The Warp.
The forests of Caliban.
Gouges the size of siege claws scarred the mossy ground while dreadful roars rolled one after another from deep within the woods.
They were Caliban's unique Chaos-tainted fauna—the Great Beasts. An adult Great Beast could tear power-armor like cloth and shred a heavy tank to scrap.
These abominable forest monsters had once brought endless calamity upon the people of Caliban.
Until the day a Primarch came. A man called the Lion led the knightly orders and purged the Great Beasts from the face of the world.
Yet in this Caliban that existed within the Warp, the Great Beasts still prowled—proof that this place was anchored to some era before the Lion's cull.
"Execute Terminal Protocol. Exterminate."
A flat electronic voice suddenly rang out, so cold and affectless it chilled the marrow.
Then came the flare of lances and a thunder of detonations. The Great Beasts were scythed down under lethal fire; their dying keens were drowned as the forest went up in roaring flame.
"Knights, stay on me!"
A towering, imperious figure strode out of the firelight. Brand-new plates of deep green armor threw back the blaze; a crimson cloak snapped and streamed in heat-born winds.
The weathered face and the flecks of silver in his beard only made his presence more commanding.
It was the First Primarch—the Lion.
Once more fully war-armed and every inch a king, the slump that had dogged him was gone without a trace.
Behind the Lion followed Zahariel and several high-ranking Astartes—battle-captains among them.
As for the mortal knights, they had already been safely consigned to gene-augmentation.
In his right as gene-sire, he had recalled his sons, mustering armies and fleets about Vostonia and then taking the forests of Caliban as a path into new regions.
More frightening still, a host of cold red optics flared to life behind the force.
Rank upon rank of ancient man-shaped machines walked on, raking the distance with unending fire.
Every lance of searing beam or armor-piercing shot erased a Great Beast. Almost nothing missed.
Relics of the Dark Age of Technology, their creations of forbidden science casually butchered foes who had once taxed Calibanite knights to their limits.
Using his authority, the Lion had unlocked black-vault legacies from a pre-Imperial arkshelf: a class of autonomous war-robots called "Extinction Automata."
Once they had possessed true minds and were known as the Men of Iron—machines that had nearly annihilated mankind at its zenith.
"By the Emperor… what abominable engines of murder…"
Zahariel stared at those malevolent automatons, a tremor running through him as he watched a taloned manipulator ram through a Great Beast's skull.
The dying monster swatted the automaton with all its massive strength—only for the blow to glance away without so much as a scratch.
A veteran of millennia, he realized he would struggle to destroy even a single Extinction Automaton—and that their counter-assault would be fatal.
He had heard the nightmare-tales: from the Old Night and the Unification Wars' terror slaughters to the ruin loosed after the Lion deployed Extinction Automata.
All of it inspired fear.
During the Great Crusade, Extinction Automata had been unleashed against the most recalcitrant xenos.
Once released, they became storms of blades, geysers of star-hot flame, and bursts of hard radiation.
The Automata mounted war-talons, phosphor grenade launchers, neuro-induction shatterguns, atomic pulse cannons, heavy particle-wave projectors—ancient interdicted weaponry of obscene lethality.
Only the Automatons themselves could wield such relics to their full; they brought fires more savage than the foe's and smeared radiation across entire battlefields.
Cunning by nature and nursing a genocidal hatred for organic life, they knew neither mercy nor restraint. The only leash was a "kill-switch."
If they slipped the leash, their internal melta charges would atomize their cores.
Even so, these venomous machines remained among the Imperium's most fearsome taboo weapons.
In Zahariel's imagination, a single Extinction Automaton was horror enough; an entire formation was a storm of ending—capable of razing a world in hours.
They could scour planets with orbital grids too hardened for assault and too well-screened for Cyclonic Torpedoes.
During the Horus Heresy, the First Legion had unloosed a batch of Extinction Automata upon the traitor Forge World of Galatea.
They scoured that world with absolute slaughter. Machine-fortresses, living things—everything perished. Only the void-docked shipyards remained intact.
How terrifying was that?
And yet, seeing the Automata in the metal, he realized he had still underestimated them.
They were worse than the stories.
The Lion's son suddenly remembered another legend:
During a war of the Second Imperium—Imperium Secundus—the Lion had unleashed high-order Extinction Automata to hunt another Primarch: Konrad Curze, the Night Haunter.
Just seven high-order Automata had pinned the Night Haunter.
That was a Primarch who had cast the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar into turmoil by will alone—yet he was crushed beneath abominable machines.
There was nowhere to hide.
It proved the Automata's terror beyond doubt.
Zahariel looked back at the marching cohorts, swallowed, and felt his mouth go dry.
This time the Lion had all but emptied the vaults—one hundred high-order models, and many more of the standard patterns.
A legion of wicked machines—what power could stand against that?
This was the Emperor's favor toward the Lion: the gift of a proscribed armory capable of breaking Primarchs and tearing down any wall.
It was also the Lion's trump against all the foes of man.
It was a pity that, during the Heresy, the Lion had been too far from Holy Terra—and the affairs of the Second Imperium had cost precious time.
Had he been able to loose these machines and race for Terra, perhaps the Imperium's ending would have been written differently.
"Zahariel—this time we will not fail. The Imperium will be saved by our hand, and tragedy will not repeat."
As if hearing his blood's thought, the Lion's deep voice was iron-certain.
In accepting his nature, he had grown more keen—able to read much from the twitch of a face and the flicker of an emotion.
Once, he had been too restrained to unleash such ruinous weapons.
But this was no longer the Great Crusade's first golden noon. It was the black midnight ten thousand years on, and the Imperium tottered.
He had to use every tool and any power to break the enemies of man.
"When the Savior sees this forbidden strength, he will be shocked—and awed."
The Lion's mouth curled, unbidden.
Before, he'd had almost nothing; his poise and his honor had taken beating after beating under the Savior's relentless blows.
Perhaps this time he could claw a little honor back.
He would lead the Automata ahead to the Vostonia Pan-Sector and hold the line there.
By the time the Savior arrived, the crisis at that industrial nexus might already be resolved.
With this fist at his back, he could speak to the Savior—and to that Emperor of the Imperium—as an equal.
Though the Lion had promised to aid the Savior, a leader's pride would not let him be shuffled at another's whim.
He had his own designs.
As the Lion weighed how to shape his rapport with the Savior and his brother Primarch, the forest began to shake.
The tremor wasn't in the soil—it set the entire woodland quivering under some unknown pressure.
Weightlessness crept in at the edges of sensation.
"Terminal systems flag a high-risk mass. Alert—alert…"
In an instant, the Automata kicked to high alert, ready to vomit annihilating fire. Their refraction-field shields howled up to full.
"All units—stand to!"
"Is it an earthquake? This forest can suffer tectonic collapse?"
The Lion and his knights braced against the violent lurching, ready to meet whatever came. In the Warp, danger was a thousand times more likely than in the galaxy.
Worse, there was almost nowhere to fall back to.
"W-what… is that?!"
A son of the Lion pointed and yelled toward the chaotic Warp beyond the trees.
THRUM-THRUM-THRUM-THRUM-THRUM!
Before anyone could truly react, a gigantic, half-transparent mechanical hull tore through.
It skimmed the forest's rim, ripping open the surrounding space and the woodland's very ground.
Like a tunnel-borer chewing a conduit underground—only the "ground" here was the seething Warp itself.
A vast gilded half-figure—some holy colossus—loomed along the hull, striding parallel to the Lion's host like a titan stomping past, staggering the heart with sheer spectacle.
???
The Lion stared at the hundred-meter gilded beefcake idol bolted to the machine's prow.
He went a little numb.
That sky-pointing, muscle-popping half-statue. That brazen pose. That eternal riot of luxurious, domineering paint.
And that skyscraping drill.
Familiar. Too familiar. The damned thing was haunting him.
Around him, the sons of the Lion cried out:
"By the Emperor—what manner of being is that…?"
"The Savior! That's the Hope Primarch—the Savior!"
If you were trudging through the Warp's Caliban forest and that flamboyant engine with that all-too-familiar figure suddenly blasted by, you'd lose composure too.
The Lion's eye twitched. He drew a long breath and did his best to keep his bearing.
Of course it was the Savior. Why was that man everywhere?
He'd even forced his way into the Warp—what in the throne's name was that vessel?
Questions piled up like wreckage in his head.
More deflating by far—
The Savior had once again crushed his presence.
Even here in the Warp, the other man managed to make the ground shudder and gravity die, stamping an unrivaled presence on reality itself.
The ruckus would rouse half the profane denizens of this realm.
Was that what they called "talent"…?
In that moment the Lion felt as though the Savior were an omnipresent nightmare, forever rolling over him in the most intimidating, most flamboyant, most impossible way.
He was reduced to a foil.
Truth be told, the Lion was getting jealous. Presence and intimidation were what every warsmith and warlord pursued with all their soul.
Why else would high nobles armor themselves in grotesque, towering war-plate, drape themselves in relics and skulls, paint their panoply to command the eye, and trail couture capes?
Even the eighth Primarch, Konrad Curze, master of shadows, wore batlike horrors on his plate and a cloak of arterial red—
All to crush a foe in the first instant of revelation.
Only overwhelming presence could seize every gaze on arrival, wring command from a crowd, overturn battles, and paralyze those who looked upon you.
Through all history, the most awe-inspiring presence in the Imperium was the Gilded Colossus, Lord of Humanity—the Emperor of Mankind.
Gold war-plate, holy and terrible claws, relics and splendor, a cloak like a comet's tail—his image radiated terror and majesty, fused to a soul that could bear it, into a style of force no one could ignore.
One glimpse and men thought: here stands a king; here is an unfathomable depth.
So when the Emperor arrived at a mustering, warlords and heroes hit their knees.
Thus the Primarchs and every high war-captain copied the Emperor's armor and adornment.
They dared not be so bold nor so shameless, of course; they copied in secret, avoided the most sacred imperial sigils.
But the Savior was different. Even when he was only a Planetary Governor, he had the gall to copy the Emperor at full power—down to the rivet.
He wielded the Emperor's image perfectly to achieve intimidation.
Now he had surpassed the master with a personal style even more over-the-top.
It was pure dominance—a flattening of every Primarch and general around him.
Stand anyone beside the Savior's sacred effigy and in a blink you knew who was lord and who was retainer. The gulf of presence was too wide.
That was why the Lion and the others felt such a hollow in their chests.
Standing beside the Savior's colossal idol, he felt a hand on his head—felt himself pressed down.
It couldn't be helped. In the Savior's wake, the Imperium's aesthetics had undergone another revolution in ten thousand years.
And the Lion still wore the old cut—plain, effect-less. Some part of the mind rebelled at being outshone so thoroughly.
Whatever the case, the Savior's scandalously flashy statue had shaken them to the core.
When the gaudy engine finally roared away and sank into the Warp's howling tides, they noticed how the Caliban forest had changed.
They gaped.
The forest's rimlands and treeline were simply gone. Debris drifted in the Warp's churning void.
Around all that absence hung a single transparent tunnel.
The Savior's monstrous engine had wormed a path through the Warp and left behind a half-transparent corridor.
The Lion stared a long time, speechless.
While he had fretted about holding off the enemies of Chaos, the Savior had begun his advance into the Warp itself?
Perhaps that was the gulf between them.
Still, the Lion's battles lay in the galaxy and upon the Imperium's frontiers. There he would hew out honor enough for any man.
"All units—full speed ahead!"
His will burned brighter. The First Primarch would not be outpaced.
The forbidden host marched under the Lion's command, accelerating toward the Vostonia Pan-Sector.
…
THRUM-THRUM-THRUM-THRUM-THRUM!
The Eden-pattern Dissonance Engine—the warp tunnel-borer—rampaged through the immaterium, devouring and carving, leaving a half-transparent spaceway behind.
The shock rippled through endless voids, like a runaway drilling head, wrecking what passed for calm in the Warp.
If the Warp had been a sullen, ever-heaving sea before, this tunnel-borer was a sea-dragon crashing in, kicking up a far greater storm.
And it never stopped shredding and swallowing whatever swam those waters.
Aboard the borer, on the command deck—
Eden watched the skyscraping drill surge and whirl ahead and the Warp rift and shear before it.
He realized, a beat late, "Did we just bump into something…? A forest in the Warp?"
This Savior lineage was always a bit reckless with vehicles and starships. No one worried about crashing.
It all went on the expense account anyway.
Eden felt that forest had been familiar, but he couldn't place it. He let it go.
Too much drifted in the Warp—wrecked hulls, meteoroids, corpses, even slabs of solidified realms, entire planets, and macroscopic life-forms.
Everything was out here.
Not long ago he'd even seen a ten-kilometer kraken brawling a void-whale.
As for chaotic "domains," those were everywhere.
From the holdings of the Dark Gods to territories ruled by Warp-kin, Beast-things, and unaffiliated abominations—there were too many to count.
It was another dimension entire; the rules were just wrong.
But with an Old One artifact—the warp tunnel-borer—he could explore those places, reopen collapsed Webway trails, or even dig brand-new conduits for Webway construction.
For the borer to break into this disorder was a small step for him—yet a giant leap for mankind.
Humanity was formally setting out to explore the Warp. The Warp would no longer be Chaos' private demesne.
No less meaningful than man's first reach into space or our first step on Luna. Even if we could do little yet—it was a breakthrough.
"It's just… loud. Maybe we can retrofit dampers or something…"
The whole machine shook and rattled his bones; his words came out with a buzz, drowned in the engine's roar.
In short, it sounded like subway works outside your window—twenty-four seven.
Inevitably, the noise radiated into swathes of the Warp.
In the Garden of Nurgle, the Plague God's daemons had their jolly music smothered; they cursed through their confusion and sank into foul moods.
In the Black House, the sleeping Plaguefather tossed, grumbling as if haunted by nightmare.
Upon the Throne of Delight, the Prince of Pleasure studied the Savior's muscle-sculpted idol and its heaven-boring drill.
Sensing those shudders, the Dark Prince only grew more… excited.
But when that outrageously bombastic machine veered away, the Prince felt a pang of disappointment.
In the Crystal Labyrinth, skeins of fate crisscrossed as the Changer of Ways tracked the machine's path, a smile playing at His beak.
He had foretold this.
After iteration upon iteration, the Great Schemer had finally snared the Savior's thread and derived the right answer.
There would be no soul the Changer could not reach, move, or bind.
It meant He could now weave a trap of destiny—while the Savior would no longer receive fate's indulgence.
Perhaps not death, but a loss so searing it would brand the bones. The Savior and the Imperium would slink home to lick their wounds—
And dare not dream of revival.
Everything was proceeding according to plan.
In Khorne's realm, across the Brass Citadel and red earth, daemons seethed. The colossal racket boiled their nerves.
They hacked and grappled all the fiercer.
Usually the Warp contaminated the galaxy. This time the Savior contaminated the Warp—
As if ripping up a subway through their living room.
"Damn it—what is that noise?!"
Within the Brass Citadel—
The Exalted Bloodthirster Ka'Bandha, convalescing upon a throne, was goaded by the din into a fresh bellow, vomiting more fire.
He backhanded a lesser Bloodthirster out of his way and staggered from the palace, seeking the source.
He found nothing.
Once the most dreaded daemon in the Warp, he was a ruin of gashes down to bone; his wings hung limp; his face was a map of bruises.
Pathetic to see.
A nameless horror had beaten him—like a nightmare writ in blood.
"Perhaps in all the galaxy and the Warp only I—Ka'Bandha—and the Savior have the right to face it."
He had been broken, but not unmade.
Perhaps the only quarry worth his chase—the only rival worth his blade—was his life's nemesis: the Slayer of Daemons, the Void-Storm, the New Sun of the Imperium, the Hope Primarch—the Savior.
Yet some deep part of the Exalted Bloodthirster worried for the Savior. That thing was too strong.
And its true quarry was the Savior. Soon the Warp itself would hunt him in the heart of the Umbral Star-Domain.
Suddenly Ka'Bandha felt a familiar presence.
He turned.
Far off, a monstrous engine erupted from the void and drove straight for the Blood God's lands.
"Blood God!"
"&#￥@&%!"
On the crimson flats, Khorne's daemons barely had time to look up before a sky-pointing gilded beefcake and a titanic spinning drill slammed into their world.
Panic seized them.
In heartbeats, the earth twisted and tore and was hurled into the endless dark.
They felt a savage weightlessness—
And then they lifted—drifting in the void—
Because the ground and everything around them had simply stopped existing.
Worse still for those snared in that heaven-boring drill: they went straight to the Skull Throne.
Terror spread like fire.
ROAR—
The Brass Citadel vomited a blood-shadow to spear the sky.
The Blood God moved.
(End of Chapter)
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