Chapter 527: The Emperor's Itch for a Fight
The Empyrean, the Untamed Reaches, near the Webway Fragment.
The infinite tides of the Warp continued to churn, a sea where countless lives flickered into existence only to be snuffed out by the next surge of the Immaterial.
The distorted radiance that had previously snarled Gork and Mork's advance receded, revealing the battered carcass of the Webway fragment. It hung suspended in the void like a cracked rib of the universe.
Gork stood before the breach, staring down the "Star-God" (Arthur) lurking within the tunnels.
"Do we keep krumpin' 'em?" Mork asked, parrying a lashing spike of malice from a nearby Nurgle-growth. He hovered near the fragment, looking as though he were holding a live explosive he didn't know how to disarm.
The situation was reaching a stalemate. They hadn't expected the "Iron-Men" (Necrons) to interfere. The twelve Noctilith Obelisks deployed in the Empyrean were outputting a suppression field far beyond their genetic memories—a weight of reality so heavy it promised a "proper thumping" to any Warp-entity that dared enter its radius.
And worse, a complete Star-God was likely anchored within the array.
Even for the twin gods of the Orks, charging into that was a daunting prospect.
"I dunno," Gork grumbled.
He poured another surge of energy into the fissures, but the result was the same: the power was instantly "corrected" into physical Orks or beams of matter, neutralized by an equal and opposite force from the array.
"..."
Mork went silent, unsure how to respond.
This was a meta they had never encountered. In the past, they simply fought whatever species was currently obsessed with war. But now, it felt as though the entire galaxy was coordinating specifically to manage them.
Facing this multi-species coalition, Gork and Mork felt as if they had accidentally violated some cosmic law. They searched their memories but couldn't fathom why they were being treated like a localized infestation by a stew of rival races.
We're just scrappin' and breakin' stuff. Everyone does that!
The "Humies" in the galaxy called Orks a "War-Race," but look at the Necrons, the Eldar, and the Humans—those three had caused far greater disasters than the greenskins ever had.
Take the Necrons. Why were they here? Stay in your metal tombs in realspace! Warp and Webway affairs were none of your concern.
And the Eldar? After the Eye of Terror popped, their numbers were too thin to even walk the Webway. Now they were dragging their entire families over here to help the "Humies" seize the conduits and pry ancient technology from the Orks.
Since when did the 'Beaded-Ones' care about their Father's (Old Ones) junk? You weren't this active during the Eldar Empire!
And finally, the Star-God.
Gork and Mork watched the psychic tides entering the Webway.
After the "Formless Lord" (Ramesses) opened the defenses, an infinite stream of mental energy—pushed by the Chaos Gods and the natural currents of the Warp—had flooded into the fragment.
Yet, it was a one-way street. The energy was entering a bottomless pit.
Upon closer inspection, they saw that any Warp-spawn birthed from those tides was being slaughtered the moment the Obelisks "materialized" them. Their spiritual energy didn't return to the Sea of Souls. It was being "inhaled" by the monster wearing the skin of a Primarch.
Ain't enough souls in realspace for ya? Now you're tryin' to eat the Warp itself?!
Gork and Mork could understand a group of species uniting in a moment of existential crisis. Survival was a primal instinct.
But the underlying logic of this universe was: 'I hate seeing you do better than me.'
The Necrons had started the War in Heaven because they were jealous of the Old Ones. Every race that followed was the same: they couldn't coordinate for "Shared Prosperity," but they'd line up to kick someone while they were down.
You could trust these species to unite to win a war against a "Beast." The Orks had been through that at the end of the 32nd Millennium.
But to trust them to build something together? You'd have better luck trusting a Tzeentchian scheme to go exactly as planned.
The Twin Gods ran an "Audit" on the gathered races. History proved they were all "Special Cases" of dysfunction. Gork and Mork concluded that they, the simple brawlers, were not the ones at fault.
"I reckon it'z the world'z fault," Gork said, slamming a fist into his palm. He looked as if he had just achieved enlightenment.
"The world changed. We didn't. So it feelz glitchy."
"Whot?" Mork asked, still holding the line.
"Look. Used to be the Iron-Men liked scrappin', so we hit 'em. Then the Beaded-Ones liked it, so we hit 'em. Then everyone liked it, so we hit everyone."
Gork began counting on his massive fingers.
"But now, everyone except the Iron-Men has stopped likin' a proper scrap. Now, when we try to hit 'em, they all come to hit us back at once."
Unlike every other race in the galaxy—who claimed to fight for survival, or expansion, or immortality, only to end up in an endless spiral of violence—the Orks fought for the sake of the fight.
The "Humies" caught in the crossfire didn't count; they were just collateral.
To find joy in every battle, to break what others built, and to grow stronger through the carnage—the Orks were the final, defiant response left by the extinct Old Ones.
A giant middle finger to the universe.
You bastards wanted a war? We'll give you one that never ends!
But after sixty million years of this "Stagnancy Protocol," the rules were shifting.
"You're sayin' our 'Theoretical' is outdated?" Mork gasped.
"Did I hear that right?"
Does that mean we stop scrappin'?
"I reckon the scrap stays," Gork pondered. "We live to fight. But I reckon we gotta get used to the feelin'."
"Whot feelin'?" Mork asked.
"The feelin' of gettin' krumped," a strange voice interjected.
"Like that, eh?" Mork nodded instinctively.
Getting krumped was part of the cycle. The Boyz could accept a loss. The Gods were no different.
But then, the realization hit him.
Since when did Gork sound this... soft?
"Was that you talkin'?" Mork asked Gork, intending to mock him for a century if he admitted to it.
"Hah?" Gork looked confused, his mind still trying to wrap itself around the concept of "Feeling."
"I didn't say nuthin'."
"?"
"..."
The two giants stared at each other.
To miss an anomaly like that required a level of stupidity that even an Ork God couldn't manifest.
"WHO'Z THERE?" Gork roared, turning to the empty Warp.
The tides and the lesser daemons were nothing to them.
"SHOW YERSELF!"
A shockwave of authority rippled outward, manifesting as a network of deep emerald lightning. It stripped the form from a thousand coalescing Warp-entities, reverting them to raw quintessence.
But in the center of that indiscriminate purge, a sector remained unaffected. An anomaly revealed.
"If I show myself, you won't be happy," the voice replied.
Gork and Mork lunged.
The next second...
The Light Descended.
The heavy, suffocating clouds that had wreathed the deep Warp for eons evaporated in an instant.
A long-lost sunlight pierced through the thinning atmosphere of the Empyrean, scattering the "Gifts of Death" across a world that had been broken a thousand times by divine war.
The gold light reflecting off the Webway fragment was blinding and magnificent.
SCREECH—
Bodies were being unmade. Arms erupted in a blossoming pain. A power fueled by a terminal hunger for destruction followed the point-blank contact, pouring into the twin gods' essences through their very limbs.
It was the sensation of a mortal punching his way into a star-forge. Gork and Mork realized they had fallen into a snare.
Whoosh—
They tore their arms away, creating a localized hurricane.
The towering giants retreated in a panic, their instincts screaming that a tactical withdrawal was the only path to survival.
As they diverted their gaze from their scorched limbs, they saw the opponent who had inflicted such trauma in a heartbeat.
It was a Colossal Golden Sun.
Even Gork and Mork—witnesses to a million wonders and veterans of duels with true Gods—froze. A shock rooted in the very marrow of their souls forced them to focus every cycle of their being on the entity before them.
He was too vast.
So vast that the tides of the Warp seemed like shallow puddles in His presence. So vast that the moment He entered a creature's field of vision, its every sense was colonized by His majesty.
But unlike the warmth of a true star, this Sun was freezing.
In the eyes of Gork and Mork, beneath that golden shell and the infinite space decorated by the souls of mortals, lay a heart-stopping darkness. A Chaos of pure shadow where no light existed—a place even the Sun's own gaze refused to touch.
Countless threads of light linked the Sun to the material universe. They were not human souls, but the raw frequency of Faith.
These threads—each a singular strand of energy capable of making a Lesser God weep with envy—seeped through the rifts in the Warp, anchoring themselves to the Golden Sun like solar flares.
The flares churned. Within them, the discordant prayers of quintillions of souls merged into a single, unified cry.
THE EMPEROR.
THE EMPEROR OF MANKIND.
It's the Emperor?
"Zog it!" Gork spat.
He had forgotten that the slippery "Formless Lord" could hide a God in his pocket.
Maybe our 'Theoreticals' really are outdated.
Faced with the Ork Gods, who were currently paralyzed by a sequence of high-tier protocols, the Emperor—successfully seizing the initiative through Ramesses' material manipulation—had to admit the Dawnstar's tactics were superior to His own.
The Emperor acknowledged a truth:
He had arrived late on purpose. He wanted to see if the Dawnbreakers' frantic maneuvering actually yielded a strategic dividend.
He had chosen to manifest through the "Regent" (Guilliman).
The results were... gratifying.
The Webway went without saying. He had obsessed over it for eons. He had intended to seize the keys and hand the administration over to Humanity to let them win their own internal "Battle Royales." With the Webway, efficiency was high, and the cycle of evolution was rapid.
But there was more. The technical frameworks of the Necrons and the Eldar—the disparate paths of the Material and the Spiritual—were being integrated. These were gifts of knowledge that could be bequeathed to every human soul.
He saw the Imperial Guard winning on the surface without relying on a Primarch's individual combat stats. He saw a Warp-tier advisory council assisting Ramesses in countering Lesser Gods. He saw Necron Overlords acting as specialized contractors to blockade the Labyrinth.
The Emperor could see a future where Humanity wielded these tools themselves. They would fight the shadows of the Warp on their own terms.
Perhaps even led by a God who actually did love them.
All of this was a byproduct of the Dawnbreakers' presence.
It was built upon their ability to secure the allegiance of the ancient races, and their willingness to expend immense effort on the "Enlightenment" of the common citizen.
The old legends have dropped a lot of 'loot', the Emperor mused.
Standing before Gork and Mork, the Emperor witnessed the reality and used it as leverage to force His bickering internal personalities into a temporary consensus.
Had I ever thought of this?
Yes. I had.
But the "Theoretical" and the "Practical" were worlds apart.
First: the technical hurdles, like shielding the species from the psychic fallout of the Eldar's faith. He couldn't solve that. Seeing Lorgar build a religion for Him had triggered a stress-response that broke His logic.
Second: His own reputation.
In the 41st Millennium, the Emperor's credit-rating was "Noxious."
The Dawnstar Lords had succeeded primarily because they lacked "Historical Baggage." Everyone who knew the meta knew these four weren't "problem children" who had already proven they were as neurotic as their Father. Their high moral baseline had allowed the xenos to stop "probing" and start "complying."
If He had tried to offer asylum to the Eldar...
Would those knife-ears have believed Me?
The Eldar had been dying for ten millennia. Not once had they looked to the Four Gods or the Emperor for salvation. In their eyes, the God-Emperor and the Ruinous Powers were cut from the same cloth.
And then, look at the internal state of the Imperium.
In the 41st Millennium, slavery was the norm. The central government was a classical aristocratic republic from the BC era. The living standard was abysmal; billions lived below the poverty line of the Industrial Revolution.
How do you convince a race that lived in a literal utopia to join that mess?
The Emperor knew the pressure within His own borders was terminal. If He hadn't found an external enemy to vent that pressure, the Imperium would have imploded centuries ago.
This was according to His plan. He had intended to solve the Webway and then let Humanity figure out the "Socio-Economics" for itself. He had been indifferent to the institutions; they were "Tools of the Moment."
But Magnus had broken the "Tools." Tzeentch had used the Crimson King to detonate the Terran Webway, and the Crusade's momentum was gone.
And back then, there were true Xenos Empires on the board.
If someone brought up the Interex, the Diasporex, or the Olamic Quietude—those human branches "assimilated" or "liquidated" during the Crusade—the Emperor could argue they wouldn't have survived the Rangdan or the Orks of Ullanor.
You can call it 'Stubbornness,' if you wish.
The voices in His head continued to scream. One personality seized the "Psychic Microphone" to rant about the necessity of xenocide. The Emperor mentally kicked that persona into the pit.
Behold: the Emperor stands here, offering excuses for Himself.
But what of those lost to history? Where can they go to refute Him?
The fact remained: the Imperium, that fermenting corpse, still stood. And while the Emperor's body was a ruin on the Throne, His spirit remained a pillar in the Warp.
That didn't mean He was "Good." It didn't mean the Imperium was "Right."
The Emperor's character flaws were a matter of public record within the Dawnbreaker councils. The Imperium was a "Cesspool" that looked normal only because everyone else in the galaxy was also swimming in filth.
They existed because they were Strong.
Strength was the only foundation.
Without strength, you could not face the threats of the galaxy. You ended up like the lost branches of the species.
Without strength, you could not withstand the schemes of the Gods. You ended up like the mortals in the spires—or the Primarchs in the Warp.
Without strength, a vision was just a dream. You couldn't enforce a reality; you just prayed to a distant god and hoped they were kind.
But most gods were not.
And now, something stronger had arrived.
The Emperor offered a smile and a nod to Ramesses—who was being more cautious than Gork and Mork. He then moved to hide the "Assets" that even Tzeentch coveted in a place beyond His own perception.
They kill to save. They save to kill.
They share knowledge to protect it.
They seek to place Mankind on the Throne, greedily consuming the galaxy's resources.
Yet, they see the individual behind the macro-narrative. They leave 'room' for the soul, a move that defies the world-view of every other deity.
They are not like the ones who held power before them.
Perhaps... it is time to adapt.
Watching the Dawnbreakers assemble a "War in Heaven" roster just to handle a couple of Ork Gods, the Emperor felt a sharp, internal interrogation of His own administrative talent.
Faced with the evidence, He chose to place His faith in these young "brothers" from another world.
Wooo—Wooo—Wooo—
The eternal hurricane of the Warp grew louder.
The discordant voices in the void fell silent.
Facing Gork and Mork, they achieved a consensus. They remembered their purpose.
Responding to Ramesses' petition, they had arrived to break the Ork Gods and secure the Webway project.
Facing the fragment, He stood. For Mankind. To preserve the anchor that would give the species the material foundation for a healthy interstellar empire.
For Humanity.
The collective mind unified.
The Golden Sun, which had been buckling under the shifting forms, suddenly stabilized. It coalesced into the form of a Golden Giant—the most legendary icon of the Imperium manifested in the void.
He reached out and seized Gork and Mork, dragging the twin gods of the greenskins away from the Webway fragment.
Confusion is irrelevant.
Understanding is unnecessary.
The Radiant Giant focused on the task at hand. The burning blade struck toward the Ork Gods, who had entered their own terminal combat-frenzy.
Let the 'Old Men' brawl until they are satisfied.
Armageddon, Sub-Continent, Ruins of the Palace of the Beast, Capitol Imperialis.
Creak...
Time passed. Tu'Shan entered the command deck, his heavy boots echoing as he moved toward the edge of the dais.
He squeezed through the narrow thoroughfares, being careful not to step on the NCOs who had collapsed at their workstations in a state of terminal exhaustion. He reached the primary console.
Yarrick sat in the command throne, staring at the blackened sky.
It was still daylight, but the northern horizon was sinking into a heavy shadow. His expression was a statue's mask, his jaw locked tight.
Perhaps he was checking for omissions. Perhaps he was calculating the post-war reconstruction.
The surviving staff officers spoke in hushed tones, delivering routine commands with a hollow efficiency. The digital arrays clicked and whirred, receiving data-bursts from the front.
A unique, heavy stillness wreathed the room.
The entire planetary host, after a period of high-speed operation, had ground to a halt. Even the most durable machines required maintenance and a fresh charge.
The oaths before victory were magnificent. The parades after victory were grand.
Only the moment of victory itself was silent.
"Are you well?" Tu'Shan asked.
A long silence followed.
"Everything has unfolded according to the plan," Yarrick finally spoke. He turned to Tu'Shan, a faint smile touching his lips.
"I am well—"
He looked at the tactical hololith. There were no red icons left on the board. He allowed himself a look of weary satisfaction.
"Through our unified effort, we have defended our home. We have won. There is no better outcome."
Tu'Shan nodded.
"I agree."
He looked at Yarrick, who was leaning back into his throne, and said no more.
The towering giant withdrew in silence.
The Capitol Imperialis ground forward. Dry sand-dunes and scorched earth slipped past below, growing darker as the sun dipped. Grit rattled in the air-intakes; the engines emitted a rhythmic, thrumming groan.
In the sky, the fleet of scrap-ships began their rout.
On the ground, the Orks were being liquidated in droves. Rescue units emerged from the ruins—mortals and Astartes working together.
The clamor of the other world had faded. The "Teeth" of the Waaagh! had been broken.
The war was over.
Happy New Year to all my readers! May the new year bring new light and prosperity to you all!
WAAAGH! (The humie kind).
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