"Savior, I have failed your trust."
Jubal lowered his head in shame.
While trying to pick a shortcut through the Webway, he had the misfortune of running straight into another tide of daemons—only for the Hope Primarch to shoulder the burden and slaughter his way out.
"At least we arrived on time. A misfortune turned blessing, perhaps."
Eden waved his hand dismissively, refusing to linger on the matter.
He lifted his gaze toward the distance, an inexplicable sense of awe rising within.
There stood the Dark Eldar's abominable mechanical creation—the Black Throne.
Though named a "throne," in truth it was a massive complex of machinery and architecture.
Countless gears and twisted metal structures interlocked seamlessly.
In some places, living flesh had been fused with the mechanisms, making the whole thing even more grotesque.
"What a staggering piece of mechanical art…"
Having rested enough, Eden dismounted from the White Falcon and strode toward the mechanical complex.
This was the supreme creation into which Asdrubael Vect had poured endless resources and lives—a masterpiece of construction few things in the galaxy could rival.
Eden could feel the rhythmic thrum pulsing within it.
One thought, however, seized the Hope Primarch's mind:
"This damned thing looks bigger than the Golden Throne… if I sit on it, will I ever get back off? Will my end be worse than the Emperor's?!"
But he had already come this far.
The stage was set, and he had no choice but to continue.
Now, this Webway sector had become one of the most terrifying battlefields in the galaxy.
Massive rents tore across the Veil as warp fissures split reality, staining the surface of the great structure with warped, eerie light.
Three distinct currents of Chaos power surged forth, birthing fresh abominations.
From the heavens descended six hermaphroditic Keepers of Secrets, their perfect bodies reflecting thousands of lustful faces.
They exuded a heady fragrance that reduced Dark Eldar warriors to shrieking puddles of pink slime—reforming moments later into horrifying new daemons, their souls long since consumed.
From a churning sea of molten blood, eight towering Bloodthirsters emerged, bellowing. Their bodies were like rock-forged iron, nearly impervious to dark-matter weaponry.
Swinging their massive axes, they became walking engines of carnage—decapitating foes and piling skulls into grim cairns to honor the Blood God.
Nine raven-headed Lords of Change chanted paradoxical incantations in unison.
Half-real and half-illusory, these weavers of fate were untouchable even to the firepower of the Dark Eldar's heavy voidships.
With each touch of their serpentine staves, ancient xenos relic-tech turned traitor, slaughtering their original masters.
And these Greater Daemons were merely the vanguard.
A tidal wave of abominations crashed against the spires of Commorragh that the Kabal of the Black Heart had spent millennia fortifying.
"Commorragh's wound bleeds true blood…"
The Black Throne had entered its final phase. In his incubation vat, Asdrubael Vect could no longer send word to the outside.
He stared at the encroaching daemon tide with a rare sense of helplessness.
For the first time in millennia, the supreme overlord realized his schemes were nothing. All his plans had turned to blades pointed back at him.
It was as though an invisible hand had been moving every piece.
The realization chilled him—just a flicker of the Dark Gods' wrath could devour him whole.
"This duel with the Changer of Ways… have I truly lost?"
His grand defenses crumbled; his godhood project lay in ruins.
Sooner or later, She Who Thirsts would claim the souls of all Dark Eldar for eternal torment. Even Vect was not immune to that fear.
His face twisted at the thought:
"Chaos Gods! Perhaps I've lost—lost this crown, lost Commorragh's heart to your corruption…
But do you know what hides in your throat, the perfect thorn you can't swallow?"
His gaze hardened. Commorragh and the Dark Eldar would be his, or no one's.
If he failed, if the daemons seized the Webway city…
Then his tongue-root's Blackstone device would detonate. Commorragh would fall into annihilation, dragging the Dark Eldar with it.
The city's secret soul-circuits would harvest every Eldar soul, delivering them to the Eldar God of Death.
That would be his final revenge.
The Craftworld cousins and their death-god would carry on the eternal war against She Who Thirsts.
Just as Vect prepared for that final fate, a new host surged into the Black Throne's sector.
The mixed armies of the Heirs of Asurmen.
Warriors of many Kabals, Terror Legionnaires, Orks, Tyranids, and even Mandrake hosts surged into the Black Heart's defenses.
"Traitors!"
A High Archon of the Black Heart spat in fury.
He had never imagined the rebels would strike now. With daemons at the gates, now came this betrayal—despair compounded.
"Those Asurmen heirs—are they so eager to see Commorragh destroyed?!"
The Black Heart reeled, stunned at such ruthless pragmatism.
But then—to their shock—the rebel host pivoted, not against them, but against the daemons.
Archons like Fruk coolly ordered their troops to the defense.
Their voices thundered across the battlefield:
"We march under the Heir of Asurmen's command—to stand with you against the daemons!
From this moment, we are comrades-in-arms, not enemies!"
"Lord Asurmen decrees: all of Commorragh's strength must guard the Black Throne and safeguard the Supreme Overlord. Only then can Commorragh's future be preserved!"
Such magnanimity moved even the cynical Black Heart.
Hatred melted into unity.
"Asurmen's heir… I must admire your courage."
Even Vect, floating in his vat of solution, felt a flicker of emotion.
Never would he have expected the so-called Savior to send his armies in this darkest hour.
But the feeling passed swiftly—replaced by elation.
His plan for godhood might yet succeed.
"I will soon stride upon the stage of the Warp itself, a higher being shaping the galaxy's fate. No longer a pawn!
As for the Heir of Asurmen—he is beneath me. His pitiful efforts will only pave my ascent."
Yet what Vect did not know—
The Hope Primarch feared nothing more than Vect's failure.
Eden knew the old tyrant's nature: should Vect fail, he would drag everything into ruin.
Thus, he had to ensure Vect's ascension—if only to keep him from burning all of Commorragh.
And so, under the Redemption Satellite Zone's coalition banner, chaos deepened into a grand melee.
Every color of faction clashed in a kaleidoscopic slaughter—the very chaos Eden had engineered.
It gave Jaghatai Khan's White Scars the opening they needed.
Hidden within a structure, the Khan's riders prepared to strike, to install sacred machinery and channel the Little Sun's soul.
But first, Vect had to ascend—freeing up the Black Throne's "bandwidth." Only then could the Little Sun's soul overwrite it.
"Let's move."
With Mandrake shadows as cover, Eden and Jubal crept toward the Black Throne's core.
Hum—
The colossal machine roared, the obsidian seat drowning in soul energy.
One could even hear a faint heartbeat.
It was the heart of the Emperor's clone, beating within its body. Though mindless, its functions had awakened.
As the clone of the galaxy's once-greatest being, its aura alone sent shudders through xenos flesh.
Even daemons recoiled.
For this was once the mightiest being of the galaxy—now the Warp's greatest curse, the Black King, the eternal beacon.
Hum—
The last surge of power rushed into the Throne. White arcs of psychic lightning coursed through conduits, culminating in the throne itself.
The Emperor's clone rose into the air, wracked by soul-force vast enough to shred any flesh.
But the body endured.
Twin eyes blazed with white radiance.
All knew the truth then: the Supreme Overlord's ascension was at its final step.
Hiss—
"We feast upon rapture itself… and your suffering is our finest vintage."
Dexyssa, the Claw of Slaanesh, and Synnyssa, the Voice of Slaanesh, broke through the Kabal of the Black Heart's inner defenses and burst into the Black Throne's core.
With butterfly-brilliant wings giving a lazy beat, scarlet crystal clusters budded from the void and lanced through every Incubus who tried to bar their path.
Even the heavy batteries along the way buckled under that onslaught.
Bone-whips and rapier-thorns twined with a mist of seduction as the Twin Keepers carved the space into prisms that refracted a thousand devouring emotions.
For the Dark Eldar, it was a deathtrap—one that drowned them in their own extremes.
The two Greater Daemons surged straight for the Black Throne.
She Who Thirsts had long since sensed what a fully functioning Black Throne would mean for Commorragh—and would stop at nothing to destroy it.
Now the inner ring of Black Heart troops lay shattered; no one seemed left to prevent the Throne's ruin.
But before the Twins could strike, spears of white lightning crashed in.
"For the Savior—and for the Khan!"
A White Scars raider squad tore from cover at breakneck speed. Their stand against Greater Daemons was nothing short of epic.
Look closer, though: each White Falcon's sidecar carried a golden, towering figure—Adeptus Custodes.
The Shield-Captain and his Ten Thousand leapt from the sidecars, jump packs howling, and slammed down before the Twin Keepers.
The Shield-Captain drew his hip-sword and leveled it. "In the name of the Golden Throne, heresy goes no further."
"This body is the Throne's bulwark—form the shield wall."
Behind him the Custodians locked their storm-shields into a seamless barrier, unmoving as a cliff.
Any abomination that dared profane the Emperor's clone would first have to climb a rampart of Imperial dead.
"Lackeys of the Accursed!"
The Twins tried to slip around, only to crash against layered psychic wards and force-fields the Custodians projected.
They roared, attacking in tandem—powder-pink hellfire crossing with bolter storms and the glare of power blades.
More Greater Daemons forced their way in. Custodians and White Scars met them head-on, buying ground with Sanctified Ash Shells by the dozen.
Across the Black Throne district, more "yellow suns" flared as daemon-banes detonated—yet the foe adapted, emboldened by their patrons' favor.
"This won't hold… we're outnumbered."
Eden crouched in a crook of machinery, eyes tracking the flow of battle, ready to intercept any disaster.
But even he had to admit: the daemons were pressing hard.
Suddenly, a six-legged Keeper of Secrets smashed through a White Scars bulwark and swept a scything blade toward the Throne's conduit trees.
Boom—
The Black Throne's local force-field caught the strike, but the Keeper didn't relent—blow after blow drained the ward.
Worse, nothing stood between that daemon and a fatal breach.
Eden felt his scalp prickle. Forget stealth—he vaulted out to intercept.
"Over here, you filth!"
He poured his weight into a single brutal kick that sent the Keeper tumbling, then chased it down and laid in with a righteous pummeling.
The Hope Primarch's appearance snapped every predator's attention; several Greater Daemons converged at once.
This was why he'd stayed in the shadows: in the Warp's pecking order, the Hope Primarch ranked right alongside the Black Throne and the Emperor's clone.
"Trying a cheap shot?!"
Eden slipped a Slaaneshi slash and, without even turning, hammered a would-be backstabber with a Sanctified Ash Shell to the face—dropping it screaming.
He caught another daemon's poisoned spike on his power sword and sheared the wielder's arm clean.
Fwip!
Air shrieked.
Eden's psychic sense screamed—every hair stood on end. He rolled as a spear flashed past to where his heart had been.
The tip bit into the floor; fleshstone boiled into a pulsing pit—killer venom.
Then the spear vanished.
Fast—too fast. The attacker moved at the apex of speed and skill, veiled in a relic cloak that blurred all trace.
Eden drew a slow breath, coiled for the next strike.
"Savior, you are so very weak—you can't even parry this."
The voice of Syll'esh the Doom of Secrets rippled around him.
She had waited for this moment—to end the Warp's "false legend."
"Oh?"
Eden ignored the trash talk—he'd heard harsher on a bad forum thread.
He planted his feet, closed his eyes, and felt the attack lines spool.
The spear flashed again.
"Got you."
A thin smile cut Eden's face.
He tilted, letting death graze past—and caught the haft.
His other hand snapped up the ash-launcher, point-blank at Syll'esh's brow.
"Impossible—"
Her pupils pin-pricked as the Emperor-cursed munition swelled in her vision.
Duang—
At the split-second of detonation, the Doom of Secrets threw up her rapture-shield. The relic drank most of the holy flare and spilled it aside in splinters of light.
Her speed and fight-sense were monstrous.
By the time Eden shifted to disengage, it was a heartbeat too late—pink tendrils coiled him, locking limbs and spine.
Shards of She Who Thirsts, woven into a living cloak about Syll'esh—her greatest weapon and font of power.
"I've got you."
The towering, willowy daemoness loomed, spear plunging for the kill.
Death's chill brushed Eden's heart—he was already thumbing a last resort when—
"Not today."
A colossal crimson titan crashed through—Ka'Bandha.
His blood-axe sheared the tendrils; he planted himself between the Hope Primarch and the strike. The spear glanced, punching into his shoulder.
He didn't care. The axe came down for Syll'esh's face.
The Doom of Secrets didn't take it head-on—she ripped the spear free and vanished into the cloak's mirage.
"Ka'Bandha?"
"Savior."
For a beat, the Hope Primarch and the Exalted Bloodthirster locked eyes—brotherhood and bloodlust both burning there.
They knew another duel—final, absolute—awaited them.
"Good timing…"
Eden almost felt numb to the classic "brother saves brother" beat—trust the half-brother from another nightmare to spare him one trump card.
"I won't have some other daemon take your head."
Ka'Bandha's eyes blazed. "Once I tear down the Doom of Secrets, we settle this—with death."
Murder rose from him like heat; he could scarcely wait to claim the Savior's skull.
"I'll be waiting."
Eden answered with perfect swagger. Maybe he couldn't win now. Later… who knew?
Both of them scanned the haze, backs touching as they turned—two enemies moving as one.
To the watching hordes it looked like a true alliance: the Hope Primarch and the Exalted Bloodthirster, fighting back-to-back.
"Blood for the Blood God!"
Ka'Bandha lunged, shoulder-ramming Syll'esh out of a fresh ambush line.
Eden reignited his relic power blade and rammed it home—squarely into the hindquarters of another Greater Daemon.
Boom—
The Black Throne sector convulsed.
Above the seat, a queer fissure tore open—through it, a twisted roadway seemed to writhe into being…
(End of Chapter)
[Get +20 Extra Chapters On — P@tr3on "Zaelum"]
[Every 500 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter Drop]
[Thanks for Reading!]