Ciaphas Cain, God of Chaos: Part 2
"Let me get this straight." Grand Master Rothwyr Morvans intoned. "You were hopelessly outnumbered by a Nurglite Daemonic Host... right up until a newly-formed Greater Daemon of unknown allegiance appeared on the field of battle, blew off the head of the Greater Daemon of Nurgle with a warp-forged weapon bearing a vague resemblance to a Bolt Pistol, and then single-handedly massacred every last Nurglite-aligned Daemon Daemon then turned back to look at you, and then itself, put on a visible expression of surprise, and then vanished into the warp, leaving the planet largely free of the corrupting energies every daemon spreads. And immediately following its disappearance, your whole chapter heard a stifled scream of "FRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAK!" echo through the warp. Is all that true?"
"It was not a Greater Daemon." To any normal mortal's eyes, Grand Master Aidan Perdon was just as much of a pillar of unshakeable faith as he had been before the incident he was currently describing to the Protector of the Sanctum Sanctorum, but Rothwyr's gene-enhanced eyes could see the shock and disbelief in his eyes. Rothwyr could relate; he was struggling to believe the tale himself. "But other than that, yes. The tale is true."
"Not a Greater Daemon?"
"No." Were Aidan a mortal man, Rothwyr suspected he would've been shuddering in horror right about now. "It was something worse."
"Worse? The only Chaos-aligned warp-entity greater in power than a Greater Daemon is-"
"A God of Chaos."
Rothwyr turned to the new arrival; Kaldor Draigo, limping into the chamber, the tip of the Titansword pressing into the chamber's floor as he leaned on it the way an infirm mortal might lean on a crutch.
To say the Supreme Grand Master's extended foray into the Warp had been hard on him would be the understatement of the century. To survive, he'd had to sharpen his mind well beyond even the heightened limits of a typical Grey Knight, allowing his mortal body to atrophy as a result. When he'd returned to his chapter, he'd collapsed mere moments after stepping through the portal, and even now his mortal form was so clumsy and weak the Grey Knights would be better off granting the weakest member of the nearest PDF honorary status as a Grey Knight to stand in for him in any sort of physical combat. During an incident when an Ork WAAAGH! had stumbled across the Sanctum Sanctorum, the Supreme Grand Master had the misfortune of getting ambushed by a sneaky Snotling... and said Snotling had utterly dominated the close-quarters altercation that had followed, despite being armed with nothing but it's bare fists. But in battles of a psychic nature... Kaldor Draigo was invincible, able to deny and respond to whatever foul sorceries the Grey Knights' many foes threw his way with an ease that eclipsed even the strongest of Psykers, save perhaps the Emperor.
And, more relevant at this exact moment, his knowledge of the Immaterium was as unrivaled as his psychic might; nobody save Tzeench himself, and perhaps Magnus the Red, knew the Warp better than he did.
"So you can attest to the truth of Aidan's words?" Rothwyr asked.
Kaldor Draigo nodded solemly. "Moreover, I can attest to the identity of this newly-formed deity. Even if its appearance, its choice of weapons, and the alleged death of a certain arch-heretic mere days before this incident occurred weren't evidence enough, I have been peering into the Warp. I witnessed its awakening, and I could recognize the shape of its soul. This newly-minted Chaos God is none other than the Arch-heretic, Warmaster of Chaos, and alleged 'Liberator' Ciaphas Cain."
A long silence fell over the gathered Grey Knights as the Supreme Grand Master's proclamation sunk in. All present knew of the Black Commissar and the shockingly successful rebellion against the God-Emperor's realm that he had headed, though they had largely ignored it in favor of other threats, threats that were, admittedly, far more damaging to the stability of the Imperium and Materium alike. But now, the rebellion had grown to the point that their love for their 'Liberator' and faith in his vision and virtues had forged the arch-heretic into a fully-blown Warp Deity...
"And why would this arch-heretic turned nascent god see fit to physically manifest for the sole purpose of averting our demise?" Aidan finally asked.
"On that matter, I'm afraid I'm far less certain in my answers." Kaldor Draigo admitted. "The Cainite Protectorate's antipathy for the Lord of Pestilence and his followers is well known, and was by all indications shared by Cain himself. It's entirely possible the psychic Choir of your battle-host drew his warp-borne senses to you, and he opted to slaughter the Plague Lord's daemons and ensure your Brotherhood was spared from their depredations purely to spite the dark god. But still..."
"Better safe than soulless puppets of the Great Enemy. And while knowledge of the forces of Chaos is dangerous, so too is ignorance regarding a new foe." Rothwyr concluded, turning to one of the chapter serfs present. "Accompany Kaldor Draigo to the Librarium. The Grey Knights must learn everything they can about the nature of this new foe; his personality, his virtues and vices, and precisely what sort of vile heresy he has been getting up to following his brief foray into the mortal realm..."
"Okay, okay, okay." I babbled to myself, doing my level best not to focus on the swirling maelstrom of emotion made manifest all around me. "This might as well be happening to me," I repeated those seven words to myself like a vox-ghost trapped in a looping glitch, the repetitive sound of my own voice vaguely reassuring. I never thought of myself as someone who can be described as "liking the sound of their own voice", but for a bit the phrase was true of me anyway, at least in the literal sense.
Okay, so I'm a Chaos God. What now?
Well, first, I should probably shut the frak up and take a look around me, in case my incessant babbling drew the attention of something undesirable. I cast my 'gaze' around me, but nothing revealed itself in the maelstrom around me. All of a sudden, I found myself wishing for my aide Jurgen and his expertise in all things related to the Immaterium.
"No need to fear, Liberator. The only thing in the vicinity, besides yourself, is me. At least for the moment." My heart leapt with joy at the sound of my aide's voice. I spun on my heels... and my adulation promptly gave way to disappointment as I noticed several things about the Jurgen-look-alike.
One: He was a good half my size. Two: Jurgen doesn't call me 'Liberator', at least not out loud. Three: his face and his voice were all ever-so-slightly off.
"You're not him."
"If by 'him', you mean Jurgen, then no, I'm afraid I'm not." The impeccably dressed Jurgen look-alike informed me. "Jurgen is still alive in the mortal plane, and thus unavailable for summoning. Unless you'd like to rectify that."
"NO!" I shout, recoiling in disgust.
Not-Jurgen nodded in agreement. "As a Daemon formed from your essence, I figured as much. Anything else you need?"
For a second, I considered keeping this newly-formed Daemon as a replacement for my aide, but decided against it. I'd thoroughly pissed off Nurgle during my time as an unwitting leader of an impossibly successful Chaos Cult, and he was complacency and stagnation incarnate. As articulate and well-dressed as this Daemon was, leaning on him as a crutch meant taking the risk of inadvertently inviting far less pleasant company into my vicinity.
I shook my head. "No. Dismissed."
"Very well." Not-Jurgen said. And then the Daemon was gone. I couldn't help but feel a slight stab of regret at being alone once again. Even an Inquisitor's rather pointed inquiries would relieve the silence...
"CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIINNN!"
I swiveled around at the sound of another familiar - albeit FAR less welcome - voice, and found myself staring at none other than Inquisitor Karamazov, screaming at the top of his lungs and charging at me with a crackling power sword at full sprint.
I must say, even though he was now half my size, he was still frakking terrifying.
"Cain." A voice called, distantly. I ignored it, preoccupied as I was with running from yet another horror conjured from the dark depths of my memories.
"There's no need to be frightened, Cain." The voice calls out again. And again, I ignore it. It has to be something else my stupid frakking mortal brain conjured up, it can't be real, it can't be real-
"Then if I'm not real, then the same can be said of the beast on your tail, can it not?" The voice pointed out, its declaration bringing me to a stop. "All you have to do to banish them is acknowledge that."
For a long second, I just stand there, not sure whether this voice can be trusted or if it was trying to trick me. Slowly, carefully, I turned around, half-expecting to see a towering, slavering horror... and found myself having to look down at said slavering horror, on account of the fact that it only came up to my shoulders.
It was a genestealer. A tiny genestealer. The very same type of genestealer I'd slaughtered over a dozen of back on the Emeli's Gift, all those years ago.
I tilted my head downward, looked it straight in its unnatural eyes. "Dismissed," I told it. And sure enough, it vanished in an instant. For a long, long second, dead silence reigned.
And then, I burst out laughing.
Another slathering horror, again much smaller than it should be, appeared before me once again. "Dismissed!" I shouted at it, and it vanished once again. My laughter intensified as I began deliberately conjuring up worse and worse horrors, banishing them once again with increasingly hysterical cries of "DISMISSED!" that finally concluded in a miniaturized caricature of Gurug'ath, complete with the look of mortal terror he'd had on his face moments before I'd blasted it to smithereens.
"...thanks..." I wheezed out between peals of overjoyed laughter after the Gurug'ath imitator had been dismissed. As I'd soon learn, my form in the warp was dictated by my mind and will, which meant that I was still capable of running out of breath until I reminded myself I didn't need to breathe anymore.
"Consider it repayment for getting rid of that idiotic Inquisitor for me." The voice responded, far louder and closer this time, and my terror promptly returned with a vengeance. I turned back around, toward the distant, golden light that was leaking through the swirling mass of indescribable colors up ahead, slowly growing brighter... and the searing warmth that accompanied the light.
My mouth opened to speak, to grovel, to plead for forgiveness, to list my sins against this diety and plead for the consignment to blissful oblivion I'd earned... only to be cut off by the oddly nondescript human man who'd stepped out from that light.
"Don't. Just don't. It's bad enough my whole Imperium has thrown the whole 'secular kingdom' thing right out the window and started worshipping their atheist Emperor as their god. The last thing I need is one of my fellow gods doing the same." The Emperor of Mankind informed me, and I'm not ashamed to admit that I spent the next few seconds (at least insofar as seconds can even be a thing in the warp) staring at Him in slack-jawed shock.
AN: The long-awaited second part of Ciaphas Cain, God of Chaos is here! As is the Grey Knights' reaction to the way he saved their butts, and his inevitable encounter with the Emperor of Mankind. Or a part of Him, at least.
Oh, and on the subject of the Grey Knights, the fanon explanation for Kaldor Draigo somehow being able to survive in the Warp is one that's been bouncing around in my head for a while now. Basically, he only survived by allowing himself to fall victim to crippling overspecialization; thus, he can bring an Incinerator to a fistfight with a Snotling and still get utterly demolished by said snotling, but in a psychic duel nothing short of Tzeentch himself can beat him. Doesn't exactly line up with Matt Wald's canon, but I doubt anyone'll raise a fuss about that.