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Chapter Text

Heed my words, my kindred, and heed them well.

I am Zerestra Hellbinder, the Voice of Hashut. Through me, the Dark Master speaks. Through me, His will is shared to us, His most favored of servants.

For millennia, we have hidden from the galaxy. For generations, we have cultivated our strength.

As the rest of the galaxy warred in the name of empty causes and false gods, we studied the deepest secrets of power. As more and more of their lore and might slipped away from their weakening grasp, we gathered more of both into ours. As entropy eroded the glory of their flawed empires, we toiled to build up the foundations of our own, so that it might stand forever.

Now, at last, the time has come. The long-awaited hour of our ascension is at hand.

All the signs are there for us to behold. The galaxy burns, as worlds are sundered and the Veil thins. The False Emperor is dead, His Imperium leaderless and divided, while the Old Four are at each other's throat, failing to accomplish anything of worth as their servants slaughter each other.

And, most important of all, our lord Hashut has risen, casting off the disguise of slumber by which He fooled the other, lesser deities, and called us to join Him in His war to bring the galaxy under His dominion.

Let none stand in our way; let none oppose the coming of the Truth.

In the name of Hashut, and His avatar Guilliman. Spill the blood of the unbelievers upon the altar of war !

Times of Ending : The Ruinstorm Breaks

Part Three : The Denunciation of Iron

With the arrival of the Demiurges, the balance of power in Olympia, which had swung in the Imperium's favor at the arrival of the Grieving Blade, was once more firmly to the Dark Master's advantage. No one, not even the great spymasters of the Alpha Legion, had foreseen the arrival of the Kin of Hashut, whose very existence had been concealed through a combination of ruthless paranoia and sorcery of the highest order. All, it seemed, had unfolded according to the Arch-Traitor's plan – but there remained elements for which the Thirteenth Primarch's genius couldn't account, due to the mutilation of his once noble soul …

The Void Burns in the Fire of Hashut

The Demiurge fleet emerged from the Warp deep within the Olympia system, far beyond the Mandeville Point, in a repeat of the feat accomplished by the Grieving Blade and her escorts mere hours prior. Where Perturabo's flagship had achieved this feat through ancient technology and the superlative skill of her crew, the Demiurges had managed it thanks to the guidance of their infernal master – but this did nothing to diminish the tactical impact of their arrival.

The Demiurge armada was small compared to the forces already present in the system, but its ships were all of cruiser-class or heavier, without the lighter escorts both Chaos and Imperial navies typically used as part of their formations. The Navy officers took immediate notice of that fact, but none of them believed, even for a moment, that this was a weakness that could be exploited : the time for such optimism had long since passed. Clearly, the Demiurges simply adhered to a different naval doctrine than the Imperium or its traditional foes : how different exactly remained to be seen.

Unfortunately, the Demiurges were only too eager to provide a demonstration of their favored method of void warfare : the unleashing of a single, crushing blow through blasphemous technologies and sorcerous might. The Kin's flagship, an immense warship whose name translated in Low Gothic to the Fire of Hashut, held a special cargo, kept in stasis for several centuries. Within the ship's decks were thousands of Nicassar, a race of ursine-looking psychic xenos who, despite the many dangers of the Warp, had managed to remain free of the Dark Gods' influence for thousands of years. Under the guidance of Guilliman, the Demiurges had raided the Nicassar home system (the xenos never having managed to spread beyond its borders), sailing through the Empyrean for many months in order to reach the distant star.

The Nicassar were powerful warriors, who added the might of their minds to their already mighty bodies, but that wasn't enough to save them from the Demiurges. By the time the Kin of Hashut departed, the Nicassar homeworld was a burned-out husk, and the last members of that species were the slaves which were dragged back to the Core. When a Tau exploration fleet arrived in the system years later, they discovered the ruins, which the Ethereals swiftly claimed were evidence that whoever the previous inhabitants had been, they had destroyed themselves, holding up that 'self-evident fact' as another proof of the supremacy of the Greater Good.

Over the following decades, the Demiurges had experimented on the Nicassar, using both forbidden science and dark sorcery to turn their captives into a weapon to unleash at the appointed time. That time was now, and the Shadow Priests aboard the Fire of Hashut shivered in delight and dread alike as they felt the Dark Master touch their minds to command it.

The enslaved brains of thousands of Nicassar cried out as the agony-engines to which they were linked flared up. With such direct access, the suffering they felt was many times greater than their lost bodies could possibly have endured, yet they were denied the release of death by the very devices which tormented them.

Great sorcerous coils harvested the Warp energy thus produced, feeding it to the Fire of Hashut's main gun. Within that mass of power, Neverborn spawned by the Nicassar's torment came into existence, only to be immediately obliterated, unable to maintain their cohesion, their brief existence spent adding their scream to the cacophony of the monstrous engine the Demiurges had built in the Galactic Core.

Finally, after an eternity of unspeakable torment inflicted upon the alien brains, the Fire of Hashut unleashed its mightiest weapon : a stream of Warp energy so vast it blotted out the stars and made a mockery of the incomprehensible distances normally involved in space battles.

The void burned, and with a single strike, the Imperial fleet was cleaved in two. Dozens of ships were destroyed immediately as they were caught in the discharge of aetheric power, their void-shields utterly unable to withstand the unholy might of the Fire of Hashut's superweapon.

Worse than the loss of so many vessels, the Imperial fleet was now divided, unable to properly coordinate even with the Grieving Blade trying to maintain discipline. Vox-communications, already unreliable due to the proximity of the Ruinstorm, became all but impossible, and the astropaths and psykers who had survived the previous traumas of Guilliman's Black Crusade were knocked unconscious – some of them never to awaken, whilst others rose possessed by fiery Neverborn of a kind never previously encountered and had to be put down.

Zerestra Hellbinder exulted as she watched the devastation her people had wrought. She saw it with her eyes, heard it through a dozen reports, and felt it with her mind. She could perceive the screams of hundreds of thousands of souls suddenly torn from the Materium as their bodies were disintegrated and they were hurled into the Warp, at the mercy of its cruel denizens.

Destruction and suffering were prayers offered to the altar of Hashut. By bringing ruination to those who dared oppose the Dark Master's will, the Demiurges demonstrated their loyalty to the god who had chosen them, proving that His choice had not been in error when He had saved them from the despair into which they'd been cast by the lying Ancestors.

In her life, the Voice of Hashut had led many rituals and offerings to the Father of Darkness – not sacrifices, for true sacrifice must weaken the giver just as it empowers the recipient, and the destruction of the Imperial vermin wasn't worthy of the title – but never on this scale, and never with His glorious avatar so close at hand. Even as she led her congregation of Shadow Priests in prayer, she basked in the aura of the Dark Master, which she could feel all the way across the void to the bridge of the Fire of Hashut.

Another part of her mind kept track of the reports from the bridge crew, who whispered of the damage the superweapon's firing had inflicted upon its mechanism. It would take many days of work, and more still of reconsecration through the sacrifice of thousands of slaves to Hashut, before the Fire of Hashut was ready to compel the last remnant of the Nicassar into service again. But that didn't matter : they had known such would be the case, and the Father of Darkness had taken it into account when weaving his master plan for Olympia.

Zerestra yearned to join the fray in person, but she knew she couldn't. She had other duties to perform in this first battle of the Demiurges alongside their kindred in Darkness, and she would not fail in them.

Caught between the two armadas of the Thirteenth Legion and the Demiurges, it seemed that the Imperial vessels were doomed to be destroyed, leaving the Olympia system at the Dark Master of Chaos' non-existent mercy. Aboard the Macragge's Honour, Guilliman smiled as he beheld the work of his slaves, and prepared to watch the final destruction of his brother's spiteful resistance.

But it was not to be, for as the jaws of the Arch-Traitor's trap closed in on the Imperial fleet, help arrived from a most unexpected source.

The Alignment of Order

On the Tau flagship Crown of Ascension, Commanders Farsight and Shadowsun had assumed command following their victory over the possessed Aun'Shi with the help of the Stone Dragon O'Vesa and Admiral Viel. But restoring order to the rest of the Tau coalition fleet was much more difficult : the rupture of the Iron Cage had thrown the fleet into complete disarray, madness spreading through the ranks of the aliens like wildfire.

Slowly but surely, however, the two Tau officers managed to rally a portion of the fleet to their banner. The news of the Ethereals' corruption weren't shared beyond the three who had witnessed Aun'Shi's transformation and the battle that had ensued, for they knew it would either cause further panic or be dismissed out of hand. Instead, O'Shovah declared that Aun'Shi had been slain and impersonated by an agent of the Ultramarines, who had deceived the Tau Empire into assisting their escape from what was now clear had been a deserved exile into the region of space they called the Ruinstorm.

The Ultramarines were no unfortunate outcasts of a cruel and tyrannical regime, Farsight proclaimed. They were enemies of the Greater Good, who had used perverted mind-sciences beyond the Earth Caste's ken to manipulate even the great Ethereals into becoming their instruments. Such mental manipulation, Farsight declared, stood in opposition to every principle of the Tau'va, the tenets by which every Tau had vowed to live.

Farsight was very careful with his words. He refused to lie to his people, who had been lied to enough by the corrupted Ethereal Council, but neither could he tell them the full truth at this time. He had wanted to at first, but Shadowsun and O'Vesa had convinced him otherwise. Their wisdom soon became apparent, as even this watered-down version of what had truly happened was too much for many of the Warp-touched Tau warriors to accept. Of the Tau fleet which had survived the battle of Olympia thus far, only slightly more than half heeded their Commanders' words and rallied to the Crown of Ascension's side, while the rest scattered through the system, fled for its border in the desperate hope of returning to the Tau Empire, or self-destroyed, wholly lost to insanity.

Having gathered as many ships as they could, the Tau Commanders made their intentions known to their brethren. They had unwittingly committed a great wrong in breaking the complex machinery that had kept the Iron Cage locked : it was their duty to do all they could to right this wrong. The principles of Unity upon which the Tau Empire was founded left only one clear course of action : to join the battle raging deeper in the Olympia system, this time on the side of the very Imperials they had been fighting not long before.

Many Tau officers balked at the prospect : having been fed anti-Imperial propaganda all their lives, the very idea seemed anathema to them. But amidst the confusion and mayhem that had engulfed them, they clung to the chain of command tightly, seeking any source of stability. Few made their doubts known, and fewer attempted to act upon them.

Soon, the Tau fleet began to move toward the site of the battle between the Imperial and Chaos fleets. From the bridge of the Crown of Ascension, Farsight and Shadowsun watched the Grieving Blade's arrival, followed by that of the Demiurges and the unleashing of the Fire of Hashut's eldritch weaponry.

When they finally closed in, Farsight ordered Admiral Viel to broadcast a message to the Iron Warriors' flagship. The message was brief, and unlike nearly every communication between the Imperium and the Tau, it didn't occur through a translation system designed by the Earth Caste using data from the Water Caste and sporting small, cunning alterations by the agents of the Ethereals. Instead, Farsight spoke the words in Low Gothic directly into the transmitter, guided by the ghost of the son of Magnus which resided in the Dawnblade he still carried.

That message contained words and phrases whose meaning eluded Farsight completely, but which he knew must harken back to the days of Kadeth's life as a flesh and blood being, rather than a guarding spirit keeping eternal watch over the Keystone. For several long minutes, which seemed to stretch forever, O'Shovah waited, watching as his fleet came ever closer to the raging battle.

Then came the reply, broadcast on every vox-channel and bearing the sigil of Olympia's highest authority. By order of Perturabo himself, the Tau were to no longer be considered enemies of the Imperium, but allies in the fight against the Thirteenth Legion and its own corrupted xenos allies.

No other Imperial commander could have had such orders obeyed, for all knew it was the xenos who had broken the Iron Cage open and unleashed the Traitors trapped within. But Perturabo was the Lord of Iron, Primarch of the Fourth Legion and son of the Emperor of Mankind. His will was as strong as any fortress wall his Legion had ever built, and his authority within the Olympia System absolute. And so, the Imperial forces put their hate of the Taus aside, though the great transgression they had committed was neither forgotten nor forgiven.

The unexpected arrival of the alien reinforcements were enough to prevent the Fire of Hashut's psychic superweapon from turning the void-battle of Olympia into an outright disaster, but the newly allied forces of the Imperium and the Tau were still in considerable danger. The Imperial fleet managed to disengage from the jaws of the Arch-Traitor's trap, scattering into several lesser flotillas; but in doing so, it lost the cohesion and concentration of firepower required to present the hosts of Chaos with a credible threat. As new orders were transmitted from the Macragge's Honour by vox, telepathy, and darker methods of communication still, the heretic forces began to plunge upon the worlds of the Olympia system in droves.

The new Olympian War had entered a new phase, where the fate of the system – and indeed, that of all the galaxy – would be decided on the ground, by clashing armies of Order and Chaos.

The voice of the Human commander named Perturabo was a deep, scarred thing. Even with the interference ubiquitous of all Human communication devices, Farsight could hear the pain that every word cost the man to speak, but it couldn't completely suppress the majesty and weight of authority the voice carried.

"It hurts, does it not ?" asked Perturabo, in a tone that could almost be described as conversational. "To watch your dream die in fire and betrayal ? To know that all you cherish is gone, and no matter how hard you fight, you will never get it back – not truly ?"

There was no intelligence in the Tau records about Perturabo. Not that it could have been trusted anyway, not after all the lies that had already been uncovered. Still, O'Vesa had listened in on the Human transmissions since arriving in the system, and the Stone Dragon had put together a small dossier – the reading of which had caused a pulse of what O'Shovah could only describe as amusement from Kadeth.

Perturabo was some kind of deific figure to the Imperials, and a patriarch of the Iron Warriors' gue'vesa (which they called a Primarch in their tongue, something which apparently translated to 'one who wields power because he is the first of his kind', which had disturbing implications to say the least). He was, supposedly, ten thousand years old, and blood-brother to the very leader of the Ultramarine fleet they were now fighting. To Farsight, it all sounded like mythology come to life, but after all that he'd seen, he dared not reject it.

"… Does the pain ever go away ?" O'Shovah asked.

"No," said the Lord of Iron, crushing Farsight's hope with that single word. "I have borne that burden for ten thousand years, and in all that time, it has remained as fresh and painful as the day I first heard what Guilliman had done."

"How do you deal with it ?" asked O'Shaserra from where she stood at his side on the bridge of the Crown of Ascension. O'Shovah flinched at the raw need in her tone, her desperate hope for an escape from the shadows that now resided in her mind.

"One might say that I don't," replied the Human demigod, crushing that hope, though not without kindness. "I certainly don't feel like I do. But … duty, I suppose. It will keep you going, though it will be of little comfort in the darkest nights, where there is nothing to distract you from dwelling on the depths of your loss and contemplating whether there was something – anything – you could have done to prevent it. And, if you can, I would advise you to find companions to bear it with you. Unlike I, you aren't cursed to isolation by the very circumstances of your creation."

Without him being aware of it, O'Shovah's gaze flickered to O'Shaserra, only to find her looking at him too. Despite everything, he couldn't stop himself from smiling briefly. For all that they had lost, for all that they now knew they never had at all, their bond to one another, at least, remained – despite the Ethereals' best efforts to split them up.

"We will," he promised. "Thank you, Lord Perturabo."

"Do not thank me until this is over, young warriors. There is still time for you to wish I'd ordered my ships to blast yours to pieces."

As the transmission went dead, O'Shovah knew that Perturabo had spoken the truth as he saw it. But Farsight also knew that the Primarch was mistaken.

Because, after everything he had done, everything he had learned, O'Shovah would never regret defying the foul power which had enslaved his people, no matter the consequences.

The Theft of Fire

While Olympia itself was the focus of the Black Crusade, being the most important planet in the system for multiple reasons, the other worlds of the system weren't spared from the onslaught of the Chaos-sworn forces.

The orbital stations around Phlegeton were targeted by scores of Demiurge warbands seeking to claim their bounty for the fires of Hashut's industry. As more and more installations fell into the hands of the heretics, their overseers began to enact drastic measures, sabotaging the life-support systems of their void-borne kingdoms and condemning thousands to death by suffocation in order to deny the enemy their prize, or setting reactors to overload so as to take as many of the attackers with them as possible.

Meanwhile, on Volundr, the Adeptus Mechanicus was embattled against the daemonic legions which had manifested in the wake of the Shriek and the collapse of the Iron Cage. As the noosphere had been rent asunder by Commander Shadowsun's unwitting sabotage, Skitarii Legions fought without the planet-wide coordination they were used to. For the tech-priests of Mars, used to the stifling order of their calling, the anarchy of a daemonic incursion was as close to Hell as they could imagine : many of the Red Planet's anointed went mad as a result, and had to be put down by their saner brethren as they succumbed to nihilism and sought to destroy their forges to keep them from falling into the hands of the daemons – or worse, embraced the corruption of Chaos, either in a desperate bid to survive or because the Warp's dark glory had twisted their rigid minds.

Fortunately for the forge-world's defenders, the daemonic hosts were even less united. Neverborn belonging to each of the four Ruinous Powers had manifested, and, certain of their ultimate victory on this world, they spent more time fighting each other than they did the Mechanicus forces. The remaining Skitarii commanders and arch-magi were quick to capitalize on this. Manipulating Daemons against one another was a risky proposal at the best of time, but for every Skitarii host which was devoured flesh, metal and soul by the Chaotic horde, another managed to escape doom for just one more day by drawing their pursuers into the sight of a rival Chaos Legion.

Such ploys could only delay the inevitable, however, and with every hour the grip of the Warp on Volundr grew stronger, drawing ever closer to the tipping point where the planet would become a full-fledged Daemon World and be damned forevermore, no matter which one of the Dark Gods ultimately held dominion over it.

In response to Volundr's quandary, Perturabo had sent a single ship to the forge-world's help – seemingly a pittance compared to its desperate need, but all that could be spared in the Lord of Iron's cold calculus of war. Aboard that ship was a contingent of the Ordo Malleus, supplemented by several thousands Sisters of Battle and led by the famed Daemonhunter Lord Inquisitor Maximilian Schreiber.

Lord Inquisitor Maximilian Schreiber

All Inquisitors walk a dangerous road, but few can claim to have trodden a more deadly path than Maximilian Schreiber. Born a psyker on an Imperial world now known only to him, he was given to the Black Ships at a young age, yet showed such willpower and purity of faith that he was spared the fate most psykers meet of being fed to the Golden Throne or the Astronomican. Instead, he joined the Inquisition, first as an Acolyte, then as an Interrogator, before earning his own Inquisitorial Rosette as a full-fledged member of the Ordo Malleus after the classified events which led to the Arikamean Purge.

In his two centuries of service to the Imperium, Schreiber has faced the minions of all four Dark Gods, as well as other, nameless entities dwelling in the Empyrean – and triumphed over them all. He rose to the rank of Lord Inquisitor after defeating the daemon known only as the Fiend With Thirteenth Maws, a great horror responsible for the damnation of several star systems before Schreiber defeated it and sent its howling spirit back into the Warp – an exile that, thanks to the Daemon Lord's incarnate form having been slain by Schreiber's thrice-blessed Staff of Purity, shall last for a thousand and one years.

Upon landing on Volundr, Schreiber lost no time taking control of the situation and going on the offensive. He moved across the forge-world, rescuing beleaguered Skitarii units and rallying isolated Iron Warriors squads to his banner, while banishing all daemons who crossed his path. Many Neverborn, sensing the Lord Inquisitor's presence, sought to kill him to claim his soul as their plaything, but they were all defeated and hurled back into the Empyrean.

Left to his own device, Schreiber may very well have ultimately succeeded in purging Volundr of its Neverborn infestation. Unfortunately, Perturabo wasn't the only Primarch in the system aware of the forge-world's importance.

The resources laying on the planet, even in its current ravaged state, were of great interest to Guilliman. The internal conflicts of the Ultramarines while he slumbered had left the Ruinstorm with few hellforges of its own, and with the loss of the resources his minions had stockpiled on Macragge itself, the Dark Master needed ways to resupply his forces in order to prosecute his war of galactic conquest. Thus, under direct orders from Zerestra Hellbinder, who spoke with the Dark Master's voice, a Demiurge host led by the legendary Daemonsmith Malachai Ruinmaker, he who had designed the Fire of Hashut's great weapon using knowledge learned from the Masters of the Forge of Souls, descended upon the tormented forge-world, to bend both tech-thralls and Neverborn to the will of Hashut.

Guided by the Shadow Priests accompanying him, the Ruinmaker landed his forces close to the greatest daemonic concentration on Volundr. There, amidst the ruins of what had once been a sprawling industrial complex, a Lord of Change had successfully imposed its will upon thousands of Neverborn, and was directing them to reshaping the ruins according to its twisted designs.

The Demiurges marched upon the fallen city, utterly unafraid of the daemons dwelling within. The Lord of Change, sensing their intrusion into its new domain, sent its minions after them in waves, only for the Neverborn to be butchered by the Kin of Hashut, who were well-practiced in fighting what they saw as the servants of lesser gods.

After several hours of brutal fighting, Hashut's Claw, Malachai's personal Daemon Engine bodyguard, tore the Lord of Change's incarnated form to shreds. Before the essence of the Greater Daemon could dissipate back into the Warp, the Daemonsmith trapped it using one of the many infernal devices he carried on him at all times, to be used at a later date.

Meanwhile, Inquisitor Schreiber had received word from his ship in orbit of the Demiurges' arrival. The exact nature of the sudden Chaos reinforcements was unknown to the Imperials, but the technology of their ships, albeit twisted and corrupted, was clearly of Human origin. Garbled intercepted broadcasts and what little imagery could be gleaned from orbit led the Lord Inquisitor to believe this new foe to be some previously unknown abhuman strain, which had been tainted by the Arch-Traitor and turned to his foul purposes – or perhaps a humanoid, primitive xenos breed which the Dark Master's agents had uplifted with technological gifts.

The truth, ultimately, was irrelevant to the situation at hand. Schreiber had been dispatched to Volundr by Perturabo himself, and he wouldn't let these new Slaves to Ruin bring the forge-world into darkness. The Lord Inquisitor began to advance across the continent, a days-long march through ruin and devastation that saw many heroic acts by the forces under his command, all of which would go unrecorded and unremembered.

It wasn't long before Malachai was informed of the approaching Imperial host by his own scouts. Grinning at this opportunity to test his latest creations in the field of battle against the enemy the Demiurges had always been meant to fight, the Daemonsmith mustered his brethren and their infernal construct. At the Ruinmaker's command, they boarded the Dreadful Engines which had carried them from their landing zones, and went out to meet the foe.

The two armies met on the dawn of the eighth day following Schreiber's landing, in the shadow of Iacopo's Ladder. Across a field of broken metal, blackened by the heat of atmospheric entry, they stared at one another – until Malachai gave the order to his Immortals to charge ahead of the rest of his forces, their augmented limbs swallowing the meters of the difficult terrain with ease. Among the Imperials, the Sisters of Battle charged as well, relying on their power armor to match the Immortals' speed.

And so, for the first time in recorded history, the Imperium went to war against the Kin of Hashut.

There was, Malachai had found, an order to the seeming anarchy of open battle.

Not many could detect it, even among his kin. But the Ruinmaker had always been able to hear it : the symphony of destruction, the rhythm of death on such a scale, mortal minds had never been meant to comprehend it.

It was beautiful, in its own way.

Artillery shells fired from the Dreadful Engines rained down upon the Imperial forces. Malachai had seen Ork warbands break and run from such barrages, yet the humans kept advancing toward the lines of Myrmidons and Immortals.

Admirable. Foolish, but admirable.

The Daemonsmith was walking through the devastation, surrounded on all sides by battle yet untouched by it. His favorite creation stalked around him, keeping anyone from reaching him as he took in the sights and sounds of war. Already, it had reddened its claws with the blood of several souls unfortunate enough to be dragged into its path by the ebb and flow of battle.

Malachai paused as he heard the symphony shift. Something was approaching his position – a nexus in the tempest.

He smiled under the helm that protected his face. This was what he'd been looking for. A moment later, his instincts were confirmed as the enemy commander strode forth, haloed in psychic lightning that lashed out to incinerate any Demiurge that got close, while the women in power armor around him fired disciplined volleys from their bolters.

Malachai raised his own weapon toward the group – not in salutation, but in silent command to Hashut's Claw. The Chimeric Horror recognized the order at once, and with a sound that was as much a scream as the Fire of Hashut's superweapon was a gun, it leapt at the warband, ready to rend and tear until naught remained by scraps of bloody meat and shrieking souls for it to feast upon.

Yes, thought the Ruinmaker with satisfaction, his hand moving to one of the devices hanging at his belt. This would make a most interesting test for his creations.

The battle between Malachai Ruinmaker and Lord Inquisitor Schreiber's retinue was violent, but brief, and ended with the latter gruesome demise. Schreiber himself was slain, not by the feline Chimeric Horror that accompanied the Daemonsmith, but by Malachai himself, at the conclusion of a savage duel that cost the Demiurge warlord his left eye and several arcane devices of great value and potency.

With Schreiber's death and that of his command staff, the force he had assembled was doomed. Those who stood their ground were killed by the Demiurges, while those who fled were hunted down and slaughtered. Soon, Volundr belonged to Malachai, who wasted no time in rebuilding the damaged forges according to Demiurge designs. The surviving tech-priests and their thralls were enslaved by the abhuman overseers, while the Neverborn were hunted down and either banished or bound through sorcery. Those magi who had succumbed to the Warp's false promises bowed to the Ruinmaker willingly, eager to learn his secrets.

Amused by their devotion, Malachai selected a handful to join the ranks of his assistants – a position of great honor in Demiurge society, but also one that came with considerable risks, as the craft of the Daemonsmith was one of permanent danger. Some among his order may have considered this sharing of their secrets with outsiders to be blasphemy, but Malachai had ever been eccentric by the standards of the Daemonsmiths, and such was his prestige – strengthened even further by his capture of Volundr – that none would dare question his decision.

Within a few days, a dark order was restored to the forge-world – the order of Hashut.

The Battle of Lochos' Wall

As more of the forces of Chaos landed across the Olympia system, the Iron Warriors' homeworld was already beset by its own set of troubles. Guilliman's spearhead, cast upon the planet before Perturabo's arrival, rampaged nearly unopposed through most of the world's surface, a three-headed beast which targeted the planet's most important locales.

One of those, the Chaos host that marched toward Lochos, was mighty indeed. The Daemon Prince Kazakital had brought with him a great horde of Khornate cultists along with his former Chapter, the Black Consuls. That powerful force had been further augmented when the Tome Keepers, who worshipped at Tzeentch's altar, had joined the push toward Olympia's capital. Their lord, Saargon, had negotiated this in person with the Red Prince before their landing. Despite their differences, the two Chapters ultimately served the Dark Master of Chaos, and both the Daemon Prince and the Sorcerer Lord could sense the presence of an old enemy among the defenders of the city-state.

That enemy was Justine, the Living Saint, who had once slain Kazakital and been bound by the Tome Keepers and delivered to Mortendar as a trophy – although Saargon was too savvy a diplomat to mention that fact to the Daemon Prince, lest the Sorcerer Lord earn his ire by insinuating he had succeeded where the ascended Khornate champion had failed.

Now, the avatar of the dead God-Emperor's power stood on the walls of the city-state with two other Liberated, Inquisitor Felix Jaeger and Custodian Zagreus, their mere presence boosting the flagging morale of Lochos' defenders considerably.

Based on the scouting reports of those brave souls who dared to leave the relative safety of the walls, Lochos' commanders believed that their defenses could withstand the might of Kazakital's host, so long as the Daemon Prince could be dealt with by their own elites. However, that same realization had also occurred to the Tome Keepers, whose knowledge of warfare was scarcely lesser than their esoteric prowess. Seeking to tip the scales more firmly in their favor, Saargon performed a great summoning ritual, with Kazakital's own blessing, and called upon the Dark Gods to deliver them reinforcements.

None but the Sorcerer Lord could say whether he had predicted what happened next, and fewer still would be foolish enough to trust any words that came out of his mouth. Regardless, instead of a Neverborn horde, a legion of the Death Korps of Krieg emerged from the Warp Rifts Saargon's efforts had opened. These lost souls had been scattered across time and space at the Fall of Cadia, rescued from certain doom by the War God they served. While most mortals would have been driven utterly made by such unprotected passage through the Empyrean, the Death Korps had long since left their sanity behind, and their devotion to the Blood God had seen them through.

That was not to say they had been unaffected by their journey, of course : even the most favored of the Ruinous Powers' slaves couldn't hope to bathe in the Warp and emerged unscathed. All of them now bore the mark of Chaos upon their cloned flesh, and their wargear had been equally warped. The Khornate runes carved into their equipment now glowed with infernal light, as did the eye-sockets of their gas-masks, many of which had become fused to the face of their wearer.

Daemons of the God of War walked at the side of the Death Korps, bound to them by a strange respect – or perhaps the Neverborn merely disdained the weakling spirits of the cloned troopers when there was a greater bounty to harvest elsewhere on Olympia.

This battalion of the Damned joined the march toward Lochos, the Death Korps falling in steps with their Khornate brethren without a word. Tens of thousands of the cloned children of Colonel Jurten made for a considerable force, especially as their siege engines had followed them through the Empyrean and were equally as transmuted : now, artillery pieces were fuelled by blood, and shot burning skulls instead of shells, while tanks made of meat as much as metal crawled forward on screaming threads, propelled by the hatred of their still-living crew, forever fused to their engine.

From atop the walls of Lochos, the Liberated watched all of this unfold in mute horror, and knew that their chances of survival, already questionable at best, had just become perilously low. Yet still, they held on, and prepared for the inevitable confrontation.

As the Chaos horde drew near, Lochos' artillery spoke in a hundred voices of thunder and fury. Death rained from the skies upon the heretics, killing thousands before Saargon and his brethren wove a protective kinetic aegis into being. Their spellcraft, potent as it was, was not perfect : it was nigh impenetrable above those the Tome Keepers judged to be important in Fate's design, while the rest were left at the mercy of chance's whims – or, as the Sorcerers saw it, those of mighty Tzeentch.

Kazakital took wings, flying up to the walls of the city-state. But instead of going straight for Justine, the Red Prince landed on an entirely different span of the great wall surrounding Lochos, and began butchering its defenders. The three Liberated hurried across to stop the rampaging monster, the Living Saint feeling every death, knowing that this was a deliberate insult by her old enemy.

Despite the athleticism of Inquisitor Jaeger and the transhuman might of Zagreus, Justine's pace was boosted by the imminence of her confrontation with Kazakital, and she sped ahead of her companions. By the time she reached him, the ascended Khornate stood in a pool of gore that had been over a hundred Olympian Guardsmen but a moment ago.

Kazakital opened his mouth to gloat, to taunt and threaten Justine. But the Living Saint's patience had long since run out, and she hurled herself at the Daemon Prince, her great axe blazing with holy fury.

There was fire everywhere.

The rampart was burning with clashing blood-red and golden flames as Justine and Kazakital duelled one another, each blow sending shockwaves that cast the mere mortals caught in the radius to the ground. It was taking every bit of Felix's agility to keep to his feet – that, and Zagreus' help, the Custodes appearing wholly unconcerned by the quaking ground.

Most people would have been hard-pressed to understand what was happening, let alone get a feeling for the flow of battle. But the Liberated weren't most people, and they could see that, despite all of Justine's efforts, Kazakital was gaining the upper hand, slowly but surely. Unlike the typical servants of Khorne, the Daemon Prince wasn't letting rage consume him and driving him into making mistakes, and he knew better than to underestimate Justine now – the very thing which, she had confessed to Felix once, had allowed her to win during their first confrontation.

"This isn't going to work," muttered Felix. "She needs our help. Help me get closer, Zagreus."

The Custodes nodded, and together they advanced into the crimson and golden flames. Felix felt them burn at his body, at his mind, at his very soul, and visions of unholy slaughter and sacred sacrifice alike clashed in his mind's eye, yet he held onto his sanity, and kept on running. Once, he would have prayed to the God-Emperor for strength, cladding himself in the armor of faith.

But the God-Emperor was dead. He could no longer help His faithful, who needed to rely on themselves and one another for strength and survival instead. So Felix kept his mouth shut, to keep the mixed fires from entering his lungs through it, and focused on just putting one foot ahead of the other, until they were close enough to the duelling celestial and daemon.

With Zagreus standing between him and the source of the conflagration, shielding him with his gene-forged body, Felix Jaeger closed his eyes and reached into the deepest recesses of his mind, past mental defenses that would have thwarted all but the most potent and determined of telepaths. Carefully, he unlocked sections of his memory that had been partitioned off long ago, recovering and combining fragments of lore, the possession of a single of which was ground for summary execution by the Ordo Malleus.

Together, the fragments of dismal knowledge formed a single word that wasn't a word. Never before had it been spoken by any mortal tongue, and as Felix gave voice to it, every unholy syllable burned inside his mouth, while the pain to his soul was greater by far. But he forced himself to keep speaking, dredging each un-sound from the depths of his brain, where they had laid hidden and sealed away for years.

It hurt, but pain was nothing to one who had spent years in Mortendar. Blood dripping between his teeth only to turn into red vapor in the boiling air, the Inquisitor continued his proclamation of Kazakital's True Name.

The Red Prince couldn't ignore this, of course. His power, his very essence, was being weakened by Felix's profane recitation. Sensing the source of his sudden distress, Kazakital turned from his duel with Justine and frantically looked around, his burning gaze falling upon the Inquisitor and the Custodes who stood before him.

With a scream of purest rage, the Daemon Prince struck, bringing his sword down upon them to silence the recitation. The blow held enough strength to obliterate Felix entirely, yet the Inquisitor remained standing, unflinching, continuing to speak the accursed syllables of the Khornate Lord's True Name.

At the last moment, the infernal sword was battered aside, struck by the power spear in the hands of Zagreus. The weapon had been a gift from the Custodes sent to Olympia before Light's End, gene-coded to the returned Eye of the Emperor by the blood-smiths and acolytes the Companions had brought with them to the Ruinstorm's edge to maintain their wargear. Like all of the Custodes' equipment, it was a masterfully crafted relic, worthy of being wielded by a Hero of the Imperium.

It still cracked and splintered under the impact of parrying Kazakital's blow, but that brief moment it had bought was enough. In his desperation, the Red Prince had overcommitted, and lost his balance long enough for Justine to seized the advantage.

Her axe smashed into Kazakital's side, spreading a torrent of foul ichor and sending the Daemon Prince reeling, one hand pressed against what would have been a mortal wound on a living being, and was still a mighty injury even for him.

"You … How ?!" he roared, his gaze darting between Justine and Felix, fury consuming his voice and almost completely hiding the layer of fear underneath. Gone was the silk-like voice which Kazakital had used to draw so many into damnation : the mask of civility had been stripped from the Daemon Prince, revealing the beast underneath. "How do you know my Name ?!"

"I am an Inquisitor of the Ordo Carceri," Felix replied, forcing a mocking smile on his face to mask the terror he felt from the Daemon Prince's mere presence. "It's my job to keep the horrors of the Ruinstorm contained – horrors like you, Kazakital."

In truth, it had been the work of generations, starting long before Felix had even been born. Bit by bit, the True Name of Kazakital had been pieced together, from the fevered dreams of astropaths and the tainted minds of cultists, from the whispers of rival daemons and the divinations of blessed seers. By the time Felix had taken up his rosette, a full eleven-twelfth of the Daemon Prince's truth had been discovered, and it had still taken him years of incredible good fortune to find the missing fragments – followed by more years of training and preparations in order to be able to contain such fell knowledge without letting it corrupt him.

Even then, holding the fragmented name of Kazakital, along with far too many other nuggets of heretical lore, had taken a toll. It had been a very long time since Felix had been able to sleep peacefully without chemical aid. And now, having finally spoken it, he could feel the holes it had left behind in his mind, the taint that had passed onto his soul and the damage it had inflicted on his body. The pain had stopped a few moments ago, which he knew was a bad sign, and it was taking every bit of his willpower to remain upright instead of collapsing where he stood.

It had all been worth it for this moment, though.

"Finish him off, Justine," Felix said, before adding : "Please."

He was barely able to follow what happened next, as darkness swam before his vision. He caught glimpse of flashing silver, of fire-blackened armor cracking, of false-flesh torn apart, while the screams of the Red Prince mixed with the sounds of the greater battle still raging elsewhere alongside the wall. Eventually, it was too much, and he swayed, slipping into darkness, prevented from falling and braining himself on the rockrete ground only by Zagreus catching him with the arm that hadn't been broken alongside his spear.

When the Inquisitor's consciousness returned, he found that Justine was holding him tight against her chest.

"You absolute moron," he heard her whisper in his ear. "That could have killed you."

Felix Jaeger, for all his many talents and all the forbidden lore he possessed, wasn't so foolish as to believe he understood women, so he stayed silent – until the minions of Chaos proved they could be useful for some things after all, by providing a distraction that forced the Liberated to focus back on the battle despite their various states of injury.

With Kazakital's banishment, the defenders of Lochos gained new heart, while the morale of the Daemon Prince's followers was broken by the sight of their overlord's defeat. The Tome Keepers, seeing their ally brought low and knowing that the wrath of the Liberated would surely fall upon them next, disengaged and withdrew, abandoning the rest of their comrades without a word or hesitation. They were the first to run, but far from the last : apart from the daemons of Khorne, only the Death Korps kept fighting, heedless of their own casualties, wholly consumed as they were by Khorne's blood rage. Their ceaseless onslaught gave the rest of the Chaos horde cover as they fled into the plains and scattered.

Despite their victory, the Imperials couldn't risk giving chase. Their mission was to hold the city-states and protect the citizens taking refuge within them until reinforcements arrived to cleanse Olympia of the taint of Chaotic invaders. Under the recommendation of the Liberated, they began to repair the damage inflicted to the walls, and prepared for whatever foulness next assailed them, while Saint Justine carried the wounded, half-conscious form of Inquisitor Jaeger through the city and toward the most secure medicae center available, both of them under Zagreus' watchful eye.

The Price of a Life

Amidst the ruins of Kardis, whose walls had been breached by Cato Sicarius' fell power after its defenders had already been beset by countless dark spells, the Beastkin of Talassar began to fear. Since the city-state's fall, they had feasted upon the corpse of the great polis, preying upon its population and building their primitive idols to the Ruinous Powers amidst the desolation.

The warhost of Talassar's mongrel progeny had been thorough in its desecration, unleashing generations of pent-up rage and hatred at the Humans whose very forms reminded them of their ancestors' sin in the eyes of the Dark Gods. Led by their shamans, they had broken into the great shelters where the population had taken refuge, and visited upon them all manners of exactions born of the union of bestial cruelty and human malice that made up the Beastkin's warped souls.

But now, they were no longer the uncontested apex predators of the ruins : they, too, were being hunted, by beings far more deadly than them.

A company of Iron Warriors had returned from the Forbidden Zones, where it had sustained heavy losses against the Aberrants, though the memories of that gruesome battle were already fading from the transhuman minds of its warriors, for such was the nature of the eldritch creatures which had plagued Olympia since the Hrud invasion. Of all the Space Marines who had sallied out under the banner of the Tenth Grand Battalion's Second Company, less than two scores had returned alive, and none of them were uninjured.

The Iron Warriors knew that it was too late for them to save Kardis : indeed, this bitter knowledge was the reason why so few were returning, while the other survivors of the battles at the Forbidden Zones went to reinforce other Imperial positions that still stood. But this handful of warriors had sworn grimly that, if they couldn't save Kardis, they could at least avenge it.

The sight of the Beastkin's atrocities stoked the fury of the sons of Perturabo – the same deep, volcanic wrath that had once led to the Lord of Iron's slaughter of Lochos' self-serving nobility. Led by their Chaplain, the highest-ranking officer who had survived the battle against the Aberrants, the Iron Warriors cut a bloody path through the Beastkin. Outnumbered more than a hundred to one, they moved with caution, tempering their rage through the teachings of their Primarch. Scattered through the city as they were, with few means of communication, the Beastkin died warband by warband as the sons of Perturabo steadily marched toward Kardis' former center of governance, where the Chaos Lord responsible for this atrocity had made his dreadful court.

Despite his disgrace in the eyes of his Primarch for participating in the Sacrificed Son's attack on Macragge, Cato Sicarius outwardly remained as self-centered and arrogant as ever. In his own mind, the Champion of Slaanesh was convinced that his ascension into his gene-sire's good graces was merely a matter of time : soon, the Dark Master would realize his mistake in dismissing Sicarius and summon him back to his side so that he could assume his proper place. Until then, Sicarius would enjoy in his depraved pleasures, forcing the surviving defenders of Kardis into gladiatorial fights with the Beastkin in the former debating hall of the city-state.

It was there that the Iron Warriors found the Warrior-King. The Slaaneshi champion was so certain in his supremacy that he'd neglected to leave sentries around his stolen palace, and as such, he was caught completely by surprise when the sons of Perturabo launched their attack.

Although the Fourth Legion's reputation laid in the building and besieging of fortresses, they were more than capable of bringing the same eye for weakness and talent for destruction so valuable in siege warfare to a more constrained battlefield. The Beastkin champions and shamans, those who had proven worthy of being in Sicarius' presence, died within seconds, cut down by precise bolter fire and sudden blade strikes before most of them even had the chance to realize they were under attack. The same fate befell the Slaaneshi cultists who had come down from the Despoiler's Will, Sicarius' flagship : the sycophants and heretics with which the Ultramarine surrounded himself died quickly, their pleas for their liege to save them going unanswered as Sicarius watched them die with a smile on his face.

With the chaff out of the way, nine sons of Perturabo converged on the Chaos Lord, who still sat upon his throne, a cruel smile on his lips. The Warrior-King cared naught for the death of his slaves : if anything, their brutal demise amused him, and he relished the chance to prove his superiority against worthier opponents.

For all his delusions, Sicarius was still a terrible foe. The power he'd usurped from Amnaich the Golden still coursed through his veins, further augmented by the sacrifices his followers had performed in his name. The Warrior-King of Espandor still held Slaanesh's favor : in the wake of Sanguinius' destruction at Terra, his position in the Dark Prince's cruel eyes had even increased, as the Youngest God burned with the desire to avenge the humiliation it had suffered in the Angel War.

Laughing, Cato Sicarius cut the would-be avengers apart. He took his time with their leader, the Chaplain who'd guided his brothers through the ruined city outside, sharpening their grief and rage into a blade that was now broken into bloody pieces, its purpose unfulfilled.

Amidst the carnage, a single battle-brother of the Fourth Legion, who had been born to Kardis and had found the mutilated remains of his human family in one of the many charnel pits the Iron Warriors had found on their way through the city, called out for the strength to strike down the monster who had murdered the ones he cherished.

And Vindicta, the Power of Retribution, answered.

They rose from the broken stones of the city's streets, from the blood-soaked altars, from the very pikes on which their mutilated bodies had been impaled. A grand host of spirits, glowing with the fires of retribution.

The Beastkin, already made fearful by the metallic-grey hunters who had walked through the city and killed so many of them, howled and brayed in terror as their victims' specters appeared, making gestures to ward off evil and call upon the favor of their Dark Gods. But the ghosts of Kardis ignored them, and instead flew toward the city's center.

"What is this ?" said Cato Sicarius as the desecrated chamber was suddenly filled with hundreds of wraiths, staring at him with burning eyes. Despite the bravado he exuded, there was a tinge of unease in his voice. "What do you think you can achieve against me, little ghosts ?"

The wraiths didn't answer with words, but with deeds. They clawed at Sicarius' armor, ripping it apart one shard of tainted metal at a time, until the mutated flesh beneath was exposed – and then they began to tear that apart as well. Even as they burned in the fell radiance of the Warrior-King's stolen daemonic power, the specters kept up their onslaught.

More, and more, and more. They kept coming, individually weak, but together, strong enough to topple mountains. The agony of their spirits being so close to Sicarius' corruption was immense, and on the ground, battle-brother Lucarnos of the Fourth Legion, last survivor of the Tenth Grand Battalion's Second Company, felt it all. The pain was immense, yet compared to the torment he'd felt when he had smelled the blood of his sister and mother amidst the gore of one of Kardis' shelters, it was nothing. He endured, and he watched, his pain and his grief serving as a catalyst for the Power of Retribution to manifest in the Materium.

After what seemed like an eternity, the spectral maelstrom dissipated, and the bloody remains of Cato Sicarius fell to the ground with a wet noise. The once-handsome Warrior-King had been stripped of his armor and flayed alive, his face reduced to a bloody smear. Yet somehow, Sicarius yet lived, and he stared at Lucarnos with eyes alight with outraged madness.

Slowly, despite the pain that wracked his flesh, the Iron Warrior stood, and walked to the fallen Chaos Lord. He raised his weapon, and ignited the power field around the hammer's head.

"They were only mortal," spat the Warrior-King, looking up at the son of Perturabo, utterly without remorse for all that he had done. "Small. Insignificant ! They didn't matter, none of them did."

"They mattered to me," replied Lucarnos, and struck.

With Sicarius' death, Slaanesh's influence over Kardis was broken, and Vindicta's power swelled. A great army of vengeful specters arose across the city, freed from the clutches of the daemons which had seized their souls, and fell upon the Beastkin. The wrathful howls of the dead mixed with the terrified shrieking of the mutants as they enacted their terrible retribution, until, a few hours later, silence descended upon the desecrated city-state.

A few bedraggled human survivors emerged from where they had miraculously managed to avoid the Beastmen – less than a hundredth of a hundredth of Kardis' former population, and each and every one of them scarred in body and soul by what they had endured. Slowly, guided by the specters of their lost kin, they marched through the ruins of their city and toward its center.

There, they found Lucarnos. The Iron Warrior was on his knees, surrounded by his dead brothers, weeping as the ghost of girl tried to hold him with ethereal hands that made his tears freeze on his face, whispering words of comfort that only made him shake harder with grief.

The Vessel Empties

In the great forest that spread around the base and up the slopes of Mount Aradine, near the city-state of Sodalian, the grim ritual of Chaos Lord Castus was approaching its paroxysm. For seventy-seven hours, the followers of the Vessel of Vileness had performed a grotesque ceremony, offering up praise to the Lord of Decay and a willing sacrifice of one of their own every hour. With each death, the forest around the cultists grew more corrupted, and the veil between Materium and Immaterium, already thin from the breaking of the Iron Cage, grew even thinner.

The Sodalian defenders were aware that something awful was taking place, but they had no idea what exactly. None of their scouts had returned, and their commanders, wary of walking into a trap, had decided to remain behind the city-state's walls and trust in the Fourth Legion's engineering and the might of their great artillery guns. It was a perfectly rational decision, and against most enemies, it would have been the correct one – but in this case, it doomed Sodalian and all within it.

At the climax of the Nurglite ritual, the essence of the great Daemon Lord Parmenides, which had resided within Castus since his creation from the amalgamation of sixteen Ultramarines in the Ruinstorm, passed from its host and into the very land itself. Only thanks to the Daemon Lord's power and unique mentality among the Neverborn, the proximity of the Ruinstorm, and the fact that the eyes of the Dark Gods were firmly turned on Olympia was this possible.

Through this unique form of daemonic incarnation, the forest that grew on what was now Parmenides' body was transfigured into an echo of the Garden of Nurgle in the material plane. Trees that had grown for centuries unperturbed by human touch were twisted, their bark forming silently weeping human faces. Flowers grew rotten teeth and bulbous eyes, while those few animals who hadn't fled from the area days ago were absorbed into moving daemon-possessed fungus colonies, their flesh eaten off their bones, which were then used as the foundation of the Neverborn's new incarnated forms.

Amidst this festival of horrors, the followers of Castus rejoiced, and gave praise to the God of Decay for what they saw as a wondrous miracle. Their fevered minds had long dreamt of walking into Nurgle's bountiful Garden, and now, it seemed to them that they had brought it to reality. They danced with the foetid monstrosities that rose from woods which were quickly turning into swamps, and howled demented prayers to the heavens, where the stain of the Ruinstorm appeared to pulse in time with their unholy chorus.

A fell wind swept from the tainted woods, in violation of all natural air currents, carrying the sound of these fell revelries with it. When it reached the walls of Sodalian, the mighty guns whose sight had convinced Castus to turn back began to rust in place, to the horror of their crew. The great fortified gates, large enough for Titans to walk through, rotted on their hinges, and all machines began to malfunction as a plague of rust spread throughout the city-state. By some whim of Chaos, flesh was left untouched by this entropic curse, though the tech-priests, servitors, and Iron Warriors who had lost limbs in service to the Imperium and received augmetic replacements found these metallic parts of their bodies decaying with alarming speed.

And, at the site of the ritual, the Chaos Lord who had brought all of this about twitched.

Slowly, Castus rose to his feet, freed from daemonic possession for the first time in centuries. He felt drained, hollow. There was a hole in his thoughts where the Daemon Lord had been, and after several minutes, he realized he could no longer remember anything from the memory of those from whose existence he'd been created.

Around him, he heard the sound of celebrations, as his followers rejoiced. Looking at what had become of the drab forest he remembered falling unconscious in, he could understand why.

Slowly, awareness of his awakening began to spread among the celebrating crowd, and an expectant silence fell, all eyes (and things that weren't eyes) turned on Castus.

"Lord Parmenides ?" he murmured.

I am here, Castus, said a familiar voice that spoke directly into his mind, yet still felt painfully distant.

"What is your will, Lord ?"

The voice chuckled.

The same it has always been, dear Castus. Lead the children of Nurgle, and bring His gifts to those who reject them.

The Plague Lord bowed, though there was no icon or idol to propitiate himself before.

"It shall be done, Lord."

Soon, the Plague Host emerged from the Rotten Woods, led by Castus and reinforced by a horde of Nurglite abominations. With the guns of Sodalian silenced by the entropic curse, they were able to breach the walls and spread into the city proper, where they were met by the Imperial defenders – now deprived of their mechanical support, as tanks and vehicles rusted into uselessness.

Though no longer possessed by Parmenides, Castus remained a potent champion of Nurgle, blessed by the Plaguefather for the many deeds he had committed in the Dark God's name over thousands of years. With his infernal mace, he broke the ranks of the Iron Warriors arrayed before him. Their power armor barely functioning, the sons of Perturabo could offer little resistance to the Plague Lord.

Still, they fought to the last, side by side with the Olympian soldiers. Their last stand saw many examples of bravery and prowess worthy of being immortalized in sagas, but like so many other instances of heroism, these would go unremembered, as Parmenides and his host of plague-ridden monsters killed them all.

For the people of Sodalian, cowering in their shelters, the nightmare had only just begun. One by one, the doors of their refuges were broken down, and they were dragged outside to be subjected to the nauseating gifts of Grandfather Nurgle.

The Siege of the Dodecapyrgion

Several kilometers away from the Dodecapyrgion's outermost walls, out of reach of the Iron Warriors' artillery, the combined warbands of Uriel Ventris and Faustinius prepared to launch their assault.

A great number of Chaos warmachines had been sent from the belly of Faustinius' ship, the Caestus Infernus. Chaos Knights and Titans walked alongside thousands of corrupted Skitarii warriors, as well as less recognizable creations of the Dark Mechanicum magi sworn to the Last Judge. Faustinius looked forward to cracking the Dodecapyrgion open and avenging the extermination of his people by the Iron Warriors during the Great Crusade, as well as scavenging any ancient technology to be found within the Fourth Legion's vaults and armories.

A steady flow of mutated True Olympians had joined the Drinker of Sorrow's forces since planetfall, as the insane cultists were drawn to the Chaos Lord's banner by the Warp's insidious whispers. Ventris treated these reinforcements with less care than he did the bolt shells of his Chaos Marines, but was still willing to make use of them. He knew he would need all the assistance he could get if he was to breach the many layered walls of the Dodecapyrgion – though he suspected he'd been sent here more to keep the Iron Warriors trapped inside than out of any hope that he'd actually succeed in breaching the Fourth Legion's mightiest stronghold.

Of course, the Drinker of Sorrow didn't let any of the doubts he felt show on his face. His control of his warband had already been weakened by Guilliman's return and displeasure, though the Ultramarines under his authority still respected him – or at least feared the consequences of disobedience enough not to openly challenge him for now. Only through regaining the Dark Master's favor would Ventris be able to swipe the slate clean, and only through victory could he earn the Thirteenth Primarch's forgiveness.

Meanwhile, within the fortress itself, Warsmith Xyrocles was confident in his ability to keep the heretics outside of his Legion's sanctum for months, years even. The Iron Warrior commander seethed with quiet fury at being trapped within the Dodecapyrgion while the rest of Olympia burned, but he knew his duty, and was determined to keep the many relics and gene-seed vaults of the Fourth Legion safe. If nothing else, he told himself to assuage his doubt, the fortress was forcing the traitors to send many of their tainted god-machines toward it instead of unleashing it upon the city-states. And the void-shields of the fortress could withstand even a full barrage from these great blasphemies against the Omnissiah for weeks, during which the Dodecapyrgion's own guns would be far from silent. If it came down to a duel between long-range artillery, the Warsmith was confident his forces would prevail.

However, Xyrocles had underestimated the resourcefulness of his foes. Faustinius had spent centuries studying every scrap of intelligence the Dark Master's operatives could obtain on Olympia's defenses with the kind of obsession only an immortal was capable of. While the heretekal weapon which had taken out Olympia's orbital defenses had been an improvised creation, using parts 'acquired' from Ventris' collection of xenotech relics, Faustinius had joined the Black Crusade with his solution to the Dodecapyrgion's seemingly impervious defenses already prepared.

As night fell upon the besieging host, Faustinius and Ventris met to discuss their options, and the Last Judge revealed his plan to the Drinker of Sorrow.

Mankind's void-shield technology prevented teleportation through the Sea of Souls, the energy barriers blocking all but the most advanced of teleportation chambers from getting a lock by interfering with the complex processes involved in punching a hole through the Materium – processes which were ill-understood even back during the glory days of the Great Crusade. Even sorcery, which called upon the reality-defying powers of the Warp to bend the universe to the caster's will, struggled to overcome these barriers. But there were other technologies available to the Chaos host. During his gutting of the tomb-world Silva Tenebris, Faustinius had acquired a bounty of Necron relics, including a single functioning Dolmen Gate.

The antediluvian portal had been thoroughly desecrated by the Last Judge's study, and combined with other pieces of Dark Tech to create a short-range teleportation portal without the restrictions of standard teleportation technology.

Of course, the Dolmen Gate wasn't without its own limitations. For a start, after all the modifications Faustinius had wrought upon it, it was barely wide enough for a single Astartes to go through at once. It also devoured power at a voracious pace : even with the unholy generators the Last Judge had brought down to the surface, it could only be activated for short periods of time at once, and required maintenance after every use, which would quickly burn through the limited supply of spare parts Faustinius had claimed from Silva Tenebris.

Nevertheless, Ventris agreed with Faustinius that this was their best available course of action, and though he was displeased that the arch-heretek had waited so long before revealing this invaluable asset, he was well aware of the importance of keeping one's cards close to one's chest.

With the limitations of the Dolmen Gate in mind, the two lords worked together to design a plan that would deliver them a victory that any sane mind would have believed impossible. The most elite warriors of the combined warbands were summoned, given their orders and received the blessing of the Ruinous priests within the host. Chaos Terminators, Possessed Marines, Heretek Skitarii and Dark Mechanicum murder-wrought scions were split up in kill-teams, each assigned a series of objectives within the Dodecapyrgion.

Then, at the stroke of midnight, the Dolmen Gate opened, and the first Chaos party passed through, emerging right inside one of the many generatoria which fed the fortress' countless machines. The Secondborn Ultramarines wasted no time in killing the surprised workers nearby before laying waste to the device and disappearing into the corridors of the Dodecapyrgion, running toward their next target.

Not all dispatched kill-teams were so successful. Despite many years of study, the exact workings of the Dolmen Gate were little understood by Faustinius, and some groups emerged inside thick walls of stone as their exit coordinates were miscalculated, causing their immediate death but also the destruction of everything around them, while others failed to appear entirely, lost to the alien dimensions through which the Necrons had crossed the galaxy in their war against the Old Ones.

As the corridors and chambers of the Dodecapyrgion echoed with the sounds of battle from the infiltrators, Warsmith Xyrocles, outraged at this defilement of his fortress, did his best to manage the situation. He had no idea how the heretics were sending forces directly inside the stronghold, but he sent squads of Iron Warriors to guard the most obvious targets.

Upon noticing this, Ventris gave the order for the heretic host outside the walls to advance. Under the combined fire of the Chaos warmachines, the weakened void-shields flickered and collapsed. Ventris drove the mutated hordes of the True Olympians forward, letting them absorb the bulk of the casualties as the Iron Warriors' guns fired and tore large chunks of the mob to pieces. Those few who reached the walls began to climb up the ramps of debris created by the ongoing bombardment. They were promptly cut down by the defenders, their broken corpses sent hurtling down the battlements, but more came, and more and more and more, in a seemingly endless tide that inevitably ground down the defenders.

Once the Drinker of Sorrow judged that the Imperials had been tired enough, the more valuable units of the warband were let loose, with Ventris himself leading the second wave. Faustinius, despite his burning hatred for the Fourth Legion, remained a cowardly creature at heart, and had no desire to risk his own existence : still, the Last Judge sent many of his techno-abominations alongside his ally, eager to watch the carnage to come through their senses.

The Imperial defenders fought with all the courage and skill expected from veterans of the Fourth Legion, but it wasn't enough. Warsmith Xyrocles fell slain by Ventris himself, his last breath spent cursing the traitor who had breached the Dodecapyrgion's walls for the first time in the stronghold's history. As the sun rose over the horizon, its light struggling to pierce the streams of Warp energy stretching from the Ruinstorm and across the system, the loyalists were forced to fall back deeper and deeper into the fortress.

It seemed that all hope was lost. The Drinker of Sorrow was advancing onto the Dodecapyrgion's sanctum when, suddenly, there was a great crack of displaced air, and a new combatant entered the fray.

At first glance, the behemoth resembled a Dreadnought, but even the most cursory look was enough to reveal that it was much, much more.

For one thing, it was larger, both in height and width. It was also much more detailed, resembling a humanoid body rather than the boxy appearance of most Dreadnought models. It bristled with weaponry, some of which of a nature Uriel could only guess at, and was decorated with the emblem of the Fourth Legion. It bore the symbol of the aquila on its chestplate, and held an absolutely massive power hammer in its right hand, humming with the unmistakable sound of an active energy field.

The thing was as much a work of art as it was an engine of war. Looking upon it, the Drinker of Sorrow knew that he was looking at a Legion relic of unparalleled value, a walking piece of history – and one that would kill him in a heartbeat if given the chance.

For this must be Perturabo, Uriel realized. This had to be the Lord of Iron himself, come down from the war in orbit to join the defense of his Legion's great stronghold. Despite Uriel's transhuman nature and the boons of the Ruinous Powers, he felt terror in that moment, for he knew he couldn't stand against the Fourth Primarch.

And so, for the first time in his entire life – both mortal and immortal – the Drinker of Sorrow turned tail and fled, abandoning his brothers to die to the Lord of Iron's retribution.

With the teleportation of Perturabo from the Grieving Blade, the defenders of the Dodecapyrgion regained the advantage. Between the Lord of Iron's immense martial prowess and the boost to morale his presence provided, they began to push out the Chaos intruders, who themselves suffered from an abrupt lack of leadership as Ventris fled from the Primarch's wrath.

Against all odds, an Imperial victory seemed to be in sight, but Perturabo knew that it was only an illusion. By moving to reinforce his sons, the Lord of Iron had issued a challenge – one he knew his traitorous brother couldn't ignore.

The Duel of Master and Praetorian

Aboard the Macragge's Honour, sat on his throne in the Court of Discordia, Roboute Guilliman watched the battle of Olympia unfold. He looked at eight distinct holographic projections cast out of the burning eyes of mutants bred by the Dark Mechanicum within the Ruinstorm for that exact purpose, taking in a flow of information that would have driven a data-smith mad all at once. At the same time, he listened to the whispers of an entire daemonic choir, and reached out with his own will, feeling the ways the tides of the Empyrean shifted in response to every action performed by every soul caught in this grand madness he had unleashed.

And so, when reports began to arrive that the Iron Circle had been sighted on Olympia itself, joining the defenders of the Dodecapyrgion in their last stand, Guilliman knew of it at once, and smiled. Just as he had expected, his foolish, sentimental brother couldn't leave his homeworld burn while he remained in the void. This was good : killing Perturabo on the soil of Olympia itself would resonate much more strongly in the Warp than blowing up his ship, or even killing him himself in a boarding action. The very affection the so-called Lord of Iron held for Olympia, however misguided, would provide additional symbolic power to the deed of fratricide.

It had long burned Guilliman's pride that, among the Primarchs who had broken free of the Emperor's lies, Vulkan had slain more of their loyalist kin than he. He had killed Alpharius on Eskrador – no matter what comforting lies the Twentieth Legion might tell itself – but Vulkan had slain Curze on Isstvan V, and then, years after the Siege, had killed Mortarion on Pandorax. Killing the Emperor would have made the Black Dragon's feat irrelevant, but with their gene-sire having cowardly chosen death over facing him, the Dark Master of Chaos needed another way to prove his superiority to those who were his only possible rivals in this new age.

Thus, the Primarch of the Thirteenth Legion rose from his throne and began to enact a spell that would let him walk the ground of an Imperial world for the first time in ten thousand years.

He came in a storm of black lightning and the screams of countless daemons. One moment, he'd been aboard the Macragge's Honour, and the next, he was standing surrounded by high walls, breathing air that, while still reeking of blood and fire, was still far cleaner than that of his flagship.

There, in the courtyard, stood Perturabo, his great hammer already slick with Ultramarine blood. The sons of Guilliman who had breached the gates of the Dodecapyrgion had only found death within, for none of them were capable of facing even a crippled Primarch.

"Hello, Perturabo," said the Dark Master of Chaos, stalking into the sacred stronghold of the Fourth Legion as if it were already his. "I see time hasn't been kind to you."

"Kinder than it has been to you, traitor," retorted the Lord of Iron. "I didn't think it possible, but you've become even more vile than you were at the Siege."

"I have become what I was always meant to be," Guilliman riposted. "The champion of Chaos, avatar of its might in the Materium. Our father's truest heir, crowned by the very gods themselves."

"You were only a pawn to the Dark Gods that they used to cripple our father," said Perturabo, shaking his head in disbelief – at least, that was how Guilliman interpreted the grinding noise and stilted head motions of the metallic giant before him. "Do you really believe in your own lies, Guilliman ?"

"I know what the Four intended better than you ever could," snarled Guilliman. "I realized it the moment that bastard Fulgrim's sword pierced through my flesh, when I should've been able to sense his arrival and annihilate him with a thought. By that point, I'd already maimed the Emperor nigh unto death. But it doesn't matter what they planned, Perturabo. They underestimated me, like everyone else, and now, I will make their lies into reality."

"Really ?" challenged Perturabo. "Do you think the other traitors will let you ? You led them to defeat and exile once already."

"Ferrus will need to be reminded of his place, but he'll see reason in time. The Lion is irrelevant as long as I have his owner's favour. Sanguinius is dead, courtesy of Lorgar and Omegon. Dorn … Dorn will be a challenge, yes," the Arch-Traitor admitted. "But he has only joined the game, while I am the one who set the board. Vulkan's ambition has equal chances of destroying him as succeeding, and if he does manage to ascend, he shall find godhood very different than he imagines. As for the others, Jaghatai is dead, Leman might as well be, and Corax is too much of an idealist to be a threat to me."

"You may be the only being the galaxy who would call the Ravenlord an idealist, Guilliman." For the first time, Guilliman reckoned he could hear genuine surprise in his loyalist brother's words. Whatever Perturabo had expected from him, it hadn't been this.

"Only because I know what he wants, under all that power and mystery," replied Guilliman. "The Nineteenth hasn't changed, not really. He's still a scared child, afraid of monsters and doing what he thinks will make them go away. The goal he pursues is impossible, but it serves well enough as a distraction."

"You are even more insane now than you were ten thousand years ago," said Perturabo with a machine sigh, before rising his power hammer, the weapon Guilliman recognized as Forgebreaker, stolen from Ferrus Manus on Isstvan V and reconsecrated before being given to the Lord of Iron in time for the Siege of Terra. "Enough talk. Let us finish this."

Guilliman's smile was the grin of a corpse, blackened lips parting to reveal teeth that gleamed with eldritch inner light.

"Yes," he said. "Let's."

Despite his bulk, Perturabo moved first, his Dreadnought chassis propelled with incredible speed by its engines. Guilliman raised his claws just in time, and the Talons of Might clashed against Forgebreaker with a shockwave that sent cracks in the walls surrounding the duelling Primarchs.

For several long minutes, Guilliman fought Perturabo, part of him relishing in the chance to truly push his body to its limits after his resurrection. They moved through the Dodecapyrgion as they fought, tearing through walls and sending lesser combatants running away from the warring godlings in their midst.

But while Perturabo's machine-body was powerful, it was no match for the terrible power that coursed through Guilliman's flesh. With each blow, the Dark Master inflicted more damage to the immense Dreadnought, while his own injuries healed in a matter of seconds, including the cracks inflicted to his armor by Forgebreaker. In fact, he mused as he crushed the Lord of Iron's left arms in his Talons, his wounds were healing faster than he had anticipated. It seemed Perturabo's long vigil had drained him more than he'd thought, diminishing the psychic might every Primarch infused in their blows by sheer instinct.

When he finally dealt a lethal blow, cutting through the chest armor of the Dreadnought deep enough to reach the life-sustaining pod within, they had reached a great chamber, decorated with the banners of every Fourth Legion's Battalion across a hundred centuries. At any other time, Guilliman would have delighted at defiling each of them as Perturabo watched, but the Dark Master was more preoccupied by the fact that, despite the mortal blow he'd inflicted, he could not smell the rich, potent smell of Primarch blood.

"Oh," said the Arch-Traitor, one eyebrow raised in surprise as comprehension dawned. "Nicely played, brother."

"Go to Hell, Roboute," crackled the reply from the Dreadnought's damaged vox-speakers.

The Last Contingency

Contrary to what Guilliman had believed, Perturabo hadn't gone down to Olympia in person. Instead, the Lord of Iron had sent an empty Dreadnought chassis, which the Primarch was remotely controlling from aboard the Grieving Blade using a combination of technologies so advanced it could keep up with the preternatural reflexes and speed of thought of one of the Emperor's sons, even one as grievously injured as Perturabo.

The reason why the Fourth Primarch had resorted to such a deception was because of the inescapable conclusion his logic-driven mind had arrived to : Olympia was doomed. Despite all the valor of its defenders, despite all the resources which had been invested into making the system a fortress comparable only to the likes of Cadia and Sol, the Arch-Traitor had succeeded in breaking the walls of the Fourth Legion. The unity of the Ruinstorm's hosts of the damned; the manipulation of the Tau; the corruption of the Demiurges : Olympia would have resisted any of these on their own, of that there was no question. But combined, and with a being of such cunning and power as Guilliman orchestrating them, it was too much.

Thus, with a heavy heart, Perturabo had sent an order he had hoped never to have to give. This wasn't the first time the Lord of Iron had to do such a thing, for ever had it been his burden to make the hard choices – though only ever after ensuring those were indeed the only recourse, and never, ever as his first course of action. Yet none, he knew, would haunt his tormented dreams as much as this one.

For Perturabo had ordered Triarch Etrogar – one of his own sons, though they had never met in person and had only exchanged a few short words over the vox since the Grieving Blade's arrival in-system – to enact the Last Contingency. Now, watching through the damaged auspex arrays of his Dreadnought, the Lord of Iron could only pray – to whom, he did not know – that the sacrifice would be worth the reward.

In the depths of the Dodecapyrgion, Triarch Etrogar did not run, despite the urgency of the situation. The path he walked was supremely dangerous : every step needed to be taken carefully to avoid the hundreds of traps that guarded it. The machine-spirits of this place were watching him through thousands of mechanical eyes, checking his identity against their records even as they evaluated his movements for the faintest mistake which might betray him being manipulated in some way.

He also needed to follow a very precise path through the maze, which had been constructed using many of the same principles which had gone into the creation of the Cavea Ferrum on distant Terra. Space and time were bent in this dark labyrinth, in ways wholly unlike those of the Empyrean – for this defense was meant to thwart its denizens as well as any mortal intruder.

Reaching this place (which was nameless even to those few souls who knew of its existence, for Perturabo had feared that giving it a name might have threatened its secrecy) from orbit had been a trial all its own. With the Warp as agitated as it was, any use of teleportation was incredibly risky already : this one would have been all but suicide, had it not been for the wealth of expertise available to a Fourth Legion's Triarch. The Techmarines and Martian adepts aboard his ship had worked for several hours to modify the teleportation crucible, imputing specific patterns into the frequencies of its aetheric energies so that it would be able to bypass the Dodecapyrgion's wards, sundered as they were by the Chaos assault.

Even then, Etrogar had nearly died, or worse, when the teleport had delivered him to the entrance of the Dodecapyrgion's labyrinthine dungeons. He felt weak, nauseous, in a way he hadn't been since becoming a Space Marine centuries before, his body struggling to keep up with the strain his brief transit through the Immaterium had inflicted upon it. Still, Etrogar was a son of Perturabo, and he endured the discomfort with stoicism. He knew he might very well be dying, but what did it matter ?

Once he accomplished the task his Primarch had asked of him, such things would be the least of his problems.

Finally, he reached the final gate. A final gene-scanner waited for him, along with a panel that required the input of a hundred-symbols code – he could have remembered one much longer, but the builders of this place had decided that by this point, speed was more important than further security.

The device beeped once, then a green light turned on, and the gate began to ponderously grind open, revealing a chamber the size of a cathedral that was almost completely occupied by an immense device of such complexity, even Etrogar couldn't grasp it.

The Triarch walked through the threshold, marching toward the single console that waited in front of the door. Right as he reached the device, however, he froze, his every instinct screaming at him that he was in more danger than he'd ever been in his centuries of service to the Imperium.

Impossibly, there was someone else inside this chamber. No, not someone. Something. Slowly, the Iron Warrior turned, and beheld a vision of horror that made his eyes ache and his soul quail.

It was tall, taller than Etrogar in his armor, but skeletally thin. It wore a golden crown atop a bare skull whose eyeless gaze pierced through the Triarch and froze him in place like an insect under the lens of a Magos Biologis.

Somehow, Etrogar knew that this was only a projection, a Warp shadow cast by some great and terrible entity. That it was able to manifest here, despite the many arcane protections woven around this place, was testament to the power of the entity behind it.

But then, all it took was a look for Etrogar to know the entity's nature.

This was the Emperor, but not. An abomination, and yet, one that he felt the nearly irrepressible urge to kneel before. That he didn't was testament to the strength of will for which he had been elevated in his Legion above all but one.

"Etrogar," it said, and its voice made the Triarch weep inside his helmet. "Faithful son. Rejoice, for I come bearing the gift you most desire."

Its words were not words, but their meaning burned itself into Etrogar's mind, cutting past his mental conditioning and the experience of centuries spent ignoring the whispers of the Ruinstorm. It made him believe they were true – worse than that, it made him want to believe they were true, even as their speaker's mere proximity made him want to scream and tear out his eyes so he wouldn't have to look at this defilement of every Imperial ideal anymore.

"There is another way. You need not doom your entire world to a fate worse than death," it continued. "Kneel. Submit. Pledge yourself to me, and your world will survive. The Arch-Traitor and all his followers shall be cast out, and your people will be saved. More than that, they shall be forever protected by the might of my Throne."

It was tempting. It was so, so tempting. For so long, it had been Etrogar's duty to defend Olympia, and now he was going to doom it. Even though he knew the exact calculations that had been made to choose this course, even though he understood and even agreed with his Primarch's reasoning, Etrogar was, in the end, made of weak, sentimental flesh, not unbreakable iron.

But before he could make a choice he knew he would regret for the rest of eternity, he remembered something. A dream, which had visited him in the few stolen moments of rest he'd been forced to allow himself since the Fall of Macragge and Light's End, forgotten until this moment.

In that dream, through the fire and fury of the rising storm which hungered to consume the galaxy entire, he had seen a distant light, a sword held aloft by a golden figure, and known that, though the Master of Mankind was dead, His light yet remained – and so long as it did, there was still something worth fighting for.

So the Triarch looked the specter of the God-Emperor in its dead, hollow eyes, and said, the words coming from deep within him :

"No. I choose the Sword over your Throne."

The thing had no face to twist in anger, if it was even capable of such. Yet Etrogar felt its rage, cold and pitiless as the void between galaxies. It wasn't used to being denied, that much was clear.

"The path you walk will unmake you," it told, threatened and taunted him all at once. "The rest of Olympia might have a fighting chance, though you condemn them all by this deed. But you, so close to the source ? You will be annihilated, if you are fortunate … and those of your blood have never been fortunate."

Etrogar laughed, then. If this creature thought to make him hesitate, then clearly, for all its awful power and dark wisdom, it didn't understand those of his Legion at all.

"I am a son of Perturabo, ghost," he declared. "And dying has never frightened me."

Before it could do anything else to tempt or dissuade him, he slammed his palm into the cogitator's activation rune, and triggered the Last Contingency. Around him, technology that had been old when the Imperium was young, and forbidden to all by the will of the Emperor Himself, rouse from its ages-long slumber.

To his total lack of surprise, the apparition vanished immediately – too cowardly to risk being caught inside the effect, no doubt. So be it. Getting it caught in the Last Contingency's effect would have been a pleasant bonus, but it wasn't the main objective.

Alone in the depths, the last Triarch of Olympia took a deep breath, and waited for the end.

The Last Contingency was a device constructed after the Heresy by some of the greatest arch-magi of the Adeptus Mechanicus, under the direction of the Lord of Iron himself. Its existence was an absolute secret, kept from Perturabo's own brothers and the newly founded Inquisition alike.

The knowledge needed for its construction had come from forbidden texts of the Dark Age of Technology, as well as observation of the strange properties of the Noctis Labyrinthus on Mars, where so many Iron Warriors had been temporally maimed by Moravec's crude experiments on the essence of a trapped Star God in the madman's pursuit of a Warp-free apotheosis. Even with such proscribed lore, only a Primarch's mind could have conceived of the use Perturabo had envisioned for it, or possessed the resources and ruthlessness necessary to implement it.

Even as he designed it, Perturabo hoped that it would never be used, for the device's purpose was as terrible as it was grandiose.

The Last Contingency activated.

Olympia was sundered from Time, cut off from the rest of the galaxy. From now on, it would continue to exist, following its own time-stream, its skies shining with the light of its sun and stars diffused through a temporal prism – a ceaseless, unchanging twilight.

Within this impossible prism, Time itself was broken, the cracks rippling backward and forward from the moment of the Contingency's activation. Later, when the now trapped Imperial survivors managed to make contact with each other, they would find out that there were inconsistencies in how much time had passed for them between the arrival of the Black Crusade's fleet and the severance of their world from the rest of the galaxy. They would also discover that the Forbidden Zones had expanded greatly in size, although mercifully, it seemed their edges had become even more dangerous than before, to the point not even the Aberrants could leave them – at least, not yet, for who knew what foul achronal adaptations they would develop in time.

While the Last Contingency had first been imagined as a way to save Olympia from the claws of Chaos should the rest of the system fall, the Lord of Iron had envisioned a new purpose for it following Guilliman's resurrection. It had been Perturabo's hope that the Last Contingency could serve as a jail for his fallen kinsman – a trap which would keep the rest of the galaxy safe from the Dark Master of Chaos, though at a terrible price.

But such was not to be. At the last moment, warned by instincts that had whispered to him of a trap ever since he'd arrived to find that Perturabo's guards, the legendary battle-automatons of the Iron Circle, were absent, Guilliman wove a spell that brought him back to his flagship, right before Olympia was shrouded by the time-displacement field.

The homeworld of the Fourth Legion had been saved from the depredations of the Dark Master by the Last Contingency, though many of his sons and slaves (if the distinction could be said to exist at all) yet remained on the surface. And, in the deepest underground level of the Dodecapyrgion, everything that had been Triarch Etrogar was unmade, rendered into nothingness with such thoroughness that naught remained of his soul for the Neverborn to prey upon.

The Dark Master of Chaos stood in the Court of Discordia, the sparking, failing Dreadnought his brother was remotely controlling laying at his feet.

"Did you really think this would work ?" he asked, kicking the warmachine with an armored boot. "That you could stop me – me – with a mere trick such as this ?"

"I hoped," came the reply, rendered nearly inaudible by static.

"That was your first mistake. Still, I am impressed," Guilliman said, half mockingly, half sincerely. "I thought it mere cowardice at first, but then I realized the truth, and I didn't think you had such ruthlessness in you. Had your scheme succeeded, you would have trapped me on your homeworld. What do you think I would have done to your people then ?"

"If you were trapped, your masters would have abandoned you again," droned Perturabo. "It was a toss-up whether you would have survived, and even if you did, you would have been weakened enough for them to have a fighting chance."

Guilliman scowled, and crushed another part of the Dreadnought viciously. It was the truth, and one he did not enjoy hearing out loud. The Dark Gods' favor was ever fleeting, and never more so than when it came to those who had already failed them once before, yet had managed to cling to life and claw another chance from Fate's grasp.

"And now, your people are instead trapped with the forces I sent to conquer their world, without any hope of reinforcement, because you abandoned them."

"They are not alone. They have many of my sons with them. I have faith in my allies, Guilliman. Do you have faith in yours ?"

Again, the Dark Master of Chaos scowled.

"When next we meet, Perturabo," Guilliman promised, "it will be in person – and I will kill you."

"I know," replied Perturabo, sounding singularly unworried. "Until that day, may you seethe with the thought of how you failed to kill me as you failed in every single goal you have ever sought to accomplish, you rotten bastard."

The last animating spark left the Dreadnought chassis, and it fell silent. With a snarl, Guilliman ripped it apart, venting his frustration on the machine even as his mind ran through the shifting possibilities of the future, trying to look for a way to catch his loyalist brother before he could escape the system – and finding none. Already, the remnants of the Imperial fleet were moving toward the system's Mandeville Point, accompanied by these xenos wretches who had dared to disobey his will and banish one of his precious Tetrarchs.

Very well. Perturabo might escape, but his cowardice would bring him no joy, of that Guilliman would make sure. He would burn the entire Sector to ashes, plunder the resources that had gone into sustaining the Iron Cage for so long, and use them to fuel his own Black Crusade against the Imperium and his rivals for the galaxy's throne.

Vengeance and victory would be his in the end.