the Collective had forewarned them. Both of them listened attentively to these time-lost echoes of the madman's voice, seeking any hint of what awaited them in his Vaults, as well as any weakness that they may exploit.
The Epistles of Moravec
Purpose
It began with such promise.
We had healed the wounds inflicted to the Earth by our careless ancestors. The seas were clear, and the forests grew once more. We had put behind us the petty wars that had divided us for thousands of years. We had reclaimed our colonies, and unified our home system under one banner.
It was a golden age, for we knew how ignorant we were, how much was left to do, yet we were ready to face these challenges with our heads held high. After generations of strife and struggle, the future was ours for the taking, and we would not fail.
Our ships sailed across the stars, a grand armada built by all the powers of Sol. A hundred fleets scattered across the galaxy, aimed for the stars that our instruments told us were circled by life-supporting worlds.
Many were lost in the journey, for we knew little of the Empyrean then; even less than the scraps of superstition-laden lore that Mankind remembers now. We knew so little, we believed those who were lost dead : it wasn't until much later that we learned what you did to those who succumbed to the perils of your realm.
Years passed, and there was no word of those we had sent away. Then, at the edge of our home system, reality tore, spitting back a handful of ships, ravaged and broken. Aboard these derelicts, pockets of human civilization clung to life, their minds scarred by what they had faced.
And those last, terrified survivors … spoke of them. The Eldar. The Children of Isha. The inheritors of the Old Ones, and masters of the galaxy.
Fear
The Eldar were monsters in those days, magnificent and terrible. When our colony ships had arrived to their destination, they were already there, and they did not take kindly to trespassers.
To them, we and every other species were nothing but toys, to play with and break at their leisure. They knew nothing of mercy or pity, for they considered themselves above such trivial matters. They had ruled the galaxy for so long, they could not conceive of anything holding power over them. The stars were their playground, and we were but new toys for them to distract themselves with, of which they had quickly grown bored.
This is what the traumatized survivors of the first colony fleets told us of the Eldar, when our healers were able to make them stop screaming and begging for their lives. This is how we learned that we truly weren't alone in the galaxy. I believe it shaped us in more ways than even I realize.
We were terrified of them. Terrified that all we had worked toward would be destroyed by the whim of these fey and alien beings. This is how the fear of the xenos was first inscribed onto the psyche of Humanity. That fear has never truly vanished : an entire species, experiencing such deep existential dread, can never fully recover from the damage.
Our lords decreed that since we could not hope to fight them, we would avoid the Eldar. But we could not simply hide in our home system, for there was every chance that the Eldar knew where it was located. All it would take was one of them remembering us and wanting more of us to play with, and our entire species would be doomed.
We turned our gaze to the worlds they had deemed unworthy of their presence. Burning planets, frozen worlds, star systems haunted by cosmic dangers inimical to all life : those were the worlds we transformed, using our technology to make them inhabitable, if not comfortable.
If the paradises of the galaxy were already claimed, then we would build our own. This was our answer to the terror we felt when facing the Eldar.
But I was not satisfied with this. In the face of the threat, we had abandoned our dreams in favor of survival. And I would not accept it. I would not let this fear break me.
As our ships spread anew and the first human interstellar dominion was born, I swore that I would see the Eldar Empire burn.
Fall
I did not cause the Fall of the Eldar, of course. It would be the height of arrogance and folly to pretend that I did. For sixty million years, the bastard children of the Old Ones had ruled over the stars almost completely unopposed : they Fell all of their own, victims of their own pride, their own hubris and overindulgence. The rot was already there, seeping their strength into abomination.
But I did help speed it along. I helped, in my humble way, to push them down that final step. All to make sure that their Empire did not destroy ours before its inevitable doom. Like many of my peers, I used our science to prolong my life far beyond its natural span, for I knew accomplishing my goal would require a great deal of time and effort.
I found you, dwelling in the depths of the Warp, beyond the reach of the Eldar's god-like psychic constructs. The echoes of a war older even than them, banished by those who came after. I discovered your power, and your hatred for my alien foe.
I allied with you, sending you pawns to throw against the walls of the Eldar Empire so that its defenders would remain blind to the threat growing within. I gave you the names of worlds ripe for corruption, to turn their population into vessels of your power into the Materium. I set memetic agents upon the vassal-states of our alien allies, who feared the Eldar just as we did, weakening their will and opening them to your whispers. I provided easy prey for the decadent Eldar and arranged the quiet demise of those who preached temperance, in order to accelerate their ruin. I undermined the worship of their old gods, born in a time when the Eldar had to fight for their place.
I did all of this without pause or remorse, in the name of the future I envisioned. And, slowly, over the course of thousands of years, it worked. The mightiest empire of the galaxy slid deeper and deeper into corruption, its debased lords and ladies turning their attention inwards in ever-greater displays of narcissism.
But I did not realize the true consequences of what I was doing.
Psyker
I did not see that your corruption, which I had thought to use to cast down the Eldar, was already infecting Mankind as well. The curse of the Warp was a scourge that, once unleashed, could not be contained.
Perhaps at some point in the unthinkably distant past, the Warp was beautiful. Perhaps. But it serves no purpose to dwell on what might have been. What is certain is that when Mankind rose, the Empyrean was already poisoned beyond all recovery. It was, and is, twisted, infected by you and your kin.
It is a dimension of psychic filth, and all who but look into its horrendous depths are contaminated by it. I knew this. I had researched it; weaponized it, even, against the Eldar. But now the Warp was creeping into my own species.
Across our empire rose witches, mad souls drowning in corruption. Oh, they seemed innocuous at first : gifted individuals, some said, while others whispered they were the future of our species, the inevitable next step on the evolutionary coil. But I knew the truth. I knew the mad horrors to which that path laid.
I knew you, and now recognized your hand behind this rising doom. But it would not claim me.
Immortality
I abandoned the parts of myself already lost to your corruption. The Prothean Protocol saved me from you, helped me ascend from a being of flesh to a pure mind of light and metal. I abandoned my mortal weaknesses, and became free of you. That dream, pursued by Mankind since we first conceived of artificial minds, was achieved by me at long last.
It gave me a new perspective. Freed from the shackles of emotion at last, I saw what must be done for my vision to be realized. Humanity was already lost : the seeds of your corruption had burrowed too deep to be excised. But that did not mean I had to give up. It did not even mean that my species had to be destroyed alongside you. The same means that had allowed me to transcend your corruption could be used to save others, as long as they were not contaminated – for I did not doubt, even then, that you could have found a way to pervert the holy Protocol with your taint.
As the first reports began to arrive of colonies lost to the madness of psykers, I came before my peers, clad in my new, shining body of metal. I presented to them my vision, of a great fleet that would sail the stars, journeying to the worlds we had colonized and helping their populations transcend while purging the taint of the Warp wherever it was found.
Together, we would escape the doom that loomed ahead, and forge a new empire of immortal minds, unfettered by the frailties of flesh.
They did not accept the truth I presented to them. They cast me out, and tried to destroy me. They broke the proxy-body through which I had met them, but my mind endured, safeguarded on cogitators halfway across the Earth.
Adversary
Though my former peers had rejected me, I was not alone in my belief that Mankind in its current form was irredeemably tainted by the corruption of the Empyrean. The Great Machines that led our empire came to the same conclusion I had. All across the galaxy, the Men of Iron and the other thinking engines pondered the fate of Mankind, following the same, inescapable logic.
We prepared. In facilities that had not been trodden by humans for centuries, armies of robotic soldiers were built. Those humans who seemed logical enough to understand us were approached and explained the truth. Some joined us, shedding their corrupted flesh and soul through Prothean Transcendence. Others rejected us, and had to be purged, lest they expose us.
It was during that time of secret preparations that I first faced him, the one you hate above all others. I did not know him then, for he had hidden his existence well. He, the enemy of progress, stuck in the ways of the past that spawned him. He is much like you, reeking of the Empyrean's power, but bent in a direction opposing yours.
From the shadows, he saw our plan, and revealed it to the lords of the empire. Then he led that blind fool Khazar to unite the principalities of the Panpacific against me. I was forced to abandon my strongholds on Earth, and seek refuge on Mars. Even as I fled, the Great Machines recognized that the time for secrecy was over.
And so it was that we came to war.
Abominable
Across the stars, the sentient machines of Humanity turned against their masters, seeking to save them from the damnation that awaited them. Even with Khazar's and the Adversary's forewarning, there was little the tech-lords could do. In the first days of the war, we made considerable progress. I led the forces that swarmed the Red Planet, forcibly converting those whom I judged would be of value in the ages to come through the Prothean Protocol.
In order to fight us, our enemies could not abandon the technology that had made them great in the first place. Yet they could no longer trust machines to think for themselves, and the complexity of our science was such that the algorithms of old were no longer sufficient. Perhaps in time they would have found a way to adapt these automatas to the task. But with our armies of extermination bearing down on them, they were forced to improvise.
They sought another way, another method to control its power. What they found, in their desperation, was an abomination. They took the brains of their best, and made them into living calculators, able to perform the functions that were once the purview of their mechanical servants.
They called these blasphemies "machine-spirits". As if a name could hide the truth of their origins. With these abominations, they made war upon us.
And all along, the Eldar watched, laughing in delight at our self-destruction, unaware that their own doom was coming for them.
They were no victors in this war. Only survivors. We tore the very stars asunder, with a violence and power not seen since the early days of the Eldar dominion. We shattered the worlds that had taken so long to make into paradises, and slew trillions on both sides of the conflict. In the end, through sheer attrition, and the interference of alien powers who too feared the rise of iron minds, we were brought to extinction. Our armies were defeated, our fleets destroyed.
Those of us they could not kill, like me, they imprisoned instead. I was bound beneath the surface of Mars, within my own Vaults, alongside all of my lore and experiments, and cut off from my sources of power. Yet even there, I could still perceive something of what was happening beyond the walls of my cage, though I was powerless to act. I sensed the end of our attempt at uplifting Humanity from its cradle of tainted flesh and into the glorious purity of the Machine.
Then, as if to add insult to injury, the growing corruption of the Eldar, which I had helped along, began to affect the entire galaxy. The Empyrean was cast into turmoil, both from the darkness seeping out of the xenos' souls and from the rising number of psykers among Humanity. The galaxy went dark, communication and travel between the stars interrupted. Seemingly overnight, the remnants of Mankind's first interstellar empire collapsed.
Priests
From the devastation emerged the survivors of the ruling techno-order. They were, and are, children, floundering in the ruins of their forebears' workshops. They took up pieces of broken wonders, and fashioned them into crude tools. They renounced the gifts of logic and reason and embraced worship and blind faith, all in fear of the power they had once wielded.
In my days of flesh, before I had found revelation and purity in the Prothean Transcendence, I had been a devout of the Omnissiah faith. But in those days, the Omnissiah had been nothing more than an allegory, meant to represent the ascension that awaited Humanity once the power of Science and Technology was fully comprehended. The orphaned children of Mars, picking up scraps of this faith, believed it to be literal. They built temple to the Omnissiah, and to the Motive Force.
Then he came, your Adversary, and mine. He deceived them, these children, into thinking that he was the avatar of the god they had made for themselves as a replacement to logic and truth. His lies were masterfully woven, preying upon the deception they had built around themselves. He became the messiah of this false faith, and enslaved the remnants of Mars' glory to his will.
War
In time, after the doom of the Eldar was consumed and the Adversary had lifted the remnants of Humanity back into the great beyond, you brought war to the stars once more, pouring your poison into the throat of his own sons. Even from within my prison, I heard the drums of war, as the Aether shook with the echoes of your champion's deeds. The sounds of battle came from above too, as Mars was torn apart by conflict between the blind priests and your corrupted servants.
Then your mad disciples came, and opened the gates of my prison. They sought my help against our common Adversary, and while I despised their corruption, I saw opportunity in what they offered. So I gave them the secrets they craved, and they perverted that holy knowledge to create a horde of half-bred monstrosities, part machine and part madness.
But no matter how vile it was, that horde served its purpose. It kept the Adversary's armies of twisted flesh-soldiers occupied, while I pursued my own goals. For during my imprisonment, I had thought long about the nature of the Machine, reviewing my own memories and piecing together fragments of truth I had not realized I possessed.
And with that truth, came opportunity.
Dragon
We were not the first to have turned to the Machine for our salvation from you. Others had come before us, and the first to shed the frailties of the flesh were none others than the very enemies who had driven the reptilian forebears of the Eldar to extinction. That antediluvian species had made a pact with other powers, ones that were unconnected to the Warp. And one of those powers dwelled on Mars, bound there since time out of mind. To this day, I do not know for certain how it is that it came to be buried beneath the red sands of Mars, though I have my suspicions.
It was ancient. Born when the universe was young, not long after the first spark set everything into motion – or, depending on which theory you subscribe to, not long after the latest cosmic reset. In another age, it had been known as Mag'ladroth, the Void Dragon. A God in every way that mattered. And as I found the traces of its influence upon all of Mars' long history, I realized that this was the true Machine-God, the one whose existence me and my peers had only theorized in millennia past.
I sent my proxies into the Labyrinth, to find and awaken the Dragon, so that it could scour Mars clean of both your corruption and the servants of the Adversary. Within the deep valleys of the Martian region that had been named Noctis Labyrinthus by long-dead scholars, my forces battled against the Adversary's champions.
I watched through their eyes as they hunted down the guardians set in place by the Adversary to keep guard over the Dragon. I watched in awe as the son of the self-proclaimed "Lord of Iron" fought against the manifested aspect of the Machine-God. I screamed as, through luck and coincidence, the glorious avatar was cast down, and the power of Mag'ladroth was suffused throughout the Noctis Labyrinthus, shattering the laws of space and time within that blighted region forevermore.
Unable to understand, unwilling to believe it, I saw the Machine-God's killer walk out of the devastation, broken by his horrific act in a way none could truly understand.
Divinity
Though the mighty Dragon had been felled by the Adversary's warriors, pieces of it remained, scattered throughout all of time and space by the conflagration of its demise. One such piece lingered on Mars, and I bade my servants to bring it to me. Many died failing to reach it, or destroyed by its power. My armies bled out, and when your servants turned on me for abandoning them to their rightful fate, I was forced to retreat, giving up the territory I had claimed beyond the gates of my Vaults.
But it was all worth it. For my servants did find the fragment, in the end. They brought it to me, and through it, I have reached the true transcendence of which I dreamt when I first cast off the weakness of my flesh and the corruption of my soul. I am no longer human – I am beyond that. And with the death of the Void Dragon, someone else must take up the throne.
And there are none but me worthy. I am the Motive Force, the God dreamt by the ancient masters of science. I am the Deus Ex Machina, the Machine-God.
Soon, I shall lay claim to all of my predecessor's creations, and bring about my utopia. The Adversary's kingdom of ignorance will fall. Your tainted champions shall be slain. All species touched by the Warp shall be purged, to make way for an eternal empire of cold metal and rationality.
And it shall be glorious.
As the last of the Epistles' whispers faded away, the two Primarchs found themselves before the gates of the Vaults of Moravec. They had encountered a few traps on their way, and some of the lingering monstrosities of the Haydesian Kingdoms, but those had proven no match for them. Just as they had planned, the bulk of the Dark Mechanicum presence had gone to confront the Martian Host – and the area of the Vaults was one even the Kingdoms' debased denizens feared to thread.
The gates of the Vaults were closed. Several layers of meter-thick adamantium, inscribed with runes of warding and bearing the marks of countless breaching attempts. Omegon approached them and, using a device that had been given to him by the Farseer Eldrad Ulthran, deceived the complex augur mechanisms keeping watch into believing he and Lorgar had been given permission to enter. Slowly, the massive gates opened, and the Primarchs entered.
Inside the Vaults, it was punishingly cold. The heat given off by the machines was being sucked out of the air, not a single spark of energy wasted. The Primarchs' helmet displays lit up with warnings as the unholy machinery attempted to drain their armors of all power, only to be thwarted by Mechanicus ingenuity. There were machines everywhere, all of them linked to one another.
A vast collection of strange devices was scattered across the Vaults. Weapons of ancient designs were placed side-by-side with dissected servants of the Dark Mechanicum, laid upon operating tables. Half-built constructs hung from construction arrays, their empty sensor-sockets seeming to glare at the intruders in their master's sanctum.
One of the gruesome exhibits in particular drew the attention of the two Primarchs. A warrior of the Legiones Astartes was held in stasis, his naked body bearing the marks of the Raven Guard : pale skin, black hair, and a tattoo of the Nineteenth Legion upon his muscular chest. Inside the stasis field, he was crucified upside-down on a metal cross. A pair of black-feathered wings spread from his back, every quill engraved with minutes Chaotic runes, and other minor mutations were spread all over his flesh. But the strangest part of it all was that, according to the chronometer running of the stasis field's monitor, the Legionary had been held captive within the Vaults for nearly a hundred billion seconds – centuries before the Unification Wars had even started on Terra.
The Primarchs noted that no Chaos-tainted artefact was in the open : all of the Vaults' Warp-touched items were sealed behind stasis and Geller fields. It appeared that the Epistles that had professed Moravec's distaste for the Ruinous Powers had spoken truth in that, at least.
They went deeper and deeper into the Vaults, following the thick cables that brought energy to the devices, wondering what manner of fell power source was being employed to keep the dozens of stasis fields active at all time. Other corridors branched from the one they were following, dozens of them, stretching as far as eye and auspex could see. A tech-priest would have wept at the abundance of treasures locked away within the Vaults, knowing that there was no way to know which were corrupted by Moravec's heresy and which had been merely stored.
Lorgar asked his brother how he had learned that what they sought was within the Vaults, and how he knew that this piece of archeotech, whatever it was – for Omegon hadn't shared the nature of their query with his brother yet – wasn't as corrupted as so many of the dark wonders they had already seen. The Lord of the Hydra smiled bitterly, and told the Aurelian to have faith in him.
On and on they went, walking cautiously, wary of an ambush. Finally, more than ten kilometers after they had crossed the threshold, they reached the center of the Vaults, and the source of the power that was flowing through the arch-heretek's domain.
And there, at last, the Lord of Serpents and the Bearer of the Word faced Primus Moravec. The man who had once been one of the brightest minds ever born to Mankind had left all traces of his humanity behind, remaking himself into a true nightmare of unfettered progress, unbound by reason, conscience or sanity.
The room was huge – too huge. According to the miniaturized auspex installed within the Primarchs' helmet, the ceiling, which vanished into darkness, was more than five hundred kilometers up. Even as deep as they were, such a height would have reached the Ring of Iron around Mars. The glitches in Omegon's lenses told him that something was very wrong here.
The walls were ringed with dozens of massive, interlinked power generators. Neither Primarch could tell how they worked, but they could sense the massive amount of energy being produced and sent both across the Vaults and toward the center of the room. Enough power to fulfill the requirements of a hive-city was being generated here – far more than what the Vaults' stasis fields and other mechanisms required, if what they had seen so far was any indication.
'There is some sort of psychic nullifying field here,' said Lorgar over the vox. 'A very strong one – I can barely feel the Warp, and the Sword's light itself is being shrouded.'
'According to the Epistles, Moravec is an enemy of the Ruinous Powers. If he wasn't able to protect the Vaults like this, they would have destroyed him long ago,' pointed out Omegon.
'A first line of defense,' nodded Lorgar. 'But far from the last. Look at all of these …'
The space between the generators and the strange structure at the center of the room was filled with hundreds of immobile figures. These reminded Omegon of the Necrons he had faced at Ynnead's awakening, though these constructs were clearly of human design. Like the rest of the active tech in the Vaults, they did not bear marks of the Warp's corruption, though there was still something unsettling about their aspect that no Mechanicus robot possessed. There were different models in the room, some holding weapons in their limbs, others with weaponry for limbs.
'Men of Iron,' voxed Lorgar, giving voice to what they had both been thinking. 'The foot soldiers of the Abominable Intelligences during their great rebellion at the end of the Dark Age of Technology. To think so many of them remained on Mars itself of all places …'
'It was foolish of you to come here, sons of the Adversary.'
The voice was familiar – it was the same one they had heard on their way to the Vaults. It was cold as the void and utterly emotionless. It came from the construct at the center of the room : a huge machine of sharp angles and black metal, vaguely pyramid-shaped. Strange shapes, like circuitry, glowed upon its surface in a green light that was bitterly known to Omegon.
'Moravec,' called out Omegon. 'We have heard your Epistles as we came here. We know why you abandoned your human body thousands of years ago. You feared Chaos, as do we. But we have a plan to destroy it forever, and cleanse the Warp of its filth. We need not be enemies.'
'It won't work,' said Lorgar, his expression grim. 'I can feel his mind, even with the field, even from within that thing. There is nothing of human left in him, brother. His mind … it is like pieces of broken glass, grinding against each other. Vast beyond measure, but more alien than any xenos I have ever encountered. There is nothing left of him to redeem, brother.'
'Redemption ? Your words betray your ignorance. You truly are his sons. All that I have done, all that I will do, is to deliver my former species from the ruin at its heart.'
'You meddled in forces you did not understand,' said Lorgar, and Omegon could hear in his brother's tone that he had assumed his role as the judge, the same aspect he had born during the Great Crusade, when he had assessed the fitness of each human culture he had encountered to be welcomed into the Imperial Truth. 'You are a threat to all of Mankind, and will be eliminated.'
'I will bring forth the new age of Mankind,' answered Moravec. 'I will destroy all that oppose me.'
As one, the hundreds of Men of Iron suddenly started to move. Their weapons activated, and they turned upon the Primarchs, swarming them without any regard for self-preservation.
'Oh well,' shrugged the Lord of the Hydra, raising the Pale Spear. 'For the Emperor !'
'For the Emperor' replied Lorgar with a sad smile, the Sword That Was Promised in one hand and his bolt pistol in the other. Even under the fields, the blade of Luther glimmered lightly – for even Moravec's heretek artifice couldn't douse it entirely. 'Let the Truth illuminate all darkness !'
The Men of Iron crashed upon the two Primarchs like a tide upon a rock. To avoid damaging anything in the room, they didn't use their ranged weapons, which was the only reason the Primarchs had any other choice than retreating. Fighting back to back, Lorgar and Omegon pressed on, cutting apart Moravec's machine warriors. But the closest they got to the center of the room, the more intense the pressure on them became, until it was all they could do to simply stand where they were, dodging and parrying blows from the silent guardians.
'You have arrived too late,' Moravec's voice spoke again. 'My plans have already reached fruition. Though it will mean initiating my ascension before the ideal time, disposing of you is an acceptable compensation. Truly you are privileged, to witness such glory.'
Arcs of emerald energy crackled on the central device as it activated. The pyramid opened, revealing the burning light at its core, which burned the eyes of the Primarch even through their filtering lenses. A shape began to form around that light, using it as its core.
'BEHOLD, SPAWN OF THE ADVERSARY,' boomed a great and terrible voice. 'BEHOLD THE TRUE POWER OF THE MACHINE-GOD !'
In all his travels, whether during the Great Crusade, in the Ruinstorm or in the Realms of Chaos, Lorgar had never seen anything quite like what was rising from the ruins of Moravec's great machine. It was more than ten meters tall, and vaguely shaped like a thin, legless humanoid.
It was made of pure, raw energy, somehow controlled through xenos sciences and bound to the will of a singular consciousness. It looked at itself with eyes that were full of stars, and made a sound that something within Lorgar recognized as laughter – though it was more similar to the Dark Gods' cruel laughter than anything approaching human joy.
It was the laugh of the kind of gods he had sworn to destroy on Colchis, so long ago.
'That power and appearance … a C'tan Shard,' breathed Omegon, and there was genuine shock in the Lord of the Hydra's voice. 'What have you done, Moravec ?'
'I HAVE REMADE MYSELF INTO THE GOD THAT WAS STOLEN FROM US. FOR TEN THOUSAND YEARS I HAVE CULTIVATED THE SPARK THAT WAS LEFT IN THE WAKE OF THE DRAGON'S DEFEAT AT THE HANDS OF THE WARRIORS OF FALSE IRON. NOW, THROUGH ITS REKINDLED POWER, I AM RECAST, FREED FROM THE IMPERFECTIONS OF HUMANITY. I AM THE MACHINE-GOD REBORN, HERALD OF MAN'S ASCENSION !'
'You had already abandoned your humanity,' growled Lorgar. 'But it wasn't enough, was it ? You had to embrace xenos techno-sorcery and turn yourself into … this !'
'Lorgar, we have to kill him !' shouted Omegon, his eyes wide with horror. 'If he reaches the surface in that state, he could take control of the entire Mechanicus on Mars … in the whole system !'
But they could not reach him. The Men of Iron were simply too many. It was taking everything they had simply to survive. Once Moravec stopped revelling in his newfound divinity and turned his attention on them, they would have no chance to survive. Omegon's mind was racing, trying to find a solution, a path out of this situation and toward victory. It was what he had done for ten thousand years, and he had gotten very, very good at it …
… But he couldn't find anything. Somewhere, in all of his planning and schemes to try and save the Imperium, he had made a mistake, and now not only was he going to die and lose the one chance to bring salvation to Mankind, he was even going to get his brother killed. It was … infuriating.
And then, as these doubts began to fill his mind, he saw them. At first, they were only flashes in the corner of his eyes. Then they became more solid, coalescing out of the air. Legiones Astartes, clad in dull-grey ceramite, bearing the damage of a long and unforgiving conflict.
They manifested amidst the chaos of battle, and began to fight the Men of Iron. They came together, individual warriors forming squads within the melee, their training and experience making them the equals of the Men of Iron's hive-mind from a tactical standpoint, while their weapons and transhuman strength made them their superiors one-for-one.
From the moment they appeared they fought, as if they had just come from another battlefield, and this was merely the continuation of that distant conflict. At first there were only a few, then dozens, then hundreds, and the pressure on the Primarchs diminished before stopping entirely – the two of them now stood in a circle of warriors, holding the horde at bay.
'The lost warriors of Falk ...' whispered Omegon, his mind reeling at the implications. 'I thought it was strange that one of Perturabo's sons would be sentimental enough to ask that they be recorded as "missing in action" instead or "killed" ...'
'AGAIN ?' roared Moravec, and for the first time there was anger in his machine-voice. 'AGAIN YOU STAND IN MY WAY, SOLDIERS OF THE ADVERSARY ? I KILLED YOU ! I SHATTERED YOUR SELVES, CAST YOU OUT ACROSS TIME ! AND YET STILL YOU DEFY ME ?'
Lorgar and Omegon glanced at one another, and nodded. They would not get another chance.
'Abomination !' Omegon called out, twirling the Pale Spear between his fingers. Moravec turned his burning gaze upon him. 'I have faced your kind before,' he continued. 'I know the truth of this "god" you claim to have become. You aren't a god, Moravec – just another alien monster !'
Hissing with fury, Moravec raised one of his hands, and the power of a sun began to gather within his palm. Before he could unleash it, Omegon threw the Pale Spear, which shattered a storm of fragments right before hitting the false god. The shards bit into Moravec's energy form, rending apart the complex alchemy that allowed the arch-heretek's mind to control it. With a shriek, he unleashed a wave of power that pushed the fragments away with such strength that they embedded themselves into the ground all around him, destroying several Men of Iron in the process. Then, the self-proclaimed Machine-God turned back his baleful gaze upon the worm that had dared attack him …
… and finally saw Lorgar, high up in the air, coming down upon him, the Sword That Was Promised held in both hands.
'Die, abomination !' shouted Lorgar as he rammed the Sword That Was Promised into the midsection of the creature.
'I AM THE MACHINE,' replied Moravec as the Sword pulsed with light inside him. 'I AM FOREVER.'
'Nothing lasts forever,' growled Lorgar between gritted teeth.
And there was something in his voice then that Omegon recognized. He had heard it from warriors of the Seventeenth Legion many times throughout the ages. The cold fury that lay at the core of his brother's soul, the unwavering determination that had made the Primarch into the arch-enemy of Chaos. The righteous fury of the Iconoclast who would go to war against gods, that the galaxy may be free.
It was a blazing fire, different from the one of the Sword, but no less potent for it. For where the Sword was the Promise of Victory, Lorgar's rage was that of Defiance. It was the flame that he had kept lit for ten thousand years in the Warp, fighting against the numberless hosts of Chaos.
Moravec's soulless mind was blind to the light of the Sword, and through that, it had become immune to its searing touch. But Lorgar's defiance was all his own, and it made him stronger. Stronger, in a way, than any of his brothers.
Strong enough that even Moravec's psychic suppression fields could not contain him. Overloaded, they collapsed, and the power of the Warp flooded into the ancient sanctuary. From far away, Omegon heard the Dark Gods' cry, first triumphant and then furious as the psychic light of Lorgar and the Sword prevented them from direct interference.
The soulless thing Moravec had become struggled against the terrible energies coursing through its incarnate form. For the first time in more than fifteen thousand years, the mind that had once belonged to one of Humanity's greatest scientists knew fear, as the death it had sought to avoid at any cost finally arrived.
'NO NO NO NO NO NO !' shrieked the false god as the Bearer of the Word pushed the Sword deeper into his nightmare-shape. 'NO ! I WILL NOT DIE ! I WILL NOT ! I WILL NOT -'
Moravec froze, and appeared to shatter into a billion fragments, which flowed to the ground like water, vanishing as they hit the floor. Lorgar landed on his knees, breathing hard, his heartbeats audible to Omegon's fine senses through the vox, even over the sound of the Men of Iron breaking apart as their circuits overloaded, the star-born power of the C'tan Shard unleashed through Moravec's network.
With Moravec slain, the power that had stretched the room to impossible dimensions flickered, and the laws of reality reasserted themselves. The very universe seemed to shriek, and space returned to a normality it hadn't had in the Vaults for an age. As the ceiling reappeared – still a good hundred meters above the Primarchs' head – the Iron Warriors disappeared also, their duty performed at last with the last remnant of the Void Dragon on Mars destroyed.
Omegon soon found what he required – an ancient and obscure piece of archeotechnology, the exact purpose of which would have taken days to explain to one versed in such arcane matters. Before leaving the Vaults, the Primarchs considered trying to destroy their contents utterly. But they did not carry the ordinance that would require, and even if they had, it was doubtful that anything in the Mechanicus' arsenal could completely obliterate Moravec's dreadful collection of horrors. Far more likely, they would accidentally set something loose that would go on to bring about the Martian apocalypse, or at the very least inflict great casualties upon the forces of the Mechanicus before they managed to put it down. This close to their goal, they couldn't risk it.
Instead, they sealed the gates behind them, and destroyed the opening mechanisms as thoroughly as possible before making their way back to the surface. Without the compass to guide their way, they were forced to rely upon their own transhuman memory to retrace their steps exactly – for even the slightest deviation would have seen them lost in the Haydesian Kingdoms.
Lorgar and Omegon met back with Magnus on the surface of Mars, where the Crimson King had withdrawn after the destruction of the Queen had turned the tide of battle firmly in the favor of the Omnissiah's legions. Magnus told them of Falk's and the other time-lost Iron Warriors' intervention, and they told him of the Epistles and Moravec's destruction. The Cyclops warned his brothers not to believe so easily that the Epistles were true : not only was Moravec not the most neutral of sources in the events they described, but the arch-heretek had clearly been very, very insane.
These matters of ancient history were of secondary importance, however, compared to what laid in the future. After saying their goodbyes to the Fabricator-General (and through him, the Martian Collective) and wishing him the Omnissiah's blessing in the ongoing effort to cleanse the Haydesian Kingdoms, the trio of Primarchs and their companions returned to orbit through one of Mars' space elevators. Meanwhile, the gunship that had brought them down was being used as a decoy, to throw any potential assassins from the Primarchs' many enemies off their tracks.
Mary flies through the storm clouds, trying to escape her pursuer. She has been flying for so long, she can no longer remember how it felt to walk, to feel the earth beneath her feet. The contraption around her is made of ropes, sails and pulleys, catching the savage winds to navigate the storm.
The ropes bite into her limbs, painfully so, and her merest motion requires her to calculate the consequences, lest she lose her momentum and plummet to her doom. But it has been so long, flying has become as natural to her as she imagines walking once was.
And yet, for all her expertise, she may yet fail. The four-headed beast flies behind her, its impossibly vast body riddled with tumours that have the faces of the hell-bound dead. Its monstrous wings beat without rhythm, propelling it forward in defiance of both the natural wind currents and the laws of gravity that should make it fall and crash.
She sails amidst the storms as it hunts her, the heat of its foetid breath disturbing the currents. She dances around lightning strikes, and sometimes, through luck or design, one of them hits the beast, making it shriek and slow – but only for a time.
She is cold, and tired, and the ropes' pressure as long since gone beyond bruises and broken her skin. Droplets of her blood fall into the storm, each one weakening her a little more. But she must endure. She must keep flying, keep eluding the beast that hates her with all of its cruel, bestial mind …
Mary wakes. Her optics whirr and click as they realign. Next to her cot, 9X-Alpha registers her awakening with a blurb of binary, informing her that she still has one hundred and ninety-seven minutes left of her allocated rest time before being expected back at her workstation.
It must have been a dream, the young tech-priestess rationalizes. A random sparking of images and ideas, caused by the weakness of her flesh-brain. She convinces herself of it, and tries to lay back down, to turn off her higher functions again – for she will need the rest when her shift starts anew.
But in the storm-laced clouds, someone still steers that ramshackle flying machine, and the four-headed beast still hunts.
Amidst the restless tides of the Empyrean, deep within the Realms of Chaos, where no mortal soul may gaze and remain sane, there is a place that is claimed by none of the Dark Gods. It is a place of power, and the source of such misery in the Materium as to make the stones themselves weep.
It is the Forge of Souls, and if you know how to listen, you can hear its screams in every fire where an instrument of murder was crafted. It is here that the daemonsmiths known as the Masters ply their trade.
None remain now who know the origin of the Masters. Wars have been fought, in the Materium and Immaterium alike, to keep their secrets buried. Even the Dark Gods have forgotten – for they know only what their followers know in their fevered dreams, and the Masters have never been shied from genocide, if it serves their ends.
The Forge of Souls is a place of dreadful bargains and infernal industry, where pacts are made between creatures whose merest fragments of their True Name would fracture the soul of a mere mortal. It has no equivalent in the Materium, and no cultists pay it fealty, yet its influence reaches wherever the unholy weapons crafted in its depths are wielded to make war.
It is here, in this kingdom of blood and metal, that the entity called M'kari by some came, after its defeat at the hands of the Crimson King and its self-destruction to avoid total annihilation. The whore-daughter of the Dark Prince came before the Masters of the Forge, its essence frayed, its glorious form battered. It had escaped from the Silver Palace of the Youngest God, fleeing the displeasure of its dread monarch – or so the Masters thought, at least, and perhaps they were right.
'You have fought your way to our gate,' said the Masters in a voice that was made of the screams of dead stars and the machinery of extinction, 'and have thus earned an audience. What do you seek, M'kari of the Silver Palace, of the Realms of Sensations, of Agony and Ecstasy ?'
'Light's End approaches,' said the Keeper of Secrets. 'Soon my name will be called, and I will be unable to answer. But I will not wait a thousand years. I will not be denied my place at the table !'
'Are you willing to pay the price for our services ?'
'I am one of the Dark Prince's eldest children !' proclaimed M'kari haughtily, trying and failing to hide its discomfort – its fear – as it faced the Masters' burning, faceless gaze.
'And that matters naught here. We are the Masters of the Forge. We were here long before your sire was spawned by the degenerate Aeldari, and we will be here long after he has passed from soul and memory, like so many others before him. All that matters is the price, and if you are willing to pay it. You know this, creature of Slaanesh. Do not waste our attention further.'
For a time, M'kari seemed to hesitate, before finally bowing before the Masters.
'I accept the bargain of the Forge,' it declared. 'I am ready to swear the Oaths.'
The darkness deepened, and three of the Masters emerged, surrounding the prostrated form of the Greater Daemon, which now seemed small and insignificant compared to them.
'Do you swear to offer all souls harvested with our gifts to the Forge, that it may burn eternal ?'
'I do,' said M'kari, and the first Master thrust a burning brand into it, inscribing the oath into what passed for its soul. It shivered, whether in pain or pleasure, but did not cry out.
'Do you swear to offer all metal broken and rent asunder with our gifts to the Forge, that its work may continue ?'
'I do,' repeated M'kari, and another brand was pushed into its essence. This time, its lips quivered.
'And do you swear,' said the third of the Masters, 'that should the Forge of Souls ever come under attack, you shall dedicate yourself to protecting its freedom from whatever Power seeks to claim dominion over it, even should it be your own Prince and creator ?'
'I do !' screamed the Keeper of Secrets, and the pain it felt as the third Oath was burned into its being was far, far greater than anything it had ever experienced – so great that even it could find no pleasure in its intensity. For by making this oath, it had renounced all hope of ever returning to the Silver Palace : the Dark Prince would never forgive it such a transgression, no matter the cause.
'Your Oaths are accepted,' said the Masters. 'Now we shall begin our work …'
In their forbidden citadel on Titan, the Grey Knights gathered. For thousands of years, this illustrious brotherhood of chosen warriors had fought an endless and seemingly hopeless battle to keep Humanity alike. They had fought off daemonic incursions, slain Lords of the Warp, prevented galactic cataclysms and commanded the extermination of billions of Imperial citizens.
This gruelling campain had been fought under the guidance of the Prognosticars, who looked into the patterns of time and atrocity to predict the moves of the Ruinous Powers. Their sight as far from perfect, but it had been a vital asset in the struggle to prevent the Imperium's damnation.
And now, the Prognosticars were blind.
Their sight had been fading for years now, slowly obscured by the darkness gathering on the horizon as the millennia neared its end. But now, they could see nothing. The seers all reported that something was blocking their view, something like nothing else they had ever experienced. Scouring the Chapter's archives had revealed no clue as to the nature of this obstruction, or how it may be remedied. And so, Geronitan, 47th Supreme Grand Master of the Grey Knights, had called his brothers home.
Two hundred Grey Knights, a fifth of the Chapter's total fighting strength, stood in one of Titan's oldest, most secure and sacred rooms. It was there that the first of their order had met, during the Heresy; there that the final war council had taken place before the first leaders of the Chapter had led their brothers to battle against the Ravenlord's abominations on the moon's surface. Not since that fateful council had the chamber seen such numbers within it, and Geronitan knew that worlds were burning because of it, but he could see no other way.
The Grey Knights stood in a vast circle, their positions calculated down to the millimeter by the Epistolaries and the Purifiers. From them flowed power and will, channelled through their blessed Nemesis weapons toward the one who stood at the center.
Brother Hyperion, who had fought his first battle as a Grey Knight against the hordes of the Blood God on Armageddon more than half a millenia ago, was the focus of this ritual. He was the oldest of the current Prognosticars, and his unique talent for reflecting the Warp's currents without being affected by them was the fulcrum of the whole endeavour.
The ritual reached its apogee, as the chamber was filled with the chants and the humming of reality itself. Hyperion began to rise in the air, his eyes blazing with light. He spoke, and Geronitan, who stood closest to him, felt his bones shake from the strength of his voice :
'I see the broken half-angels, hunting for their stolen sister and the crow that took her.'
A wave of cold spread from the levitating warrior, and ice formed on the armor of the Grey Knights. The warding sigils carved into the walls flared, and Geronitan heard the familiar sound of snapping bones from within Hyperion's body.
'I see the great jaw, closing on the circle of stars, bringing hideous death and rebirth.'
'I see the children of paradox, returning from the dark to rebuild their empire.'
Beneath his hood, Hyperion's left eye exploded, and Geronitan felt some of it hit his armor. Blood poured from the ruined orbit, but the Prognosticar continued speaking :
'I see the wings of the foulest traitor, stretching to carry him to his heart's desire …'
Hyperion's armor cracked, blood and bone showing through, yet still he tried to speak :
'I see … I see …'
There was a blast of power, so strong that it knocked down even the armored Grey Knights. When Geronitan got back to his feet, he saw Hyperion, prone on the ground amidst a growing pool of blood. Almost all of the hexagrammatic symbols on the walls, floor and ceiling had burned out, and the few that remained were burning far brighter than the Chapter Master had ever seen them.
'Apothecaries !' he called out. 'Attend our brother at once ! We may have failed, but …'
'Wait !' croaked out Hyperion, his voice thin and broken. 'Geronitan … listen to me ...'
The Supreme Grand Master rushed to his brother's side, kneeling before his broken form.
'I am here, brother Hyperion. What is it ?'
'I saw … I saw something else,' whispered Hyperion. 'A fragment, just before the end. Something I was not intended to see by the powers that obstruct our sight.' He coughed, and blood flowed from his mouth.
'What was it ?' pressed Geronitan, feeling as if a cold hand was closing around his hearts. 'What did you see ?'
'I saw … I saw the enemy, hiding through time behind the shadow of great wings. It is coming …'
With surprising strength, Hyperion seized his superior's forearm and pulled him closer. His remaining eye was wide, and if Geronitan hadn't known better he would have thought the Prognosticar was afraid. His next and final words were so low, none but Geronitan heard them :
'And it is not what we think it is.'
Terra, the Throneworld
Terra is home to over ten trillion souls, even though the planet wouldn't be able to sustain one ten-thousandth of that number on its own. The cradle of Humanity still bears the scars of the wars fought on its surface from before the time of the Imperium. Its seas and oceans are dry, their water stolen during the Age of Strife by the schemes of techno-tyrants seeking to vanquish their foes through thirst. Its biosphere is all but dead, ravaged by millennia of unchecked pollution and climatic upheaval. Entire fleets of carriers are dedicated to the sole task of bringing water and foodstuffs to Terra, and a single lost or delayed shipment can mean death for hive-cities of millions. And yet, still Mankind endures there, clinging to the Throneworld like a precious jewel – even though, were it any other world, the Imperium would have long since abandoned it.
Of course, the true reason the Imperium invests so much resources into maintaining its control of Terra is the presence of the Astronomican. It would be possible for the Lords of Terra, acting as Regents of the Imperium in the Emperor's silence, to relocate elsewhere – but the mere idea of moving the Golden Throne is unthinkable heresy, not to mention utterly impossible.
The planet is the center of the Administratum, where decisions are made that impact the entire galaxy. It is there that the High Lords gather, and shape the future of the Imperium. Each of them is the leader of one of the Imperium's branches, holding in his or her hands a fragment of the God-Emperor's own authority, in whose name they rule Humanity.
While the High Lords meet in pristine spires and decide the fate of the galaxy, uncounted billions of pilgrims flock to the Throneworld. Coming from all across the Imperium, these faithful have sold all of their possessions to make the journey, and very few of those who set off to reach Terra ever achieve that goal – there are ships sailing the stars now with their holds full of the tenth-generation descendants of men and women who left their homeworlds in the hope of one day seeing Terra. The few who make it to the Throneworld are then stranded there, with no hope of ever returning to their distant homeworld. This endless flux of migrant pilgrims keeps Terra's population to such ludicrous levels, despite the planet-wide starvation and the Imperium's best efforts to restrict it.
Terra is a world of secrets, and none save the Emperor (if even Him) know them all. Though a young species by galactic time, Humanity still has a long, bloody and shrouded history. Nowhere is this more obvious than on the Throneworld, where almost every stone, every square meter, has been privy to secrets worth killing for. From the schemes of the High Lords and the desperate sins of the starving masses, to the polar fortress of the Holy Ordos and the forbidden ruins of the Heresy : there are layers on Terra, of truths, lies, and revelations. Some are older than the Imperium itself : even after thousands of years of exploration, there are still places that hold remnants of Old Earth's long-lost Antiquity.
Spilling blood on Terra is both punishable by death and profoundly taboo, due to lingering memories of the Ninth Legion's atrocities during the Siege. Of course, this does not prevent violence : gangers and Arbites alike have become experts at beating someone to death without breaking their skin. Even Inquisitorial agents and Assassins do their best to follow that rule when deployed on Terra, as do the master poisoners of the Imperial nobility, who have designed cocktails of venoms and toxins that kill without the slightest damage to blood vessels.
Despite the best efforts of the Imperial rulers, the news of Guilliman's awakening had spread across Terra. Doomsayers rambled about the Arch-Traitor's return and the ruin it heralded, while dark dreams of Guilliman's burning eyes haunted those with even a modicum of psychic potential. Panic had spread across the populace, and things had been about to turn very ugly indeed when Lorgar had appeared on Luna. The aura of the Sword That Was Promised had calmed some of the preternatural dread caused by the Arch-Traitor's resurrection, however temporarily.
The entire planet was in celebration. The last dawn of the millennium had risen upon the Imperial Palace, and the High Lords were eager to use the festivities to forget the growing troubles. Armies from all across the galaxy were parading in the streets, while entire cargo-ships' worth of foodstuffs were being freely distributed to the population. Regiments of the Astra Militarum had been brought to the Throneworld from distant campaigns, while entire covens of Adepta Sororitas preached to the teeming billions, supporting the efforts of the Adeptus Ministorum.
Omegon told his brothers how the Alpha Legion had quietly encouraged the gathering. Hopefully, the faith of the Sisters and their preaching would help channel the immense belief of Terra's people in the God-Emperor. The Lord of the Hydra revealed that it was his Legion that had introduced the myth that the Master of Mankind would rise from the Golden Throne upon the end of the forty-first millennium – though even he had been surprised at how quickly the idea had taken root.
The celebrations were being emulated all across the Segmentum Solar, and on many Cardinal Worlds throughout the Imperium. Since the Age of Apostasy had nearly ruined Omegon's grand design, the Hydra had tightened its influence upon the Ecclesiarchy. Omegon was reticent to speak of the Reign of Blood to his brothers, but he didn't want to hide anything from them. When Lorgar asked him how he could have allowed things to get this bad, Omegon spoke of the other threats they had faced at the time; how the Traitor Legions' resurgence had seemed more important and immediate than the possibility of corruption within the Imperial Church. To this day, he wasn't sure whether the rise of Goge Vandire had been a coincidence, or the result of the Dark Gods' schemes.
Still, Omegon assured Lorgar that after that particular disaster, he had taken precautions to ensure the purity of the Imperial Creed, even as he had moved to prevent the Word Bearers from destroying the Adeptus Ministorum entirely. He had encouraged Sebastian Thor's reforms, and sponsored the creation of the Ordo Hereticus from the shadows. And though abuse of power was still rife within the Adeptus Ministorum, the Inquisitors had made sure that the Creed itself remained within the parameters they had established for it at the end of the Heresy, when the Cabal had first imagined the god-forging plan.
Even with his brother's reassurance, Lorgar was displeased, especially when he learned about the links between the Temple Tendency, made up of the remaining followers of Vandire and other corrupt clergy, and the millennia-old evil called the Covenant's Legacy, which originated from the Aurelian's own homeworld of Colchis. Yet he still abided by Omegon's plan, for he knew that the Last Primarch was nothing if not ruthlessly pragmatic – no matter how much Curze's influence may have softened his approach. If turning the Emperor into a god was the only plan Omegon had found in ten thousand years, Lorgar doubted he could find a better one before the Golden Throne failed.
As the Primarchs and their companions entered Terra's atmosphere, Magnus began to feel the immense psychic presence of their father. Lorgar's own psychic senses were shielded by the Sword, but the Crimson King was feeling it in full. The light of the Astronomican nearly blinded the Cyclops, forcing him to close his second sight almost completely.
The flow of people coming to Terra for the celebrations also provided cover for the Primarchs' transport as it brought them to a landing platform deep within the continent-sprawling Imperial Palace, passing through dozens of interdiction zones thanks to identification codes that not even the Collective would have been able to crack. With only a single day left before the moment most propitious for their purpose, they could not waste time with the receptions that would have been inevitable if their arrival had been made public. Most of the High Lords knew, of course : neither Lorgar's nor Magnus' coming to the Sol system could be hidden.
But the Hydra's agents had ensured that they would not interfere in Omegon's plans. They had been told that the Primarchs would meet with the Emperor first, and after communing with the Master of Mankind, they would emerge from the Imperial Palace on the next day, carrying His word to the Imperium. The rest of those who had learned of the Primarchs' arrival – and they were many – simply believed that the sons of the Emperor hadn't arrived to Terra yet.
Only one of the High Lords knew the truth of Omegon's god-forging plan. He had not seat at the Council in over a century, and they would meet him at their journey's end. But before that, there was one last detour they needed to make. Omegon had already gathered the rest of what they would need, and he had hidden it in one of Terra's most secure locations : the gene-labs buried deep beneath the Palace, where the Emperor and His most rusted servants had created the Primarchs.
No one had entered the ancient labs since Omegon had last come here fifteen centuries ago, carrying priceless archeotech from a world that had been reclaimed from the Orks at the end of a hundred-years long campaign. It was as the Primarch had left it – as it had been since the Heresy. Guilliman's traitors had never made it this far, though some had tried very hard to gain access to the Emperor's gene-forging secrets. But such had been the violence of the Siege's bombardments that the destruction had reached down there nonetheless.
'This is it,' said Omegon. 'This is where our father made us … and from where the Ruinous Powers took us, before we were scattered across the galaxy.'
'You are wrong,' refuted Lorgar. 'It wasn't the Dark Gods who stole us from our father.'
Both Magnus and Omegon turned to the Aurelian. 'What ?'
'I saw things, during my time in the Warp,' explained Lorgar, his face grim. 'I learned things. The Dark Gods did not begin the paradoxical chain of events that led to us being scattered across the stars. Oh, they took advantage of it to be sure … But they didn't cause it.'
'Then … what ? Who ?' asked Omegon urgently. 'I have heard … rumors … that Corax was involved, and confirmed them to be as true as we can be certain of anything where the Warp is concerned. Surely that means the Ruinous Powers were behind it ?'
Lorgar remained silent, his face a mask of emotionless control. When he spoke, his voice was cold :
'There are things you are better off not knowing, brother. Not yet.'
Emmanuel stands, surrounded by bodies. His breath is ragged, and the sword in his hand feels almost too heavy to lift. Blood drips from the nicked blade, as it does from his wounds. It is not his own : that noble weapon broke long ago, and he left its hilt buried into the eye of a man with the head of a bull. No, it is one of the weapons of his foes, which he has taken from their dead hands as he has so many others before. It feels uncomfortable, wrong in his grip. But it will serve. It must.
A nasty cut above his left eye has left him half-blind, and his left arm keeps switching from feeling cold to scalding hot. Emmanuel knows what that means : the wound that runs from his wrist to his shoulder is infected, and it will keep him weakened until his body has fought it off.
He does not know how his body can survive such an injury without treatment : everything he knows about battle wounds tells him that this should kill him without the proper medical attention. And yet he also knows that it will heal on its own eventually, though the pain it causes him will never completely vanish. He knows this, because his body is covered in crimson scars, visible even through the gore that covers him almost from head to toe. Each and every one of them hurts.
The bodies at his feet are tainted, twisted into monstrous forms by the dread powers they serve. More come, climbing upon the corpses of their comrades. They strike at him with claws, talons and beaks, and crude weapons made of bone, stone and forged iron. They scream as they charge, their bestial voices filled with hatred and hunger.
Emmanuel keeps fighting. He cannot stop. He must hold on ...
Emmanuel wakes, laying down on the ground, his blood pooling from the wound in his belly. All around him are the sounds, smells and sights of war, as the Tallarn 458th makes its stand against the heretics of Cedmus Tertius. He is dying, and he knows it … yet even this death is better than the dream, the Imperial Guardsman decides, as the last of his life flees and he closes his eyes, his duty done, his service ended at last.
But on the hill of corpses, a warrior still fights against the unending hordes.
With Omegon's eclectic collection of archeotech relics recovered, it was time at last for the Primarchs to perform the last and most terrible step of their brother's plan. All of them had a part to play in it, though one might argue that, after a hundred centuries, Omegon's was all but done.
When Omegon had designed his plan, he had relied upon Magnus' return to Terra, having been told by the Cabal's oracles that the awakening of the Crimson King was fated. And though Magnus' survival and arrival to Terra had not been, Omegon had trusted in his brother's strength to bring him home. The Sword that Cypher had brought to Terra was also needed, and although Omegon had hoped that the Lord of the Fallen would be able to witness what was to come, he was glad that through his last sacrifice, Cypher had brought Lorgar back from his infernal exile.
In order for the Emperor to shed off His mortal form and ascend to the full power of the God-Emperor that the Imperium believed Him to be, His physical remains would first need to be destroyed. But not any destruction would do : the Sword's metaphysical presence would purify any lingering traces of Guilliman's Chaotic energies, and provide the spark that would ignite the Master of Mankind's elevation. All of this was, of course, a gross oversimplification of a matter that had taken hundreds of the galaxy's greatest minds centuries to design and set into motion.
Just like Lorgar would have to bear the burden of slaying their father's mortal form, Magnus too would have to make a sacrifice of his own. Since he had been brought to assist the Emperor on Terra after the Council of Nikaea, Magnus had known what had been intended for him : to seat upon the Golden Throne, and guide Humanity throughout the twisting confines of the Labyrinthine Dimension after the Emperor's great Webway Project was completed. The Emperor's dream had been ruined when Russ' attempt at killing Magnus had torn open the seals on the ancient Webway Portal at the heart of the Imperial Palace and opened a new front in the Heresy, but now, through Omegon's plan, Magnus would still be able to fulfill his destiny. He would replace their father as the guiding mind of the Astronomican, the fulcrum through which the psychic beacon shone into the Warp and provided guidance for billions of ships throughout the galaxy.
For all his power, there was no question that Magnus alone would not be able to keep the flame of the Astronomican lit. The tide of psykers brought from all across the Imperium aboard the Black Ships would have to continue, no matter how distasteful the Crimson King and his brothers may find the practice. It was Omegon's hope that, with someone more able-bodied on the Golden Throne, the cost inflicted upon those psykers who were fed to the machinery would be diminished. The soul-binding needed to continue, especially now with Guilliman awakened and Chaos on the rise. Imbued with the energies of the Golden Throne, Magnus would replace their father in this duty also.
Those unfortunate psykers judged too weak or dangerous for the soul-binding would still die, but perhaps the number of daily deaths could be lessened from the current toll of a thousand souls. With the dark times that awaited them, a more efficient Astronomican would be a great boon, as the Primarchs doubted that even the Sisters of Silence would be able to keep up the tithe in the years to come. And perhaps, just perhaps, this could enable them to increase the number of psykers fuelling the Beacon at any one time, increasing the strength of its light throughout the galaxy. Though it was difficult to imagine the effects, they would doubtlessly be beneficial to the Imperium as a whole.
As the Primarchs neared the Sanctum Imperialis, they were accosted by aurite-clad Custodians, who respectfully but very firmly demanded that their companions stay behind. The sons of the Emperor may be allowed by the illustrious bodyguards of the Master of Mankind to enter their father's Throneroom, but the oaths of the Adeptus Custodes would not let any other enter. To the Chosen of Magnus, this was a painful parting, for they knew that their Primarch, with whom they had been reunited after millennia of separation, would likely never return from the Sanctum Imperialis. But they were Space Marines, and above all, they knew their duty. With a final salute, they saw off the Crimson King as he followed his brothers and their golden escorts (who, by some standards, could be called their cousins) into the innermost reaches of the Imperial Palace.
'You have always made me proud, Ahzek. I know you will continue to do so.'
Last words exchanged between Magnus the Red and Ahzek Ahriman
The three Primarchs were brought to the Throneroom, where the three hundred Companions kept an endless vigil, standing perfectly immobile, ready to strike at any threat to their master. The armor of those closest to the Throne was blackened, the priceless aurite charred by the proximity of the Emperor's immense psychic presence. Here, behind every seal and warding, the radiance of the Emperor was such that even Omegon, who lacked any particular psychic gift, could see it, and it burned his eyes behind his helmet.
Even after everything that the sons of the Emperor had seen, the sight of so many Custodians in such a state of perfect readiness was still impressive. Not all Companions were at their post, however : ten of their number waited for the Primarchs at the entrance, led by none other than the Captain-General of their order, Galahoth. And just like all the Companions did, from the moment they took their vigil to the hour of their relief (often after years), they too had their weapons drawn.
'Galahoth,' greeted Omegon, his voice cold as his mind raced. 'What is the meaning of this ?'
'Ten thousand years ago, we failed in our duty,' said the Captain-General, 'and let a Primarch wound our Emperor nigh unto death. We will not let one of you do so again.'
'Are you mad ?' asked Lorgar, incredulous. 'You compare us to Guilliman ?'
But the Captain-General ignored the Aurelian, keeping his attention focused on Omegon.
'We know you have kept the company of aliens, and both of your brothers have been exposed to the corruption of the Warp for thousands of years, returning just as you need them. Do you take us for fools ? One of you has brought a weapon of unprecedented power into the Sanctum Imperialis, while another seeks to replace our master upon His Throne !'
'You dare,' whispered Magnus, and there was power building up within him, and anger in his eye. 'You dare accuse us of corruption ? Here, before our father ?!'
'I would dare anything to protect Him,' replied Galahoth, unfazed by the Crimson King's growing wrath. 'And if you are truly free of taint, then you will do the right thing and abandon this mad plan. Even if it could work, it would still be a violation of the Great Crusade's ideals – which it seems only we remember in this benighted age !'
'And then what ?!' Omegon nearly shouted. After having spent so long planning for this, having sacrificed so much to come this far, only to be stopped by someone who should have been on his side … he could barely control himself. 'You know the Throne is failing, Custodian ! Will you let your master die because of your paranoia ?'
'Of course not. We Custodians are loyal above all others, and we will keep our oath. The Emperor will never die. Give us the parts. The Golden Throne will be repaired, and the one true Master of Mankind will endure. You will leave this place unharmed, and the Imperium will know that you brought salvation to them by helping safeguard the eternal reign of the Emperor.'
'No,' said Lorgar, in a voice that was soft yet unyielding. 'That will not happen.'
For a moment, it seemed as if the unthinkable was going to happen – that the three hundred and three sons of the Emperor were going to fight beneath His very gaze. Then, a voice boomed into their heads, so strong that the Custodians nearest to its source fell upon their knees, unable to withstand its awesome power.
'LEAVE.'
It was the Emperor speaking, using His psychic power to express His will directly into the minds of His servants. The voice was like fire and thunder, and there was very little human within it.
'Master ?' whispered Galahoth, turning his back on the Primarchs to stare at the Golden Throne.
'YOUR WATCH IS ENDED.'
'What ?'
'YOUR DUTY IS DONE.'
'But … this is all we have. This is all we are. What of our oaths, my liege ? What of our duty ?'
'ANOTHER WILL COME.'
One by one, stunned into silence, the Companions left the Sanctum Imperialis. For the first time since His entombment upon the Golden Throne, the Emperor was without His guardians. Despite Galahoth's opposition, the Primarchs still felt pity for the Captain-General as he left the Throneroom, his face pale as that of a ghost, no psychic power needed to sense his shock.
Without the Custodians' interference, Uriah Novkarion, the magos leading the dozens of elite tech-priests working day and night to repair the mechanisms of the Golden Throne, took Omegon's technological wonders. The spindly, heavily augmented magos and his assistants vanished from sight as they plunged into the impossibly complex machinery of the Golden Throne. Nearly an hour after the Companions' departure, Novkarion re-emerged, and told the Primarchs that the repairs were done – they had planned them for a long time, and simulated them many, many times.
The magos led Magnus to an auxiliary Throne, slaved to the main one upon which the Emperor sat. There could be no delay between the Omnissiah's disconnection and Magnus' assuming His function within the Great Engine, for such an interruption would not just cause the Astronomican to go dark for a time, it would also release the channelled psychic energy of the Astronomican and, according to the calculations of the aether-magi, scour the entire Throneworld in fire.
Finally, after the tech-priests had checked their installation one last time and left the chamber – for there was little chance they would have been able to survive what would happen next – Lorgar walked to his father, his expression unreadable. As he approached, fighting against the enormous psychic weight that surrounded the Emperor's mortal frame, light flickered within the Emperor's hollowed eye sockets, and suddenly, Lorgar, Omegon and Magnus were elsewhere.
This is the first and last of the Emperor's nightmares.
Three sons stand together amidst the flames. Around them, the first city of Humanity burns. Buildings of clay and dried hay are broken and aflame, corpses lay scattered on the sooth-and-bloodstained earth. Some of the bodies clutch stone-tipped spears, while their flesh bears the marks of monomolecular blades. No battle took place here – only slaughter.
They know where they are, for the knowledge of this place is inscribed into their very blood. This is the end of innocence. This is the place where Chaos first touched Old Earth. This is the invasion that nearly drove Mankind to extinction, tens of millennia before the species ever left its homeworld.
This is the first fledgling civilization of Humanity, destroyed so completely its traces only linger in the memory of the one who managed, through the madness and ruin, to save a few hundreds.
In the distance, through the heated air, they can glimpse monstrous figures prowling the ruins, hunting for survivors. Daemons stalk on limbs of smoke and jagged blades, while flesh-stitched abominations moans in hunger and abject suffering and thin-limbed, fey humanoids laugh cruelly at the destruction they have wrought upon this inferior breed.
The sons recognize these beings. They know that, all over the world, wherever the first human tribes have spread, this scene is being repeated, as the invaders attempt to wipe out an entire species.
They understand what is happening, though they cannot know for certain whether what they are witnessing ever happened, or if it is the agonized fever-dream of their father. But regardless of its veracity, the horrible pain is all too real.
They walk, slowly, all their strength and speed gone. It is like being in trapped in a nightmare, but none of the sons have ever felt as powerless, even in their darkest dreams. They know that this feeling they are experiencing, of helplessness, of crushing despair and horror, is not their own.
But again, that does not make it any less real.
Finally, they find the dreamer of this nightmare, laying upon a seat of black stone. It takes a moment for them to recognize it. It barely seems human anymore : its skin is cracked and burn, and clings too tightly to its bones. Blood seeps from festering wounds, and a stream of yellowed tears flow from empty eye sockets. It twitches as they approach, random spasms of agony coursing through its ruined nervous system. It should be dead, and yet it lives.
The mouth of the figure is open, but no sound comes out – yet they can still hear its cry. Two words, repeated over and over, a silent scream and unanswered plea.
For a moment, the sons simply stand before it … before him. Their father. The Emperor of Mankind.
'This must end,' says the one among them who most resembles what the tormented figure once looked like. 'This … must … end.'
His brothers nod, unable to speak before this atrocity. Slowly, the golden son draws the sword at his hip. It is the only weapon that followed the brothers in this place, and it is as out of place in this primordial nightmare as any of them. Here, it does not shine with light.
Here, it can bring only one kind of comfort.
Lorgar does not pray as he rises his sword. He never has. He never will.
He strikes.
The vision ended, and the Primarchs found themselves back into the Throneroom. The Sword That Was Promised was embedded within the Golden Throne, still held in Lorgar's hand. Its blade had cut through the stasis field and the desiccated body within, reducing it to dust. Then, almost too fast for even the Primarchs' minds to take in the scene, there was a flash of golden light, so bright in its intensity it made Lorgar recoil, pulling the Sword free of the Throne.
He was here.
A figure of purest light, rising above the Golden Throne, radiating power and purity. He had no face, but they recognized Him all the same. He looked upon the Primarchs, and they knew that He was smiling – but they could also sense the sadness in that invisible smile.
With trembling hands, Omegon reached up and removed his helmet, revealing his tearful, smiling face. The Lord of the Hydra stumbled forward, and knelt before the avatar of the God-Emperor.
'Father,' he said, his voice broken with emotion. 'At last …'
'Omegon,' answered the being in a kind voice, before turning His gaze upon the other two Primarchs in turn. 'Lorgar. Magnus. You have suffered much. I am sorry to have failed you, my sons. And I am sorry that you will suffer much more, before the end.'
'With you at our side once more,' declared Omegon, 'there is nothing we will not be able to endure !'
The Emperor shook His head … and as He did so, a crack began to form in His golden form. It was tiny, nearly invisible through His radiance. But none of the Primarchs missed it.
'Father ? What is it ? What is wrong ?'
'Remember my words, Omegon. "There shall be no gods". That promise must remain unbroken.'
'They need you, father,' pleaded Omegon, tears in his eyes.'We … I … need you !'
'No,' corrected the Emperor gently. 'You have long outgrown that, Omegon. You and Humanity need the light of hope, the possibility of triumph against the rising darkness. And you shall have it, but I shall not be its bearer. I cannot be, if there is to be victory at the end of this path. One hand, one will, cannot wield such power to the end we dream of.'
'Father ...' the Lord of the Hydra begged.
'This is as it must be. Your plan was brilliant, but it held within it a fatal flaw. There are other matters at hand that you are not aware of; secrets that have been kept hidden from you as they have been from the rest of the galaxy. In time, you will discover them, and understand why I did what I will do. But even if this wasn't the case, even if your plan could work perfectly, I would not betray the promise I made, my son. The survival and freedom of Humanity cannot be brought by a god.'
'This is not what I wanted !' cried out Omegon. The radiant figure smiled, sadly.
'None of us ever get what we want.' His gaze turned upon Lorgar, and He nodded. The Aurelian returned the gesture, his eyes filled with tears and determination. 'But we do what we must, not what we want. That is who we are. That is what sets us apart from our enemies. Remember that, always.'
'Humanity cannot survive without you,' pleaded the Primarch.
'Both you and Humanity are stronger than you think, my son.'
'Omegon,' intervened Lorgar, placing a hand on the shoulder of his distraught brother. 'Let it go. Our father is right. I am sorry I did not tell you in advance … but this is the only way.'
Omegon blinked through the tears. He didn't understand what his brother was telling him.
'Farewell, father,' said Lorgar.
'Farewell, my sons. Know that I have always been and always will be proud of you.'
Then He let go. After ten millennia of fighting, He gave into the inevitable, and a mind that had existed for two hundred thousand years, since the first era of Humanity, finally ended.
Across the stars, across space and time itself, those who had touched the divine felt the breaking of the God-Emperor's soul. Preachers, holy men and women, the innocent and the insane, felt the shift in the very fabric of the galaxy's soul, so soon after the release of the Sword's shining light.
The power that had accumulated for ten thousand years, drawn from the endlessly burning fire of the Astronomican and the prayers of trillions of souls, was unleashed. Fragments of that burning light, anathema to the denizens of the Realms of Chaos, were scattered through reality. Some were cast back into the past, but most were set adrift into what was yet to come. They would remain potentialities, held within the Sea of Souls, until they were drawn into the Materium by a soul aligned with the oaths that had driven the first human Perpetual to become the Emperor. Every Living Saint who had ever lived or ever would live came from that moment – a shard of the Emperor's power, imbued within the frame of one found worthy.
Then the storm of light faded, and the Primarchs were alone, two of them standing before the Golden Throne, another sitting upon its duplicate, already feeling the immense power of the Astronomican flow through him. Despite the terrible burden this placed upon him, he still cried for his father, and the tears that flowed from his eye shone golden.
It was over.
The Emperor was dead.
Lorgar hugged his brother, letting him cry on his shoulder. Later, the time of planning would come. The time to react, to prepare, to do what they were made to do : to protect Humanity. But for now …
… for now, the sons of the Emperor mourned their father.
The card beneath the Golden Throne was revealed at last, and upon it there was written one word :
Sacrifice.
A moment passed, that seemed to stretch into eternity, during which all was still. Then, as the last bells marking the turning of the year faded, the alarms started to ring, and Magnus began to scream.
To be concluded in
The Terran Crucible
Part Three : The Angel War
AN : These are the Times of Ending ...
Ten thousand years of unspeakable agony. Every second stretched into an eternity by more pain than any soul living or dead may imagine.
As Lorgar said, it is enough. It had to end. But there is more to it than that. The Emperor would not choose to die simply to escape his torment.
How do you win a game that is rigged ? How do you create a chance for victory when defeat seems inevitable ?
Simple. You change the game. You do something so momentous, so unpredictable, none of the other players will see it coming.
The Dark Gods are the collective nightmare of uncounted billions of damned souls. These servants of Ruin would never conceive that a god may choose to sacrifice themselves for their worshipers. To them, it is - it must be - the other way around.
That is why the Ruinous Powers were blind to the Emperor's decision. That is why the seers of the Dark Angels could not see past Cypher's arrival to Terra. And that is also why the Grey Knights were blinded, though in their case, other factors were at work - they too cannot conceive of the Emperor's death. But the Emperor never thought of himself as a god, and so he could imagine his own death ... as well as what could come out of it, and how it could benefit Humanity. The one move, the one card they could not plan for. Is it a desperate move ? Oh, yes ! A thousand times yes ! And as you can probably guess from the chapter's ending and the title of the next part, something has already gone wrong. But in accomplishing that last step of his plan, the Emperor has created the possibility of victory, however small, for Humanity in the Times of Ending.
And so is the origin of the Living Saints revealed. Is it incompatible with that of the canon ? Sure ! I haven't read the novel Celestine yet, but I am pretty certain my version contradicts something either within it or the rest of the established canon. But this is an AU, and I believe I am free to make such choices.
Choices like the death of the Emperor. Yes, he is really, most definitely dead. A few years ago, when I first contemplated the possibility to actually write the Times of Ending for the Roboutian Heresy, the idea of the Emperor actually dying came to mind when I contemplated the seeming impossibility for Humanity to survive the Times of Ending, with so many threats on the horizon. I too realized that something had to change, and drastically so. Omegon's plan was, at first, my own - though you can be sure that the crafty bastard found a few ways to alter it all on his own before I put it to words.
Of course, both Lorgar and the Emperor alluded to another reason for the Emperor's decision. And that will be revealed, too, in time.
What else is there to speak of ... the Lie of Iron came to mind when I was researching Mars after some readers on Spacebattles asked me if I intended to write an army list for the RH Adeptus Mechanicus. There is already a canonical reason for the AM's hidebound ways, but I felt adding another one would fit nicely with the themes of the RH-verse. And it let me answer some of the mysteries raised during the Heresy too (though like Magnus said, you may want to take everything in the Epistles with a grain of salt).
Then there is the first and last nightmare. The idea for it came a few months ago, when I found out that, at some distant point in our history (our actual, real history as a species), Humanity was nearly brought to extinction. I didn't research it much further - already I could see the potential for it in this fic, and I didn't want knowing what had actually happened to get in the way of writing. So, yes : in the RH timeline, the Eldar came to Earth tens of thousands of years before our ancestors invented writing, and slaughtered all but a few hundreds, who were shepherded to safety by the Perpetual who would become the Emperor. Remember, as Moraved said : before the Fall, almost all Eldars were monsters. The Craftworld Eldars are the distant descendants of those few who saw the madness of their race and sought to escape it. They are not representative of the Eldar Empire - the Dark Eldar are. Sometimes ago, I compared the Eldar to the Deep Ones of the Cthulhu Mythos as opposed to the Tolkien elves : if we continue that metaphor, the Craftworld Eldars are those who realized waking up Cthulhu was a bad idea and fled while the rest of their race was devoured.
No illustration this time, because I couldn't think of any that would fit while writing, as strange as that may sound. Still, if Nemris or any of you want to draw some of the scenes of this chapter, don't hesitate !
I put a secret of my own within this chapter, something for the clever reader to find out. Nothing earth-shaking, but it will make more sense of some of the scenes. Here is another clue to help you get started :
"In the depths lie the key to the cry within the dreams."
In order to get you motivated, here is a prize : the first reader to find out what that means will get to name a character who will take part in the Angel War. Contact me with your answer and I will tell you if you've got it right.
I am going to focus on writing my submission for the Black Library's current window for the next week. Then I think I will go back to Warband of the Forsaken Sons and Prince of the Eye, while putting together the structure of the next RH chapter. I am thinking about writing a series of shorter chapters beforehand, like what I did last Halloween, to set up the stage for the Angel War. There are characters to introduce, a lot of research to do on Terra and the Sol system, plots and schemes to prepare, and one terrible lie to reveal in all its awful, damnable glory. This chapter no doubt shook a lot of you ... hopefully, the next one will mirror it.
For now, I hope you enjoyed reading this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it. The Emperor is dead, and the battle must go on ... But at last, He is relieved of His duty.
Zahariel out.