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.
Constant
Emperor Constantinus the Eternal, First and Last of His Name, looked upon the armies that had gathered to bring an end to his reign. They had come from far and wide, rallying to the banner of rebellion once it had become clear that there was more to this one than the seven previous attempts, all of which he had crushed without mercy or pity. Hosts of beastmen clad in thick metal plate hailing from the Desolate Plains marched alongside the pacted fiends of the Speaking Mountain and the cult-armies of the Crystalline Towers, their masters having made alliance against Constantinus.
One hundred and eleven years had passed since he had claimed the Throne, putting an end to the succession war that had followed the demise of Emperor Augustus the Fourth, and proving that he alone was worthy of ruling the daemon world he had renamed Constantinium as his first decree. His was not the longest reign of an Emperor – that honor, it seemed, would remain to Emperor Infernus III, who had endured for nearly a thousand years as master of the daemonworld before its enemies had performed a grand ritual that had banished the seventeen Neverborn bound to his flesh that had kept him alive all these years.
But Constantinus' own reign was still one of the longest that had been recorded in the Annals of Triumph, before he had ordered them burned to ensure none would ever challenge his supremacy.
In hindsight, this gesture may have been premature. Many of the Lords and Ladies of the Realm had seen it as an insult, a blatant defying of the traditions that had seen the crown of Emperor pass from one champion of Chaos to the next since the skies of the world had begun to burn with Warp-fire. No one lived who remembered what the world had been called then, as almost every Emperor and Empress since had changed the planet's name upon claiming the Throne. Under Augustus' rule, it had been called Shkra'Keil, an approximation of the word from the daemonic tongue whose significance could best be translated as "symbol of glory".
Regardless of Constantinium's ancient past, it had been locked in a cycle of wars, conquest and tyranny for millennia. An Emperor or Empress, blessed by one of the Ruinous Powers, would rise to dominate the planet at the top of the hierarchy of nobles who enforced their rule with strength and sorcery. Sooner or later, these nobles – the Lords and Ladies of the Realm, carrying all manner of titles – would grow restless and rise in rebellion. Eventually, one of those rebellions would succeed, or the Emperor would die to assassination or earn their patron's displeasure, and after an equally brutal succession war, a new Emperor would claim the Throne. All four of the Dark Gods had had their champions rise to that lofty position – though those blessed by Nurgle were few and far between, as the other Lords would always band together to prevent their ascension due to the devastating plagues that followed.
The Lords and Ladies could have ended the succession of Emperor by rejecting their authority. But doing so would have ended their chances to one day seize the Throne for themselves at one point, and regardless of which of the Four they served, none wanted to renounce that chance. And so the cycle had continued, with millions perishing in brutal conflicts every few decades.
Constantinus had sought to end that cycle by making himself the last of the world's Emperor. Hailing from beyond the daemonworld, he knew that the struggles of the Lords and Ladies, impressive as they seemed to their followers, were nothing compared to the greater battles raging within the Ruinstorm and beyond. Following the precepts of the Codex Chaotica, the Chaos Marine had swiftly conquered a domain of his own, before aggressively expanding. It had taken him ten years to gather enough influence to end the succession war that had followed Augustus' untimely demise at the hand of his chief concubine, but what was a decade to an immortal ?
And he would be immortal. He had survived the Heresy, survived the Unborn Crusade, survived the inner conflicts of his Legion and the trials of the Ruinous Powers. He would not die here, on this backwater world, to an army that had never walked on another planet.
He would survive. He would be eternal. That was the promise he had made to himself when he had chosen to walk the Profligate Path, embracing the teachings of Slaanesh over those of Chaos Undivided. In a galaxy where every oath he had made had turned to ash, where every cause he had fought for was ruin, Constantinus, who had once led the 27th Chapter of the Thirteenth Legion across the stars, had come to the realization that he was the only thing he could trust. His own life was the only thing that remained the same, the only constant in an existence consumed by Chaos.
This rebellion would not kill him. And so Emperor Constantinus looked upon the battlefield, and considered his options. Previous engagements with the rebel armies had cut down his own forces considerably, as had treachery within the ranks of his own so-called loyal followers.
Only his most faithful now remained with him, his Constant Ones. Out of all his armies, their loyalty alone had never been in question, for they had never had a choice. Each had been taken as an infant, chosen for displaying no mutation, and been reforged in the forbidden Halls of Flesh. There, Constantinus' servants had infused them with the gene-seed of his dead brothers, who had perished in the crash that had brought him to this long-forgotten daemonworld in the Ruinstorm.
Constantinus had marked each of them personally with a ritual dagger when they had completed their transformation, carving the first syllable of the daemonic name the Dark Prince had bestowed upon him upon their skin. By this process, they were bound to his will – little more than puppets given the strength of an Astartes and equipped with the best daemon-infused weaponry and armor Constantinium could provide.
Mighty as they were, they only numbered five thousands in all – less than a tenth of the forces now arrayed against Constantinus. To make things worse, there were more rebels coming – since Constantinus had been forced to leave the Throne and had lost the majority of his forces, the uprising had spread to those Lords and Ladies who saw the opportunity to enhance their stations in the next world order. With no allies left, sooner or later Constantinus' loyal troops would be overwhelmed and crushed.
The Emperor of Constantinium pondering his situation, while the rebel army waited for reinforcements, held at bay by the will of its overlords. Constantinus sacrificed his remaining mortal servants to the Warp, hoping to summon daemons powerful enough to turn the tide of battle. But no Neverborn answered his call, not even the lowest of the infernal spirits. At first, the Emperor believed this to be the result of enemy sorcery, but soon realized such a feat was beyond even the mightiest of the daemonworld's magi. Something greater was at play here.
On the dawn of the fourth day, the rebel armies began to march on Constantinus' position. It was then that a comet streaked through the Warp-torn heavens and smashed before the Emperor's fortified camp. From the crater emerged a golden winged figure carrying a chalice and sword.
The Sanguinor had come to Constantinium to make an offer to the Emperor. The son of Guilliman's empire was lost : even if all the armies presently arrayed against him were wiped out, the rebellion was spread too far to contain. But if Constantinus would dedicate himself and his Constant Ones to fighting one singular battle under the Sanguinor's banner, it would give him the power to wreak terrible vengeance upon those who had defied him.
Cornered and with only his tattered soul to lose, Constantinus accepted and drank from the Sanguinor's proffered cup. No sooner had his lips left the unholy artefact that the bargain was enacted.
For thousands of years, Constantinium had been preserved from becoming as chaotic as most daemonworlds not by the single over-arching will of a powerful master, but by an ancient spell woven by the first Emperor, that ensured that the worst depredations of the Ruinstorm were kept at bay as long as a champion of Chaos sat upon the Throne he had forged. Now, Constantinus, who was still Emperor, had broken that ancient spell.
All across the planet, the earth cracked and shook, and daemons burst from the ground or rose from the corpses of the dead. Rivers turned to blood and mountains dissolved into trillions of tiny, ravenous insects. In the southern hemisphere, an air current that had kept half a continent from freezing in winter became poisonous, causing the agonizing death of millions.
The effects were even more pronounced near Constantinus and the Sanguinor. A veritable legion of daemons of Slaanesh descended from the skies, while all of the bindings of the Speaking Mountain's fiends snapped free at once. Fiery meteors bombarded the area for kilometers, leaving only Constantinus' forces untouched.
Hours later, Constantinus looked upon the ravaged remains of his foes, and smiled. He then turned to the Sanguinor, and said that he was ready to fulfill his end of the bargain.
With a single gesture, the Sanguinor assembled an arch from the bones of the dead, and wove their souls into a passage leading to the Empyrean. Surrounded by the screams of his vanquished foes, Constantinus led his warriors through.
The passage was narrow enough that the Constant Ones had to advance through in a single file. For hours, they crossed from the ravaged daemonworld into the Sea of Souls, each taking a single sip from the Sanguinor's cup before plunging into the abyss – a necessary precaution, the golden being assured, for them to survive the transition.
This was no lie, but as with everything spoken by those touched by Chaos, it wasn't the whole truth. As the Constant Ones walked through the Warp, each of them became the receptacle for a potent Neverborn, drawn to them by the tainted liquid already present within their bodies. As Constantinus marched onward, following the path set by the Sanguinor, the slaves he had made form his brothers' gene-seed became more and more warped. Their broken wills were no match for the power of the daemons, and their flickering souls were devoured easily.
Constantinus himself was left untouched, protected by the Sanguinor's favor and the Mark of Slaanesh upon his soul. But even he was beset by visions, as the Empyrean filled with images of what had been, what was, and what might yet be. His narcissism became ever more deranged, as he himself was the only thing in his surroundings he could rely on to remain the same, the only thing he could trust to be real.
Finally, the Emperor of a ruined daemonworld and his army of Daemonhosts emerged from the Warp and onto an active battlefield. Under burning skies not so dissimilar to those of the world they had abandoned, the sounds of war and terror filling the air, Constantinus beheld before him an immense tower, dwarfing all of the other structures that surrounded them as far as the eye could see.
This, he knew, was what the Sanguinor wanted him to cast down. And so he raised his blade, and the Constant Ones, still bound to his will in spite of their horrendous transformation, hurled themselves at the walls of the Tower of Hegemon.
AN :
Wings of pain and armor gold,
Here flies the herald of old.
With cup and sword and honeyed lies,
It comes to bring ruin to the wise.
From sons and nephews, six hosts it seeks,
To bring to the kinslayer's service.
Rip the heavens, and tear the sky,
The Angel War comes to Terra.