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.
THE DARK CELLS
Deep below the Imperial Palace lies a complex whose very existence is kept secret from even the highest-ranking lords and ladies of the Holy Inquisition. Within this prison, the Custodes of the Shadowkeeper shield host keep all manners of eldritch horrors contained, locked away in rune-sealed vaults whose opening codes are known to them alone. The things contained within the Dark Cells could doom the Imperium a hundred times over, and so the Shadowkeepers maintain their ceaseless vigil, while also scouring the stars for any other such threat to capture and confine for the rest of eternity. But a secret cannot be kept forever, and what sane minds consider nightmares, others regard merely as potential instruments.
We see the Dark Cells only through the absence of sight. Potent indeed are the wards laid upon them, the hands that crafted them guided by our father in the age before He led our species back to the stars.
But we see those who want to get in. Their aim is burned into their thoughts, their desire radiates from them with a single-minded obsession that brings a smile to the lips of the Dark Prince, even though not a single one of them ever uttered a prayer to him.
We see the Flawless Host. The sons of our brothers who sought redemption as the galaxy burned, who dreamt only of preserving something amidst all the devastation.
It turns out that even Space Marines can grow tired of the horrors of war. They stopped believing in either of the Truths warring for Humanity's soul, and sought to preserve rather than fight. They painted their armor black, and renounced oaths to Throne and Primarch alike. The gene-craft of our father should have made such a thing impossible, but it was an age of many impossible things.
We see their attempts at building a utopia, good intentions paving the road to hell time and time again. We see the Ages of their rule, the four recorded and the one they will not speak of.
Do not ask us about the Fourth Age, brother. It is better to leave that matter unknown.
Astartes were not meant to rule over peaceful kingdoms. Their minds are not fit for the task. They are too separated from Humanity. Their instincts are different, and their thoughts flow in alien patterns. It must have been maddening – close, so close, yet they could never really understand. And so, failure after failure after failure after failure after failure, each one costing them a sliver of that precious humanity until there was almost nothing left but the bitter, brooding anger.
All that it took was a promise. That all that they had done would not be for nothing. That even their failures could be the foundations of success. A truth spoken as a lie, and an offered cup – and the Host went to war against its own people, who had raised banners of rebellion and would be slaves no longer. The gates of Sheol were open, and caged daemons unleashed, while death rained from the skies. Witches with machines spiked into the soft tissue of their brains burned mortals and cast down fortresses. Engines of war crushed cities, while the Host watched with the kind of cold satisfaction one feels when released of all tethers to one's past – along with sanity and morality.
Now they come, driven by deceitful whispers. They come for the ancient sins our father hid away lest they drown the stars, to break open the vaults and bind the monstrosities within to their will. They think absolute power will solve the equation of peace.
But the Host never thought to ask who it was that inspired the rebellion. Their tyranny was gentle, brother. Their lies did not prevent the happiness of those they protected. And yet when the truth dawned, with it came bloody-handed murder and riot. Who was the Wretch who whispered of freedom's promises into the heart of Haven ?
And who was it that whispered them to him ?
Of all the Custodes, the Shadowkeepers were perhaps those best forewarned of the coming of Light's End, though even they could not possibly have predicted the death of the Emperor. This Shield Host of the Adeptus Custodes had held the sacred task of watching over the Dark Cells, a labyrinth buried deep beneath the Imperial Palace within which were sealed countless horrors from the Age of Strife and before. Should these horrors ever be unleashed, Humanity's doom would be all but certain.
For decades now, the dread entities trammelled within the Dark Cells had been growing more and more restless. Once, the Shadowkeepers had believed such unrest to have been foreshadowing of the death of Lockwarden Borsa Thursk, a Shield-Captain who had served as the Shadowkeepers' leader for over a century.
Thursk had perished only a few years prior to Light's End, fighting off-world to capture a particularly gruesome example of the Children of the Raven that had reached maturity and could no longer be slain by conventional means. The capture of the entity was completed by one of the Shadowkeepers who had accompanied him, Alhoris Bastoris, who brought it back to Terra and sealed it within the Dark Cell prepared for it.
Yet the unrest among the captives had not abated with Thursk's demise and the selection of Alhoris Bastoris as his successor. Instead, it had only grown worse, with no less than five breaches occurring in the years since then, where before such instances had been separated by centuries. Each had been minor and relatively easily contained, yet the Shadowkeepers had remained on high alert while their new Lockwarden searched for the cause behind this.
This meant that when Light's End came and the Emperor died, the Shadowkeepers had taken measures against all kind of threats, from a massive breakout to an outside attack. They had called more brothers to their colors, going through the trials required with a speed that stretched the traditions of the Order to their limits in order to replenish their ranks following the losses taken in Thursk's last operation. They had opened ancient vaults and distributed the relic weaponry contained within among their ranks. They had consulted the doomscryers of the Tower of Hegemon and spent precious resources to check and reinforce the wardings of the most important cells. They had sacrificed even the modicum of free time Custodes usually spent on their own martial and academic pursuits, spending them instead reciting mantras of purification and focus.
Even so, the death of the Master of Mankind struck them as hard as all Custodes.
Only the Shadowkeepers were allowed within the Dark Cells. Thralls and tech-priests were only permitted for brief periods to perform repair works, and the most important among them were subjected to weeks-long purging and quarantine protocols afterwards, while the rest were executed. The hundred Custodes among the Shield Host were briefly overcome with the psychic shock of the Emperor's demise, but their special training and experience with the horrors of the Dark Cells allowed them to recover more quickly than their brethren.
Even so, they were too late to prevent the breach of several cells, whose seals had been weakened by the psychic quake that followed the Emperor's death. Ancient horrors were released within the corridors of black iron, and as the Shadowkeepers fought hard to contain these nightmares of Old Night, they were blinded to the threat that struck from the outside.
The ancient Astartes who led the Flawless Host had been drawn to Terra by the promise of power and knowledge with which they would finally be able to wash away all their sins and mistakes, and they lost no time in pursuing their prize. Their army, fresh from having destroyed their world of Haven, emerged from the Warp within the Imperial Palace, to the east of the Imperialis Sanctum. There were few of the Heresy-era Legionaries left among them, after all the purges and the Ages, but all who remained were veterans of ten thousand years, who had survived in a galaxy determined to kill them.
In total, fifty-seven Traitor Marines of the Flawless Host came to Terra to fight in the Angel War. Only they knew just how many brothers they had buried since turning away from the civil war that had burned the galaxy ten millennia ago. Under helmets of all but forgotten designs, their faces were grim and determined – they would not fail, not now, not when the means to forge their dreamt utopia were at hands.
With the warlords of the Flawless Host were the war-machines they had gathered during the Heresy, and all the horrors they had locked away in the Ages since. The Guardians of Sheol, who made up a third of the Flawless Host, held dominion over dozens of ancient daemonhosts and psykers bound to the Astartes' will through forbidden sciences. Each of the Guardians was as a king of hell, going to war surrounded by an infernal court.
Along with Sheol's former captives were the war engines of the Advent, broken to the will of the Host once their guiding Abominable Intelligence had been purged. Hundreds of killing robots of malevolent design, their limbs ending in blades and lascannons, their optic lenses gleaming with cruel intent, crawled from the Warp portal, its baleful energies dancing on their carapaces of metal without finding purchase on their soulless anima.
From the vaults of their fortress, the Flawless Host had dragged one of their most powerful weapons. Once, it had been affixed to the Host's flagship, but when they had dismantled their flotilla in the Haven system it had been recovered, to be kept as a last resort weapon of absolute destruction. The weapon, which was over a hundred meters long, was a disintegration lance, a device that had been built by Vulkan himself during the Great Crusade, and that the Host had reclaimed from a Salamander warship during the Heresy.
After clearing the surrounding area of all resistance, the Flawless Host aimed the disintegration lance. From an exact position, measured against the landmarks that could still be glimpsed on the burning horizon, they pointed it downward at a steep angle. Everything from the position to the angle and the amount of energy to use was precisely calculated, using information that the Sanguinor had provided the Flawless Host before their crossing into the Warp.
It took several minutes for the lance to be charged, and the moment it was ready, it opened fire. There was no great detonation, no burst of fire or great quake that shook the Palace's foundations. One moment, there was nothing but stone before the lance's projector : the next, there was a perfectly circular tunnel, over thirty meters wide and so long its end reached the Dark Cells themselves. At its very end, the inmate whose capture had been arranged three thousand years ago to secure the coordinates of the Dark Cells was also caught in the ray and obliterated from existence, its duty done.
The lance that had dug the hole did not survive firing. None of the Host had truly understood its workings, and it sizzled and died after firing that single shot due – even among the wonders of Vulkan's artifice, there were pieces that could not withstand a hundred centuries without maintenance, it seemed. But it did not matter to the Flawless Host. The way was open.
The tunnel did not remain smooth for long : the quakes of the Angel War soon broke its walls apart. Even as alarms that had never rung before started to blare in the Dark Cells, the Flawless Host began to descend, plunging into the depths to claim the keys to paradise they had been promised.
We see now, the wards breached by ancient artifice. Yet even now that the wards are broken, our sight is obscured by the deep, deep time of so many of those imprisoned there.
We see the halls of black iron, where darkness reign.
There is no electric light down there, only the flickering illumination of braziers burning purified crystals. The darkness keeps its dominion jealously, refusing all but the scarcest source of light. Some of the wardens wonder, when their minds turn to matters that would turn mortals to ravening madmen, if the dark is the Cells' first prisoner or its first guardian.
There dwell the Shadowkeepers, standing in perpetual vigil. We see them now, clad in sable-black. Their minds are proof against the whispers, against the creeping dark. They alone can walk in these depths and not go mad. They bear the burden of knowledge – the curse of understanding. Of all of our father's servants, they know best just how fragile that which we call reality is.
We see the cages meant to keep unspeakable horrors at bay. Trapped within each is a thing undying, or whose destruction might unleash a yet greater evil. The oldest beings entrapped within are older than most stars, and would devour them all if given the chance.
Somewhere in this labyrinth, we see a cell with Moravec's name on it. It will go on empty forever now.
It took only a few moments for the Shadowkeepers to realize that the unthinkable had happened once more, and that the Dark Cells had been breached from the outside. Vox-communication was impossible within the Dark Cells – even mortal voices were shut down, lost in the all-pervasing darkness. As the Flawless Host entered the complex, many of their sapient machines went mad, their perceptions suddenly overwhelmed by the unnatural energies that saturated the Dark Cells. They rampaged without thought for their own safety or the will of their masters, and while several were put down by the Host, more fled ahead, spreading across the Dark Cells and lashing out at everything they encountered.
Though the means by which the Flawless Host had entered the Dark Cells were unprecedented, there were contingencies in place for the presence of an enemy force within the complex. The Shadowkeepers who encountered the Flawless Host came together in ad-hoc squads, sending some of their own to serve as messengers and carry word of the invasion to the rest of the Shield Host.
In open combat, even the elite warriors of the Shadowkeepers would have been overwhelmed by the numbers of the Flawless Host – for though the Custodes outnumbered the ancient Astartes, their slaves were greater in number by a vast margin. But the Dark Cells were anything but a standard battlefield, and the Shadowkeepers were the only force in the galaxy who were even remotely familiar with it. As the lords of the Flawless Host struggled to retain control of their forces, the Shadowkeepers sprung a series of ambushes on the invaders, seeking to isolate and cut down their foe piecemeal.
The engagements fought in the corridors of black iron were of rare violence, as the Shadowkeepers fought to prevent the doom of Humanity and the Flawless Host's minions fought with mindless cruelty and spite. Infernal powers and machine-wrought talons tore through blessed warplate and hallowed flesh, yet despite the grievous wounds inflicted upon them, the Shadowkeepers continued to fight. Something akin to dread spread among the denizens of Sheol as their foes simply refused to die.
But the Flawless Host were not novices in the art of war, and they soon saw what the Custodes were attempting. Despite the proximity to their goals, they did not let their control slip, and consolidated their forces before advancing further as a unified force. Soon the Shadowkeepers were forced to give ground, leaving more and more of their dead behind. Eventually, the inevitable happened : one of the Custodes, who had served within the ranks of the Shadowkeepers for seven decades and as a Custodes for nigh on a thousand years, was captured alive by the Flawless Host.
With the knowledge plundered from that Custodes' living brain, the Flawless Host began to open the Dark Cells they had already passed by. Each of the Shadowkeepers only knew the opening codes and rites for a fraction of the Dark Cells, but even that was enough for the lords of the Flawless Host, who had brought with them thinking engines within which was poured the accumulated lore of Haven's Ages. Peeling the auramite armor from the corpses of dead Custodes, they fed these dead brains to their machines, and with these combined to the example extracted from the one who had the misfortune of being taken alive, these unholy engines were capable deducting the opening sequences for many more.
One by one, even as they continued to advance further into the complex, the Flawless Host began to break open the Dark Cells. At the same time, the weapons used by the Chaos warband were of such potency that in several cases, they were enough to break the seals by accident, unleashing yet more ancient horrors within the labyrinthine battlefield. What had been a chaotic battle descended further into madness with each such evil released, and though the Flawless Host could not control nearly all of the monstrosities they set free, their experience in taming the horrors that had destroyed Haven time and again served them well on a handful of occasions.
We see the Dark Cells breached. The horror ! It burns our sight with acid and fire. But we must see. So much is at stake here, brother. We must see !
We ignore the pain. It is nothing compared to the Beacon's cleansing agony. It is nothing compared to the torments of falling forever and hearing the galaxy's screams. It is nothing compared to the pain of failure. We must see, and so we will see.
We see the Six In One.
The quest for perfection has brought pain and suffering to Humanity for thousands of years. This iteration began in what we now call the Dark Age of Technology, when a cabal of tech-lords attempted once more to force the hand of evolution and create the ultimate human being.
We see the seed, gene-crafted using methods lost even to our father when he created us. We see it split into six parts, each grown to maturity in vats of nutrients, their brains monitored and stimulated every second of their slumber.
We see the six children kept away from each other as they are each taught a portion of the accumulated lore of Humanity, their minds forced open to cram more knowledge inside. We see the strain on their sanity, yet it holds, a testament both to the inhuman mastery of their creators and to the strength of their own will.
We see the six brought together for the first time. We see the surgical knives and the alchemic vials. We see …
We see their pain. We see brains cut out of skulls. We see bone reshaped. We see a vision of perfection that is naught but nightmare.
The Six In One rise immaculate, driven beyond madness by their torment. We see them destroy their creators. We see them rampage in the laboratory that made them, lost and alone with the voices in their grotesquely oversized head.
We see our father break the gate the Six In One could not – dared not ? - open. We see him in all his glory, the aspect he showed to the rest of the Imperium. We see him look at the Six In One as they stare at him, something like hope in their eyes.
What thoughts passed behind his eyes ? What calculations did he make, that led him to deny the Six In One the death they craved and instead lock them away into the Dark Cells, in case he needed their knowledge in the future ?
Our father longed for death for more reasons than the pain of the Throne, brother.
We see the Host open the cell. We see them bind the Six In One with a collar wrought from archeoscience. We see the Six In One follow them out with wonder in their gaze.
Of all the horrors in the Dark Cells, it is this one that perhaps most resembles what the Host hope to find. With the knowledge the Six In One possesses, they just might succeed in creating the utopia of their dreams.
But their dreams are no longer their own. Their untainted vision was stolen from them, and now lies at the bottom of a bloodstained cup.
Should the lore locked away in the Six In One's manifold mind be brought to bear in the Long War, the Flawless Host shall only create more nightmares to inflict upon the galaxy, all while the Dark Prince watches and laughs.
We see the Hierophant.
It was born of the cycle, the one the Eldar only think they understand and our father barely glimpsed as he contemplated the magnitude of his dream. In the age before the age before the age before the age of Humanity, the Hierophant rose on a distant world, servant to a power that now lies dead and forgotten.
Then came the Children of Isha, inheritors of the galaxy. They destroyed that power's followers, cast down its temples and buried its memories. Of a culture that spanned a hundred star systems, only the Hierophant survived, trapped beneath the ruins of the temple it had built to its god.
For a thousand times a thousand years it was trapped, until at last it broke free. Its screams echoed across the galaxy, and it vowed revenge on those who had slaughtered its people even as they burned in the fires of their ancestors' sins.
But the screams draw the eye of our father's hunters, and they captured it before its rituals could endanger his dream. They could not kill it where time itself had failed, and so they brought it here and buried it within a cell, so that the galaxy could forget it as it forgot its dead god.
We see it emerge now as the Host free it, a thing of ice, shadow and hate. It is of the Warp as much as it is of ancient flesh, and that infernal part is enough for the shamans of the Host to bind it to their will. The last remnant of a dead god, bound to obey those who care nothing for its once majestic past.
There is a lesson there, brother, and a warning, if you can find them.
We see the Unknown One.
They found it sleeping in the blackness. Buried deep beneath the event horizon, laying on a bed made of devoured suns. When its kindred woke and broke the galaxy, it remained sleeping, unchanged. Unknown.
Unknown to those who came before, unknown to the covetous, silent kings.
They woke it. They disturbed its slumber with their machines and their scanners, with their technological sorcery. Curiosity ? Greed ? Ambition ? No one knows, brother, because it destroyed them when it woke.
It woke, and knew hunger and pain, until Father bound it with chains he had stolen from a silent tomb. It did not try to resist him : it went back into its slumber willingly, once it realized what he was trying to do.
There is a name for its kind, a name whispered in dread by those who know them, and pride by those who broke them. Do you know it, brother ? The Host do not. We see how they struggle, trying to bind its power to their will. We see it lash out, sending the contents of a dozen Dark Cells across time and space, along with every member of the Shadowkeepers and the Flawless Host nearby.
We see it return to its cell and close the door behind it – back to sleep, back to quiet, back to peace.
We are envious, brother.
We see the Weapon.
It is not a spear, though it apes the shape of one. One of its siblings was given to Sanguinius, another to Russ, and the third to Valdor. Two of our brothers who fell, and a cousin whose fate is lost in the mists of time. Coincidence, or the will of dark powers ? Yes.
In their days of sanity, both the Wolf and the Angel despised those gifts without knowing why. Both threw them aside during their descent into the waiting arms of Ruin.
One was destroyed at the gates of the Black Library, and the other waits for the hand that will dare raise it anew. Both changed alongside their masters, sharing into their growing madness and corruption.
And what of Valdor ? What secrets did his spear whisper to him that drove him to abandon our father ? We do not know. The paths he walked are hidden from our sight, even now.
But this one ... this one is different. Greater than the other three, yet lesser as well. It is the prototype, the mold from which they were wrought by His hand.
It lives, it hungers, and it HATES. The Host know not with what they play.
We see it burn them to ash and less than ash. And then … it is gone. We cannot see where it has gone.
But it is not far, brother. Not far at all.
We see the Lost Children.
Grief and guilt can make one do terrible things. Once upon a time, in an age where it seemed there was nothing the Science of Man could not do, there were many children born of a lord of secrets and machines.
We see the children playing with their father. We see the smile on his face, a sight none of his subjects would have thought him capable of.
We see tragedy. The details are irrelevant, and there is no point in retelling them at this late hour.
We see the nine children die and their father live. We see him weep for them. We see him rage, rage at those who took them from him. We see fire and iron, and death such as Sol had not seen in a long time.
But vengeance is a hollow thing, brother. We see the father standing alone in the ashes of his foes, his heart bleeding his soul into the void. And then, that most dangerous of things – an idea, born into the mind of someone with nothing left to lose.
We see the forbidden devices, erected at the lord's command. We see the secrets brought to bear. In ages to come, this unholy lore will come to be known as the Keys of Hel.
We see them turn. We see nine bodies begin to move again as anima is forced into their stasis-preserved flesh. We see them rise, and we hear their father's cries of joy.
We hear the cries of terror and agony as the children turn on their father's helper. We see the madness gleam in their eyes, the bestial ferocity of animals who have been broken by pain and trauma.
We see their rampage across the moons of Jupiter. A thousand legends of the Jovian Clans can be found in that terrible slaughter, for the Lost Children could not die, could not be fought. And always their father rushed after them, trying to get them to stop, to remember who they had been.
They never did. They never stopped. But they never attacked him either. When their victims tried to kill him as punishment for unleashing these monstrosities upon the universe, they protected him. They knew who it was who had brought them back, you see. And that was their downfall.
Our father took theirs, and used him as bait to draw the terrible children into this cage, before locking the door behind them.
Now the Host open the door, and we wait for the madness of the Lost Children to be unleashed once more … yet there is nothing. The warlords of the Host are confused. We see them send one of their minions inside, thinking it a trap of the entities trapped inside.
It is not. The Dark Cell is empty, save for the old, old bones of a man who sought to cheat death. They lie at the center of the prison, perfectly ordered in silent repose. There is a hint of peace in the way they are placed.
Where are the Lost Children ?
We see the Beyonder.
We ... I remember this one. It slithered through the cracks of the Webway, when Father and I did battle in the Labyrinth amidst the burning wreckage of his dream.
I fought it for three days – or was it a century ? – after it destroyed a Psi-Titan merely by passing through its metal as if it were mist.
It brought with it the alien laws of its native dimension. Heated particles are made immobile in its presence; fluids flows in reverse and the thread of causality is broken.
I do not remember how we defeated it. Did we ?
It is gone as soon as its cage is opened by the warriors of the Host, vanishing back to … to …
What were we talking about, brother ?
We see … so many of them. So many chambers in that ancient prison. It seems impossible the galaxy could have produced so many horrors and yet continued to exist.
It is too much. Too much ! We look away.
As the Flawless Host went deeper into the Dark Cells, they encountered their first non-Custodes foe in the Angel War. A group of daemonhosts led by a Warden of Sheol entered a corridor with an open cell, before which was a stasis coffin. Several Shadowkeepers stood guard around that coffin, but they weren't alone : a single human woman stood alongside them.
Lady Inquisitor Morgana had come to the Shadowkeepers as they brought the corpse of Cypher, the Lord of the Fallen, to be interred within the Dark Cells. When the Primarchs had brought the corpse of the last loyalist Dark Angel from Luna, the Shadowkeepers had come to claim it, and Lorgar had conceded to their demand. The Aurelian was convinced no trace of the Ouroboros remained within Cypher's body, but understood that no risk could be taken. Cypher would have understood, he knew.
How Morgana had known of these events or how she had penetrated the strongholds of the Shadowkeepers was unknown. The Custodes had a long and complex history with the Lady Inquisitor, with records of her interactions with the Shield Host dating back to the founding of the Holy Ordos. Significant debts were owed, so that when Morgana asked that she be allowed to accompany Cypher to his final resting place, "for old times' sake", the Shadowkeepers had grudgingly agreed.
Cypher's mortal remains could not be allowed to fall into the hands of the Flawless Host. The possibility, however remote, that the Chaos warband may successfully draw upon the Ouroboros' power was to terrible to allow. Merely finishing Cypher's entombment would not be enough – the Flawless Host had already proven capable of opening the Dark Cells. Instead of using the same patterns of runes and locks the Shield Host had used for ten thousand years, the Shadowkeepers allowed Morgana herself to set the combination of the Dark Cell's gate, while they fought to hold back the foe.
Once Morgana was done and the corpse of the Lord of the Fallen was forever beyond the reach of the Flawless Host, she turned to face the servants of Ruin herself. Psychic power flared around her – the first Imperial psyker to enter the Dark Cells freely since the days of Malcador – and she called upon ancient Calibanite lore.
We see Morgana. Morgana, daughter of Luther, that most noble of knights. Morgana, the exiled witch-child, sent to learn at the foot of Caliban's ancients by her grieving father. Morgana, Inquisitor, who holds in her soul the key to the Lion's triumph and defeat alike.
We see how it is that she yet live, despite the passing of ages. We see the spells woven into her flesh, the runes that were carved into her bones by diminutive figures while she was awake to feel it. We see the debt repaid when she helped them escape the destruction of the world they had been tasked to guard, now that the prison at its heart laid empty.
We see the wraith at her side, bound to her by ties deeper and stronger than any sorcery could conjure. He is old, that one, older than many of the galaxy's self-styled immortals. He was there when your Sword first coalesced into dreams. Accident was what bound him to her, but what is fate if not the result of coincidences that end up shaping the galaxy ?
We see him given form by Morgana's power, brought back into the Materium to fight the Slaves to Darkness in death as he once did in life. Witch and knight, Inquisitor and ghost – two champions of Order, nemeses to Ruin. Old oaths surround them like cloaks of chains that they bear proudly.
The Shadowkeepers fought well against overwhelming odds, but slowly, inevitably, it became clear that the Flawless Host were going to win the battle of the Dark Cells. Then, in their Slaaneshi-induced madness, they would break open each and every seal, unless one of the horrors they so foolishly unleashed destroyed them all before they could. This could not be permitted, for even in the wake of the Emperor's death, the Shadowkeepers' oaths still bound them.
In the days since his elevation to the rank of Lock, Alhoris Bastoris had been inducted into the greater mysteries of his order. He had read the ancient scrolls, made of the skin of powerful Pariahs, that contained the names and natures of all of the Dark Cells' inhabitants. He knew, more than any other soul in the galaxy, the calamity that would befall the Imperium should the Flawless Host succeed in their mad plan – not to tame the power of the prisoners, for such a thing was surely impossible, but to break them free in the first place.
He also knew the back-up plans, the contingencies first drawn up during the Age of Unity. The possibility of a mass break-out had haunted the thoughts of every Lockwarden since the Dark Cells had been constructed, and though each had redoubled their efforts to ensure such a dread eventuality never came to pass, they had also prepared should the unthinkable happen nonetheless.
Alhoris did not feel doubt, fear or remorse as he ordered his brothers to keep the Flawless Host at bay just one moment longer, to keep them from opening any more of the Cells for just a few more minutes, even if it cost them their lives. The Lockwarden was as beyond such emotions as any of the Custodes – more so, for his mind had been tested further by the horrors he was jailer to. Without question, the Shadowkeepers obeyed, throwing themselves at the foe with renewed vigor even as it exposed them.
Sevastin Haeger had been an Imperial Fist once. That had been so long ago it might as well have been another person, but he remembered it, with the perfect clarity of one cursed with an eidetic memory. He remembered the Blood Crusade. He remembered looking at what his Legion had become, and becoming disgusted with it. He remembered staining his hands further, with the blood of his own Company, in order to escape it. He remembered joining with other exiles like him. He remembered the Host, and the one warrior who had united them all with his vision.
He also remembered how they had betrayed him, when the flames of rebellion had guttered out and he had spoken of rejoining the Imperium. It was a memory that haunted him often.
But soon, it wouldn't matter. Soon, they would have all the power they needed. Soon, they would make things right.
Sevastin tightened his grip on the chain that ended around the neck of the daemonhost working on the gate of the Dark Cell. His will slithered up the chain, checking that the monster wasn't doing anything other than what it had been told to do.
The last of the rune-locks clicked open, and the door cracked. There were no hinges – these gates had never been meant to open. Then it burst apart, and something that Sevastin's mind could only interpret as the giant, translucent skeleton of some kind of grotesque fish floated through the opening.
Sevastin barked a word, and chains descended upon the entity. Some were based on technology from the Third Age, while others were the same used in Sheol. All of them passed through the entity without slowing down, and Sevastin frowned. Another failure, then. A shame, but better to destroy a dozen captives than risk one of them ruin everything.
He was about to give voice to the order that would unleash the full might of the daemonhosts and weapon platforms gathered under his command, when a flash of light burst from the entity, overcoming even the protection of his helmet. When the light faded, no trace remained of the creature. But the light had another effect, Sevastin slowly realized in horror.
He … He remembered. He didn't want to. He didn't want to ! But he did. He remembered what he had forgotten, what they had all forgotten – what they had chosen to forget.
He remembered how the Fourth Age had ended.
In the scraps of the Advent, they had found a half-drawn schematic for a device called the Chronovault. It had taken months before they had even understood what it was meant for, so ludicrous had the concept seemed. Somehow, the Advent had began to plan for the creation of an actual time machine. Perhaps it had sought to ensure its victory over the Host, or perhaps it had wanted to return to the Dark Age of Technology, to tip the war against the machines in their favor.
For years, the Host debated what to do with that schematic, while Haven healed and new restrictions on technology and research were drafted, based on the ones the Emperor had imposed upon Mars in the Treaty of Olympus. From the logistics to the morality of it, the Host pondered what to do.
In the end, the temptation had been too much to resist. The things they could have achieved with a functioning Chronovault … helping Dorn fight off the Orks and save Inwit. Rescue Corax from the tech-lords of Kiavahr. Save Guilliman's mortal parents from the treachery of his political rivals.
They could prevent the Heresy. They could save the Imperium.
They could undo everything that had gone wrong on Haven.
And so they had built the Chronovault. It had taken centuries, even with all their resources. They had ruled Haven openly during that Age – the Fourth Age, the last Age, if only they could succeed. And finally, they had completed it. They had checked all of their schematics a thousand times and more, gone over every single one of the numberless components of the device … and they had turned it on.
Whatever the Chronovault had opened a portal to, it hadn't been the past. They had figured that out later.
It had been the future.
Monsters had poured out of the portal the second it had opened. Things that the Host had no name for, things unlike even the worse of the horrors Sevastin made sure remained locked away in Sheol. Things made of pale, human flesh, and black matter darker than the void. Things that made noises that made the ears of Legionaries bleed and turned any humans who heard them into crazed killers.
They had tried to contain the propagation of madness, to close down the portal, but they had failed. The monsters had spread across the entire world, and so there had been no choice. Even orbital bombardment hadn't been enough to destroy the Chronovault. It had taken a desperate suicide mission using teleporters and tactical nukes combined with the darkest lore gained during the Second Age, all of it strapped to Terminator warplates, to close the gateway into that nightmarish future.
And then the Host had burned Haven. They hadn't tried to rescue anyone from the Fourth Age. They had just … burned it. Burned everything, down to cellular lifeforms. And once they were done, they had burned the memory of that Age from their own minds. Because the thought of that future, of what they had seen, was too terrible to comprehend. Because of the brothers they had to kill when the revelation broke their transhuman minds.
They had forgotten, and the Fifth Age had begun. But now … Now Sevastin remembered.
Despite the power of the daemonhosts at his fingertips, Sevastin still carried a bolt pistol at his belt. With trembling hands, he drew it, and put the barrel firmly against the forehead of his helmet.
The sound of the shot was swallowed by the blackness of the Dark Cells.
With what little time his brothers could gain him, Alhoris descended into the deepest vault of the Shadowkeepers. As he ran, he spoke passwords in long-dead languages, opening gates that had never been open before. Deeper and deeper he went, into the most forbidden of the Shadowkeepers' many arsenals, where only the Lockwarden himself may walk. A thousand and more defense systems scanned him, checking the insignias of office on his armor against records that had been loaded at the time of Unity. If even one of those had failed to approve his passage, Alhoris would have been cut down by automated defenses.
Similar defenses had been laid around what had been the only entrance into the Dark Cells complex, but the Flawless Host's method of entry had bypassed them completely. Something like bitterness floated in Alhoris' mind as he entered the black-level vault – knowing that so many resources, so much time and effort had been spent in vain, was a deeply unpleasant thought.
At the center of the vault was a single device. It was small, yet nothing could disguise the aura of power that surrounded it. It was old, a relic from the terrible war that had ended the Dark Age of Technology, when the lords of science had fought a desperate conflict against their own rebellious creations. The Emperor Himself had recovered it during the Great Crusade, and commanded it be brought to the Dark Cells as an ultimate safeguard, to be used only if the Dark Cells were judged to be about to be lost beyond recovery.
Such a time had now come, and the Lockwarden began to activate the device. It took time, more than he wanted, for every passing heartbeat was another brother lost, another abomination potentially unleashed upon Humanity. But finally, every code was entered, every safeguard removed, and the weapon was primed to use.
It was with his eyes open and an oath to the Emperor on his lips that Alhoris Bastoris triggered the antediluvian device. In the war against the Iron Men, it had been crafted as a desperate tool, a way to preserve some of the tech-lords' domains from the sentient machines' malevolence. Incredible energies crackled on its surface, as row upon row of plasma generators buried beneath the chamber were drained of every speck of power in order to activate the immense, city-sized time-lock field.
Modern stasis fields employed by the Imperium were to that field as the Custodes were to mere combat servitors. It could not be breached, and those caught within it would never escape. Not even the entities of the Dark Cells would be able to escape it, though some of them might still experience the passage of time, even as they were unable to move.
For as the field unfolded, it swallowed the entire Dark Cells, reaching kilometers in every direction – a perfect sphere of stillness, anchored around Terra's core so as not to crash out of the planet's surface and float into the void. The Shadowkeepers, the Flawless Host, and every captive of the Dark Cells that had not yet fled – all of them were caught in it, frozen in a single slice of time, removed from the rest of the Materium. To the best of Alhoris' knowledge, there was no way to deactivate the field : in the Great Crusade, entire cities had been found preserved within such time-locks, and not even the Mechanicum at the height of its power had been able to free them.
The Lockwarden and his brothers would be trapped for all eternity, he knew. He accepted it.
This was his final thought, and the one Alhoris Bastoris took with him into eternity.
Lady Inquisitor Morgana leant on her staff, breathing deeply. It had been a long time since she had needed to fight like this – too long, perhaps, she reflected. She had grown too used to sending acolytes and agents to do her bidding across the Imperium, rather than participate in their investigations in person.
She had only barely managed to escape the Dark Cells before Alhoris had sealed them forever. Being trapped in the stasis field that now covered the entire underground structure wasn't too bad a fate, not for her, who had witnessed far worse in the millennia of her life. But she had no idea how her father's spell would have reacted – if the curse Luther had laid upon Lion El'Jonson would consider her dead if she was frozen out of time. The possibility of unleashing the Daemon Primarch of Tzeentch in the fullness of his power at such a critical time for the galaxy was unconscionable, and so she had ran the moment she had heard the Lockwarden's orders and realized what they meant.
At least poor Cypher's corpse was beyond the reach of Chaos forever now. That was one good thing, in what promised to be an unending stream of bad ones.
Morgana had only just made it out, and she was feeling the exertion across her body now. Her power and the best treatments of the Imperium – rejuvenation methods whose existence wasn't known even to the High Lords – had preserved her flesh throughout the centuries, but in that moment, she actually felt her age.
The knight's spectre appeared at her side. His presence was stronger than it had ever been before, strengthened by the very energies that seeped out of the great rent in the heavens and threatened to drown all of Sol in madness.
"My lady," he whispered in her mind, and she could hear the concern in his ghostly voice. "What do we do now ?"
She looked around. They were on the surface, next to the gaping hole the renegades had opened into the Dark Cells. There had been no time to go through the series of checkpoints guarding the Dark Cells' proper entrance, and so she had made it through the corridors the Flawless Host had thought they controlled, before flying up the tunnel on a burst of power, barely making it out ahead of the stasis field.
She could hear screams, coming from every direction. The loudest came from above, where the Tear of Nightmares yawned open. Unlike the screams that resonated across Terra's polluted atmosphere, this one was a scream of mockery, of hunger – of triumph.
Not yet, she thought to herself, forcing herself to stand straight. Not yet.
"I believe," she replied to the ghost of he who had once been called Kay, "that Lord Magnus will need our help."
AN : Well, you wanted the truth of the Fourth Age ... Now you have it. Or as much of it as I am willing to reveal at this stage, anyway.
Writing the descriptions of the Dark Cells' inmates was a lot of fun. I was able to really let my imagination roam and only later figure out how to integrate my ramblings into something vaguely approaching WH40K lore. I hope you enjoyed reading that section as much as I did writing it. And while the ending may seem like a cop-out, considering what is hinted in canon to be imprisoned in the Dark Cells, I do not believe there was any other option if I wanted the rest of the Angel War to still happen. Besides, the Flawless Host believed that their mission was to take what they needed to create a perfect utopia ... but that's not necessarily what their patron actually wanted them to achieve.
To clarify : the "narrator" in the italic sections written in the plural first person is indeed Magnus the Red. He says "we" because he is accompanied by the echoes of all the psykers who were consumed to sustain the Golden Throne. I thought I had made that clear in the introduction, but apparently not.
Is the ghost accompanying Morgana Sir Kay from the Round Table ? Maybe. He certainly believe he is, anyway. Stranger things have happened in the Warp, as we all know by now.
Thanks to Jaenera Targaryen for beta-reading this. Next week, the followers of the Angel rise from the deeps, and in their way stand heroes old and new.
And now, time for the Halloween special bonus I promised yesterday. Enjoy !
Hear.
This is the sound of sundered dreams. This is the scream of a galaxy burning. This is the laughter of thirsting gods.
Witness.
This is the light of hope shutting down. This is the scarlet of sinners' blood. This is the color of madness.
There is no peace among the stars. But why must it be so ?
We hear it. We witness it. Our victories are few, and may yet mean nothing.
On Hydra Cordatus, the sons of iron fell. Only one lives. With what little remains of who he was, he wishes he were dead like his brothers.
On Maccrage, the sons of treachery perished. Their father ate their souls to rise again. A new sin to add to the long, long list, even as he faces retribution for an old one in the form of a sacrificed son.
On Chemos, the sons of the phoenix died. The enduring monolith was shattered by the twin blasphemies of its great betrayer. We see the eldest face, and we weep in dread recognition.
We see Cadia. We see Tartarus. We see Damnos. We see Juno. We see Scintilla. We see Abbracius. We see Nuceria. We see Commoragh. Blood-soaked battlefields, altars upon which the future is set ablaze by the devotees of Ruin. A grand ritual of damnation to herald the coming of Chaos Ascendant.
Times change. See that which hides in the future, behind the shadow of great wings. We see !
We see Sancour.
The rules have changed, but the board remains. The pieces are in place, even if one of the players has run a sword through his own heart. The game will continue. Time does not stop even when your father is dead. That is the way it has always been for Humanity. Why should it be different for us ?
01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01111001 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111 01110111 00100000 01101011 01101001 01101110 01100111
Sancour. Sancour. In the city of the queen of air and shadow, sing we of doom and ruination. Sing we of madness and despair.
Sing we of death ? Sing we of ending ? Perhaps. Perhaps not.
The inquisitor searches, searches in the dark,
While his prey looms at his back.
It is not what we think it is, the madman writes in his own blood on the walls of his cell. It is not what we think it is, screams the priest as he throws himself off the highest spire of his church. It is not what we think it is, chant the cultists in the dark tunnels. It is not what we think it is, whisper the eyeless faces that haunt forgotten nightmares. IT IS NOT WHAT WE THINK IT IS.
It cannot be. Surely, it cannot be.
What drove these mortals to suicide ? What terrible truth thundered through their tender thoughts ?
We know. We know. They call it the Yellow King, but that is a lie. It has no name. IT HAS NO NAME. A name is a leash is a cage is a truth. It has no truth as the universe understands the concept. It will not let itself be limited by mortal perceptions.
FIND THE BOX OR ALL WILL BE AS THEY SHOULD