Within the roiling Sea of Souls, the Crusade of Retribution fleet, with the Void Sword as its spearhead, plunged ever deeper into the heart of the Warp. The intelligence culled from the memories of the Iron Warriors proved dangerously obsolete; none had suspected that Sortiarius had secretly slipped its anchor within the Immaterium to manifest within the Segmentum Ultima.
Axion continuously scanned the shifting Warp-tides, utilizing navigation algorithms derived from the Hearthkyn to steer the armada through the treacherous depths.
Aboard the Imperial vessels trailing in the wake of the flagship, the warriors of the White Scars and Space Wolves maintained constant patrols. Warp-transit was no stranger to them, and the threat of a daemonic incursion was a constant shadow. Yet, the interior of the fleet remained unnervingly silent.
The Geller Field was an anomaly of a defensive barrier. Unlike a standard, uniform geometric shield, its generator produced a field of variable density that fluctuated around the hull. This irregularity was the daemon's primary vector for assault, allowing them to manifest in pockets of weakened intensity and spill into the corridors to wreak havoc. However, the Geller Field projected by the Void Sword was gargantuan in scale. Its sheer energy density was so dense that no common daemon could hope to breach it, let alone stabilize a physical manifestation to begin a slaughter.
Using specialized observational arrays, the Tech-Priests, captains, and crew of every ship gazed out into the panoramic views of the Warp. It was a rare, perhaps singular, opportunity. Even the Rune Priests of the Space Wolves and the Stormseers of the White Scars seized the moment to observe the tides.
The depths of the Warp had remained a mystery to the Imperium for millennia. Few had ever ventured so deep and returned to tell the tale. If an Imperial fleet were to be caught in these currents, the chances of being lost was ninety-nine percent. The rare vessels that did manage to break free typically carried crews driven to madness or corrupted beyond redemption. Even those who maintained their sanity provided accounts that were entirely contradictory and chaotic.
Now, they had the chance to witness the savage majesty of the deep Warp with their own eyes. The Sea of Souls was, after all, the flip side of the material universe. Here, daemons and warp-entities were the true denizens; in a sense, the humans were the invaders.
The vistas of the deep Warp were impossibly vibrant, a spectacle that could never exist in the laws of the Materium. Multicolored luminescence illuminated the roiling chaos, veins of raw energy arcing through the tides. Reflections of planets shimmered in the space like half-remembered dreams, interspersed with bizarre, tangible celestial bodies.
Through the composite imaging equipment of the Iron Men, the fleet shared a feed that clearly annotated the difference between true planetary entities and mere echoes. If one could ignore the fleeting, monstrous shadows of daemons flickering against the outer void shields, it was a view of unparalleled, albeit terrifying, beauty. Yet, it was a beauty meant only for the Iron Men; for any other biological entity, to gaze too long upon such sights was to invite madness.
The Tech-Priests observed these bizarre phenomena, recording every scrap of environmental data. A flurry of frantic, high-pitched binary screeches erupted between them as they exchanged insights through the sacred cogitator-cant. To the Iron Men, however, these readings were mundane. The archives stored within the Federation's Energy Research Institutes, which had operated in the deep Warp for eons, contained data far more anomalous than anything encountered today. They had categorized hundreds of species of warp-entities, though "species" was a misnomer, as most were merely semi-corporeal or ethereal projections.
Beep.
With a soft chime, the shared display across all ships zoomed in on a corner of the feed. Amidst the churning waves, a colossal shadow flickered. Shadows were common in the Warp, but this was different.
The image was stretched and magnified. As it rendered, data cascaded across the screens; the object possessed unmistakable signs of artificial construction. The Iron Men's sensors began to outline the structure submerged within the Warp-tides, projecting several potential configurations: an ancient facility, or perhaps a vessel of a design never before witnessed.
The Tech-Priests watched in awe, humbled by the Iron Men's analytical prowess.
As the fleet pushed onward, the shadow in the tide revealed its true form. It was a fortress. It was unlike any star-fort pattern in the Imperial inventory, vast and imposing. While it did not reach the planetary dimensions of a Titan-class ship, its widest span exceeded two thousand kilometers. It was shaped like a flattened octahedron, and every sloped facet was etched with countless rune-like patterns. These markings pulsed with a dim, rhythmic light against the backdrop of the Warp, as if the entire structure were breathing.
"Spectral analysis: Failed. Remote material comparison: Failed. Information: Unknown. Composition: Unknown."
Beyond the Iron Men's own Titan-class ships and the rare, dark relics of the Age of Technology, the Imperials had never seen a megastructure of such scale. The Tech-priests stared, a creeping suspicion taking hold that this object bore a resemblance to certain myths buried deep within the archives of the Mechanicus.
Axion analyzed the target blocking their path. The construction characteristics were clearly not from the Federation era. While there were xenos races in the galaxy capable of constructing such megastructures, the Imperium had encountered many civilizations whose ships were larger than battleships but brittle as glass. Throughout the vast, forgotten history of the galaxy, countless civilizations had risen and fallen. When the Necrons had scoured the stars, they had eradicated untold xenos species, much as the Federation had done in its own time. The Warp itself was an entity whose age could not be measured.
None knew what else lurked within these depths. Some speculated that the Warp was a residual echo of a previous cosmic epoch.
The Iron Men and the Imperials had vastly different ways of responding to such unknowns. Imperial forces would typically record its silhouette, gather what data they could, and debate whether to board it or simply sell the coordinates to the Adeptus Mechanicus or a nearby Astartes Chapter.
The Iron Men's response, however, was simple and brutal.
The Oblivion Cannon unleashed a terrifying beam from the flagship's prow. Before the horrified eyes of the Imperial crew, the beam that had illuminated the void struck true.
A translucent barrier flared to life around the strange xenos fortress, refracting the devastating ray into the surrounding void.
And then, the structure began to awaken.
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