Chap 1 review responses and a short note are available in the Infinite and Divine forum like with past chapters. Chapter 1 was a prologue, and because of the nature of the characters is markedly different in tone from the rest of the story. After all, Telos of Asgard is essentially a super-powered teen-ager, despite her experiences. With this chapter, we begin the story proper. I will try to provide useful references to those who've bravely followed the story even if they're not familiar with 40K.


Part I: Genesis

Chapter Two: Tenebrae Super Faciem Abyssi

Naid Loche, Interrogator of the Order Hereticus, gave thanks to the Throne that he had his helm sealed. The Adeptus Mechanicus servants stank of oil and rotting flesh. But what he and they were waiting for was a thousand times worse.

Some things no good man wanted to smell.

The dual lines of half-machine Skitarii soldiers who escorted he and his team moved in silence through the warren of pumps and fuel canisters that filled the valley between massive ziggurats and forge-temples made no sound save the metal of their boots on the grates below. The normal white-gray carapace armor of the Ordos was painted black, with all trace of their affiliations removed. Even Naid's interrogator mark was gone.

The Martian Archmagos that accompanied them made no effort to hide his allegiance to the machine god, and could not have been silent if all their lives depended on it.

Under a faceless helm, Naid felt no need to hide his disgust at the hybrid creature that walked at his side. It moved hunched over like some Stygian hellspawn, with not one, but three extra limbs protruding from its mechanical spine. Worse to Naid's eyes, the limbs were of different lengths and function, trampling to death any lingering symmetry the creature might have possessed in its original, human form.

In truth, Naid could not see the human at all in this representative of the Martian Adeptus Mechanicus, save for a pair of dark eyes all but lost in the unmoving facial plates of the cybernetic creature's elongated head.

Thick, belching clouds of particulates hung especially low over the Martian Enclave, originally authorized by the Emperor himself during their work on the Golden Throne ten millennia ago. Since that time, the enclave had seen sharp periods of excess and decline. Judging by the number of unlit ziggurats and unmoving pumps, Naid suspected they were seeing the latter at that moment.

The enclave had its own spaceport, which was not surprising since it served as the embassy to a foreign power. The reality of the port, though, served to illustrate Naid's opinion on the state of things not just in the Enclave, but across the Imperium of Man itself.

Things were falling apart, and it took special people willing to make radical decisions to keep things together.

Naid, his two kill teams of Inquisitorial stormtroopers, and the Mechanicus column emerged onto a vast field of landing stages, each protruding up like a forest of cross-braced scaffolds. Squat, oblique pyramids rose from the edges of the field, topped by rectangles of armor glass control towers. None were lit, not even in expectation of a coming craft. If not for the auspex-enhanced night vision of his helm, Naid would be all but blind.

Such work as this is better done in the dark, he thought to himself.

When their party reached the correct cradle, the Tech-priest chattered something in his piercing machine language and the Skitarii spread apart, surrounding the entirety of the cradle. Like their master, the Skitarii were, in theory, human. But how much of each remained actually human and how much was machine was a question not even they could answer.

Naid believed, with all his heart, that the Emperor's treaty with Mars was a mistake. The idea of the Emperor of Man making a mistake was, itself, heresy. And yet the belief remained. Even gods could be in error.

Which, if Naid were honest with himself, is why he stood where he was. Another mistake had to be fixed or the Imperium itself would perish. He knew his master made the decision, but it was one he wholly agreed with.

From the hellishly lit, boiling clouds above, a heavy void ship plummeted down in a sudden roar of plasma thrusts and grav distortion. The further down it came, the more Naid could feel the air shake from its approach. Though not large at all by the standards of the day, the machine still massed hundreds of tons as it settled down with a final burst of thrust and the dizzying effects of null gravity onto the stage that blasted an entire storm of ancient rust and debris from the long-unused stage.

As its considerable weight settled, Naid could hear the sound of straining adamantium and steel from the landing stage. The landing ramp opened and immediately soldiers of the Mercatura, lightly armed in blue uniforms, spilled out by the dozens in a tight, defensive perimeter. Moments later, the passenger emerged.

The hope of Mankind was nearly as hunched over as the tech priest, draped in a heavy black cloak that hinted at unseen things moving over parts of its body that should not have moved. Naid voxed an order to his company of storm troopers, who split into columns in preparation for guard and escort duty.

All of them tensed, though, when they saw the figure that emerged behind their guest.

The newcomer towered over the creature it stood behind, but it was not just height that added to the imposing size. This being was wide as well, bristling in black armor designed to withstand the most punishing enemies. One shoulder bore the skull over the Inquisitorial insignia of the Ordo Xenos; the other had the blue pauldron of Ultramar.

The Death Watch Space Marine strode with smooth, heavy steps down the ramp right on the heels of their special guest.

Beside Naid, the tech priest began jabbering to itself. Perhaps it was voxing others of its infernal order. The priest came forward, waiving one of its back arms expressively. "The agreement was for no others to come!"

The massive Death Watch marine turned its flat, featureless helm to the tech priest. "The Xenos killed Lord Inquisitor Khallus for amusement. It will not go unescorted on Holy Terra." The voice sounded gravelly and old; the tone brooked no discussion.

Damnation. While the Tech Priest sputtered and protested, Naid sent a secured vox through his helm.

Even so secured, the voice that responded was filtered and stripped of all inflection or gender. "Report."

"Complication. Death Watch escorted the subject and refuses to leave it. Khallus is dead."

"The mission is too important to take any risks. Death Watch serves us."

The connection ended. Mentally switching to his outer vox grill, he said, "Death Watch serves the Inquisition, Archmagos."

The priest turned its mechanized head with human eyes and stared. In synthesized Gothic, it said, "On your head be it, then."

Naid sneered behind his mask at the fool. He walked up to stand before the Xenos that they had brought against all law and tradition to the heart of the Imperium. "Do you understand your purpose here, Xenos?"

"I understand far more than you do, mortal," it said with a voice that made Naid's spine shiver and his gut clench with an instinctive need to shy away. "No other still living knows more of it than I. Pay my price, and I shall restore your precious machine."

The creature's words seemed to linger in the vox grill of Naid's helm, or perhaps his ears themselves. He'd seen the taint of the Warp-witch cults and sorcerers; even neverborn spawned from the Warp. This supposed Aeldar had far more in common with the demonic than it did with its fell race.

"Your price will be paid," he said. He glanced to the Death Watch marine. "What shall I call you, Astartes?"

"Astartes," came the laconic answer.

Arrogant ass. However well-deserved their reputations, Naid could not stand Astartes. To have one walking on Holy Terra was almost as offensive as the Xenos itself. The Emperor's so-called defenders of humanity had done their share to destroy it. The fact this one served his Order did not make it any more palatable. Even ten thousand years later, the High Lords of Terror did not let Astartes onto the world in any numbers.

The mission was too important to let his opinions influence his actions. "So be it. Come, we must be quick."

The Death Watch used his power sword to push the Xenos forward. It made no show of anger at being thus herded. Clutching a metallic staff it pulled from somewhere within its heavy robe, the creature began to slowly make its way across the port to where the matt-black Thunderhawk transport waited.

A Warhound-class Scout Titan stood near the Warhawk, its fourteen-meter height easily towering over the top of the Thunderhawk. Plasma blastguns tracked the slow-moving column, keeping the Xenos square in their sights.

Given his own extreme distaste, Naid couldn't help but feel a touch of pride at the unmoved, professional lines of his stormtroopers. His Lord Inquisitor recruited the men from one of the many regiments drawn from Terra itself, taking only the best, and then submitted them for the extensive extra training necessary to don the armor and hellguns of the Inquisitorial stormtroopers.

Despite the urgency of the Xenos' mission; despite the need that led them to commit what their fellows would almost certainly deem to be heresy most foul, he almost hoped the Xenos would try something just so his men would have the excuse needed to destroy the foul creature.

As if reading his mind, the creature released a gravelly sound—one might describe it as a chuckle, though a sound no other could take humor from.

Ahead, the outer level of Skitarii shed off from the sides of the stormtrooper column as they reached the loading ramp of the transport. Five storm troopers went first, forming a cordon from the rest of the ship, while the xenos and his Death Watch escort slowly made their way up the ramp. Naid came behind, followed by the rest of his kill team.

The ramp closed behind them, and at Naid's orders the craft was airborne before the last man even found his seat.

The space marine remained standing, held to the floor with magnetic locks and an iron will. The xenos folded into a crumpled sitting position also in the middle of the floor of the transport.

Naid found himself trying to see a hint of the creature's face, while at the same time hoping he could not. He caught only the hint of what looked like a jaw, only the jaw was metal, almost like a tech priest.

Using the auspex of his helm, Naid accessed the view screens of the transport. Despite the night, pilgrims filled every conceivable surface of the unending city that surrounded the Palace. It was only three weeks until Sanguinala, the Holy Day that celebrated the sacrifice of the Primarch Sanguinus in saving the Emperor from the Great Betrayer. Perhaps more than any other save the Emperor himself, Saint Sanguinus was venerated by the people of the Imperium.

They flew on, past massive cathedrals and basilicas; past the many hab units that were prevented from becoming full Hive Cities by their proximity to the Palace Gates. Untold billions of humans from all across the cosmos pressed together in an orgy of desperate faith so intense that one in five did not survive the experience.

Past massive arches that spanned the sky and chasms that seemed to plummet into the depths of the earth, the Thunderhawk flew until it reached a massive circular shaft, easily large enough to hold a Titan. The transport came to a horizontal stop before it began to drop into the well.

They continued dropping for five long minutes before the thrusters flared and brought the craft to a halt. According to his helm, they were now deep within Malliax Profundis, one of the poorest areas that shared the palace's continent.

The third and final kill team stood waiting for them at the mouth of one of the many tunnels that crisscrossed Terra. A small wheeled transport waited-sized to hold the Xenos only. The Astartes would have to walk.

From the midst of the kill team walked another servant of the cabal.

Edir Rathus did not bother to hide the robes of her Adepta, which hung off her stick-thin frame. She was not the master behind the Adeptus Astronomica's participation in this cabal, any more than Naid himself. Some dangers were too great for their masters, no matter the need.

However, she was placed higher in the cabal than Naid, and was a welcome sight to Naid after riding in close proximity to the enemy since she was, by the very nature of her adepta, a powerful psyker.

The woman didn't hesitate to walk right up to the Xenos. "Your payment has been gathered," she said. Her voice dripped with contempt. "One thousand menials for you to...entertain yourself. Know this, Xenos. If you fail to deliver on your promise, your death will last for days."

When the betrayal happened, it did so with such speed that not even Naid understood precisely what was happening. The creature moved far, far faster than any normal human. In one blink of an eye, it had a glowing green syringe in Rathus' neck.

"Traitorous xenos!" The Astartes bellowed in anger even as the psyker fell. His massive bolter guns, held in his hand like a pistol though any mortal man would have to cradle them like heavy rifles, spat death.

The Xenos ducked and moved with inhuman speed, blurring in Naid's auspex sites. The Astartes did not hesitate despite the line of stormtroopers that stood behind his target. The explosive bolts began to strike the stormtroopers, who being well trained but merely human were still trying to adjust to what happened.

Four were felled in the space of a heartbeat as the xenos bounced wildly around. "Kill it!" Naid cried.

The creature shed its heavy cloak, and in so doing Naid caught his first glimpse at the hellish xenos. Its limbs were thin bundles of tendon and skin stretched tightly over bone. Its back was twisted horribly, and from its spine more limbs extended in a fashion similar to that of the Tech priest, but with far more sinister purpose.

It moved so quickly that four more storm troopers fell, their throats sliced to the bone despite their armor woven gorgets. All the while the Astartes roared his rage as he continued to fire. Now all the other stormtroopers did as well, tracing a path of lasbolts across the walls of the chamber.

More stormtroopers fell as the beast somehow continued to elude their concentrated fire. It was above their heads, scrabbling along the wall like an insect.

So why were Naid's people still dying?

He locked eyes on the Astartes and felt his stomach drop. The Death Watch marine was not aiming his massive bolters at the creature at all. Though he roared and bellowed, his guns were in a line with the stormtroopers.

"The Astartes betrays us," he voxed on a closed circuit to his men. "Kill him!"

The surviving stormtroopers responded instantly, turning their hellguns onto the Astartes without any hesitation. The transhuman soldier fired until the first lasbolts struck his armor, then threw one of his bolter guns aside and charged forward with a chainsword.

Naid never stopped firing, not once. Rage stung his eyes as he saw first-hand why Astartes were both venerated and feared. The two and a half meter tall transhuman, easily weighing half a ton in his armor, barreled into the nearest formation of stormtroopers as if they were infants. His chainsword roared as he dealt death with an efficiency that left limbs flying and Naid stunned.

Worse was how quickly the Astartes moved. Despite Naid's continued firing, and the concentrated firing of the rest of his team, the transhuman soldier received only one hit out of fifty shots. Nor was the miserable hit ratio due to poor shooting. The marine was just that fast.

When he eliminated the squad nearest to him, he rolled away and opened up with his second bolter gun at those across the chamber. Naid motioned for two of his men to help him flank the marine, but that plan ended when the Xenos came down from the wall and gleefully cut one of the men's heads off entirely with a shining power knife that crackled in the gloom of the chamber.

Naid spun away from the creature and opened fire, hoping to drive it away.

Something hit him in the back. The blow sent his body flying until he slammed against a far wall hard enough to crack the lenses of his helmet. His display began flashing hazard and health warnings at him, but he didn't hurt. Not truly. The thought worried him; shouldn't a blow like that have hurt?

He tried to stand, but couldn't. It wasn't weakness, just an...absence. He could move his arms, though, and doing so pushed himself up off the filth-encrusted stone floor enough to turn himself over. One of his legs flopped over oddly, like a mass of jelly, but he couldn't think about that now.

Broken and with his mind reeling, Interrogator Naid Loche watched as the xenos and space marine quickly and efficiently wiped out three whole kill teams of storm troopers. The space marine did not do his work without injury-there were burn holes and chips on his armor, and blood flowed down his side, but the injuries didn't seem to slow him.

The Xenos showed no sign of injury at all as it scurried down a wall and used two of the arms on its spine to reach down, grab the last stormtrooper by her helmet, and (ignoring her horrified scream), snap her neck like so much cheap plastek.

Her body fell to the ground in an unmoving lump.

The xenos climbed down to the ground and stretched out its limbs-six of them, Naid saw now. Most ended in razor-sharp blades or sickening syringes. Two ended in something approximating digits. The creature slinked over to where the Astronomica psyker fell.

It leaned over, bending in unnatural ways as it gently caressed the woman's cheek. To Naid's increasing horror, he could hear her moaning in fear through his helmet vox grill.

"Oh dear, sweet child," the Xenos said. Its voice carried multiple tones, each somehow at odds with the other to create a chorus that grated on the mind. "I shall so enjoy tasting your sweet, delicious agony. I will feed on it for hours, perhaps days."

"Not days, Xenos. Not here. This is Terra; linger too long and you will be found. Already, my brother was found out on Luna."

The Astartes was blurring to Naid's eyes. The Interrogator blinked back tears and tried to focus, but a sudden wash of cold made his lenses fog for a moment before they compensated. In that one split second, the Astartes changed. Where before he saw a Death Watch of the Inquisitorius drawn from the space marines of Ultramar, now he saw something completely different.

Naid recognized the red armor; he recognized the serpent of flame eating it's own tail. How could he not? Every inquisitor, regardless of their Ordo, knew the armor and sigils of the Thousand Sons.

And with the changing shape of the figure's armor, Naid realized it was not even a Rubrik Marine he was looking at, but one of the Chaos Sorcerers. Here, on Holy Terra itself!

Cold, blood-red lenses turned and stared right at him. Naid tried reaching for his weapon, but he could not find it. Desperately, he reached down for his secondary laspistol, but he never had time to grasp it.

A massive hand gripped his chest and lifted him into the air. Naid's legs dangled useless, though he tried to strike the traitor Astartes' helmet as best he could. The blow was futile, as he knew it would be.

"You will tell me who else knew of this conspiracy," the sorcerer said.

"I will not."

"Foolish mortal," the traitor said. "I was not asking."

A massive gauntlet reached down and ripped Naid's helmet from its seal, exposing his head. Instead of hitting him, the marine removed his own helmet.

The face he saw was broad and huge, as only a transhuman's could be, but yet also starkly handsome. But what Naid's eyes locked on-what made his heart thud with a deep, primordial terror that went beyond just the certainty of his death-was the mark carved into the man's forehead.

It looked almost like a waxing crescent moon, if the upper left point had been melted into an odd, disconcerting wiggle. A circle sat carved in its midst. The skin within the carving had taken on almost a metallic sheen that glimmered like a star field. Looking at it, Naid could feel the air grow colder.

He stared at the Mark of Tzeentch, the Chaos God of sorcery and change.

"Yes," the sorcerer said, smiling without humor. "You see now, don't you? Your little prayers will not avail you, mortal."

Naid screamed for a long time, proving his killer was right.

~~Revelation~~

~~Revelation~~

The mortal's mind shattered, leaving memories and knowledge for the taking. Orobek looked back with contempt at the woman the Haemonculi was preparing for its entertainment.

"The Fabricator General knew of this plan, as well as an Inquisitor Lord and another Lord of Terra," he spoke aloud.

The Xenos Lord of Pain laughed gailey as he prepared a roughly made cross of old metal beams. "Of course! The machine-men have lost their knowledge as well as their souls. They have nothing left but to gasp in fear for the inevitable. The throne of your mighty Emperor fails, and there is naught you or they can do."

"He is no Emperor of mine!" Orobek snarled. "He betrayed us! We, his greatest sons!"

The Haemunculi glanced at his mark of corruption and made a twittering sound, akin to laughter. "All gods betray, sorcerer. It is in their nature."

Orobek glared his rage at the creature, but it ignored him to concentrate on its art. The mortal woman herself was not only still alive, but awake. She would remain awake the entire time as well, likely even after she should have died. Such was the skill of the Drukhari Lords of Pain.

Orobek did not care–he had done far worse. "Remember your task, Xenos. Enjoy yourself, draw them to you. Make this world tremble in fear as their holy day approaches. Take their eyes off me."

"Oh, they will tremble," the creature said as he began to lovingly cut into the silently screaming Inquisitor's doomed body.

Orobek turned and left the Haemunculi to his pleasures, moving back to the empty Thunderhawk. He stepped inside and used security codes gleaned from the dead Interrogator's brain to unlock the craft and activate its controls. It was a very tight fit in the cockpit, but he had far too long a journey to travel to risk it by foot.

While he bore the mark of Tzeentch, it was his lord Ahriman that he served, just like his brother who was lost trying to make this same approach through Luna.

"Something stirs on Holy Terra," Ahriman told him. "You are my strongest disciple, Orobek. Go to Terra, I know you will find a way. Find this creature-this potential that so angers the gods. Find it and kill it."

As Orobek flew the stolen Warhawk up out of the giant chimney, he thought of the Xeno's comment. All gods betray. For thousands of years, they have searched for a means of saving their brothers among the Thousand Sons.

The Emperor betrayed them. For their crime of trying to harness the Warp for the defense of the Imperium, they were betrayed. Even after ten thousand years, the dread memory of that day lingered in his mind. Like his master, he'd developed a palace within his mind to sort and store so many millennia of memory, but the memory of Prospero could not be contained.

The sons of Russ with their Wolfen abominations burned his beautiful world. They slaughtered his brothers among the Thousand Sons. It was their own Primarch, Magnus the Red, that at last saved them by bringing the surviving Thousand Sons and their city of Tizca into the warp.

The effort and the battle shattered their primarch and progenitor. In the warp, he changed to become the first demon among the Emperor's twenty primarch sons. But his own geneseed marines? Like Ahriman, Orobek had to watch as their brothers quickly began to mutate and be lost to the horrid powers of the Warp.

It was Ahriman who convinced Orobek and others to attempt a powerful spell to stop their brothers from mutating any further. The spell worked, after a fashion. The marines of the Thousand Sons stopped mutating. They stopped breathing. They stopped living entirely-but they never died. Instead, their bodies turned to dust and their souls were trapped within their armor. They became Rubric Marines, soulless machines of battle activating only when a psycher of their order required them to.

Against that great, terrible sin, Ahriman had been seeking a cure. Turning to the Lord of Change presented both their best hope, and a terrible danger. But there could be no reward without risk.

"For my brothers," the chaos sorcerer declared as he turned his vehicle west and pushed the turbo thrusters to full power.


*40K references:

The Vaults of Terra Series by Christ Wraight.

Thousand Suns Traitor Space Marines

Dark Eldar