- A short time earlier -
(Valerian POV)
Adeptus Custodes Shield-Captain within the Hykanatoi's Palaiologian Chamber. That was my position, and I started the day content, if that was a word you could use in these times.
The Grey Knights had arrived.
The Grey Knights, with whom we had always had uneasy relations, answered our summons. I do not know whether my request prompted the order, or whether Captain-Commander Valoris had been petitioned by others.
In any case, we were not so proud that we couldn't ask for help when we needed it.
A profound distinction must be made here. Both Custodian and Grey Knight could slay daemons. We were both to all intents and purposes immune to their temptations, and we were both effective against their many strategems.
Two great repositories of lore against the daemonic stand in the Sol System: our own archives in the Tower of Hegemon and the far greater librarium on Titan itself.
We are, as orders, steeped in the fight against the Great Enemy to our very cores. Perhaps, you might say, Chaos is the reason for both of our existences. Or He is the reason for both of our existences.
We are indeed different, however.
We Custodians were never solely warriors. We are certainly not an army; we were originally intended to serve an empire that never came to fruition, as He had intended.
In contrast, our cousins in the Chamber Militant of the Ordo Malleus were created exclusively for a singular war against our most powerful and enduring foe. They exist solely for this purpose, to fight and destroy Chaos.
Like the Space Marines from whom they were derived, they are a complete, self-sufficient army.
We have always been aware of their existence. Our archives contain private records that chronicle their creation. Ten thousand years ago, we watched as the Emperor embarked on His final gambit. We watched Saturn's moon darken as the Great Enemy drew close to Terra, knowing that one day it would return, its purpose fulfilled.
...
Consider what this history signifies.
We know that they came after us, as the more junior creation, yet they are as closely associated with Him as we are. We both look to Him alone as our progenitor and share the same understanding, cultivated over the ages, that we enact His designs when all others falter.
Some of my brothers regard the sons of Titan as little more than specialised Space Marines and view them with suspicion because of their connection to a fractious lineage that caused us much pain during the Horus Heresy.
They believe that a Space Marine can ultimately fail if given enough time and motivation, leading them to see all Space Marines as potentially aberrant.
Some people have different concerns, and I have often speculated about this myself. We know that they were created as His ultimate weapon, intended for an age He foresaw would come at the end of His time on Terra.
What if they, rather than us, truly represent His final legacy? You may never hear any of us express this thought out loud, but that doesn't mean the suspicion doesn't exist. It lingers in the halls of Hegemon like a foul odour, subtle, but difficult to eliminate.
From the speculum certus, we know we were the finest and most faithful. In the speculum obscurus, however, there is, as always, more doubt.
Our uneasiness stems from our differing circumstances. In practice, this rarely caused issues, since they were usually not on Terra, and we were never on Titan.
However, that situation has now changed.
They sent fewer warriors than we requested, less than half of one of their brotherhoods. Although many of the Grey Knights were stationed far from the Sol System, their response still felt inadequate. They must have understood the cost of making such a request to our Captain-General, which made it hard to believe the slight was unintentional.
.
It took many days before I encountered one of the new Grey Knight arrivals myself.
I had been focused on defending my section of the Palace wall in coordination with human defence forces. Despite our efforts, the tide of violence only grew worse.
Agitators began to emerge, once buried deep within the heart of the world city, now rallying large groups of followers. Some of these individuals had been corrupted long ago, and their influence now bore fruit, while others were merely deluded and desperate, their minds shaped by the terrors in the sky and their stomachs empty.
Soon, the walls were attacked nightly, and our troops were occupied firing their lasguns at the charging hordes.
It was sickening work, and even Urbo, the captain of the human force under my command, grew numb to it.
I was called upon to eradicate the masters of this infection, and I found myself at the heart of wearying fighting, slaying those same humans I had once protected from a distance.
Some of the corrupted had become dreadful by then: semi-human creatures bearing the traitor's marks on their flesh.
The most powerful, and those who had fallen the hardest, had accepted foul gifts, making them both lethal and persuasive to the masses. I slew men with embryonic wings sprouting from their spines, women with fangs, and half-human, half-beast hybrids.
Under these circumstances, I met Justicar Alcuin of the Grey Knights, and they were far from ideal.
Our objective had been the industrial district just east of the main boulevard, well within sight of the Lion's Gate.
What used to be a massive, three-hundred-meter-wide avenue built for military parades had become a ghostly, burnt-out ruin lined with rows of charred, hollowed-out buildings.
We ran constant missions to keep the route open, mostly to give troops fighting further out a clear line of retreat back to the main perimeter. We could push the enemy back into hiding during the day, but as soon as night fell, they always crept right back in.
Deep inside the main assembly hall, the enemy had already been waiting. Thousands of factory workers, their minds shattered, their skin pale, and their bodies force-fed cocktails of combat drugs, had gathered into a frenzied mob.
They had turned the old tank assembly line into a literal slaughterhouse.
...
Captured soldiers were locked in crude, rusted cages awaiting their execution, while a rogue priest stood high above the crowd on a hovering metal command platform.
He was performing a horrific blood ritual atop a mountain of butchered bodies and skulls. It didn't get any worse than this.
I charged straight into the sea of maniacs, my Guardian Spear carving a bloody path toward the platform. Behind me, Urbo's troops laid down heavy automatic fire to cover my advance, while his assault teams sprinted towards the cages to free the trapped soldiers.
Realising what was going on, or simply acting out of instinct, the cultists threw themselves at me in mindless waves, but they died as fast as dry wood in a furnace. I cut through them faster than they could swarm me.
As I closed in on the command platform, the air suddenly burst open with a blinding flash of lightning and a blast of freezing ozone.
ZZZZ---CRACKK!!
Five massive warriors clad in polished silver power armour had teleported directly into the centre of the Chaos Cult horde. The Grey Knights had arrived.
Armed with psychic-crackling warhammers and force halberds, they smashed into the enemy lines and immediately joined the slaughter.
We worked as a lethal unit, vaulted onto the side of the floating platform, and hauled ourselves up to the main deck. I sliced through the priest's tumorous, fleshy bodyguards just as he tore a still-beating heart from his last victim.
I raised my Guardian spear and moved, but I was a second too late.
The priest looked at me with a twisted, manic grin that seemed painted in blood. Raising the heart high above his head, he crushed it between his fingers, drenching his face in more blood.
"You're too late!!" he shouted.
My bolt-shell hit the priest square in the chest, blowing him off the platform and detonating mid-air to spray his remains into the crowd.
The Grey Knights rallied to my side, their steel-grey armour still sizzling with residual psychic energy. Their leader leaned on his glowing warhammer, his helm's blue eye-lenses fixed on the chaos around us.
"We come too late," he said.
Before I could question him, the entire facility's foundations began to heave. Space seemed to twist and turn. Heavy iron chains swung wildly, dormant conveyor belts screeched back to life, and a terrifying, bone-deep rumble shook the floor.
The sacrifice had worked; something massive and monstrous was forcing its way into reality, and it was breaking space to do it.
"Withdraw! Get to your ships now!" I ordered Urbo over the vox.
His men immediately disengaged and sprinted for the exits. Spotting a high stairwell hugging the far wall, I turned to the Grey Knights, and we sprinted.
Debris rained down as the floor shattered beneath us, revealing a molten, red-hot glare below. The earth seemed to open up, quite literally and swallow everything into its molten depths. Massive battle tanks slid like toys into the widening chasms opening across the hall.
We bolted up the stairs four steps at a time as the walls broke and tore apart. Beams of hot, crimson light pierced through space as they would through a thin blanket, and the air turned into choking red ash.
Just as the entire area imploded into ruin, we blasted through an upper exit onto a narrow, high-altitude bridge leading to an adjacent spire.
KKRRRR---BRROOOOOMMMM--!
Behind us, the vast factory folded in on itself with a deafening roar, plunging into a vortex of violent, cursed smoke and fire.
The bridge under our feet began to sway, and the heavy iron moorings snapped like cheap wire.
With the bridge twisting into a freefall beneath us, we sprinted to the edge and threw ourselves into the air. We jumped across the open drop and slammed hard onto the neighbouring spire's solid adamantium deck, just as the bridge snapped free and dropped into the hungry, roaring abyss below.
...
I stared west, toward the Lion's Gate.
Even with all my conditioning, I could barely process what was happening.
Terra was burning. Quite literally.
Massive geysers of fire shot up from the deep canyons, engulfing ancient spires that had stood for thousands of years. The sky, which had been red and drenched in Warp energies, suddenly ignited into a nightmare of blood-red and roaring, unholy storms as pure psychic hatred washed over everything.
This emotion from the Warp's deep, chaotic parts could mean only one thing.
Beside me, the Grey Knights' armour glowed under the Warstorm's light. Justicar Alcuin stared out into the effect of Chaos.
"Shards of Khorne. They actually pulled it off," he said in a deep voice.
The immense landing zones of the Lion's Gate void port were buckling. The heavy adamantium ground heaved, spewing towering columns of liquid psychic fire into the sky.
I moved toward the edge to reach the outer wall, but a massive shockwave shattered the spire's reinforced viewports, showering us with a waterfall of glass.
Down on the plain, thousands of fire columns began to solidify, flickering like a blood-red constellation.
And then... came the howls.
Right before our eyes, daemons tore their way into realspace, out of the Warp. Tens of thousands of grotesque figures clawed out of flaming cocoons, their bodies swelling, eyes blackening, and scab-fleshed blades sprouting from their hands as they locked into disciplined yet chaotic ranks.
The entire void port became a sea of red. Smaller daemons were quickly followed by true nightmare beasts: multi-eyed behemoths, packs of iron-collared flesh hounds, and heavy, brass-armoured juggernauts belching black smoke into the sky.
And then the true lords of the slaughter arrived.
With a roar that shook the foundations, colossal Bloodthirsters tore into existence. Their massive brass-and-muscle bodies towered over the war host as they unfurled giant, studded bat wings to beat the fiery air.
Cloven hooves smashed the rockcrete open, carving channels of flowing blood as they brandished giant two-handed battleaxes and curling, barbed whips, ready to lay siege to Holy Terra and drench it in blood and glory for Khorne.
"By the Throne. Bloodthirsters."
Eight of them.
Forged in the image of mankind's oldest fears, embodiments of battle-rage and avatars of bloodlust, these were myth-born titans of ruin.
When they marched out, the horizon shuddered. Wreathed in lightning and black-edged flame, the mightiest vassals of the Blood God raised their vast jaws skyward and roared.
The clouds above Terra transformed, sending massive lightning strikes and blood rain earthward. The Neverborn army screamed, lashing out with their hooked blades, a chorus of feral ecstasy unleashed on a world they had coveted since the dawn of history.
For a moment, it seemed as if the heavens themselves had formed the image of a giant horned face, as vast as the Palace itself, leering in incipient triumph, before the driving blood-rain obliterated the vision.
"We must-- WHAT?!"
Alcuin started to speak when he turned from the bloody carnage and looked above the Lion's Gate, closer to the Palace, where a lone figure seemed to float.
"Justicar, this..."
"Aye."
I was about to sprint forward and confront the enemy, just like I knew my brothers would, when Alcuin raised his hand. And that's when I felt it too.
BOOOOOOMMM--!!
An explosion shook the ground and the air, cutting through the massive, heavy tension that had just built up.
"OI, you damn Warp Spawn!"
Khorne's crimson hatred seemed to give way to the golden light shining from the figure, and I could make out that they held a weapon I had never seen before.
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!"
A booming laugh rang out from the individual. Or so I thought; at least, it was coming from there. A wave of golden psychic energy shot out of him and pierced the blood-red sky, breaking the clouds in that area and allowing one to see Luna from there.
"Oh. The moonlight's shining all the way through. It's helping me see you pathetic wastes more clearly. Hehehe, ready or not, here I come!"
Suddenly, the world lost all its colour. If it had been colourful but bleak before, it was now utterly without light and life. I heard the Grey Knights scream right next to me, and it felt like I had been plunged into a black hole.
That was the feeling of death.