Forest.
Veils of pale light fell like gauze.
Moss carpeted the soft earth, with the occasional green leaf and twig tangled within, while birdsong rose now and then in gentle calls.
"Zabriel, how long have we been marching through this forest?"
The Lion halted and asked.
"My lord, we should have been walking for half a month…"
Zabriel thought about it, then changed his answer. "More like a full month. But we're not feeling any hunger at all, and even the light hasn't changed in the slightest.
Do you know what's going on?"
After they followed the Lion into this uncanny Calibanite forest, every chronometer failed. Pointers and digits sometimes rolled forward, sometimes backward.
No one could tell how much time had truly passed.
"The galaxy hides too many tangled secrets—more than even I can pierce."
The Lion turned to the uneasy knights behind him and spoke with certainty:
"But I can promise you this: I will lead you out of this forest. I used it to reach Kamas.
And it will guide us to Avalons."
Suddenly, his heart clenched—an emotion he could not suppress surged up.
The Lion pressed a hand to his chest, unease gathering like thunder.
It was the same sorrow and pain he had felt ten millennia ago when Caliban's sons butchered one another and burned their home to ash.
Now the Lion felt it again.
He realized a tragedy was about to occur—one bound to his blooded sons.
Between a Primarch and his sons there is a peculiar bond. Now that he had embraced his nature, he sensed that link with greater clarity, its tremors unmistakable.
He decided at once and lengthened his stride. "All of you, keep up with me. Don't fall behind!"
The power systems of his armor had long since failed in the previous battles. He drove the multi-ton suit forward with his body alone, running faster and faster.
Zabriel, Hada, and the other knights ran flat-out, jump packs and thruster jets burning, barely keeping pace—able only to glimpse the Lion's back.
"We're almost there!"
The Lion fixed on a thread of light far down the shaded path, urgency pounding in his chest.
A tragedy was unfolding. He had to stop it, had to mend the old sin.
He would bring the Fallen—tormented for millennia—back into the First Legion's embrace.
With great strides he crossed merely a step or two—and the world changed. The Calibanite forest vanished. Low, withered trees stretched away.
Beneath his boots, the ground turned to soft sand.
He lifted his gaze to the searing sun and thought only one thing—
This was Avalons.
…
Dreamweaver, bridge.
Eden sat at a desk beneath the observation dome, paging through intelligence gathered from every quarter.
His eyes fell on the file for Avalons, and worry sank its hooks in.
The developing system had reportedly suffered serious Chaos incursions, and worse, its planetary defenses were not strong.
"Let's hope we aren't too late."
He worried that by the time he arrived, the world would already lie in ruins—like the ravaged planets he had seen before.
Suddenly, the ship jolted. Armor shutters over the dome rumbled open, revealing the void outside.
A slightly yellowed world hung ahead—the planet Avalons.
"Good. We made it in time."
Eeden looked on the world with some satisfaction.
Then, belatedly, he realized something and glanced to Tarko.
"Did we just… hit something?"
Under normal conditions a behemoth flagship like this would never shudder on translation out of the Warp.
If the Dreamweaver had body-checked some orbital station, that would be a problem.
"Yes, Your Majesty."
The data-receiver at Tarko's temple flickered as he paused a few seconds before replying.
The office secretary and adjutant was constantly flooded with incoming feeds, ready to answer the Savior's every question at once.
He spoke slowly. "We appear to have collided with a cruiser. Light abrasions to the outer armor. Minimal damage overall."
"Sigh… Tell whoever's on the helm to show some care. They barrel around like hooligans."
Eeden sighed, oblivious to the fact that the helmsmen had learned their "style" from the Savior himself.
"Get in touch with the ship we hit and settle it. If compensation is due, pay it. An armor refit would be nice for them too.
And give them some supplies for… emotional damages."
As the Savior Primarch—the Emperor of the Imperium—he felt he must handle an accident with an Imperial ship properly. Otherwise it would be too much.
He would not chill the hearts of his loyal subjects.
Tarko's eyes ticked as he received another burst and added, "Your Majesty, the vessel we struck is a Dark Angels lord-class cruiser. They—"
Before he could finish, the shipwide vox crackled with an icy voice.
The Dark Angels cruiser broadcast to the Dreamweaver in a tone that brooked no dispute:
"Unknown Imperial vessel, you have profaned a warship of the First Legion, the Dark Angels.
We will board you for inspection. Your commanding officer will proceed at once to receive us. Note… any resistance or hostile act will be judged treason!"
To the Dark Angels, this stranger-ship was imposing, but it still fell short of the Rock.
It did not inspire dread.
Besides, the Rock—their fortress-monastery—was nearby. It could translate at high speed and arrive for support at any moment.
More importantly, in this region of the Imperium, none dared defy Dark Angels' authority.
After the Great Rift, they had tacitly restored Legion-scale war posture to fight the Imperium's burgeoning enemies—and their authority only grew heavier.
Tarko's look soured.
The Dark Angels intended to board and "inspect" the Savior's own vessel, and demanded the highest commander meet them at the airlock—an arrogance and affront.
It was nothing less than an insult to the Savior and Emperor of the Imperium.
"They're touchier than I'd hoped, even if this is a misunderstanding. The Lion will be worse to handle,"
Eeden thought.
He worried the Lion would be too intransigent—splitting with him, even trying to build a Second Imperium. That would be… vexing.
Even the Emperor of old had struggled to resolve disputes between Primarchs.
Especially among those who had embraced their essential natures.
They were more potent, near-impossible to bend, and even annihilation seldom held them; they could always flee into the Warp.
Corax, for example—drifting as a great raven in the Immaterium.
As for the matter at hand, he did not trouble himself.
This kind of trifling incident did not require his voice.
No sooner had the Dark Angels' vox-cast ended than the Dreamweaver replied over the channel:
"Dark Angels, I am Inquisitorial Grand Master Antil. I accompany the great Savior and Emperor of the Imperium.
I suspect profanation in your ranks. Heave to at once and submit to an Inquisitorial investigation!"
"By the Emperor, I am Captain-General Tilis of the Custodian Guard.
Your actions verge on profanation. Shut down all communications. The Custodians will board and subject you to examination, to establish your purity and loyalty!"
As the voices rolled out, the Dreamweaver's relic-grade macro-batteries traversed, cavernous barrels yawning—intimidation honed to a fine edge.
Such words were like slamming someone to the wall and ordering them to produce their papers—now.
The Savior Primarch's name carried weight in the Imperium's light… and in some quarters besides.
But in this shadowed region, many had likely never heard the title at all; there was bound to be friction and wrangling.
So when Eden came to the Imperium's dark side, he brought high officers of the Custodes and the Inquisition—moving calling cards—to speak with the powers here.
No explanations needed.
If not for the fact that the Captain-General must hold the Palace and could not be spared, Eden would have brought the Captain-General as his personal guard.
As Emperor, the right was his.
"By the Emperor…"
The Dark Angels sergeant on vox duty went numb.
He didn't know who the "Savior" was—but he knew the Inquisition and the Custodes. No one in the Imperium did not.
Inquisitorial Grand Master. Captain-General of the Custodian Guard?
What sort of blasphemy would draw both at once?
And who in the void was this "Savior"?
The Angel responsible for the channel softened a shade.
"Lord Tilis, Lord Antil—Dark Angels remain loyal. We will submit to inspection…"
They did not want a clash with Custodes or Inquisition.
"Prepare to make planetfall."
Eden ignored the matter thereafter. He went straight to the armory to don war-plate, ready to descend to the surface.
The Dreamweaver had already pinged everything happening below.
Time was painfully short.
…
Not long before.
Avalons, desert.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM—
Burning Drop Pods slammed into the sands one after another, rattling the ground.
Hatches blew, and figures in long robes and heavy black Terminator plate strode out.
Their precious armor was worked with reliquaries and sword-reliefs, helms crested with a pair of splayed wings.
Unmistakable—brethren of the Dark Angels' Inner Circle, giant blades in hand,
their sacred duty the purgation of the Fallen.
One Inner Circle warrior after another debarked, closing on the traitors in silence. Black armor rolled forward like a storm front, awe and killing will spreading like frost.
"This may be our last battle. Never thought we'd end it as traitors."
Kayton looked at the machine-precise Inner Circle warriors advancing and swallowed, bitter to the marrow.
The Fallen captain knew there was no hope of flight.
The enemy were nearly twice their number—and bore the First Legion's finest weapons and war-gear.
"We didn't betray anyone! The Lion and the First Legion attacked us and destroyed Caliban!"
Horlock ground out the words.
The Lion and those madmen had done wrong, branded them traitors, and hunted their brothers-in-arms. How hateful could one be?
Avka kept his silence and drew his blade.
The old Knight-Officer felt no fear, no rage—only regret. He would not guard Avalons any longer, nor get the chance to wash away the slander of "traitor."
Vmm—
Avka's heart lurched. Fear flared across his face.
From the distant Warp-rent he sensed a fathomless darkness gathering—about to break upon this world.
"A terrible darkness is coming. We cannot fight now."
So thought Avka.
He looked to the Inner Circle ahead and tried to cool the bloodshed. "My former brothers, the darkness is here. We should—"
He never finished. Battle crashed down without warning, sweeping everyone into its maw.
Hoses of mass-reactive fire slashed across their ranks. The Fallen brought shields up. Explosive bolts shattered against them in sheaves of sparks.
"Shield wall!"
Avka had no breath for talk and dragged his voice to command. They were outgunned and could barely answer.
One Fallen after another fell in ruin.
Fortunately, the Inner Circle's aim was to take the Fallen alive.
They laid suppressing fire as they closed step by step, then drew the great swords from hip or back.
"Seize every traitor!"
A tall, long-limbed Inner Circle Knight-Officer in black Terminator plate launched in a bound, hewed a Fallen's shield in two, then drop-kicked the bearer to the sand.
He punched through the Fallen line. More Inner Circle brethren flooded in.
Power-field light flared across the field.
Caliban's knights were masters of the blade. Steel rang on steel in vicious duels, every cut and parry rimed with death.
"You've chosen the worst time to butcher each other!"
Avka roared, flattening two Inner Circle Knight-Officers in a rush and leaving them in smoking ruin.
Old as he was, he fought alone against a dozen to relieve his beleaguered Fallen.
When he paused to breathe, he found deep new gashes in his chest and shoulder, who-knew-when struck.
He looked on the melee and felt only grief.
The feud had burned for ten millennia, blood-brothers turned mortal foes—blades drawn, no quarter.
And he had no balm for it—no way to clear their names.
Danger sparked up his spine. He threw himself into a roll as an alchemical shell screamed down and burst.
He looked up. A Thunderhawk gunship had appeared in the sky at some point.
A side hatch slid open. A black-armored figure in a dark-green robe stood within, a cross of sword-blades on his back, his long cloak cracking in the wind.
One of the Inner Circle's Grand Masters—Belial, Master of the Deathwing.
"Avka. You will not escape, traitor."
Belial leapt from the craft, slammed into the earth, and swept his storm bolter in a scything arc—kneecaps of several Fallen exploded into scrap.
Inner Circle brethren stamped the downed Fallen and bound them with cruel devices engineered to inflict exquisite agony.
They were not spared by capture. They would be hauled to the Rock—interrogated, then executed.
"Damn it!"
Belial's arrival pushed Avka toward despair.
The man was a paragon of blade and bolt, a "Lion of the battlefield" said to mirror the Primarch's knightly virtue—
and a perfectionist besides.
It meant that once the Master of the Deathwing moved, there would be no pulling him back—no pleading him down. Every Fallen would be taken and erased.
Zzzrak—
Belial swung the Sword of Silence. Power-field sparks flared—and sound seemed to vanish, swallowed by the blade's aura.
He smashed aside several Fallen and came straight for Avka, his assault irresistible.
"Belial! The darkness is about to swallow this world. We must stand together and face the Chaos incursion—not slaughter each other!"
Avka gritted his teeth against the Master's assault. Fresh-welded armor plates flashed and went flying, shorn away.
"Kneel and repent your crimes, traitor!"
Belial ignored the plea, hammered Avka across the sand, then planted him and drove to force him to his knees—to make him confess.
A calculated humiliation.
Of course he knew the darkness was near. It would not stop him from cleansing the Fallen first.
Then he would handle the dark.
"You don't understand. It's worse than you think!"
Avka forced himself upright. He would not kneel and confess to a crime he had never committed.
He'd rather die.
The Fallen and the Dark Angels both swore the other had fired first. The truth lay buried beneath ruins, leaving only hate behind.
"Hmph."
Belial said nothing more. He wrenched Avka's weapon away and raised his sword to hack through the Knight-Officer's knees.
BOOM—
A tank-killing shell smashed into Belial's back—his power field blazed and caught it.
…Huh?
Belial turned and saw the attacker—a planetary defense battletank.
"Don't you dare kill our hero!"
"He is our guardian—not a traitor!"
A mortal soldier's voice shook, and more soldiers joined him. They trembled as they glared up at the Dark Angel.
KA-THOOM!
Belial snapped a searing alchemical round into the tank and flipped it onto its back. His voice was iron-cold:
"All mortal soldiers, kneel. Or you will be executed for your profane attack."
He did not kill them. Mortal foolishness did not merit a Master's wrath.
But he issued a final ultimatum.
The soldiers did not bend. They stood rigid, trying to shield their savior—their hero to whom they had given highest honors and devotion.
Tribal-born soldiers, stubborn as stone. Even for an egg against a rock, some things admit no compromise.
Their will was harder than steel.
"Your resolve does you credit, soldiers—but you apply it wrongly.
You must not commit rebellion for the sake of traitors. Perhaps they have beguiled you. This is your last chance."
Belial's patience held; his calm was absolute. Virtue, and vice—once he judged, no one could turn him:
"In thirty seconds, we will execute all deemed rebellious in this zone."
His meaning was clear. Fail to kneel and swear loyalty—you die.
Inner Circle brethren could kill every rebel here in seconds—an abattoir in the making.
"Soldiers—obey the order!"
Avka and the Fallen had tears glimmering in their eyes. They had never received such trust—and they felt honor in it.
They ceased struggling. The Dark Angels forced them down and set them in the posture of penitence—on their knees.
Avalons' guardians would not let the people die for their stubbornness.
"Avalons' soldiers—obey your guardians…"
Haraga gave the order, drained, her gaze dim. She knelt and bowed her head to the Dark Angels in submission.
The system's Astra Militarum commander knew she could not defy the Dark Angels—not for her guardians, not for her world. She could only accept.
One by one, mortal soldiers sank to their knees through tears, a black sea of bowed heads.
Only Belial and the Inner Circle stood.
They looked down on Fallen and mortals both, their authority beyond dispute.
"By the Emperor!"
Haraga, kneeling, noticed a shadow sweep over the ground. She looked up—and saw an immense starship, terrible and holy in its majesty.
She had never seen an Imperial ship so vast.
More shocking still, it had all but shouldered aside the Dark Angels' cruiser, its presence irresistible.
It was the Dreamweaver—the Savior's flagship.
The vessel of the human Golden Age, refit again and again, had become a near twenty-kilometer void-beast. Its arrival alone crushed the breath from lungs.
Murmurs and cries rippled across the host.
"Traitor—will you now admit your guilt and repent?"
Belial looked down at Avka, as calm as ever—untouched by anything.
He was about to begin a bout of exquisitely honed torments.
But a heartbeat later, his face changed. He, too, saw the giant ship in the sky—brazen beyond belief.
Then sacred, sonorous hymnals rolled across the atmosphere.
An epic ode exalted the one chosen by the Emperor—the Savior Primarch, the Hope of Mankind, the Emperor of the Imperium.
After that came a voice like a proclamation of law:
"The great Savior Primarch, the second sun in the Warp, the Emperor who shall rule all the Imperium's bounds, will now descend upon Avalons.
From this moment, all armed conflict on this world will cease. Make ready to receive the coming of this august being.
Defiance will be judged profanation of the Imperium—and of the Emperor!"
RRRRAAAAA—
The atmosphere tore. A burning immensity punched down—a colossal mechanized descent platform screaming through the sky.
At the same time—
From the belly of the void-leviathan overhead, a gold-hulled craft slid free and sank toward the sands.
Such awful majesty shook Haraga and her soldiers to the core. They bowed lower still, unbidden.
This time, they knelt not to the Dark Angels—
but to the one who was coming.
"What manner of being is this?"
The Fallen were shaken too. They wondered why he came—and whether there was any future besides the gallows for them.
"Our Rock should be nearly here as well."
On the desert flats, Belial squared his shoulders to the slicing wind. His cloak snapped like a banner.
He looked up, face set like stone.
(End of Chapter)
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