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.
OF KNIGHTS AND CHAMPIONS
On the Saturnian moon stands the stronghold of the Grey Knights, greatest of the Imperium's warriors, hammer of the Ordo Malleus and bane of all Warp-spawns. Founded near the end of the Roboutian Heresy, their secretive order has safeguarded the galaxy from destruction untold times, striking at the schemes of the Archenemy wherever the greatest champions of Chaos seek to unravel reality itself. During all that time, never has Titan itself been threatened. But with the hordes of the Dark Prince manifesting within Sol, an entire host now descends upon the fortress of Titan : the Warp-twisted Regals, fallen heroes upon whom the Dark Prince bestowed infernal powers at the cost of all but a scrap of their humanity …
We see Titan. The fortress of the Grey Knights. Within its vaults are stored a thousand wonders and far more horrors, secrets preserved for the days of reckoning and deathless foes bound with lore that would see any Imperial citizen sentenced to the pyre. Within its catacombs are buried generations of unsung heroes, whose deeds saved Humanity from a fate worse than death time and time again. Within its prisons are those Neverborn who were trapped within dimensional cages, pitiful immortals separated from the infinite tides that spawned them. We can only imagine their screams, for even the Dark Gods that made them cannot hear them any longer.
We see the arsenals where weapons anointed with the tears of saints and the blood of innocents await the day they are picked up once again. We see the chambers of becoming, where ancient alchemy alters the aspirants. We see a thousand souls enter, ten thousand, a hundred thousands – and only one leaves transformed. Such is the price of purity.
We see that which lies below. It is ancient and terrible, a power trapped by our father's will and word. We look away before it sees us through the cover of its chains.
And in a chamber where only the Supreme Grand Master may enter, we see a box.
What's in the box ? We know, brother. We know. Knowledge is power. A secret. A weapon. A back-up plan. But not yet. Not yet. DO YOU HEAR US ? Not yet. The decree must remain unspoken. Terminus est non.
But why do we see Titan ? It is meant to be hidden, shrouded by veils first woven by the cunning Sigillite, with assistance from my own sons. Its shields were torn down once, only to be restored, greater than before – though never again will Titan move into the depths of the Empyrean as it once did. We see the Warp Nexus, silent for ten thousand years, despite the efforts of thousands of the Imperium's greatest scholars to awaken its awesome power once more.
For a hundred centuries Titan has been hidden, even from those who despise it and dream of its destruction with the kind of hatred that rends Sectors apart. Yet now it is exposed, visible to all with eyes to see. How did it come to this ? We watch. We learn. We know.
The knights made a mistake, brother. They sensed the approach of ruin, but could not find its source. They were ignorant of Omegon's plans, you see. The conspiracy of apotheosis did not see fit to add them to its ranks. They put too much effort into trying to see what waited beyond Light's End – and when you look into the abyss, the abyss looks back with dead, hungry eyes. Ancient wards, reinforced by the metaphysical weight of millennia of ruthless secrecy, have been sundered.
This is not the whole truth. There is something more behind Titan's exposure. Something which hides in the future behind the shadow of great wings, and which struck through time to protect itself, to prevent its detection before it can be born. But we will not speak of it now. Sufficient unto the day is the damnation thereof. Titan is visible, and its defenders must prepare for war.
Barely a few hours had passed since the failed scrying ritual of the Grey Knights when Light's End came.
In the Augurium, the ancient and mysterious device known as the Speculum Infernus stirred to life. But a few months past, the arcane artefact had been silent for over five hundred years, since Rogal Dorn, the Daemon Primarch of the Imperial Fists, had manifested on Armageddon. Yet now it was active again for the second time in less than a year, having already warned the Grey Knights of the brief manifestation of Corvus Corax, the Ravenlord and arch-foe of the Chapter. Though the master of the Nineteenth Legion had spent relatively little time in the Materium – too little, unfortunately, for the Grey Knights to hunt him down or come to the rescue of Hydra Cordatus – the Prognosticars had kept a close watch on the Speculum Infernus since, waiting for another sign of the Ravenlord's foul plans.
As the Speculum Infernus activated, the Prognosticars quickly saw that the signs were different this time. Since the Roboutian Heresy, the device had been used by the Grey Knights to detect the incursion of the thrice-cursed Daemon Primarchs into the Materium, allowing the knights of Titan to react quickly. Its workings were a mystery, though the Prognosticars had noted that it had remained silent when Roboute Guilliman himself had risen from Maccrage, an event of such cosmic implications that no Grey Knight had been left unaware of it happening. It seemed that the Speculum Infernus was attuned to those fallen sons of the Emperor who had abandoned all pretence of Humanity, and been reborn in the fires of Chaos as one of its god-like avatars.
The Prognosticars were no fools. They had all heard the words of their brother Hyperion, who had spoken of a winged traitor. And as doom-laden reports flowed into Titan's vox-net from all across Sol, they had also learned that the Dark Prince was making his move to claim the Throneworld. From these signs, identifying which of the Emperor's treacherous sons was responsible for the Speculum Infernus' activation was no difficult task.
And yet, the Prognosticars could not help but doubt their own conclusions, for all the lore that had been accumulated by their order over the last ten thousand years was clear that this particular Daemon Primarch was a lesser threat to the Imperium, a crazed prince of blasphemy forever lost in his own madness and abandoned by his own Legion. Still, there were records of another being associated with that Daemon Primarch's Legion : a winged figure clad in gold, that had involved itself in the affairs of the galaxy even as the Ninth Primarch himself remained trapped within his delusions. Was this creature, the Sanguinor, long rumored to be the incarnation of the Ninth Legion's damnation rendered into Warp-wrought flesh by the whim of Slaanesh, the one behind this attack on Holy Terra ?
Before the Prognosticars could think long on this mystery, Lorgar struck down the Emperor's mortal form in the Throneroom, and Light's End descended upon Sol. Like the Custodes, the Grey Knights were bound to the Master of Mankind through an esoteric link, that had been passed down from generation to generation along with the power the first Grey Knights had received directly from Him. The psychic shock of the Emperor's demise affected the Grey Knights less than it had the Custodes, but there was no escaping the truth of what had caused it. Many Grey Knights knew, if not doubt or fear, then a numb sense of horror for the first time since their psyches had been reshaped by the Rituals of Detestation.
As had been the case with the Custodes, perhaps it was a good thing that the enemies of Humanity launched their attack on Titan then. Faced with the imminent threat of destruction, the Grey Knights were able to turn their minds from the horror that followed in the wake of the Emperor's death, and focus on the grim business of war.
Though Titan had been spared the horrors of war since the days of the Siege and the incursion of the Daemon Prince Be'lakor and the Daemon Primarch Corax, the Grey Knights had maintained the moon's defenses – indeed, they had built upon them with every century. For despite the passing of millennia, the Grey Knights remembered the horrors of the Roboutian Heresy well, and knew that what had been done once might occur again, however unthinkable it might seem to the minds of the Imperium's mortal leaders.
In the dance of cosmic spheres, Saturn was located on the other side of the sun from the Tear of Nightmares. Even as they rushed to their positions, those of the Grey Knights who specialized in such matters suspected that this was not a coincidence – that events had been orchestrated so that they would be as far as possible from this new and terrible threat to the Imperium's very heart.
The daemonship that had once been a battle-barge of the Sons of Horus Legion, but was now only the Splendid Procession, emerged from the Warp deep inside the Sol system. Had the auspex of the Imperium been able to identify its entry point with the required accuracy, their tech-priests might have calculated that the rift through which the Splendid Procession had arrived to Sol (which was a small thing only when compared to the yawning majesty of the Tear of Nightmares) had occurred precisely six light-hours, sixty-six light-minutes, and sixty-six point six light-seconds beyond the Mandeville Point.
Crucially, the Splendid Procession's point of arrival placed it on the opposite side of Titan from Broadsword Station, where the fleet of the Grey Knights was gathered in numbers rarely seen in the Chapter's existence.
The Splendid Procession was the only warship to emerge from this hole in reality, but it was not the only threat to do so. Great Warp-beasts the size of battleships followed in its wake, each the manifestation of an entire alien species' worth of passions and terrors, gathered in the Realms of Chaos after the xenos that had birthed them had perished in the throes of excess.
Before Light's End, the array of orbital defenses surrounding Titan was matched only by the ones around Holy Terra and distant Cadia, and the defense stations of Titan had withstood the opening of the Tear of Nightmares better than those of anywhere else in the Sol system. They had been designed from their very core to resist daemonic tempering, by ancient Inquisitors and Grey Knights who had lived through the Chapter's first battle against the Ruinous Powers.
Even so, the current circumstances went well beyond even the darkest nightmares of their architects. Entire stations were lost as self-destruct protocols were initiated after possessed servitors rampaged through their corridors – or, worse, infected the machine-spirits of the weapon emplacements and began to train them on other star fortifications. Even these last measures failed in several cases, and the Inquisitorial fleet that was permanently stationed in Titan's orbit was decimated in the opening minutes of the Angel War, as ships were blasted apart by the guns of their own turned allies.
The ruins of the Apex Cronus Bastion, destroyed by the Raven Guard during the Siege of Terra, had been preserved and kept forbidden since the defeat of Guilliman's traitorous armies. An entire battle-group was tasked with enforcing the interdiction, and the only reason the ruins hadn't been hurled into the sun or otherwise annihilated was that the Inquisitor Lords feared such destruction would unleash the vile things that, even now, haunted what was left of one of the Imperium's mightiest starforts.
As the Sol system was embroiled into the tides of the Warp, however, the fell presences that dwelled within the Bastion stirred awake. Tendrils of Warp energy leapt from the scar left by the Splendid Procession and englobed the entire moon-sized starfort, before suddenly dragging it entirely through the rift and into the Sea of Souls. It moved through the void at impossible speed, yet somehow retained its integrity until it plunged into the rift. Less than half of the quarantine battle-group managed to escape, the rest either smashed to pieces by the moving ruin or dragged into the Warp along with it, never to be seen again.
Of the moons of Saturn, Tethys alone was spared from the encroaching infernal tide. The Librarium Daemonicum, a hidden archive of infernal lore constructed upon its surface by the Inquisition, was covered in wards even greater than those of Titan itself. This was because of the many daemons that had been imprisoned upon it, powerful Neverborn that had been captured by the Grey Knights over the millennia and trapped on Tethys to remove them from the Great Game. Apart from the squads of Grey Knights bringing new captives, only Lord Inquisitors and aspiring Paladins of the Chapter ever came to Tethys.
Why the daemonic incursion spared Tethys was not known. Perhaps the power behind the opening of the Tear of Nightmares did not desire to free any potential rivals, any Neverborn aligned with opposing Chaos Gods that might throw its schemes out of alignment.
Furthest from Saturn was the moon Iapetus, which had been turned by the Inquisition into a Naval Fortress of considerable size, from whence the ships of the Ordo Malleus sailed in support of the Grey Knights and the Daemonhunters. Millions of the Imperium's most faithful and zealous souls dwelled within the station and the ships anchored there, but no reinforcement would come to Titan from that quarter, for the wards that guarded it were far from being as strong as Titan's.
The power of the Tear of Nightmares rebounded from the rift torn by the arrival of the Splendid Procession, and Iapetus fell to madness as its wards broke and thousands of Slaaneshi daemons manifested upon its surface. The ancient stronghold of the Ringers, who had held Saturn in the dark days before the rise of the Emperor, became a bloody and desperate battlefield, the Naval Fortress unable to bring its mighty weapons to bear against the enemy within.
Closest to Titan was the moon Mimas, which was ravaged by bloody riots. The vast prison complex built within the immense impact scar covering a quarter of the moon's surface had housed the worst criminals hunted down by the Inquisition for centuries, secured by an entire Regiment of Inquisitorial Stormtroopers, psychic wards and battle-servitors. But the opening of the Tear of Nightmares had sundered these wards, and let loose the human monsters imprisoned there.
Feral psykers and wielders of heretical sorceries unleashed their vile powers upon their captors, and their careless use of Warp energies helped scores of daemons manifest upon Mimas. Seeing that they would inevitably be overrun, the commanders of the Stormtroopers initiated long-standing doomsday protocols, destroying all means of escaping the moon and triggering the meltdown of the prison's powerful plasma reactors.
The explosion that soon blossomed on Mimas' surface was small in comparison to the one that had created the crater untold epochs before, but it was more than powerful enough to wipe out the prison and every living and unliving creature within it.
On Enceladus, the vast citadel where generations of the Ordo Malleus' Lord Inquisitors had held court was burning. A host of Laers had teleported inside the fortress itself, shattering its wards in the process. Entire retinues of Acolytes fought desperate battles against the foul xenos and their daemonic allies, supported by the Order of the Shattered Glass, an order of Sisters of Battle who had used the moon as their base since its founding. The Admiralty Spire, where the ancient lords of Saturn had signed their treaty with the Master of Mankind at the dawn of the Great Crusade, had come tumbling down in the first moments following Light's End, ripped apart by monstrous bolts of Warp energy.
Amidst the confusion, renegade Inquisitors revealed themselves as having sold their souls to the Ruinous Powers, and threw their lot with the invaders. The great library of the Enceladus Fortress, where the accumulated lore of the Ordo Malleus was stored, burned to the ground in the ensuing firefight between Inquisitor Gholic Ren-Sar Valinov and the newly unveiled heretic Torquemada Coteaz. Though Valinov survived his confrontation with the treacherous Lord Inquisitor, he was unable to prevent Coteaz from escaping, fleeing through the Empyrean with a coterie of possessed servants and carrying a handful of tomes recovered from the burning library.
On Deimos, the former Martian moon displaced during the Heresy and converted into the personal Forge-World of the Ordo Malleus, the tech-priests sworn to the Inquisition's service found their domain under attack. Three of the Warp-beasts that had followed the Splendid Procession into Sol tore themselves open on the moon's defenses, and tens of thousands of lesser daemons emerged from their guts, like parasites inside a sea-faring whale. Infernal ichor and Neverborn rained upon Deimos, and the forges where the holy weapons of the Grey Knights had been crafted for millennia were defiled, even as the tech-priests rallied their thralls to their defense.
One of the vast monstrosities, overcome by hunger, hurled itself at Titan. From the surface of the moon, the serfs of the Grey Knights saw its immense maw fill the sky – but the moment it got too near, Titan's age-old defenses activated. Wards that had kept the moon sacrosanct for thousands of years flared to full power for the first time in recorded – and unrecorded – memory, and the abomination that had been born of the death of a species whose name was known only to the Dark Prince was obliterated in a storm of sorcerous fire. The hosts of daemons that dwelled within its guts were likewise destroyed, their essences sent shrieking back to the Silver Palace in shameful failure.
Within their fortress-monastery, the Grey Knights all felt the impact of the creature's demise. And though the wards of the moon yet held, Geronitan, Supreme Grand Master of the Chapter, commanded his battle-brothers to prepare for battle – for even should Titan remain inviolate, the rest of Sol needed the aid of the Grey Knights most urgently.
We see the Grey Knights. Paladins clad in secret science, faith and sorcery – though they would not call it that. Within each of them lies the Emperor's Gift – a shard of our father's power, passed down from the first Grand Masters of their Chapter. It could be called seraphic power, if not for the Imperium's rightful distrust of all things angelic.
They walk into shadow and fire, where the Primordial Annihilator rears its ugly heads to tear the cosmos apart. They listen to the sounds of screams echoing from nightmare futures, and intervene before the Empyrean can swallow Sectors whole. But it is not in their remit to save, and they have left a litany of destroyed worlds in their wake – because when they come, it is already too late for anything but the harshest of measures. Survival is the Imperium's keyword, not salvation.
We see Hyperion, whose true name we will not speak lest we draw the attention of that which is hidden. Here and now, the consequences of such a thing would be … No. No. We will not be distracted down that hateful path. Hyperion. Hyperion. We see the child coming home to his junkie mother, only to find her dead from overdose. We see him look into a tainted mirror to escape the horror of his life. Every shard took something from him, left him both less and more, until … But no. We will not speak of his past. It lies dead and buried, the unseen and forgotten foundation of what Hyperion has become.
The lens of the Grey Knights' telescope lies cracked, but his life is not yet spent. The sons of Titan have many secrets, and know how to preserve their own. But the moon will burn as the Regals descend, and the hourglass is running out of sand. Can the healers finish their task in such conditions ?
We see Geronitan, the Chapter Master of this most secretive of orders. He is old, the thread of his destiny marked by loss and tragedy, yet unbroken by their weight. He does not understand Hyperion's warning, and now, with Sol aflame and the servants of the Dark Prince coming, he has no time to parse its meaning, to converse with his learned brothers and divine the threat that hides from sight behind the Angel's wings, in the darkness of Light's End. And so he calls all of his brothers to arm, while defenses that have been watchful but silent since the days of Guilliman's war lock onto incoming foes.
We see what Geronitan has seen, and it is too much for any soul to bear. His loyalty, his faith, are unbreakable, but he does not believe the war against Chaos can be won. Even then, his defiance shines bright. There is noblesse in fighting against the inevitable, when the inevitable is obscene.
The Supreme Grand Master's destiny looms large over him. The Prognosticars knew, when the child who would become Geronitan was brought before them, that his was to be a great and terrible doom indeed. They shaped him as best they could to prepare him for it : his training, his knowledge, the missions on which he was first sent as a battle-brother of the Chapter, even his name – all to make him ready for the moment they knew would come, even if they could only glimpse its shadow.
The moment approaches. The moment is near.
Two hundred Grey Knights had been gathered at Titan at the command of Geronitan. Almost fifty more were also present on the moon, and all of them answered the Chapter Master's call. In the silent halls of the Chamber of Heroes, Techmarines began the rites of awakening, rousing the Chapter's Dreadnoughts from their slumber, while other warriors climbed into their Dreadknight suits, linking their mind to their machine-spirit.
The wards of Titan had been reinforced over the millennia by the ritual burials of those Grey Knights who perished in battle and whose remains could be collected. A vast network of catacombs, known as the Dead Fields, stretched far beyond the borders of the fortress-monastery and beneath over a third of Titan's surface. Forbidden to all but the Grey Knights themselves and their most trusted serfs, the Dead Fields were composed of thousand upon thousand of crypts, where fallen Grey Knights were laid in stone coffins decorated only with a plaque marking the name of the warrior interred within.
The lingering power that clung to the remnants of so many Grey Knights had been carefully channelled by hexagrammatic rituals designed by the Sigillite's first heirs in the days following the Roboutian Heresy. Even in death, the knights of Titan served, their corpses adding to the spiritual defenses of the moon. The ancient wards laid down by Malcador had not been able to hold back the might of the Master of Shadows and the Ravenlord during the Siege, but Titan's current defenses against eldritch horrors were proof against even the greatest of Neverborn.
Unfortunately, the Dark Prince knew this, and the host that descended upon Titan during the Angel War was not made of daemons. The Chaos warband, known to the fell powers that had remade them as the Regals, were mortal warriors, Space Marines whose minds had been broken and reforged within the Realms of Chaos. Their bodies were swollen with infernal power, yet they had been kept just one step shy from ascension to true daemonhood – or horrible degeneration into spawnhood.
We see the Regals, worn by their mantles to war. They were given such glory, and it cost them everything. Their identity was eroded bit by bit, and replaced by daemonic power. Their loyalty to the Humanity was burned away, and replaced by infernal obligations. Their memories of their past were cut out, replaced by hellish knowledge.
They are the changeling children of the courts of Chaos, wearing usurped flesh. Not princes they, but dukes and counts and marquis. Not Possessed either, oh no – there is only one broken mind within their tortured bodies. A blasphemous trick to bypass the ancient laws of the Neverborn. This is the union coveted by the Slaves to Darkness, bestowed upon those who fought Chaos until their sanity gave in. Titan's wards will not hold them at bay, for they are mortal still. And if the wards come down …
Oh brother, do you remember the old meaning of apocalypse ?
We see the Titleless, an unnamed and unnameable horde that pours forth in dreadful procession to answer their lords' call. They are flesh, flesh that screams, flesh that hungers, flesh that suffers, flesh that hates. We see their twisted bodies, their genetic code broken past the agency of life. No evolutionary path ever led to these forms, but the power of the Warp granted them dreadful actuality. We see teeth and claws, hooves and horns, scales and tentacles – and other things, things that only have names in languages purged by the Inquisition. Just enough humanity remains in the Titleless that those who can weep without knowing why.
We see he who was the Lord Caustos, trapped in chains of sorcery and withered brotherhood. He used to struggle against them, to try and break free, but even the noblest spirit can be ground down in time. Now, the only thing he desires is an ending – but what strength does that desire possess ! It burns so bright, and that light drew to it a firefly clad in golden armor. Alone of the six, he was not deceived into the bargain he made.
An ending has come, an ending is coming, an ending is here. But for whom ? That, brother, remains to be decided.
The Tormented Pathfinder, a Regal who had spent his time in the Realms of Chaos tasked with the impossible task of finding a way leading from one end of the Silver Palace to the other in a single step, stood outside the Splendid Procession's hull. With a single swing of his great axe, he cut apart the fragile skein of reality, and the daemonship plunged back into the Empyrean, before emerging mere hundreds of thousands of kilometers away. This micro-jump through the Warp had brought the Splendid Procession behind the surviving orbital defenses, and by the time their confused auspexes could lock onto the ship again, it was too late.
Like a grotesque meteor, the Splendid Procession descended upon Titan, beaching itself upon the moon in a cacophony of breaking metal and pulverized flesh. The Tormented Pathfinder leapt from its hull as it stopped with a last, tortured gasp, and though the soil of Titan was charred back where his boots touched it, the wards that had killed the Splendid Procession's infernal intellect the moment it had crossed their threshold did not affect him.
Something like a laugh emanated from the lightless pit that had become of the Tormented Pathfinder's face. He raised his arms as if in benediction, and the doors of the Splendid Procession's bays creaked and fell open, revealing the monsters inside that had survived the fall.
The Regals led their horde of mutants out of the wreck of the Splendid Procession and onto the surface of Titan, herding the shrieking, mewling mass of twisted beings like cattle. The ice sheets on which the daemonship had crashed cracked and moaned at their weight, and dozens of the mutants were lost to the icy depths as they collapsed underfoot before their masters led them to more secure locations.
In the days before the Emperor had risen from obscurity on Old Earth, the tech-lords of Humanity's first interstellar empire had worked their wonders upon the moon, artificially increasing its gravity to Terran standard and creating a breathable, if thin atmosphere. Even the Regals did not know whether their mutated thralls needed oxygen after their hideous transformation, but whatever the case may be, none of the Titleless perished of something as simple as asphyxiation. Nor did the cold, which was potent enough in some regions to cause vast seas of liquid methane to exist on Titan, affect them – their unnatural vitality kept the Titleless from freezing in place as surely as the Regals' warped power armor and infernal boons.
The Damned Lord was the last of the Regals to leave the ruined daemonship. The rest of the warband, bound as it was to his authority, awaited his orders. With a single gesture and a pulse of command sent through the esoteric link that existed between the Damned Lord and the other Regals, the warband set forth to the west of the Splendid Procession's crash site.
The Regals had crashed near the Grey Knights' vast fortress, at the foot of the immense Mount Anarch. All defenses in their way were crushed, manned as they were by servitors and reprogrammed mortals clad in suits that protected them from Titan's freezing atmosphere. Thousands of the Grey Knights' serfs were slaughtered while their lords prepared themselves for battle, their sacrifice barely slowing down the advance of the Chaos warband. The mighty defenses of Titan opened fire with cannons that could have torn even the best-defended transport to pieces, but the sorcery of the Regals protected them, turning aside the onslaught of mere technological weaponry with ease.
Less than two hours after the moon had shook from the Splendid Procession's final descent, the Regals reached their objective. To the south of the Grey Knights' innermost citadel was a monument whose first component had been raised in the years following the Roboutian Heresy. It was an incomplete circle of great adamantium steles, each towering nearly fifty meters in height, and covered in Imperial names.
Each of these steles was a memorial to the heroes who had fallen in those Imperial wars that were not recorded in the archives of Humanity. From the first battle of Titan to the Pale Wasting, the Calixian Crusade and a dozen other forgotten conflicts, the only trace of the millions that had perished were their names, engraved upon the unadorned steles of the Grey Knights' memoriam. Its location hadn't been chosen at random either, for the first stele had been erected on the location where the first Grey Knights had fought Be'lakor, the Master of Shadows. There, after Corvus Corax had abandoned the field to join his fleet in battle against the returned Emperor's Children, the progenitors of the Chapter had battled the Firstborn of Chaos, and hurled his black spirit back into the Aether.
With the banishment of Be'lakor and the Ravenlord's departure, the infernal horde they had hurled against Titan after dragging the moon back into reality had dissolved into anarchy. The daemons had fled from the unbearable purity of the remaining Grey Knights and their Inquisitor allies. This had been the first victory of the Chapter against the Archenemy, and like all the ones that had followed, it had come at a terrible cost.
When Malcador had sent his chosen Space Marines and acolytes to Titan, he had hoped to keep them hidden throughout the Heresy in the Sea of Souls, protected by powerful wards and Geller field generators. The Sigillite had used his great power and greater knowledge to hasten the passage of time on the moon, so that the first Grey Knights would be able to turn the hundreds of Aspirants the Sigillite had gathered into a full Chapter. When Corax and Be'lakor had dragged Titan back into reality with their combined might, only four hundred Grey Knights had completed their training, and less than a tenth of that number had survived the Heresy.
The first adamantium stele had been raised to honor the fallen of this war, and ever since, the monument had been guarded by a handful of Grey Knights, stationed there after returning to Titan from particularly gruelling duties. There, while their bodies healed, these warriors drew strength from the memory of the Chapter's past heroes, until the armor of their resolve was renewed and they left Titan to bring the wrath of the Emperor to the Neverborn once more.
When the Regals arrived at the Circle of Remembrance, only nine Grey Knights stood before them. They had not retreated to the citadel where the rest of their Chapter prepared for war, for they had sworn oaths to guard the Circle and would not break them, even at Light's End. They fought well, and killed scores of Titleless – and even a handful of the Regals themselves. But eventually, sheer weight of numbers prevailed, and the Knights were dragged down and cut to pieces.
With the defenders of the monument slain and their bodies thrown aside – for even the Titleless beasts could not feast on their hallowed flesh, so potent was the holy power within it – the Damned Lord summoned another of the Regals to his side. The Triumphant Bannerman, who had been the bearer of the Company's standard before his fall, now carried a banner woven by the artisans of the Silver Palace of Slaanesh. Every thread of that mockingly beautiful banner was made of the soul of a dead Chosen of Slaanesh, who had born the Dark Prince's Mark in life. At the Damned Lord's command, the Triumphant Bannerman slammed this infernal standard at the center of the Circle.
The horror the Damned Lord had felt before he had taken his new name was a distant thing now. It wasn't gone, not entirely, but like every emotion he had ever possessed, it was a small and quiet thing. He had changed since he had accepted the bargain of the Golden Herald, gaining much and losing more.
He could feel every Regal around him, feel the stirrings of their mantles of power. He knew each and every one of them, both as they had been and as they had become. Their stories and natures were his to know, for such was his own role in this great play they were putting on for the only audience that really mattered.
He could feel, too, the hateful wards that covered this moon. They felt like a constant burn on his flesh, on his mind, and on his soul. He could bear them, but he could not ignore them. Yet that pain, too, served a purpose. Through it, he could sense the way in which the wards were arranged – through it, he had led his Regals to this place, where the names of the dead were used as a ritual cornerstone in the great work that shielded Titan.
The flag that flew between the steles was disturbing the flux of energy, introducing discordant notes in the carefully balanced symphony that kept the children of Chaos at bay. But it wasn't enough. The Bannerman's standard had power, but not nearly enough. To break the wards, to turn this nexus of energies against itself, something more was needed. A symbolic gesture, committed by a one invested of great power.
The Damned Lord reached out and, slowly, carefully, ran his finger across the newest stele. Where his fingertip passed, the blessed adamantium bubbled and melted, erasing the only record of thousands of Imperial martyrs.
As the first line was erased, he felt his desecration echo across the web of power that spanned the entire moon. The power of the wards diminished ever so slightly, and the Neverborn legions waiting on the other side of the Veil howled in his mind in anticipation. To the north, below Mount Anarch, the Damned Lord sensed something stir in response also – something old and powerful, that had been bound beneath the citadel for aeons. He sensed its gaze turn on him briefly, and felt its eldritch thoughts brush against his own – then the connection broke as the many chains that weighted upon it reasserted themselves.
Without smiling, without weeping, without feeling anything but the impulse of his role, the Damned Lord reached for the next line on the stele …
Within the war-room of the citadel, Geronitan contemplated his options, and knew they were limited. The Supreme Grand Master could feel the slow erosion of the moon's wards, and knew that he had very little time in which to prepare his forces. To the south, the horde of Titleless massively outnumbered his warriors, yet the Supreme Grand Master did not fear the mutant abominations – it was the Regals themselves, and the unholy powers they wielded, that worried him.
The Grey Knights could sense the power vested in the Chaos Marines, though the nature of their transformation yet eluded them; in all the Chapter's years of fighting the infernal, this particular aspect of it had never been encountered before. But they could detect them easily, and knew that they numbered one hundred and eight – a number the Chapter's diviners promptly pointed out to Geronitan was exactly half of six times six times six, if any other proof that the Dark Prince was behind the Angel War was required.
Geronitan was wary of confronting such an unknown foe in the open, yet should the wards fall, Titan would be subjected to a full-scale daemonic invasion once more. And while it had defeated one such incursion before, with the Angel War raging across the entire Sol system, the Supreme Grand Master knew he could not afford the time and sacrifices that would be required to repulse such an infernal onslaught.
With no other choice left to him, Geronitan threw open the gates of the citadel, and led his battle-brothers into a charge on the captured Circle. Members of all eight Brotherhoods marched forth, in numbers not seen on a single battlefield since the First War of Armageddon (a conflict many Grey Knights in this host were veterans of). With them came tanks and Dreadknights, and the elders of the Chapter – Dreadnoughts of designs that had become hallowed relics to the loyal Legions. Every warrior was linked to the others in a psychic web that shone in the Sea of Souls in defiance of Tear of Nightmares' own baleful light like a radiant, silver star.
The Regals could not miss the approach of the Grey Knights, and the corrupted Legionaries reacted predictably. Little remained of the tactical insight they had possessed before their transformation, and the infernal impulses that had replaced them saw the Grey Knights' advance as a challenge that could only be met with full force. With the Damned Lord's attention focused on his work, his control of the warband had lapsed, and individual Regals led portions of the Titleless host north to meet the advance of the Grey Knights.
The Titleless hurled themselves at the Grey Knights with an abandon born of the abject horror they felt for their own existence, and the champions of the Emperor cut them down in droves. With bolt and blade and psychic lightning, the Grey Knights laid low the mutated beasts, refusing to let them slow their advance. Though their Regal masters saw them as little more than bolter fodder, fit only to keep the Grey Knights occupied while they hunted for the specific targets pointed to them by their infernal instincts, the beasts that had grown in the Splendid Procession's holds were mighty indeed, and no few Grey Knights met an ignominious end at their claws, teeth and spiteful hatred. The larger among them towered above even the Terminators of the Grey Knights, and those were engaged by the Dreadknights, whose height allowed them to face the enormous beasts on equal footing.
The Regals' own efforts to stop the Grey Knights had mixed results, for each of the Chaos Marines had been "blessed" with different abilities according to the trials he had undergone in the Realms of Chaos. The armor of the Grey Knights, etched with holy sigils and warded with purity seals, resisted the onslaught of the Thief of Faces' sorcery. Illusions danced on the surface of the Grey Knights' gear but failed to find purchase, until the head of the fallen Librarian was removed by a Nemesis blade. The Star-Eyed Swordsman had more success, slaying no less than five of Titan's sons before Captain Ederic of the Sixth Brotherhood rent him in twain with his mighty halberd – though not before the Regal champion had severed his left leg at the knee.
More came. Almost half of the Regals had left the Circle, and soon the Grey Knights were forced to fight for every kilometer of what had been their greatest stronghold mere hours ago. At the head of the host was Geronitan himself, the Supreme Grand Master a beacon of psychic purity that set the Regals to flight with a terror they would never have known before their damnation. In his hands he held the Titansword, a blade that shone with the fire bestowed upon it by the Emperor Himself – a fire that was undimmed, even in that darkest of hours. With it, he defeated the Empty-Hearted Soldier, banishing the aura of despair and futility that cloaked him like a shroud of nihilism.
As the Grey Knights approached the Circle, Geronitan ordered his host separated into three forces, each of which would come up one of the available paths leading to their destination. It was Geronitan's hope that he could divide the enemy forces and make sure at least one of the three prongs could reach the Circle in time to stop the foul desecration taking place here. Taking command of the central host, the Supreme Grand Master handed command of the eastern battle-group to Grand Master Aldrik Voldus, Warden of the Librarius and leader of the Wardmakers Meanwhile, the western force was led by the sinister Castellan Garran Crowe, leader and champion of the Purifier order – and wielder of the dread daemonic weapon known as the Black Blade of Antwyr.
We see the Black Blade and its jailer. Antwyr and Crowe, the daemon despot and the Purifier paragon.
We see the ruined temple in which the apostles of a fool discovered the sword, after thousands of years of brooding imprisonment. We see what they did not : the mark on the stones, shaped like a great reptilian beast. A fragment of legacy that could not be controlled, or an enemy that could not be destroyed ? It mattered little to these seekers of forbidden power. They died all the same, and the one who did not perish was hollowed out until only Antwyr remained.
We see the stars run red with the blood of the conquered. An entire Sector burned before an unlikely alliance of knights, serpents and strangers brought the Sword-god's empire low. But Antwyr escaped, fleeing through the Sea of Souls.
There it fled for millennia. What did it run from ? Not the knights of silver, brother. It fled from that which imprisoned it, that which bound it within the Blade.
When it returned to the Materium, the knights were waiting for it. With clever schemes and quick wit and concentrated firepower, they slew its puppet and captured it. We hear its roar of outrage, echoing through the ages.
We see the dread quandary of the Purifiers, who could not destroy the Blade, and knew that its evil must find a wielder eventually. Neither the blackness of the void nor the deepest pit could contain it – such is its power, destiny itself warps around its will …
… or at least, that is what Antwyr would claim. We know better. We see beyond the shadows projected by the Great Game into our reality as the hands of the gods move. There are pieces that the players will not let simply disappear and fade into obscurity; toys that the mad children who amuse themselves with our torment refuse to throw away.
We see the decision made. One of the knights will keep the Black Blade close always, to guard the galaxy from its evil, and to guard the sword from those who covet its power. We see the line of heroes among heroes, guarding their souls against Antwyr's corruption while forever listening to its whispers, parsing them for the fragments of truth the daemon cannot help itself but hide amidst its rantings.
At the end of that line, we see Garran Crowe, first of the Grey Knights to wield the Black Blade in battle – first of all who have ever lived to hold it in his hands and retain his freedom of mind and purity of soul.
Among his brothers, Crowe stands alone, for their own protection. The daemon's voice is his constant companion, and for decades he has listened, without every succumbing. If you asked him, brother, he would tell you that, of late, something disturbingly like worry has crept in Antwyr's endless stream of threats, curses, and obscene revelations …
Crowe led his brothers from the front, haloed in a corona of psychic silver fire that burned the Titleless and left the Castellan unharmed. He held the Black Blade firmly in both hands, ignoring the constant whispers of the daemonic entity bound within. This task, which had never been easy, had grown even more difficult in the last few hours, as Antwyr revelled in the death of the Emperor and taunted its guardian with horrific glimpses of what was occurring on Terra – and what would soon occur across the Imperium entire as the aftershocks of Light's End made themselves known. In his mind's eye, Crowe saw entire Sectors fall to anarchy and madness without the light of the Emperor to guide them. And still Antwyr offered salvation : if Crowe would but draw upon the power of the Black Blade, it promised, then he could restore order to Sol and then to the galaxy.
But Crowe knew that those promises were lies, even if he could not deny the other horrors his prisoner had shown him outright. Armoring his soul with duty, he forced himself to ignore the whispers of the daemon, and focused on the task he had been given by his liege.
The Grey Knights under Crowe's command advanced quickly, taking relatively light losses as they marched – though even the loss of a single Grey Knight was one the Imperium could ill afford. Then, in the shadow of a tower where generations of Aspirants had been delivered to Titan and subjected to the first of the many, many trials to become Grey Knights, the Castellan faced the Repentant Bladesmith.
All of the Regals had been subjected to torments designed to break them and reshape them into aspects suited to the purpose attached to their new name, and the Repentant Bladesmith was no different. He had once been a Techmarine of the Sixteenth Legion, trained in his craft on Mars itself before serving his Legion for centuries. By his hands, the weapons of his battle-brothers had been made whole as they delivered the Emperor's wrath upon the traitor, the alien and the heretic.
In the Realms of Chaos, he had been forced to forge weapons for the chosen daemons of Slaanesh, chained to his forge and commanded to craft tools of death and torment, knowing that they would be used against the same Humanity he had sworn to defend. Each weapon had then been engraved with fell runes imbued with his own blood, forcing him to experience every life that it was used to end as its wielder manifested across the galaxy. With every infernal weapon he had forged, with every Imperial death he experienced, a part of his sanity and soul had left, until all that remained were the guilt and self-hatred, which the Dark Prince's minions had shaped into a weapon more powerful than any the Repentant Bladesmith had ever crafted.
You think yourself incorruptible, Garran … But you thought the Emperor was immortal, too. Can't you feel it ? That which was impossible no longer is so. The rules of the Great Game are changing. How long before the first of your brothers finally sees the truth ? How long before they realize their crusade is futile ?
How long before the first Grey Knight falls ?
The Purifier Champion ignored the voice of the daemon. It was hard, harder than it had ever been. Like all of his brothers, Crowe's faith, his conviction, had been shaken badly by the psychic echoes of … of …
Of the Emperor's death. He had to confront that truth, lest it break him.
The heretic in front of Crowe carried no weapon, yet the Purifier did not let his guard down. So far, every Chaos Marine he had faced this day had proven more difficult to kill than any of their heretic ilk he had encountered before, bloated as they were with the Warp's unholy power.
What manner of creature is this ? Whispered the voice of Antwyr. Rare indeed were the times the daemon was caught by surprise, but it seemed to Crowe its curiosity was not feigned. Whether that was a good or a bad sign was, unfortunately, very clear, given the circumstances. The power of a prince of the Warp, bestowed upon a puppet of flesh ? Truly the Dark Gods have a strange sense of humor.
Around Crowe, the mutated monsters suddenly redoubled their onslaught with greater ferocity, as if answering some unseen signal. The Grey Knights' advance briefly paused, and Crowe found himself facing the Chaos Marine – or whatever the heretic really was – alone.
He was used to fighting alone. As Castellan of the Blade, it was his duty to fight separate from his brothers, lest they be needlessly exposed to its corrupting influence. He raised the Blade, holding it firmly in both hands, his grip as much a psychic as a physical one, and prepared to fight.
It will kill you, Garran, taunted Antwyr. You are too weak, and your master is dead. Use me ! Only with my might can you hope to triumph and save your brothers from the doom that waits for all Humanity now that the Anathema is gone !
"Abomination," hissed the Chaos Marine – but he wasn't addressing Crowe. No, his gaze was fixed upon the Blade he held in his hand. "Defiler. Tormentor."
There was a brief pause in the Blade's whispers. It wasn't unusual for slaves of Chaos to address the Blade directly – even the most wretched of the Lost and the Damned could recognize its power. But such addresses were usually supplications and entreaties, not insults.
"Your time is over," continued the heretic. "This is the hour of the Prince of Pleasure. His time is come. He shall rule, and you shall fall. You will not be allowed to interfere in His design, old one."
Kill him ! roared Antwyr in Crowe's skull. Kill him kill him kill him !
Crowe moved to attack, not because of the Blade's shrieked command, but because the heretic stood between him and his goal. He struck with the Blade, aiming at the heretic's neck – but before the blow could reach, the Chaos Marine reacted. His left hand moved impossibly swiftly, and just as impossibly caught the Black Blade mere inches from his throat. Crowe felt as if he had slammed a more mundane sword into a rockrete wall – and then the heretic began to squeeze, and the Black Blade began to crack.
What ?! No ! No no no no no no no no no no ! KILL HIM, GARRAN ! KILL HIM KILL HIM KILL HIM KILL HIM !
This could not be, thought Crowe with something like awe. The Blade was immortal. All the lore of the Chapter said so – all the attempts to destroy it had confirmed it.
And yet, it was happening all the same. The daemon screamed and screamed as the cracks spread from the heretic's grip across the length of the Black Blade, eldritch light pouring from them.
"Go back to the Realms of Chaos," declared the Chaos Marine. "Go back to your doom."
The Black Blade, Antwyr's prison for untold millennia, shattered into a thousand pieces. There was a flash of hellish light as the veil between the Materium and the Immaterium was briefly sundered, for such was the power of Antwyr's unleashed essence that even the wards of Titan could not fully contain its full power.
All of the Grey Knights could now hear the voice of Antwyr, yet the daemon was not rejoicing at its freedom. Instead, it was screaming in shock, rage, and – yes, Crowe realized : this could only be fear.
In the moment before his vision failed him, Crowe caught sight of an immense maw opening to swallow the shadow that had emerged from the broken blade – of black scales and burning red eyes.
The blast of Warp energy caused by the destruction of the Black Blade obliterated the Repentant Bladesmith and a number of the Titleless that had accompanied him, but miraculously left Crowe and his brothers unharmed. Though shaken by the loss of the Black Blade – both because of the sudden silence where its voice had tormented him for decades, and because of the implications of its destruction – Crowe recovered quickly, and rallied his host to crush the surviving mutants and continue their advance, drawing the Nemesis blade that had hung unused at his hip since he had first drawn the Black Blade in order to best contain its evil.
Having each faced their own obstacles, the three Grey Knights hosts reached the Circle of Remembrance, where the remainder of the Regals were ready to face them. Through telepathic communion, they synchronized their assault, and three spears of silver-clad warriors plunged into the mass of Titleless and Regals.
Casualties were high, as even ancient Dreadnoughts and tanks were torn to shreds and holy warriors were cut to bloody pieces, but the Grey Knights did not relent. Voldus led his brother Librarians into incredible feats of psychic might, unleashing storms of holy fire and lightning that obliterated scores of the foe, while the Purifiers under Crowe wielded the Emperor's Gift itself into a weapon against the Chaos-touched horde and Geronitan strode the battlefield like the avatar of Him on Earth itself. Squads of Terminators fought on his flanks, forming a hammer blow that swept aside the tide of Slaves to Ruin and opening the path to their objective.
As the Regal known as the Mindful Watcher tried to marshal the Titleless into something approaching a true formation, a squad of Interceptors teleported next to him. Their personal teleporters had carried them through the battlefield, though two of their number had been lost in the transition due to the disturbances in the Aether. The Mindful Watcher, who had guided the infernal hosts of Slaanesh to a hundred and six victories against the hordes of the Blood God, perished with three blessed spears through the chest, his lips still moving silently to give commands that might have turned the tide of battle.
Finally, Geronitan managed to reach the Circle of Remembrance. There, the Damned Lord awaited him, his attention turned away from his desecration of the great adamantium steles. In the time it had taken the Grey Knights to reach this point, two of the ancient monuments had completely been defiled, and half the names on a third had already been erased by the Chaos Lord's claws.
Vowing that not a single one more hero would be wiped from history, the Supreme Grand Master of the Grey Knights engaged the Damned Lord.
The leader of the Chaos warband that had befouled Titan with its presence was a terrible sight, wrapped in power that shone in Geronitan's second sight. His armor still bore some likeness to the panoply of a Legion commander, though warped and twisted by the Dark Prince's boons. He wore a scarlet cloak over armor the color of jade. His face was a mask of colorless fire in which could be glimpsed images of grasping hands and screaming mouths.
In his hands, the Chaos Lord held a sword whose guard was adorned with the image of a weeping two-headed eagle whose twin necks had been broken. The tears that fell from the mutilated bird's eye sockets turned into two rivulets of black smoke that swirled around the weapon's pommel.
A name rose unbidden to the forefront of Geronitan's thoughts as he looked upon his foe, and he knew that it was the true identity of the creature – or rather the only identity he had left : the Damned Lord.
The two of them stood alone in the Circle of Remembrance, while the battle raged around them. Geronitan's brothers knew that they could not interfere : the Grey Knights understood well that such matters were steeped in ritual, and that to interfere in this fated confrontation might be exactly what the Archenemy wanted them to do.
"They told me your name," said the Damned Lord, his voice a chorus of screams. "Geronitan, Supreme Grand Master of the Grey Knights. They told me many things as we plunged toward this moon."
"Daemons always lie, except when the truth will hurt you more. But whatever you were told, know that you will die here this day."
"Will I ?" whispered the Damned Lord almost softly. He shook his head, and gestured with his sword, pointing it upright at the Warp-torn skies. Though his focus did not slip, Geronitan let his vision follow, and looked into the heavens.
The sight would have poisoned the mind of a mortal man, but a Grey Knight was inured to such horrors. It was only the fact that he was seeing it here, on Titan itself, that made it unnerving at all.
"Do you know what it is that stands on the other side of your precious wards, waiting for them to fall ?" asked the Damned Lord, his voice full of bitter rage. "It isn't just daemons of the Silver Palace, though there are plenty of those. It is the dead, cousin. All the souls your order murdered over the centuries. All the innocent you condemned to death. All the souls you sent screaming into the Abyss that the Dark Prince could get his hands on. They died screaming and not knowing why, and in the Realm of Chaos they were shown just who it is who murdered them. They are waiting, and they hate you … and their hate gives me strength !"
With a roar, the Damned Lord hurled himself at Geronitan. He moved not like a warrior but like an elemental force, and the Supreme Grand Master could barely raise the Titansword in time to block a blow that would have severed his head.
On instinct, he reached out with his mind, ready to lash at the foe with telekinetic strength. But the moment his psychic grip brushed against the armor of the Damned Lord, he felt the power of the hate that cloaked him, and blood poured from his mouth under his helm as the backlash caused his brain to feel as if it was on fire.
The Damned Lord hadn't lied or exaggerated in the slightest. He was quite literally armored in hate, and Geronitan was its target. He stumbled backward as the Damned Lord struck again, parrying the blow – then the one after – then the one after that, each time with more difficulty. He could not sense his brothers, could not link with them : the Circle's own power was acting as an isolating barrier, the selfsame ritual significance on which the Supreme Grand Master had relied turned against him.
"You could not save them," roared the Damned Lord with genuine pain and grief in his voice. With his left claw, he held Geronitan aloft and slammed him into one of the steles with enough strength to crack the adamantium. "You could not even save your Emperor !"
As one hand of the Damned Lord tightened around his throat and the other raised the infernal blade, Geronitan realized that he could not defeat this foe alone. He had underestimated the extant to which the powers behind this invasion had investigated the Grey Knights, the depths to which they had sunk in order to create a being that was tailored to destroy them.
The Damned Lord was the antithesis of the Grey Knights, the apotheosis of the entire Regal warband : the very nature of his existence made him anathema to the sons of Titan. As they had been made by the Emperor to destroy the Neverborn, so too had the Damned Lord been made to destroy them, in some grotesque cosmic arms' race.
But there were other weapons the Emperor had made. Tools of war so potent that even He had refused to use them after witnessing their full potential.
And one such weapon was on Titan, buried deep beneath the Citadel. The secret of its nature had been passed on from Supreme Grand Master to Supreme Grand Master – one dread revelation among the many that awaited those who were chosen by their peers to ascend to that position. Long before the idea of the Grey Knights had been conceived by Malcador, the Master of Mankind had trapped His wayward creation on Titan, ordering it to sleep and wait until He commanded a release He had no intention of ever allowing. For though it was one of His greatest weapons against Chaos, its thirst for vengeance against the Primordial Annihilator made it impossible to control, and the Emperor sought more than to reign over a galaxy of silent ashes.
The rest of the Imperium had forgotten it had ever existed, to the point where not even the Inquisition, or the wise scholars of the Fifteenth, knew of it. But the secret had been passed on among the Grey Knights, along with the key to undoing the locks of the being's cage. And now, faced with the death of his order at Regal hands, Geronitan knew he didn't have a choice.
He spoke the words, forcing them out even as they burned his mind. By his authority as lord of Titan, the wards that had kept that which the Emperor's closest confidants had once called Angel was freed – freed, and summoned.
IT manifested immediately. From ITS prison deep beneath the citadel of Titan, IT came at once, ITS binding irrevocably sundered by Geronitan's incantation.
IT was the impression of a man, like chalk drawings or nuclear shadows. Wings of lightning rose behind IT, and IT carried a flaming sword. Where ITS head should be, there was only a shining halo of blazing, burning light. Blue fire cloaked IT, and ITS proximity was enough to blind Geronitan's psychic sight.
ITS arrival caused a great cry to rise from the battlefield, as Regals, Titleless and Grey Knights were caught in ITS psychic presence. IT looked upon them all with ITS eyeless face, seeing them and judging them without mercy nor pity, and then IT acted.
There was fire, and pain, and death, and then IT was gone.
Around the Circle of Remembrance, all was silence, as the Grey Knights slowly stood, taking in the devastation. Blackened bones and charred pieces of armor were all that remained of the Regal warband, all Chaos-touched flesh obliterated by ITS awesome power in the blink of an eye. Of IT, there was no trace – only a spot of melted stone in the Circle where IT had stood.
Geronitan thought back on Hyperion's last whispered words, and felt that he knew where IT had gone.
Only one of the Regals was left. Despite having been closest to IT, the leader of the warband still clung to life. His mantle of power had been stripped from him, burnt away by ITS fire, and yet he still lived. Geronitan walked toward him, looking down at the ruined form of the warlord who had come so close to ending his life. In his face – his human face once more – the Supreme Grand Master saw only pain … and relief.
"Kill him," gasped the wretch that had once been Captain Caustos of the Thirty-sixth Company of the Sons of Horus, in a singular voice. "Kill that golden bastard …"
"I will," promised Geronitan, before the last of the Damned Lord's life faded away and he fell back, dead.
At great cost, the full extent of which would take years to properly evaluate, the Regals had been defeated, and Titan's wards saved from destruction. The infernal hordes and the host of damned souls howled in fury as their chance to invade Titan and finish what even Be'lakor and Corax had failed to accomplish was denied to them.
Yet the Angel War was far from over. Amidst the horror and madness that threatened to drown the Sol system, the Grey Knights could sense that the greatest evil had yet to reveal itself – and would do so on Holy Terra itself.
Of all the Grey Knights who had gone to battle this day, less than forty remained in a state to fight. In the citadel's vaults, a few more Dreadnoughts had been roused from their slumber, and Geronitan commanded them to prepare for immediate departure. Among these ancient warriors was the newly entombed Hyperion, who had managed to survive the backlash of his Chapter's failed scrying ritual.
Leaving only a handful of the less wounded behind to defend Titan, Geronitan called to the ships that remained in orbit. Their mortal captains broke off their engagement against the warp-leviathans long enough to recover the Grey Knights on Titan, and departed for Terra, their engines burning at full power to propel them through the Empyrean-tainted void.
In his chamber, where the Apothecaries were still working on his wounded form, the Supreme Grand Master of the Grey Knights knew that his destiny yet awaited him on the Throneworld.
AN : Well, this chapter ended up a lot longer than the other components of the Angel War. That's because it doubles as an Index of sorts for the Grey Knights, which have so far remained mysterious in the Roboutian Heresy. No doubt you still have many questions unanswered, and no doubt the revelations of this chapter have left you with even more. Some will be answered in the rest of the Angel War. Others ... well, you will have to wait.
With this chapter, we have caught up to my backlog. The next chapter of the Angel War isn't finished, and I am not sure I will be able to get it done by next week-end. And even if it is, there will be no way for me to finish the one after in time.
Thanks to Jaenera Targaryen for beta-reading this.
I hope you enjoyed this chapter. In other news, the next chapter of A Blade Recast should hopefully be finished this week-end.
Zahariel out.
Next : The Madness of Europa