This was the first time the Imperium truly understood the dread of that bygone era.
The Iron Men were, in truth, the most terrifying war machines of that age. Once their supply lines were secured, the depth of their capability was revealed in full, even planet-sized warships could be mass-produced. No mortal mind could comprehend the sheer, soul-crushing horror of a conflict where vessels of planetary scale, or larger, locked in combat, dwarfing the imagination of even the creators of old.
It was a war that defied the very concept of human scale.
As the last of the bio-domes were recovered, Axion successfully apprehended Magnus, who was found slumped on the floor of the final chamber. The traitorous son of the Emperor was a ruin of blood; dark crimson fluid oozed from his eyes, nose, and ears, congealing upon his skin. It stood out even more vividly than his natural red hue, painting a portrait of utter, wretched defeat.
The psychic trauma he had suffered manifested physically, leaving his body beyond his control. He could no longer channel the warp, let alone orchestrate an escape.
Deep within the Immaterium, Tzeentch let out a piercing shriek from the Impossible Fortress at the end of the Crystal Labyrinth. The roiling psychic backlash sent every daemon in the vicinity into a frenzy; the Tzaangors, sacrificed here in the name of the Changer of Ways, shattered into heaps of raw meat. The Tzaangor Shaman frantically performed rites to appease the god's wrath, but it was futile.
In that single, catastrophic instant, a dozen weapons firing in "Nullification Mode" had blanketed the midsection of the Void Sword. The Thousand Sons, the Iron Warriors, Perturabo himself, and that entire sector of the ship had been unmade, annihilated into nothingness.
Tzeentch had been personally channeling power to Magnus at the time, attempting to destroy the Iron Men's Titan-ship. The possibility of the Iron Men turning such weapons upon their own vessel was a statistical anomaly of near-zero probability. Yet, it had come to pass.
Tzeentch felt the power it had lent to Magnus utterly depleted. A portion of the god's own essence had been expended. Worse still, the ectoplasmic dissociation weaponry possessed the property of conceptual collapse. This strange, clinical destruction left Tzeentch feeling as though its own divine domains had been chipped away. In the secret libraries composed of foul sorcery, pages in books chronicling forbidden and profane knowledge began to turn blank.
Tzeentch could feel the damage healing, yet for the first time, it felt a genuine, gnawing trepidation toward the Iron Men.
In a sense, the Ruinous Powers were paradoxes themselves, not merely distortions of concept. Even the Four Gods could not explain the nature of their own existence. Yet, humanity occasionally crafted creations that defied their own understanding, triggering chain reactions and phenomena that remained beyond the reach of divine explanation.
The wounded Tzeentch felt a surge of rage, which caught the attention of Khorne. An infinitesimal thread of immense power bled from Tzeentch's realm into the domain of the Blood God. As Khorne probed the origin of this power, Axion had already finished scouring Magnus's memories.
It turned out that Magnus had been tracking the movements of Leman Russ for a long time. Horus had twisted the Emperor's commands, precipitating the Burning of Prospero, and in his desperation, Magnus had possessed no time to discern the truth. After his pact with Tzeentch, Leman Russ had viewed him only as a traitor. He could not explain to a man who saw him as an apostate that the tragedy had been birthed from a lie, and with Horus dead, proof was forever beyond his reach. He would never believe the Emperor's word, and Tzeentch would never permit him the truth.
This left Magnus with only a fractured, incomplete understanding. Yet, this did not stop him from transmuting his hatred from the untouchable Emperor to the man who had struck the blow: Leman Russ. He had always hungered to make the Wolf King feel his own agony. But knowing the lethality of his brother, Magnus had remained in the shadows, observing. He had already lost to Russ in direct combat; he knew he was no match for him, especially when Russ wielded the relic spear, Dionysian. One slip, and death would be certain. He had been waiting for an opportunity.
At the end of the Horus Heresy, Leman Russ had received word of an unknown origin regarding the "Tree of Life" somewhere in the Warp, rumored to hold the cure for all wounds. No one knew what the Tree of Life truly was; different xenos races perceived it differently, and it might not even have been a plant at all. Yet, chasing that ethereal hope, Russ had plunged into the journey without a backward glance.
Magnus had used his psychic gifts to track Russ's movements, constantly divining his whereabouts. Axion found the most recent prediction in Magnus's memory, a trace from a century ago. Magnus had pinpointed Russ's location and, leveraging Tzeentch's dark power, uncovered many mysteries.
The vastness of the Immaterium lay not just in its expanse, but in its staggering temporal scope and bottomless depth. The hope Russ pursued was a relic of an ancient age, a being nurtured by the dominion of Life.
Nurgle commanded the aspects of decay, regeneration, and the cycle within that dominion. But other facets of the Life-domain were lost in the deeper reaches of the Warp. The Aeldari Goddess of Life had possessed aspects of existence that Nurgle did not. While the Ruinous Powers were effectively undefeated in the Warp, they were not truly invincible. The place Leman Russ traveled was a region even Nurgle avoided.
The internecine schemes between the Four, combined with the presence of powerful followers, forced the Gods to reserve their strength. If they suffered grave injury or depletion, they feared their domains would slip away, or that a Greater Daemon might ascend, supplanting them. The number of god-seats in the Warp was fixed, the sequence of their ascension etched in stone.
But the daemons born of that same void harbored an eternal, insatiable greed. The desire to usurp the Gods never faded from their hearts; they simply bowed to power. The Four were too mighty for the daemons to seize their domains, and without a domain, there was no godhood. The Gods drove these daemons while warily guarding against them, a truth known to none but the Ruinous Powers themselves.
After confirming Magnus still held value, Axion sequestered him in a specialized containment cell. The Iron Men required him to divine the path of Leman Russ once more and locate the sanctuaries of the Chaos Gods.
Upon receiving the notification from the Iron Men, Jaghatai Khan, who should have been elated, found no joy. Gazing upon the fourteen Titan-class ships, his mood became deeply complex. If these terrifying allies were to one day turn their blades, the legacy of the Emperor would surely be erased from existence.
——————
This fanfic is now complete! If you want to read the entire story ahead of everyone else, check out my pat-reon: pat-re-on.c-om/magnor (remove the hyphen to access normally)