Perpetual's Twilight

Fourteen Angels vanished in a blink, off to their first missions. Duty called across the galaxy, and it would be only fourteen cries for help they could answer, for now. Once Fleur was done in the Halls of Death, and their solar system was secured, their armies would follow in full force. Fifteen million mages, veela, goblins, centaur, golems and more, awaiting orders to march.

She was so giddy with excitement, she almost skipped towards the top of the Halls of Death. Fleur - Grand Architect of Elysium - had spent fifty years planning, designing and creating their very own paradise, with all the safety measures she could possibly think of implementing. Under her guidance, Archmages who have dreamt for forty-thousand years about magical theory have created Enchantments of a scale and power that made even the Herald of Death tremble in awe.

Harry was on his way down the palace, towards the final step of their emergence. She reached the top, where the view was just as breathtaking as the thin air. Here, a crystal the size of a marble was placed into the middle of the highest tower. It was surrounded by the most complicated runic circles, combined with mandala, combined with solomonic circles,... she had a hard time remembering herself. It had taken them roughly thirty years to carve them all. To the untrained eye, it looked chaotic; as if someone had used the tower's floor as a scrapbook. Circles overlapped so much, that some line crossings were inches deep, carved into the stone, so often had they carved over it. Usually, lines for such rituals were a few millimeters in depth.

What seemed like chaos, was masterful precision, beyond what any magic user had ever produced. The marble in its middle was her greatest pride. It was Alchemy as well as Charms, Transfiguration and Abjuration, moulded into what she could only describe as crystallized Love. “You are being protected, by your ability to love.” she recited the quote Harry had once told her. Albus Dumbledore had known about this magic, even back then. He had used it to protect Harry, and now they would use it, perfected and complete, to protect all of them.

“Architect, are we ready?” one of the archmages asked, tearing her from her musing.

“Of course, Tiran. Just one last look at it, before the dawn. Let us begin.”

It was a day like any other, spent alone and mostly forgotten by the rest of the ship, guarding the scanners that collected data on the Black Reef. Phaetek had prepared and executed the rites to appease the machine spirit, as he did every day. Now he meditated on the results. The holograms showed the same, as they did every day. The movement of planetary bodies, so random and wild, that those above him in the hierarchy just knew there had to be some unbelievable construct within the storms.

Phaetek, Omnissiah forgive him, disagreed. It was not merely the sun that was constructed. He had watched these holograms for twenty years, now. Every day. Where the archmagos saw chaos, he saw a pattern larger than they were scanning for. However, he knew that should he speak aloud what he believes to have seen, the accusations of heresy would not wait long.

Because he was sure that whatever happened within the Black Reef, it was neither natural, nor was it malevolent, nor was it a precursor to human civilization. He was sure that the reports of the Rogue Trader were what they believed to be true. Phaetek was sure they believed to have seen reptile humanoids that swam through pillars of water to another world, defending it against coming evil. There were more absurd things to be found in the galaxy, after all.

He believed them to be illusions. Tricks to fool the flesh as well as the machine. However, they were gentle, most of the time. The people who pressed on into the anomaly were eventually met with forces too strong for their ships. The ones fooled by the illusions find themselves navigating around the Reef, shook but never hurt.

Could it be a relic of the dark ages? It had some characteristics of those times, if his limited data of it was sufficient to even make such assumptions. Phaetek once more picked up a quill, and began to note down the differences in positions of the planetary objects. He swore by the Omnissiah that he saw a pentagon there. If he added the Object of Interest to it, that odd sun, then it would make a pentagram of gigantic size.

He noted down the miniscule differences, which by themselves made little sense. They were not natural. At least this consensus had been reached. However, what civilization would have been able to build a solar system? The only real option, in his opinion, were their cursed enemies, the Necron. Who knew, maybe they would find the greatest tomb world of history under all this camouflage? Others would make these decisions and observations. Phaetek would continue to keep watch over the scanners, as was his holy duty.

His quill scratched across the parchment, and it took him a moment to realize that something had shaken the ship. Were they under attack? Have the T’au finally decided to end their stand-off?

He watched the scanners. No. There were no T’au ships. Nothing was out of the ordinary, as far as he could…

“Omnissiah protect us,” Phaetek whispered as he witnessed a golden line shoot out from one of the planets surrounding the Reef’s sun. Then another, and another. He threw away the protocol and started to make notes by hand, alongside the reports and lists his scanners created. “I was right,” he breathed out through his respirator. His mechanic voice reverberated in reverence. There it was, a pentagram drawn by five planets and the sun.

He saw Thirteen lines move out from the sun, connecting with gas giants. The pattern he saw was strange, yet familiar. He couldn’t keep up with what he saw. He pressed the activation button for the vox channels with an absent mind, so hypnotized by what unfolded before him. “Magos Phaetek to Archmagos Zilren. The Black Reef…”

“Order. Cease needless communication at once. Query. Availability of data packages concerning the Reef.”

“Sending.” Phaetek answered, but before he could hope to gather the data and send it to the bridge, he took one last look at the Black Reef.

He was blinded. Suddenly, without warning, the galaxy was alight in the white glow of the sun, brighter than a supernova. The ship shook with the impact of… the light? Phaetek knew not what he saw, yet he knew that whatever this was changed something within him. He grabbed his chest, where once his heart had been, and for the first time in decades, he felt empty.

Mont'yr Mal'Caor was still shifting in her pilot seat. Her gear was all over, a jumbled mess that would have required a minute longer to get to fit right. They didn’t have that minute. The moment the Black Reef exploded in white light, the alarms for immediate take-off had been given.

Every air-caste member of the orbital station observing the Reef had been activated. Every available ship had been brought to the docks, and made ready to fly towards the new system. Fly towards it, and fight for it. Fighters, dropships, even merchant vessels.

She realized she was shaking. Their clashes with the Gue’la had been minimal. Skirmishes, really. Now, their scanner showed the main gue’la fleet in movement, and their militaristic merchants not far behind. Their starships dwarfed any T’au battleship in the near vicinity. Unrefined hunks of metal that they were, they still were home to unimaginable violence, once unleashed.

“Attack formation.” came the cold command, and just as they trained, they steered their small fighters into optimized formations. Their engines pushed them as fast as they could, yet it would still take a few hours until they would clash with the enemy.

Mont’yr left her ship on auto-pilot, using the time until the clash to scout out the battlefield. The system was surrounded by asteroids, all seemingly pushed out from the sun, onto the edge of the system. How else would the almost perfect ball-like shape be explained?

She tapped onto her displays, zooming in on one of these asteroids. She stopped, shook her head and did a double take. They had markings on them, which she could not read. Still, there were markings, on asteroids, perfectly placed around the system. “What are they?” she mumbled to herself, while sending the images back to the orbital station.

“We are entering the system. Prepare for battle.” her commander spoke over their squads channel. His ship was in front of her, leading by some fifty tor’kan give or take. She checked her torpedoes, and guns. All functional, all full of ammunition. She took a deep breath, steadying her resolve, when all of a sudden, the commander’s ship was annihilated.

She could not speak, she could not react. One moment they were flying to battle, and the next she flew through the pieces of her commander’s ship, with the largest piece being no larger than her head.

“We’re under fire! Locating!”

“Engage, engage, engage!”

“Weapons free! Where are they?! I need a target!”

One by one, her squad was decimated by an invisible force. It took them apart with cold precision, one by one, from the front to the back. All too soon, she was the last of the squad, trying to veer off, find cover, the enemy; anything.

She couldn’t make the curve. It would kill her to make such a move, just as staying on course would. She made peace with it, in the blink of an eye it took for her to be the next one dead. She just hoped there would be no more useless sacrifices after theirs.

The last thing she saw was the asteroid she had seen, as she crossed an invisible border between this one and the next. Then, all went dark.

The roar of joy from across the planets was but a faint whisper on top of the Halls of Death. Fleur gazed out onto the mountains and fields of Hecate, and up the ray of magic they sent to the sun, to scatter it further onto thirteen gas giants, where it furthermore scattered to ten thousand runic markers on the very borders of their solar system. Nothing could cross them, without them knowing. Nothing would ever cross them, without their permission.

“The first ones are already trying to breach.” Tiran, the archmage, observed. He pointed towards the sky, where one could see faint, tiny orange balls appear in the blue above them, and vanish just as fast. Explosions of enormous starships, trying to reach the newly appeared solar system first.

More and more of them could be seen across the skies, until they suddenly stopped.

“They realized they’re not getting through.” Fleur frowned. “Smarter ones would have heeded our warnings over the last fifty years.”

“Well, from what we saw, smarts are not found in abundance within this galaxy.” Tiran said, shaking his head towards the sky.

“Hmm. At least they eventually stopped. That will make interrogations much easier. Shall we go and welcome them?”

“After you, Architect.”

All was done. They had emerged; and were about to show the galaxy a taste of who they were. Benevolent chaos, whimsy, joy, and above all, hope. Powerful, yet uninterested in using that power for conquest. Curious, yet mindful.

Once more, he reflected on this pride. He loved them, dearly, with every breath, with every fibre of his being. Which was why his sacrifice would come so easy. What was his divinity in the face of such devotion? Power without purpose.

There on Holy Terra, his brother in the divine sat on his throne, a corpse, helpless, lost. How long ago had they been born? Harry remembered the forms before this one. Thousands of names had he been called - tens of thousands of forms had he inhabited. Anubis, Styx, Yama, Hel. Vilified by so many who misunderstood his purpose in this universe.

It broke his heart, seeing his brother struggle so. Left alone for forty-thousand years, driven to the dark depths of his own mind by the never ceasing onslaught of gods made evil, treason and mistrust - of their siblings in forms he didn’t recognize, formed of hatred and anger of trillions of souls.

He had come to the deepest point of his palace, where the Halls of Death stood connected to the core of this planet, and by doing so, connected to the entirety of the solar system and every magical in the galaxy.

He gazed upon the roiling, perfectly circulating core, stabilized by an array of menhir stones where it opened into the palace. Temperatures too extreme for any mortal made the enchanted stone glow, its metallic veins even white-hot. Here, atop one of the menhirs Harry sat down. He crossed his legs, laid his hands gently into his lap, and let his thoughts begin to wander.

The galaxy was at a crossroads. Chaos had split it in half, and was splitting those halves again, and again. Divide and conquer, in a millennia spanning masterplan of destruction. The Ruinous Powers were on the best way to bring the galaxy to an end, where it would be ruled by Evil Incarnate, or devoured by orcs or tyranids, until all went dark. The method of destruction mattered not, in the grand scheme of things.

Where your enemies sought to divide, the cunning man must unify. Where they required darkness, the light must shine ever brighter. 

His brother could not be allowed to die by his followers, for one reason, and one reason only. His light was required for mankind to navigate the Warp. Without it, humanity would be doomed to die. Solving this problem had been a hard decision to make, since they would give up their greatest piece on the board. Their Queen in this round of chess, would be bound to the core of Hecate. At least for a while.

Harry concentrated now. He sharpened his mind, and made all distraction cease. He felt the arrays in place, and the power of their enchantments truly and fully unfolded. The last piece was his to give.

His body sprouted wings, large and as black as those of his angels. His eyes became the same black void. He tore on his soul, bending and stretching it. He felt the Warp, the Beyond, real space and the realms besides, twitch and shiver with every tearing of himself. He wanted to scream, but he could not. How long had he not felt pain? It had been ages, and he could barely keep his mind focused through this old, and somehow new sensation.

Then, pulling for one last time, he was done. Nothing had changed, at first sight. Yet, when he stood, he saw a dark silhouette remain kneeling at the centre of the planet. “Mortal again,” he whispered, knowing that it was only true in the most abstract of ways. Mortal like a greater daemon. Mortal like the Emperor. Not really mortal, by any stretch of a human’s imagination.

Yet, he was less for the part that he needed to leave behind here. He felt as his divine essence filled the space. It grew and grew, invisible but all the more oppressive for it.  Eventually, real space couldn’t hold it anymore, and it pressed into the Warp. There it took root; built a foundation. Unmoving, unmistakeable.

He felt the Warp tremble. He felt fear, and rage, streaming towards him, as if he would be impressed by their feeble attempts at lashing out. Here they had no power, and no hold. He wondered how it would feel, had he not been behind the wards of Elysium. Would he have felt impact of the rage of Khorne? Well, he would find out, eventually, of that he had no doubt.

However, for now, his rage was impotent. Their combined fury but a faint echo.

His essence filled the Halls of Death, every crack and every stone, infused with what had once been the Herald of Death.

Now, he was just Harry, and every magical was a herald of death, now.

“All for you, brother.” he whispered into the Warp. “A weight off your shoulders. Rest now.”

Zariy felt her eyes. They had vanished for days, maybe weeks. Now they’re back, and felt like somebody had poured in acid alongside them. Her skull itched, inside. She would have to scratch that itch.

Ahh, that was better. NO! She couldn’t. She must not. Zariy felt how her nail had dug so deep into her skin, she had reached the skull. She must not. This was the work of daemons. She heard their whispers and false promises. The itch would not lessen. She would die if she scratched! She knew this. She could not listen to them. She must not.

“The Emperor guides. The Emperor provides. The Emperor guides. The Emperor provides…” she mumbled as well as her mouth allowed.

Everywhere was darkness. She couldn’t see the beacon. Where was he? He was supposed to save them, but they were lost in the warp. How long had it been?

Oh, the captain’s corpse had fallen to dust. Her brother was still alive, tough. Thank the Emperor. Aww, look at the little tyke, playing with his ball. Haha, just like back then when he hadn’t been killed by the Null. Must have been a millenia or so? Who knew? The Warp did alter the mind, time and space and everything all at once, always, never ceasing, never relenting, never stopping, never ever giving her any rest ever.

Ahh, yes, that hit the spot.

NO! She once more pulled away from her forehead, where gushes of blood came from the hole she had dug with her nails. She had an entire chapter of Astartes to take care for! They needed her to find a way out. A way out. Where was the way? Where was the Emperor? Where was his light?! There was no light. Never any light. Never any clarity. 

Were they even alive, still? She didn’t hear them, anymore. Never hears them. Never anyone.

Her brother was here. Such a joy. Oh, no, his eyes were melting, again. Unfortunate.

Her own eyes started to melt too. Her fingernails fell out. Ah, well, they would grow back in another hundred years or so. Stay on course, Zariy.

You have no course, Zariy. You are lost. You are doomed. You are dead and lost and forgotten and revoked and erased and destroyed and murdered and killed and forsaken, forsaken, forsaken by the Emperor. Forever forsaken.

“Look, Zaryi!” her brother cried out. “Look into the stars!”

“No, no, Domin. I cannot look. I must not look. Please, do not tempt me, brother. I love you, but I cannot trust you.”

“You must look, Zaryi.” She had to look. What if it was the Emperor, finally? Had he come to save her? Please, she was so lost. So lost. So alone. Never anyone. There was no one. And her skull itched. So much. She needed to look up. Look into the stars.

Behold a black star, splitting the warp. Where was it coming from? Why did it say to follow it? Why? What was it? Holy Terra? No. She knew not, but did it matter? Finally, something.

The star became larger, brighter in its odd blackness. She saw patterns form. Guidelines? The star became even larger. It gained form, and silhouette. A hand? Three fingers stretched out, two bent to the side, with an eye in the middle.

She saw lines and routes, and all manners of guides. She could swear she saw names in the warp. Macragge. That was… Ultramar? She remembered? She remembered. She remembered! The Astartes. She could bring them home!

“Thank you, brother.” she said to the corpse on the floor. “Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you,...” she cried as she triangulated a course towards salvation.