He saw the plain dusty, lifeless, soulless. There was an eerie quiet in it, as if the world stood still, waiting for the action from the one brother before him. His face was pale as snow, his hair was jet black, his eyes of pure inky shadows. Behind him, large metallic steel sheets were strapped to a jump pack together to simulate dark Raven feathers. They were the unmistakable features of a brother molded in the same shadows as him, it was unmistakably the features and battle plate of Corvus Corax, Primarch of the Raven Guard.
His face was a mixture of quiet restrained fury, of hateful indignation and most surprisingly of all, disbelief, crafted in such a way that if not for the battleplate he perhaps would have seen himself in that face. It was a face clearly scarred by heavy wounds that would never heal, scars that would drive him mad with the need for retribution, even if it could be restrained for a time, in the name of a higher cause. The meter long claws of his brother were wreathed in lighting in an unthreatening position, almost at ease if not for the fact that he himself knew claws as well as the Primarch before him, and he knew they could turn to a deadly strike faster than even a fencing blade.
Around them warriors in midnight clad with their long chainglaives exchanged blow for blow with the warriors of the being before his eyes, like smaller versions of themselves. The smell of promethium seeping into their nostrils from the blades the warriors of both legions used.
As if by some unseen signal he spoke. "What has happened to you, Curze?" It asked. The name in his brother's tongue sounded almost like the curse it had always been before, shackled to a thought, an idea that had cast a limitless shadow over him. The wind rose in strength, their black hair swinging freely in the swirling air almost like the freedom neither had ever possessed. "Is this your new justice? Has your madness finally broken you that treason and justice are one and the same?"
Whatever answer he gave his brother he did not know, the strand of his dark hair passed before his eyes as the dust rose from the winds growing strength almost in anticipation of a clash. He just felt his heart clench, his emotions not of regret but something else he did not quite know how to interpret, like a knife being twisted inside your heart. A depthless void of anguish that tore that one immaterial thing in his being.
The moment he felt that, that uncertain anguish, he returned to Nostramo… Dark and sunless as always, though today it seemed the sky had stopped weeping as for once the rain had stopped.
Atop the spire the Nighthauter wordlessly gazed into the distance, to the molten river, the place where everything began. Where his gestation pod had landed amidst the world´s very wound. It was poetic, his pod had landed so close it had put another dent into Nostramo´s already scarred soil, and this world scarred him also…
"Tenebor," he whispered, choosing not to dwell on the vision his foresight had revealed. It had been one of the most clear visions he ever had. The only ones comparable were his father´s arrival to his poisoned world and the visions of an Imperium that was exactly the doom of man. An empire in ruins, worlds progressing to a state far worse than Nostramo had been in when he arrived at it, human planets preyed on by Xenos as if they were cattle and slaves, as the species slowly died.
His eyes did not hurt, unlike many times before. His body did not forcibly force him into the sight, it did not strike him with a burning painful sensation. This time it felt natural, like an instinctual thing, a sleepless dream but more imponent. A thought stretched into imagination so real your mind could not have conjured it alone, or whose context had no existence as of that moment.
He jumped to the platform below, to where his stormbird was waiting for him, he landed with a soft almost imperceivable thump, as if his feet had landed on a large bundle of cloth silencing the heavy steps of the Nightmare mantle.
"Tenebor," he thought again. He turned his gaze to the world below, to his gestation pod laying there so close to the molten flame of the world´s wound,to his city, to his world and then he entered the craft.
.
The green light from the hololithic shone dimly in the room, casting its hue into the skull helms and the snow pale skin of all presents. Melkor did not like being there. He, unlike everyone else, was simply clothed in a comfortable dark shirt covered by a dark blue cloak without the legion´s symbols. A peaceful blend of the ocean's endless deep expanse and the void´s starless depths. The others had a firm and stern military attire or battleplate, Legiones Astartes battleplate.
Seven space marines were positioned to Melkor's right in battleplate, to the left seven mortals and him in the center. Unlike him everyone else seemed to be analyzing his general battleplan, bringing questions to his attention.
"Even distracted by Auxilia, the orbital defense batteries and void shields will prevent any insertion." Krukesh said. The Claw master of the forty-fifth company, its captain.
Melkor took a step forward, getting closer to the hololithic display. His hand gave a silent gesture and several positions near the walls of the hive city shifted from the pure verdant green to a blood crimson red. "These sections have been identified as the most likely to be under guarded or with the best cover to approach for Astartes. Their harsh cliffs make it extremely unlikely the foes focuses on those areas."
The screen shifted, from a hive, from a single world, to the agglomeration of worlds he had been sent to take. Besides the red spherical orbs in the galactic plain were numbers, timetables, names. Malcharion, Claw Master of the tenth company, had moved it, but he did not speak, he let a mortal, a man in his fifties speak.
"According to these time tables, my lord," the man´s hair was nostraman dark, yet already threaded with silver. On his pauldrons were the evidence that he had been fighting in the crusade for far longer than his skin conveyed. "You expect the overall compliance to take around two to three months"
"Yes," Melkor said, trying to keep his voice steady. He hated being in a room with men far more experienced than him, it made him feel as if he was not supposed to be there, it left him waiting to just be a ghost and remain unseen. "That is what the computerized analysis indicated."
He raised his eyebrow at the words Melkor picked up and went on. "The combat simulation indicates."
The various occupants of the chamber eyed each other, an entire unspoken conversation going on through their stares, until finally he spoke again. "The plan in itself is not badly crafted, the building blocks can be seen, it is just woefully unrefined. I mean not to question your appointment, Lord Melkor."
It took many, many adjustments to finally have it finished. In the end it was a blend of earlier basic concepts, of ways of war based upon forgotten battlefields, ancient conflicts and the post-human wars of the Great Crusade. If one looked hard enough each part could be seen, under the simple layers of simplicity and thoughts. The Nostraman Auxilia, the Imperial Armada, the one organization that had jurisdiction over both land and fleet assets of the regular mortal forces attached to the legions, would take the forefront in the campaign.
Melkor based his plan on the assumption that he had a hammer, but he would not use it as a hammer, he would use it as a scalpel. As they would end up being deployed when the legions were no more. After the would-be Warmaster turned and let the galaxy burn.
The hammer would be the scalpel, if these worlds had no sense. If the eighth's reputation was not enough to make them bow to Terra. If his sons' reputation and deeds were not convincing enough. If…
.
"My sons," the voice was quiet, soft, tender even, yet behind it lay a thousand different emotions. A thousand different impressions. Even devoid of obvious strength, of the once so common rasping and hissing it sent every single astartes to their knees. Like small children discovered in a small but unforgivable conspiracy begging for forgiveness.
They did not speak. How could they, when the mere presence of this being overwhelmed to such a point their gene-forged strength, the godhood mortals like to compare them to, was nought but a small and pitiful thing.
"Father." One of them whispered back, his mind overwhelmed by the one feeling they had been conditioned to not feel. Fear. The word leaves his tongue with an almost involuntary thought, as if the very presence made all individualistic, internal, natural thoughts numb.
It was surreal, his senses so overwhelmed he almost thought it to be a dream, were it not the fact that he had gone to his knees in a completely involuntarily action.
He heard the cracking sound of ceremite plate buckling and breaking, being split apart by a meter long metallic blade. It was so fast, so unexpected that the Claw master, the target, did not have the time for a single word, no sound leaving his three lungs. No rictus scream, just simple silent broken ceremite and deathly pale body falling limp to the floor.
"My sons," the voice repeated again, his gene-father spoke again. His spine shivered as it seemed far too close to him than he would like. His gaze wavered slightly, trying to assess the company's condition, to check if his brothers were frozen in time as he had been. To see if they had gone all to their knees in such an involuntary motion.
They all were. Nigh on a hundred Legiones Astartes warriors frozen, motionless on the still metallic floor of Tenebor´s great hall, in the Legion´s fortress. They were all still, the stench of fear permeated, impregnated the very room. It's almost like the conditioning they had gone through was useless against the genesire, against the King of Nostramo, who amongst all his titles had one who was perhaps too apt for this moment. The King of Terror.
Ceremite split again, another one of his brothers lay dead. This time there had been no warning, no words spoken that could anticipate such an action. It had come as silent as the shadow all things possessed when basking under the light.
"My sons," it repeated again, this time louder, almost hissing in displeasure. "You are my sons," the sound of cracking ceramite was heard again, the smell of blood now could be felt besides the air of fear that seemed to have clung to the very walls. "You are Night Lords."
The words stopped for a moment. No ceremite was broken, almost as if his father was looking for the right words.
"No," it continued after a minute of silence that had seemed to have stretched for infinity. "You are not Night Lords." He could feel something, an emotion he had no recollection of, one that made his heart clench, like as if it chained his twin hearts in some sort of emotional abnormality.
"You do not deserve to be that. You are the wretched things who should never have ascended. Then I failed you."
"What?! NO!" His mind screamed against all logic. "You did not fail us, we failed."
"Yet you have failed me. Under your watch Nostramo has degenerated. You allow it to degenerate. You failed me."
A tear fell from his eyes, and he could smell that he was not the only one amongst his still alive brothers.
The presence dwindled yet the emotions that it had casted, that its presence forced to erupt beneath the veneer of gene-forge physiology that had made them so apathetic to anything, yet tears did not stop flowing for a solid half a minute. Some slightly longer, some slightly less, yet all felt their heart torn apart. All felt a shame so deep they had never thought possible. So much in fact that their gaze never left the floor, as if they were afraid to look simply forward.
He felt something grab his pauldron, his gaze did not move. "Rise," the voice of his genefather whispered beside his ear and once more with a jerked involuntary motion his body answered his gene-father´s command.
The face looked serene, yet his gaze was thunderous, his presence immense. It took the pale hand on his pauldron holding him in place for him to not take a step back, to instinctively put distance to the being before him, to put distance to the Nighthaunter.
His Lord read his name from the edge of his pauldron, he confirmed it and then after a stare that seemed longer than the void´s expanse, a stare born of the depthless abyss of that one human facet we all blind ourselves to, he whispered his words.
"You will paint your gauntlets red."
The Nighthaunter moved on, but the words echoed in his mind. He froze. He knew the meaning, the rite known to all Nostraman born, gang owned or free. He was a dead man walking, his life forfeit to his lord's pleasure. It did not matter that he was an Astartes. It did not matter that his brothers bore the same genetic lineage. He had been marked.
He was a dead man walking.
His gaze shifted to his brothers, the company that had been lined up, the same company who had been garrisoning Nostramo. Some were standing up, frozen in time, almost as if they got the same decree as him. Others… Others lay on the floor, blood pouring from their pierced skin and ceremite plate as it pooled into a single cold pond.
In the end only ten percent of the company survived their master's decree. Only one in ten lived only to die again, later. Only one in ten lived, but the company was dead.
.
After Tenebor Curze returned to his world, to his accursed domain. Rain had returned, tainting his visage with the watery tears of the world´s heaven as he stood in the tallest spire of Quintos keeping his gaze even as he stared to the world below. He wondered if his people would do something or if they would shrink into inaction. He wondered if the gunshots would stop. If the people would do what he tried to do, and wrest control out of chaos. He wondered…..
Why had he done that? Why had he felt the need to take a step back? Why had he taken that choice? The primarch took a few steps away, he walked into the spire, and seated himself on his throne. The blackstone was smooth and reflected the pale dim blue lighting as if it was a mirror. On the armchair the blue adamantine circle with rubies and a single soft blue exotic stone so similar to a diamond rested. The Corona Nox. It was simple in design, unlike much of the dark gothic Nostraman architecture. It was old, how old no one knew, but it was old. He always thought it to be from before Old Night.
He may have only used it when others were before him, but his dreams had always been softer near it, even before Melkor´s arrival.
His pale hand touched the crown, his hand going over it with a strange tenderness. He sighed, everything to do had been done. Now it was time to wait. The enforcers had been ordered to do the bare minimum to prevent a complete social collapse.
Why had he chosen this path? Was it Melkor´s annoying words ringing in his head? Had the mortal more influence over him than he wished to admit? Was it the memory of the dead Karzen? The one moment he chose to believe against fate only to trap himself in the jail of immutability. Was he daring to break that jail? Was it some desire for hope beneath all the acknowledged monstrosity that he would never admit?
He closed his eyes, and willed himself to use his gift, the one gift he rarely had control over. The gift of prescience had shown him earlier, a few hours ago, before he had passed his judgement on the garrison, a standoff with Corax. Corax accusing him of treason, of madness, in a world he did not know.
He had seen himself killing the pretty ravens before, but he had never seen himself being confronted by Corax.
He tapped his fingers on the obsidian blackstone.
Why would he be confronted by Corvus, by the pretty naive Corvus, the perfect Corvus in such a manner. Over the years, even before Melkor had joined him, he had seen many times Astartes fighting against Astartes. It had never been clear, only that he would be killing Astartes, his sons would be killing Astartes.
He should have brought Magnus´s Orb, his brother's gift the first time they had met, it was meant to help him with his visions. He willed his sight to show him something of the future, a reason, some context.
He was pulled into his mind´s eye and he saw something.
A golden Pillar of Light, too bright, too powerful, too cold. The unreality of the thing before him stunned him to the core. He was looking at something he felt familiar yet was completely alien. He was looking at a thing, and then, that thing, that terrible, awful thing in the pillar of light turned to something. Whatever it was he did not see it.
He was thrown back into Nostramo. His breath was ragged, he felt sweat on his skin, and there was some sort of pain in his body, almost as if it was a greater effort than everything he had done in his century long life.
Whatever that had been, it made his back shiver. That presence, that terrible thing, he could almost say what it was if not for the paradoxically strange feeling. Almost as if something was missing. Whatever his sight had shown, it was only marginally better than that Dark awful King, that prophecy he did not understand, not that he understood either.
He had judged his sons on Tenebor while relying on his sight, witnessing the most likely of their futures, his desire clear, but to see the circumstances that would lead to that confrontation with Corvus. Whatever his sight had shown him, he understood one thing, he still had a lot to go. His sight may be pure and accurate, but trying to see more than what it showed him naturally was as taxing as it could be dreadful.
Whatever his sight had tried to show him with this intent it was far more complicated than he had first assumed. Perhaps unlike what he had thought, he had to master his sight once again, to see more than a single path. Perhaps he, after all, still had a long way to truly master his prescience, more than simply witnessing a few seconds or minutes forward willingly or instinctively. To master it so that it is no longer spontaneous. He should really start using the Orb his Prosperan brother had gifted him.
.
"So what is their answer?" Melkor asked, feeling the anticipation in his blood. This answer would either make him have to swing the hammer as the scalpel it could be, or do what the eighth never did. Diplomacy.
"They declined." The man said, all eyes fell on Melkor at that moment. He felt his heart pound with the rhythmic strength, the attention on him suddenly making him feel as if he could feel everything. His breathing became clearer to his mind, the pulse in his veins he felt keenly. He did not hate that sensation, the overstimulation of his senses in such an internal matter. He did not like all of the attention being put on him however.
"Give them the terms again. I would rather avoid deaths if I can."
A few short silent seconds after, seconds that seemed like hours they answered back, one again refusing. Melkor sighed and told everyone to leave the hololithic chamber before he turned to the ruling council of that planet below, as the Nightfall and that ruling house talked through the vox.
"I have with me five thousand Legiones Astartes, warriors that move faster than the mortal eye can follow, five million men belonging to the most experienced human soldiers in the galaxy. Nearly four hundred Imperial Armada vessels. In the following weeks thrice as much is on route to reinforce and reclaim this section of the galaxy. You cannot win. So for god's sake just accept the banner of the Imperium." The frustration and the tiredness in him made him almost want to break the hololithic table.
"It's a bluff." One of them shouted back. "Terra is a myth," Another shouted.
Melkor sighed there was no point in arguing with these men. And so, he said words he never thought he would say in his life. "Your resistance will be noted in the Anals of history." He cut the connection off.
"And so comes the end of a people, the end and death." Whispering to himself absentmindedly. Why he spoke these words he had no idea, but for a second, for an infinitesimally small second, a permutation that almost did not exist in the expanse of time, he saw an image of an underground throne flashed before his eyes. Halls in the nethermost point in eternity.
He informed the first captain of the conclusion, he informed him that the eight would go to war. And then, he reached up to a cabinet, took up a bottle and stared at it, unsure if he should open it.
On the Photep a Primarch stacked books upon books, seeking any inkling of knowledge he could find. The stack was almost ten meters already, and yet still nothing. This wasn't the first stack Magnus had made on Melkor, he tried almost everything. From seeking the etymological source of that name, to using his legion´s connection to try and find his origin, for he very much doubted whatever it had been shown to him was the truth. For if it was, no mortal had the power to resist him, for even a second, and Melkor had somehow resisted.
It unnerved him, it frustrated him. It was like looking at a mathematical equation that made no sense yet it was correct, like a law completely broken yet somehow when applied into the physical realm nothing seemed to suggest the former. An anomaly the world itself adjusted itself too, or he adjusted to it. It was as frustrating as it was unnerving, if only he hadn't made that promise. Magnus may not have had the best relationship with Curze, he in fact barely had any, but Magnus still had a sense of honor, a sense of care for the Imperium, for unity.
He sighed, putting another book on the stack. He was now seriously considering Astral Projecting through the warp, and finding his answers there. The warp guarded immense knowledge, unbound by time or the limits of the material universe, the things, the knowledge one could find there was enormous. He had used the warp in his research many times before, he loved skimming through the sea and peering into its mysteries, understanding it even. The Warp was a realm of emotion, of metaphors that were reality, of concepts real or imagined. It was a realm of boundless expanse and limitless frontiers. Yet in all his search he never even heard the whisper of that name. A name that seemed like the answer and clue he was missing while having it.
A name... Names, meanings, words. Magnus knew all of them held power, for the Warp was a maelstrom of intent, meanings, and truths so deeply buried in a soul that many were unaware of them, even since the day they were born.
Names have power, immense power, they could be used to bind the many creatures of the warp to your will, to find truths about a soul, truths hidden behind the grandest veil. And something he knew as well, the more powerful the soul, the warp construct, the longer its true name would be.
He had the mortal´s name. The name Melkor, normally he could have used that to devine more about him, yet he could not find anything. Nothing, it was almost as if he did not exist. It was an anomaly and it was frustrating.
"Have you chosen which legions to call upon?" The Regent of Terra asked. He heard no sound, but nonetheless he received his answer. The Ork Empire needed to be dealt with very, very soon.
Well this took slightly longer than i wanted, but life is bitch. Tests exist and availability is a bitch.
Also, as before i have no idea how to fix the lack of space between the various sections. Sry about that. If it bothers you guys too much i also post this in Ao3 and there isnt any problem there.
However do not worry, I am working on the next chapter already. (I see you guy begging to not stop, do not worry.)
I would love to hear your opinions on this one. See you next time.