Black Cells Holy Terra
"You needn't have gone to such barbarism," he said, his tone almost scolding, as though chiding a child for misbehaving. He tilted his head slightly, as if looking at her through eyes that no longer existed. "The shattered kneecaps, the ruined eyes... even the stripping of my psychic abilities. None of it was necessary. After all, it was I who willingly surrendered to your forces near the Gothic sectors. Would your Lord approve of such barbarism, hmm?"
Alice's eyes narrowed slightly, but her expression remained neutral.
"You'll forgive my caution, I'm sure," she said, her tone matter-of-fact. "Heretics are infamous for their treachery. Surrender is not often in your vocabulary." Her lips twisted into a faint smile. "But tall tales as a talent... that's a first I've heard of the Black Legion's skills."
The transhuman laughed loudly at that and winced at once. The chains holding him aloft creaked slightly but remained strong.
She leaned forward slightly, her eyes locking onto his ruined face, her voice dropping to a low, measured whisper. "Enough with the games, Khayon. What is your true agenda?"
Iskander's smile widened, blood seeping from the cracked corners of his lips. His laugh, broken and ragged, echoed through the cell.
"True agenda?" he repeated mockingly. "My dear Inquisitor, I have no agenda. I am no schemer in the shadows, no plotter of betrayals. No... I am simply a messenger."
Alice's brow furrowed, the first sign of frustration breaking through her stoic mask. "A messenger?" she spat, incredulity coloring her words.
"Yes," Iskander replied calmly, ignoring her disdain. "A simple messenger. And nothing I have spoken in the last seventy-two hours has been a lie."
Slowly, deliberately, as if still possessed of the vision long since torn from him, he turned his head towards the far corner of the cell. His empty sockets seemed to fix on something in the shadowed recesses of the room. A twisted smile curled his lips, as though in silent communion with whatever lingered there.
Alice instinctively followed his gaze, turning to peer into the darkness. Her heart froze for a split second as she saw it. A massive figure stepped forward, previously unseen in the dim light. A Custodian. His gleaming gold armor barely visible beneath the black shadows, the eagle crest of his helm catching the faint light as he moved. The sight of him, the living embodiment of the Emperor's will, struck her like a blow.
Iskander let out another soft laugh, thick with the taste of blood and amusement.
"Ah, yes," he crooned, his voice softer now, intimate. "The mortals are always shocked by such declarations, but to them this is nothing new. After all... they know."
Alice's eyes darted between Iskander and the Custodian, a growing unease gnawing at her. The sorcerer's tone had changed, taking on a sinister edge.
"They know what, heretic?" she demanded, her voice harder now, regaining its steel.
Iskander smiled wider, a grotesque parody of joy, blood dribbling down his chin.
"They know that the end is coming," he whispered, the words dripping with malice. "The 13th Black Crusade is upon you. And this… this is the final death knell of the Imperium. The Corpse Emperor will meet his demise, and the galaxy will burn. All of them know it."
He paused, his broken gaze drifting back toward the towering Custodian, whose silence only deepened the tension in the air. Iskander's smile twisted once more, his voice low but seething with dark satisfaction.
"And I know... that he knows it too. After all, the Custodians have dreamt of this moment for millennia."
Alice punched a few buttons on their PD and a surge of electric current went through the bindings holding Khayon. The man neither winced nor screamed in pain but laughed. He laughed the laughter of a man who knew his eternal triumph was at hand.
"Tell me Custodian…." He gasped. "Tell me, where is Roboute Guilliman?"
The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men
Coheria
Thus do I go once more to war, my final war, and I will meet the gaze of Slaanesh without fear. Who among you will follow me?
Eldrad knew something had gone wrong. The skeins of fate were always fickle but in his old age, he thought himself prudent enough to see most ends. In none of his attempts to divine the future, he had seen this particular outcome. He spat blood on the ground as the terrifying din of bolter fire roared all across him. A century of effort and careful planning had gone to oblivion in a matter of 13 minutes.
In 13 minutes, a century of effort to carefully manoeuver sympathetic people in the Seer Council to positions of power had been destroyed. A century of effort involving deadly subterfuge to smugle spirit stones out of the craftworlds to power the ritual. The countless kinsmen he had betrayed and killed to protect the secret of his grandest creation. All had been lost.
Just when the God of the Dead was about to reach maturity and sensation, a woman's delightful laughter rang out on the surface world.
"Most amusing! Most amusing indeed my little one!" The woman purred. Time seemed to slow down around them and the air grew heavy with the contradictory smell of intoxicating perfume and corruption. Several of the younger psykers fell to the ground, clawing at their eyes and ears. Eldrad stood stunned.
"What madness is this?!" He gasped as he raised his mental defenses to protect against the onslaught.
"Nothing as crude as that, farseer. Merely a moment stretched to eternity." The voice said. "You have been very naughty little elf. Its time for you to make ammends to your mistress."
As realization hit him, multiple portals tore open into the fabric of reality.
She who thirsts….. Eldrad thought with despair as his helm picked up several hostile signatures materializng into the real space. The sensory data indicated that these were the Astartes known as The Emperor's Children. Once he had chosen to warn their liege lord about the rebellion of their brother, Eldrad idly thought as he struggled to bring himself to his senses.
Rapid bolter fire roared across the battlefield shredding several more. Torso were rendered apart from lower bodies. Chainsaws whirred as desperate Guardians struggled to put some distance between the hulking monstrosities and themselves.
"This quiet offends Slaanesh! Let there be noise!" A hulking brute yelled and unleashed a psionic screamed from his weapon that tore open ear dreams and flesh alike with its potent howl. Luckily, this seemed to knock the Eldar out of their stupor, and they violently came back to the real world. Furious at the intrusion, Eldrad raised his spear and slammed it into the ground. Bolts of psychic lightening thundered away from him and struck several astartes. Chunks of limbs went flying and flesh was seared. Bizzarely enough, instead of pain, the space marines roared in celebration at the sensation.
Once again, they levelled their bolters only to find their bullets unable to pierce an etheric barrier summoned by the farseer. The Eldar warhost rallied towards Eldrad after seeing the desperate cover he had conjured for them via the warp's eddies. Dark Reapers knelt behind rubble and took aim with their gleaming launchers. Explosions followed each shot as Emperor's Children were blown apart, their mutilated armor clattering to the ground in ruin. For a brief moment, the Eldar pushed back, the precision and discipline of the Dark Reapers holding back the storm. But it was only a fleeting reprieve.
With a thunderous crack, reality itself was torn asunder. Across the battlefield, rifts split open like wounds in the fabric of space, and from those wounds poured an overwhelming tide of Slaaneshi daemons. Their forms defied logic, skin shimmering with impossible hues, their laughter a cacophony of madness. The pressure on Eldrad's mind was immediate, unbearable. His shield flickered, faltered, and then shattered as the warp-spawned horrors exerted their will. The Emperor's Children pressed forward, unleashing barrages of fire that ripped through the now-exposed Eldar lines.
"For Asuryan!" The striking scorpions yelled and proceed to charge the Emperor's children. Chainswords clashed with shimmering blades, and blood splattered the ground as both sides suffered grievous wounds. The scorpions danced around the massive bulk of the Astartes while trying to aim for the joints in the armor.
"For the dark prince!" One of yelled and tossed himself at the nimble eldar. Crashing into the floor below, the astartes roared in triumph as he ripped the warrior's head off. A cry of despair went amongsBt the Eldar ranks as he held the torn head above his mouth and eagerly drank the blood. Slowly yet surely, the Eldar were being pushed back in despair as the Emperor's children took a savage delight in breaking the spirit stones in full view of Eldrad.
"More! More souls for the dark prince!" The astartes yelled as he tossed around the head only to find his own head bursting apart. Both sides blinked before a triumphant cheer went amongst the Eldar as the Harlequins from the Masque of Midnight Sorrow took to the field. Their flips and pirouettes defied gravity and time, their graceful strikes decapitating Emperor's Children with effortless precision. As they moved, laughter echoed through the air, mocking the desperation of the Astartes. In their wake, the Fire Gale Knights followed, their engines roaring as they locked onto the Chaos Dreadnoughts that lumbered across the battlefield. Streams of molten fire and missile pods were unleashed, searing the twisted machines with blinding light. For a moment, the Eldar morale surged as they saw the Emperor's Children falter, their dreadnoughts burning under the unrelenting fire.
But like all things Eldar, their hope too was fleeting just like their lives.
In response to their losses, the Astartes conducted a grisly ritual. Blood sacrifices of their fallen comrades fueled dark rites, and once more the sky above the battlefield was torn apart. Larger, more stable portals opened, and the sickly hum of the warp filled the air. The night sky turned crimson as a new horror descended. Harbinger-class heavy bombers appeared above, their ominous forms blackening the stars. The humming turned to a deafening roar as their payloads dropped, obliterating the Eldar battle lines in waves of destruction. Fire and shrapnel tore through the Eldar ranks. Guardians, Aspect Warriors, and even the agile Harlequins were vaporized in the storm of death. The sheer force of the bombardment crushed what remained of Eldar resistance, turning the battlefield into a charnel pit.
The bombers cared not for what they hit as the Astartes childishly laughed at the pain brought on by bombardment.
"My Lord! We must retreat!" One of the younger ones spoke. Eldrad glanced towards him and then towards the shattered remains of his shattered dream. A grand gamble. The grandest of them, in fact, lay broken. Worse, it was the last one. He had failed his people, perhaps for the last time. For a moment he glanced at the skeins of fate and all he could hear was the renlentless laughter of She Who Thirsts.
"Retreat to where?" Eldrad quietly muttered as dreadnaught fired another valley of rockets towards their location. "All is ashes."
Forsake all the tireless efforts, little one. The terrifying whispered and Eldrad felt hot breath on the nape of his neck. A creature of excess doesn't deserve the company of the dead.
An illusion of a daemonette materialized infront of him and Eldrad shuddred. He knew this was anything but a simple demon. She winked at him.
I shall be your wife and your husband, your mistress and your lover, and in My arms you will find Purpose and Delight
Eldrad shuddered at the grim fate of the Aeldari as he was forcibly dragged by his comrades into the webway. Only the haunting laughter of Slaneesh echoing in their minds.
Unknown
Silent King
As blasphemous as it might sound, in times like this he thought it a blessing that his body was machine than flesh. Nothing could as expertly hide emotions as the unflinching coldness of machines. For he knew if he was flesh, he would be screaming in unbridled fury right now.
He stood at the precipice of the great, smoking chasm, his silvered face devoid of expression as the flames danced across the wreckage of the hidden facility. His necrodermis glinted faintly in the fiery glow, a cold, timeless figure amid the destruction wrought upon the depths of this once-secret installation. Above him, the stars of the recently ravaged Imperial world twinkled faintly, but their light was dimmed by the acrid smoke that coiled upward into the desolate sky.
"The facility is lost, my king," Vethrekh intoned, his voice mechanical and devoid of emotion, though laced with deference. "The Great Devourer has stripped this world bare, but the damage here is… not of its making."
"The scars, the residual energy signatures—they bear the unmistakable signs of Aeldari weaponry," Vethrekh whispered.
He cursed Vethrekh internally for his unsubtle delivery of bad news. This was the seventh and the last of such facility that he knew of. Necron memory, while theoretically infinite, was no incorruptible. Much had been lost since they had ventured into the great sleep of the ages. Data had become lost, corrupted, or stolen by scavengers. Unbenknowst to most, the recovery of lost technology was one of the reasons he was raising every tomb world he could locate. He needed to recover the knowledge of the one weapon that could spell the difference between inevitable triumph or doom.
Interialiess Drives.
The crowning achievement of his people that had finally tilted the scales of the Great War in his people's favor. That was until children of the wrap, the so called Dark Mechanicum, had launched scrap codes that corrupted their knowledge drives. Worse, all facilities to manufacture these that he could reach, had been struck by perfidious younger race Eldar.
Figures. The vermin still faithfully wag their tale at the order of their long dead masters. No doubt they think they are once again continuing the cycle of the great war. Foolish children, poking around where they had no right to do so.
He raised a hand, a silent command.
"Send the phaerons deeper into the facility. I will know what they sought here." His voice, resonant and dark, echoed through the silent wasteland. Without hesitation, the phaerons, towering figures clad in obsidian and silver, moved toward the broken entryways, disappearing into the smoke-shrouded depths.
Moments stretched into silence, broken only by the distant creaks of shifting metal and stone, the groaning of the facility collapsing upon itself. The Silent King remained still as his phaerons plunged into the darkness. His mind worked, calculating the layers of subterfuge, the reasons behind the Harlequins' involvement.
Then it came—the laughter.
It echoed through the hollowed halls of the broken complex, drifting upward like a sinister melody. It was light, almost joyful, yet tinged with malice—a sound that belonged to no mortal throat. The silent ruins seemed to breathe in response, as if the laughter itself animated the very air.
Vethrekh's sensors flared, a warning flashing across his embedded augurs. "My king… the laughter… our scans…" His voice trembled slightly, the only indication of his fear. "It is her. The Masque of the Dreaming Shadow."
At that moment, the Silent King's eyes gleamed with cold understanding. The Harlequins had been waiting for this, playing their theatrical role as always, bound to the whims of their eldritch intelligence. But whatever game they were playing, it had now intersected with his own designs.
There was a sudden flurry of movement—too swift, too graceful to belong to any but the Aeldari. From the shadows of the ruined archways, a group of Eldar Harlequins materialized as if stepping from the dreamscape itself. Their figures shimmered with vibrant colors and intricate masks, each motion a blend of elegance and lethal precision. In their hands were weapons as beautiful as they were deadly, shimmering with deadly intent.
"Hold them back!" Vethrekh commanded, but his voice was drowned out by the frenetic clash of battle as Necron warriors emerged from the shadows, engaging the Harlequins in a whirlwind of combat.
Several gauss rifles unleashed deadly arcs of energy that were swiftly dodged.
With a burst of psychic energy, the Harlequin leapt into the air, her form twisting and flickering with ethereal grace. She landed among the Necron ranks, and in an instant, three warriors fell, their necrodermis being damaged by her blade.
The Silent King raised a hand, and a ripple of unseen force emanated from him, disrupting the local fabric of reality for a brief moment. His phaerons reacted immediately, converging toward the Solitaire with methodical intent, but it was too late.
The laughter echoed once more, a final, mocking crescendo as the Harlequins' movements quickened to a fever pitch. A flicker of light—too fast for mortal eyes—and then a massive explosion rocked the facility. The very ground beneath them trembled, a cataclysmic rupture tearing through the already fragile ruins.
As the flames burst upward and debris cascaded down, the Harlequins vanished into the smoke, disappearing into the immaterium as quickly as they had arrived, their laughter fading into the silence.
Vethrekh's sensors flared with emergency warnings. "My king… the facility… it's collapsing!"
But the Silent King did not move. He stood still, watching the burning ruins consume the last vestiges of the installation. His gaze lingered where the Harlequins had disappeared, his mind calculating the cost of this unexpected interference.
They will pay for their insolence.
"My king! The devourer converges on this location! We must leave!"
Ultramar
The towering gates of the Fortress of Hera groaned under the relentless assault, cracks spiderwebbing across their once-impervious surface as the forces of Chaos battered at its last defenses. Chapter Master Marneus Calgar stood at the apex of the citadel, his gaze sweeping over the ruins of Macragge, his beloved home world. The once-proud heart of Ultramar lay in ruin beneath him, reduced to a charred wasteland by the ruinous powers. Plague-ridden skies, bruised and swirling with unnatural hues, crackled with foul energies. The screams of dying warriors, their flesh rotting from Nurgle's blight, echoed through the air.
"Lord Calgar," came the rasp of Captain Sicarius, his voice strained beneath the weight of his wounds. His armor, once resplendent in the blue of Ultramarines, was now scorched and cracked. "The outer defenses are gone. They are inside the fortress. It won't hold for much longer."
Calgar turned his gaze to Sicarius, seeing the weariness etched into every line of the captain's face. "We fight to the last," Calgar rumbled, his voice heavy but unwavering. "We will give them nothing but our deaths, and even then, they shall pay in blood."
"Courage and Honor, sir." Sicarius saluted and walked away.
From the warp-torn skies, the nightmare descended. Mortarion, Daemon Primarch of the Death Guard, had come to claim the world. The skies churned with his arrival, and his laughter—a deep, gurgling sound—rolled like thunder. The air thickened with the stench of decay, choking the very life from the lungs of those too weak to resist the unnatural filth. Plagues, each more horrific than the last, bloomed across Ultramar's 500 worlds. But none suffered as Macragge did.
"You will not fall to despair, my brothers," Calgar declared, tightening his gauntleted fists. His armor, the sacred Gauntlets of Ultramar, hummed with ancient power, though they too were covered in the filth of battle. "Guilliman lives in all of us! We will hold this line, for him, for the Imperium!"
The main door blasted open and the corpse of an ultramarine was tossed through it.
"Courage and honor. Courage and honor." A voice mocked as it slowly walked inside. "Neither courage nor honor will save you now, nephew."
The grim reaper incarante, Mortarion walked inside, scythe in hand. Calgar said nothing. No more words were needed. His men knew what to do.
"For the Emperor!" Calgar roared and the Ultramarines charged the Death Guard.
The first clash sent a shockwave through the shattered remains of the Fortress of Hera. Calgar's fists hammered against the rusted, plague-ridden armor of the Death Guard's Primarch, but Mortarion barely flinched, his towering figure laughing through the storm of blows. His ancient, reeking wings spread wide, catching the rot-streaked wind as he rose above Calgar, hovering just out of reach.
"Is this it, nephew?" Mortarion's voice, guttural and dripping with scorn, reverberated through the fortress. "Is this the best you can offer me?" His scythe, Silence, came whistling down, forcing Calgar to lurch aside, the blade carving deep into the stone floor where he had just stood.
Calgar snarled, surging forward again, trying to bring Mortarion back into range. His fists swung in wide arcs, but the Daemon Primarch always danced away, his wings carrying him aloft with ease. Calgar's blows struck only empty air.
Mortarion cackled. "You cannot touch me, Calgar. You are but a child flailing in the dark."
Suddenly, the scythe lashed out, faster than Calgar could react. The blade bit deep into his right arm, shearing through armor, muscle, and bone. The limb fell to the ground with a sickening thud, sparks and blood spraying from the stump. Calgar grunted in pain, but did not falter, staggering back, his remaining hand still clenched into a fist.
"You think you can stop me?" Mortarion jeered, his eyes glowing with sickly green light. "You are nothing to me!"
Another sweep of the scythe, and this time it caught Calgar's left leg, cleaving through his knee joint. The Ultramarine toppled, crashing to the ground, his armor buckling beneath the force. Agony ripped through his body, but his pride, his defiance, would not let him cry out. He swung wildly as Mortarion descended again, but the Daemon Primarch stayed out of reach, taunting him with every motion.
"You fight for a corpse, Calgar. Your Emperor is a lie, your Imperium a rotting carcass. And I am the harbinger of its end."
Mortarion landed with a heavy thud, standing over the fallen Chapter Master. His laughter echoed in the vast chamber as his scythe swung one final time, severing Calgar's remaining arm. The Gauntlets of Ultramar, symbols of his legacy, fell to the ground, useless. Blood poured from his wounds, pooling beneath him as Mortarion's shadow loomed over him like death itself.
"Now watch as I take everything you hold dear away from you." Mortarion declared. "And when you have felt our pain. Felt our bitterness. When you you have seen your beloved father die, then and only then you have my permission to die."
The last thing Calgar saw before darkness consumed him was the Daemon Primarch raising his scythe over a broken figure on the ground—a figure clad in golden armor, the living corpse of Guilliman himself, ravaged by the plagues of Nurgle, his once-proud features twisted in agony.
"No!" Calgar's cry was lost in the void as Mortarion's scythe descended. Then there was only silence, as the heart of Ultramar fell into ruin, and with it, the last hope of Macragge.
Space and Time
Eldrad walked with measured steps, his flowing robes trailing behind him as he moved through the cold, angular corridors of the Necron warship. The air here was stale, metallic, and the eerie hum of ancient technologies droned in the background. He had already fallen from grace and was in all honesty a persona non grata from every aspect of Eldar society.
Negotiating with an ancient enemy? Wel lthat wasn't the worst of his sins so far. Might as well see what the might necrons have to say.
He reached the massive audience chamber, a grand, sterile hall built with the precision and cold efficiency the Necrons were known for. At its center, a solitary figure stood, motionless and imposing. And beyond him, through a vast observation window, a bizarre scene played out in the distant void.
A colossal chair-like structure floated in the distance, surrounded by a maelstrom of psychic energy. The very fabric of reality warped and twisted around it, and the air crackled with maddening, furious phenomena—shards of raw emotion, pain, and eldritch forces clashing against one another in a seemingly endless struggle. The sight was both awe-inspiring and terrifying.
For a moment, neither spoke. They stood side by side, two ancient beings watching the impossible. There was a quiet understanding between them, as though the sheer magnitude of what they had survived together demanded silence. But the weight of the moment became too much, and Eldrad was the first to break it.
"We thought you long perished," Eldrad said softly, his voice carrying both accusation and curiosity. "Forgotten in the dark histories of a bygone age. Yet here you stand. I commend your might, old one."
The Silent King did not immediately turn to face him. His eyes remained fixed on the chaotic scene outside. "News of my demise," the Silent King said, his voice cold and emotionless, "has been greatly exaggerated. Though, certain factions of your fae-kind have done their utmost to hasten it."
As if on cue, several metallic Necron servants appeared, carrying with them the heads of Harlequins, trophies of their latest battle. The Silent King gestured toward them, an offering of grim victory. Eldrad's gaze flicked over the severed heads, his face an unreadable mask. He gave a slight, dismissive nod.
"I have neither authority nor influence over the troupes," Eldrad said, his tone measured. "They follow the whims and diktats of the Laughing God. They are his children."
At this, the Silent King finally turned, his cold eyes locking onto Eldrad's with a look of disappointment. "Then the fae children have fallen lower than I expected," he said. There was a sharpness in his voice, cutting deeper than the steel of any weapon. "Once, your kind stood tall. Now you grovel before the whims of deities more fickle than even your lives."
Eldrad's eyes narrowed, and he spoke without hesitation. "And yet, you remain. Old enough, perhaps, to remember the fall of the Eldar, but also to recall how far your own kin have decayed." His gaze moved deliberately over the Silent King's body, tracing the intricate workings of the Necron's form. "Do you not feel it, Ancient One? The cold, creeping rust of what you once were?"
The Silent King betrayed no emotion. "I am old enough," he began, "to remember when Asuryan was nothing more than a prototype weapon, wielded during the Great War against my legions. When your people were respectable—before they became slaves to their own emotions and your… gifts were just that. Gifts, not something to be worshipped."
The Silent King paused for a moment, before continuing "I watched as the First Ones encouraged the younger race to reach further into the other realm and with their vibrant minds and passionate souls create beings of power to fight the star gods. But the battle was long and the First Ones were now few, and as their numbers dwindled so too did their influence over their young creations. Without the wisdom and might of the First Ones to bind them, I saw the Eldar's warp-beings evolve from sentient weapons into living gods – the first true gods of the Immaterium. How I wept when the Eldar embraced them as such."
"You know your liber chaotica well, ancinet one." Eldrad commented with a bitter smile. "Alas, what one perceive as a God or a superweapon rather depends from what point in history they are viewing it."
"You were once something greater, Eldar," the Silent King continued. "Now, you are fractured, diminished—your empire in ruins, and your gods either dead or laughing at you from the shadows. I do not mourn the passing of your kind. I only lament what you could have been."
Eldrad's lips curled into the faintest hint of a smile, one that held no warmth. "We are not so different, you and I, Ancient One. We both fight to preserve the remnants of a dying race. The question is… what will be left when the wars are over?"
"Where are we?" The Silent King asked as he ignored Eldrad's probbing.
"We were in the webway before. The fighting between the devourer and the mutated astartes was chaotic. Many dungeons and pathways were collapsed in our ensuing bombardment and retreat." Eldard said. "Last I saw our ships plunged into a sub-dimension. Perhaps a creation from the time of our old empire?"
They stood in silence once more, both staring out at the maddening void, the storm of psychic power thrashing against reality itself. The Silent King, in his cold, logical mind, admired the endurance, the sheer will it took to survive such pain. Eldrad, ever the seer, watched with dread—knowing that the pain endured was a warning of what might come if they faltered for even a moment.
Somewhere, the laughter of the Laughing God echoed faintly in the warp. Neither of them found it amusing.
"Perhaps." The Necron lord said. Another massive psychic surge went casting pale red hues over the duo. Addressing the elephant in the room, he inquired, "And what is that? The technology orignates from us. That is obvious."
It was Eldrads turn to be silent as he best tried to phrase the natue of the psychic phenomenon to the cold logic of the machine being next to him.
"Even now, I am not entirely sure what this is," he began, his voice laced with caution. "It began nearly 60,000 years ago... perhaps even earlier. In the beginning, it was subtle—an undercurrent, hardly noticeable compared to the sheer, vulgar power it wields now."
He allowed his words to hang in the air, the Silent King waiting in his cold silence.
"We investigated it time and time again," Eldrad continued. "Every attempt revealed something different. Sometimes it was a man, sometimes a rogue automaton from the Great Collapse, a silicon reality eater that ate too much, or a creature of the Immaterium masquerading as flesh and bone. Yet one truth always emerged, no matter how fragmented: He is the God Emperor of these so-called current rulers of the great wheel—the humans."
"The corpse witch still lives." The Silent king remarked. "We have torn apart many humans to study them," he said, his voice devoid of any warmth. "None have come close to what we are seeing now."
Eldrad inclined his head slightly. "I believe it," he replied. "There are rumors that he made dark bargains—deals with the gods both above and below to secure his power. And then, like so many of his kind, he betrayed them. He failed to fulfill his end of the bargain."
"We all know the stories of the secrets of the red planet near Sol." His eyes flickered with amusement as he glanced up and down at the Silent King, his meaning clear without needing to say more. "Although, The irony of his story isn't lost on me."
The Silent King did not respond immediately. His eyes, dark and void of life, bored into Eldrad with cold disdain. "Your glib tongue does you no credit," he said monotonously. "Neither the star god nor the warp ones offer salvation. Remember that."
Eldrad acknowledged the reprimand with a slight nod. "Perhaps," he conceded. "Though, in the younger days, he was known as—"
His words were interrupted by a sudden shift in the storm. As if some ancient intelligence had awoken, two pairs of eyes—burning with an intensity that defied understanding—materialized atop the massive throne-like structure outside. The eyes locked onto them, boring through the thick hull of the Necron warship as if the cold metal were mere air.
The figure outside began to coalesce, shifting rapidly through forms—a young boy, a warlord adorned in battle armor, an aged man with deep-set eyes, and finally a decaying corpse seated on a throne. Over and over, the forms cycled, faster and faster, until at last it settled on a single shape: the aquila, the symbol of the Imperium.
A voice, terrifying in its power, its tone and amplitude shifting a thousand times over in a single breath, echoed through the chamber. At once it was that of a crone, a man, a woman, and/or a child. The psychic resonance hit like a tidal wave, radiating pure agony. "Eldrad."
Eldrad smiled bi, his expression unreadable, though there was a flicker of recognition in his ancient eyes. He bowed his head slightly, a gesture of familiarity. "Neoth," he greeted.
Fin
Author Notes: Hi All,
Just another Warhammer nugget that was stuck in my brain. I kinda suck at writing warhammer since there are so many military units to memorize. I only know about Imperium. So, if you find any flaws with Necron or Eldar writing/quotes/tactics - please lemme know.
Your constructive criticism is much appreciated.
Please don't forget to read and review. Thanks all!