The Aeldari — Central Cathedral of the Hall of Art
The high presbyter, robed in ornate vestments, slowly withdrew from deep meditation and opened his eyes.
Blessed by the power granted from the God of Art, he could now touch fragments of the future. After a brief pause he whispered:
"Time is nearly upon us. Send word—make ready below."
At his command, a shadowy figure nearby shimmered, its outline manifesting like a translucent ripple. From it stepped an Aeldari assassin in light armor who responded, curt and precise:
"Yes, my lord."
When the assassin departed, the presbyter rose from his seat of office and walked calmly to the window.
He looked out at the engineered suns overhead—stars whose orbits and output had been adjusted to provide light and warmth to neighboring sectors according to the Aeldari star-calendar—and down across the tens of thousands of kilometers of world beneath, where ant-sized masses of people scurried.
He murmured to himself:
"The opportunity has already been given. Those who accept my lord shall enter the eternal heaven; those who refuse shall sink into endless torment."
He extended his left hand to the stars above and, across inconceivable distances, made a gesture in the air.
In the next instant a tide of psychic energy—blood-red in hue—rolled outward from him like a rising sea. Under his influence several distant suns slowly altered course. They moved through the firmament like polished marbles and arranged themselves into a symbol unique to the God of Art.
Within those stars, energies that had not changed for eons were forcibly stirred. The suns flared like gigantic torches and cast an appalling crimson light that stained nearly half of the Aeldari domain in blood-red.
Many ordinary Aeldari, unused to such displays, stared in bewilderment. But among the high clergy of the Hall of Art there was uncontained joy: they fell to their knees and broke into fervent prayer.
They understood.
They were on the brink of ascending into the Crimson Heaven, to be united with their god in a single realm.
---
Far away, Commander Kody Kosler of the Aeldari Fourth Fleet watched the distant red glow and allowed himself a rare smile. After a short kneeling prayer he rose and told his adjutant:
"Increase speed. We must finish the Novokh Dynasty before it matters."
The Novokh Dynasty was a polity of the Necron—the Space Undead—one of the Aeldari's longstanding enemies. In the distant past, during the War of Heaven, the Necrons had fought alongside their former masters, the star-gods, and had waged a brutal campaign against the Aeldari progenitors, the Old Ones. That conflict left a century-spanning hatred that flowed down the ages.
Although the Necron dynasties had long since betrayed and enslaved their star-god patrons, and the Old Ones themselves were extinct, the grudge remained. The Necrons, now slumbering in deep stasis across many systems, were regarded by the Aeldari as a buried bandit menace—disgusting and intolerable.
The Novokh Dynasty ruled hundreds of worlds—entire resource-rich systems. More than old enmity drove Kody's mission: one of the Novokh rulers had committed an egregious sacrilege in the eyes of the Hall of Art. That ruler had enslaved a star-god known to worshipers of the Art deity as the Crimson Deity, and arrogantly assumed the title Crimson King.
To the faithful, this was unbearable blasphemy.
Once the Novokh coordinates were confirmed, Kody would cross ten thousand light-years without hesitation—to strike and to destroy, regardless of the cost. Thus the Fourth Fleet, which had once treated conflicts with human federations and fallen machine intelligences as mere excursions, now committed its full strength to a targeted assault upon the Novokh Dynasty.
---
Days later, under the thunder of billions of ship cannons and distortions that shredded local spacetime, several massive planetary systems were cleaved from realspace and hurled into the Warp. After a fierce defence, the Novokh Dynasty fell under the onslaught of the Fourth Fleet.
Because the Aeldari knew their enemy intimately, they attacked the Necrons' weak points with ruthless efficiency. Even the Necrons' ability to convert souls into data and effect rebirth could not save the Novokh states. Only the Crimson Deity—a star-god that, as a god, could not be slain by ordinary means—survived the destruction of its dynastic hosts.
Yet survival for that entity was no triumph. It would be taken as an offering—sacrificed to the great God of Art; in truth the God of Art was also a god of torment and trial. Thus, being seized by the Hall of Art's worshipers was not a merciful fate: it merely delayed an inevitably inglorious end. Better, the clergy reasoned, to perish cleanly.
---
Months later, on a scale unseen before, millions of worlds under the Hall of Art's sway rose monuments across their skies. In countless devout prayers, and as spacetime rippled in response, planetary-size gateways opened. From those gates extended chains—endless iron links that drew entire planets inward, pulling them gently into the Warp.
The sight left even many unbelieving Aeldari and lesser deities swallowing hard.
To move a single planet across light-years without damaging it was a feat beyond most gods. Even during his zenith, Asuryan might have managed such a task for a lone world. But to relocate millions of planets intact and simultaneously—hundreds of thousands of light-years apart—required not only stupendous power but absolute control. It seemed almost unreal.
The Hall of Art had accomplished the impossible.
....
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