Chapter 170: Chaos???
Golden light erupted as Sanguinius descended into the Garden of Nurgle, his voice a roar that seemed to shake reality itself: "Go ahead and try it on me—"
He stopped.
Francis stood amid the chaos, casually draining a Slaanesh daemon dry before squeezing it into the soup pot like a discarded orange. He stirred methodically, scooped out a ladle-full of thick liquid, blew on it with the care of someone sampling fine cuisine, then took a deliberate sip.
"Goddess! This is perfect! The seasoning is exactly right!" He held the spoon out to Isha, who accepted it and took a small sip.
Her eyes widened with genuine appreciation. "Mmm! You have improved. Well done !"
"See? I've perfected the recipe. When I make proper soup later, I'll have it add seasonings according to my specifications. The flavor will be extraordinary." Francis spoke to himself as he examined the armor in the pot, a flesh-and-metal mass that trembled with each movement.
It was, quite literally, an infinite egg-laying machine. With every tremor, Chaos eggs erupted from its surface like a fountain. Indiscriminate, ravenous, utterly deaf to command.
"Don't bite me there!" A maggot-like daemon shrieked as it attempted to flee the swarm, but its massive bulk moved slowly. The eggs overwhelmed it, gnawing until the daemon bled profusely across the corrupted earth.
Across the garden, several Slaanesh daemons attempted to banish the eggs with charm and psychic force. The eggs didn't even slow. They emitted strange, discordant sounds and chased the daemons with mouths agape.
One Slaanesh daemon leaped onto a corrupted vine to escape, only to have an egg bite straight through it, sending the daemon crashing onto its back.
Sanguinius stared in silence. 'What in the Emperor's name is going on here?'
If not for the two colossal figures still locked in combat above, he would not have believed any of this.
"Why is it so hot?" Francis wiped sweat from his brow, feeling a burning sensation crawl across his back. He turned and saw it: a massive meteorite suspended vertically in the sky, its ribbon-like appendages lined with countless eyes. All staring directly at him.
There were three seconds of silence. Then Francis's voice erupted, a wail of genuine despair.
"SUNGUINIUS! Hey, look, it's my Brother. Oh, ~ You've finally come! These beasts are inhuman! Help me! Even my own parents aren't as precious as you!"
Sanguinius felt his heart clench. His brother suffering so much. He had failed to protect him. It was his fault Francis had endured this torment.
Without hesitation, he tore through the constraints holding him, determined to save his brother. Francis opened his arms in welcome.
Thick plumes of poisonous mist and a purple psionic storm surged toward Sanguinius, attempting to drive him back. He met the assault with a burst of blazing golden light, resisting their pressure with all his might.
"Francis is destined for Chaos!" Slaanesh's voice rang across the void.
"Every action demands a price!" Nurgle's voice, thick with rot, echoed in response.
Both inferred the same message: Sanguinius was outmatched.
The golden brilliance wavered under the combined onslaught of poison and storm.
"Shut up!" The words tore from Sanguinius with raw fury. "I have already lost enough! I will not lose him again! I will not allow you to torment him!"
Nurgle fell silent. It was Francis who had invaded His garden, after all. How had this become His fault?
Sanguinius's rage intensified until a shard of brass detached from his form, spiraling upward. It transformed slowly, inevitably, into an ancient war horn.
The blast was immediate and absolute.
A golden shockwave erupted forth, pure and terrible, tearing through the heavens and earth alike. The poisonous fog shattered instantly. The psionic storm collapsed into nothing.
"Those who would bind the Light will face reckoning!" Sanguinius roared, transforming into a streak of golden fire. He descended toward Francis with terrible speed, seized his brother, and launched skyward with all the strength his wings could muster.
Francis, trailing tattered armor and scattering Chaos eggs in his wake, looked back to see Isha raising one fair hand in farewell. The Goddess of Life herself, waving him free.
Nurgle and Slaanesh moved to intercept, but the brass horn's aftershocks threw them backward.
Nurgle "..."
Slaanesh "..."
Across the Warp, Khorne, locked in eternal combat with the Emperor, suddenly felt his strength drain away. His legs gave out as He collapsed.
Khorne stared in absolute confusion.
On Blackrock Fortress, all eyes turned toward the Garden, and silence reigned. None had imagined Francis capable of such devastation.
Only Magnus showed understanding. A knowing smile curved his lips as he spoke with effortless certainty.
"Do not panic, my friends. This is precisely as Francis intended. He may appear helpless now, but in truth, he is exceedingly dangerous."
The Soul Drinkers' fists clenched. They suspected an elaborate Thousand Sons deception, a ploy meant to draw them from their fortress.
Magnus, unconcerned with their suspicion, continued assembling the truth as he alone perceived it.
"He may even be in danger himself," he mused. "Or perhaps… he is merely the reason someone else soon will be."
The Thousand Sons said nothing.
The Soul Drinkers glared at the insinuation, an insult against their innocent primarch....
All right, perhaps not innocent. But a primarch was still a primarch.
At that moment, golden light streaked across the sky. Every eye snapped upward. A great battle erupted almost immediately after, and then they saw him. Francis, perched atop the massive meteorite, flew free from the garden.
"The Primarch has emerged! We must march to his aid this instant!" a Soul Drinker bellowed.
"Waaaaaagh!" the others roared in response.
The Soul Drinkers adjusted their fortress trajectory and gave pursuit.
Magnus, still contemplating, was jolted from his reverie. He spoke with sudden excitement: "You see? I told you this would happen! He is Francis. Clearly, this was all according to his plan!"
...
On a safe passage through the Warp, a child in fine garments pointed toward the viewing port. "Grandfather, grandfather, it is quite lively outside."
An elderly nobleman resting nearby patted the child, though the boy was already two meters tall, and chuckled. "Let Grandfather see what draws your attention."
He looked out and beheld a tall warrior seated upon a massive meteorite. Behind him, a great obsidian warship. Behind the warship, countless daemons and Chaos eggs were in chaotic pursuit.
The old man's eyes widened. He rubbed his face roughly, looked again, and screamed in absolute terror.
"Ah! Ah! AH! What is that! What—Ah! Ah!" With a sound like shattering glass, the old man exploded into a Chaos egg.
The child, having witnessed this without fear, merely watched with dark, gleaming eyes.
"Courage and glory," he whispered.
Mars
The Vaults of Moravec lay deep beneath the Martian crust, sealed behind a massive, unnamed steel door. Its surface was inscribed with countless ancient runes, sacred prohibitions meant to remain unbroken until the end of time.
Before this door stood a figure: Fabricator-General Kelbor-Hal of Mars. He wore robes that glowed with sickly red light, and mechanical tentacles writhed behind him like serpents. Corruption and fanaticism radiated from him in equal measure.
He chanted in a language not known to orthodox Mechanicus doctrine. The words were prayers, yes, but prayers to something far older and far darker than the Machine God. His voice was a hybrid abomination: mechanical whining interwoven with deep, ritualistic incantation. It distorted the very space around him.
As the chant continued, the runes, sacred, inviolable, began to weep black liquid. The metal surface corroded and peeled away, revealing dark red cracks beneath, as if poisoned from within.
Kelbor-Hal had finally grasped his mistake.
The Ork technology that had eluded him, that he could not replicate or record using STC protocols, had been misdirection.
Francis had deceived him, leading him on a false pursuit while obscuring something far more critical.
But as he prepared to settle this account with that infernal child, a revelation descended upon him like divine inspiration. The god of machines itself whispered truth into his corrupted mind.
"The Imperium was a lie. They destroyed the God of All Machines with their own hands. The Emperor stole its power. I will be the one to awaken it. After the Brotherhood of the Singularity fails, I alone will resurrect the God of All Machines. I will possess infinite knowledge."
Kelbor-Hal's mechanical voice emerged cold and absolute: "It will be done."
He opened the forbidden door.
A piercing shriek erupted as the vault burst wide. Thick shadows poured from the opening like something breathing, some sealed entity exhaling after eons of containment. Kelbor-Hal stepped across the threshold without hesitation.
The interior defied human comprehension. This place existed twisted to extremes beyond sanity, warped by fantasy and madness made manifest.
Countless mechanical devices shimmered with unnatural light, suspended in the air, many appearing almost alive. Some emitted intense Warp fluctuations that felt as though they were tearing souls apart.
Corrupted gears and pipes lined the walls, and within them flowed liquid shadow.
He saw it.
He saw it.
A massive black box, inscribed with a single designation: Silica Animus.
In an abandoned section of the Mars Foundry, long-dormant machinery awakened. It roared to life with a power that shook the foundations, a sound of terrible purpose.
Kelbor-Hal stood before the casting table, his cold mechanical eyes fixed on the form taking shape before him. His metal fingers danced across the control panel, entering commands that should never have existed.
Unobserved, a thread of blue, chaotic energy wound itself around the machinery like a serpent.
The production line accelerated. Enormous robotic arms seized mountains of raw material and hurled them into furnaces that burned white-hot. The cooling tanks beside them hissed and steamed, releasing vapor that obscured the space between red light and shadow in an eerie haze.
On the assembly line, mechanical figures began to coalesce. Their emergence from raw material and machinery was gradual, methodical, and profoundly wrong.
What Kelbor-Hal was creating, what the corrupted god was guiding him to create, remained unknown even to him. But the consequences would echo far beyond Mars itself.
[End of Chapter]
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