"Fool!
The victory you imagine is nothing more than the thousand-and-first possibility I foresaw…"
As the Cursed One's energy guttered out, the Fateweaver Kairos once again sustained his sorcery, keeping Ka'Bandha restrained.
The crystal chains were no mere bindings—they were psychic weaves, drawing upon the victim's own strength, impossible to dispel easily.
Everything was proceeding according to plan!
Yet the very next moment, a flicker of fear touched Kairos' pupils.
His body seemed frozen in disbelief. "Impossible… destiny has changed."
For Ka'Bandha was straining against the crystal chains, rising to his feet, slaughterous wrath blazing hotter than ever.
Never before had this happened. Not even the former Regent had broken free from the fear within his own heart.
This beast's inner terror was deeper still—how could it be cast aside?
"Quickly! Suppress the Exalted Bloodthirster!"
The Daemons of Slaanesh, their flesh charred black, had shaken off the Cursed One's taint.
At Kairos' urging, they hurled themselves forward, striking with desperate ferocity, seeking to force Ka'Bandha down again.
But their efforts did nothing—except to fuel his rage.
"Wretched maggots! I will crush your bones and tear apart your souls!"
The crystal chains burst one by one as Ka'Bandha raised his monstrous bloodaxe once more, his fury greater than ever.
The Chaos greater daemons nearby quailed, pinning their hopes on the Fateweaver's trickery to bind this beast anew.
"Kairos, do it! Quickly—"
They looked skyward, urging the sorcerer to release another warp-sigil.
But in the shifting haze, the Fateweaver hung unmoving—as if struck dumb with terror.
Then, as a pebble skittered past, it went straight through his body and carried on into the distance.
???
The gathered daemons stared in stupefaction.
After several stunned heartbeats, a Keeper of Secrets broke out swearing, voice shrill with grief:
"&#@*! That dog Kairos ran away!"
The next instant—
He was hammered into the ground by Ka'Bandha, face grinding in the dirt, tears streaming as he howled:
"Rot-gutted Tzeentch-spawn! Just you wait!"
At that moment, the Slaaneshi daemons' hatred of the Changer's servants burned hotter than even their dread of the Bloodthirster.
Ka'Bandha smashed or drove off a dozen Keepers and their ilk before the thrill of it ebbed, his eyes searching for Tzeentchian prey. But none remained.
For the servants of Tzeentch had already fled, disrupting the Slaaneshi lines and leaving them to be beaten.
The Changer's horde had once more twisted the field—ensuring both sides left embittered, both sides nursing grudges—while they slithered away.
Perhaps this too was part of their plan.
Such is the vileness of the Changer of Ways.
When all believe He is about to unleash devastation, He cackles and delivers only mischief.
When all expect a prank, He suddenly unleashes calamity—shoving filth in your face.
Not even allies are spared.
Worst of all, countless beings across the galaxy must still seek His aid—for His infinite knowledge, for glimpses of futures yet to come.
Or else they are nudged and twisted into His schemes, step by step toward ruin.
In truth, the Changer of Ways and His flock are like the galaxy's own Schrödinger's cesspit—ever unstable, ever shifting, and you never know when it will belch its stench upon you.
And then He laughs. Even if beaten for it, the laughter is worth it to Him.
"Blood for the Blood God! You cannot flee!"
Ka'Bandha at last seized a shrieking blue avian sorcerer that had lagged behind, grinding its head into the ground, each blow wringing screams from the Tzeentchian.
It was then he heard the oracle of Khorne.
The Hope Primarch—the Savior of Mankind—was about to reach Commorragh. Khorne commanded His Exalted Bloodthirster to take the Khornate legions to the core webway nexus.
More legions of Khorne were already on the march, and together they would seize the Dark Eldar's Black Throne—a critical bastion that weakened Slaanesh's grasp.
And within that throne's domain was a vital clone of the Cursed One. It must be captured and delivered unto Khorne's domain, to be corrupted and blessed by the Blood God Himself.
"The Hope Primarch Savior?!"
At that name, Ka'Bandha's eyes flared, his fanged mouth splitting in a hideous grin.
Battle-lust erupted anew, his molten flames surging, scorching the Tzeentchian captive in his grip until its iridescent feathers turned black.
No longer did he fear the Savior. This clash would end with one of them fallen.
And the one still standing would be Ka'Bandha, Exalted Bloodthirster.
The head of the Hope Primarch would be his.
"Baal, we ride for the Dark Eldar's nexus."
Dragging the squawking Fateweaver by his neck, Ka'Bandha hurled him onto the back of his brass chariot, chaining him fast to the barbed hooks behind.
Boom—!
The brass juggernaut erupted in fire, surging forward with brutal speed.
Warp-flames trailed from the chariot, roasting the chained Tzeentchian as its cries rang out like a war-horn, stirring the Khornate hosts to frenzy.
Ka'Bandha led them forth, thundering toward Commorragh.
The daemons of Slaanesh, seeing this, abandoned the Redemption Satellite Zone and surged after.
The Black Throne, and the clone of the Cursed One—these were Slaanesh's linchpins for dominion over the Dark Eldar. They could not fall into rival hands, lest the Dark Prince be weakened, shackled by His foes, and left to stumble in the Great Game.
...
Redemption Arena, Command Chamber
"Huuhh… they finally left. Another hour and I would've cracked…"
Eden slumped into his chair the instant he received word of the daemons' withdrawal, heaving a long sigh.
For days, the Chaos horde had seemed unending. The ammunition spent just within the Redemption Satellite Zone could have drowned several hive-cities.
The burn-rate was at least one and a half times greater than the Battle of Baal—and still no end in sight.
And that didn't even count the orks and Tyranid auxiliaries. Training and breeding those xenos drained resources as well.
Worst of all—fighting daemons yielded nothing. At best, some worthless remains. More often they simply crumbled to ash, returning to the warp to reform.
Only the Terror Legion profited, feeding on fear and faith.
For Eden, though, it was pure loss.
Even he, wealthy as he was, could not bleed silver like this forever. Every shell fired was like coin tossed into the void.
Now he understood why the Imperium was always destitute.
Wars against aliens brought little return—some territory, but rarely their technology or labor.
Against orks and Tyranids, the land itself was left desolate, requiring costly reclamation.
Against Chaos daemons it was worse still: land and minds poisoned, decades of cleansing required.
That was if you won. Lose, and it was total ruin, spreading to other systems.
Meanwhile the Imperium's industry crawled, its logistics groaned. A single campaign could drain a sector for years.
And as for war-torn, shadow-haunted systems—those were nothing but black holes of resources. Survival there was triumph enough.
With all this, no wonder the Imperium could never grow rich.
This was why Eden had schemed so long in the webway—to seize Commorragh's nexus and make it serve the Imperium.
Only by stabilizing production and transport could Mankind escape the bleeding cycle, and enter growth instead of endless loss.
Otherwise, even if he emptied out his own Savior's domain, he still wouldn't be able to prop up the whole Imperium of Man.
Now, with the timely support of his sworn brother Ka'Bandha, the Redemption Satellite Zone had been held.
With the Chaos Gods turning their gaze toward Commorragh and the Supreme Overlord on that side, the daemon hosts were being drawn away—
which meant it was finally his turn to make a play.
He had to seize Commorragh and the Emperor's clone under the mantle of the Hope Primarch, the Savior!
"Ilyss, go find the Dark Mechanicum and the Ork Big Mek. Tell them to patch the rift…"
Eden glanced at his Lhamean secretary and gave the order.
Fortunately, this was only a small tear in the webway's veil; with the daemons halting their assault, even an Ork Big Mek still had a chance to jury-rig repairs.
Not all rifts are equal: a common warp fissure might be modest in scale, but a great rift can span the galaxy.
It's the same for tears in the webway's curtain—if it's anything like that breach beneath the Emperor's own throne on Holy Terra, its true size would be greater than Terra itself, and still expanding.
Even if he threw in his own life to plug it, it wouldn't be enough.
You could say Magnus was terrifying back then—or that the Chaos Gods had long been plotting to collapse Holy Terra, to cast humanity into endless night,
to leave them like the Aeldari—harvested for their souls and stripped of any future.
Thankfully, the Emperor—old as He is—was hard as adamantium, and forced that breach closed.
"Those Chaos Gods better not punch a similar hole open over Commorragh.
That would be game over…"
So Eden thought.
He still needed that webway for his plans, and, fortunately, the Emperor had already recovered strength—ready to move at any time.
With that in mind, Eden felt less anxious.
The Emperor's thigh was thick and unyielding—this would probably be fine. Stick to the plan and see it done!
Once the Emperor stood and took a few steps in His clone-body, the Chaos Gods wouldn't be sleeping easy.
But then Eden remembered how deeply the Changer of Ways had inserted Himself into these events, and his worry returned; it was impossible to predict that bastard's logic.
Would He spin up some colossal prank—or a colossal catastrophe?
Across the galaxy's higher powers, it seemed almost everyone but Eden had been burned by that one—and badly.
Take Nurgle, for instance: the Plague Lord was still nursing wounds in some dark chamber, drifting in uneasy sleep and cursing the "big blue bird" from time to time.
He'd realized his grand design had failed and that the Goddess of Life, Isha, had been snatched away—and it all traced back to the Changer. The swindle had been too cruel.
Compared to hating the Emperor or humanity, he hated the Changer more.
Who else would it be?
Eden now worried he might trip in the gutter as well.
The Changer of Ways could never be trusted. Eden had dealt with Him a little too much; the closer the "ally," the deeper the eventual backstab.
Who could say whether He'd subtly warped Eden already—or seeded mines throughout his plan, just waiting to be triggered one by one?
"Asdrubael Vect's apotheosis scheme… surely there isn't some hidden, apocalyptic sting in the tail?"
Eden frowned. The Changer's meddling had even him second-guessing.
So he sent a psychic message ahead to the Emperor.
In short: if they were due to throw down with the Chaos pantheon, and circumstances allowed—grab the Changer and beat Him until He's leaking.
After he transmitted that message, he felt much better. Whether or not the Changer intended to shaft him, settling the score early couldn't hurt.
...
Meanwhile—
Within the warp's Crystal Labyrinth.
A silhouette of shifting illusion collapsed and ballooned upon itself, one heartbeat a coiled serpent, the next a raven with iridescent wings, each burning feather a living spell.
Soon the phantasm coalesced into a head-and-torso fused as one, crowned by two vast, indescribable tendrils, its skin crawling with faces that were not faces.
This was the Changer of Ways.
He was truth and lie made manifest, the abyss of knowledge and the source of madness.
Any being who looked upon Him would behold all possibilities detonating at once—or else forget ever having witnessed the god, becoming nothing more than a fleeting die at His fingertips.
Tzeentch watched the galaxy and the warp with omniscient, omnipotent attention—industrious, as He "maintained" the balance—
or the chaos—of countless intertwined matters.
Particularly those of the Imperium of Man.
Yet more and more of His attention had settled upon a webway nexus named Commorragh.
He had seeded a few "insignificant" designs there—sparks to kindle both jubilation and tragedy—prelude to a grand revel.
He was sure the Dark Prince and that reckless old friend would enjoy it—and perhaps the Emperor would come to regret a few things besides.
Suddenly, the Changer's psychedelic bulk shivered.
Cold—He felt cold.
Not physical cold, but the chill of a foreseen misfortune in destiny itself. In other words: danger.
For a Chaos God, this was exceedingly rare.
Vmm—
Prismatic flame drifted.
No longer at ease, Tzeentch meticulously inspected the webs and chessmen of fate He had woven—
to locate the thread that had twisted toward His own undoing.
Ever since He'd been roasted like a bird that one time, He'd paid greater heed to such subtleties. A calamity like that must not be allowed to befall Him again.
Even for a Chaos God, such blows were… difficult to bear.
Just look at that fool Nurgle, still laid up in the dark.
Tzeentch sprawled across the vast curtain of the void, combing for clues, until He fixed upon the locus of the looming misfortune.
...
Commorragh.
And the cause was ***—?
When He guessed the likely outcome, He instinctively severed that strand of fate.
*—that is, the Savior—was among the beings He most dreaded in the galaxy.
Perhaps the priority was even higher than with the Emperor.
After all, the Emperor was still "controllable"—His destiny could be read and bent, harm inflicted.
But the Savior was a black hole of fate. Even reading him via those around him yielded only blurred, erroneous results.
And they changed from moment to moment.
Tzeentch simply could not predict the Savior's next move—or what havoc it would wreak upon the galaxy and the warp.
Especially upon Himself.
He had crossed paths with the Savior a few times—and the bill was ruinous. Not only had He been singed and pummeled, the Well of Eternity had nearly detonated, which would have taken His treasured secret library and the Crystal Labyrinth with it.
That time, the Changer's liver quaked with fear, and He immediately blocked the Savior on the psychic plane.
To Tzeentch, the Savior was an agitator of filth—nothing good ever came from contact with that origin-less, destiny-shrouded entity!
Contact would only wreck His grand fate-design across the galaxy.
So, in His schemes, He always tried to avoid the Savior, minimizing any direct link.
But judging by the present situation—
His designs in Commorragh had somehow entangled deeply with the Savior—and now the misfortune pointed straight back at Him.
???
Tzeentch was… a little lost. And a touch aggrieved: First of all—I didn't go after you, Savior!
He only wanted to stir some chaos in the Dark Eldar's webway and, while he was at it, shackle the Dark Prince's strength.
If he could goad the Aeldari's Death God and the Laughing God into brawling with Slaanesh, so much the better.
He had even arranged for the Ynnari—the Death-God's followers—to retrieve the Fifth Crone-Sword from the Palace of Slaanesh, to summon Ynnead.
That would have been a spectacle.
But now the plan had hit a snag—the Hope Primarch Savior, that meddlesome busybody, was getting involved, and the board had become uncontrollable.
Not entirely Tzeentch's fault, really.
His gaze was too vast; every day, countless plans unfolded—most measured in centuries, millennia, even tens of millennia.
He could blink and find years had passed.
And with an unpredictable being like the Savior, tracking his path was harder still.
Tzeentch hesitated, then decided to reach out—perhaps a temporary pact could blunt the edge of the coming misfortune.
So long as the Savior didn't step foot in the Crystal Labyrinth, matters should remain manageable.
Hmm?
He failed to connect—then remembered He Himself had blocked the Savior on the psychic layer.
To keep the man from contacting Him.
The Changer lifted the block and sent a proposal of alliance to the Savior.
An offer to cooperate against the Dark Prince.
This was not contradictory—everyone knew Tzeentch might ally with both sides of a conflict at once, proffering "assistance."
Of course, such aid was not always positive.
But this time—
He intended to offer the Savior something genuinely beneficial, at least for now, to avert the looming calamity.
"Get lost. I don't care if you're a Chaos God—get ready to be beaten until you're leaking."
That was the Hope Primarch Savior's blunt reply.
Tzeentch did not grow angry. He prepared a second message, confident his chips would tempt the Savior.
However, the message never sent—
the Savior had blocked Him.
???
Even a being as "rational" as the Changer of Ways wavered, His ever-changing form falling briefly into disorder.
But He calmed quickly, and began to devise new countermeasures…
(End of Chapter)
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