151 - The Primarch Who Knew the End (Patreon)

151 - The Crone World

The greater daemon's death broke the Chaos forces' will to resist. The Red Corsairs and Tzeentch's daemons had never been a match for the Imperial army; the Mocker of Fate had merely kept them fighting. Now that Guilliman had cut him down, they collapsed.

Their destruction was inevitable. Primaris swept all before them, while the Astra Militarum and Battle Sisters cut through the enemy without slowing. Mutated Space Marines recoiled before that vast, relentless army of steel. Reality had shattered their naive hopes. The awakened Primarch was invincible. With the Mocker dead, no one remained who could stand against him.

The Emperor's Sword swept across the battlefield, and the Hand of Dominion smashed everything in its path. Each attack sent severed limbs flying. Guilliman stood among his enemies like an invincible god of war. At last, the final daemon crashed to the ground at his feet. Farther away, the human traitors had all been beheaded, their bodies piled high for burning.

Cheers rose for another victory. Guilliman, who had done more than anyone to win it, did not join them. His flagship had sent bad news. The Astropathic array had received a plea for help.

“Saint Celestine has been ambushed. Her fleet is trapped in a vast Warp storm.”

Guilliman frowned. Every ship in the expedition carried Cawl's latest positioning equipment, allowing the vessels to locate one another. Yet Celestine's fleet had not been found. Either its equipment was switched off, or something was blocking it.

The positioning systems were silent or jammed, but psychic communications, the easiest signals for the Warp to disrupt, had somehow got through. It took no great genius to see the problem. Celestine's force had been ambushed; there had to be something wrong with this message. The Warp was exceedingly good at tampering with communications.

Leaving the troops to finish clearing the battlefield, Guilliman returned to his flagship. He ordered the intelligence chief to verify the message and establish when it had been sent.

“My lord, we have confirmed that the message is genuine. It appears to have been sent two months ago. We must decide quickly. If we delay too long, I fear...”

The chief had promptly carried out Guilliman's instructions, checked the message's authenticity, and reported as soon as it was verified. Guilliman calculated the timing and understood the shape of the affair. His expression grew grave as he considered the opponent awaiting him. This enemy was cautious and an exceptionally capable strategist.

By his reckoning, Celestine had been targeted almost as soon as she left the main fleet. A trap capable of catching the new ships could not have been prepared quickly. Perhaps the enemy had even played a part in her departure. Deception and temptation were the Warp's specialties.

His frown deepened as he studied the intelligence files. There was too little information to draw a useful conclusion. He had already considered a particularly grim possibility: Celestine might have betrayed him. If that were true, his position was dangerous indeed. If someone chosen by the Emperor, someone marked with a golden border by his own system, could turn traitor, then there was no one around him he could trust.

Guilliman tapped the table, considering his next move. In Warhammer, knowing the timeline did not guarantee an advantage. If he followed the storyline he remembered, Tzeentch would make sure there was nothing left of him. Seeing the future and turning back time were hardly extraordinary here. Even high-ranking Necron technologists could manage tricks like that.

To have a chance of winning, he had to break fate and smash the board itself. Otherwise, he would end up worse off than the Emperor. The Emperor had once read a book of the future in the Black Library and gained some knowledge of the timeline. The four gods had still outmaneuvered him and left him crippled. He was serving as a torch to this day.

While Guilliman thought, the conquered daemon world began to change. With the daemons banished, the crystal forests collapsed. The rivers of blue flame died away, replaced by muddy water. The thick mist vanished, clearing the view. Brilliant colors drained from the sky, leaving it pale and bright. The Warp's unnatural presence lingered, but it was far weaker than before.

Each daemon world was shaped by the greater daemon that ruled it. With the Mocker of Fate dead, this world had returned to its former state. Its tall, luminous crystal trees withered and dissolved into blue mist.

The sight gave the troops a little hope. When Chaos withdrew, everything here could become what it had been. The Warp was the true invader of the material universe. Freed from its creatures, reality possessed a restorative power that could return things to their original state.

The planet had been liberated, but it was still condemned to destruction. The Imperium could not leave an army to garrison it. To prevent the daemons from returning, it would have to be shattered. The Colossus-class warship had begun charging its weapon. In two days, it was to put the entire world to the torch.

Tech-Priests traveled across the surface, gathering data on the Warp. Imperial troops boarded their transports in orderly groups and returned to the fleet to rest and reorganize.

Two days later, once everyone had withdrawn, Guilliman made an announcement. Celestine's fleet was in danger. They would have to change their plans and go to its aid. His decision met with little opposition.

Celestine commanded immense respect. As the Emperor's spokeswoman, she had always fought at the front, driving daemons from many worlds. Her kindness to ordinary people had earned her widespread affection throughout the Imperium. Her fleet also carried large numbers of warriors and support personnel. Guilliman could not let the daemons slaughter them all. Such skilled people were too valuable to lose.

The expedition was meant to train the first generation of humans willing to confront the Warp and to temper the Primaris in battle. The vast fleet changed course toward the coordinates in the Astropathic message.

Elsewhere, Celestine fought a desperate battle. Darkness spread through the ships, and monsters poured out of the Warp. Exhausted, disease-ridden soldiers were forced to take up their weapons. Daemons filled every corridor, clashing with the human defenders.

Some warships were so badly damaged that their Gellar fields burst apart. Countless daemons flooded in and butchered those aboard. Cries of anguish never ceased over the communications channels. Ship after ship fell. Less than a third of the once-mighty fleet remained.

Vicious diseases and fighting without rest had claimed countless lives. If this continued, the entire force would be destroyed.

At the last desperate moment, Celestine found a daemon world. Through strange psychic echoes, the fleet's psykers learned its name: Belial IV. Despair crossed her face when she heard it.

Even within the Eye of Terror, the planet was infamous. Belial IV was a Crone World. Such worlds bore witness to the ancient Aeldari empire's glory. They were among its earliest colonies, its most developed and magnificent planets. Before the Eye had swallowed the empire, they had been its core worlds, usually centers of trade, finance, and culture.

Belial IV had been a cultural center before the collapse. It housed an incomparable temple dedicated to Asuryan. Many knew little of him. In Aeldari mythology, he was the father of the gods and the ancestor of all things.

Another theory held that the gods were Old Ones, or beings who had absorbed fragments of Old One souls. The Old Ones had created the Aeldari and the Orks to fight the Necrontyr. Everything about the gods' origins had been buried by the War in Heaven, a conflict beyond the comprehension of living beings.

What was certain was that the Aeldari gods truly existed. They had fought in the War in Heaven and formed the main force opposing the C'tan directly. Asuryan had played a crucial role. He had moved stars into formation and detonated them, using their terrible power against the Necrontyr and the C'tan to save his people.

The gods had known supreme glory and grown alongside the Aeldari. After that height had come their fall, at the birth of Slaanesh. The Aeldari's unrestrained desires had awakened the god, and its birth had brought their pantheon to ruin.

Only a few survived: Cegorach, the Laughing God, who fled into the Webway; Khaine, the war god shattered into a thousand fragments; Isha, taken by Nurgle as his wife; and Ynnead, the god of death who had yet to awaken. All the others died, either at Slaanesh's first cry or after being defeated and having their souls devoured.

The fall of the Aeldari pantheon testified, in its own way, to the strength of the four gods. Only they could truly contend with one another. Other gods might gain a temporary advantage, but could not escape their eventual destruction.

Celestine despaired because Dark Eldar frequented this world. Space Marines who had escaped from their stronghold had spoken of being taken here as prisoners. Conflicts broke out constantly, and strange, ancient Aeldari defenses still functioned. Roaming Dark Eldar hunted anything that tried to enter the world. Danger awaited on every side. She had never felt so hopeless.

But she had no choice left. She had to land and use the planet to establish defenses. Otherwise, her entire force would perish in the Warp storm.