Slowly, but with gathering momentum, Cassandron pulled itself away from the abyss it had so nearly plummeted into due to Hash'ak'gik's schemes.
With the fall of their infernal master, the Broodspawns lost their daemonic allies as well as their preternatural coordination. They reverted to the bestial mindset the Covens were used to, and to which their tactics and weaponry were well-suited. One by one, the Nergalite uprisings were put down, and one by one, the hive-cities of Cassandron called to their sisters and declared themselves victorious. The surviving Broodspawns fled back to the depths from which they'd risen, pursued by an army of wrathful hunters, but while many would be tracked down and slain in the coming weeks, few dared to hope that the scourge of Nergal's Brood would be wiped out completely.
Meanwhile, through the wonders of the ansible network, the population of Slawkenberg had been informed of the operations ongoing on Cassandron nearly in real-time, the only delay being caused by the Liberation Council needing to ensure the news were safe for public consumption. As past experience had shown, the Rotten One could spread his poison through even the most innocuous of knowledge, and Chief Clerk Jafar had also been told to keep the nature of the Covens a secret for now, as per the Vampires' request. No outright lie would be told to the masses, for such deceit was the way of the Imperium, but state secrets were still an accepted part of life in the Protectorate.
While the ansibles delivered a treasure trove of information, the divination rites of the Tzeentchian and Slaaneshi magi revealed even more. They knew that the Liberator had not just defeated a Daemon Prince of hated Nurgle with his allies, but faced the God of Decay himself when he had briefly shown himself to threaten Cain with his terrible vengeance. And while they were awed, they weren't surprised : to them, this was simply further confirmation of their glorious leader's greatness.
Soon, the news spread across Slawkenberg, and celebrations began immediately. In the temples of the various creeds, prayers of thanks were given for the Liberator's triumph over the hated Rotten One, while alcohol flowed in taverns and soldiers whose units hadn't been selected to accompany Cain commiserated over their having missed the action at Cassandron before throwing themselves back into training with renewed vigor. In the church of the God-Emperor in Cainopolis, Father Anthony knelt before the stone statue of the Master of Mankind and silently prayed for the Liberator's safety.
And, in the chambers of the Liberation Palace, where only those who were most trusted by the royal-in-all-but-name family of Slawkenberg were allowed, one girl who was much more than she seemed clutched her father's old cape and vowed that one day, she'd stand by his side as he fought against the galaxy's evils.
If there is one good thing about fighting a Daemon Prince of Nurgle before enduring the scrutiny of the Rotten One himself, it is that, in the vanishingly unlikely case you survive, nobody will think less of you when you ask to rest afterwards, regardless of the reputation you've unwittingly accrued.
And I definitely needed rest, that much was blatantly obvious. Black spots danced in my vision, and no amount of recaf could banish the bones-deep exhaustion that had crept up on me with the inevitability of the sun setting on any world that wasn't Adumbria.
Facing off against Nurgle, even that small, infinitesimal fragment which had been visible through the rift to the Warp, had been enough to give me enough heart attacks and other ailments that the Liberator Armor's supply of Panacea had been completely empty by the time the opening had mercifully shut. One more second, and the others would have needed to pry my twitching, dying form out of the armor and inject me with their own stock before I succumbed – if I was lucky.
Much as I didn't want to dwell on how close I'd come to death, the whole incident was a sobering reminder of just how powerful the Dark God I had somehow ended up declaring the enemy of the Protectorate really was – not that I had really forgotten, despite my best efforts to the contrary. Still, looking back, I couldn't say I would change that if I could : the Liberation Council's shared hatred of the God of Decay had done a lot to keep my so-called subordinates from turning on one another (and more importantly on me), as well as provided a target other than the Imperium.
Of course, that wasn't how my companions had seen it. In their eyes, I had bravely put myself between Hash'ak'gik and our two witches, then punched the Daemon Prince back into the Empyrean before shooting Nurgle himself in the face after talking back to him. How people who had demonstrated their skills and intellect could be so stupid when it came to me, I still had no idea.
Jurgen, Areelu and even Hektor had ended up having to give blood to our Vampire allies to keep them standing once the dust had settled on the bone temple. Akivasha especially had drained her reserves badly in the fight against Hash'ak'gik, as she'd needed to use every trick she'd learned during her long life to match the Thrice-Damned. While there was something obscurely reassuring in the knowledge that she couldn't pull those kinds of moves for long, it was clear my hopes of winning through attrition had been foolish, which I really should have known from the start given we were fighting a Daemon Prince of Nurgle.
She also hadn't looked very pleased when she'd drunk from the others, sending glances in my direction – but it was clear I wasn't in any state to give blood, and she hadn't pressed the matter.
I'd been worried we would be stuck underground for days (something I'd have been more or less comfortable in other circumstances, but not in such a state and with such thirsty company). But Harold and Tesilon-Kappa had come down from orbit to lead the rescue efforts in person and between the Tzeentchian magi's divination rituals, the chief borg's engineering skills, and me leading our party out of the bone temple and up the passages the Nergalites had used to navigate their subterranean kingdom, they had been able to dig their way down to us in just a few hours.
Within moments of my return to Hive Primus, Jurgen had passed along a request for a meeting from the ambassador of every one of the six other Covens. Not in the mood to receive them all one by one, I had summoned them all together in a room provided by Vlad, with the Regent himself in attendance, along with his wife Isabella and Akivasha herself. I hadn't tried to conceal my exhaustion, which had helped ensure that the meeting hadn't gotten bogged down, as nobody present was willing to risk drawing my ire by keeping me awake longer than absolutely necessary.
The end result of the meeting was a set of two separate treaties. One of them, which would be made public, was that Cassandron would join the Protectorate, in return for access to the Panacea STC and the borgs' help in solving the hive-world's food supply issue. That meant allowing the heretical faiths of the Liberation Council to start proselytizing, as well as beginning reforms to bring the hive-world in compliance with the standards of the Liberation when it came to the treatment of the lower classes – a process I was confident would take decades, even if the Covens cooperated fully, which in my opinion was far from guaranteed.
The other treaty was between the Protectorate and the Covens themselves, and would remain a state secret until the Vampires felt comfortable revealing their existence. There was an entire section left to be determined about who exactly would be told of the blood-drinking mutants' existence, but that was for the bureaucrats to hash out later. The meat of the treaty, and the one which worried me the most, was that each Coven had pledged a contingent of Vampire warriors to accompany me when the fleet left Cassandron and went back to fighting pirates (which, after the nightmare that this supposedly tranquil detour to help prevent mass starvation had been, a perverse part of me couldn't help but look forward to).
Since we'd have to feed these Vampires, I had asked that the Covens only send us the most elite of the warriors they could spare, making up some story about wanting to show the galaxy only the best of our new allies to pave the ground for their eventual reveal. How exactly were these Vampires supposed to fight without breaking the very secrecy which the Covens had asked for in the treaties wasn't clear to me : I presumed we would have to pretend they were all a very specific kind of psyker, or that their equipment was much more advanced than it appeared. But, to be honest, I was too exhausted to think about it as much as the question probably warranted.
Each Vampire group would be accompanied by a PDF detachment, taken from whatever passed for the elite of their respective hive-cities. I didn't have high hopes for the soldiers : they weren't bad for PDFs, but their equipment was undeniably inferior to that of the USA. Still, a few thousands more bodies to put between myself and the pirates of the Torredon Gap were always welcome, and we had more than enough space to accommodate them aboard the fleet.
At some point during the discussions, Jon Skellan had said his goodbyes, slipped outside and gone back to his family in the underhive with his brand new armor and weapons, leaving the spires and the Volkihar Coven's high-ranking business behind – thus proving himself to be the smartest man I had met since leaving the Schola Progenium. I wished I could follow him and disappear in the underhive as well, but alas, that path was closed to me. All I could do was shake his hands as he left and wish him and his family all the best.
With all the urgent business I could think of handled or handed off to someone else, I finally let myself be dragged to a room provided by the Volkihar servants by a fussing Jurgen and put to bed. In my state of exhaustion, I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. My last thought before unconsciousness claimed me was that I was pretty certain the Emperor would approve of what I'd done on Cassandron.
Yes, I'd allied myself with a race of blood-drinking mutants, but I'd done it to fight a Nurglite plague which might well have equalled the one that'd brewed on Adumbria in terms of how dangerous to the Imperium it might become. Surely me doing the job His servants were apparently too busy to do and striking a blow against the schemes of one of the Ruinous Powers had to count for something.
The spires of Hive Primus were abuzz with activity. Though the Brood of Nergal had been put down, the rulers of Cassandron still needed to deal with the aftermath. There were entire sections of the hives in need of cleansing, and the total death toll had yet to been fully tallied, while Vampires who had displayed their prowess in battle immediately started capitalizing on their exploits to increase their status in the Covens' endless struggle for dominance.
At the moment, however, Isabella Volkihar didn't care about the thousand plots and schemes which kept the wheels of Vampire society turning. All she cared about was that her beloved husband had come back from what, despite all the confidence everyone involved had shown, they'd both been afraid would prove to be a suicide mission.
The married couple sat on an embroidered couch, resting against each other, their fingers intertwined in their laps. Their personal quarters were located near the top of Hive Primus' highest spire, near the ones reserved for the human Governor. Much of the space was taken up by art pieces they'd collected over the centuries, with the centerpiece being a painting of the day of their wedding, where they'd both stood under the sun in a display of their mastery of the Defiance Talent.
With mirrors no longer reflecting their image, that painting was even more important to the two Vampires than it would've been to a human couple – though it was far from being the only portrait either of them had commissioned over the centuries.
"You should have seen him, dear," said Vlad. "He charged straight at that monster, without hesitation, while the rest of us – yes, even Lady Akivasha ! – were frozen in place."
Isabella smiled at her husband's enthusiasm as he continued to recount the tale of his adventure. Now that it was over, she could enjoy the story, but from the moment Vlad had vanished in a flash of unearthly light as the teleportation ritual was completed to when she'd been informed the attack party had succeeded without a single casualty, she had been a veritable ball of nerves. Things had gotten to the point she'd given genuine consideration to joining the fray herself : while she wasn't a soldier like her husband, she knew how to use her Talents to defend herself.
Fortunately, victory had come before she'd gone that far, and now Vlad was back where he belonged : at her side. Still, there was no denying that things would change on Cassandron in the coming nights, no matter how much Vampiric nature, even more so than the Human one, rejected changes to its established routine and familiar patterns.
After the last war against the Broodspawns, the Covens had managed to maintain their cover by swearing the soldiers involved to secrecy, through a combination of threats, bribery and Mesmerism. Few enough had survived the scourging of Hive Septimus that this had been a viable option, especially with the promise of Turning dangled before the worthiest survivors – such as Isabella's dear husband. The Nergalite attacks across the planet had been blamed on a mutant uprising, and the truth of their daemonic allegiance kept secret.
That option wasn't viable this time, as the infernal allies of the Brood had been sighted at their side all over the hive-world. Nearly every PDF soldier who'd seen action in the last few days had also seen a daemon of Nergal (or Nurgle, but honestly, who cared).
Which, according to their Protectorate allies, was going to be an ongoing problem, as the human mind was a fragile thing, and such contact with the minions of Decay could leave lingering wounds – wounds which, if left untreated, would fester and become a seedbed for corruption. Fortunately, the Slawkenberg magi also had a series of tests and treatments to share, based on their own encounters with the servants of the Dark God of Decay.
Which brought things back to how things would have to change if Cassandron was to survive, let alone prosper. In the interests of keeping their existence hidden from the rest of the Imperium, the Covens had learned more about the Inquisition than most – certainly more than the Holy Ordos would be comfortable with if they knew about it.
And if the Emperor's hunting hounds ever learned that a Daemon Prince had manifested on Cassandron, however briefly, while the PDF fought a combined mutant and daemonic horde, it was almost guaranteed that they would subject the planet to Exterminatus. The very knowledge of the existence of daemons was ground for summary execution in the Inquisition's eyes, after all. Isabella had read reports of entire Imperial Guard Regiments being wiped out after successful operations against the forces of the Ruinous Powers, with their very existence and legacy being burned from the Imperial records to conceal the truth.
What had happened on Cassandron was several magnitudes worse, and it was clear from talking with the Protectorate's magi (as well as the few psykers kept in the Covens' personal employ, just to double-check – not that Isabella doubted the word of their stalwart allies, of course) that there would be no hiding the fact that a daemon incursion had nearly taken place on Cassandron. The psychic resonance of Hash'ak'gik's summoning and defeat, as well as whatever it was that'd happened right after (Vlad had tried to describe it to Isabella, but for once, words had failed her husband, and when she'd seen how distressed the mere recollection of it was making him, she hadn't pressed him) had echoed in the Immaterium with enough force that not even the Warp storms shrouding much of Torredon would prevent it from being detected by the Imperium.
Even in the miraculous case that Cassandron was judged clean of daemonic taint without requiring purging on a level that would effectively destroy the planet's economy, such a judgment would only come at the end of a prolonged investigation which was sure to discover the Covens' existence. Keeping the peons from discovering the truth about their secret masters was already going to be difficult enough with all the PDF soldiers who'd directly witnessed the use of Talents against the Broodspawns : the Covens were under no illusion their millennia-long masquerade would withstand the close scrutiny of the Holy Ordos.
Thus, it was clear that the Covens' best chances of long-term survival laid in binding their fate with that of the Cainite Protectorate and ensuring the rest of the Torredon Subsector followed suit. Hopefully, the Imperium would remain too preoccupied by the many other threats besieging the Damocles Gulf to spare the enormous amount of resources that would be required in reclaiming the Torredon Gap.
In the meantime, the benefits to Cassandron were obvious, immediate, and considerable. The distribution of nutrient paste to the population had already started, as had the construction of new recycling machines in every hive. These would prevent the mass starvation that had loomed over the hive-world's horizon since the collapse of Torredon's trade, and the Cainite tech-priests were already working with Cassandron's own Martian adepts to improve and expand the few gardens and other 'natural' food production facilities present on the planet.
Along with foodstuffs, the Protectorate had also brought the wonders of the Panacea with them. Freely shared with the PDF, the miraculous substance had saved the lives of thousands of soldiers wounded in battle with the Brood of Nergal : not only could it heal all wounds, it could even prevent the contagion from taking root – although only if it was injected soon enough, and even then, it wasn't a sure thing, for the curse of the Broodspawns was no mere disease.
Not for the first time, and certainly not the last, Isabella wondered how much of this had been planned by Cain. She didn't think the Liberator had somehow orchestrated the rise of the Broodspawns and Hash'ak'gik's return : his opposition to the Brood's foul deity was too firmly established for that to be the case. The idea of a false flag operation was utterly ludicrous : regardless of Cain's favor with the Dark Gods, the notion that one of them would play along to such a scheme was unthinkable, even with Isabella's limited knowledge and understanding of the Ruinous Powers.
But the possibility that Cain had learned of the Thrice-Damned's machinations was another matter entirely. Isabella had already suspected that the Warmaster had known of the threat to Cassandron in advance, and events since had only reinforced her suspicions. Even if the man himself didn't possess oracular abilities (which was far from certain), he had people like Sieur Harold in his employ who most assuredly did, and could have given him forewarning.
In all the years she'd spent wandering the galaxy, first as a grieving, vengeful mother, then as the Rogue Trader of the Van Yastobaal Dynasty and a secret heretic, Areelu had never fought a battle like the one she'd just survived.
She'd come face to face with daemons before, but those had been lesser aspects of the Ruinous Powers. Horrifying to the common folk, yes, and disturbing even to her, but dispatched easily enough through precise spellwork – or, barring that, the application of overwhelming firepower.
Hash'ak'gik had been something else entirely. The thought that the monster they had fought had once been human, before becoming first a Vampire and then a Daemon Prince, was one Areelu still struggled to fully comprehend. Her knowledge of the Warp only made her more aware of the seeming impossibility of such a transformation, even though she knew it had happened numerous times before, as the Dark Gods rewarded their most successful champions with apotheosis – both so that they would continue to serve them forever in the Great Game and, the Rogue Trader suspected, as a lure to draw other ambitious souls to dedicate themselves to the Ruinous Powers with the promise of immortality and eternal power.
"Tell me, Suture," Areelu addressed the tall, armored giant who stood next to the door, ever-vigilant. "Have you ever seen someone akin to our dear Warmaster ?"
In her experience, extracting information about Suture's past before coming into her service was like pulling teeth out of a grox during mating season, but the scarred Astartes could be coaxed into sharing pearls of wisdom from time to time that, while never revealing anything about his own history, hinted at a long and eventful life.
"A few times," replied Suture. "Rarely among standard humans, though. It takes a particular kind of hubris to walk the tightrope he's merrily dancing on."
Areelu raised an eyebrow at her transhuman protector's choice of words, and gestured for him to elaborate.
"He has the favor of three of the Four, and after today's events, I think it's safe to say he also has the eternal enmity of the fourth," Suture explained. "That's a dangerous path to walk. Cain isn't the first to try to balance the favor of the Dark Gods to his advantage. Many have tried before him, and apart from Abaddon himself, they've all either died or ended up serving one of the Four above the others. And I'm not convinced the Despoiler won't go the same way as all the others eventually – he's just too big a prize for the Dark Gods to let any of the others win him over."
"Cain only has to balance between three, though," Areelu pointed out.
"Yes, and as I said, every servant of Nurgle in the Segmentum will be gunning for him because of that," countered Suture. "Setting up a bidding war between the gods for your soul sounds nice in theory, but the danger is that you have to keep being worth the effort on their part. The Gods will test him, tempt him, and if he fails or stumbles at any point, they will destroy him, completely and utterly, as an object lesson to the next bright spark who gets the same idea in their head. It is their way, and they will not change."
"What Cain and this Protectorate of his have achieved is remarkable," Suture allowed. "And his bravery and strength are undeniable – even with that armor of his, I don't know of many Astartes who could have challenged Hash'ak'gik like he did. But might alone isn't enough to keep the Gods satisfied, and that's not taking the Imperium into account. Liberating Slawkenberg was one thing; saving Adumbria from certain death another. But stealing an entire Subsector, even one the High Lords had given up on ? When they finally hear about it, there will be a reaction, you can bet on it."
It was all true. There was a reason Areelu valued Suture for more than his martial prowess : his advice was brutally pragmatic, and he never hesitated to give it to her, even when he knew it wasn't what she wanted to hear. In the life of a Rogue Trader, such honesty could be more valuable than adamantium, and it had helped save Areelu's life several times in the past.
And yet, this time, Areelu knew she couldn't heed the unspoken warning hidden under her bodyguard's words.
"I owe him," Areelu murmured. "He saved Lucia."
She had called her daughter over the vox, once before joining Cain on the expedition to Hive Septimus, and once again right after returning to Hive Primus. She hadn't told her beloved child what was going on, of course – she didn't want to scare her, if only because Worldwounder might not have survived Lucia panicking without her mother being her to calm her down.
"He didn't ask for anything in exchange," Suture pointed out, having heard her words without issue thanks to his superhuman hearing.
"And ? Should I merely accept his generosity and not do anything to repay it ?" Areelu snapped back. "I think not. Even before I seized the Warrant of Trade over the corpses of all other claimants, I made a point of keeping my word and paying back my debt. And the debt I owe Cain is more than I can ever repay, because he saved my daughter's life."
Suture inclined his head, saying nothing. The bond between parent and child was one that few Space Marines could understand, Areelu knew. Most of them forgot their childhood during the psycho-indoctrination which turned strong, healthy male children into transhuman killing machines fanatically loyal to their Chapter, and the closest thing an Astartes could claim to a father figure were the Primarchs, who had long since vanished from the galaxy – and, based on what Areelu had parsed from the legends, hadn't exactly been shining examples of parenthood while they'd been around either.
"I promised to assist the Protectorate in liberating the Torredon Gap from the shadow cartels, and I will keep that promise," the Rogue Trader said, more calmly. "Once that's done, if we're still alive, then it will be time to consider what form our alliance with the Protectorate will take. But there will be an alliance, Suture, you can be sure of that."
"As you say, Rogue Trader. As you say."
In a way, Areelu reflected, she really had become a Rogue Trader : she was putting the interests of the Van Yastobaal Dynasty over everything else. It was just that, in her case, her Dynasty was limited to herself and Lucia, her daughter and heir.
And, yes, some of her distant relatives might argue with her about that due to her areas of research and the company she kept. But they weren't the ones with the Warrant.
Sat on her throne, Akivasha Volkihar, Ancient and Paragon of her Coven, contemplated recent events. Sensing her mood, the younger Vampires had deserted the room, leaving her alone to think.
So few of her peers remained now. Not even immortality could last forever, she had learned : she'd lost her contemporaries one by one to war, treachery, suicide, and endless slumber. Yet somehow, against all the odds – she certainly wouldn't have bet on it herself all these ages ago – she endured.
Akivasha was old, older than the Warp storms which had defined the Gap since the Imperium had claimed it. Her memory of that time were distant, obscured by the fog of ages. She remembered a war that had left scars across the entire Torredon Gap, glimpses of battles that made the Broodspawn uprising look like a minor skirmish in comparison.
For all his many mistakes, Hash'ak'gik had been correct in one thing : back then, she had indeed been Turned because of her beauty, by one of the First Generation Vampires looking for a companion. But, like everyone else, she'd been forced to learn to fight in order to survive, and come into her Talents in an age of war and strife that had consumed all that had come before.
None of the First Generation remained now. They had been targeted by the enemy above all others, Akivasha remembered that much. Her own Maker had died saving her life and the lives of millions, buying time for … for something. She didn't remember what exactly, just like she only had the faintest impressions of her Maker left. She knew they had loved her, and presumably she had loved them as well, but little else – not even their name.
The Covens believed that the Ancients kept the truth of the Vampires' origins from them as a means of control, but they were mistaken. The truth was, the Ancients didn't want their descendants to realize just how much they no longer remembered, out of both shame that they'd forgotten something so important, and fear that their children's children would turn on them when they realized their Vampire parents were as fallible as their Human ones after all.
Even the present became difficult to hold onto after long enough. The years faded into one another, and the hour of a Governor's coronation seemed to happen right at the same time as his period of mourning. When Akivasha had last gone into slumber, she'd struggled to distinguish the centuries that had passed since the fall of the Ruthven Coven – that one event, at last, had inscribed itself into her memory.
But now, the fog had lifted. She was fully aware of her surroundings, of the last few days, and when she thought of the future, it didn't stretch out in her mind's eye in an endless repeat of the past.
In fighting the Thrice-Damned, Akivasha had felt alive for the first time in millennia. She had been pushed to her absolute limits, and had been found wanting : if not for the sorcerous intervention of her allies, the Thrice-Damned would have destroyed her there and then.
Despite the danger, despite how close she had come to true, final death, it had been … exhilarating. And that battle had only been the latest apex of her new lease on life, which had begun right when she'd awakened in her sarcophagus, driven out of her torpor by the Liberator's vitae dripping down from where he fought the Broodspawns.
Cain's blood had tasted achingly familiar, and it was that fact as much as the strength contained within the crimson liquid which had awakened Akivasha. She remembered a time when every human on Cassandron had possessed similar vitae, healthy and clean of any taint or pollution.
This was the true reason why the Ancients slept while the Regents ruled, beyond sheer boredom : the thin blood of Cassandron's current inhabitants simply couldn't sustain them. Awakening them from their slumber required days of work, distilling the blood of hundreds of people in order to produce something potent enough, and the same was required to keep them fed afterwards. It wasn't sustainable, not without the risk of drawing attention as thousands disappeared to feed the Ancients.
With the Protectorate freely sharing the secrets of the Panacea, and the borgs working with the tech-priests of Cassandron to draw plans to build up their meagre depollution efforts, that might change. Once the human population was healthier, perhaps Akivasha's peers would be able to remain awake for longer : the impact this would have on the Covens was difficult to predict. But even then, Cain's blood would remain a rarity : the touch of the Panacea lingered in it from frequent use, no doubt a result of how often he threw himself into danger, or from training his body to the point of breaking.
And soon, that blood would be beyond her reach, as Cain left Cassandron to continue his campaign across the rest of the Subsector. Even with the new treaties binding the hive-world to the Protectorate, it would be years, if not decades, before Cain returned to the planet – decades before Akivasha could taste that particular blood again, and the very idea was nigh-on unbearable to the Ancient.
Part of her wanted to compel Cain to stay at her side, but she knew it was impossible. Not only had the Liberator resisted her Mesmerism right after she'd awakened, but his allies were sure to act to stop her, and not even she could be sure to survive the mayhem that would ensue.
But there was another option, one that became more and more tempting every time her thoughts circled back to it. For the first time in her millennia of life, she could leave Cassandron. She could go with Cain, follow him in his war against the shadow cartels and beyond. He had witnessed her prowess against the Thrice-Damned with his own eyes : surely he'd jump at the chance to keep him at his side, even if it meant letting her drink his blood from time to time.
As for Hive Primus, Vlad was more than capable of managing the Volkihar Coven without her. He had done so for hundreds of years while she slumbered, after all. And while the possibility of awakening her had helped maintain the balance with the other Covens, the Volkihar had other Ancients, and the balance was going to be completely upset by their alliance with the Protectorate anyway. If anything, her being close to the Liberator would reinforce Vlad's position, would make it clear that the Volkihar were the ones who had engineered the alliance which had saved Cassandron.
Yes, Akivasha decided. In the morning, once Cain had recovered, she would go meet him, and announce her intent to join the other Vampires who would follow him into the stars.
Just as victory had been achieved on Cassandron, but its aftermath was still being handled, in the Realms of Chaos, Emeli's work was not yet done. Sat upon a throne made of the prayers and offerings of every citizen of Slawkenberg who'd ever bowed before an icon of her, the Daemon Princess of Slaanesh directed her minions as they scoured the aether, extracting the lost souls of the dead and bringing them to her.
Although the Broodspawn uprising on Cassandron had been swiftly crushed by her beloved and his allies, it had still claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of hivers. A small fraction of the hive-world's population, yes, but each and every soul lost to the Brood was one more with which Nurgle could fuel his next plot against Ciaphas, and that couldn't be tolerated. So Emeli had set her minions to work harvesting the newly dead, whose souls shone with the dark light of their final moments' pain and terror. There was a distinct quality to the spirits of those who'd been touched by the Nergalite plague in their last moments, which made it easier to find them in the churning seas of the Immaterium.
That the daemons of Nurgle had been able to manifest on Cassandron at all was testament to the level of involvement of the Grandfather. The Warp storms of the Subsector were special in that they made daemonic incursion more difficult instead of easier, but Nurgle had brute-forced the issue by pouring power into his pawn Hash'ak'gik – power which had completely vanished once Ciaphas had sent the Thrice-Damned back into the Empyrean, leaving him completely vulnerable to Emeli.
By the time Emeli was done trapping the fallen Nurglite Daemon Prince in a labyrinth made from countless hivers' nightmares of being hunted by faceless horrors in the darkened tunnels of their homes, her servants had gathered nearly every such soul.
Usually, Emeli would simply have devoured the souls thus acquired, or handed them to her daemonic servants to feed upon so that they might grow stronger and serve her better. But Ciaphas' words after defeating Armand – for he no longer had the right to bear the name of Hash'ak'gik, not after his defeat and abandonment by Nurgle, and with that name had gone his power – had given her another idea. Instead, she had gathered all the souls she'd recovered and placed them in what, to a mortal mind lucky enough to gaze upon her slice of the Dark Prince's Realm, would have looked like a glowing orb.
Inside, the spirits of the dead Broodspawns and their victims were kept safe from torment and dissolution. The orb shone like a lamp with the sheer relief that their torments were at last ended, and they sang their thanks to Emeli, who they knew only as the one who'd rescued them from a most grim fate in the Garden of Nurgle. The positive emotion created a feedback loop in the sphere, keeping the souls happy and the orb radiant.
Honest gratitude was a rare emotion in the Empyrean, and while less powerful than the heights of agony and ecstasy to which the Slaaneshi damned were usually subjected, Emeli felt as if she could extract it from the souls of Cassandron's dead indefinitely. The memory of her skin tingled at the light's touch, the sensation just on the right side of painful for the Daemon Princess of Excess. It paired deliciously with the screams coming from the various prisons of Karamazov, Vileheart and Armand.
Emeli sighed in mixed delight and longing, her thoughts inevitably turning from her latest acquisition to her beloved. Once again, dear Ciaphas had proven himself worthy of all her love, and shown that he was well on his way to joining her in the Empyrean for all eternity. How else could his steadfast defiance in the face of even a fragment of the God of Decay's attention be explained ? The souls of lesser mortals had been obliterated by such an awful vision, and while Emeli had done all she could to prevent the Grandfather from exerting as much of his influence as he could in the effort, she was still only a Daemon Princess.
The temptation was there to simply let go of the flow of linear time, to embrace the Warp's timelessness so that her beloved could be at her side without all these years of painful waiting and separation, with only brief interludes of union thanks to faithful Krystabel's service. But, for all that giving in to temptation would be a very Slaaneshi thing to do, the anticipation of each such reunions made them all the sweeter, and once Ciaphas joined her in eternity, such simple joys would be beyond her reach forevermore.
So Emeli would savor the pleasures of the moment, and take steps to ensure the ones she dreamt of would come to pass.
The Externus Exterminatus, personal starship of Inquisitor Amberley Vail, sailed through the Sea of Souls, its prow sending waves as it ploughed through the tides of the Empyrean.
Journeying through the Warp was always a perilous endeavour, even with the protection of a Geller Field and the best Navigator and enginseers influence could procure – and Amberley had a lot of both these days, and wasn't shy about using it. But this particular journey, though it had started relatively well, had nearly ended in catastrophe when the ship had been struck by the psychic shock of some distant phenomenon which had carried across the Empyrean and slammed against the Externus Exterminatus' protective bubble of reality like a tidal wave against a cliff.
Whatever had happened, every astropath aboard the vessel had sensed it, and it had taken every bit of the Navigator's skill to avoid being cast adrift by the disturbance – especially since, according to the three-eyed mutant, it had seemed particularly drawn to their ship for some reason ('as if there was a resonance or symbolic link', the Navigator had managed to describe it in Amberley's brief chat with him over the vox before he'd needed to return his full focus to his task).
They had been lucky in the end : only half of the astropathic choir had succumbed to the strain, their bodies melting in their communion thrones into piles of vile goop which had needed to be purged with holy flamers. But all of the survivors had needed to be taken to the medicae for treatment, with generous injections of Panacea being the only thing which had kept them from succumbing to the numerous plagues which had suddenly manifested within their frail bodies.
The fact that all astropaths had suffered was very concerning, as were the two words the survivors had managed to make out : 'Cain' and 'Inevitable'. And that had made Amberley darkly suspicious of what the 'resonance' the Navigator had mentioned might be, for her path had crossed that of the Liberator years ago, and that meeting had dramatically changed the course of her life ever since.
Tracking the origin of the disturbance had been difficult, but eventually, the astropaths had identified it as coming from the Torredon Subsector. Amberley was familiar with the name, of course, as well as the recent changes in the region.
There was no denying that stripping the Torredon Subsector of all its Navy assets had prevented a major disaster at Simia Orichalcae. With the information available at the time, Amberley was confident she'd have made the same decision as Inquisitor Lorquai. But she'd known the consequences would come back to haunt the Imperium eventually – just like Lorquai herself doubtlessly had when she had made the call. What she hadn't expected was that Cain would be involved.
When Amberley had met the Liberator of Slawkenberg, he hadn't struck her as a Warp-frothing lunatic, ready to unleash catastrophic forces into the Materium in the pursuit of his ambitions. But for all that he'd looked and sounded reasonable (except when he'd brazenly declared his intent to wage war against the Chaos God Nurgle himself) Cain was still a heretic and enemy of the Imperium, who had made unholy alliances with the denizens of the Empyrean.
Throne, Amberley had seen the Black Commissar call forth a lesser manifestation of a Daemon Princess with her mortal name and an offering of Drukhari souls.
(Black Commissar – what a ridiculous title. Had the Munitorum forgotten that every Commissar wore black as part of their uniform ? It honestly wouldn't surprise her, given the kind of incompetence Zyvan always complained about when the two of them met to discuss the business of the Panacea Cabal. Even now, with the STC safely in the Adeptus Custodes' hands and copies of the technology spreading every further in the Ultima Segmentum, the circle of allies she'd created after her 'escape' remained in close contact, their coordination helping to keep the Sector afloat.)
She sighed. She needed more information. If Cain was in Torredon, then that meant he had expanded his ambitions beyond Slawkenberg itself. The road his forces had taken to get to the Subsector had to be found, quickly, to identify which other systems might be in danger. Once the astropaths recovered, she would have them send messages to her contacts in the Gulf, but until then, there was one other source she could consult.
"Tell me what's wrong, Rakel," said Amberley as gently as she could. "Tell me what you hear."
The Inquisitor's psyker was huddled on her bed, inside her room aboard the Externus Exterminatus. She had stayed inside since the disturbance, with other members of Amberley's retinue bringing her meals at regular intervals (the regular crew of the ship were scared to get anywhere near her room at the best of times, let alone now).
"The voices are screaming," she moaned. "A thousand thousand voices, howling as one. Fear and shock and exaltation, a chorus of ruin !"
"What do the voices say ?" asked the Inquisitor, bracing herself. Even at a remote, the predications of the Warp were not to be faced slightly.
"Praises and curses, laughter and weeping. Rotten blood flows on an altar of old bone, and salvation comes from nine dark champions," babbled Rakel. "In her palace of fantasies and delusions, the beloved crafts a beacon of stolen souls. The eldest children of war rally to a new master's banner where he stands, wreathed in shadow, roaring his defiance of the inevitable."
Inevitable. That word again. It had to mean something, but Amberley didn't know what. If it was related to Cain, though, then one possible interpretation of the psyker's ramblings was that the Liberator of Slawkenberg had faced a champion of Nurgle with allies at his side and triumphed – but not without something happening which had echoed across the entire Sector to reach the Externus Exterminatus, something clearly aligned with the Plague God given what had happened to the astropaths.
The use of 'war' and 'master' in the same sentence was worrying too, and Amberley had a good idea of who the 'beloved' was. But the meaning of the rest – and it did have meaning : every single time Rakel spoke like this, her words were always laden with meaning, even if Amberley too often understood it only in hindsight – eluded her for now.
"There is a light – a dark light, a shadow light," continued Rakel. "It is a torch that threatens to set the galaxy aflame in the wrong hands, but can any living hands be the right ones ? Retribution leads the way to it, justice brought at last to a world that has suffered its absence for so long. But who will hold it in the end is yet to be decided. The master of war, who desires peace above all else ? His servant, walking ever at his side ? The architect, now bound to him by a loyalty only one thing can ever break ? Or the traveller, returning from his journey beyond the reach of the light ?"
Rakel's voice had grown louder and louder as she ranted, until she was almost screaming the final words. Then, all of a sudden, she deflated and collapsed back on her bed, unconscious. Amberley check on her pulse, which was strong if quick, and made her drink a bit of water laced with a cocktail of medication that should help her sleep without the Warp tormenting her too much.
Once she was done, the Inquisitor left the slumbering psyker's chamber, but her mind lingered on her words. The 'master of war' had to be Cain, and his assumption of the mantle of Warmaster didn't presage anything good. The Imperium had faced many self-proclaimed Warmasters of Chaos over the ages, and while only the Despoiler had remained a threat for thousands of years, many others had inflicted great harm to the galaxy before being finally brought to justice.
Parsing the rest of Rakel's ramblings was more difficult, but Amberley was now certain he'd defeated some manner of Nurglite plot in the Torredon Subsector, earning yet more allies and power in the process. Given the term used, 'eldest children of war', those allies were most likely affiliated with the Blood God – hopefully mortal cultists or mutants, for the thought of the Cainite heresy being reinforced by Chaos Marines was a terrifying one.
Unfortunately, she wouldn't be able to immediately go off and investigate. The situation on Abraxus couldn't be ignored any longer. The Nurglite uprising there was threatening to fully consume the planet, and the Damocles Gulf couldn't afford another front opening.
According to Amberley's operatives on Abraxus, the cults of the Dark God of Decay were growing in strength at an alarming rate, and had subsumed all other heretical mouvements which had formed as fear and doubt spread due to the Imperium's repeated setbacks in the region. They had targeted the construction sites for new Panacea production facilities, publicly claiming that the miraculous substance was but a ploy to poison, sterilize, mind control or genetically modify (the details of the claim changed depending on the day and the speaker, never made any sense whatsoever, and rejected all demonstrations no matter how public) the population instead.
This wasn't the first Nurglite plot to appear in the Damocles Gulf in response to the spread of the Panacea. With Amberley's associates at the ready, the Imperium had crushed them all, leading to a weakening of the Dark God's influence in the entire Sector, according to Inquisitorial diviners who were trusted enough to even dare contemplate such things. But Amberley knew all too well how lowering their guard, even for a moment, could lead to catastrophe. Decay's influence was much like the diseases which accompanied its followers in that regard, able to make a comeback as long as even a piece of it remained undestroyed.
And so, Abraxus would take priority for the time being. But one of the perks of being an Inquisitor who spoke regularly to the most powerful commanders of the Eastern Fringe was that, when she'd a necessary task she had no time to take care of herself, she could always find someone to off-load it to.
In his personal quarters, deep within the recesses of his research facility, Ernst Stavros Killian was concerned. Since learning of Smile's demise and Slawkenberg's alliance with Adumbria, the undercover Inquisitor had attempted to track the Black Commissar's movements, so as to know where to send his hand-picked team of psychic killers once they were ready.
The heretic fleet would have to pass by Dis Station if it followed the path Smile's ships and the Rogue Trader had taken. From there, while the aetheric maps of the Torredon Subsector were even less reliable than those of most of the Imperium due to the nigh-permanent Warp Storms, there were only two directions it could take : to Sanguia, where that brute Balor had gone to crush the local resistance, and Cassandron, a hive-world that, cut off from trade, must surely be little more than a graveyard haunted by cannibals by now.
The Bloodied Crown had never been able to get a foothold on Cassandron – nor, to Killian's knowledge, had any of the other shadow cartels. The hive-world's rulers were annoyingly competent at tracking down off-world attempts at infiltration, and had kept their domain surprisingly clean of the criminal influence which pervaded the rest of the Subsector.
So, in order to keep track of the arch-heretic of Slawkenberg, Killian had set a group of psykers whose talents laid in the domain of divination on the task. But, while they'd been able to detect the passage of the Protectorate fleet from Adumbria to the Dis system, results had been much more mixed afterwards. Killian would be the first to admit that the psykers artificially awakened by the Shadowlight were far from the most stable of witches, if such a thing could be said to exist. The ancient relic was a temperamental thing, even with all the progress Magos Galerion had made studying it after he'd lost Metheius' research on Periremunda.
But he'd been able to use the seers to spy on the activities of the other Directors semi-reliably before, which had been of great use in securing his place in the cartel. However, when he'd tasked them with tracking Cain's location directly, they had become useless, babbling nonsense about a vast shadow obscuring their sight. Reasoning that Cain must be using some heretical witchcraft to protect himself from divination, Killian had then had the Emperor-inspired genius idea of telling his seers to look at Sanguia and Cassandron instead.
When the latter attempt had failed in the exact same way, he'd been able to deduce the Black Commissar's location. That Cain had ignored the atrocities Balor was no doubt committing on Sanguia to harvest the riches of a dead hive-world had been of little surprise once Killian had taken the time to think about it. Cut off from the Imperium and the Mechanicus for over two decades, Slawkenberg's economy had to be in shambles, desperately needing whatever resources could be plundered from Cassandron's ruins.
Once Cain was done with Cassandron, Killian had no doubt he'd go to Sanguia next. Having defeated Smile's fleet of killers, the arch-heretic must be swollen with arrogant confidence, certain that he could triumph over the rest of the Bloodied Crown. The Inquisitor had begun planning for this eventuality, while ordering his seers to keep an eye on the dead system to warn him when the Black Commissar started to move.
Except, now they were all dead, having died in a most explosive fashion, screaming about some manner of apocalyptic conflict taking place in the Warp and 'the gaze of the Dark Gods descending upon the Grave of the Covenant'. The entire wing had needed to be purged, its contents vented into the void before the shapeless things which had emerged from the psykers' corpses could rampage across the rest of the facility.
As a member of the Ordo Hereticus, Killian was well-versed in heretical practices, his mind and soul shielded from the corruptive influence of such fell lore by the shield of his faith and the armor of his contempt. With such knowledge, it was easy for him to guess what had happened : Cain had performed some manner of foul ritual on Cassandron, desecrating the graves of billions in ways it was best not to dwell on, all in order to briefly draw the gazes of the infernal deities he served.
And there was no doubt in Killian's mind that the purpose behind such a monstrous act had been to beseech the Dark Gods once more for the location of the Shadowlight. None of his contacts across the Subsector had reported anything else amiss, so this was the only logical conclusion.
Killian would have to make doubly sure that his team of assassins were fit for the task of eliminating Cain, if the Black Commissar had such potent sorceries at his disposal. The Inquisitor thought back to some of the notes Galerion had shared with him, describing certain processes by which the magos believed the psychic potential of their subjects could be pushed even further.
It would be too risky to perform it on every member of the team when the risks laid out in Galerion's writings were so severe, Killian decided. Even the test subjects who'd survived the procedure hadn't done so for long, their enhanced abilities swiftly consuming them from the inside out. But the facility had several stasis pods used to contain the most interesting yet volatile specimens of Magos Galerion's research. Perhaps one or two might be sacrificed in the Emperor's name to make sure the enhanced assassins survived long enough to reach their target and perform their holy duty.
After that, well, they were doomed anyway, as Cain's minions were certain to avenge their master. So their lifespan was of no concern – really, they should thank Killian for giving them the chance of making their pitiful lives matter in the grand scheme of things.
But, of course, the Inquisitor had long grown used to the ungratefulness and small-mindedness of others, even in his fellow Inquisitors, who had the audacity to deem him Radical for daring to find a way to save their species from its inevitable doom. In all his life, he'd only met a few souls with the kind of vision required to understand the necessity of his work, and unfortunately, circumstances had forced him to kill most of them.
This wouldn't be any different. And, as he typed the instructions to Galerion on a data-slate, he also made a mental note of making sure the Warp-capable craft his party of assassins would use couldn't be traced back to this base. A little bit of sabotage should do the trick.
AN : In the first draft of this chapter, Akivasha wasn't going to join Cain, and Jon Skellan and his merry band would come with him instead. But I decided that 1) it was funnier if Jon, having survived fighting Hash'ak'gik, longed to return to the (relative) peace and quiet of the underhive, and 2) Akivasha joining up instead would cause the Liberator a lot more headaches.
Will I regret this later on, when I need to scale up combat encounters to account for the presence of an uber-powerful Vampire Queen ? Yes, almost certainly.
There will be an Informational post on SpaceBattles later with the lore I've built up for the Vampire Covens of Cassandron. Crucially, that lore dump won't contain the explanation of the Vampires' origins, because that's going to be revealed in-story.
I'm still playing through Rogue Trader as Ciaphas Von Valancius, and enjoying myself a great deal so far. As a result, I'm having a lot of ideas for this story, right as I planned to focus on AYGWM - because of course I am. Truly, the Muse is a fickle beast.
As always, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and I look forward to your thoughts and comments.
Zahariel out.