"That Ecclesiarchy vermin really isn't leaving Phanes a single way out…"
After spotting the cyclonic torpedo, Eden drew a long breath.
The cyclonic torpedo was roughly sixty meters long. Its capacity to ruin a planet's environment was extreme, designed to be deployed from low orbit, a specialized weapon used to carry out Exterminatus.
They came in different attack patterns: nucleonic firestorms, raw plasma scouring, or geoseismic shock.
No matter which pattern it used, the end result was the same: the atmosphere burned away, the oceans boiled off, surface structures were annihilated, and every living thing on the planet was wiped clean.
Under normal circumstances, only Space Marine Chapters and the Inquisition had access to weapons like this.
But this was the dark half of the Imperium—Imperium Nihilus—and the Third Diocese held the highest authority in the region in the Emperor's name. Having cyclonic torpedoes wasn't strange at all.
The penitent's memories showed the Third Diocese wasn't doing this for the first time. Emperor knows how many Imperial worlds they'd already destroyed.
The Third Diocese had spiraled into extremist faith, incapable of tolerating anyone who worshipped a different doctrine—even other dioceses within the Ecclesiarchy itself.
They'd turned their guns on the Emperor's own subjects, hands soaked in humanity's blood and tears.
Some Ecclesiarchy factions, in order to "prove the Emperor's divinity," had even fired upon Imperial forces before.
That was what happened when faith-power lost all checks and balances. Their crimes were beyond counting.
"Once the Misty Sector is reclaimed, I'm putting Deville in charge of restructuring the local Ecclesiarchy and purging every sect stained with innocent blood!"
Because he'd always had a decent relationship with the Ecclesiarch, Eden had been relatively gentle with the Ecclesiarchy over the years. Even reforms were handled through guidance rather than force.
But the bad news had been piling up—especially the Third Diocese's heretical atrocities.
He'd had enough.
More importantly, he now had the control necessary. He wasn't afraid that a purge of the Ecclesiarchy would shake the Imperium's foundations.
"Whatever happens, we cannot let that cyclonic torpedo reach the planet!"
Thinking fast, Eden directed his mutated Hive Tyrant toward the cyclonic torpedo. He had to stop that nightmare weapon.
If it detonated on Phanes, the humans down there were almost certainly finished, and the Karozasa Dynasty would inevitably break with the Imperium—sparking a new war.
A cyclonic torpedo could kill humans and other carbon-based life, but it might not wipe out every Necron—especially not a Phaeron like Zabok.
It would only drive him madder.
As he closed in, Eden used the Hive Tyrant's senses to feel the immense energy contained inside that torpedo.
It was a two-stage cyclonic torpedo—after the initial detonation, the penetrating second stage would plunge deep, ripping toward the core to trigger catastrophic upheaval.
Luckily, Eden was already near low orbit, and the torpedo had only just been released—gravity hadn't accelerated it to absurd speeds yet. If it had, the hypersonic drop would have been almost impossible to stop.
At least, impossible for standard Imperial defenses.
But right now, Eden wasn't acting as a lone individual.
He was acting through a Tyranid synaptic apex organism.
That meant he had a chance.
Eden guided the mutated Hive Tyrant alongside the cyclonic torpedo, then let it free-fall in the same direction.
Relative motion matched—an almost "still" state.
He didn't need to destroy the cyclonic torpedo. Shattering a sixty-meter monster with shielding was far too hard.
Worse, damaging it could trigger an explosion that would either obliterate the Hive Tyrant outright, or send it crashing into a hive city below—causing a second detonation and even more casualties.
So he needed something gentler.
The best option was to alter the torpedo's trajectory.
All he needed was a massive lateral impulse—enough to kick its path off-course.
Sss—
Psychic sparks bled from the Hive Tyrant's swollen crest, and then a surge of bio-psychic force erupted.
That living warp-force slipped clean through the shielding field and slammed into the torpedo's flank.
A harsh, metallic shriek rang out. One side of the torpedo's heavy armor buckled inward.
Under the push, it deviated from its original path, tilting into a new vector. The threat plummeted.
Eden calculated that the torpedo would most likely skim past the planet's upper atmosphere rather than strike the surface.
It was the best he could do.
What happened next would depend on Phanes' luck.
"I swear by the Emperor—no, damn it, I screwed up!"
In the next instant, Eden's emotions spiked so violently that even the mutated Hive Tyrant's cold insect eyes widened.
Along the torpedo's new trajectory, debris from a low-orbit fortress was falling.
If nothing changed, they were going to collide.
And the moment they did, the torpedo would detonate.
Eden immediately drove the mutated Hive Tyrant up into open space, trying to escape the blast radius.
At this point, nobody was stopping that detonation.
The instant the Hive Tyrant broke free of the atmosphere and entered the void, Eden felt an eerie hollowness—silence so complete it was almost spiritual.
Even the booming thunder of gunfire vanished; without air, sound couldn't carry.
Eden realized what that meant. He turned and looked back down through the planet's skin of atmosphere—
A bloom of iridescent plasma fire burst outward, blanketing tens of kilometers of sky.
The plasma flash vaporized the air in its coverage zone. Shockwaves rolled outward in expanding rings.
From the hive cities below, anyone looking up would see a sky made of flame, heat and tremors rippling outward.
But the cyclonic torpedo had detonated in low orbit. By the time the heat and shock reached the surface, they were greatly weakened—and the hive city superstructures absorbed much of what remained.
And based on the trajectory, its worst mechanism—the deep-penetrating second stage—would not strike the core.
The torpedo's destructive potential had been cut down to a tiny fraction of what it should have been.
As for Eden's mutated Hive Tyrant, it was already in space. The heat arriving as radiation was negligible, and the shockwave, if anything, became extra propulsion—
Pushing him even faster toward the Third Diocese fleet.
"Phanes' luck is unreal. It might be the only planet in Imperial history to have two cyclonic torpedoes fired at it and still not even get its skin broken!"
Eden stared at the Third Diocese command battleship's armor plating, now close enough to touch, and felt an overwhelming relief.
Only then did he realize he'd spotted a second cyclonic torpedo.
That torpedo, hammered by the first blast's shock, skimmed along the planet's atmospheric edge—
And caused no damage at all.
His accidental "divine assist" had neutralized two cyclonic torpedoes in one go.
Truly worthy of the great Savior.
Eden anchored the Tyranid organism against the command ship's armor, feeling genuinely pleased.
The tension that had been strangling him finally eased. For the moment, Phanes wouldn't be destroyed.
Now he needed to breach the battleship, disrupt the Third Diocese command structure—or find the archbishop himself.
Give that heretical traitor a lesson written in blood.
More importantly, Eden had no idea whether they had additional cyclonic torpedoes. If they did, they were almost certainly stored in the flagship's magazines.
If he could locate and destroy them, all the better.
Eden guided the mutated Hive Tyrant along the underside plating, searching, until he finally found a viable entry point.
The ship's sewer line.
The mutated Hive Tyrant crawled through the pitch-black drainage tunnels.
Through its organs and sensors, Eden caught the stench of filth. He frowned.
"Yeah. This feeling's familiar. Real 'remembering hardship to savor sweetness' vibes."
Years later, facing this battleship sewer, Eden would remember a distant afternoon more than a century ago—on Urth—when he first guided a clone body through waste pipes to reach the underhive.
Back then he'd been a governor barely keeping himself alive.
Now he was the Imperium's emperor.
He rarely had moments this… ungraceful.
Even when experiencing it through a Tyranid apex organism.
"It's all those Third Diocese maggots' fault!"
Eden spat, adding another entry to the ledger of debts owed by the heretics.
Still, the tangled sewer network under the flagship held a pleasant surprise.
He wasn't fighting alone.
Like many Imperial ships, the belly of this command battleship was a festering pit—home to all kinds of things that shouldn't be there.
And the most iconic presence of all:
Genestealers.
Of course. Wherever there were humans, there were Genestealers.
From that alone, it was clear the flagship didn't regularly purge its lower tunnels—though Genestealers being impossibly invasive didn't help either.
Dock in a voidport for a while, and you'd get infiltrated.
That was what made them such a problem. They could hide in any dark corner, waiting for the Hive Mind's command—then erupt into sabotage and slaughter.
But for Eden, now a powerful Hive Mind in his own right, Genestealers were good news.
Even without a psychic beacon lit, he could use a high-tier Tyranid synapse organism to seize control of the local brood.
He quickly captured their bio-signals and, through a gestalt network, took over the Genestealers nesting in the flagship's lower sections.
More information poured in.
Eden had the mutated Hive Tyrant lead several thousand Genestealers in a first strike against what he suspected might be the cyclonic torpedo magazine.
Normally, a brood like this would never meaningfully affect a warship's order.
But with a psychic synapse apex organism directing them, it was different.
Very different.
When Eden blasted open the storage area, there were no cyclonic torpedoes inside.
So that was it. No more.
He immediately shifted targets, driving the Genestealers through the labyrinthine ducts toward the ship's cathedral.
By now the flagship had detected the incursion. Elite forces would be dispatched to the magazine area immediately.
There was no time left to sabotage other armories and cripple—let alone destroy—the command battleship.
So instead, he would exploit the gap.
While their best troops rushed to secure the magazine, he would strike the enemy's command core—
The cathedral at the ship's center.
As the Third Diocese's flagship, roughly a quarter of its internal volume had been devoted to a grand cathedral—vast, ornate, and obscene in its scale.
Boom—
Eden tore open a duct with psychic force, and the Genestealers poured out like a living tide.
"By the Emperor! These damned xenos dare violate the holy ground of the Great Preacher!"
A holy militia unit—bodies heavily augmented—unleashed volleys from boltguns into the Genestealer swarm.
They were fanatics to the bone, sworn to die protecting the Great Preacher.
The Third Diocese "holy militia" was barely Imperial military anymore.
They were the private guard of the archbishop—the so-called Great Preacher, Frekebor.
They served no one but him, and they treated anyone who refused his doctrine as an enemy heretic.
Among the unit, Eden saw Arco-flagellants and Penitent Engines.
Those the Third Diocese branded as heretics and traitors had been twisted into grotesque shapes—bodies laced with cables, forever injected with pain-drugs that drove them into frenzy.
Slaaneshi as hell.
Under torture of the flesh, they exploded with vicious combat power, inflicting serious Genestealer casualties.
"No Sisters of Battle…"
Eden watched the holy militia and analyzed the bio-data he was receiving.
Under normal conditions, the Adepta Sororitas should have been operating alongside the Ecclesiarchy's forces.
So either the Sisters had split from the Third Diocese—
Or they'd been purged.
Either way, it proved the Third Diocese wasn't merely deranged.
They had fully betrayed the Imperium.
They wielded the Emperor's name to forge personal power, abused Exterminatus, committed endless crimes, and had caused the deaths of at least tens of trillions.
The Third Diocese leadership—and anyone beyond saving—had to be eradicated.
Eden's gaze shifted into the distance.
Across the ship's massive central plaza stood the cathedral itself—its stained-glass dome gleaming above ancient, weathered reliefs.
From the outside, it looked holy.
Inside, it was rotten to the core. You could almost smell the blood and corruption.
The head of the Third Diocese—the archbishop Frekebor—was in there.
According to the penitents' memories, that "Great Preacher" loved personally carrying out Exterminatus orders—
To display his sanctity, his supremacy, his divine authority.
That was the reality of Imperial high power: once unrestrained, a single figure could command hundreds of worlds and hold absolute authority.
They could shape the fate of tens of trillions of lives. One order meant suffering for countless Imperial citizens.
They could do whatever they wanted.
"Great? Holy?"
Eden sneered.
"That bastard loses Imperial oversight and still wants to play planetary emperor—climbing a god's throne using the Emperor's faith?!"
To Eden, that archbishop was nothing more than a regional heretic and traitor.
Normally one command would send an army to end him. Eden wouldn't even need to think about it.
But this time was different.
That idiot had intervened in the Phanes system at the worst possible moment. Even one day later and Eden wouldn't have been pushed into this corner.
Eden even suspected Tzeentch was behind it—because Phanes was a special zone that could affect the Vigilus war.
Otherwise, why would the Third Diocese travel all the way out to this frontier to carry out an Exterminatus?
If Frekebor truly forced the Karozasa Dynasty—a Necron dynasty that worshipped the Emperor—and its Phaeron into open rebellion, then Frekebor could die ten thousand times and still not repay the damage.
Eden didn't linger in the fight.
He drove the mutated Hive Tyrant forward under Genestealer cover, breaking through the holy militia line.
His plan was simple: use the Genestealers as a screen while the Hive Tyrant executed a decapitation strike.
With a synapse apex organism and Eden's psychic might, he didn't even need to get close.
From a distance, he could crush the archbishop's skull like fruit.
But the defense line still caused friction—until a new variable arrived.
A pack of Flayed Ones, drawn by the scent of blood, had infiltrated the flagship.
Those twisted, misshapen Necrons crashed into the defenses as well, seemingly also aiming for the cathedral.
Maybe the Third Diocese priests' flesh was simply more enticing.
After all, under layers of pampering and worship, those people were tender, soft, and well-fed.
Some priestly families might never have performed a single act of labor from birth—unable to walk, dress, or even use the latrine without servants and believers attending them.
Phanes had always been plagued by Flayed One attacks.
Now this sweet banquet of human flesh had come to them.
Of course it drew their interest.
The Flayed Ones weren't many, but they were enough to shift the battlefield—creating a situation where Eden's Genestealers and the Necrons were simultaneously smashing the same defense line.
The outer defenses collapsed rapidly.
Eden seized the moment, driving the mutated Hive Tyrant and a larger Genestealer mass into the central plaza.
But the instant his brood reached the plaza, they were met by a storm of fire.
A full Space Marine formation held the cathedral zone in a hard defensive cordon.
There was no easy breakthrough.
Inside the cathedral, opulence reached obscene levels—down to the Emperor's central icon, encrusted with gemstones.
The so-called Great Preacher, Frekebor, stood at the cathedral's heart.
His dark crimson vestments hung to his ankles, scripture embroidered in gold thread shimmering in candlelight.
He stood calm, his back to the icon. Stained-glass light from the high dome washed across him, gilding his outline in a halo of false sanctity.
"Listen," Frekebor murmured, savoring it. "How moving the wails of heretics and xenos are. So lowly. So stupid. Still dreaming of resisting this sacred work…"
He used the ship's comms to drink in the screams of Phanes' Imperial subjects, while the howls of xenos outside the cathedral echoed in from time to time.
He was enjoying the torment—enjoying the moment life failed and pain peaked.
That was the price of defying the Great Preacher.
"Your Eminence…"
Chapter Master Ansemor of the Castellans of the Rift frowned, wanting to speak.
The Emperor's preacher's behavior unsettled him.
His was a penitent Chapter, tasked with the brutal mission of purging heretics in the Nachmund Gauntlet and hunting down traitor Knights.
But for a Chapter under punishment and stripped of supply, the burden was too heavy. They'd been forced to seek support from the Third Diocese.
And the archbishop was so domineering—purging "heretics" everywhere, and subtly using the Emperor's name to command a Space Marine Chapter.
"Hmm?"
Frekebor's sharp eyes turned on the Chapter Master, as if piercing straight through the man's soul and the doubt within.
His voice was aged, yet heavy with authority.
"Do you believe the heretical traitors on Phanes—ruled by xenos—do not deserve judgment?
That is the Emperor's will!
Or do you, who still bear sin unwashed, intend to defy your oath again and commit fresh treason?!"
Ansemor looked up at the Emperor's icon behind the archbishop and, in the end, said nothing.
They were sinners.
They had no right to dissent.
If the Ecclesiarchy had not shown them a sliver of mercy during their judgment, they would have been thrown into the Eye of Terror long ago.
"Go," Frekebor said. "Destroy the pitiable xenos trying to breach the cathedral. If necessary, you will descend to the surface and execute the Necron filth.
As for the unbelievers, leave them to the holy militia. They are better suited to this sacred, honored cleansing.
We have all the time we need—until every last drop of unbeliever blood has been spilled."
With that, the archbishop's figure sank back into the candlelight.
From beginning to end, he never once looked at the Emperor's icon.
His words were scripture.
…
Outside the cathedral.
With the Third Diocese's support, the Castellans of the Rift were extremely well equipped. Behind layered defenses, their firepower became even more terrifying.
Flayed Ones and Genestealers were pinned beyond the line.
Eden watched Genestealer after Genestealer fall, and his brow tightened.
With only a mutated Hive Tyrant on hand, there was no way to smash a full Chapter formation.
And soon, under covering fire, they would come to execute the high-tier Tyranid organism he was controlling.
That would be a disaster.
The only possible turning point now was the Emperor's Legion of the Damned.
If that force arrived, it would flip the entire situation.
But the Emperor's sacred host still hadn't appeared.
"Isn't this all that Tzeentch shit-stirring bastard's doing?
That @#$% bird-brained freak!"
After receiving the Emperor's message, Eden immediately started cursing.
There was a problem on His side that needed solving, and it would take time.
So the Legion of the Damned would arrive later than expected.
Eden felt irritation claw at him.
The Legion of the Damned was one of the most mobile forces in the galaxy—and the warp—able to ignore distance and deploy anywhere.
It was warp-god methodology.
The Emperor's own greater daemons and daemonic hosts.
A force like that could appear at the critical point, at the critical second—
And overturn the battlefield.
"If I had a legion like that, I wouldn't have to stand here waiting for the Emperor's help…"
That was the thought.
Eden gritted his teeth.
"Fine. I'll do it myself. I'm a 'minor' warp god too. I refuse to believe I can't build one.
With the time differential between realspace and the warp, there's still considerately enough time!"
(End of Chapter)
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