Chapter 488: "I Have Long Since Been Human"
The Blackstone Fortresses hung suspended in the high orbital zenith.
They clustered in a jagged formation, firing their massive arrays in synchronized pairs. Waves of intense psionic energy lanced through the void hundreds of thousands of kilometers above Badab Primaris. Arcs of warp-lightning erupted from their apexes, tearing at the veil of reality and vaporizing asteroids, orbital debris, and any loyalist picket-ships that drifted too close.
The crackle of the Empyrean bled into the material world, fueling the Chaos onslaught.
All around them, the void was a storm of fire. Small Chaos warbands darted in and out of the rift-shadows, only to be shredded by the long-range batteries of the Imperial patrols. At the center of this swirling firestorm, the Blackstone Fortresses rotated with glacial, malevolent intent, their structures unfolding into the shape of a massive, obsidian eight-pointed star.
Inside the fortresses, there was only a tomb-like silence.
Aside from the rhythmic, wet wheezing of the daemonhosts fused into the blackstone walls and the occasional metallic crash of Imperial "retrofit" modules being torn away by the expanding structures, there was no sound.
CRACK.
Dust billowed through the stagnant air of the corridors.
In an Imperial-style thoroughfare that looked entirely out of place amidst the xenos architecture, a massive blast door hissed open. Figures clad in obsidian plate filed out—efficient, practiced, lethal.
They were a Black Legion Reaver Company, the tactical elite of the 13th Battle Group. At their head strode Vortigern, Lord of the "Lost Lion" warband. Beside him walked his First Captain.
They fanned out into a combat wedge, weapons leveled, sweeping through the chambers.
Vortigern was a legacy of the Old War—a son of the Lion who had turned to Abaddon in the early days. He was a veteran captain of the Dark Angels, one of the finest killers in the Black Legion. Since the birth of the Long War, he had been proving his worth, rising through the ranks to claim a seat within the Ezkarion.
Yet, within the inner circles of the Legion, many questioned why this "unremarkable" warrior held such a prestigious rank. Iskandar Khayon had gone as far as to refer to him as "cognitively deficient" in private. In truth, his presence was likely a calculated insult by Abaddon aimed at the First Legion.
But the modern Dark Angels didn't seem to care for his existence.
"Orders confirmed," Vortigern barked.
Even with his true Gene-father now returned to the galaxy, the traitor played his role of loyal lieutenant to perfection. He scanned the diagnostics on his HUD, comparing the auspex readings to the Warmaster's demands.
"Initialize the primary arrays. We are to set the Blackstone Fortresses on a collision course with Badab."
He transmitted the command through the encrypted link.
"Verified," the First Captain responded. Under the guidance of a sorcerer, he was already manipulating the Blackstone blocks to align with their new directives.
"The Warmaster's surface strike has failed," the Captain noted, reading between the lines of the terse, emotionally charged commands coming from the Vengeful Spirit. He couldn't resist a sneer. "As typical. A strategic blunder followed by a more 'intricate' plan of desperation."
"His strength lies in his thoroughness," Vortigern replied, ignoring the sarcasm.
The Captain shrugged and signaled the unit forward.
Vortigern raised his left fist, snapping two quick tactical signals.
The "Lost Lion" warband moved in a sweeping arc, advancing through the interior of the fortress.
They were to link up with the other garrisons, slave the fortresses to the impact vector, and evacuate. The Warmaster's orders were concise. It was time for those who had been stationed away from the front lines to pay their tithe in blood.
Abaddon always gambled everything on the final strike. Every bit of data Vortigern had on his master pointed to this conclusion.
As it always was, this was their duty.
Loyalty to Abaddon was the only thing they had left. The world outside was changing—warping into something that challenged every reality they had known for ten millennia—but they remained focused.
As for going back?
He looked at his mutated kin, the warriors fused with Neverborn, the sorcerers who had bartered their souls for a scrap of power, and the occasional xenos mercenary or cultist rabble that cluttered the hallways.
Go back to what?
To an Imperium where the Legion of the Damned fought alongside mortal saints? Where Astartes and Battle Sisters erupted into holy fire mid-combat? Where a Priest's prayer could literally drop the Emperor's Sword from the heavens?
Chaos couldn't match the "Chaos" the Imperium was now outputting. They couldn't win the Warp-war, they couldn't win the material war, and their gods seemed to be losing the popularity contest. They were being reduced to clowns in their own theater.
The Black Legion could barely scream a coherent war cry anymore. Looking at the "new" Imperium, it was getting harder to tell who the "Chaos" faction actually was.
Vortigern pushed the thought away, his eyes lingering for a second on a xenos corsair in his retinue.
Silence was the only sound in the hallway.
"Planetary coordinates locked," he reported. "Instruct the sorcerers to push the Fortress toward the Badab gravity well—"
"EVASIVE ACTION!" Vortigern suddenly screamed.
THUD.
A monomolecular shuriken slammed into Vortigern's faceplate. Before he could fall, a wall of fire erupted from the darkness.
Bolters and las-fire roared from three different directions, catching the warband in a lethal crossfire.
Enemies? How can there be enemies here?
The searing pain in his helm forced Vortigern into a reactive stance, but the combination of shuriken and bolt-shells made the identity of the attackers a logical impossibility in his mind.
"Counter-attack!" he bellowed, pointing toward a ruptured bulkhead three hundred meters away where a vault ceiling had collapsed.
Even before his voice died, a brilliant flash of blue light illuminated the chamber. The rhythmic, mechanical thrum of Terminator engines echoed through the silence.
His warriors attempted to form a line between the breach and their lord, their bolters spitting fire at the source of the noise.
Then, the horror manifested.
"By the Gods..." the Captain whispered.
It was a combined force of Astartes and Eldar.
The muzzle flashes revealed the impossible: Eldar strike teams and warriors of the XIII Legion operating in perfect, seamless synchronization through the long galleries.
No one could fathom how a force of this magnitude had infiltrated the Warmaster's prize without detection. And the combination—Astartes and Xenos—was a blasphemy that defied description.
But the intruders did not give them time to ponder.
BOOM!
An outer bulkhead collapsed inward under a melta-charge. A sequence of heavy bolter rounds shredded the air. Warriors of the XIII Legion surged through a gap previously hidden by Imperial retrofitting. They dropped from the gantries above before the traitors could even adjust their aim.
Simultaneously, the air ionized with the scent of ozone. A displacement-pop signaled a teleport. Clad in cobalt-blue plate, Tartaros-pattern Terminators materialized, immediately adding their firepower to the fray.
The two lines collided. The corridor became a meat-grinder of tracer fire and shimmering energy fields.
Vortigern fired blindly, the recoil of his bolter rattling his teeth. The density of the enemy was so high he didn't need to aim. All around him, his men were shouting and dying.
Muzzle flashes strobed through the room. Towering bodies were torn apart by fire from half a dozen angles. Blood sprayed across the blackstone walls. Chunks of meat were tossed against the vaulted ceiling. Shattered fragments of armor clattered to the deck like discarded coins.
Silence fell as quickly as the storm had begun.
Smoke roiled through the cold air, clinging to the mangled, twisted heaps of the dead.
Ichor leaked from the rents in the obsidian-black armor.
The strike team—composed of Astartes and Eldar—stepped from the shadows. Weapons leveled, barrels smoking, they moved through the carnage.
The "Lost Lion" warband—the self-proclaimed pride of the XVI and the pillar of the Black Legion—had been extinguished in less than fourteen seconds.
CRUNCH.
A fallen body was kicked aside.
"Toss them into the Warp," Captain Titus commanded his men.
"No exceptions. I do not care if they appear dead. Xenos—Eldar technical team? You may proceed. Astartes squads, escort the technicians. Follow their demolition protocols to the letter."
"As you command, Captain," Sicarius responded, stepping through the bodies.
Behind him, the sounds of coup-de-grâce shots and minor psychic manifestations echoed. His men were counting the dead, placing a bolt-round into every helm and chest cavity before piling them up.
He found Vortigern.
The traitor lay on his back. His right hip was a ruin of splintered bone; his arm had been severed at the elbow. A bolt shell had struck his throat, tearing away his helm and a portion of his skull. A shuriken was buried in his chest. His final breaths blew bubbles of red foam through his mangled lips. He stared upward with a single, glazed eye.
He saw an Ultramarine standing over him.
Then he saw several Eldar approach. With practiced, almost "helpful" efficiency, the xenos delivered the final strikes before the Astartes could even raise his weapon—acting like eager, servile acolytes.
No. Impossible.
How are these people on a Blackstone Fortress?
Vortigern's eye went wide.
This must be a dream of death. A final, flickering hallucination.
"Ultramarines?" he gasped, his voice a wet rattle. Blood matted his lips. He could not believe what he was seeing.
Cato Sicarius and Titus exchanged a look. Sicarius tapped his vox, wondering if they should call in a Dark Angel to handle this particular traitor.
Titus shook his head. No need.
He tapped the data-slate on his vambrace, indicating that the tactical report would suffice.
Standard procedure for Chaos traitors was enough. The Dark Angels weren't prone to "episodes" anymore.
Sicarius knelt.
He didn't waste breath on words. He jammed the barrel of his bolter into Vortigern's mouth and pulled the trigger.
"He looked surprised," Sicarius noted, glancing at the unblinking, dead eye of the traitor.
An Eldar warrior immediately stepped forward, showing no hesitation or offense at the Astartes' bluntness. He began dragging the corpse away.
Before he left, the Eldar carefully used a minor psychic trick to scrub a bloodstain from Sicarius's pauldron, ensuring the ornate armor looked pristine once more.
"I imagine no one sees this coming," Titus replied, surveying the room.
The fortress was being devoured in silence.
The Master of the Eldar, Ramesses—the Radiant One, the Formless Lord—had subverted it with his thought, turning it into his own spoil of war.
Currently, the Blackstone Fortress stood with its "gates" wide open.
The rest would be clinical. Ownership of the fortress was being reformatted in real-time, exactly as their Master willed.
Eldrad Ulthran, Farseer of Ulthwé, stood ready.
As an ancient who had survived since the era of the Eldar Empire, he possessed a visceral understanding of the Talismans of Vaul.
When the Eldar stepped onto this ancient, Warp-drowned fortress and found themselves unharmed, they erupted into incoherent cheers. They surged past Eldrad like a tidal wave of emotion.
They cursed the daemonhosts as they banished them to the void. They dismantled the crude Imperial modifications that had scarred the interior, "offering praise" to the unique artistic sensibilities of Mankind while simultaneously injecting psychic commands into the fortress's logic-nodes.
It was effortless. Routine.
It was as if these two fortresses, stolen by Abaddon, had always been intended for Ramesses.
"The Talismans of Vaul. Super-massive, multi-functional composite bastions. Their primary function is the manipulation of the veil between reality and the Empyrean, and the channeling of psychic energy for wide-area material strikes. Legend suggests they predate even the Aeldari, forged by the Old Ones as weapons against the C'tan..."
An "Honorary Friend of the Dawnstar" (Trazyn) was providing the exposition to an Imperial journalist. To mark the 80th anniversary of the Dawnbreaker-Necron Accords, Trazyn the Infinite—Director of the Museum of Human History—was walking alongside Lord Ramesses. He was personally lecturing on cutting-edge archeotech, injecting confidence into the burgeoning alliance and providing momentum for sustainable, long-term development.
As he lectured, Trazyn occasionally peeked into his Tesseract Labyrinth, admiring his latest collection: the black topknot of the Warmaster and a blade that had once belonged to a Primarch.
The benefits of compliance are immense, Trazyn mused. No need to spend centuries scrounging for relics when you can just seize them through official channels.
Though he felt it was a pity the Dawnbreakers hadn't killed Abaddon outright—Trazyn had wanted to collect the Warmaster to put a full stop to his "Biographies of the Long War" collection—the spoils were still excellent.
"Is that true?" Ramesses asked, genuinely curious.
"The Old Ones built this?"
He was currently seeing the fortress through the collective sight of the Eldar, learning the systems as he went. Eldrad walked with Trazyn, acting as his translator and mouthpiece.
The modern Eldar were overflowing with a desire to please. Although the Craftworlders had lost much of their history, the Harlequins had retrieved the operating manuals from the Black Library. Since the device was built for Eldar minds, turning it on was as simple as following a script.
Listening to Trazyn's description, Ramesses felt like a peasant entering the Imperial Palace for the first time. Everything was a revelation.
"Hence why I call it a 'Legend'," Trazyn said, walking past a team of busy Eldar. He watched as the Blackstone Fortress began to wake, its essence shifting to Ramesses.
"I also claim that we 'Metal Abhumans' once suppressed the Four Gods with World Engines," Trazyn added, his tone dripping with envy.
We've fallen behind. Far too far.
Szarekh, stop your pathetic civil war. Even these spineless Eldar have found a backer, and the humans have literally moved into their own machines.
"You. There."
A sharp command interrupted Trazyn's internal grumbling.
Cato Sicarius blocked his path.
Given the Eldar's knowledge of the layout and the convenience of the Webway, the seizure of the fortress had been a landslide.
Sicarius, a man who understood nothing of psionics or metaphysical nuance, had been doing a perimeter sweep after reporting to Titus. He stopped the unfamiliar figure who seemed to be distracting Eldrad.
"What is your designation and function?"
"I excavate subterranean structures, provide protective storage for ancient artifacts, recover lost truths of history, and display the reality of the past to the galaxy," Trazyn said, turning to face the Ultramarine with a look of absolute, righteous dignity.
"So... you're a grave robber?" Eldrad muttered, sabotaging him.
"ARCHEOLOGY! It is Archeology!" Trazyn hissed, whipping out the official warrant issued to him by the Dawnbreakers.
"Director of the Museum of Human History. Rank: Sector-Level Administrator (Brevet Galactic-Grade). I am a founding father of this new era, a loyal servant of the Throne! I am no thief; my actions are fully compliant with the Protocol!"
Lately, Trazyn had become very insistent on his "official" status when dealing with the Eldar.
"Hmph," Eldrad snorted. He had no time for a xenos whose race had been left in the dust by history.
We are already human, Eldrad thought, watching the Blackstone Fortress begin to glow with a golden light. We are Citizens.
And the Necrons? Solve your own civil war first!
Thinking of how the Eldar had hitched their wagon to a winning star—proving their worth by securing the Blackstone Fortresses—Eldrad felt a surge of smug satisfaction.
Can Trazyn do this? No. If he wants a win, he has to drive a World Engine here. If he even has one left.
Typical Necron Lord. Szarekh... really can't compare to Cegorach.
"Archeology is a noble pursuit. We must learn from it," Ramesses agreed, nodding.
While the Warhammer universe had a tech-tree that looked like a sci-fi setting, the general rule was "Old is Gold." The Eldar's manual for the fortress had been dug out of a library, after all.
His consciousness flickered between the various Eldar teams. The decision to absorb the race was looking better by the hour.
"So, my friend," Ramesses turned his focus to Trazyn. "What's the next plan for 'expanding' the collection?"
Ramesses felt it was time to put some pressure on Trazyn.
These "Old Guard" types were absolute treasure-troves of hidden assets.
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