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.

Regal

They had been Sons of Horus once.

It was difficult for Lord Caustos to remember the days before he and his brothers had been trapped into the Empyrean. So much had been lost, and so much more had changed. They were none of them the men they had been when the ship that had become the Splendid Procession had been lost, her Geller Field breaking down under the ceaseless assault of the Warp. Even the name that the ship had born before was now lost to her master, as he stood on her bridge, gazing into the many-hued storm ahead.

But he did remember that, once, they had fought and bled under the banner of the Sixteenth Legion, bearing the eye of the First Warmaster and the number of their Company, of which he had been Captain. He could not, however, remember the number of that Company, nor did he remember any of the battles they had waged under that name.

He wanted to. He felt that he should remember it, even if he had forgotten almost everything else. He forced himself to focus, to cling to the few threads of memories that lingered within him. His surroundings faded from his perception as he turned his mind inward, and eventually …

Thirty-six, he thought. Yes, that had been the number. The Thirty-Sixth Company of the Sons of Horus. There was symbolism in that : six times six, the sacred number of the Youngest God.

Was something as simple as this the reason we were damned ? Caustos wondered.

Perhaps. The ways of the Warp were not for mere mortals to understand, and despite everything that had been done to him, Caustos still stubbornly clung to his mortality, even as he and his brothers had been all but completely stripped of it.

The Warp Storm that had claimed the Splendid Procession had been unlike anything any of them had ever experienced, beyond anything recorded in the ship's archives. Perhaps, during the Roboutian Heresy itself, there had been forces that had encountered worse tides, but Caustos doubted it. They had been dragged from the Immaterium and into the Realms of Chaos themselves, the hellscapes shaped by the subconscious darkness of every soul that had ever lived. They had emerged from the storm and into the domains of the Ruinous Powers.

They had sailed the Sea of Blood, where the vitae of Khorne's victims flowed endlessly and sharks the size of continents bit at one another in frenzied hunger. They had fought off boarders of silver and fire amidst the crystal towers of the Labyrinth of Tzeentch. They had burned their way through the Garden of Nurgle, and slain the seven Daemon Princes the Grandfather had sent to punish them at the cost of a hundred brothers.

And then they had come to the Silver Palace of the Youngest God, and their doom had found them. The Procession had been becalmed, trapped within the honeyed maze of promises and lies that sprung around the Courts of Pleasure and Pain. The Space Marines had prepared to die at the hands of the infinite daemonic horde waiting outside – but instead, only two emissaries had been sent.

Calling themselves Agony and Ecstasy, the two creatures had offered a single choice to the lost Company : to die valiantly but for nothing, or to take up the challenges set before them by the Courts. They had made it sound as if it were an honor they had been selected for, rather than the cruel whim of a Dark God.

Of course, they had been lying : it had not been a choice at all. No sooner had they spoken that Caustos and his brothers had been dragged out of the Splendid Procession by sorcery, separated and thrown into a hundred different arenas – for that was what they had been, even if some of them had looked like exquisite gardens and courts. Though Caustos had known better than to vainly rail against this breach of their word, the two daemons had mocked him relentlessly as he underwent his own trials. They had stop laughing when he had watched them ripped apart after an eternity spent navigating the intrigues of the Sensuate Courts, finally succeeding in making them run afoul of a greater Power.

And so it had been for each of his brothers, trapped within the Realms of Chaos. Here, each of them alone and surrounded by monsters in beautiful disguise, they had been made to play their part in the drama of the Slaaneshi aristocracy. They had been servants and knights, champions and villains, strangers and old friends – even, Caustos knew to his eternal disgust, lovers to some of the abominations.

Had any of this been real and not an illusion conjured by the Empyrean ? Caustos had no way of knowing. But the effects on him and his brothers had been all too real.

The Warp had hollowed them, taken pieces of their souls and replaced them with stories woven of infernal whispers. Bit by bit, slowly enough that each individual violation left them virtually unchanged, until only the shape remained of who they had been, a vessel for the creatures they had become. They had lost their names and received titles in exchange, symbolizing the power they had been given as well as incarnating the shackles that had been put around their souls. For these titles were in truth the roles they played in the strange and insane theatre of the Dark Prince's courts, and they had been bestowed with little regard for how well they fit : instead, it had been the recipients of those mantles that had been altered to fit them.

When they had reached the end of their stories, the Space Marines had been brought back to the Splendid Procession, except that they weren't Space Marines any longer. Caustos had been the first to be sent back, and he had watched with growing horror as the rest of his Company returned. He saw his Librarian, a noble and proud warrior who had held the Amethyst Gate of Nefrarius against the Tyranid onslaught for seven hours on his own, reduced to a shadow-shrouded figure calling itself the Thief of Faces. He saw his Company champion, who had duelled an Imperial Fist heretic to the death and in victory broken the back of the Radios Incursion, return as the Star-Eyed Swordsman. On and on, he had witnessed his brothers come back and take up their old chambers within the Procession, and watched as they created something akin to the infernal courts they had departed from the mortal crew.

Of his entire Company, Caustos alone had retained his name, and with it his mortality. He was the lynchpin of the Regal Company, its last remaining tie to the Materium. This was not by coincidence, he knew, for through his old rank he held some authority over the entire Company, no matter how changed they were. Even as they plotted and schemed, pitting their minions against each other in petty power plays, none of them had ever conspired against him.

Now, at last, that design was revealed to him. As the last of his brothers – the Empty-Hearted Soldier – was returned to him and the chains holding the Splendid Procession in place came loose, the Golden Herald had come for them, and offered a path out of the Sea of Souls, if they would but do one last favour for it and the one it served. And, Gods take him, but Caustos had been so tired of it all that he had accepted what he knew to be a devil's bargain. He had accepted the proffered cup, and drunk from it, sealing the pact between the Regals and the Sanguinor.

"You shall be Regal and terrible," the Golden Herald had told him, "and bring forth the wrath of the True Gods upon those who have sought to defy their dominion for a hundred centuries."

And so the Thirty-Sixth Company of the Sons of Horus, lost to the Warp a thousand years ago, returned to the Materium on the edge of the Sol system, to join into the final and most terrible play that was the Angel War. The Splendid Procession burst from the Warp deep within Sol, far beyond the Mandeville Point and its many strongholds keeping watch for any invasion.

Across the halls of the Procession, the Regals stirred. They called for their Titleless servants, descendants of the ship's original mortal crew. They too had been reshaped by their long journey, transformed over the course of generations into eyeless, furtive creatures that spent their entire lives serving as incubators for the nightmarish warp-spawns dwelling within their mutated genes.

Suddenly cut off from the Immaterium for the first time in their wretched existences, the Titleless screamed and twisted. Most perished within seconds of the battle-barge leaving the Warp, but those who survived blossomed into new and wondrous shapes as the potential they held within them was forced to actualize. An army of mutants was birthed in the holds of the Splendid Procession, each and every one of them still bound to the Titled Marine who had held their loyalty in their mortal life. And as the Regals called, the Titleless answered – a horde of souls lost to beasthood and madness, rushing to the command of beings who had been heroes and were now naught but puppets of a cruel and uncaring Prince.

Let this sordid tale end at last, thought the Damned Lord of the Regals, who had once been called Caustos, but who was now just as lost as his brothers. Only enough remained of who he had been to feel horror and disgust at what they had become, and to long for an end to their torment. Let us all burn and be done with it.

The Splendid Procession, driven by the bargain sealed between its master and the Sanguinor, coursed through the void, followed by a trail of boiling Warp energy. Like an arrow loosed from the quiver with perfect aim, it shot straight between void fortresses and orbital defenses, toward its target :

Titan, the Saturnian moon where the hallowed and secretive Grey Knights had made their home.

AN : this Interlude's concept was inspired by the Fae nobility of the web novel A Practical Guide to Evil, which I strongly recommend to anyone who likes fantasy stories with well-written characters, incredible action and world-building.

Several people have asked if the Mark of last chapter was related to the one in one of my short stories, The Perils of Victory. The answer is no : the Mark of Xanadu is just one big frak-off Chaos rune to summon daemons, while the Mark of Perils is something far, far more insidious.

Still working on the interlude after this one. It will probably be finished during the week-end, so until then, here is a teaser (something I realized yesterday I should have done since the beginning of those) :

Next : Signal

Zahariel out.