The Roboutian Heresy Chapter 24: The Siege of Terathalion - Part Three, a warhammer fanfic

I do not own the Warhammer 40000 universe nor any of its characters. They belong to Games Workshop.

Inspired by the Dornian Heresy, by Aurelius Rex.

My sons are here.

They have returned from their errance across the stars. They sailed through the tides of the Warp, which grow ever more turbulent as the final hours of this age draw near. Just as it seemed your victory was assured, they arrived, and your slaves in the void tremble at their approach.

You did not see that coming, did you ? They are beyond your sight, those of my blood who embrace the echoes of your terrible crimes and turn them against you. They are beyond your reach, and that proves you to be nothing more than a lie. You do not know everything that happens among the stars.

You have broken my city's walls, and spread ruin and suffering across my world. You have made the heavens bleed, and poisoned the earth with the taint of the Neverborn. Worst of all, you have taken my people and broken their minds and bodies, drowning their souls in darkness. Everything they were, everything they could have been, you callously destroyed to make them another tool of your designs. Such has ever been your way, ever since you coalesced into existence in the infernal depths of the Great Sea, a canker festering in the soul of the universe. But now, you will be judged.

And you will not be forgiven. My sons have come, bearing the wrath I buried for the sake of the Imperium. The thirst for vengeance that nearly consumed me when I learned of Russ' terrible sin has passed on to them, and the work of my greatest son keeps them safe from your corruption. Even now, its great fire burns within the Warp, the wrath of a Primarch cast out of his soul and seeking the vessels it requires to express itself. Sometimes, amidst the torment and the visions, I wonder what might have been if I had kept it within myself. How different would things have turned out, I wonder ? Would my wrath have made me stronger, or would it have been my undoing ? Would I have been able to save my father from His terrible fate, or would have I fallen to the Lion, allowing my treacherous brother to help Guilliman in his battle against our sire ? So many doubts, so many questions. But I cannot waste what remains of my mind on what could have been, least it consumes what is left of my will. I cast out my fury to focus on the defense of the Throneworld, to deny the enemies I fought in the Webway this weakness in my armor. And now, it has come back to me.

It began as my wrath, but it is changed. It has evolved into a Power of its own, through the thoughts and emotions of my sons who embraced it and the echoes of the slain. Others serve it across the Imperium, fuelling its flames even as it strengthens them. For ten thousand years it has grown, fed by the will of those who dedicate their lives to the just punishment of the guilty, to the avenging of the dead. Every Imperial Guard who looks upon a burned city and swears to slay its destroyers, every Arbites who sees a crime scene and vows to bring the criminal to justice – their oaths are unaware offerings to this Power. Those who die unjustly, their last thoughts of terror and fury, leave their echoes behind, and it is through these lingering traces that the thing my wrath has become expresses itself, raising the shades of the dead to create wraiths bound to its living agents.

A new Power has risen, unmarred by Ruin, untainted by the dread legacy of the Old Ones' terrible failure. Its name is Vindicta, the rightful retribution of the slain, and it comes for you. Passing through the tides of madness, forged by ten millennia of war, a vengeful angel empowering those who have dedicated their lives to the punishment of the guilty. Fear its judgement, for it shall show you the same mercy you showed to all those you crushed underfoot.

And if Powers can be born …

Then they can also die.

The Siege of Terathalion

Part Three : The Wrath of the Dead

From the Warp came the Heralds of Prospero, carried on winds of vengeance, drawn to the greatest concentration of Leman Russ' blood in the galaxy. With them came the ghosts of the Thousand Sons' long-lost homeworld, spirits of mortals and Astartes possessed with a burning need to avenge the wrongs inflicted upon them in ages past. These wraiths had shielded them from even the sight of the Ever-Watcher, and the witches aboard the Chaos fleet screamed as they sensed judgement come round at last. At their head was Khayon the Black, Scourge of the Wolves and first of the Heralds, who had led the defense of Prospero against the Sixth Legion, watching his world burn around him as he fought to save his people. To the embattled Thousand Sons, these returned brothers were a miracle – but their journey to Terathalion had been far from an easy one, and even with their help, the issue of the war against Sarthorael's armies remained to be decided. One thing, however, was certain : before the end, the dead would have a chance to claim their revenge …

It began with a call, a distant voice crying out to the scattered Heralds of Prospero, long before Sarthorael's Black Crusade entered the Prosperine Dominion. Across the galaxy, the sons of Magnus who had heeded the voices of the vengeful dead sensed something ominous on the horizon, and the instincts that drove them to battle against the minions of Chaos and the children of Russ woke once more. Within the Imperium and beyond its borders, hundreds of Heralds knew that a terrible threat was rising, a new power being forged in the darkness that would be aimed at the Legion they had left behind, but that they still adored. It was a pull on their consciousness, far stronger than anything they had ever felt before.

Each of the Heralds had walked the path leading to his status alone, hearing the call of the Legion's dead homeworld until they had journeyed there and bonded with the restless spirits of Prospero's ruined cities. They had all left their brothers behind, claiming small ships as their own, navigating them through the Warp through their own power. And amidst the desolation left by the Burning, they had embraced the power that had been born from Russ' betrayal, the psychic imprint left by the slaughter of billions of psychically sensitive souls. A Thousand Son descended to Prospero, and a Herald returned, wreathed in the ghostly shades of long-dead humans and Astartes. So it had been for ten thousand years, and during all that time the Heralds had remained isolated from each other, walking their own paths, only rarely crossing one another when a particular battlefield called to several of them at once. Yet now, they were returning to Prospero for the first time, all of them.

Though the Heralds of Prospero fought alone, not even they could hope to sail the galaxy for long without aid. Each had gathered a warband at his side, of those who had survived the darkness thanks to the haunted warriors. In their errance, they had found allies, men and women who could be trusted in the long war against the slaves of Chaos and the sons of Leman Russ. Rogue Traders, Inquisitors, but also captains of the Imperial Navy who had willingly followed these wraith-wreathed warriors. Some Heralds only had a single, small ship, made Warp-capable only through the exercise of their power, but other brought small flotillas to Prospero, with entire Regiments they had rescued from the fires of war aboard. It was an eclectic mix, and only the exchange of old Fifteenth Legion codes kept the various elements from turning hostile against one another. The defenses left in place by the Thousand Sons did not open fire, acknowledging these codes as well.

Several weeks after the arrival of the first ship, without any special exchange, every Herald suddenly descended to the planet, the call that had brought them to the system intensifying. None of them brought any of their forces with them – whatever was about to happen, they all knew it was a matter only for the sons of Magnus. Fifty-two Heralds of Prospero returned to the world that had forged them into what they were, their transports landing on the edge of what had once been Tizca, the City of Light, capital of Prospero and center of the Thousand Sons' dominion. The world reacted to the new arrivals, and as the Heralds moved through the ruined streets, echoes of the city's lost glory appeared around them, the ghosts of buildings long since destroyed.

But soon, the images changed, showing the buildings as they had been during the Burning, with half-formed spectres fleeing from their destruction, hunted by red-eyed monsters in grey armor. The minds of the Heralds were filled with the screams of the wounded and the dying as they retraced the path their ancestors had followed ten thousand years ago, toward the Pyramid of Photep. There the Thousand Sons had made their stand against the Sixth Legion, and there they had escaped the misguided judgement of Leman Russ. The wound in reality through which the survivors of Prospero had escaped remained, even after all these years, the energies of the Warp leaking through it, infusing the bones of Tizca and all of Prospero.

Lesser minds would have shattered under the pressure, unable to cope with the suffering surrounding them. But the Heralds were used to such things, their psyches inured to the screams of the lost, which they always heard in the back of their skulls, even between battles. All of them had renounced any form of peace, sacrificing even the tenuous tranquillity Astartes might know in the pursuit of retribution. The ghosts of Prospero only strengthened their resolve, and they came together before the ruined Pyramid, emerging from the illusion-wreathed Tizca one by one. Then, from the spectral mists came the first and greatest of them – Khayon the Black, Scourge of the Wolves. All present recognized him, and the fifty-one Heralds bent the knees before the warlord who had led the doomed defense of the world on which they stood. Here was a living legend from the Legion's distant past, wreathed in the same ghostly fires that raged through the devastated city.

Iskandar Khayon had vanished after the Scouring, when the Rubric had been cast and the Fifteenth Legion had been all but destroyed by its unintended effects on those not strong enough to bear it. Since then, he had never been seen by any Imperial, and the Thousand Sons themselves thought him long dead. But, when the black-clad Legionary entered the circle of his younger brothers, none doubted his identity for a moment. His armor, blackened by the fires of Prospero's burning; his axe, bearing the mark of the wolf, that he had claimed from the last champion of the Sixth Legion he had killed before leaving Prospero; and the aura of ghosts that surrounded him, thicker than any other Herald's – all were incontrovertible proofs of who and what he was.

For nigh ten millennia, Khayon had wandered the galaxy aboard his warship, the Tlaloc, fighting beyond the borders of the Imperium against threats both new and ancient, the xenos enemies whose very existence had been forgotten amidst the Heresy's destruction. He had hunted the traces of Russ' Folly, these disturbed xenos worlds where the Wolf King had awoken horrors that pre-dated the rise of Mankind. Though the Imperium would never know of his deeds, Khayon had prevented countless atrocities over the centuries. He had been spared even the slow ageing of the Astartes, preserved by the same power that flowed around the Heralds and bathed all of Prospero. Like them, he had been called here without knowing why, unable to resist the pull of his lost homeworld. And, like them, he had many questions and precious few answers. But before he could do anything, a terrible vision fell upon the assembled Heralds of Prospero, brought to them by the Power that had gathered them – Vindicta, the Warp entity that had grown from the Wrath of Magnus. For thousands of years, it had slumbered, empowering the strange abilities of the Heralds – and, perhaps, others fighting against Chaos and the Wolves. But now, as the Dark Millennium came to a close and the enemies of the Fifteenth Legion rose to destroy it once and for all, it was awakening, roused by the echoes of a potential future that must be averted, no matter the cost.

[See the artwork Vindicta's Warning by Nemris, on Deviantart]

They saw …

Madness.

They saw the fortress of Ahat-iakby torn down, its walls breached by armies of daemons and Chaos Marines. They saw their slumbering Primarch slain, his body torn to bloody pieces by the claws of the Greater Daemon that had plagued their Legion for ten thousand years. They saw Sarthorael use the defiled remains of their gene-sire to weave a vile spell, perverting the Rubric and turning it against the Thousand Sons, wiping out every living scion of Magnus in the galaxy. They saw the ashen dead, these brothers who had not survived the Rubric's power, enslaved to the cruel will of the Ever-Watcher, waging war against the Imperium side by side with infernal horrors. Their armors had been defaced with symbols of Tzeentch, and they wielded new, sorcery-infused weapons of terrible power, while the souls trapped within were forced to do the bidding of the Changer of Ways. They saw Terathalion burn and crack, the planet unable to bear the strain of the atrocities committed upon its soil as the fifteen cities were lost to the depredations of the Ruinous Powers. And they saw the Prosperine Dominion fall to the armies of Tzeentch, brought low by the Black Crusade unleashed by the Chaos God of Change to fulfill his ancient vow to destroy the Thousand Sons. Library-worlds set ablaze, billions made playthings for the Neverborn – a kingdom of the damned and their victims, to suffer in the fires of anarchy for the rest of time.

Warriors who had witnessed the darkest horrors Chaos was capable of fell to their knees, weeping like children, unable to cope with the monstrosities they beheld in their mind's eye. Their screams of revulsion drowned out the sound of Prospero's own wailing, a shriek of outrage and terror and pure, absolute denial. They vomited in their helms, twitched on the ground, paralysed by shock, or remained eerily silent and immobile while the air around them was filled with psychic projections of their terrible anguish. Only one remained on his feet, though even he was shaken by what he had seen. Khayon the Black threw his head to the storm-filled heavens and shouted his defiance :

'No ! This will not be ! I will not allow it ! NEVER !'

The strength of his words, backed by the indomitable power of his will and his tremendous psychic might, shattered the hold of the vision on the Heralds' mind, allowing them to rise again. But no sooner had the words left his lips that, from all around the sons of Magnus, came a sound that every Herald remembered, even if they had never heard it in their lives :

The sound of Wolves howling as they came to destroy Prospero.

Ever since the razing of Prospero's cities by the Sixth Legion, at the dawn of the Roboutian Heresy, the world had been haunted by the ghosts of those slain during that fateful conflict. But the defenders of Prospero had taken a toll upon their attackers, and thousands of sons of Russ had paid with their lives for their betrayal of Imperial Unity. As the world was slowly suffused with the power of the Warp, the shades of these warriors had been risen as well, but the overwhelming number of the Prosperine dead had prevented them from manifesting whenever a new Herald was called. However, they were still there, fiends of shadow, fang and claw, lurking in the deserts and wild places, still consumed by the same blind, self-righteous rage that had driven the Rout to the Thousand Sons' homeworld. And now, these wraiths had been strengthened by the foul rituals of a servant of darkness, a being that had once been mortal but had long since transcended the laws of life and death : Aghastri the Necromancer, undying servant of Vulkan, the Black Dragon.

Aghastri the Necromancer

Centuries ago, Aghastri was an Inquisitor of the Ordo Sepulturum, the branch of the Inquisition whose members take it upon themselves to hunt down those who would disturb the slumber of the dead. Greatest among the Ordo's enemies are the cults of Vulkan and the resurrectionists who seek to break the laws of life and death. Aghastri served well as an Acolyte for several decades, finally earning his Inquisitorial Rosette when he slew the Great Defiler, an unidentified xenos creature whose psychic abilities had turned a whole hive-city into a kingdom of walking dead. Aghastri's loyal service continued for nearly a century, until his path crossed that of a cult of Vulkan known as the Arisen Dead. These debased worshippers of the Black Dragon originated from all strata of Imperial society, their minds blasted to ruin by the call of Vulkan. Each of them had undergone an unholy rebirth that transformed them into wights, retaining their faculties and gaining immense strength and resilience – at the cost of their soul. Driven by a splinter of Vulkan's immortal mind, the Arisen Dead wandered the galaxy in search of the Black Dragon's Legacy, these items of power and significance scattered across the stars and bearing Vulkan's taint.

Aghastri confronted the Arisen Dead on multiple occasions, losing several of trusted Acolytes before eventually managing to corner the cult's last members on the forbidden world of Maltiros. This world had been abandoned by the Imperium during the Scouring, declared irredeemable by the then newly founded Inquisition for reasons only mentioned in the most sealed of records. The Arisen Dead had come to Maltiros drawn by hints that one of Vulkan's relics was on the planet. Aghastri and his remaining allies fought the undead in the streets of the world's greatest city, now hollow and ruined, with no sign remaining that anyone had ever lived there. Eventually, Aghastri confronted the leader of the Arisen Dead, a Draconite Inquisitor who had succumbed to the empty promises of the Black Dragon more than two thousand years ago. Aghastri's final triumph over this renegade destroyed the remaining Arisen Dead, but his victory had cost him the last of his allies.

Then, as he prepared to return to his orbiting ship, Aghastri found the relic that had led the Arisen Dead to Maltiros. In the ruins of the Governor's Palace, the Inquisitor found a ring, crafted by Vulkan himself during the Great Crusade and offered to Maltiros' ruler when he had bent the knee to the Salamanders without fighting, back when the Eighteenth Legion still served the Imperial Truth. Upon Vulkan's fall to Chaos and eventual ascension into a Daemon Primarch, the ring's connection with the Black Dragon had been enough to transform it into a dark relic, possessed by what might possibly be the first of Vulkan's own Neverborn. Maltiros' Governor had been corrupted by the ring, malevolent influence, though few records remain of the exact process. When the Scouring reached the planet, nothing living remained on it except for the creature the Governor had become. After the Sons of Horus destroyed it, the ring was lost and the planet quarantined, lest Vulkan's evil influence spread once more. But even this was not enough, in the end.

Weakened by his recent battles and the loss of his friends, Aghastri was unable to resist the power of the ring and claimed it for himself, unaware at the time of what he had done. Through the ring, Vulkan's influence corrupted him over the course of several years, his body wasting away along with his righteousness. By the time his peers had discovered the truth, it was too late, and Aghastri vanished along with several radical tech-priests and a handful of the most dangerous prisoners of the Inquisition he had broken out of their cells. When next he appeared, he had become the Necromancer, a dread figure in full heavy spiked black armor decorated with sorcerous sigils and marks of his allegiance to Vulkan. Through the ring's power and his knowledge of the Arisen Dead's secrets, he had become able to take control of the psychic echoes left by the death of any ensouled being, raising hosts of ghosts and possessed corpses as he waged war against the Imperium. Through means unknown, the Necromancer travelled the galaxy for centuries, seeking to prosecute Vulkan's agenda – exposing the relics of the Legacy of the Dragon, and weakening the wills of the Emperor's subjects to make them more easily dominated by the Black Dragon. Servants of the Vulkan throughout the galaxy know of the Necromancer. Aghastri has worked alongside Salamanders on a handful of occasions, and even the infamously proud Dragon Marines give him a wary respect, seeing him as an agent under the direct control of their Daemon Primarch.

Vid-logs from the armor of those few champions who managed to engage Aghastri in close quarters have revealed that his armor is now hollow, all traces of his body having long since turned to dust while his spirit remains bound to his shell of metal by the ring's power. The ring itself is still worn on his gauntleted hand, proudly displaying the snarling dragon face Vulkan sculpted in it ten thousand years ago. All attempts at destroying the ring have failed, as the daemon within protects its host from damage. Aghastri himself has been defeated a handful of time, but his slavery to Vulkan will not let him rest, and he always returns from such setbacks, seeming none the worse to bear.

In the closing hours of the Dark Millennium, Aghastri had been sent to Prospero by his dread master, tasked with destroying the Heralds of Prospero and prevent the rise of Vindicta, for the Black Dragon feared that the newborn Power might interfere with his own sinister goals. The nature of Prospero increased the Necromancer's powers dramatically, even if the world itself loathed him and what he represented – the enslavement of even the dead into service to the lord of the Eighteenth Legion. How long Aghastri waited on Prospero before springing his trap, none can tell, but such was the Necromancer's strength that he was able to summon the psychic echo of every fallen Space Wolf, along with a host of nightmares and long-dead horrors from Prospero's past. Spirits born from the uneasy dreams of tormented young psykers and abominations from the planet's distant past, during Old Night, manifested in the storms of sand, dust and ash.

The sons of Magnus were still shaken by the nightmarish vision they had just experienced, but the cries of the wolves brought their focus back. Sharpened instincts pushed aside the horror they felt, and the battle at hand drew their minds away from dread considerations. They did not know how the Rout's ghosts had taken form, but they could sense the power that had roused them in the distance, and knew that it must be removed from Prospero's hallowed grounds. With Khayon leading them, they went to war, and their fury was terrible to behold.

For the first time in their long and bloody history, the Heralds of Prospero stood as one. Even those of these warriors who had gathered armies of followers were used to fighting alone, for few could bear to be in the presence of the wraiths they summoned onto the battlefield. Yet now they were all members of the same shadowy order, all sharing in the esoteric powers the world itself had bestowed upon them. And so, at long last, the Heralds fought side by side, their first taste of true brotherhood since they had heeded the call of their lost homeworld. Strategies and signals that hadn't been used in centuries were employed once more, still as fresh in the memories of the Heralds as the day they had been taught in the Legion's halls. Telepathic abilities that had weakened through disuse suddenly blossomed once more, former Athanaeans becoming nodes in a psychic network binding all the Heralds together. And at their side rose the ghosts of Prospero.

The shades of millennia-dead Spire Guards, Astartes, and countless civilians emerged from the shadows and mists of Tizca, drawn out and given form by the psychic power of the Heralds and the ambient energies of Prospero. Wraith fought wraith in the streets of Tizca, while the Heralds cut a path ahead, toward the source of the Wolves' return. Their weapons blazed with psychic power, ripping the aetheric forms of their foes to pieces. But the Necromancer's army fought back, striking with claws of hate and fangs of old, old judgement. Torbek Kalim, who had saved the worlds of the Ollyrian Cluster from destruction at the hands of a Blood Angels warband, fell, his hearts ripped out by the claws of something with three wolf-like heads and cloaked in snow-white fur. Seth Payros, who was the source of the legend of the Ghost Lord in the Gaelos Sector, died bleeding from a hundred different wounds that his enhanced physiology could not close up in time. Aleph Iuros, who had been the last to journey to Prospero and become a Herald, took his own life with his bolt pistol when he was possessed by the shade of a particularly vicious Wolf Lord, whose spite had allowed it to retain much of its individuality through the centuries.

These and others fell, but none of them stopped fighting. Their ghosts rose from their broken bodies, and they joined the battle once more, their psychic powers undiminished by their demise. The dead of Prospero and their Heralds fought their way toward the city's borders, and there they found Aghastri, standing in a ritual circle etched in melted rock upon the sand, dark runes glowing with ember light. Around the circle were the echoes of Prospero's ancient predators, the Psychneuein, beasts that fed upon the brains of those psychically gifted. They had all been wiped out long ago, but the memory of their terror lingered, and the Necromancer's spell had unwittingly brought them back. Aghastri could not control them, but neither could they cross the arcane barriers surrounding him. When they detected the Heralds' approach, they turned upon them.

The Thousand Sons fought these ancient horrors with their blades and their fists rather than their psychic powers, just as their Primarch had done millennia ago in the confrontation that had cost him his eye. The wraith of the very creature Magnus had fought was present, a towering thing of tendrils and fanged maws that Khayon cut in twain with his axe before facing the Necromancer, passing through the ritual circle unhindered, his mortal body breaking the protection it offered. Aghastri raised a spiked mace inscribed with infernal runes, and the two masters of the dead came together in deadly melee combat, matching their martial skills even as their psychic powers clashed.

The air around them was filled with the roar of the dead and the clashing of weapons. Throughout the centuries, Khayon had faced many champions too powerful to be dispatched by the ghosts he carried with him, but even he had to admit Aghastri's skills were superb. The renegade had only grown stronger since the last time Khayon had fought him in the crystal halls of a xenos tomb, within the Halo Stars. That time, Aghastri had escaped him by releasing the tomb's guardians and setting them upon Khayon – but now there was nowhere for the Necromancer to run.

'You are only delaying the inevitable,' declared Aghastri. 'The Imperium's demise can no longer be stopped. The Age of Mankind is over … The Age of the Dragon will soon begin.'

'Shut up,' spat Khayon, his wrath at the desecration of his homeworld overcoming his usual tempered behavior. If not for the murmuring ghosts at the back of his mind and their cold, cold fury, he might have been completely overwhelmed and lost control to his rage.

On and on they fought, while around them the armies of the dead clashed. Finally, with a great, exhausted roar, Khayon focused his anger and dismay at the attack, at the vision, at ten thousand years of endless war, into the edge of his blade, and cut his opponent's mace in two. The daemonic weapon exploded in a wave of sorcerous energy that threw Aghastri to the ground, where Khayon towered above him, axe raised like an executioner of old.

'The power of the Dragon cannot be defied,' whispered the spectral voice of Aghastri. 'In the end, all will bow to him … even you, Khayon the Black. Even this new Power you serve ...'

'Never,' growled Khayon, before ramming Saern into the renegade's armored chest.

The runes on the blade glowed as their power ate through the vile sorcery keeping Aghastri's soul bound to the material plane, and the ring on his right hand burned with a bright, orange light as the power within sought to keep its slave within its grasp. But Khayon could sense the threads of aether chaining Aghastri's shade now, and the power that had been growing within him ever since he had returned to Prospero flared in his consciousness. He channelled it into Saern, and felt something like surprise emanate from Aghastri's withered soul – then, gratitude and relief, as the old spell that had kept him trapped in this state of undeath for so long dissolved.

The armored suit of the Necromancer fell to the ground, its pieces turning to dust in mere moments. The winds of Prospero quickly swept even that away, revealing the last remaining trace of the creature Vulkan had sent to the Fifteenth Legion's homeworld : the golden, dragon-headed ring that had burned so bright on Aghastri's hand. Khayon bent and picked it up, before raising it before his eye-lenses, glaring at the reptilian visage. He could hear its voice trying to tempt him, but the chorus of Prospero's dead was much louder.

'Go back to the Dragon,' hissed Khayon through clenched teeth as he tightened his grip. He could sense something else, something immensely powerful and distant speak through him, and words not his own left his lips in a terrible shout : 'and give him this message : WE COME FOR HIM !'

The ring shattered in Khayon's grip, and the daemon bound within was cast back into the Warp, to return to the dark power that had created it and confess its failure. Tossing the pieces aside, Khayon turned and faced his brothers, who looked upon him in awed respect.

'In time,' he swore, 'Vulkan will be brought to justice for his transgression. But a greater battle lies ahead, brothers. We have all seen what threatens our Legion, our father – our Imperium.'

He raised Saern above his head, and the perpetual cloud cover suddenly broke. A pillar of sunlight fell upon the blade, and for a moment it seemed as if Khayon was haloed in pure gold.

'We go to Terathalion,' he declared. 'Now at last, we return to our Legion !'

With Aghastri's defeat and the destruction of the ring, the wraiths of the Sixth Legion were banished, and the power of Prospero was allowed to flow freely at last. The strength of Vindicta flowed through the Heralds of Prospero, restoring their power and healing the wounds they had taken in the battle. But nothing could be done for the twelve Heralds who had fallen in battle – returning the dead to life was beyond Vindicta's power. However, their aetheral forms remained strong, their spirits unbowed by death. They too knew what horror threatened Terathalion, and the power of Vindicta anchored them into the material plane. Baptised the Vengeful Ones by Khayon, they spread across the fleet, each following one of their living brethren – like all ghosts of dead Heralds, but still fully aware and capable of clear psychic communication.

The Vengeful Ones were not the only manifestation of Vindicta's newly awakened power. Above Prospero, the warship Tlaloc, which had carried Khayon through the stars for ten thousand years, suddenly blazed with psychic power in the eyes of the fleet's Navigators and astropaths. Deep within its machine heart, the Anamnesis, an entity born of Khayon's own blood sister as well as the brains of hundreds of scholars and convicted criminals, was reforged by Vindicta. The mind of Itzara Khayon, who had all but vanished amidst the chorus of the Anamnesis' voices over the centuries, was suddenly invigorated, her ancient psychic ability serving as a conduit for the Power. Ten thousand years ago, Itzara had watched Prospero burn through a thousand eyes, observing the destruction wreaked by the Space Wolves with her ship's every sensor. Now, with her damaged soul restored, her hatred of the Sixth Legion might surpass even her brother's. She took the name of Ultio, the High Gothic word for vengeance, and vowed to lead the assembled ships of the Heralds to where they were needed – to Terathalion, where the forces of Chaos had gathered.

'I am the Anamnesis, a thousand minds speaking as one, bound by the secrets of the Omnissiah.

I am Itzara Khayon, sister to Iskandar Khayon, daughter of the sands of my murdered homeworld.

I am the vengeance of Prospero rendered into cold iron and burning plasma.

I am Ultio !'

Transmission from the Tlaloc to the rest of the Heralds' fleet in orbit around Prospero

And so, with the Tlaloc leading the way through the tides of the Warp, the fleet of the Heralds of Prospero came to Terathalion. Despite the many attempts by the Dark Gods to obstruct their journey, they were spurred onward by the power of Prospero, the same aetheric currents that had delivered the Death Guard from the White Scars' pursuit during the Roboutian Heresy. Ships were destroyed in the journey, their crews succumbing to daemonic possession and their Geller Fields collapsing in an orgy of horror and torment. But no ship aboard which there was a Herald was lost, and none haunted by the Vengeful Ones was even boarded by the Neverborn.

Though it was difficult to tell, Khayon was fairly certain the daemons were scared of his wraith-brothers – and of him, too, or perhaps of his sister. Despite not having any of the Vengeful Ones on board, the Tlaloc crossed the Sea of Souls without any of the torments usually suffered by ships sailing the Great Ocean, its crew unburdened by nightmares and madness. However, the tides themselves were cruel and violent, aetheric energy clashing against the Geller Fields of the fleet with enough strength to shake the vessels from prow to stern. From his position on the Tlaloc's bridge, acting as the ship's Navigator in psychic communion with his sister, Khayon could sense the titanic predators lurking around the fleet, their ravenous hunger for the souls within it – and their instinctive, bestial dread for the power it contained.

The fleet had entered the Warp in battle formation, but when it finally emerged into the Terathalion system, after what only seemed to have been days rather than months or years of travel, that arrangement had been thrown wildly out of shape by the vagaries of the Warp. However, Khayon lost no time in re-establishing communication with his brothers across the fleet and restoring the battle formation. Reports flooded in from auspex crews, while the Heralds' psychic senses painted them a grip picture of the situation on Terathalion. Daemons walked the land, and a Black Crusade marched upon Ahat-iakby. Khayon recognized the psychic stench of Sarthorael, whom he had witnessed in the first attack on Terathalion more than nine thousand years before.

Upon hearing that the creature responsible for their Primarch's slumber had returned, the fury of the Heralds of Prospero grew even further. Their psychic power radiated ahead of the fleet as it sailed toward the planet. The Black Crusade armada was caught directly in their path, and those psychically sensible aboard were driven mad by terrible whispers of Vindicta and the rightful retribution it promised to all servants of Chaos. Nearly all slaves of Tzeentch are psychic in one way or another, and the captains of the Dark Angels' ships and Sarthorael's cultist wretches were terrified. With the Ever-Watcher and nearly all Dark Angels on Terathalion, order quickly broke down, and the Chaos armada began to dissolve as every ship attempted to run. The vessels that had brought the Sixth Legion and their allies to the system fared better, though several of the xenos breeds with which Logan Grimnar had forged alliances also lost all discipline.

The Heralds' only goal was to reinforce their brothers in Ahat-iakby and prevent the horrible vision they had beheld on Prospero from coming to pass. But as they punched their way through the disorganized Chaos fleet, they still took the time to unleash their powers upon the enemy ships. Armies of ghosts manifested within the twisted corridors of the heretic vessels, preying upon their crew and adding to the general panic. From the bridge of the Word of Magnus, Lady Admiral Kiya saw her opportunity, and immediately seized it. She rightly suspected that these new vessels held reinforcements loyal to the Golden Throne. This was a gamble, even if their identification codes proclaimed their Imperial allegiance, and vox-officers called out to her, telling her they had successfully established contact with the humans aboard. But the Lady Admiral trusted in her instincts, which told her that this strange coalition could be trusted.

There was nothing she could do to help in the surface war of Terathalion, but that wasn't the case in the void. The traitor fleet was falling apart, but given time and enough distance from the Heralds of Prospero, it might be able to recover. Even if it did not, and shattered into a hundred different pieces, these remnants would plague the Prosperine Dominion for years to come, and require an extensive campaign to purge completely. With the reports of doom and horror coming in from the rest of the galaxy, this was not something the Imperium could allow. At her command, the Terathalion fleet left the planet's orbit in battle formation, sailing through the void toward the confused Chaos ships. They were soon joined by part of the Heralds' own fleet.

As the Heralds' armada came close to Terathalion, auspexes and psychic senses had been able to detect the unnatural storm that covered Ahat-iakby and its surroundings. This cloud cover was impossible to cross by normal gunships and transports – the sorcerous energies raging within would tear them to shreds. Only the psychic protection of a Herald could allow a craft to reach the surface and deliver reinforcements to the besieged city. Aboard the Tlaloc, Khayon quickly decided which forces his brothers would lead down to the planet, and commanded the rest of the fleet to turn back and aid in the destruction of the Chaos fleet. His choice was partly commanded by simple pragmatism – the forces aboard ships carrying Heralds of Prospero were given priority. But there were only so many transports a son of Magnus was confident he could shield, and so Khayon was forced to select the rest of his army on what little information he could glean from the situation planetside, as well as the best guesses of the Anamnesis' collective mind.

The vox-transmission had video this time, and it went both ways. On the bridge of the Word of Magnus, Lady Kiya looked at the screen showing her the one leading the armada that had turned away from Terathalion to sail alongside her fleet. He was human – every Astartes in the fleet was on his way to Terathalion's surface – and handsome enough, in a roguish sort of way. He called himself William Magellan, Rogue Trader and sworn ally of the Heralds of Prospero, who had saved his life and those of his crew more than fifty years before, in an ambush by an Ultramarine warband. She had listened to him talk for two minutes now, and every second of it had been a revelation that had shaken her world around her. She knew of the Heralds – one could hardly serve within the Prosperine Dominion as long as she had and not hear the legends of these ghost-callers. But she had never thought that they would command a fleet, let alone gather together.

Then there had been the news of the battle of Prospero, though the captain had known little of what had transpired on the Fifteenth Legion's ancient homeworld – his Astartes masters had been tight-lipped on the subject. All he knew was that the Heralds had been "called" to Prospero, and there, they had learned of the threat faced by Terathalion and their slumbering Primarch. Then, after a brief battle against the forces of Chaos, they had left to come to their brothers' aid.

She had known the Black Crusade attacking Terathalion was something that would shape the fate of the Imperium, but this was different. Events like this belonged with the legends of the Heresy, of the time when the Primarchs and the God-Emperor Himself had walked the galaxy. And yet here she was, part of one such tale in the making. She resolved that she would prove worthy of such an honor – she would not fail in her duties. Her grip tightened around the long-suffering armrests of her command throne, and she rose to her feet. On the pict-screen, William fell silent – he was looking at her, and something in her expression was making him smile.

'All ships at full speed,' she commanded. 'Align formation with our new friends. If these Chaos scum think they can run away after attacking our world, they have another thing coming !'

A cheer of pride and bloodlust rose from her crew as they moved to relay her orders, and she allowed herself a tight smile. Now the traitors would pay for what they had done.

Together, Lady Admiral Kiya and Rogue Trader Magellan – appointed fleet leader by Khayon himself on the basis of his experience and courage – led the battle against the Black Crusade's fleet. With the Heralds focusing their attention on shielding their transports as they descended through Terathalion's tormented atmosphere, the ghostly boarders had faded, and a measure of order was returning to the heretic armada. But before those left behind by the triumvirate of Daemon and Astartes could restore their control over the ships who could still be reached by vox and sorcery, the Imperial fleet entered range for their long-ranged weaponry. The barrage of nova cannons and lance weapons spread confusion once more, and the Chaos fleet soon fell apart, each captain seeking to save his own skin. With a masterful four-dimensional pincer manoeuvre, the Imperials were able to catch and destroy more than eighty-percent of the ships that hadn't begun to flee the moment the Heralds had arrived. They took losses in the process, of course. The Word of Magnus itself was badly damaged in the engagement, and Magellan's ship, the Emperor's Compass, had to be abandoned after sustaining catastrophic damage by Logan Grimnar's own flagship as it fought its way to the Mandeville Point. Magellan went down with his ship, raising a glass of priceless amasec to the Lady Admiral over a blurry pict-transmission as the bridge went in flames around him.

On the planet, the three leaders of the Black Crusade received news of this new development from their Sorcerers and psykers left aboard – the only form of communication that could pierce the supernatural storm roused by Sarthorael's circle to shield the army's approach from orbital bombardment. Even so, with the ghosts of Prospero interfering, the witches could only transmit the most basic details. The Ever-Watcher was unconcerned by the fleet's fate, but Azrael and Grimnar were dismayed, afraid that they would end up trapped on Terathalion, where the full might of the Imperium would fall upon them and destroy them eventually. The Ever-Watcher told them, laughing in their minds all the way, that they now had no choice but to follow him and do their very best to help him accomplish his goals. With their fleets destroyed, and incoming Imperial reinforcements, only the power of Tzeentch could rescue them – and the God of Change would not deliver their salvation if they failed in their unholy mission. Sarthorael's plans could yet bring victory to the Black Crusade and doom to the Fifteenth Legion, if the Greater Daemon could only reach the sanctum of Magnus and perform his vile work onto the Primarch's slumbering form. Then, Sarthorael promised with uncharacteristic sincerity, they would hold the power to defeat all that the Imperium could throw at them, and the favor of Tzeentch would be theirs forevermore.

Gritting their teeth, chaffing at the daemon's imperious command – but irresistibly drawn to the lure of the selfsame promise that had convinced them to join the Black Crusade – both Azrael and Grimnar fought their way through Ahat-iakby. Each was leading a group of warriors from their Legions, all of whom were masters of their own warbands. On the battlements of the Fifteenth's greatest stronghold, Madox listed the names of Russ' sons as his brothers and the human defenders of the city recognized them. Lukas the Deceiver, who had replaced one of his hearts with the organ of some monstrous Warp-spawn after the original had been lost to the clawed gauntlet of a Dark Eldar warlord. Leifar the Immortal, who had died five times and returned from each demise a little more changed by the faustian bargain he had made back when he was still a human cultists of the Sixth Legion. Egil Ironborn, who had been born in the Warp with half his body made of a living, dark metal, yet had not only survived but earned ascension into the ranks of the Space Wolves. Gunnar Moonchild, whose body had long since succumbed to the curse of the Wulfen but had retained his mind through an unholy combination of eldritch pacts and xenos technology.

And, most dangerous of all, Ragnar Blackmane, the Young King. That Grimnar had somehow managed to get the bloodthirsty, ambitious warlord to agree to his command was a dire sign of just how determined the Sixth Legion and the Dark Gods themselves were to destroy the Thousand Sons. For Grimnar and Blackmane were both devotees of the Blood God, and the champions of Khorne rarely accept to submit to the authority of another of their vile creed. It seemed Tzeentch was not alone in his obsession to destroy the Fifteenth Legion, though Khorne's hatred was motivated by the Thousand Sons' use of psychic abilities, not the refusal of submission. Members of the Corvidae saw this new move in the Great Game of Chaos and filed it away to be studied in greater detail later – once more pressing concerns had been addressed with bolter and blade.

Those of the Thousand Sons who had studied the ways of the First Legion in the course of their long war against Chaos were more concerned by Azrael's entourage – not by those who were present, though each had a long list of atrocities attached to his names, but by the absence of one they had expected since learning the Lord of Lies was part of the Black Crusade. Asmodai, the self-proclaimed Lord of Redemption and Azrael's infamous second-in-command, was absent from the Grand Master's circle. Despite the distraction of the war at hand, these sons of Magnus wondered on what mission the Lord of Lies had dispatched his rabid hound, who was rarely seen away from his master's side. Perhaps Asmodai was dead, but they doubted it. A creature as foul as he would not go quietly into the night – it would kick and scream and drag as many as possible with it.

On their way to the Thousand Sons' fortress, the two Chaos Lords each slew several of the sons of Magnus, along with thousands of Ahat-iakby's defenders. Azrael's armor was covered in sorcerous wards that kept the power of the Thousand Sons at bay, while the Axe of Morkai, Grimnar's infamous daemon weapon, shielded its wielder from all Warp phenomena not directly bestowed upon him by his unholy god of carnage and bloodthirst. Each of them was one of the Imperium's great nemeses, their names whispered as curses across hundreds of worlds. As for Sarthorael, he had also continued his advance after slaying the rear guard holding the breach in the city's outer wall.

The Ever-Watcher hadn't taken to the air again, instead gathering his coterie of Lords of Change nearby him. None of Ahat-iakby's defenses could stand against so might a pack – wards sputtered and died, their power broken by the twisting sorcery of Tzeentch, and all mortals who stood in their path were either hideously murdered or even more horribly transformed. However, even the Greater Daemons feared the power of the Wardens, and Sarthorael guided his group down a labyrinthine path through the burning city, using his powers of precognition to avoid encountering any of the psychic Titans. The Thousand Sons who had sacrificed themselves by bonding to the God-Machines tried to hunt down their arch-nemesis, but Sarthorael always remained a step ahead, not hesitating to throw entire warbands in the way of the Titans to escape their wrath himself.

Yet while the lords of the Black Crusade soon reached the walls of Ahat-iakby's inner fortress, most of their army had lost its direction the moment it had entered the city. Traps and ambushes had separated squads of Chaos Marines from the rest of their brethren. Space Wolves packs ran rampant, the beast within their blood pushing them forward. Many succumbed to the Curse of the Wulfen that day, their genetic instability increased by the Tzeentchian magic saturating the air. With Sarthorael's attention focused entirely on reaching the fortress, the remains of his cultist armies was lost, their leaders no longer hearing the voice of their daemonic master in their corrupted minds.

It was this disorganized rabble that the Heralds of Prospero met first when they entered Ahat-iakby. With Khayon the Black leading them, the Heralds, the ghosts of Prospero, and the mortal armies they had gathered struck the traitor hordes like the Emperor's own righteous retribution. Mind-linked, the Heralds kept their forces into one cohesive whole, an arrow aimed straight at the city's inner fortress, where they knew the lords of the Black Crusade would be going.

Faffnr Bludbroder didn't laugh as he ripped off the head of another Spire Guard. Slaughter had long since lost its appeal to him. He missed the joy of battle, just like he missed the members of his old pack. Those who now followed him into war were young compared to him – they had not tasted the ashes of Prospero, not spilled the blood of innocents in the Wolf King's name. They revelled in this war, in this chance to bring death and ruin to the hated witches of the Fifteenth Legion. Blind fools, all of them. Faffnr despised them, for all that they shared his blood. They were not true wolves – they were curs, rabid dogs descended from a line that had once been noble, but was now corrupted beyond salvation by infernal and alien influences.

And they were tearing a bloody path through Ahat-iakby, fighting against the humans who stood their ground even before such monsters as the Rout's warriors had become. Faffnr himself had killed dozens, including several of these female witches who wielded the power of the Wyrd against their foes. Their skills, honed as they were, could not pierce the runes marking Faffnr's armor – wards first laid down thousands of years ago by one of the Sixth Legion's greatest Rune Priests. Nothing, it seemed, could stand in their way – as long as they kept out of the way of the Titans fighting amidst the ruined city, of course. But then …

'Cousins !' shouted a voice, great and terrible. 'We are returned !'

He knew that voice. He had heard it before, first laughing in the time before madness and sorrow, then cursing him and all his kind with hatred colder than Fenris' own winters when they had fought against the Allfather after the Wolf King had called Him false. But it was impossible for him to be here ! It was impossible that he would come for them now, after so long !

Yet here he was, in his armor blackened by the fires that had burned his homeworld, holding the axe he had taken from the champion he had slain. He was here – and death followed with him.

The wraiths hit Faffnr's pack and tore them to shreds, the young bloods screaming as they finally learned the meaning of terror. Only Faffnr remained, his warded armor protecting him even from the wrath of Prospero's dead. He stood, numb, watching as Iskandar Khayon walked toward him. Faffnr could smell the power radiating from the other Astartes. Never before had he seen the likes of it, at least not within a being of flesh and blood.

'Khayon,' he called out. 'You have changed.'

'So have you, Faffnr,' replied the Scourge of the Wolves. 'I have become Vindicta's Voice, and you … what has become of you, cousin ?'

'Where were you ?' Faffnr asked, refusing to answer and remembering a time, millennia ago, when that question had haunted his nights and those of his Jarl. 'Where were you during all this time ?'

'Out there,' replied the black-clad Legionary, gesturing with his axe to the tumultuous sky. 'Fighting to protect Mankind from the legacy of your father's folly. Because someone had to. Someone had to remember the spirit of our oaths, rather than their words.'

Faffnr laughed weakly at the unspoken accusation, and the sound was utterly without joy.

'Tell me, Khayon. If your father had ordered you to do something you knew to be wrong, would you have had the strength to defy him ? To pit your will against that of your own Primarch ?'

'Yes,' replied Khayon, and in that moment they both knew it was true. 'I would.'

'Then you are a better man than me, cousin,' said Faffnr, bitterness dripping from every word. 'I could never go against the Wolf King, even when I had my doubts. It is a terrible thing, Khayon, the bond between Primarch and Astartes that the Allfather created. Even now, with Russ gone for more than ten thousand years, the weight of his commands still hangs around my throat. My Wyrd is not my own – it hasn't been since the day I was taken from Fenris to join the Rout. Go ahead. Finish it.'

Despite all his resolve, Faffnr still flinched as the axe bit deep into his armor and into his chest. He knew that this pain was the only the beginning of his torment, a mere prelude to what awaited him on the other side. The claws of the Neverborn would tear his soul apart, and he would suffer for the rest of eternity, slowly descending into madness until pain was all left to him. A just and fair punishment for his sins. He could still see them, forever watching him with eyes full of judgement – not their own, for they had died knowing nothing but terror and pain. His own judgement, his own self-hatred for all that he had done. For the lies he had served, for the innocents he had slain. For the war he still fought, even though he knew it was the wrong thing to do.

Yes, Faffnr knew he deserved to burn in the fires of Hel for the rest of time, in the circle reserved for traitors. He deserved to burn for the rest of time in the pitiless abyss …

Except there was no pain, when the darkness closed in and all sense of his body failed away. There was no burning claw ripping at his spirit, no agony as everything he was became feed for the daemons his evil deeds had created. Instead, there was a brief cold, and then …

… and then there was silence.

Crushing all Chaos forces in their wake, the Heralds of Prospero finally encountered the elite of the Black Crusade before the walls of their Legion's greatest fortress – the original Ahat-iakby, around which the human city had been built. Even then, the Archenemy's host vastly outnumbered the Imperial troops. Upon seeing Khayon marching at the head of the Heralds, Logan Grimnar was seized by a terrible rage, triggered by ancestral memories that had been passed through his gene-seed. Raising high the Axe of Morkai, the Old Wolf called upon the power of Khorne and strode forth to challenge the Scourge of Wolves. His guards followed him, as did the Silent Callers and their summoned infernal armies, and some of the xenos mercenaries he had brought to Terathalion who had not yet succumbed to bloodlust and the call of their baser instincts for plunder and carnage. Sarthorael and Azrael were content to let their ally deal with the Heralds, and instead focused their efforts on breaching the fortress' hallowed walls to reach their true objective.

The two warlords met head to head, neither calling upon his comrades for help. Grimnar craved to claim Khayon's skull and offer it to Khorne, knowing in his hearts that such a mighty gift would earn him tremendous rewards – perhaps daemonhood itself, and freedom from Sarthorael's bargain. Khayon saw all of Grimnar's many crimes written into the Old Wolf's aura, and Vindicta's song of was hot and loud in his blood. Grimnar had no remorse, no regret, no doubt – he was the personification of everything Iskandar had ever hated about the Sixth Legion. A butcher, blind to the truth of his deeds, perverting the Emperor's gifts to perpetuate his hate. Reality bled around Logan Grimnar, daemons stepping from his shadow, summoned by the strength of his emotions and bound by the power at his command. And behind Khayon was the host of the Prosperine dead that had followed him constantly since Aghastri's destruction.

[See the artwork Echoes of Prospero by Nemris, on Deviantart]

They came together at last, two champions of Powers old and new. Saern clashed against the Axe of Morkai, and the daemon bound within Grimnar's weapon roared in frustration as Vindicta's strength proved its match. From behind their helmets, the two warlords stared at one another, and the air crackled under the strength of their hatred for each other. The heavens above rumbled and the Warp itself shouted their names, for through them two Gods were confronting their will. One was a champion of justice, sought in the name of the innocent dead; the other, a servant of war and slaughter for their own sake, without justification or meaning so long as the blood flowed.

'You die now, little witch,' spat Logan Grimnar, his warped helmet twisting his words into a barely understandable growl. 'Your ghost friends will not save you from my blade … necromancer.'

'It is time to face your sins, son of Russ,' replied Khayon, his voice as calm and cold as the void.

Something reacted to the clash, some ancient pact suddenly coming due, and a creature shaped like a great Fenrisian wolf emerged from the shadow of Grimnar. Its fur was grey like the smoke of Khayon's burned homeland, its fangs glittered with the light of toppled spires. With his powers of perception enhanced by Vindicta's blessing, Khayon saw through the daemon's borrowed form and into its malevolent essence. He recognized it : he had encountered the Neverborn long ago, when he was still an Aspirant for the Fifteenth Legion. It had been one of the spirits who had tempted him with the Warp's false promises of power and knowledge during his ritual training, whispering half-truths in his young mind while his mentors watched. It had failed to destroy him then – it would not succeed now. Through the effort of pushing back against Grimnar's terrible strength, Khayon said the daemon's name, filling the word with all the anger and sorrow that burned within him.

'Gyre.'

The fake wolf stopped mid-air, caught in its jump by Khayon's telekinetic grip. Its fur began to burn as Vindicta's psychic presence consumed its eldritch essence. Without even looking at the creature, Khayon crushed it in his mental grip, drawing upon the strength of the hundreds of vengeful spirits bound to his soul. It burst apart in a shower of gore and rapidly dissolving soul-matter. Its spirit wasn't just banished back to the Warp – it was destroyed, obliterated down to the smallest of the emotions it had devoured when Prospero had burned. Logan flinched as the Neverborn's destruction echoed down the sorcerous connection pacting him to the creature.

Before he could recover, Khayon pressed his advantage. Saern slipped under the Old Wolf's guard and severed his right hand. The Axe of Morkai fell to the ground, the scream of the daemon within it causing blood to sprout from the earth in gory fountains. Then, his speed increased by the cries of the dead, the Scourge of the Wolves struck again, and the head of Logan Grimnar flew.

The death of the Old Wolf triggered a terrible frenzy in his Space Wolves allies. Dozens of them were lost to the Curse of the Wulfen, while others degenerated into hideous Chaos Spawns as Khorne's displeasure for his champion's fall spilled over to them. The Silent Callers cast their masked heads toward the heavens and screamed a sound coming directly from the depths of the Empyrean, their bonds to the one they had followed for so long abruptly severed. The heads of their human cultists burst under the strain, hosts of unbound daemons emerging from the gory remains. Lupine abominations, born from the nightmares of Prospero's survivors who had come to Terathalion millennia ago; raven-headed creatures that laughed and cackled, telling of dooms to come; and all manners of foul spirits that had spawned the Fenrisian legends of yore.

The Heralds and their living and dead allies fought through berserk Wolves and Neverborn host alike, the Vengeful Ones hunting down the Callers with relentless determination. The spectral Heralds blinked from one point of the battlefield to another, striking their prey down again and again, driven by the countless horrors the Silent Callers had committed. The Callers wielded greater power than the Vengeful Ones, but there were twelve of Magnus' undead sons and only six of the Chaos abominations. Moving like lightning and working together as if directed by a single mind, the Vengeful Ones always managed to triumph in the end.

Every time a Caller fell, their mask shattered and there was a great gust of wind, like the sigh of thousands of souls suddenly released from an age-long torment. Finally, when only one remained – a towering figure that had once been known as Ezrekan, Bane-Bearer of the Eightfold-Winds – the Silent Caller performed one last spell, and vanished in a flash of Warp-light. The remains of its brethren disappeared along with it, and the Heralds could not help but feel that this wasn't the last the galaxy had seen of the masked Chaos Sorcerers. For all that Grimnar was dead, this did not feel like a complete victory over the forces of evil – more like the vile power that had created the Silent Callers in the first place had recalled them to its side, to be punished and reforged for their failure.

But incomplete as it might be, this victory still took time, and during that delay the forces of Chaos pressed their assault. Callously abandoning the Sixth Legion's forces for dead, Sarthorael and the Dark Angels attacked the inner walls of Ahat-iakby. With the Wardens fighting the Chaos Titans of Legio Tempestus, the Ever-Watcher and the Lord of Lies led the assault. The Sorcerers of the First Legion called upon Discs of Tzeentch to carry them to the battlements, while squads of Raptors rose, leaving trails of eldritch flames behind them. Many of these warriors had once been Assault Marines of the Dark Angels, but their years of service to Tzeentch had greatly altered them.

Their skulls had fused to their avian helmets, as had the rest of their body to their armor. Any trace of their former humanity had vanished, replaced by vicious predators that took a cruel delight in the hunting of lesser prey. It was even rumoured, among the ranks of the First Legion, that those who pleased the God of Change enough in this aspect would end up transformed into Helldrakes, the true masters of Chaos-touched skies. Considering that such infernal engines usually come from altered gunships, one shudders to imagine the depths of evil and cruelty to which a warrior must sink in order to earn such a great transformation. With claws dripping with venom or wreathed in sorcerous lightning, the Raptors fought the defenders of Ahat-iakby, reaping a bloody toll.

When the Sorcerers added their dreadful power to the onslaught, even the disciplined forces of the Spire Guard and the Adeptus Mechanicus began to break down. Even the skitarii warriors of the Martian Empire could be manipulated by the Dark Angels, their programming overwritten by dark forces and the sacred connection to their priestly masters infected with scrap-code and sorcery. And even the Spire Guard, with all their training and experience, were unsettled by the Broken Ones the lords of the First Legion levitated onto the battlements. The Daughters of Magnus wept at the sight of the former Imperials, their minds and souls shattered by the Interrogator-Chaplains. They could sense the horror of what had been done to them, and the terrible fact that there was no coming back for them. Whatever made humans human was gone from the hollowed shells that remained.

Under the onslaught, entire sections of the walls fell to the enemy. With the situation so dire, Madox took the decision of releasing one of the fortress' most powerful – and dangerous – allies. In the days before the Black Crusade's arrival, every Corvidae Seer on Terathalion had agreed that these were momentous times, and that the hand of destiny was in motion for all of the galaxy. The time had come, they insisted, for the Fifteenth Legion to use every weapon and tool they had accumulated during the long Age of the Imperium. Already they had roused the Wardens of Ahat-iakby, despite the terrible cost involved, but more was required if the worst was to be avoided. And so, Madox decided to fulfill one of the Imperium's own prophecies, despite all his misgivings about the War of Fate. Fighting on the walls to contain the enemy, he sent his brothers to the depths of Ahat-iakby. There, they opened the stasis casket of Khalida, the Watchful Daughter of Magnus.

Khalida the Watchful Daughter

Few know of the truth of Khalida's origins, even among the order of the Daughters of Magnus – in truth, even the Thousand Sons themselves have limited this knowledge to a handful of their own. For more than four thousand years, her very existence has been nothing more than a legend, whispered by those who pray to Magnus as an avatar of the God-Emperor. To them, Khalida is a holy spirit, a Living Saint, an incarnation of their god's power and will, sent to protect His son until the day of his awakening. The truth is a bit different – but, perhaps, not as much as it seems.

At the dawn of the thirty-seventh millennium, the giant red star of the Maxil Beta system went supernova. But the stellar event was tainted by the minions of Chaos, resulting in the cosmic cataclysm spreading the touch of Ruin upon every world touched by its baleful light. This catastrophe, known as the Wrath of the Chaos Sun, affected dozens of Imperial worlds, all of which promptly descended into anarchy and madness as mutation and heresy ran wild. The Imperium reacted swiftly, gathering its terrible might to cleanse the afflicted worlds. Due to the scope of the Chaos infection, the Grey Knights alone would not be enough for the task, and the Thousand Sons sent many of their number to the decades-long war of purification. World after world burned in the fires of Exterminatus, the only mercy that could be delivered to the unfortunate souls damned by the Chaos Sun. Always, the process would be the same : the Thousand Sons would descend upon the world, eliminate whatever Daemon Lord or other defense prevented orbital annihilation, then they would withdraw and watch from their ships as the planet's population was wiped out.

This forced a terrible burden upon the consciences of the sons of Magnus, and soon they began to pray as fervently as any Imperial citizen ever had – not for an end to their duty, but for the chance to save someone, anyone at all, from the worlds. And, in what the Ecclesiarchy would undoubtedly call a miracle had the circumstances been slightly different, they found one.

The name of the world on which the Thousand Sons found Khalida was expunged from all records along with all others touched by the Chaos Sun at the Inquisition's command. But the legends tell it was a hive-world, covered in towering spires and sprawling metropolises. By the time the Imperial warmachine reached it, it had become another hellish world, filled with twisted, crazed mutants and the daemons that wore their flesh. At first, the Thousand Sons were ready to simply blast it to pieces from orbit – nothing there, it seemed, had the power to warp reality enough to make the planet immune to Exterminatus. But the Seer among the group stopped their hand, for he could feel something else on the world, something that did not belong to Chaos – a light in absolute darkness.

It did not take much effort to convince his brothers to descend onto that world and try to rescue whatever the source of that light was. And amidst the madness, they found it : a living girl, less than twenty Terran years old, who shone with psychic gold as she knelt before an unsullied icon of the God-Emperor. The mutants and daemons that stalked the world could not approach her, and there she remained in prayer, unchanging as the years passed. It was only when the Seer laid his hand upon her shoulder that she reacted, her eyes widening in wonder at the presence of the Space Marines. From the moment they stepped out of the ruined church where she had taken refuge when the Chaos Sun had flared in the heavens, the Thousand Sons were forced to fight against an unceasing tide of enemies. It seemed that the whole planet was trying to kill them, driven by an undying hatred of the light in their midst. Perhaps, the sons of Magnus would later theorize, they could not bear the light reminding them of all that they had lost.

Eventually, the Thousand Sons managed to bring the girl back to their gunship and safely extract. The moment they were out of the atmosphere, the Seer gave the order to begin the Exterminatus – already he could feel the gaze of the Dark Gods turn toward them, and there was no telling what they would do with a whole planet of servants to call upon. As her homeworld cracked apart, the young woman, who had fallen unconscious the moment the Thousand Sons had removed her from the church, woke up. Recognizing the significance of her discovery, the Thousand Sons immediately sent her and the Seer whose visions had led to her toward Terathalion, while the others remained to complete the task at hand. During the journey, the Seer learned that the young woman had forgotten nearly all of her memories prior to her time in the church. She only remembered the God-Emperor, the words of prayer, and the monsters baying for her soul – not even her own name had made it through the trial her psyche had undergone. She received the name of Khalida from the Seer, a name from old Prosperine legend about a woman who had refused to let even the most grievous of losses stand in the way of what she saw as the righteous path. The Seer also found out that Khalida was an alpha-plus psyker, one of these exceptionally rare beings who wield the power of the Warp with a degree only surpassed by the Primarchs and the Emperor themselves. The horror of the Chaos Sun had caused her latent ability to suddenly blossom, which was still in the realm of the Seer's expectations. But that she had survived and remained pure, on a world overrun by the minions of Ruin, was something even the secular son of Magnus could only call a miracle.

On Terathalion, Khalida joined the Daughters of Magnus, and learned how to wield her tremendous power from them. But the Daughters' teachings had never been meant to be studied by one as powerful as she. The Thousand Sons who knew of her existence feared that, for all her devotion to their grandsire, she was too powerful to allow to run loose. Eventually, some claimed, the Dark Gods would find a way to pervert her into their service – and then, with her strength, Terathalion would be doomed. Khalida knew of their concerns, and understood them – in truth, she shared them herself. She did not believe herself to be holy, simply protected by the Emperor, but she could still hear the whispers of the Ruinous Powers, all desperate to turn her – even Khorne, with his famous hatred of psykers, couldn't pass up such an opportunity. In the end, she volunteered to be placed in stasis, where she would not be able to cause any harm and would be beyond the reach of even the Chaos Gods themselves. With a solemn ceremony, designed to ensure that she entered stasis in the correct state of mind – as during stasis, the mind lingers on its last thought, sometimes to catastrophic effect in the case of long periods – Khalida went to an artificial sleep she hadn't broken for nigh five thousand years when the Black Crusade reached Terathalion.

Yet even in this state, Khalida hasn't been inactive. Somehow, even the Dark Age technology the Fifteenth Legion used for her sanctuary wasn't enough to completely shut off her presence. While visions of the Crimson King are few and subject to suspicion, no one denies that Khalida's specter has appeared to thousands of pilgrims and devotees over the years. These apparitions bring solace to the tormented praying for spiritual help, delivering advice and curing sickness and injury. Though the apparition's features are never clear, it is always clad in a golden aura described by eyewitnesses as "filled with the Emperor's own love". There is a sect of the Imperial Creed in Ahat-iakby that worships her as a Saint, and it is from this cult that she received the title of Watchful Daughter. Imperial seers have received visions of her throughout the galaxy – even some of the Eighth Legion's Prophets have dreamt of the light of Terathalion, though the details are never clear.

Golden light burst from the fortress as Khalida emerged from her casket. She already knew of the battle at hand – she had heard the prayers of those calling to the God-Emperor for victory and salvation. Like a vengeful angel, she flew to the walls, followed by the Thousand Sons who had awakened her. The Neverborn screamed upon her arrival, and then these screams grew even louder when she let loose the fire of the Emperor's own retribution. For thousands of years, Khalida had been an agent of the God-Emperor's benevolence – now she became a vessel of His wrath.

The power of the roused Daughter was as potent as ever, and the forces of Chaos fell back before her fury as she destroyed hundreds of daemons, elite cultists and Chaos Marines. The light of her faith in the Crimson King and the God-Emperor made her anathema to the Warp-spawn – even Sarthorael and his coven of Lords of Change were reluctant to approach her. But as long as she stood upon the walls, they could not progress further. Sarthorael called upon Tzeentch, begging his divine master for help – and the Great Deceiver answered. With a cruel smile, Tzeentch reached out and moved a pawn that had been sent to Terathalion in anticipation of that exact moment.

For centuries she had remained in prayer, her mind at one with the God-Emperor's divinity. She had looked deep into the thoughts of the Master of Mankind in that time. And while none, save perhaps His sons, could truly understand the mind of a true God, she had learned much. She had witnessed the abyss of millennia through which He had lived, guiding Humanity away from damnation and toward the salvation only He could conceive. She had seen the many sacrifices He had made in the name of that goal, the lives He had destroyed, the hopes and dreams He had broken. She had seen the oceans of blood He had spilled as He pruned the Tree of Life itself.

But she had also seen the tears He had silently shed. She had felt His love for Mankind, His drive to protect the species from which He had been born, no matter how removed from it He became.

She would keep the tides of Chaos at bay as she had done before. Then, the Exiled would return, and the Crimson King would rise. She would share the Emperor's vision with His freed son, and together they would bring a new Age of peace and illumination to the galaxy.

All would proceed according to the God-Emperor's design. His Light shone through her, and as long as it did, Ahat-iakby would not fall, for no spawn of Ruin could bear its touch. The fragments of the Chaos Gods fled before her, and those touched by their tainting influence recoiled, struck by a horror they could not comprehend at the Light's touch, even before it began to burn their impure flesh away. And so she stood, and from the walls of Ahat-iakby the wrath of the God-Emperor rained down upon those who dared threaten His son.

Then one soul approached her, confused and lost, but untouched by the darkness. She turned toward it, and her eyes widened as she saw a warrior of the Legions, clad in the armor of the Dark Angels. The warrior was stumbling, confusion and shock radiating from his thoughts. He did not know where he was, did not know who she was. Like a lost child, he was reaching out to her, desperately, silently begging for her help. The light did not harm him, instead calling him forward. He fell to his knees before the Watchful Daughter …

The dagger buried itself in her heart, and a bloodstain spread over her robe. She looked into the eye-lenses of her killer, shocked beyond words, unable to understand what had happened. Where before there had been a lost warrior, now there was a cruel, scheming monster, revelling in the success of his vile sorcery. Then, just before oblivion claimed her, she struck back with one last blow, and the deceiver was cast back, crashing onto the rock, the dagger slipping from his grasp and shattering as it hit the ground. But it was too late for her, and as Khalida fell, she knew that the Emperor's plans for her had been shattered …

'And so dies your pawn, Anathema,' laughed the God of Change, 'and with it, your pathetic efforts to challenge MY reign over the streams of destiny. I alone am the Architect of Fate !'

Khalida's death broke the mortal defenders of Ahat-iakby. They saw their Saint fall, and knew in their souls that all hope was lost. The Dark Angels, for their part, did not appear troubled by the sudden disappearance of their lord. Their complex, many-layered, utterly insane hierarchy meant that each of them still had his own mission, his own commander to obey. They pressed on, and soon the battlements fell. Madox led the retreat into Ahat-iakby's inner corridors, preparing to fight the forces of Chaos every step on the way to Magnus' sanctum.

As Sarthorael entered the fortress, Khayon and the other Heralds finally reached the walls. With their power, it was easy for the Heralds to levitate, leaving their mortal army to deal with the rabble the Chaos Lords had left behind. Utter anarchy descended as three armies fought within the fortress' corridors. Madox' control on his forces fell apart, each Thousand Son forced to fight on his own with whatever troops he could marshal, protecting their minds against the pervading despair. But despite all the bravery of Terathalion's defenders, they were still losing ground, and the forces of Chaos drew nearer and nearer to the vast cavern where Magnus' body laid in state.

Eventually, Madox led a desperate last stand at the sanctum's gates, gathering as many of his brothers to his side as he could, hoping that the Heralds would manage to break through the Chaos horde and reinforce his position. He had heard of the return of his lost brothers during the confusion, and while he barely dared believe in such a miracle, he knew it was his Legion's only hope. Before the great adamantium gate, the Undying held his ground, with hundreds of men, women and Astartes at his side. Thousand Sons, Spire Guards, Daughters of Magnus, Mechanicus skitarii – all stood together, to defend the Primarch against the legions of darkness.

And then, from the hordes of the Lost and the Damned emerged one warrior, clad in blue-grey armor and radiating the baleful power of Khorne. In his hands, he held a power sword of ancient design – a relic of Mankind's distant and glorious past, despoiled and tainted with runes of the Blood God. Behind him came other Space Wolves and Wulfen. He wore no helm, revealing long fangs and the long black hair that had given him his name. This was Ragnar Blackmane, the Young King, thrice-accursed heretic and bane of the Imperium. After the death of Logan Grimnar, he had left the rest of the Sixth Legion forces with his own warband, seeking the glory of being the one to breach the sanctum of the Crimson King. Driven by the bloodlust of Khorne, Ragnar identified Madox as the leader of the defenders, and sought to claim his head in single combat.

The Wolf Lord was no mindless berserker. There was skill in how he fought, instinct sharpened by centuries of war in the name of his hateful god. His accursed blade danced, its power field somehow sounding like the screeches of the damned as it cut through the air. Despite Madox' efforts, despite having reinforced his body with all the power he could muster, it was all the Undying could do to match the traitor's strength. They had been fighting for several minutes now, and except for a few dents in their armor, neither were the worse for wear. Then the Wolf started talking, his voice filled with hatred and disgust so potent Madox could feel them with his sixth sense. There was such darkness in the traitor's mind, it made him want to heave.

'Your witch-brother killed Lord Grimnar,' growled Blackmane. 'I will avenge him with your death !'

'Vengeance,' said Madox with as much contempt as he could muster in that word, willingly fanning the flames of his own cold, cold rage in order to retain his focus. 'It's all your kind has ever been good for, even though you never noticed that you didn't deserve it, that everything that ever happened to you was brought about by your choices, your actions !'

Ragnar's only reply was a wordless roar, and then he moved even more quickly than before. Madox parried a blow at his side with his staff, then turned the weapon in his hands and struck back. He only saw the trap too late, once his weapon had already hit the Space Wolf right in the chest. Ragnar was smiling, despite the blood leaking from his wound. He had willingly taken the hit, trusting in his enhanced physiology and the blasphemous gifts of his patron to keep him in the fight. Already his blade was moving, seizing the minute opening in Madox' guard caused by his attack.

The weapon's touch as it cut right through his armor and into his belly was agonizing. Instinctively, he sent power to close the wound the moment the blade left a portion of his flesh, but something in the injury prevented even the most basic of healing. Gutted, his entrails spilling from his wound, Madox fell to his knees. Before him, Ragnar raised his blade to deliver the killing blow …

… only for the sword to be blocked by a weapon that was only partly material. Madox recognized the ghostly warrior – this was Aleph Iuros, the last Thousand Son to leave for Prospero, heeding the call of its dead. Now he was back, but he was no longer mortal, instead one of the ghosts whose voices had driven him to leave his Legion. And there were more like him, ethereal Astartes who manifested by the side of Madox' comrades, standing with them against the minions of Ruin.

And again, Madox heard that call, this proclamation of defiance, coming from the minds of each of the twelve ghost champions :

'We are returned !'

Despite the intervention of the Vengeful One, Madox was still terribly wounded. Blackmane's blade was cursed somehow, and its power prevented the Undying from healing the injuries it had inflicted him. And just as he fell back, dragged by his brothers, Sarthorael himself appeared in the antechamber, accompanied by his cohort of Lords of Change. The twelve Vengeful Ones gathered to stand against the Greater Daemons, and the air crackled with the energies of the two Powers these entities represented. Of the coven Sarthorael had brought with him to Terathalion, eight Lords yet remained, making their total nine – an auspicious number of the servants of Tzeentch.

The Vengeful Ones were powerful, and each of them still carried the memories of a lifetime of war against the minions of Chaos. But they were still new to their ascended forms, while the Lords of Change had each existed for thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of years. And while Vindicta was growing more powerful with every passing day, the Architect of Fate had existed far longer, and was using its hoarded power to reinforce its minions in this most crucial of battle. In time, the Lords of Change would pay for this boon, for Tzeentch was ever fickle – but for now, the will of the Changing God was focused on achieving victory on Terathalion. One by one, the Vengeful Ones fell, torn to shreds by claws and sorcery, and the Thousand Sons sensed their essences lose their hold on reality. They weren't destroyed, but instead were cast into the Empyrean, where the pull of Prospero dragged them back to the world of their death. They would return, in time, reaching out to Vindicta's living agents across the galaxy – but their part in the Siege of Terathalion was over.

With the last of the Vengeful Ones banished, the Ever-Watcher raised his staff in his clawed hands, and unleashed his sorcery against the sanctum's gates. The esoteric symbols engraved upon its adamantium surface flared to life, for none but the sons of Magnus could open them – but Sarthorael's might was too great. The Ever-Watcher was empowered by his deceitful god, acting as the chosen hand of Tzeentch on Terathalion, and eventually the gates fell with a thunderous sound. Behind them was revealed the most well-defended place in all of the Prosperine Dominion.

The chamber beyond the gates had been carved into the rock beneath Ahat-iakby when Magnus had fallen nine thousand years ago. Designed by the greatest architects of the Imperium, it was truly immense, stretching out for kilometers. At the center of the space was a pyramid of white marble, and atop that pyramid was where the slumbering body of the Crimson King rested. But the rest of the chamber was far from empty. Row upon row of figures surrounded it, all turned toward Magnus' comatose form. Wearing various patterns of Astartes armor, clutching bolters that hadn't been fired ever since they had entered this room, these were the Rubricae.

Each of these silent warriors had once been an Aspirant of the Fifteenth Legion, promised to a bright future in service of the Imperium. But, upon going through the Rubric that would protect them from the genetic instability that plagued their bloodline, they had been destroyed, reduced to dust trapped within a sealed armor. Such was the price Ahriman's spell exacted from the Legion in return for saving it from the doom laid upon it by the Great Mutator. Tens of thousands of these failed Astartes stood vigil there, utterly immobile – an army of the silent dead, that could only be roused by a voice truly powerful. This was the prize sought by Sarthorael, the true goal of the Black Crusade. With the ritual desecration of Magnus' body, the Ever-Watcher would be able to command the Rubricae, bringing them to the service of Chaos in an unstoppable parody of a Legion.

Sarthorael stepped forward, and the ancient wards of sanctity fought against his presence. With a scowl, the daemon recoiled, before grabbing the closest of his coterie and throwing it through the gates. With a screech of agony, the Lord of Change went up in flames, its physical shell consumed by the wards' power. The same happened to the one Sarthorael threw next, and the same to the one after, until finally one Greater Daemon survived, reduced to a mewling mass of flesh and Warp energy by the now exhausted power of the Fifteenth Legion's spells. By then, only Sarthorael himself remained, and the Ever-Watcher laughed as he crossed the threshold of his old foe's sanctuary. Finally, after millennia of planning and scheming, the hour had come for him to claim ultimate victory in the name of Tzeentch – to destroy the Crimson King and the threat he represented to the Architect of Fate's designs, and turn his legacy to the service of the God of Change. But as he walked toward the white pyramid at the chamber's center, passing between rows upon rows of silent Rubricae, a voice rose from behind him, calling out in challenge.

'Sarthorael !'

The Ever-Watcher paused, then turned. There, walking toward him with the ruined bodies of the daemon's servants piled behind him, was Khayon the Black, radiating psychic power. Around him, the echoes of Prosperine dead swarmed, their ghostly faces facing Sarthorael, their own hatred of him increasing Khayon's already considerable own. Slowly, deliberately, Sarthorael walked back down the path, until he was but a few meters away from the Herald. For a few seconds the two simply stared at each other, the only sound that of the battle that still raged in the antechamber as the Heralds of Prospero fought against the remnants of Sarthorael's Black Crusade.

'Look at you,' mocked the daemon as it loomed over Khayon. 'Look at how far you have gone, little Iskandar, fighting at the side of your own Neverborn. I am proud of you, really. Of all of our father's sons, you are the only one who even got close to fulfilling his true potential.'

'Save your lies, daemon,' spat Khayon. 'I know what you intend. I won't let that happen !'

Sarthorael's laughter was a thing of nightmares – it was the sound of hopes becoming true in the most horrible, twisted way, of long-held beliefs suddenly revealed as naught but superstition.

'You cannot defeat me, Iskandar. You are strong, for a mortal – but I am so much more than that. That little god you serve is but a fledgling, and I serve a Power far greater.'

'We will see about that,' said Khayon, and he charged Sarthorael, his axe raised, the winds of death itself screaming at his side. He moved fast, faster than he ever had before, faster than when he had battled Aghastri on Prospero. Vindicta's strength flowed through him, for before him stood the arch-enemy of his Legion, the creature that was responsible for all the suffering and madness that had happened across Terathalion. In that moment, he was more than Iskandar Khayon, Scourge of the Wolves and First Herald of Prospero. Now, he was justice incarnate, retribution made flesh.

Sarthorael's staff met Saern's edge, and the ancient power axe shattered in a thousand pieces, while Khayon was flung back – only to be caught mid-air in the Ever-Watcher's left claw. Despite everything he had endured over the years, Khayon screamed as Sarthorael unleashed his power against him, ripping out pieces of his armor and tearing him apart on the inside until he was but a hair's breadth from death. Blinking tears of pain and blood away, Khayon stared into the eyes of the daemon, barely able to keep himself from falling into unconsciousness from the pain and shock.

'Did you really think your new Power would be a match for me ?' sneered Sarthorael. 'I am a scion of Tzeentch, little mage. I am timeless, and my knowledge stretches beyond your imagining. It will take more than your pathetic tricks to defeat one such as me.'

With a desultory gesture, Sarthorael threw Khayon across the room. The Herald crashed into the wall, next to the broken gates, and slumped to the ground, where he remained, unmoving.

'Watch now,' mocked the Greater Daemon, 'as I bring the retribution of Tzeentch upon your father, and claim dominion over all that he ever held dear !'

Then, without another glance, Sarthorael turned back toward the white pyramid, abandoning his defeated foe. Failure tasted of familiar ashes in Khayon's mouth as he laid on the ground, his body broken, his power spent, his axe shattered. He could not move, could barely breathe. He had lost, and there was nothing more he could do but watch as everything he had fought for was horribly metamorphosed by the evil he had failed to stop. Part of him wondered whether Sarthorael would grant him the mercy of death, once he had witnessed the terrible vision of Prospero come true.

And then there was a presence near him, and he forced himself to turn his head toward it. There stood Madox, the current leader of the Thousand Sons defending Terathalion. Khayon had heard of him from the Heralds who had most recently left the Legion. The so-called Undying was on the brink of death, his life prevented from ending only by the constant use of his great powers of biomancy. His aura, weak and flickering, was still threaded with Vindicta's power – should he survive long enough, he too would become a Herald. But that wasn't likely to happen now …

'I see it now … Vindicta's light,' said Madox between gritted teeth, and Khayon could hear the blood dripping from his mouth with every word. 'It needs you, Khayon … It needs you alive.'

Madox knelt by Khayon's side, and laid his hands upon his ancient brother's broken body. Power flowed through Iskandar, repairing tears in his flesh and rejuvenating exhausted muscles. For several seconds, Madox simply sat there, immobile, working his Art to heal Iskandar. And then he fell, and moved no more, the last of his life expended to heal Khayon's wounds.

How many brothers had Iskandar seen die now ? How many more would he see, before it finally ended? Why won't you let me die ? He thought bitterly, nearly overcome by the centuries of warfare and horror he had experienced, as the galaxy fell ever further into darkness. How much more could one soul bear before breaking under the strain of so much death ?

However much was required of him, came the answer from a silent voice in his head. Khayon forced himself to look up, ignoring the pain that caused. There, standing over his own corpse and Khayon's crawling form, was the ghost of Madox, looking down at the brother he had saved. He did not wear his helm anymore, and his face held no wrath, no judgement at Khayon's doubts – only trust. Even in death, Madox believed Khayon would do his duty.

How could he disappoint someone who had sacrificed his life to save him ?

Despite the pain – Madox had saved his life, but Khayon was still far from fully healed – he crawled toward the pyramid. He did not know what he would do, what he could do – but he would not give up. He would not give in to despair. And so he crawled, centimeter after centimeter – and then, a miracle happened.

Sarthorael was climbing up the steps of the pyramid and was already half the way to the top when, without warning, a disc of bright light appeared before him, stopping him in his tracks. Khayon recognized the psychic signature of a Warp Portal, through the power behind it was unknown to him. A first silhouette emerged from the portal, and Sarthorael sneered in contempt. Then, another, smaller figure appeared – and the Ever-Watcher froze in shock, before screeching in denial and dread. From his position on the ground, Khayon smiled behind his helmet. He knew these two – he knew them both. He had walked at their side in the past, and while their partings had not been peaceful, he knew them both to be enemies of the Primordial Annihilator. Most importantly, he knew what their coming meant. The circle was closed, and destiny long delayed was in motion once more.

The Exiled had returned.

AN : Behold my work ! The longest part in the Times of Ending series so far. Now that was a trial. By the time I finished writing the confrontation between Khayon and Sarthorael, I had all but forgotten the days I was writing the battle on Prospero.

Most of you will have deduced that one of the figures appearing at the end is Ahriman. But who is the second one, the one that scares even Sarthorael ? Well, I look forward to seeing what theories you come up with. I already know, of course.

And now, onto Vindicta. The idea of creating a new Power in the Warp came early in my thoughts on the Roboutian Heresy. But the fact that Vindicta was born from the Wrath of Magnus, cast out of his mind during the Heresy so that he could focus on the War in the Webway ... That one popped out of nowhere while I was writing the monologue at the chapter's beginning. Once again, my characters have surprised me. If you have questions about Vindicta, don't hesitate to ask them - but keep in mind, even the Heralds themselves still have little knowledge of this new entity.

The next chapter will again go back in time a little, to explain who these newcomers are and how they came to Terathalion. This will be an interesting chapter to write, let me tell you.

As always, thanks to Jaenera for beta-reading this, and thanks Nemris for his amazing work. Not one piece, this time, but two ! I also advise you to look at the rest of his work - it is all of excellent quality.

I also have something to tell to you, my readers : in the last days, I have offered my readers on spacebattles the opportunity to ask questions to an omniscient Oracle about the Roboutian Heresy verse, so that I might answer these questions in a suitably cryptic and prophetic manner. A lot of these questions have come up, so if you want to look at them or ask questions of your own, go check the thread for the Roboutian Heresy on spacebattles (it begins on the fifty-fifth page with the description of the "rules" for a question to be considered).

Thanks you all for your support. Once more, don't hesitate to tell me what you thought of this chapter in your review or by PM, or what you hope to see in the future of the Times of Ending. We are approaching the end game of the Siege of Terathalion - only two more chapters left, and the last one ... well, I won't spoil the surprise for you.

Zahariel out.