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The 642nd, YYYAAAASSSSS!!!!!!!!

After this whole series in concluded... Would there be a possibility that you could tackle the War in Heaven and what transpired in those events? I know it's a whole other dimension in itself but it honestly feels like you're the only capable author to take on such a task.

Thanks for humoring me.

The night came alive with light as dozens of starships lit their engines and cut their ponderous path away from their homeworld. Leviathans of steel and iron turned with dizzying slowness and grace, green-sided mountains cut form the bedrock of the earth and cast up into the heavens, their miles-long structures splitting the void like assassin’s blades. Their internal structures groaned and curved under the immense forces being pressed upon them, but like all weapons of the Imperium of Man, they were built to endure and soon a mighty flotilla sailed away from the blue haze of Cadia and into the starless black beyond. The ships that remained changed their orbit in a stately dance of gravity and geometry, ensuring that nothing would approached Cadia unheeded. The bid farewell to their fellows with machine-calls and binary transmission, and the leaving fleet responded in kind.

Ships of myriad stripe formed the fleet, each swollen with thousands of souls, crews of hardy men and women who knew their craft as star-farers well. Graceful, blade-like Dauntless Frigates armoured in grey and gold, prowled as sharks ahead of the body of the fleet, shoals of smaller Cobra Destroyers covering their flanks and bellies like youngsters flocking to a mother. Behind them lumbered the great cruisers and battleships of the new crusade, artifices so colossal and gravity-defying that they would never know the kiss of an atmosphere, the pull of a planet’s crust. They bore names of high renown and proud lineage: The Hammer of Midnight, Shield of Sophia, Istudia Rex, The Lament of Bethlehem. Every one worthy of great tales and sagas in their own right, but the tale they would craft as one fleet would go on to live in legend.

Amongst them came vessels of a stranger stripe, ships not usually seen in crusade fleets but bringing their might to bear in the service of a common goal. A great swollen beast of red iron and numerous pronged antennae stalked at the rear of the fleet, a monstrous whale of metal forged from crimson plate and armour of crushing volume, a great obsidian cog emblazoned upon its staggering hull. Dubbed Futility of Descartes, it was the flagship of the Mechanicum contingent of the crusade fleet, Magos Olnixx bringing much of his power and influence to bear to aid in this new mission. Several disjointed and unique vessels clustered near it, bizarre and powerful constructs of the Tech Priests, great gun-boats and research vessels, no two similar and none identical.

Larger still were the troop carriers of the Imperial Guard, barrel-shaped and slab-sided monoliths heavy with fighting men and women. Their hulls were green-hued and daubed with mile-high depictions of goddesses from ancient Cadian myth. They cast monstrous shadows over their kin as they burned by, but even they were dwarfed a pair of black vessels that crawled ponderously behind the main fleet. Smooth-sided and tall as mountain ranges, the two featureless monoliths carried the Titan contingent of the crusade fleet. Within their beetle-hulls crouched the Warlord Titans Horn of Disporia and The Cassandra, great walking cathedrals of war and destruction. Their Princeps had immediately volunteered their mounts when Creed had called for aid, and the great blue-hulled leviathans slept dreaming of glories to come.

Flocking before the grim Titan carriers were the smaller, crenulated carriers of the Knightly Houses. Three houses had answered the crusade call, Houses Blackscale, Fotheringham and Hassemach. Usually sentinels to Cadia’s safety, the Houses were keen to join this glorious crusade, to push back the darkness and set foot upon Terra’s holy soil. Their disparate banners and iconography seemed to strain to outdo their kin.

At the head of the wondrous armada burned a Grand Battleship in hues of silver and gold. Its prow was blunt and eagle stamped, its hull carved equally through loving artifice and bitter warfare, its weapons enough to level continents and reduce cities to ashen waste. It spanned miles of steel and killing iron, and boasted a cities worth of lives and matter. This was the flagship of the new crusade, the figurehead of a mission of hope and reclamation. Its name was The Soul of Cadia, and it is here that Castellan Creed had planted her flag.

Creed herself stood on the mighty vessels bridge, her hands resting on the command podium as about her the crew enacted her will with clipped efficiency and urgency. She smiled softly, the excitement at her purpose and finally moving forward filling her with hope. She hadn’t been off Cadia for over fifteen years, and the promise of new encounters and righteous purpose sang in her soul. She knew their goal was righteous, their mission for glory of the Imperium, and there was not even a flicker of doubt in her steely gaze. She looked ahead into the great viewport of The Soul of Cadia, into the rushing black before her, and knew it was good.

Deep within the Soul of Cadia, Grieves ensured his squad was bunked and battened down, and lay back upon his bunk. He closed his eyes, trying to shut out the occasional tremors of the ship. He hated space travel, but where the Emperor and his Commander sent him he would go. Despite his oncoming travel sickness, his thoughts went to the mission and the cause for which his troops had been chosen. He was admittedly giddy at the prospect of seeing the Sol System and Terra, and having the chance to fight for a cause greater than himself filled him with a muted joy. His troopers cajoled and joked about him, their easy camaraderie and familial bond evident to all. He allowed himself an imperceptible smile. Yes, he thought, this is good.

The lights faded in the sky in stuttering winks, like starlight fading. As a third of the mighty Cadian fleet blazed off on this so-called New Crusade, Blaire gazed up in the sky with barely restrained disgust. He stood upon the palatial balcony of his family retreat, a sumptuous mansion situated in the heart of Cadia’s Blechart Forest. He gripped the wooden railing before him, his gaze fixed on the pinkish sky. Footsteps approached from behind him and he knew it would be his manservant Agador. A respectful silence settled, and when Blaire finally spoke it was with a voice of haughty command.

“That is them away Agador”

“Yes sir, the New Crusade has left the general fleet”

Blaire sneered.

“Damn foolish waste of resources. Damn waste of ships. MY ships”

“Yes sir”

Another pregnant pause, before Blaire turned with a flourish. His manservant was dressed as always, in an older style of naval uniform, all blue lines and white lapels. His dark ruddy skin was traced with fine lines of circuitry and his eyes were crystalline augmetics, glacial blue and unblinking. Blaire’s voice suddenly lowered.

“Did you issue the communiques Agador?”

“Yes my Lord”

A cruel smile split the noble’s face. Agador stared forward, not focussing on his malicious master. It was easier to enact his will when he didn't focus on him.

“Excellent. If they think I’m going to let my world go without a fight, they have another damn thing coming…”

House Blackscale, eh? So the loyalist dogs survive!

The air was liquid thick, mired in corruption and heavy with the stink of natural decay. It was an assault on the sense, pricking the eyes with acidic moisture and the tongue with a taste that was altogether too sour and sickly to be natural. The smell was obesely pungent, bringing to mind roiling, gory fat left in the sun and old wood and dirt left in a bath of human remains.

Visibility was a laughable concept, all signs of recognition hidden beneath a cancerous mist that squatted heavily and obscenely over the landscape. A soupy marsh greeted running feet, gruel-like and plant-laden, part faecal swamp and trailing, vegetative innards. It seemed to grip and pull at any who dared enter, desperate for the warmth and company of a warm, living body. Things swam in the murk, things better not seen and mercifully hidden by the stinking clamour that surrounded them.

Things buzzed and hummed in the mist, the suggestions of fleeting insects and hideous winged clades flitting here and there, clacking and whining in their petty wars and quests for survival. The low noises were maddening, seeming to coalesce into bitter words and childish laughter.

Nothing could be discerned above the mist, only a whispish, sickly light shone through. In no way did it illuminate the hidden surroundings, serving only to deepening the labyrinth fogbank that squatted here. The impressions of trees hove into view, indistinct and plagued, their heinous, cloying scent marking their location surer than eyes could discern.

He ran through the mire, survival instincts thrumming in his ears, his hearts beating more rapidly than ever before. Sweat sheened his face and utter panic burned in his eyes, which roved all about seeking escape from something in the mist. His beard was heavy with sickening moisture, snot and blood running freely over his mouth souring his taste and causing him to choke.

His armour was partially discarded and torn from his retreat through the murk, his upper torso naked and scarred from clawing limbs and panicked impacts with rotten trees. A single, crimson gauntlet hung from his arm, its surface sheened with black plant matter and his own blood. His partly armoured legs left great, sucking footprints in his wake which filled with liquid grime quickly, masking his frenzied sprint through the low-lying fog.
Every muscle in his over-developed body screamed for him to rest, to cease this shuddering activity and just lay down. His soul however begged him to run, to flee whatever darkened horror pursued him. The diseased, stunted soul within in quailed at his pursuer and drove scars of fear through his flesh. His body rebelled, an acidic spasm of pain causing him to trip, his face splashing hard into the fetid murk below. He wailed, an altogether pathetic sound, and crawled speedily to his feet, filthy water and dank viscera trailing off him in thick, bulbous runnels. His mind was white with fear, blind to all else except escape.

He felt hot breath on the back of his neck and burning eyes gazing into his rotten core.

He knew he stood little chance of escape.

But still he ran, his limbs pistoning with the enhanced strength that had been bred into him aeons ago. His legs, strong as they were, were heavy with lactic acid, which burned and cajoled him as he pushed his body over its tolerance.

So weak, something echoed in his mind, so old. Too long scheming and plotting. Too long covering your cowardice in a cloak of supposed divine intelligence. Something as broken and diseased as you does not deserve life.

Laughter echoed behind him, the sounds crawling through the mist and drilling into his mind. He wept openly, tears streaking over his bruised and battered face. His eyes were swollen with painful swellings, several of his teeth forcibly knocked from bleeding, broken gums. A deep heady gash marred his temples, and blood covered his face in a mask of scarlet liquid.

But the tears were not from the pain, monstrous though it was.

The tears were not those of exhaustion.

No, these were tears of fear.

Tears of terror.

Tears of a hunted animal knowing it cannot escape.

He wept as he stormed forward, terror lending his limbs strength he knew would fail him. And still the grim laughter of a hidden horror ever followed behind him.

Interesting... I'm assuming that it's a space marine, if chaos - especially with the too long scheming and plotting - a word bearer or maybe thousands sons with the reference to divine intelligence?

Look forward to see how this plays out. I rather enjoy cliff hangers.

The fogbank broke as he powered forward, the wisps of greenish sickly smog fading and trailing away, although their foul taste remained on the roof of his mouth and burned the back of his throat. Dislocation hammered at his stomach, and his mind reeled from the sudden open expanse.
The marsh underneath became a hard patina of red rock and dust, savannah-warm and fine, kicking up a haze of particles as his heavy feet fell. He turned in his sprint, momentarily casting his eyes backwards and was shocked to see that the swamp and fog were no longer there, their sickly green was replaced by an endless expanse of clay dirt and desert. It ran glass-smooth in all directions and baked under an uncomfortable thick atmosphere.

The heat was oppressive and lead-heavy, and it beat down relentlessly from a cancerous red sun above. The sky was the lilac and yellow of healing bruises and was pocked with scatterings of bluish cloud which curled and festered high above. No rocks or cliffs, no grass or oasis marked the grand expanse, its titanic distance spinning madly forward toward a heat haze horizon.

The sunlight burned his skin and parched his throat, and his breathing became horse and parched. Dust whirled around him, granules of cutting dirt filling the air as his armoured footfalls crushed by. It clung to his sweat-stained skin, matted his beard and wounds, wriggled into his eyes and mouth. He coughed and gagged, spitting bloody and phlegm as he rushed forward.

He stumbled on his own footfalls, crashing down onto the warm dirt, the last rags of his upper armour clattering behind him and sticking like obelisks from the sandy detritus.

He lay momentarily, his hearts swelling painfully, his breath panther-wet and thick with fluid. He wept pitiably like a beaten child, the sound pitiful and wretched. He clawed his way forward in the dirt, the will to survive still raging in his ruined body, his arms pulling him forward like a drowning swimmer. Dirt covered his body like a second-skin, cracking and scabbing as he moved and pulled himself across the blazing sands. His finger dug, leaving narrow runnels as he pulled his not insubstantial weight forward. His nails were blackened with the effort.

His muscles yearned to lay still, to cease their movement. They seemed to whisper to him, to beg him to stop, to urge him to abandon the urge to continue moving forward.

But as they muttered to him, he realised the whisper came from elsewhere.

He raised his head, covered in blood, ruin and dirt, and saw an old woman standing several feet from him who had not been there before. She glowered at him, and rictus grin painting her face.

Recognition rankled at the back of his mind, but he could not make the leap to where he had seen her before.

She wore no clothes, her body a wrinkled, skeletal construct, her skin a deep brown like leathered hide. Lank hair hung in greying dreadlocks about her body, hanging like tattered vines from her skinny neck and head. Thick dirt and blood covered her lower legs and arms as if she had been crawling through fresh graves. Her stomach hung with a paunch and her breasts hung like over-swollen and rotten fruit over her tanned skin. She reeked of corruption and radiated a quiet malice quite at odds with her shrivelled body.

In her gnarled, spindly right hand she held a crooked stave, its form as beaten and bent as her. It rose two heads above her and about its length hung fetishes and beads, wire-wound trinkets and teeth hung with human hair. It swayed slightly in the wind, a cancerous tree holding to a dilapidated cliff.

Her left arm hung low next to her body and in its grasp sat a flinty, blackened knife scored with runes and old viscera. He recognised the weapon, a soul-deep recollection, but could not say from where, his memory deadened by his fear. He instinctively pulled away from the blade, his soul shrivelling before it. He clambered to his feet, his body a filthy wreck, and took stumbling steps away from the ancient woman.

She took a step forward as if to pursue, and lifted her face to the sky. Her face was heavy with lines and sagging skin, pocked with freckles of black and errant hairs of wiry white. Her eyes were saucers of black on her haggard face, great ovals of swallowing dark that glittered with terrible mischief. She grinned at him, her teeth rotten and fractured and her gums green with cancer and mistreatment.

She approached, each step slow and methodical and he quailed before her.

“Leave me be witch!” he bellowed, the power in his voice shattered by how it trembled “come no closer!”

She did not reply, but her deaths head grin widened to a comically wide degree. It kept widening, her checks tearing and weeping blackened matter to the ground.

With a sickening crack her mouth opened like a ruined python, wider than it had any business being, and black stringy corruption bubbled for her mouth in a wet, heavy torrent.

Mocking laughter and screaming filled the air as her wrinkled body ruptured and burst, spilling a monstrous darkness that vomited toward him with the speed of panic. Its undulating mass bubbled with thousands of obscene eyes which all focused on him, each mad with hunger and ageless malice.

He screamed and ran, sprinting back in the direction he had come, tears spilling form his eyes as the corrupting blackness stalked behind him to the sound of mocking, giddy laughter.

A torrent of dust was kicked up in his wake, the stinging grains filling the air like a swarm of angry insects defending their hive. It rose high, high into the bruised sky, forming a pillar of ashen vapour with the clouds above, an edifice of dirt and sand that swallowed distance in a voracious gulp. It surrounded and swallowed him, solid walls of particulate matter that hid the world from view and forced him to flee blind. He swept his broad arms before him as he ran, his frenzied efforts doing nothing but swirling the maddened dust around him. He was a drowning man in a sea of sand, coughing and tearing his lungs in his mad bid to surface.

And suddenly it was gone.

He fell, a panicked gasp escaping him as the ground suddenly gave way. The dust did not follow and he fell through pitch blackness. It was heavy like velvet and swallowed his fear and disorientation in gluttonous thirst. He thrashed in the air, kicking and screaming at this latest cruelty. He closed his eyes to spare them the screaming passing of the malicious wind, and begged to anything that would hear him to end the ceaseless torment.

With a sudden smack of meat upon metal he slammed into the ground with the force of a hammer blow. His vision swam, his body protested at the violence it suffered, and he passed into the blessed welcoming embrace of unconsciousness.


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Shapes swam in the dark, slipping through the black warmth with graceful strokes of deep sea predators. He reached for them but his arms were stunted and heavy, unable to move in the oily black that swallowed him.

He heard voices in the liquid weight, vibrations and the impressions of words bubbling around him. They seemed to coalesce in shivering utterances, laughing and cajoling quietly or from a great distance away. When he focussed on them they would scatter, tiny minnows fleeing before a cumbersome filter feeder, slipping through the too wide net of his perception. He was certain he recognised the whispers, and he was beyond certain they were talking about him.

Through the tarry distance he could discern a light, golden and faint, but increasing in potency. He tried to swim towards its warmth but his body was a leaden anchor abandoned at sea. He tried to scream, to bellow for help but thick, dark mucus filled his throat and lungs, weighing him down further. He would have panicked if not for the reassuring numbness that covered him. He wanted to sleep, he was so tired (had he been running?), he wanted to let whatever matter enveloped him bear him away to an eternal peace (no no no, he wanted live!)

The light came closer, and its form sharpened as it approached. A great King in Yellow hovered above him, a majestic crown of glittering hoarfrost sitting above a cowled face that promised madness to those who looked upon it. Shifting robes of grimy jaundice hung from a writhing body that undulated obscenely with uncontrolled motion. The Yellow King hung above him as systems orbit stars, and it raised a great hand to him in offering. The skin was mottled and shockingly pink, rubbery and pliant like cephalopod flesh. The hand was not a hand in the traditional sense, but a tightly wound nest of rheumy tentacles that gestured and writhed horrifically.

A great voice bubbled from within the tattered, yellowed hood, and he winced under its power. The voice, if indeed something so dense and staggering could ever be described as so, pierced his thoughts like a hammer through glass.

Who treads upon my realm little one? Who disturbs my slumber?

The figure seemed to swell, and distort, the voice filling with colossal mirth and earth shaking dissent.

A warmling from above? A fleshly tribute for consumption?

Fear shot through him as he felt hunger emanate from the great hood. Hunger that had not been addressed in millennia.

Such fine sweetmeats the above sends to me? Such a bounteous feast to sit upon my court. But I smell the intentions of another upon you.

The hood hung before him, its depths swallowing and utterly without end. He could see the suggestions of squirming shapes and grinding teeth within and the site shattered any courage remaining in his wretched body. A great snuffing boom from the depthless folds, a monstrous predator sniffing a carrion bounty. Laughter echoed form far away, and the voice throbbed in calm understanding.

Ah, you are not for me…Raum has you now…

The name sent a shiver of recognition up his spine, and with that recognition came panicked terror. He suddenly wanted to be away from this place, he wanted to escape. He wanted to live. He thrashed and yelled, he pulled at the pulling thickness around him, weeping in furious desire as his body shocked itself into action. The King in Yellow laughed above him, its laughter as thunder claps from above and it called out into the black, again and again.

Raum…Raum, your prize is here!

He kicked and screamed at the shuddering gravity of the Yellow King, pushing his hands upward, straining to grip anything that might help him, begging to surface from this bleak ocean. He pushed, and rose and thrashed and finally he rose above the waves with the laughter of a heartless, ageless king echoing in his ears.

He surfaced.

He opened his eyes and screamed.

The waking world was naught but pain and agony.

Oh god. Spooky scary!

It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a Living God... do you have the yellow sign?

Dull agony greeted him as he opened his eyes, a relentless hum of aches and vicious pains that ran through the entirety of his body. He lay face down against textured metal, cold and harsh and covered in a loose patina of sand and dirt, one of his arms lying painfully underneath him at an unnatural angle. He gritted his teeth as he pushed himself with his remaining hand, the movement eliciting a hissed breath of fresh pain. He rolled with trembling effort onto his back, thudding against the ground with a meaty smack. He lay there, his chest hiking rapidly, his face sheened with effort and exertion. He closed his eyes, desperate for his breath and heart to slow, trying to regain control of his own body from the stabbing pain that dominated his nerves.

When at last he opened his eyes, he noticed once more that he was somewhere new: a dark metallic corridor, low-ceilinged and seemingly ancient. The roof was textured links of iron, like a chain-link fence, and beyond in the dark he could make out old wiring and machinery. Stuttering light coughed from above, a sputtering staccato of electronic pulses, and pained his eyes when he focussed on it.

He pushed himself into a slovenly seat, his lower back protesting at the movement. He looked at his mangled right hand knowing that the bones within were severely bent and broken. His enhanced biology already burned through arm, trying to heal the damage done, and it throbbed with deep purple bruising and running strings of broken blood vessels. The hand twitched spasmodically, its nerve endings alight with random, pained impulses and movement. He tried to brace it against his body, but the mangled bones within resisted and after several agonising minutes he relented and let it hang limply and uselessly at his side.

Rising with great difficulty and little grace, the beaten warrior limped slowly down the metallic corridor, his left hand held out against the wall for balance. The tunnel was dark despite the random sputter of lights from above, and his eyes strained to discern detail as he progressed. From what he could see, great violence had once ran through this place: bullet holes and gouges hacked into walls, dried stains of scarlet and black running in streaks up and about the walls, discarded, moulding armour and weapons left to lie where they fell. He could not make out colours in the dull monochrome of light, but the discarded plates of armour and mail tugged at his memory, forcing him to face a truth he did not know yet.

He had been here before.

He walked on, mentally noting all he saw. The corridor twisted several times, and at some points broke into crossroads or rose up in steep, spiralling steps. It felt like the interior of a starship, but he knew instinctively on some level that that was not correct. How he knew this he wasn’t sure, but the thought brought him no comfort as he passed under a broad metallic arch stamped with a fading icon resembling a human skull surrounded by a sharp toothed cog.

He had walked these halls.

He passed under the arch and into a broad industrial space, by far the largest room he had been in since he first woke. A monstrous slab or iron wiring and glass dominated the centre of the room, reaching high up into the roof and deep down beneath the grated floor, a hemisphere of dark metals and machinery that swallowed the space it resided in. Huge cables and piping crept from the machine into the walls and adjoining devices, and complicated dials and control panels hung around I like acorns from an oak. The machine sat dead and silent, although it’s glowering presence burned quietly in the dark, a silent mass threatening to awaken at the slightest provocation.

He knew this, he knew it all.

He approached the machine, fear and pain suddenly forgotten in the face of his curiosity. He limped painfully over the cabling laid upon the floor and placed his good hand upon the cold iron. A gentle thrumming vibrated within, and the metal was covered in a thick layer of dust from long periods of misuse. Above the central hatch and display sat a raised iron plate stamped with writing and he rubbed his hand over it, removing decades of grime in broad strokes. Much of the revealed engraving appeared to be gibberish, archaic symbols and formula linked by lines and skeletal schemata, but in the centre sat a name in thick, cursive writing. A name, the name of the vessel he currently stood in.

Corinthian

Revelation dawned and realisation flowed. He did know this place, he had been here before. He suddenly knew who he was.

And with realisation of identity came memory of how he came to be here, and of what pursued him.

A heavy presence droned behind him, and a curdling voice, somewhere between an aching whisper and wet animal growl, flowed over him like spoiled ink, filling his ears with scalding pressure.

“And so we return here Deceiver, we return to where you killed me…”

He turned around, terror anew in his eyes and faced his pursuer.

Cliffhanger!

 Benny Badmen wrote:
After this whole series in concluded... Would there be a possibility that you could tackle the War in Heaven and what transpired in those events? I know it's a whole other dimension in itself but it honestly feels like you're the only capable author to take on such a task.

Thanks for humoring me.

Thank you I'll see what's in the pipeline

Oob. I'd like that.

The creatures of the warp are almost impossible for ungifted masses of life to describe . Those without some degree of second-sight or intuition simply cannot process the various grotesqueries and abominations that dwell within the shifting tides of the realm beyond our own. Some pencil words such as daemon, angel, nether-beast, neverborn, but even these terms are pitifully lacking in what the denizens of the warp actually are.

Most minds will simply process the image of these creatures into what their mind fears the most, whatever demented and darkened thoughts squat in the realm of their own subconscious. To that end it is a self-fulfilling cycle as the beasts of the warp appear as horned and monstrous revenants, mutations fuelled by mankind’s own madness. Thus do we grow to fear them, and thusly does this fear amplify their horror.

What squatted before him was perhaps the closest his damaged mind could compose when faced finally with his pursuer. It rose a head above him, its form skittish and ever-changing, like a damaged film reel or burnt and scratched pict. It hurt his head to gaze upon the thing, but at the same time he could not pull his wide, terrified eyes of its gross magnetism.

No human shape could be discerned among its mass, no reassuring imprint of humanisation to coddle the mind with familiarity. It was a solid mass of blubbery, bubbling blackness, like cooked fat left on a spit for much too long and left to rot. It strained and bled against its own confining existence, sores and open wounds forming instantly and closing just as quickly, gibbering mouths and amorphous swellings rippling across its furious hide. It rose up, a mountain of crisped, steaming flesh, its peak topped with a crown of jagged, pale antlers and crooked horns. They were soaked in gory matter and stank of swamplands and natural decay, vines of viscera dripping lazily and thickly in vomitus runnels. A haze of buzzing flies and moths circled the crown, flitting like wayward thoughts around its grotesque, swollen head, forming a swarming halo of ceaseless activity above it.

Myriad wincing eyes coated the things blackened flesh, too many too count and far too many to ever hide from, and they roved wildly and without focus around the metallic chamber. Only a single central eye focused on him, a wide saucer-like orb of sickly yellow veined with scarlet and orange fractures. A black, starless slit split the eye in half and within dwelled a darkened madness, a pitiless void that swallowed any desire for hope under a suffocating pall of total nothingness. The black-pinned orb burned into him, pinning him to the spot as a bright light freezes the deer before impact.
Its bulbous, cancerous weight sat on a nest of broken insectoid legs and animal limbs, dozens and dozens aligned in a lunatic basket weave. They twitched and bled under the obese weight, greasy fly hairs and tumours scarring their length, palsied stutters shuddering through them in a dying tremble, a last gasp for life before sinking beneath the waves. A pool of rotten matter seeped from the monstrosity, a sodden pool of viscous matter oozing with the worst corruption, its surface sheened with rainbow reflections of a gluttonous oil slick. Obscene tentacles, great ropes of sinewy muscle and blubber writhed lazily through the liquid, pulsing gently in a gross mimicry of heart function. A heinous smell billowed from the creature, a burning acidity that sat at the back of the throat and caused the legs to tremble.

It was grotesque in every sense of the word.

Of course dear reader, this was not the creature’s true form. No human mind, no matter how advanced, save maybe that of mankind’s Emperor (beloved by all) can truly see the daemon for what it is. He is however severed from this plain and his thoughts are hidden to us. But for the purposes of our tale, the terrified prey’s perception shall suffice.

The prey stood transfixed, every instinct screaming to escape, to flee, to hide but the mind knowing that this was the end. This was the confrontation that would end his flight. His voice trembled as his throat remembered its function, a stammer of fear underpinning his words.

“I…I know you”

The voice bubbled forth form the void once more, filling the chamber as burning grease fills a bowl. It ran over his skin, forcing him to tremble and gag.

Indeed Deciever, we have met before. Many, many times. Many, many lifetimes ago.

“What is it you want from me daemon?”

Wet laughter burbled forth.

You know what we want, Deceiver. You know why we pursue you. We can see the architecture of your fractured mind. How broken it is, how small it is. How afraid you are.

False bravado filled his trembling voice. He tried to hold himself up straighter, but pain forced him to hunch once more.

“I am an Astartes monster, fear is an unknown land for me”

Callous, scarring laughter boomed through the chamber, the hideous mass shivering in mocking delight. Tears welled in the eyes of the prey, knowing his bluff had not worked.

An Astartes in body you are, Deceiver, but too long have you been in the depths of our realm. Too long have you supped at the teat of the blessed expanse. Such things come with a price. You know fear, you know it intimately.

The mass swelled above him, filling the small chamber with cloying shadow, making him shrink before its gaze.

Those you once called brother have courage, they can look our divinity in the face and not shirk from it. They are more than you ever were or will ever be. You are a small petty man, so wrapped up in the illusion of your own power that you forgot the very things that made you powerful.

The great coiling limbs shot forward like pythons and seized him by his waste. He barked in fear, smacking at them with his broken hands, struggling against their constricting power. More and more vomited from within the beast, wrapping around him, tightening and squeezing him as a spider captures the fly.

You know fear because you are not Astartes, not anymore. You are a pitiful non-thing, playing with power you never deserved and you never understood. You are a broken thing, a mewling new-born waiting to die. You’ve toyed with things beyond your ken and have burned away what divinity gave you.

He struggled, oh how he struggled, but the horrific crushing thing continued its assault. He felt ribs crack and blood ooze beneath him. He gasped a plea, utterly pathetic and demeaning.

“Please…please Raum, don’t do this…I can help you…please, I beg you, anything”

The tentacles pulled the writhing figure toward the great eye at their centre, its remorseless slit pupil boring into him. A grating, spiteful chuckle rippled through the beast, a sick glee suffusing its gurgling voice.

So you do know me, little man. Then you should know why we are doing this, you should know why begging will do you no good. You pathetic waste of matter. You know why we are the one who needs to end your existence.

He mewled as the eye gazed into him, seeing the mind that blazed behind it. His sanity fled as the endless void beyond swallowed him.

You killed us Erebus, you stuck your filthy little knife in our back and ended us. You betrayed your brother, your student. And why? To further your petty goals. We do not need you pathetic mortals anymore, but the powers above and below knew that I must be the one to end you.

With a sickening crack, Erebus’s body broke, his bones and muscles rupturing, his insides bursting from his wounds and scattering messily across the already slick floor. Intestines and fluid filled bags of meat sloshed in mad patterns across the floor and lay bleeding and steaming in a gross pile. Blood coated the room as he ruptured, and he died alone and unremembered in a dark room in the maddened mind of a vengeful monster. The creature let his remains land messily, triumph suffusing its form and before it faded back into the shadows of the warp it left the steaming corpse of its prey with one final whisper.

That was for Argel Tal…

The room faded from reality, burning away as ashes on a cold wind. And with it faded Erebus, Bearer of the Word and self-proclaimed Architect of the Great Heresy, to be forgotten utterly and missed by no one.

Glad Erebus finally got it!

Couple of bits of feedback, I think there's a small typo:

"They are more than you ever where or will ever be" I think it should be 'were' not 'where'

Also I'm not sure I like the

"Of course dear reader...." part. It's like you've broken the 4th wall and are suddenly a person telling this story, rather then the story telling itself if that makes sense. I think that's fine if that had been the same all the way through, but to me it seems like a weird sideways move from the story and how it's been told until this point.

I feel like I'm sometimes the only 1 leaving feedback like this! I hope it doesn't bother you. Like I've said before I really enjoy reading it and couldn't do it myself. But if you'd rather I didn't leave these comments let me know or drop me a PM and I'll stop! You're writing this for you and sharing it with us so do what you please!

TommyBs wrote:
Glad Erebus finally got it!

Couple of bits of feedback, I think there's a small typo:

"They are more than you ever where or will ever be" I think it should be 'were' not 'where'

Also I'm not sure I like the

"Of course dear reader...." part. It's like you've broken the 4th wall and are suddenly a person telling this story, rather then the story telling itself if that makes sense. I think that's fine if that had been the same all the way through, but to me it seems like a weird sideways move from the story and how it's been told until this point.

I feel like I'm sometimes the only 1 leaving feedback like this! I hope it doesn't bother you. Like I've said before I really enjoy reading it and couldn't do it myself. But if you'd rather I didn't leave these comments let me know or drop me a PM and I'll stop! You're writing this for you and sharing it with us so do what you please!

Thanks for the grammar check, sorted!

And I like going past the fourth wall sometimes, just thought I'd try something new. Will bear that in mind in future.

The sanctum was cool, surprisingly chill for what lay beyond the bounds of its great portal. Gentle wisps of vapour rose from the great blackened wall from the touch of the chill air, and if one focused they would discern the emotions and faces of the long past in the insubstantial vapours.

The portal itself yawned immensely above, a great half-oval forged from warm unyielding metal. Graceful filigree lined its surface, gentle curves and harsh lines bisecting and blurring into a great pattern of dizzying complexity. No single image lay in these carvings, and each individuals own bias and perception brought forth images and patterns unique to them. Some saw green worlds and pastoral sunrises, others bloody battle and the cackling of a bloody handed god.

Still others saw the patterns for what they truly were: a cage, bars to trammel a furious beast at the heart of creation. A dam against bloodlust that would threaten all if ever let loose of its own accord.

Two figures stood before the grand portal, dwarfed by its immensity although being gracefully tall themselves. They were alike in form: lithe, willowy, clean pale limbs and noble, gentle features.

One was marginally taller, her eyes a deep and warm jade and her pale, almost silver hair worn loose about her gently sloping shoulders. She was garbed in silver and bronze robes of gossamer silks and glacial chains that clung to her as mist clings to the forests on a winter’s dawn. A determination put tension upon her usually soft features, a hardening of the soul for a challenge ahead.

Her companion radiated trepidation in a quiet smoulder, his shorter form garbed in curved plates of deepest forest green. He stood stock straight, rigid against the gentle cold in the air, his face obscured by a death mask of gold and crimson, an armoured Wight of monstrous scarlet eyes and sleek, killing mandibles. He came armed and armoured in juxtaposition to his ally, across his back lay a killing blade Mau’mauktahaar in his tongue, meaning The-Necessary-Death-To-Spare-The-Living. At his waste hung sleek, organic weapons, monomolecular catapults crafted with love and care many centuries before. They were Au’shabta and Au’Shinnui, The-Sisters-That-Judge-The-Unworthy.

Finally in his right hand he hefted a heavy and dark spear, a killing length several heads taller than him topped with a broad flat head of sharpened wraithbone and polyplasty. It was Ob’novimastr’dei, a cursed name among his kind, its literal meaning being That-Which-Kills-With-The-Greatest-Unkindness. It was a potent weapon of dark repute and stunning power.

He had brought it for a very specific reason.

Silence hung between the pair. It was a silence heavy with tension, like rain water gathering upon sodden clothes, and it drew out until the warrior could not tolerate it further. His voice, although harsh and clipped, flowed like golden wine and lilted with a sing-song cadence, their native tongue like honey and starlight.

“Are you certain this is the only course of action Ju’daai? I do not need to be blessed with your sight to see you are wary of moving forward.”

Ju’daai smiled softly, her features opening as a flower to the morn, and considered her companion. Her voice was silver bells within gentle snowfall, white and shining under soft sunlight.

“Just because I cannot avoid this path, Ulnaan Alnathian, does not mean I cannot feel trepidation at the course it takes. Such a thing is only natural given the circumstance”

Her companion scowled, an ugly expression for such a graceful face.

“You willingly put your life on the line and endanger your good standing with this madness. And you pull me like a maelstrom to it also…”

Ju’daai turned to face Ulnaan head on, her robes brushing the floor lightly. The swaying fabric disturbed the vapours coating the floor and they danced around her legs gracefully. She titled her head as a bird might.

“Isn’t that what you do every time you don that armour my friend? Willingly put your life on the line? This is no different. This is for the good of the Craftworld, the good of our people. I can feel that more surely than I have felt anything before.”

Ulnaan nodded, his helm dipping slightly.

“Then I am with you, I trust your judgement. You will forgive me my worries though: going against the will of our betters sits uneasily with me”

Ju’daai placed a hand gently on her comrade’s shoulder, her touch warm and reassuring.

“And I am grateful to you my friend, I know this was not the path you were set upon”

“It is the path I find myself on now”

She nodded her thanks, and moved slowly toward the great portal, the mists parting before her like waves before a skimming vessel. She knew this is what she must do, she knew her path must go to this uncharted territory, but still tension gripped her in its uncaring coils.

The vision she had seen, the horror she had felt: she had no frame of reference to process such things. total and utter war with the young race, the death of a god, a quieting of the realm beyond, none amongst her kind, not even the oldest of them had any experience of such things.

She had communed with the long passed and now-gone-but-still-present, the essence of those saved since the long flight from She Who Thirsts. They were sorrowful and full of vengeance, unable to see back to a point before the birth of their end. Their path now pointed to the red domain of revenge, and could help her not in her quest.

There was one event, one doom that had befallen the Children of Isha once before that would give her some indication of how to proceed, and she had petitioned her kith and kin to journey from the Craftworld and make the lonely sojourn to the Black Library, that lonesome, occult domain, to research and learn beyond the dances and stories of her youth. She had been swiftly rebuked, such things they deemed were long at rest and should not be disturbed. They told her to focus and commune and soon the answers would come.

So she focussed.

She communed.

And the answer did come, but not an answer her peers would ever assuage to.

There was one individual, one thing within the Craftworld that had been present during the past cataclysm she yearned to know. One physical link to a past now shrouded in so much decoration. It squatted at the heart of the world-ship, redolent in its quiet, suffocating fury, and to approach such a thing would test both her and links to her fellows.

At the heart of the world-ship was an Avatar of Kaela Mensha Khaine: a physical shard of a long perished god, a creature from the birth of her race. A smouldering reminder of the Children of Isha’s bloody past, a creature that demanded blood for its aid.

She knew that she needed to commune with this being, she needed to peer through its eyes and view the events she sought.

She needed to look back to when the ancient ancestors of the Eldar fought the unloving and unfeeling, their Gods strode beside them and a war burned through Heaven itself.

She placed her hands upon the portal, unsurprised to feel that it was warm to the touch. She turned to Ulnaan once more, a sadness and acceptance lining her flawless features, and spoke her final request.

“You know that once I am alone with it, no one else may enter. I cannot risk another soul becoming embroiled in the communion lest they sever the link and doom us all”

Ulnaan nodded his understanding.

“No one will pass these gates whilst I stand here Ju’daai. Not even our own kin. I will bar the way and keep you safe.”

“And if I come back not myself…”

Ulnaan’s gaze did not falter.

“Then I promise it will be swift.”

She turned once more to the warm portal, noticing its temperature increasing steadily. She closed her jade eyes and took a deep breath. This was not the breath that brings life, the sha’ishai, or the breath that focusses the soul, sha’alhaam.

This was the final breath, the sha’maugta, the breath of the traveller laying down after their travels.

She knew this might be the end of her, in fact she was almost certain her path ended here. But she needed the answers. She needed them to save her people.

She forced the doors open which opened with little resistance, and a breath of furnace heat welcomed her into darkness. A smouldering, heavy form filled the space with its trembling presence and she walked forward, a singly flake of dying snow flitting into the warm mouth of a hungry, terrible beast.

The door closed silently behind here, vapour fleeing from its colossal form, and Ulnaan turned his back to it, crouching into a stance of impending violence, taking Ob’novimastr’dei in both hands and awaited the coming retribution of their kin.

I'm really enjoying the story! As a necron fan, I'm excited to (hopefully) get a glimpse of the war in heaven as well!

All was blackness within the sanctum.

No hint of light, no sliver of illumination dwelt within.

The darkness was liquid thick, clinging to her limbs petulantly as she moved slowly forward, oily runnels slipping from her in a remorseless grip. It was swallowing, suffocating, a caul of coal-ash obscurity making the breath catch in her throat as she advanced. The air tasted of smoke, of old, smouldering ash. It tasted of homes burnt in a killing blaze of fury.

It tasted of death.

Panic threatened to overwhelm her. Her eyes scanned for something solid, something to anchor her to the real world. She searched for a distant shore in the ocean of black she had foolishly sailed into.

How could she have done this?

What was she thinking?

This was madness.

She turned frantically on the spot, swatting imagined phantoms from her body, her breath hiking in panic. She mewled in horror at the vast blackness engulfing her, its unfeeling, uncaring expanse pressing in against the shuddering flame of her mind. Complete and utter cosmic dread seized upon her and she sank to her knees with tears in her eyes, defeated and discarded by the heartless, cold black.

She lay there, crumpled into herself, weeping gently.

She had been a fool to attempt this.

She wasn’t strong enough.

Only the strongest could enter this place, and even they died in the process.

She wasn’t strong enough.

Yes you are

The thought came unbidden in a voice that was not her own, illuminating her immediate surroundings, a spotlight of soothing sunlight against her soul. She raised her head, her voice trembling in the oppressive black, no echo lending her words the suggestion of space.

“Who…who is there?”

She sounded small, smaller than she had ever felt before.

You must move forward

She blinked in surprise as the light increased. It was not her eyes that perceived it, for such mundane senses were useless in this place. It was her soul that sense it, her sight beyond simple perception that registered the beacon of hope.

She rose unsteadily to her feet, rising to her full height. She closed her eyes and took a calming breath, forcing her body into a state of balance. She stood for what felt like hours, feeling the breath within her slow and her heartbeat enter a steady, calm rhythm.

Now move forward

She took her first step forward, and then another. Her limbs moved with clarity, no longer mired in the tar-like quagmire. She moved with her eyes closed, allowing her soul to guide her, a shining, crystalline raptor sailing high above the beleaguered vessel of her spirit, guiding her path through troubled waters.

And then she beheld it. Indistinct and hazy at first, but thickening and warping like broth. It squatted before her, swallowing her perception gluttonously and she could not help but perceive it.

Before her burned a black flame. It seemed restrained, trammelled, pained and lessened by this petty existence. It hurt to focus upon it, like nettles pricking the subtle form of her soul. It bled malice and rage into the surrounding air, redolent with fury but bound and tied to this small reality.
She perceived it.

And it perceived her.

It promised a painful end unless she freed it. It swore to consume everything she was unless she bowed to its will.

It seemed desperate, feebly pathetic from what it once was.

It raged impotently at her.

She pitied it, and that stoked its anger even more.

She knew what she must do.

She raised her hands before her, twinkling white like snowfall, and placed them upon the flame. It reached out hungrily like a needy child, furious and desperate to end its lonely existence.

The flames seized upon her, burying into her flesh.

She opened her eyes and screamed.

Ju’daai ceased to be Ju’daai.

She was no longer herself.

She was no longer she.

She was me.


I open my eyes

I open my eyes and remember what I am. I am strong.

My name is Aldaeu of the House of Beil Ta’hann and I am a warrior.

I stand on a broad, wide field of ashen sand and glass, the horizon billowing with smoke and scattered souls. There is no colour to this world, it is dry and dead like the skin of a desert corpse. Its lustre has been stolen by war, drained by misery and the crushing of hope. It offends me that such mindless desecration can happen.

I am clothed in the trappings of my calling: armour crafted in the star-forges of the makers, glacially white and numinous, ghostly and opaque in the correct light, rainbow bursts of colour when in shadow. It holds me tight, hugging my muscular form as a lover or mother might, protecting me, girding me against the storm. Gemstones of lilac and aqua colour its breast and bands of golden-green hearthsteel lock tight around my limbs.

Swathed around it is chain-links and robes of deepest green, a foliage of war silks that flap from my body in the winds that flow past me. A clasp is mounted upon my shoulder, an eye, the Eye of Isha, our mother. It stares out watching for danger, reminding me that she is watching. Upon my brow sits a noble, sloped helm, its visage forged to convey the countenance of my Lord Asuryan, noble and full of justified wrath. It is a visage to strike fear into the hearts of those who oppose us.

In my fists I carry a two-handed blade, tall as myself then half again. The hilt is banded in deep green wrapping and coiler with silvered wire. A thin pommel of pale crystal mimics its razor point. I name it Asha’valuti, the Envy of Vaul, for it is a beauteous blade and one that the great Smith of Heaven would surely wish to own. I hold it upon my shoulder, its considerable length flashing in the low light. Its body is etched with flowing vines of emerald green and precious gems, drawn in flowing thorny vines and heavenly serpents, and its edge is fine enough to sheer the soul from the body. I give it respect and it in turn respects me. It is my closest ally in the battles we have fought together.

Around me stand my brothers and sisters, tens of thousands of us, arrayed as I am in the colours and cauls of glorious battle. We sing to the heavens, Gods do we sing. It is a stirring sound, a sonorous flowing wave of audible fury and passion that infuses our very beings. The sounds shake and rumble, challenging the makers above to ignore us. It is akin to standing amid the waves of a great ocean as it thunders to the shore, threatening to overwhelm me in it currents. I am sorely tempted to allow it.

We are strong, we are young. We have passion in our breasts and the blood of the gods in our veins.

We are new-borns on the tapestry of infinity. The Makers knew their craft when they forged us in the heat of their wisdom. Such pride do we feel.

The sound of our song sweeps back for many leagues, the green and white of our horde spreading back farther than the eye can see. We are arrayed to defend a galaxy that is both new and beautiful to us, one that we would gladly give our lives to defend.

Crisp, clean banners of silk and shining silver snap at our back, adorned with the images of hope and glory. Thousands of them fan in the breeze above us, like serpents of white and silver and gold, flowing in the air in an endless, graceful dance.

The skies above us buckle and heave, black sordid clouds rupturing amid green flashes of lightning and soulfire. A grand vista of tortured skies and splitting energy roils as the terrible depths of some black ocean, a maddened churn of broad, etheric disarray. It is the antithesis of the dead land below, always in motion, constantly evolving with cosmic violence.

A battle rages up there, a localised cataclysm between forces beyond our youthful understanding, a war fought with fire and fury, with soul and sword. The chariots of the makers duel in the skies beyond with the ghastly crypt-ships of the eternal foe, the hateful deathless. The ones we were born to lay low.

The slaves of the Yngir, the ones that live within death, the damned, the pitiable, the horrific, the lost.

They call themselves The Necrontyr. Or at least they once did.

We call them The Enemy.

They march toward us now, a vast swathe of cold metallic horror gathering in a silent horde. Countless, hollow eyes glare at us from unfeeling skulls, burning with the worst kind of soul sickness imaginable. They too wield blades and weapons, but theirs are not forged of starlight and glory, but of stellar death and entropy. Curdling unlight smoulders around them, thick spuming flashes of necrotic energies hanging like mourning veils rank with aged corruption and grave dirt.

They shuffle forward on piston limbs, a ceaseless skeletal dirge that kicks up a swallowing wall of dust in their wake, grains of ash and grey dirt clinging to their wasted limbs like robes of bleak mourning. They make no sound as they move save for the sound of their monotonous gait, no impassioned song or stirring battle cries, they are a silent unfeeling legion, like funerary statues given motion, grim shadows in the twilight realms of sepulchral wraiths, grim, unnerving sentinels of a dead, uncaring universe. They bring with them complete and total dread, an ending of all things living and vital.

They are anathema to us

No joy, no love or desire for experience colour these horrors. Simply crushing, black finality and death. They are morose and implacable, driven to the destruction of all else to maintain a horrific status quo. They are everything we are not.

They come within range of their monstrous weapons, and a blaze of emerald energy stitches across the expanse between our hordes. Brothers and sisters die, their song warping into pained and shocking screams. We respond in kind, our weapons singing a silver song of death and deliverance. Several of the front rank of the silver horrors fall, their gormless skulls dented and sliced, their empty ribcages burst and sparking. Some have the audacity to climb back to their wretched feet and limp toward us, their clacking mouths working wordlessly in dumb hatred.

The lines draw closer, more weapons crack and whine. I make out more details as the silent Necrontyr draw nearer: flashing corpse light and glimmering tokens of loyalty, wires and drives, leering ghoulish fangs and chains. Our song swells, we know what is coming.

A silent command sounds like a clarion horn.

I sing till my throat is raw. I grip Asha’valuti so tightly my knuckles lose their lustre. My souls shines with righteous fury.

As one we charge. Countless feet moving in unison to one destiny. Banners snap in the breeze like whips. A swell of battle cries and shouts echo.

Al Asuryan, al ahib Asuryan!

The sound is glorious.

We crash like the waves of the ocean against a silent shore.

Nice! Haven't checked this read in a while.

Amazing! I can't wait for the next installment.

Amazing. You manage to capture the point of view of each race and army so well. I look forward to seeing you write orks. I would also love to see you write from Kharn's point of view, if you could find a way to make it more than "Kill! Burn! Maim!"

Wow, I just read all this thread in a few days Your work is amazing, in my opinion you are meant to be a professional writer. Your book inspires me to write my Skitarii Legion story with more details and epicness that I intended at first, I'll see if I can manage that. Can't wait for the next part, but take all the time you need.

My muscles burn with ceaseless, furious motion. My bones ache from the impacts that ring against my blade. My chest heaves with the strain of ceaseless movement and tears stream from my eyes as the wind whips against them.
I adore these feelings. They tell me I am alive and still moving, and life is the greatest victory of all.

The melee around me is brutality, a tapestry of organised chaos and bloodshed on a dizzying scale, an appalling din of screams and weighty strikes of blade upon flesh. We are winning, of that I am certain, for there are several thousand more of us than our Necrontyr foes, but they are making us pay for each footfall of earth with our blood and our souls. The Children of Isha, my kin push our foes back with our fury and glory, but still the demure ranks of the unliving resist.

Their defiance drives me to greater fury.

I have already laid low two score of my enemies, leaving their artificial carcasses steaming in the mud behind me, and yet there are countless more to slay.

I spin heavily, swinging Asha’valuti in one hand, allowing its solid weight to carry me in a controlled rotation. Its edge glows faintly orange as it cuts the air, and the space before it screams as it seems to part the very fabric of reality. My spin slices through the legs of two Necrontyr, their heavy metallic bodies collapsing in a confusion of grasping silver limbs and expressionless stupidity. It would be almost comical if I didn’t hate them so.

They splash into the mud, dropping their blades, clawing madly toward me in the moronic machine gait. With a turning of my arm, Asha’valuti pulls me into a jump, sailing lightly over my defeated foes. Whilst airborne, I bring both my hands on Asha’valut’I’s grip, and use its momentum in a downward swing, decapitating both the mutilated horrors beneath me, sparks of green corpse light fountaining from their neck stumps. They wail then in their deaths, the sound that of driving steel scraping against old bone, of funerary stone scraping against a blade edge.

I used to shudder at that sound, it used to plague my sleep.

I have grown accustomed to it now. It is a reward for their defeat.

I land nimbly, my feet sinking slightly into the gory mud beneath me, and bring Asha’valuti over my head in a defensive stance.

My eyes rove, seeking my next target among the swirling density of warring bodies. I do not need to look long.

A great silvered monster rises from the scrum, easily twice my height, carrying a great staff topped with a curved lambent blade. It smoulders in the low light, and spiralling sparks of unlight drip from its killing edge. Its wielder is no less horrifying: a cadaverous construct leaden with armour plating and iconography of a lost time. Ragged, mouldering robes cover its lower body, the clothes of the mourner left untended and its head is a rictus nightmare, a deathmask carved in precious metals then left to rot in an abused tomb.

It smiles maliciously, or at least my mind projects such emotions onto it, before it barrels toward me, shouldering past its siblings in a mad scramble to face me. One of my kin steps into its path, her spear shining with frost-fire and a righteous song on her lips.

I call out even as I realise the futility in such an act.

The monster barely breaks stride as it pummels her down with the pommel of its weapon. Despite the din of war around me I hear the bones in her face give in a moist, sickening crack. She falls, blood flowing from a broken nose, her hands flying to her face in a defensive gut reaction. Before she can react further the giant stamps on her head with its heavy iron-shod talons, relishing her struggle. Her head cracks spilling its contents like an over swollen fruit and she moves no more. I utter a gasp of disgust as the monster gallops toward me, its victim already forgotten.

Such dishonourable death fills me with fury and I bellow as I too charge. I slash out furiously, cutting through embattled Necrontyr in my advance, suddenly driven to avenge such hateful, wanton loss. Four of their number die before I clash with my foe, but each death is nowhere near enough for what I have witnessed.

My feet come to a practiced halt, sliding slightly in the murk beneath me, and Asha’valuti screams in sympathy as I bring it down in a heavy slash fuelled by my own momentum. The corpse blade of my enemy rises up in a counter strike, and an eruption of flames and sparks is birthed as both blades meet. The impact is staggering, my arms protest at the intense weight, but still I stand, still I push back. My teeth clench and my eyes shine in fury. When I lost my helm I cannot say, but the rightness of facing my foe with my face open to them is intoxicating. Spittle foams at the edges of my mouth as I hiss a whisper of malice.

“I am you death monster, you will pay for what you have done this day”

Nothingness dribbles from the throat of my foe, no cough of hate or cry of retribution. Just relentless silence, and that stabs at me all the more. Its hateful eyes are alight with corpse-fire and although I know it is impossible, I swear the thing enjoys my fury.

Our blades slide from one another, a sharp ring of metal resounding in the air, before both impact again and again. I weave to the side, bringing Asha’valuti round and again, letting its weight and thirst for victory pull me. My foe is not my match in terms of speed, it moves with the idiot slowness of all its kind, but it can weather the punishment and unlike me will never grow tired. It knows it can weather my assault. It knows my living body and soul are my weakness.
It is anathema, a creature built only to hate and destroy. I cannot allow it to live.

More blows are traded, Asha’valuti glowing white hot from the strikes, and my breathing becomes more ragged. Several times I stagger against others in the swirling melee, too caught up in their own battles to intervene. The great metal beast pummels at me with piston-like efficiency, its blows sounding a staccato bell toll over the din of the battle. I have scored a dozen wounds upon it, a dozen rents, cuts and holes in its armoured shell, but still it comes on.
I need to end this quickly, before the thing’s sheer relentlessness ends me.

Asha’valuti spins a figure of eight around me, deflecting two more strikes, before slashing downward in a dazzling riposte. I aim deliberately for the creature’s weapon now, no longer thinking to strike at it. My focus becomes the hateful blade striking at me. My opponent notices my change in tactic and responds in kind, drawing a stronger defence and focusing on the spiralling path of my blade. Its tireless mind begins to formulate new patters and strategies to overcome my change in play.

This is their undoing: routine, patterns, logic.

That is their weakness.

I draw Asha’valuti in low before swinging it in an upward slash. I let go of the hilt completely, allowing my blade to sail straight upward, its blade catching what little light there is in the sky. The Necrontyr behemoth’s head snaps upwards, its attention focussed on my blade as I knew it would be.

My hands snap to my waist and I draw a pair of needle daggers, and dive upward, my blades aimed at the things neck. It notices too late and drops its weapon in a bid to stop me. My daggers slice into the wire and synthetic sinew of its neck, and I pull with all my weight backward. It’s like wrestling a mountain, but it staggers forward, metal talons gouging into my arms in protest. I scream as the meat my upper arms is shredded, blood splashing against my pale armour and robes, and yet still I pull. With a shriek, Asha’valuti plummets downward and stabs point-downward into the monsters spine, parting metal and wire before burying itself deep into the ground still imbedded in the monsters lower spine.

It goes rigid beneath my assault, its claws opening in a sudden mimicry of pain, its mouth chewing silently in imagined agony before the hateful light bleeds from its eyes. Its monstrous form sags forward, held upright by my blade.

I am victorious.

I fall then from its grip, landing roughly in the mud, my arms bleeding from were it gripped me. I suck in a cold, pained breath, in agony but beyond thankful to be alive. I rise shakily to my feet, using the still standing corpse of my foe as support. I hold my arms, wrapping myself up in pain, trying to focus my mind against the thudding pound of my own heart. Blood drips in thick heavy lines down my body and I am dizzy from the pain.

It is only then that I notice the silence.

My kin have stopped their warring, all eyes turned to the sky. I too follow their gaze, drinking in the sights of the battlefield, my pain momentarily forgotten.

The Nectrontyr are fleeing, a sudden rout against our fury. The retreat in a similar fashion to everything they do: silently, implacably and in perfect uniformity.

My kin cheer and rally to our banners. Some approach me, eager to help me, eager to leap back into the fray.

Light dawns faintly above us.

It is then I realise this is no retreat.

The skies above are glowing, gradually growing brighter. Something massive pushes against the skin of the cloud cover, something great and burning. A great booming as the air is rent precedes it, and the already abused clouds part slowly as a monstrous ellipse of blackened stone pushes through.

Fires rage across its ancient surface, great rents from which water, energy and smoke billow. Its form is humbling in its immensity and as it breaks the cloud cover it casts a deep shadow over the battlefield. Its form is perfectly circular and curved, its sides adorned with spiralling script-work and detailing, now afire from the battles above. It rotates serenely as it falls, leaving trailing contours of smoke in its wake.

It is a Seed-Ship, A chariot of the Makers, a vessel of ancient design and immense power. Inside it will be a coterie of our creators and the sight of it crashing fills me with dread. Sparks of blue vomit from its engines, its crew inside warring with its inevitable descent. I will it silently to survive, for the miraculous technologies to reawaken and carry the ship upward once more.

The blackened vessel lists over the retreating horde of Nectrontyr, passing over them in a languid curve. Its immensity gives the illusion of stately slowness, but we know that it must be moving at a maddening speed. It is terrifyingly close to the ground now, so much so that many of my kin look away. And although it is several thousand leagues away, its vastness paints its agony in dizzying detail.

I do not look away. I must witness this.

Blue flames suddenly cough from the belly of the ship, and its descent is staggeringly halted. It begins to tip upward, achingly slow, and soon the grinding roar of its descent is replaced with the resounding hum of its rise. The ground below blackens and warps as the sheer thrust of the ship reasserts itself. A cheer ripples through my kin as the Maker ship begins to rise again. I feel a smile split my face as the ship rises alongside my hopes.

Our joy is short lived.

A thin whip crack of lilac energy pierces the clouds from above, the power pushing the cloud cover back in circular shockwaves and the very air screaming at its passing. The beam slices clean through the ship, eliciting an explosion of immense proportions from the exit wound. Another beam screams from above, stabbing another enormous circular wound in the heavens and piercing the Seed-Ship lower down. The engines rupture, and soon the Maker’s chariot plummets once more, its form groaning deafeningly as it falls. It impacts with the earth, causing me to stagger as the ground trembles below me.

Several of my kin fall from their feet, others stagger, but all eyes remain on the stately and painful death of the Seed-Ship.

It seems to stand for a moment, like some colossal tower wrought from blackened stone, defying its own death with its immensity, before the inevitable collapse begins. Its bulk sails downward, faster and faster, a dirging bow wave splitting before its fall. Smoke and flame billow upward in an aching curve, marking the passing of its fall like calligraphy in the sky.

But the ancient ship never gets the chance to fall fully..

Another screaming line of energy tears from above, impacting with the ship and causing it to detonate apocalyptically, a sphere of flaming clouds billowing rapidly. A bubble of luminous force ripples outward, like air pockets on water, an ever expanding wall of furious energy. The winds of the detonation hit us, a raging torrent of heat and detritus scything through our ranks. Some die, others scramble for cover, many face the oncoming wind with implacably.
We all feel the soul sickness however, the sudden loss.

We more than any of the maker’s children are tied to them, and we feel their death acutely. Tears bud at my eyes and I weep unashamedly for the loss we have just witnessed. There would have been dozens of makers aboard the stricken vessel, and we hate the enemy for their reckless malice.

Eyes turn upward as a new glow suffuses the sky, and the killer of our creators descends.

It is a being of glass and angles, of reflective planes and unending geometry. Its shape is pyramidal in only the loosest sense, and whenever a grasp of its lines and angles is obtained, they twist and mould into new even more complex arrangements. It is both beauteous and horrific. Parts of its crystalline structure bud from it and float in a chilling mockery of gravity, before bleeding back into the whole once more. It is every piece of geometry and logic ever conceived given terrible glassy form and thrust into the skies.

And at its heart burns a sphere of perfect ruby, a burning, bloody eye that looks upon our horde and shines in sadistic mirth. It’s glassy, angular form twists and warps around this eye, seemingly both immense and humble, maddeningly huge and shockingly intimate all at once. It glides slowly above the Necrontyr, a regal deity shining above its subjects. The metallic hordes below raise their hands in supplication at the maddened thing above them and a chilling rasping chorus sounds from their time-ravaged throats.

One of their Gods has chosen to march with its children.

It is the very thing we were bred to challenge and rise against.

They name it C’tan, a Star God.

We name it Yngir, the Eaters of Life, the Utter-Dread.

Our ranks break into a charge once more, a scream of fury blistering form our throats. I pull Asha’valuti from my slain foe and run with abandon, my arms protesting at the sudden movement. My head swims from the pain and the heady calls of my people's rage. All thoughts of self preservation are cast aside in a desire to come to grips with the slayer of our makers. The Necrontyr charge also and a great clarion call rises from their reflective god. It builds in intensity, a piercing shriek that warps reality and sheers sanity.

The God begins to scream in kind, not the honest blood-scream of fury or even of fear. It is a scream at existence, a lunatic din at the utter madness of reality, a shriek at the injustices of a life that one is forced to endure. It screams and screams without end. The air before it blisters and steams, coiling and curdling in upon itself as this mad God pulls something archaic and horrific from within, and with a sound like the universe ending it unleashes its power upon us.

A scything beam of screaming energy bursts form the Yngir, a shining tapestry of unlight that blinds any who looks upon it and stains the very air with its passing, striking our charging masses with all the intensity it used to lay low the Maker’s ship. The ground erupts in fire and agony and I am thrown from my feet. I fly through the air leaving a trail of blood and broken armour as I sail, and when I hit the ground all is black.

Consciousness leaves me to the sound of metallic marching feet and the screams of a mad God killing my kin.

Nice War in Heaven scene! Is that the Outsider?

I feel a pull in the velvet black around me.

Something is shaking me, shaking my arm like a serpent strangling its prey.

There is the dull memory of pain, a throb of bitter red amidst the calming dark.

I don’t want to awaken. To awaken is to invite misery and agony in once again.

Better to sink into this black. Better to cease and relent to the swallowing void around me.

Sink.

Drown.

No Pain.

Nothing.

No…

No.

NO!

That is not who I am.

I am alive.

I am awake.

Sensation returns to me in a too bright flood, overlapped with an overwhelming ringing that scrapes against my skull. I try to focus, my eyes swimming in liquid lunacy, the lights and shapes too much for my waking mind to comprehend. Someone is hovering over me, a muddied shape I cannot discern clearly. They grip my arm firmly, trying to illicit a response. They shake me and a muffled dirge escapes their throat.

I bark in pain as they grip my arm, and the pain brings sudden clarity, the world snapping into glacial focus. There is smoke and flame, and the sounds of screams and furious battle covers me like a heavy caul. The sky buckles and heaves above me, too many colours bleeding all at once in the heavens.

Vast shapes streak through the tortured skies: ships and beings of immense power dual unseen in the murky depths above. Flashes of power and violence billow up there, the unseen impressions of titanic death burning in a battle that shatters sanity and faith. The burning afterimages sting my eyes, forcing me to look away, to look into the face of the figure next to me.

One of my kindred stands above me, concern painting his noble features. Like me his face is long and considered, slanted and naturally symmetrical, although the colour is a shocking pale white and splashed with a horizontal blitzing of red. Blood, I do not know if it is his or some other poor souls. His eyes are bordering on wildness, although a steely control descends once I waken. He is attired like me, in curved, ivory armour and swathed in robes of jet and jade. Blood coats his left side and a buzzing sword is gripped in his right hand.

He speaks my name, concern painting his features.

I know his name.

It swims from my throbbing mind, a painful recollection I struggle to cement. Geshuul, his name is Geshuul Ashwritten. I find my voice, and it is hoarse from screaming.

“Geshuul, brother, what has happened?”

A scream of lunatic dread pierces the veil, causing us both to grit our teeth in pain. I feel hot liquid in my ears and bile in my throat. The world briefly shines a shocking white and a deep throb of erupting flame billows just out of sight.

Geshuul refocuses upon me, his voice steely despite the horror around us.

“The Yngir brother, it fell upon us. We were being slaughtered, butchered. The Far-Sighted called for aid, she called to Heaven! And Heaven responded! Look!”

He gestures around, and my eyes follow his hand.

The sight steals the breath from me.

Two armies still duel in the smoke and mud. One is a glorious rabble of wraithbone and gemstones, singing in a thousand, thousand sonorous, pure voices. They wield blades of captured starlight and crystal, marching under banners of myriad colours and shapes. Light on their feet and moving with the liquid poise of graceful dancers, the sight makes my heart sing.

The other is the gutted hollow of the charnel house given will. Shadowed metallic horrors clothed in sorrow and tattered robes, monotonously driven forward into the melee, soulless thirst burning in gormless eye sockets. They fight in disturbing silence, the only sound they make the crunch and tear of butchery.

But above them sail colossal ships of the most aching beauty and nobility. From the skies and churning cloud cover descends fleets of our vessels, gracefully suspended in the air, mocking gravity with their power. Hulls of luminous blue and green shine and glitter in the murk, great sails cut from the stuff of stars rise majestically to the skies above, whilst terrible, magnificent weapons hove like fins from the sides of these graceful sky predators.

The rain destruction on our enemies: beams of energised death briefly linking the barrels of fluted weapons to their rapidly atomised targets. Explosions of smoke and star-fire erupt where the gaze of the great ships fall, and more and more push from the cover above. The enemy is in disarray at the relentless assault.

Their God, that foul crystalline monster, still hangs above them; its reflective flanks stained an angry, brittle red. Its form stutters and warps rapidly, the sudden appearance of our grand fleet angering it beyond measure, and its angering flowing over its geometry like a virulent plague. It’s keening lament rises in pitch and another dazzling beam of stellar-death blasts from it, smoting a graceful sky-chariot apart. Dozens of burning, flailing bodies fall from the wrecked ship, falling amidst a trailing hail of sundered wraithbone and crystal-sail. The hull of the vessel groans as it splits, its midsection tearing like wet tree bark.

A single spark falls through the wreckage, approaching the ground in a lazy, calm descent. As it approaches the ground it casts a numinous glow around it, a halo of too-bright illumination soothing and too terrifying to comprehend. It flits like a leaf on a shallow breeze, in no rush to reach the ground. It approaches myself and Geshuul, and I am shamed to admit that I quail before its divine light.

Gentle feet clothed in white bone shoes lightly kiss the earth, with so little force that the mud below does not move. Strong, supple legs rise up to a torso clothed in glittering white armour and sumptuous blue robes the colour of a winter’s day.
A pair of muscled arms, clothed in bands of white gold and wraithbone carry a grand spear, twice the height of any of my kin, crowned with a blade of glass-like crystal. Rainbows twinkle gently around the head of the great weapon, drinking in and refracting the light around it in a dazzling display.

A cloak of deep blue hangs from graceful shoulders, its fabric woven from the very void itself. Stars twinkle and shine in that thick blackness, the web and weave of reality cloaking its bearer in stunning power.

And above it all is the most beautiful and terrifying face I have ever laid eyes upon. Utterly symmetrical and without flaw, the skin is alabaster to the point of albinism, the hair straight and golden as the dawn, and the eyes are unblinking and utterly dark, a blue only seen in the deepest of oceans and nebula. A gentle frown creases the face, and to face it is to stare into the face of creation itself.

Tears flow freely at the perfection before me, and though my body screams for me to look away my muscles refuse to turn. My heart wishes only to prostrate myself before such might and beauty, but my coherence has fled and I stare open mouthed at the statuesque figure before me and weep. The blue upon blue eyes turn to consider me, only for a moment, and at that point I know true divinity and true and utter dread.

Wreckage from the ship rains about us, fire and flotsam from the death of the stricken ship, but none dare approach the divine being before us. His very presence pushes aside the danger and bathes the world in a haze of stellar warmth.
We all know his name.

Asuryan, The Phoenix King and Lord of the Pantheon looks upon me. The God of All-Things stares deep into me with his blue-upon-blue eyes and in a dreadful voice that is all voices speaks…

“You…you do not belong here young Farseer…”

Ju’daai opened her eyes.

She found herself as she had ever been: lithe, whole, clothed in gossamer silks and the trappings of her order, her skin supple and pale as milk. She sat cross-legged upon white sand facing a mighty blue ocean, with warm sunlight pouring from a sky of the warmest blue. The sand beneath her held a soft heat, comforting beneath her hands and legs, pliant beneath her resting body. A faint breeze picked at her hair, bearing with it the faint scent of kelp and ocean salts. She could hear the sounds of aquatic birds off in the distance, a gentle song underpinning the tranquillity around her. No cloud tarnished the sky and no brutal foam skimmed across the watery expanse, just complete and unsullied peace.

A paradise in all respects.

She closed her eyes and smiled, not remembering how she had come to be here, but not overly worried by the fact. Faced with this scene of quiet tranquillity, her concerns with the metaphysical faded.

“I often come here to consider my place in the scheme of things. It grants me perspective”

The voice was cultured and without malice, deep and sonorous, like coal gently burning. And although it had come unannounced, she was not surprised by it.

Ju’daai turned to consider the speaker who sat similarly to her, facing out into the infinite ocean in tranquil repose. A noble, handsome face framed by long locks of golden hair, and within a pair of the bluest eyes she had ever seen. The speaker radiated quiet power and utter authority, but she felt to malice or aggression from him. His robes and armour were sumptuous, and before him lay a grand and heavily ornate spear resting in the warm sands.

“It is a beautiful place, perhaps the most beautiful I have seen”

The Speaker nodded at her comment, the ghost of a smile misting across his face. They sat in comfortable silence for a moment, letting the gentle breeze and the smell of salt and sand dance about them. The Speaker chose to break the silence then.

“Do you know who I am?”

The answer coalesced in Ju’daai’s mind, the memory of another painting her knowledge.

“You are the memory of Asuryan, The Phoenix King. You are a shade from a time long past”

Again, Asuryan nodded and smiled, satisfied with her answer. Another silence fell between them then, the sound of the ocean breeze swelling to fill the quiet. Ju’daai brushed silver hair from her face before speaking once more.

“I am surprised however that you knew of my presence. Surely you are nought but a memory?”

Asuryan, closed his blue-upon-blue eyes and breathed in deeply, considering his answer.

“The memory of a God is a strange thing Young Farseer. It possesses a will of its own. It can act as a gate for the God itself, a pocket of your reality to coalesce within. Your path is one of narrow linearity, hurtling through time in one direction. My path is as this ocean before us. Vast, unending, with unknown depths and waves. To gaze upon us is to stamp our image irreversibly into the very fabric of time itself. If I am indeed just a memory, then I suspect I am the most potent memory you will ever encounter”

A hint of concern lined Ju’daai’s brow suddenly.

“So…are you The Phoenix King himself?”

Again, Asuryan considered his answer.

“Perhaps…I do not know. Such a funny, trifling thing: to know not the nature of ones exisence It is a pleasing conundrum. One I have considered many times in this place. I see far beyond the bounds of this moment, into times hither and beyond. Yet I cannot change them beyond my own destruction. Not very Godlike, wouldn’t you agree? I am everywhere and I know everything, but I am doomed to die all the same.”

Ju’daai was silent, considering the Speaker’s words. Before she could respond he spoke again.

“However, I see the design that led you here etched in your soul. I am not the one you were expecting, which is fortunate for you I feel. You sought answers from the deep past, when my children were more abundant, when we straddled the stars as a force of nature itself. You seek answers to many questions, perhaps even more”

Ju’daai nodded fiercely, memories of her quest surfacing as near-drowned, gasping for breath.

“Our extinction comes my Lord, at the hands of ones we never expected. The heavens have been turned upside-down by the death of a God. The Primordial Annihilator grows bold and I feel our last days are dawning.”

“These things are known to me Young One, even beyond the pale of death I see these events spiral ever-onward. Be that I was there to aid you in your time of need. I placed a veil between you and us, between parent and child, and I think that it will prove to be both our undoing. I will be consumed by She-Who-Is-Yet-Unborn-But-Thirsting, but these things I know.”

Ju’daai wiped a tear from her eye, allowing the sea breeze to cool the sting there. A slight tremor entered her voice.

“Please Lord, tell me what to do, how can we survive this? You see all and know all, this I am certain. Can you help us? I don’t want to see my people die. I came seeking another, your brother, but to speak with you is an even greater opportunity”

Asuryan rose smoothly to his feet, gently dusting the sand from his robes. He turned to Ju’daai and offered her his hand. She felt dwarfed by his staggering height and stature. He inclined his head, and fixed her with his blue-upon-blue eyes.

“Walk with me…”

She took the God’s hand and suddenly they were somewhere else.

She stood beside him on a smoking, ruined battlefield, death stretching out around them for miles upon miles. She was surrounded by warriors, both of her own species and the hated Necrontyr and the sheer span of the battle stole her breath.

They all stood in glacial stillness, frozen in this particular moment in time. She could see the bright energies of weapon fire tearing the air asunder, suddenly frozen like a distant star. She glimpses swarms of shuriken and glassy needles suspended in mid-air, their killing edges reflecting off the dim light. Droplets of blood hung motionless, expressions of fury and pain locked in an icy repose, the violence caught in a singular instant in time. It was eerily silent, like a painting, haunting in its perfection.

The Eldar wore armour and wielded weapons of an archaic nature, ancient in comparison to the modern conveniences she was used to. In their frozen state she could pick out the exquisite detailing on everything the carried, the supple curves of armour, silken, almost translucent weave of their cloth, the love and duty in the sharpness of their blades. They were perfect, furious statues caught in moments of dizzying glory and despair.
The Necrons were as they always were: implacable, emotionless, utterly terrifying. Their stillness did nothing to quell the unease at their wretched existence. A violet light bathed them, and soon Ju’daai’s eyes drifted upward, above the warring hordes.

She choked back the urge to vomit, but only just.

In the sky hung a horror beyond mortal words: a colossal, crystalline shape of maddened geometry and star-death. Random shapes carved from silvered crystal surrounded a core of pulsing, reddened madness, and she knew that in movement the thing would be even more terrifying.

It pulsed a sickly red in the air, it’s fury cutting through even this artificial stillness. The hideous thing hung above the Necron hordes like a grim, cursed talisman and wherever its ill light shone, ruin would follow. It pained her to look at it for too long, and she turned bleary-eyed to Asuryan once more.

“I know this place…but I don’t know how”

The Phoenix King turned to her, the perfection of his face mired slightly by the ill light of the monster in the sky.

“This is where you found me, and this is how you will find me again”

Ju’daai frowned.

“I don’t know what that means…this isn’t even your memory.”

Asuryan smiled indulgently, nodding slightly.

“Observant young one, but it is how you will find me nonetheless”

He turned to the hated thing in the sky once more, gripping his spear two-handed, and conviction painting his features. He took a step forward and suddenly the world was in motion once more. Ju’daai yelped as the swirling melee around her exploded into furious life, a hurricane of blood and bodies. None seemed to notice her as they enacted their fury upon each other, but still she fell, staggered by the monstrous violence. She covered her ears as shrieks of sky-bound craft roared overhead, dumping ordnance and explosives on the duelling lines. Her body ached as shockwaves rippled outward, and massive, barely understood shapes above rent the sky with hideous power.

But her eyes were locked on Asuryan as he ran toward the thing in the sky.

The creature noticed the God, and a gut-bleeding wail erupted from it, cracking the very fabric of reality around and slaying dozens who fought beneath it. A putrid light of violet energy curdled into being before it, before a solid beam of destructive energy thundered from the hated core toward the bounding figure of Asuryan. Ju’daai called out instinctively, but this was the past, and she could have no effect upon it.

He brought he spear around in a twinkling curve, its glittering head redolent with thunderous power, and with singular grace Asuryan struck the beam of energy. The point of impact detonated with the fury of a singularity, the godlike powers warping and buckling into one another. Hundreds died immediately in the blast, Necron and Eldar alike, and the air hummed and blurred with vile toxic smoke. Chains of lightning and flame billowed outward, and Ju’daai shielded her eyes from the wall of force and ash.

Asuryan powered through it all, his glittering armour and flowing robes smouldering and smoking, but otherwise unscathed. He leapt, his muscular legs hurling him skyward, spear thrust out before him. Like a comet he thundered upward, his beatific light shining above the swirling rout below.

The monstrous form in the sky shrieked in sudden terror, its form warping into sheets of colossal glass and spines of sharpened blades, all twirling and orbiting around its pitiless, crimson eye in a bid to fend off its approaching enemy. More energy bled from it, before it vomited forth another burst of killing light. The spear impacted, cutting through the beam, shattering its slaying power and erupting into a sphere of explosive fire.

Asuryan drove his weapon onward through the fire, shattering glassy, metallic hide and the unnatural vortexes that made up the Star God’s being. Its wail turned into a cutting shriek of fury and madness, and with one final thrust the great spear struck the crimson orb at the heart of the beast.

The shrieking stopped, suddenly silent.

Time stood still, Ju’daai held her breath.

The warring hordes turned skyward.

One final roar of victory sounded in the sky as Asuryan yanked his spear from the corpse of the C’tan, and the hideous creature erupted into a near ceaseless fountain of rank gore. Bloody rain saturated the battlefield below, and the Eldar horde roared their approval to their lord. A keening lament was taken up by the Nectrontyr host and they fell back with all the cold efficiency their masters had built into them. The Eldar harried them as they retreated, and whilst many fell to their blades many more slipped into the spaces between realities that the grim machines commanded.

The bloody field was won. The cost had been thousands of lives, but still the field was won.

Asuryan floated downward to the roars and cheers of his children, his ascent eerily slow and serene. Light shone from him in a warming haze, and Ju’daai ran through the cheering mass to reach him. Her words were tinted with awe.

“You killed it! That was…that was beautiful”

Asuryan nodded to her, the gesture unnoticed by the overjoyed throng, and he fixed her with his blue-upon-blue eyes.

“Another of the Yngir fell to my hands. A task, sadly, beyond the power of mortals. This is why we were created Young One, to destroy the things that you could not. That is our function”

Ju’daai frowned at his words, the idea not sitting well with her.

“Wait…function? I do not understand”

Asuryan smiled sadly, his attention drifting behind her, his blue-upon-blue eyes focussing elsewhere.

“No you do not…but you will”

A pained roar exploded behind her, and Ju’daai spun, her robes twirling like cold mist.

A single warrior hobbled forward out of the crowd, his face bloody and his side rent with a deep, monstrous wound. He wears star-forged armour, dented and pock-marked by battle, its many gemstones and embellishments lost under a sheen of wet gore. His green robes are scoured and torn, barely hanging onto him in scraps. The Eye of Isha hangs from his shoulders, brutally dented and rent, blood dripping from it like tears. A shattered, broken spear drags behind him, grasped in shaking fists broken beyond recognition. His voice was wracked with an exhausting rage, and blood drips freely from his throat.

“ASURYAN! YOU HAD NO RIGHT”

Asuryan speaks to Ju’daai although his lips move not.

“His name is Aldaeu of the House of Beil Ta’han. This is why you found me through him”

Ju’daai stared in mounting horror as the furious warrior approached.

“THE KILL WAS MINE! YOU HAD NO RIGHT! THE DEATH OF THE YNGIR SHOULD HAVE BEEN MINE!”

His voice warped and deepened, and soon his words were lost in the incoherent bellow of volcanic fury. Smoke and sparks bled from the warrior’s mouth, and he screamed as his insides burned. Skin smouldered and burned, crisping and melting from him in rank loops of fatty liquid. He swelled, his body growing and cracking in blackened majesty. Magma-tinged armour slid gorily from crisp skin, and dark chains and blades burst from bone.

Fire rippled freely around the approaching warrior, a walking inferno that pained the eyes and mind alike. Gore sizzled and fat crisped away, and soon what had been a damaged warrior was now a monstrously tall figure swathed in black armour and fiery robes. A tall crown of many horns rose above its head, and armour of blackened steel and drake-hide covered its quivering muscles. A blade, blacker than even the pitiless void sat in its left fist and its right was a palsied talon dripping with an endless rain of fresh gore. Its body trembled and quaked with barely-restrained fury, and smoke and bilious flame sparked from seams in its armour and flesh.

But its face is what truly terrified Ju’daai, for it was without any hint or trace of mercy or compassion, nor even a flicker of understanding or desire. It was a grimacing metal scar of relentless hatred and aggression pinned by blazing eyes of depthless fury, dripping malice and blood in equal measure. Looking upon it tightened Ju’daai’s stomach and forced her to her knees.

The trembling, damaged beast raised its blackened weapon in challenge and roared its petulant defiance to the skies.

“THE HONOUR WAS MINE ASURYAN! YOU HAD NO RIGHT!”

Ju’daai quailed, as did the horde around her. Asuryan took a step forward, his spear hanging loosely in his grip. He turned one last time to her, a look of sorrow marring his blue-upon-blue eyes.

“Now watch, Young One. Watch as my brother kills me and plants the seeds of your salvation.”