Imperium Ascendant

Part 1: Formendacil​

(The following is the only surviving manuscript of the High Remembrancer assigned to Crusader Fleet IX.)

Without the valiant, hidden efforts of Dante Uriael and the Dawn Angels, humanity's Great Crusade would have been destroyed amongst the evil, radiation soaked Halo Stars of the Galactic North. The Rangda, the most vile and hideous of all mankind's enemies, lays in wait for our armies to meet them in battle. Countless humans have perished in their continent-spanning flesh farms while their enslavers hide in the shadows, basking in our ignorance of their true threat.

Their empire resides within the Halo Stars and few of our people have ever gone there before. Every single Rogue Trader or Mechanicus exploration detachment that has survived their return journey from that region has whispered tales of eldritch abominations of technology and sorcery, with an evil stalking those stars that was wholly material. Imperial High Command ran estimations, and they calculated that the xenos waiting for us in those regions were sufficiently advanced enough to pose a true threat to our Emperor's grand dream of Reunification. The Randga must be exterminated, but it would be utter folly for our armies to engage against such a powerful foe without obtaining all of the information that we could.

The Emperor, blessed be His will, has charged the IXth Primarch with diving deep into the Halo Stars in order to sabotage the Randga war machine and provide the rest of the Imperium with crucial details to further develop our strategies for the imminent xenocide. I would like to think that in some small way, my own observations have resulted in stratagems that have delivered salvation to millions if not billions of people, but I digress. My duty is to serve the Emperor by spreading word of the actions of His sons, and I am humble in the completion of my duties.

Dante Uriael is not only a striking figure, but a cunning tactician and his first foray into the Halo Stars was a resounding success. I shudder to think about my counterparts who were assigned to the Night Lords for the duration of their duties. Campaigns filled with terror and rad-wasted landscapes do not make for good stories, so I constantly find myself grateful to have found myself tasked with recording the deeds of the Dawn Angels. I have spoken at length about the accomplishments of the Glorious IXth in my other recordings, but I shall summarize them in brief here as they will prove useful as a backstory to what will surely be our greatest victory yet:

The Halo Stars proved no match for the Primarch's tactical acumen, and dozens of fortress worlds the Rangda possessed were snatched from their horrid clutches. It was during these early skirmishes that we learned the horrific extent of the enemy we were up against. The Rangda wear suits of meat the way you or I would don clothing. The actual creatures themselves are a literal virus. The infection is the species, and they control whatever they infect to do their nefarious bidding. Flesh is sacred to the Rangda, or at least what passes as sacred to minds as alien as these wretched xenos possess.

The Biologis adepts that are on Crusader Fleet IX with me say that humanity and most other xenos evolved over time from bacteria. Humanity might have taken the superior path over all xenos, but we evolved from similar organisms as many of our protectorates, and their thought process is knowable to us. The Rangda come from viruses, evolving along lines that we cannot possibly fathom and resulting in a xenos species whose mere existence is anathemic to the rest of the galaxy.

It is for this reason that Lord Dante purges their worlds as he does. I have seen his announcements, as he calls together his sons to inform them of the next target he and his psychic children have foreseen. Their Grigori Choir is a truly spectacular sight to behold, and I have been blessed beyond all reason to have been fortunate enough to see it once. It was the last visit I had to the Primarch, actually, as he and the Choir were preparing to select their next target to raid and sabotage.

There is a dark spot in all of his visions, centered around the world of Formendacil. One of Dante's captains informed me that his Primarch saw the future like a series of branches in a tree, all extending out from the root of the present. Make a decision to travel left, and the other branches that required you to go right wither away. Go right, and the opposite happens. The planet of Formendacil, a Dark Age of Technology Agri-World, was an area where no amount of psychic foresight could penetrate the shroud of darkness covering any possible future located on that planet.

This was unacceptable to the Primarch, and in a rousing speech that brought tears to my eyes, Dante Uriael, the Archangel of the IXth Legiones Astartes vowed that he would prepare the IXth Crusader Fleet to head to this planet immediately, crushing whatever lay there and preventing it from being used to damage the Greater Imperium. Many of us would perish, he reminded us, but only in Death does Duty end. There was not a dry mortal eye in the entire chamber, and we immediately began preparations to embark towards Formendacil to destroy the Rangdan influence in that section of space forever.

It has been a month since the Lord Primarch's command, and today we are to exit the Warp at Formendacil's Mandeville Point. There is no fear in my heart, only the purity of purpose and the fiery conviction of justice. None can stand before the might of the Dawn Angels. Witness the Light!

(Note: this is the last entry the High Remembrancer of the IXth Crusader Fleet ever made. No record of what happened to him has ever been discovered, nor what happened to any other remembrancer stationed among the Dawn Angels.)

---

(Note: the following is a letter written by an individual calling themselves Colonel Nosaj Rekzilk of the Tupelov Lancers Cavalry Auxilia)

I am tired, so very tired. It is not even the weight of the years I carry that causes such fatigue, though that number has risen far higher than I ever thought that it would. No, I am weary because of what these eyes have seen in my years of service.

I was a young man when I first joined the Solar Auxilia. They had just liberated my homeworld from the oppressive tyrants that had laid claim to it for thousands of years, but I did not care about such things. The only thing that mattered was getting food in my belly and the Imperium took that once they destroyed the army that I was a part of. Since the only skills I had were following orders and killing, I joined the Auxilia, where they could put my services to use.

Those were the golden days of my life, though I did not know it at the time. The Tupelov Lancers were one of the 'Old Hundred' Auxilia legions that had formed on Old Terra. I never saw the planet, I doubt I ever will now, but I was still the beneficiary of the lineage of my legion. They said they were cavalrymen, who rode horses into battle. They told me that as a part of my initiation, I was to touch the horse while blindfolded. It was harrowing, and I won't lie by saying I was brave. The moment I felt something squishy and slimy touch my hand, I screamed like a small child and ripped my blinders off. It was nothing but a cloned horse brain, soon to be inserted into my motorbike in order to provide the machine spirit with the traits we desired in our cavalry. This was my initiation into the Lancers, and though I couldn't possibly know it yet, this was the best life was ever going to get for me.

I was fortunate enough to be put in a regiment that took discipline seriously. I grew as a person, got out of the soulless existence that I'd had for so long. Even met a woman, a fellow Lancer who made me want to fight for something more than my next meal. She gave me a son too, and it was a point of pride that I got to watch him grow up from a little boy to a young man right before my eyes. An Auxilia base is no proper place to raise a child, but I was still a proud father. There are worse places for a young man to be, and perhaps when he was older, he would find his own way in the Imperial Army.

The Lancers were fortunate to be assigned to Crusader Fleet IX. Dante Uriael is a good strategist, and we have never been deployed into a fight where we were simply to soak up attacks. As one of the first troops to hit enemy targets in a fleet known for their rapid attack movements, the Tupelov Lancers soon found themselves as the Primarch's favorite group of mortal soldiers for any sort of vanguard actions. It was for this reason that we were aboard the Seraphim itself when word came down that we were going to Formendacil. This wasn't new to us. We'd been hitting so many Randga targets that we couldn't keep all the planets separate from one another. Bombed out landscapes tend to blend together.

We trained and trained for over a month preparing for an invasion against whatever those cursed beings would throw at us. Strangely, they didn't give us information about whatever target we would be facing once on the ground. It was unusual for members of Crusader Fleet IX, but I'd fought with little to no intel before. It wasn't ideal, but not exactly something that made you want to cut and run.

I'd love to say that when we exited the Mandeville Point that I was firing a turret or delivering a rousing speech, but I was strapped into our Stormbird already, waiting for the signal to drop into the atmosphere. Ask someone else who was there for the battle itself, though there probably aren't many of them left. Warning sirens started screeching and we were told to get everyone into the birds as we could. All I know is that the Seraphim was shaking something bad, and then the loudest, most metallic screech of my life accompanied the hull of the ship getting torn open as my Stormbird along with the rest of them that carried my crew were sucked out into the void.

I had a much clearer view of the battle then. I'm no strategist, but I know an ambush when I see one. These horrid, milky-white flesh ships were shooting radiation weapons at our comrades, so there were precious few explosions on our side. The ships just sat there, drifting in space, waiting for those… things to take control of them.

The Seraphim was an exception to that. I saw a worm the size of a Gloriana-class battleship appear out of a hole in the void and sink its maw into the ship's flank. A fireball erupted from where its teeth sunk down and our flagship scattered into dozens of pieces. My heart sank into my gut. There was no way anyone could survive something like that. We were going to be out here alone, stranded without a Primarch to lead us. I accepted my death at that moment, and as I looked at my son who was on board the same bird as me, I just hoped that it would be a quick and painless one.

Then we heard him. Over the vox channel, the Lord Primarch's voice came in like a thunderbolt casting aside the storm clouds of our doubt. We were to rally on the surface and try to establish a stronghold. It was a hellish descent onto the planet, with artillery blasting every fourth ship out of the sky as we descended. Once we hit the atmosphere, the Astartes piled out and took to the skies on their silver wings. We were not so lucky. We lost even more ships as we tried to find a place to land.

Above it all, the Seraphim descended towards the surface of the planet like a fallen angel out of our myths. I don't know why, but thinking of the Angel resembling a fallen angel made me chuckle. I know I could get executed for thinking such a thought, much less recording it, but I don't care about such things now. Not much could get me to care after news reached me that my wife and her entire ship were killed in the descent to Formennos. I lost my better half that day, but I had to go on. Our son needed us, and the Primarch needed him. Thousands of Astartes had been killed, and we needed new ones if we were going to win this fight. My boy was the right age, and so he was chosen. They told me it was an honor to have a son become one of the Emperor's Angels. I didn't see any honor in it. Their war had taken my wife, and now it was taking my son. What kept me going was making him proud. If he was doing his service to Lord Urael, then his old man wasn't going to be found wanting. ᚱ₳NꝋᛒĘ𐌔

Those early days were tough for us. I was one of the first to be found by the Primarch, our squadron was one of the first to reach the wreckage of the Seraphim to look for survivors, and he appeared on the top of the hull, looking down at all that had transpired. I swear I saw a tear of blood on his face, but I won't ever know for sure. As awestruck as we were by his beauty, we had a job to do. Supplies were gathered, what remained of his Choir were assembled, and we were off. I thought it would be a morale booster, to be these heroes riding in to rescue my comrades from the inevitable death that awaited them, but stars above was I wrong. I was so wrong.

We kept on making it to these places, only to find that our allies weren't there. The Astartes were spooked, though I don't think even they knew the emotion they were feeling. Every single one of them kept going on about how it "didn't make sense. We saw them here". I don't care what they meant, or what sort of "seeing" they were talking about, all I know is that we hardly ever found anyone where they were supposed to be, and infection was a real danger for us. Only one out of every ten places we went in those early days actually had a squad to rescue. The other times we either found empty land, reanimated comrades we had to burn, or stuff so bad I don't even want to think about it right now. If it weren't for the Primarch, I don't know how we ever would have made it off.

Eventually though, we did get what resembled an army. The Seraphim was our main base, but we soon abandoned that when we realized that it painted a huge target on us that said "shell us from orbit even harder". Moved around a whole lot in those early days, but I didn't complain. My only job was to aim and shoot. I'm damn good at it, and I did the Imperium proud. Started to even think that we were gonna be ok.

Then I saw him. Our army moved around a whole lot, but there were parts that couldn't be transported quickly. We needed forges to make weapons, stations to intercept communications, and labs to do all sorts of messed up flesh-work. It was at one of those flesh sites that I saw their dumpster. It was full of human bodies, overflowing with limbs, heads, and unknown gunk. Some Dawn Angel who was scouting with us told us that these were the candidates who didn't make the cut to be Astartes.

"Usually they keep fatalities low", he said. "But even in the best of times, it is not unknown for candidates to perish when trying to undergo apotheosis."

I pitied them, these people who tried to serve their Emperor and were found wanting through an accident of birth. I don't know what came over me, but I made my way over to the body pile to pay my respects, to let them know that someone mourned for them even after their death. It was my gravest mistake, because I saw something in that pile that I won't ever forget. Something that will haunt me as long as I live, short though that may be. I tried to tell myself I was mistaken. It had been a little while, and maybe I was just imagining. Things.

But I knew I wasn't. My boy had his mother's eyes, and they were staring back at me from that pile, lifeless and scared. I guess he didn't make the cut.

It was all over for me after that. I'm a broken man, and I don't even feel bad about that. They're calling for volunteers to stay behind and sacrifice themselves to let the Dawn Angels retreat and regroup. That sounds like a good way to go for me. Despite what I've written here, I still believe in the Emperor's plan, and I'm no traitor to His plan. Maybe I'll take a couple of those infected bastards with me. Maybe I'll keep my honor when I die. Maybe I'll see my family again.

Doesn't really matter if I don't get any of that though. I'll be content that when I die, I won't be in this forsaken place anymore.

---

(The following is an interview with IXth Legion Chaplain Meros bin Mezd and Azkaellon bin Vigil, leader of the IXth Legion Ophanim and veteran of Formendacil.)

I am honored that you chose to sit for this interview, honored brother. Though I must ask: you have been hesitant to divulge anything of what happened on Formendacil before. What has made you change your mind?

The Primarch has commanded it.

I do not understand. Lord Dante gave his own personal report to the Adeptus Umbrex immediately after your rescue. Why does it take a command from the Primarch to get you to open up, and why after all this time?

He commanded it. It is not for the benefit of the Imperium, but for my own. We do not feel fear, but fear wasn't what haunted us on that planet. It was something… too alien for our minds to fully comprehend. Our Primarch believes that talking about such things can help relieve me of my burdens, and give our Apothecaries useful tools for helping our brothers deal with harrowing encounters. Lord Dante says "you may not know fear, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't know safety". Let others learn from my mistakes, and from my resilience. The Primarch commands, so I obey.

The war wasn't like any other that we faced. The Dawn Angels are not the Warhounds or the Lunar Templars. Those fools drop into danger at a moment's notice, and though their attacks are fearsome, they are brutal and irregular. When the Dawn Angels take the field to fight, we do so only after careful strategic and precognitive planning. The enemy rarely wins, because we already know what they've going to do. There is no such thing as a 'surprise attack' when you face us, because all of your plans are known to us.

That didn't happen on Formendacil. We should have known something was wrong when our visions about the planet were blurry.

What do you mean by blurry?

I mean it was unclear. Like the minute details of the system were blurred to us. A future can diverge in many ways, and the branches can be maddening if one isn't properly trained, but our Primarch trained his Grigori Choir well. Yet despite all of our power and training, we could get no more than the most basic of information from our visions. An enemy was waiting for us, they had large numbers, it would be costly, all of the usual things.

We were fools. Emperor forgive me, but we were fools. We should have reconsidered, tried a different method of conquest or simply waiting for reinforcements, but the Crusade was at its height, and our Primarch wished for our names to be held up with the best of his brothers. "The Dawn Angels are not mediocre, so let us not have our record reflect such a statement" he would always say. Formendacil cured him of that errant thought. It cured all of us from such a foolish outlook. We weren't just mediocre, we were failures. We all died upon the surface of Formendacil, and we were reborn again.

Start from the beginning. Why did the void battle go so poorly?

It didn't at first. We exited from the Mandeville Point in standard formation and destroyed their preliminary defenses. At first, there was nothing to suggest that this wouldn't be a standard, typical fight. The Rangda dealt us casualties, but nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing that we couldn't anticipate.

Then disaster struck. Our choir collapsed screaming about horrors coming from the Warp, and we all braced for impact. Trying to get them to divulge further information was like trying to grasp water. The harder we squeezed, the less information we had. It should have been a sign. We should have turned around and tried to make a run for it. Regroup and see if we could fight them in the future. But that wasn't our way. Not yet, at least.

Just as we were starting to put a serious dent in their defenses, gigantic worms the size of a battleship erupted from the Warp. They literally chewed through our armor and sent thousands of our brothers to an early grave. We humans have long convinced ourselves that we are the Alpha predator, the thing that all others fear. To be greeted by the sight of something that so emphatically disproves that point is more than most mortals can bear. Astartes were able to withstand the horror staring them in the face, but our crews were not. Hundreds of ships hung about uselessly in the void, our crews unable to function as some of the Mechanicum started ripping the prosthetics off of their body, claiming that "They can worm inside of metal. Nothing is safe anymore".

Perhaps we could have salvaged the fight, even with those worms about. But those xenos weren't stupid, whatever else their flaws were. The biggest and nastiest worm of them all made straight for the flagship and gobbled up a sizable section of the Seraphim's starboard side before we could even bring macrocannons to bear on it. In the blink of an eye, we lost the flagship. The Orphanim begged Lord Dante to evacuate. The ship was crashing and there was nothing that could be done to stop it, but he refused to leave.

We tried, stars above did we try to persuade him. But our Primarch was insistent. "This fight is not over, and we will need a rallying point for my sons" he said. His eyes began to glow with a golden light and the crew on the bridge stopped their wailing and began to calmly guide us into our inevitable descent to the planet's surface. Now it was more like a glide than a freefall. We hit the planet hard, but not hard enough to break the ship up even more. It would serve its new purpose well. The crash still hurt, but we were meant to take it. Seeing Lord Dante standing tall and proud upon the wreckage of his flagship was enough to make me hope again. We all started to hope again. Some of the mortal crew were openly weeping. I look back on how we acted with disgust. We were forgetting something. Can you see it, brother? Can you see what we were missing?

Why couldn't you foresee the Worms?

Exactly. I hope you have begun to understand why we changed our way of thinking so dramatically after Formendacil. A question that comes as easily to you as breathing was one that eluded us all, save for perhaps Lord Dante, though he had more pressing concerns at the moment. It is my failure above all of our brothers. The Orphanim is supposed to be our Primarch's guiding voice. He is a Primarch, but that does not imply godhood. We are to advise him, to provide a different perspective when there is need for one. We failed to do that.

At first, it was like any other sort of campaign, albeit with far less resources. We gathered troops together, created regiments out of ones that still existed, and start to conquer the planet. We found the troops easily enough, and progress was being made to establish permanent outposts, but then we started running into the native population.

My brothers talked about how odd it was to see them. Most humans don't have an effect on us at all. We love the species itself, and care for them much as we would a small child who needs constant assistance, but I would not say we love any individual human. That is not how we are trained. This made it harder to explain why there were certain members of the villages that made us feel violent thoughts towards them. The moment their eyes met ours, we would have these urges to smash our fists through their faces. It was curious, but we were Astartes, and we suppressed those feelings and did our duty to protect humanity.

Those people were the easy ones. It was the ones that were infected that we had to worry about. The Rangda infection is insidious, and destroys people before they even realize they're dead. Hours after thanking us for arriving in their village and delivering them from their horrid lives, they were dying and reanimating. They came for us in droves, like how the IIIrd Legion described their failed mission with the Emperor. They died easy enough, but that wasn't the point. Are you old enough to have been in battle with an Omniphage, brother?

No, I never had the opportunity

IIt was no opportunity, believe me. It's a special kind of Rangda war-breed. A black liquid, sentient and able to form whatever shape it desires. It's what the Mechanicum calls a "Non-Nooton Fluid", so our bolter rounds just made them angrier. We called it an 'omniphage' because it absorbed any sentient biomatter into itself, infecting much more rapidly and obviously than the infiltration-breeds. Imagine twelve corpses, sewn together with black fluid and driven by a hunger the likes of which we will never be able to comprehend. I don't have to imagine, brother. Omniphages killed many of us, and when we were defending towns from their attacks, the townspeople stabbed us in the back.

Enemies to the front of us, enemies behind, and all the while we have to keep moving. We thought that perhaps we could use the Seraphim as a central base of operations, but we were soon disabused of that notion. The Rangdan army was still in orbit, and their Omniphages were just the first kind of hunter being used to track us. We knew that if we kept staying in one place, they would corner us like some wounded beast and finish us off. We had to leave many villages behind, defenseless against the Rangda. The Primarch has never forgiven himself for that failure. Though many had tried to kill us, there were still many that wished to be saved.

Describe the villages

They were… odd. Most human settlements that we had discovered on previous worlds had been flesh farms, human beings reduced to livestock and living in advanced herd pens, their lives reduced to simply growing more flesh for the Rangda to devour. Not on Formendacil, though. The villagers lived peaceful lives with a level of technology reminiscent of M1 Terra, many not even knowing they were under Rangda occupation. The best way I can describe it is referring to them as 'wild game'. Our scouts saw the Rangda abduct certain individuals, though we had no idea why. They were taken in secret, sometimes fake bodies were left behind to convince the parents that their child had perished in the night. One time the Lord Primarch joined a scouting mission, and saw things that none of us had ever thought to look for. The Rangda had already infiltrated their towns. The leaders were nothing more than meat suits for their overlords, and they acted subtly in their positions of power.

The goal wasn't to make food though, it seems as though the flesh farms on other worlds were enough to satiate the Rangdan hunger for now. No, these infiltrators kept themselves busy matchmaking in the villages. The breeding rights were complex, a cultural development that we are sure was encouraged by outside forces. Do you see yet why they were so complex? What the Rangda were hoping to accomplish?

I do not, I am sorry

No matter, we were ignorant once too. It took us years to figure out what the Rangda were up to. In those years, we were both hunter and hunted. Diminished though our foresight was, we were able to attack key Rangdan positions. We destroyed fuel lines, crippled flesh pits where they bred their genetic material for the war-breeds, and even managed to smuggle a bomb into that massive Worm-Ship that took out the Seraphim. That kept them here in the system, at least for a little while. But this was a war we were destined to lose.

Why is that? It appears as though you were winning

We were winning for the time being. But we had no supply chain beyond what we could scavenge, no way of contacting the Great Crusade, and an ever-dwindling number of Astartes. Rangda corruption made it to where we could not make more from among their numbers, and a lack of proper facilities ensured that our casualties were higher when we recruited from among the mortals who still remained with us. The food started dwindling, and Dante knew that time was running short. We are Astartes, but that does not mean we aren't subject to the same needs as other men. Food is much less difficult to procure, and we do not require rest as mortals do, but ammunition is not something that we can conjure from our flesh like the Rangda can. After years of use and little to no maintenance, power swords could break. Some did, some were little more than sharp pieces of junk metal by the end. Armor among the lower ranks of the Astartes began to sport holes we could not repair. We were losing our edge, both literally and metaphorically. Options were running out, and the harder we fought, the less likely it was that we would lose any more civilians. It was an impossible choice for Lord Dante, but he chose to take that burden for the rest of us.

Are you referring to all the Astartes who became Lost to the Blood?

We all were. Every single one of us. Thousands of blood-fueled and blood-crazed Astartes fighting even harder than transhumans are supposed to be capable of is a formidable force. But it didn't come without a cost. Do you ever wonder why there were so few members of the IXth Legion present during the Solar Triumph at the end of the Great Crusade?

I always assumed it was because of the horrific casualties taken at Formendacil and Rangda Prime

Ah, and that is why the lie is so beautiful. It is the truth, but not the whole truth. Yes, we took incredibly brutal losses at both locations. A million Astartes across all nine legions died in the Siege of Rangda Prime, but the members of the IXth who died there were dead far before they ever dropped into that system. An entire legion Lost to the Blood, so that we could save those that we could still protect. But it was difficult… to do what must be done. We never drank from our own people, but those villages weren't just having people abducted by Rangda towards the end. I was one of the lucky ones. I was able to bring myself back from that horrible, all-encompassing thirst. Many of my brothers did not. The ones that had a merciful end perished in battle, serving their Emperor. Lord Dante volunteered those of us who did not resist that sweet song of blood the toughest jobs. None of them complained. They knew they were living on borrowed time. It was worth it though, they got to die fulfilling their purpose. The less fortunate ones… well, Lord Dante personally made sure they didn't suffer. Not me though, I have survived. I bear witness to a Legion that lost itself to save others. The shame of it will haunt me for the rest of my days, but that is my job as an Astartes, to pay any price and bear any burden in service to the Golden Path.

It is also my greatest failure as the leader of the Orphanim. I was supposed to protect our Primarch from this. I was supposed to take this burden of all the innocents slain in the implementation of our duty and let Lord Dante forget. But he cannot. He will not. He is the Angel of Humanity, the deliverance from our collective nightmares and salvation carried down from heaven on wings of purest white. Instead, the people he was supposed to protect were killed by his own sons. It is a wound that will never heal, and though there is a beautiful monument on Baal that makes many men weep at its sorrowful dedication, it is but a mere echo of the grief our Primarch has. But even this I must be grateful for, to my eternal shame. For our father's grief and righteous fury drove him to new heights that led to our deliverance from this planet.

The slaughter had to stop. Lord Dante could not stand to see another villager slain by his sons in a futile effort to maintain our fighting spirit. For what good would prowess be if our soul was forever lost to us? We would no longer hide in the deep forests or in underground cave systems. We would finally take the fight to them.

The mag-lift trains, the ones that took them into the processing centers on what passed for a city on Formendacil, we were going to attack one. Taking its tracking data would let us cut off the hierarchy of the planet and throw it into enough disarray that we could establish contact with the Imperium and possibly snatch victory from the jaws of annihilation. Step one was going to be getting on those trains, obtaining access codes, and getting to work on destroying their Central Command. But what we found on those trains threw all of those plans out the window. We had to hit the facility immediately. We finally found the answer to the mysteries of Formendacil. The mysteries of why we irrationally hated some of the villagers, why our fleet was destroyed, why our visions were constantly blurry, why they left the people alone and were so selective in the breeding of these people. Do you see? Have you put together the pieces?

[There is a silence in the audio transcript. No verbal communication takes place for several seconds]

Blanks. They were harvesting Blanks. Those humans who are a hole in the Warp, who negate psychic energy by merely existing. The entire planet of Formendacil was a breeding ground for Blanks. They were abducting any child who had the trait and doing who knows what to them. Their combined presence was enough to dampen our powers and send us into this disarray. But what was worse is that for over four years, we saw them taking shuttle after shuttle into orbit. They never came back. We always thought that it was just the normal food harvesting, some had even postulated that the reason the humans on Formendacil were allowed to go 'wild' were because they were some sort of delicacy. Now we know they were sending Blanks and possibly even full Pariahs out to the Rangdan Empire at large. We had to stop it immediately. It was quite possible we were too late already.

Even worse, what little equipment we still had that functioned started screaming a warning. A new fleet was entering into the Formendacil system. The Rangda had tired of this game as well, and were going to finish us off once and for all. We needed to hit that processing center immediately, and hope that we could hold out long enough for our allies to arrive and provide us support.

It was a strange feeling. Less than a solar day from then, we would either be dead or victorious. Gratifying and strange at the same time. We had high spirits, and we started the fight in good order. What a joke it all was.

What do you mean?

Do you not see the prosthetics, boy? I know you do. They make up my left side from face to ribs and everything in between. I was taken out of the fight mere minutes after Lord Dante took the field. An Omniphage tore me nearly in two and if not for the skill of your apothecary forebearers I would not be here today. I killed no Rangda that day, nor was I able to participate in the early portions of the Siege of Rangda Prime. Out of all of the shame I must bear, it is this part that hurts the most.

Perhaps that is my punishment. I still lead the Orphanim, and my body is still capable of fighting the enemies of the Imperium of Man. I must still remember the horrors of Formendacil, must still recall in my darkest moments, that horrible thirst that never truly leaves once it has been indulged. It can only be suppressed and ignored. This is the existence I suffer through every single day. There is only one worse punishment than this that I endure.

And what is that?

Sharing the tales of Formendacil out loud. Shame is bearable when it is concealed, and now my tale has been ordered to be shared.

I thank you for your sacrifice. Is your tale over now?

I spent the rest of Formendacil in a medically induced coma as I tried to recover. My part in that horror story has mercifully come to a close. You shall get no more from me, brother. Should the Lord Primarch desire more is known about our failure, I would recommend speaking with him. There are precious few of us left to speak about it now, and he is the only one still alive who knows what happened next.

---

Location: Formendacil

Date: 896.M30

At last, the foe lay dead at Dante's feet, his twin blades decorated with its blood, or at least what passed for blood, as the Primarch sent a pulse of psychic fire out from his wings to cleanse the filth and infection from the surrounding area.

Though the price had been terrible, they were victorious. Every last Omniphage had been slain and his sons were in the process of taking control of the installation's communication array to broadcast their signal to the galaxy at large.

"My Lord Primarch, can you hear me?" came a familiar voice from his close range vox communicator.

"I can, Raldoron." Dante replied, lifting the communicator to his face to better speak into it. "What have you found?"

"It is strange, my Primarch." the master of the legion's elite warriors said. "There are flesh farms here, and clearly they were in use recently, but there is nothing here. And it was all moved before our assault on this location, weeks or even months ago. As to where they might have taken the people, I cannot say. I am content to add it to the list of grievances we shall avenge upon our foes."

Dante could not help but agree as he looked out across the horizon of the planet. Despite all of the woes the planet had inflicted upon his sons and his soldiers, he could still appreciate its beauty. The night sky truly was gorgeous, and he closed his eyes as he let himself relax for the first time in four years.

"We are leaving." he breathed, relief evident in his voice. "I promise all of you who will remain interred here that I will never forget."

His reverie was interrupted by a psychic tremor that caused his eyes to snap open as they scanned the horizon. As he took in the details of his surroundings with transhuman efficiency, he noticed that calling it a 'psychic' tremor wasn't quite accurate.

It was similar to what a Theophage felt like, the musical notes of power the Immaterium but inverted. The presence was sickening, and all too familiar to the IXth Primarch. He had killed one before, and he could do it again. He was a different fighter than he was when he last fought a Theophage, and it would be a far quicker fight.

An oily comet giving off no light streaked across the sky towards him. In fact, the comet seemed to be actively absorbing the light that Formendacil's abnormally close moon gave off, creating a void in reality that seemed to suck in sanity as well. The two ultimate weapons of their prospective species streaked over the smoking ruins of a ruined facility, and it was almost too late when Dante noticed that several things were off.

First, there was no sense of coldness that came with a Theophage. There was a hunger about them, an arrogance and desire that created a freezing and petrifying aura around them. This aura was more… sentient. This wasn't a creature of pure hunger and dominance, but something that had a hatred older and deeper than the human race. It was incredibly cruel and cunning, not exactly the behavior of a Theophage.

The second was that it was large, far larger than he had first assumed. The comet wasn't so much a comet, but a winding snake of oily flesh and corrupted psychic power that had coalesced into something vaguely spherical in shape. The comet he had originally seen was only a small portion of it. This thing was easily the size of a skyscraper, and its speed was more than a little daunting.

The third is that the general feeling of unease that Dante had thought was purged when they had taken the processing center was still with him. In fact, it seemed to have increased in intensity as he drew closer to the comet. His psychic foresight was almost completely dampened right now, and it worried him. There was something he was still missing, something that he and his sons had overlooked on Formendacil. Still it eluded him.

WE MEET AT LAST, FORGEFLESH

The psychic pressure in Dante's head was overwhelming as he was forced to land on the roof of a warehouse to try and use more of his focus to banish the presence from his head. This was power unlike anything he had ever personally faced before, almost as strong as the Chaos Aspect of Hashut that his father had fought on Luna all those years ago. With a sudden, chilling realization, Dante realized the foe that he was facing.

This was a Rangda House Lord, apex of their unnatural and corrupted species. It was a god robed in infected flesh, the literal embodiment of an aspect of Rangda society. Soaring towards the Ninth Primarch was a full member of the Rangda Pantheon, and it was filled with cruel malice and unknowable purpose.

The gargantuan creature stopped before it reached Dante, sending a small portion of itself out to land on the rooftop the Avenging Angel had alighted upon. It was over three meters in length, and it hurt the Primarch's soul to stare at it for too long. It inverted all that was good and sane, twisting it into forms and features that the material universe innately rejected.

COME THEN, LET US END THIS LITTLE GAME. I HAVE NEVER TASTED YOUR KIND BEFORE. I AM EAGER TO SEE WHAT FORMS I CAN MAKE WITH YOUR FLESH.

With a mighty roar, Dante unleashed a full barrage of psychic feathers from his wings, taking to the sky and giving himself a powerful boost of Warp infused speed to rush towards his foe on slapping wings. To his great surprise, his luminescent blades vanished out of existence far before they reached their target and his wings fell dead at his side as the Primarch gracelessly plummeted from his flight and crashed right at the feet of the House Lord's avatar.

Above them, a tremendous cracking sound could be heard, so loud and omnipresent that it was seemingly ripping the sky apart.

WE DID NOT KNOW THAT A FORGEFLESH WAS LEADING THE HUMAN ARMY ON THIS WORLD. I WAS NOT EVEN HERE FOR YOU, IGNORANT OF YOUR EXISTENCE UNTIL NOW. I HAD COME HERE TO SUPERVISE THE UNVEILING OF OUR NEW WEAPON. THE TOOL THAT SHALL FINALLY WIN US THIS WAR.

WHEN YOU DIE AND THE SMALL FRAGMENT OF YOUR SOUL THAT ESCAPES ME RETURNS TO YOUR CREATOR, BE SURE TO TELL HIM THAT IT WAS OPUS-JORITH WHO SENT YOU TO HIM, AND THAT YOU WERE THE FIRST OF MANY WHO FELL TO THE BLACK MIASMA.

The moon above them split open, fissures appearing faster than lightning across its surface. Dante knew then that it wasn't a moon at all. It was an incubation egg for whatever was inside. That thing was now ready, and the true picture of Formendacil was starting to become painfully clear to the Primarch.

Formendacil was unique among Rangda farm worlds in that it was home to a prominently manifesting Pariah gene. The psychically blind children were born one every million instead of one every trillion. Careful breeding and advances in cloning had ensured that the Rangda had an essentially infinite amount of Null flesh they could use to whatever ends suited them.

Opus-Jorith, House Lord charged with the development of Rangda superweapons, had persuaded the other House Lords to be allowed to take over the project. Null flesh was cloned, replicated again, and grafted layer by layer on top of a potent strain of the Rangda infection. Over time, it had developed into a creature the size of a moon full of Pariah abilities and a mindless desire to eradicate all Immaterial power it could detect. The so-called Black Miasma was the ultimate tool to counteract the abilities of a Primarch like Dante Uriael. Even in its gestation, it had been powerful enough to dampen his foresight and now that it was awake, the Black Miasma was able to silence him completely, drawing any trace of his power into a black void of unbeing, leaving him completely powerless before the avatar of its maker.

That avatar was savoring its prey, pacing around the fallen Primarch as Dante unsteading rose to his feet. The Miasma's appearance and its continued effects weren't only being felt by the Primarch. All across the battlefield, mortal soldiers, loyal to the Imperium who had endured horrors beyond all logic, finally broke and screamed like madmen, mutilating their eyes, ears, noses, and anything else they could reach that would give them sensory perception of the newly awoken 'moon'. The Astartes fared little better, as they were unable to tap into their Blood Rage for continued combat prowess. The tide was slowly but surely turning against them, as one of the most psychically connected legions out of the Twenty were truly and fully separated from their battle brothers.

The Avatar of Opus-Jorith lunged at Dante, its blade-limb piercing his abdomen as the perfect biology of the Primarch fought to stop the preternaturally potent infection. His counterattacks were sloppy and slow, as he felt he was a painter gone blind, a poet gone deaf, fighting with one powerful hand crippled and restrained behind his back.

It went on for hours, as the House Lord seemed to enjoy toying with his prey, watching in anticipation for the fight to leave the Primarch and for his spirit to finally desert him. But Dante Uriael was no coward, and the combined embodiment of humanity's desire for salvation and vengeance kept him upright and fighting, even if there was no hope of victory. For in Dante's mind, even if there was no chance, that still meant he had no choice but to keep pressing on.

The Avatar grew bored, and it knocked Dante down to the ground, pressing a limb into the Primarch's back and shoving the Angel's face into the rubble of the roof they still fought on. The Avatar gripped the two massive white wings on his back and with a scream/cry/chitter/groan/retch, it pulled hard and ripped them out of Dante's back. Pain like the Primarch had never experienced before coursed through him, as he felt the identity of what he was supposed to be slip through his fingers. The harder he tried to squeeze and hold onto it, the faster it left him.

Opus-Jorith let out a bellow of victory as its avatar rolled the defeated demigod onto his back so that he could look the transhuman in the face as it was absorbed into the House Lord's essence. But instead of tears or fear or even rage, Opus-Jorith noted with irritation that this pitiful creature was laughing. How could it do such a thing? Did it not know that it was beaten?

"Can you hear it?" Dante chuckled, wiping blood from the corner of his mouth as he tried to sit up before eventually laying back down on his back due to the pain and weariness. "Do you have any idea what's coming for you now?"

The avatar cocked its head, trying to determine what the Primarch meant.

"No matter. You'll find out soon enough."

As the avatar raised its blade-limb to end Dante's life, it paused. It heard something that was quite impossible. Something that had not ever been heard on Formendacil before. Something that troubled it greatly.

For over the din of the battle raging around them, despite having never been introduced onto Formendacil even at the height of the Dark Age of Technology, despite none even being in range, and despite the fact that the Black Miasma should have blocked all such things from occurring, Opus-Jorith, House Lord of the Rangda could hear the howling of wolves on the hunt.

And they were bellowing like they had just picked up the scent of their prey.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!