The Call
By author Cubismo
The planet Concordus Prime, the Unity Sector, in the galactic north
Tisiphone Erinyes gazed upon a world finally made broken after eight Terran months of bitter struggle.
To spurn the Imperium of Man's call for galactic unification was an affront in of itself but the fouler crime was to accept Imperial Compliance only to throw one's oaths aside once the Emperor's grand hosts left to once more continue the labours of the Great Crusade. It was a cowardly tale, and an old one too. Tisiphone had seen it replayed a thousand times over on a thousand different worlds and civilisations. Still, despite the repetitiveness of it all, the Old Fury could not deny that it roused her choler, even after more than a century of fighting such craven traitor scum.
Tisiphone stood high in her full battle-plate, her right arm clutching her still gore-stained clainglaive Rancor while her left held her helmet, an ugly battle-scared and pockmarked piece of work that had nonetheless seen Tisiphone through the wastelands of Terra to the burning ruins of Concordus Prime.
Ruins. There was no finer word for it.
From her high vantage point on the command spire she could see a megapolis gutted and ravaged by infernos whose sheer intensity lit the sky despite the heavy miasma of smoke and ash that clung to the air like a vice. Such abject destruction was not the Dread Wardens' usual way of war but to the Old Fury it was all too familiar. Indeed, it was almost nostalgic.
Just like in the days of yesteryear, the traitors had been given no quarter for spitting on their oaths of allegiance to the Emperor of Mankind. Such treachery had cost Concordus and its tributary worlds in their so-called Unity billions of lives and left their worlds blazing charnel houses that very much matched the fell sight before Tisiphone now. It was an undeniably evil and cruel act. The Old Fury would not deny that. But it was also one that served to instruct all others in the Imperium who dared dream to walk off the righteous path. Only absolute ruination would come if they allowed such folly to fester in their throne rooms, presidential palaces, and council chambers.
Killing millions to save billions.
That had been the very heart and mantra of the Old Legion. The Emperor's Furies. His scourge of terror that silenced dissent with spectacular violence.
It had been their role, Tisiphone thought as she continued to peer out into the inferno. Not anymore. Not since Caligo. Not since Karmella Moros and her Wardens of Dread came and changed the Legion forever.
It was an old, tired thought, and unworthy one at that, but all the same, the Old Fury almost unconsciously turned away from the nostalgic destruction all around her to look upon the Caligites who had become her sisters. They were all around her now, these daughters of the night. The Midnight Progeny of Caligo. The resolute Lahmian Sisterhood. The Justicars of the Imperium. The Dread Wardens of the VII Legion. They were her sisters, strange as they were. They whose homeworld was a den of monsters. They who as mere peasants were forced to band together to hunt demons of the night. They who worked tirelessly so no other would suffer Caligo's fate. They who replaced her beloved Furies with something both worse and kinder.
Tisiphone crushed the accusation in her mind. It would do her no good to dwell on such things. The same was true for her pained nostalgia. The past was the past and the present was here and now and demanded her full attention. Especially now. Something of grave import was coming. She could feel it in her bones and a simple glance towards her Caligite sisters revealed that they surely felt it too.
An open gathering of the Inner Circle for a Legion so awash in overlapping esoteric secrets and operational security that left even the most ingenious of the Imperium's cyphers and spymasters hopelessly mad and stymied was a rare thing. And yet, since arriving at the spire, Tisiphone saw her fellow Elders arrive one by one without the usual shadow pageantry of obscura-fields, shadow-pics, and other various arcane rites that the Legion used for the sake of secrecy.
Some of them, like the bloody-minded and blunt Elder Verona, Tisiphone considered true battle-sister. A warrior, who while not a Fury, was still straightforward or at the very least more understandable than other Caligites. The others, though… the others were an admitted struggle. Since arriving, Elder Eliya had been on bended knee with her silverite blade in hand as she solemnly recited a hymn from her homeworld. It was a blasphemous sight, one that spat on the credos of the Imperial Truth, but it was also something that Tisiphone had long grown accustomed to despite all her training and hypo-indoctrination telling her that such rituals undermined the very principles of the Great Crusade.
Caligite hypocrisy at its finest.
The other Elders were far less egregious in their rituals. Elders Aleera and Wandah still communicated with their Covenants through vox, giving out their final clean-up orders to their Warden-Commanders and Warden-Captains while Elder Saskia spoke candidly with Elder Barba Gor, the sole Nostraman amongst their high ranks, about the mistakes made and lessons learnt for the future.
A few of them of them had even momentarily driven Tisiphone out of reminiscing and approached her to discuss the war they had just won. And why would they not? She was the one tasked with accelerating the Legion's reconquest of Concordus, shifting from the subversive shadow war of the Dread Wardens to the blunt old ways of the Emperor's Furies. The Primarch had ordered that the sector be conquered ahead of schedule and Tisiphone had been personally asked the one to remake the battle plan. Whether it was an earnest recognition of her value and her old Legion's value or an act of pure practicality, Tisiphone did not rightly know. Karmella could be such an enigmatic figure, her motives and plans as mysterious and esoteric as her Legion of witch hunters.
Providence seemed to have sensed her thoughts as that was the moment the Primarch made her presence known.
Though the command spire was bereft of obvious places hide for one of her stature, all the same Karmella Moros of Caligo materialised out of nowhere, as if she had somehow teleported without the tell-tale rush of displaced air or the raw smell of ozone that came with teleportation. She had simply arrived in her full panoply like a wraith or spectre of Terran myth, tall, dark, and radiating power. Tisiphone always wondered how she managed to appear and disappear as she did and whether that power was obtainable for those who shared her gene-seed but never had the wherewithal to ask. She had serious doubts that she would like the answer if she ever did.
The Old Fury and the rest of the Inner Circle made the sign of the Aquila at the sight of their Primarch. "My childer," Karmella began, her tones familial to the ears of her daughters who could pick up on their Primarch's micro-inflections. To anyone else not of the Blood, though, it was an utterly stoic and austere greeting. "Concordus once more belongs to the Imperium. By this act—cruel as it was—you have once more proven your commitment to ensuring mankind walks ever closer to redemption from this dark age."
The Primarch's voice and eyes seemed to address all of them directly all at once, as if each individual member of the Inner Circle was her sole focus… that was until she turned to the Old Fury. Dark, soul-piercing eyes rounded on Tisiphone. "Your strategy held true despite there being little time to change our course here. This victory belongs to all of the Blood, but you stand paramount, Tisiphone. Well done."
The Old Fury accepted the accolade with a nod to her gene-mother. "You willed it, my lady. I only advised on the change while my sisters acted to make it a bloody reality. The triumph belongs to all of us. No special recognition is needed or wanted."
Though the notion of Karmella physically smiling was unthinkable to all beyond those who knew her most—a perilously small cabal—Tisiphone sensed a shift in her Primarch's abyssal eyes that she surmised could only be pride in a child who had succeeded some test of wit or character. The sight of it made the Old Fury feel strangely guilty.
"And that was well said," the Primarch replied before returning her attention back to all her daughters.
"I have news from the Emperor himself, my childer. A new foe of man stakes the stars. One that worries my father more than perhaps any other."
Elder Aleera perked up from that. "Greater than the maleficium, Grand Inquisitor?"
"Or the Beasts of Ullanor?" Elder Verona added.
"The maleficium are the First Enemy and the Last," Karmella reminded them sagely. "Never forget that, my childer. But our duties and concentrations must be manifold if we are ever to survive long enough to finally purge mankind of the ruinous enemies of the heart."
With a flick of her hand, the command portal at the centre of the spire sprung to life and conjured images of immensely detailed holographic light. It showed a creature of obvious inhuman origins—tall and terrible, its shoulders higher than the head of even a Space Marine, though it had no head of its own; gleaming metallic black scales; two powerful, massively muscular legs; four huge arms, each with a clawed mouth on the end of it, some clutching guns of sleek and darkly elegant making, others bright with human blood drenching their maws.
"Xenos," Tisiphone spoke even as she studied the creature with a critical eye that had borne witness to thousands upon thousands of xenos warriors. She gripped bloody Rancor tighter. "The Emperor bides us to commit another xenocide? It has been some time age since we fought the Enemy Without."
The Primarch nodded. "Indeed. The emergence of this enemy is why this world needed to fall so quickly. Laura is already preparing the fleet. The call has been made. All the Covenants will gather. The Dread Wardens will be united as one Legion to fight this war… as will many others."
Tisiphone took in the severity of those words. Multiple whole Legions fighting against one terrible foe. She had not seen the like of such a gathering since… No. She could not think it. Let alone speak of the lost and forgotten. Instead she asked a vital question.
"If I may, Grand Inquisitor—what are these creatures? Do we have a name for them?"
Karmella Moros's black eyes shifted again, lost for a fraction of a fraction of a second to some thought or vision that Tisiphone could not hope to know or decipher. "Yes… They are called the Rangdan. And they hunger for us all."