Khorne's Brass Throne shuddered amid the Blood Sea, the steps of skulls collapsing under his booming laughter.
"Slaanesh's wails are sweeter than a mortal's screams! But if this is an Imperial trap—it's not worth the risk. Why not watch and wait?"
In truth, he cared little for the previous Slaanesh or the upstart inheritor. Anyone bearing that power was his enemy. He wanted Slaanesh dead, not saved.
Trap or not, he wouldn't rescue Slaanesh.
"It's not a trap—it's murder," hissed Tzeentch, a thousand mouths speaking cold truth and hot lies, his Crystal Labyrinth twisting into a Möbius loop.
"Look at the ripples in realspace—this is a premeditated plot."
In the mist appeared Holy Terra: the Golden Throne blazing like a supernova, thirty-six Emperor-avatars forming a psychic matrix to wrench the Chaos divinity from Fulgrim's chest. The Emperor was extracting it by some method.
"What is that? It looks like our own embodiment," Khorne asked.
It felt like the concretized essence of their power—indescribable, like themselves.
"You know something?" Nurgle asked.
He suspected Vashtorr and Tzeentch knew more. His loss in the Plague War likely owed much to their using him as a decoy—to draw Imperial strength or to probe the Emperor's current level.
"Can't you see? This is the locus of our power—its source—the Supreme Godhead of the Immaterium: the Chaos divinity.
"The Emperor intends to extract it and annihilate a Chaos god.
"That is good for you, Khorne—you and Slaanesh are sworn foes.
"But if he can kill Slaanesh, he can kill the rest of us," Tzeentch said.
That was the crux. They were immortal—rules incarnate. Or rather, the universe's emotions. As long as sentient life existed, they would not fade.
They were bound to the Warp—the great Chaos gods.
Once, everything was a game—an eternal game.
But now the Emperor sought to change the rules—turn the game into slaughter—upending the table, breaking all their interests.
"It's true," Vashtorr said, dropping pretense. "That is the Chaos divinity. The Emperor is extracting it.
"Humans mean to annihilate a Chaos god, and the prime movers are the Emperor and that human, Rhodes."
"How is that possible? We are immortal. As long as the Warp—our great Immaterium—endures, we persist," Khorne said.
He embodied war, violence, cruelty. As long as sentients knew slaughter, his power was endless.
He was the first-born Chaos god, birthed from the slaughter through which life evolved.
"That was then. Now is different. Humanity keeps growing stronger. And that human Rhodes—you've noticed?
"The beings and machines he conjures aren't of our universe.
"That means a plane higher than ours exists.
"We so-called multiversal gods exist across timelines, but we have not transcended this cosmos," Vashtorr said.
"How can that be—other universes—and this Rhodes hails from one of them?
And he can summon things from there into ours?" Khorne rumbled. The blood-hued ocean heaved—his mood in turmoil.
If other universes existed, what were they—these self-styled multiversal gods?
They hadn't even left their own universe. It was laughable—like a villager boasting he was the world's richest man while never leaving his hamlet.
"I speak truth. I've watched him long. Didn't you notice?
"His soul did not originate in the Warp. He was not born in our world. He comes from elsewhere.
"The universe has shifted. We can no longer see the future," Vashtorr said.
Chaos gods transcend time and could once move future-to-past at whim. But now—could they really see? The future had become uncertain. For Tzeentch, uncertainty was not necessarily good if he didn't know the outcome.
"This is bad for all of us," Tzeentch said.
Cosmic upheaval could be good—if he knew the result. Otherwise, it wasn't.
Other-universe powers and beings—no wonder the Emperor sheltered Rhodes so carefully. If not for Vashtorr's disclosure, they'd think Rhodes was merely a special Primarch the Emperor created.
"That explains it. Those 'Cosmic Beasts' are imports. Our universe never birthed such things."
They resembled proto C'tan yet fundamentally differed.
"We must unite. No more Eternal Game, no more infighting. We must join forces to eliminate the Emperor—and that human, Rhodes," Tzeentch said.
"Tzeentch is right. We cannot waste ourselves. Unite against the Emperor—or be destroyed one by one," Nurgle said.
"I'll tell you something more. Your beloved goddess of life wasn't stolen by the Emperor, but taken by that Rhodes. She even bears his divine offspring," Vashtorr goaded.
Nurgle's cauldron boiled. The kindly father stirred the green froth with a bone staff; Isha's emerald hair shimmered in the surface. "My Isha…" Pus-tears welled in his milky eyes.
Cursed wretch! So that human stole his bride. He would make Rhodes pay—destroy him, humanity, and the Imperium.
"I will intervene. We must unite. If the Emperor gets the divinity and uses the Dark King's power to devour it, he will surpass us all," Khorne said at last.
After consideration, Khorne joined the war. If he waited, disaster might reach him when the others had already fallen. As the strongest of the Chaos gods, he should stand up now.
"But we are insulated from realspace. We can only manifest part of our power there.
"We cannot even intervene when humans sail the Warp. How do we stop what's happening on Terra?" Nurgle asked the key question.
It wasn't fear of the Emperor or inability to fight him—the problem was they couldn't reach him in realspace.
"Hahaha. That was true before. We were beings of the Warp, insulated from reality. But the Great Rift has torn the galaxy open. We can meddle more deeply in realspace," Tzeentch said.
"At most, we can send greater daemons. Our true selves still cannot go," Nurgle said.
"I already said—that was before. The Emperor is stripping the Chaos divinity—and he doesn't realize that the divinity is itself an insulator to realspace.
"By making it appear in realspace, he has turned the area around Holy Terra into a zone where Warp and reality interlace.
"The barrier of reality is about to break," Tzeentch said.