Perpetual's Twilight

“Completely barren. Not even bacteria left to find.”

Neville stood on a planet’s surface, which name he purposefully forgot. It was not a planet, as in, a world on which life was possible, anymore. It was a barren rock, utterly devoured by Tyranids. His dozens of detection spells gave him the exact same result, every time. Here, there was nothing. There was so little, in fact, that any mortal would have to be careful walking here, lest their own biology couldn’t withstand the sheer emptiness of it all.

He did not remember the names of these worlds, because they would be given a new one, once he was done. He stretched out his hand with a vial in it. Shining green liquid was still corked shut in its crystal confinements. Life, distilled down into a liquid.

One drop fell onto the barren sand of the planet, and just a blink of an eye later, the tiniest of seedling had rooted itself into the soil, and began to grow with breakneck speed.

Neville jumped back, playfully so, just before the seedling sprouted fully wooden roots, and a stem that grew larger and larger with every second. Not too long after, Neville grinned at the singular, ancient looking oak. An Allseed Tree, as he called them. It would grow to reach the height of a skyscraper, with roots deep into the crust of the planet, where they will pull from it new substance for life. However, for this it needed water.

Then he pulled out another vial, and took to the skies to pour it out. Blue and white, like liquid marble did it shine from within. Just one drop he spilled into the air. Behind him, clouds formed, thick and as black as his wings. Thunder roared across the world, and before too long, torrents of water fell from the skies.

On the peak of a mountain, he paused to witness the glory of a world beginning to heal. In a few thousand years, this planet would once more be able to host an abundance of life, probably even beyond what it had been capable of before. His gardener’s touch would see to that.

Now he only needed to see if the Hive reacted to it.

Hagrid was having the time of his life. Unlife, if one wanted to be technical about it, but technicalities were never something he spent much time pondering. Technically he was an archangel of Death, but other than the others Harry had summoned, he had neither wings, nor the preference for the colour black. He was in his usual hunting vest, with his trusty crossbow and umbrella wand. All that gave it away was that his eyes were black. Not even his entire eyes, just the pupils.

He had been summoned, and given a rather easy task. Find and tame the most dangerous animals this galaxy had to offer. Befriending the wildlife. He had been gifted a truly satisfying mission.

Finally, after their emergence, this task had brought him to the vast jungles of a planet called Catachan. He had found a hive of a most interesting little critter. It was scorpion like, but seemingly crossed with a centipede. It was eating steak out of his hand, when a bunch of rough looking folk came crashing into the clearing. They had been stunned by the view. “Aye, and ‘ow do ya lads call them?” he had asked one of the soldier types. Guardsmen, if he remembered correctly.

“Devils. Catachan Devils.” one of them stammered, still stunned by the happily gurgling beast.

Even some of its offspring came to eat from Hagrid’s hand. “Aren’ you jus’ the sweetest? Devil is no name fo ya.” Hagrid petted it over its hard carapace. He thought for a moment, “Herbert, I call ye. Whadayya think?”

His answer came as another happy gurgle, coming from Herbert the Catachan Devil as it chewed down on even more meat.

“What the fuck,” the guardsman whispered.

She felt it before she saw it. They had left the Warp. Finally, after all this time. Zariy fell back into her navigator seat, and wept. Tears rolled down her cheeks in a continuous stream. Her sobs carried through the empty halls of the battleship they had entrusted to her. It was finally over.

Her brother was gone. She had known him an illusion of the Warp, probably made to torture her. Now she found herself missing him. She felt over the skin of her head, marked with fingernail formed scar after scar where the ruinous powers had tried to make her kill herself. She had always denied them. The people that trusted her to steer them safely to harbour were none less than the Emperor’s most trusted. Her cargo was too important.

The Captain still lay dead before her, at the same post where he had stood when they entered the Warp. She mourned the brave man. When he had given the order to have every other Marine in stasis, so that the Warp may have a harder time corrupting them, he decided to stay behind. He had tended to the stasis pods, made sure that every single one of his men was properly asleep, before he returned to the bridge for one last time.

He had asked her to swear to him. Swear that she would do everything in her power to find a way through the storms, through the Warp and it’s corruption. She had sworn to him, that the sons of Rogal Dorn would one day see the light of Sol again, and that their task would find completion. “Almost there, Captain.” she spoke to the dust and bones of him, lying there next to sensors that slowly began to figure out where in the galaxy they were.

Whatever sun she gazed upon now, it was not Sol. The planets she looked upon were not Holy Terra, nor Mars. Neither were they of Ultramar or any other planet system she recognized. Her charts made little sense of what she looked at. Outdated, no doubt. How long had they been inside the maelstroms of madness?

Zariy cared little about such things. She needed to land, somehow awake the marines, and bring her cargo to Terra, and… “Much to do, much to do.” she whispered to herself, while she mulled over how exactly she was going to contact anyone. The Astropaths had all succumbed to the Warp almost immediately upon entry, helpless against the onslaught of daemons ordered to torment them. They had been killed by the marines before the stasis. She wondered what had happened to the rest of the crew. She could only imagine the horrors that unfolded in the bowels of the ship.

Without further warning, intruder alerts went off. Someone had entered the docking bay, and the few servitors still functioning had identified them as a foreign presence. Whatever it was, its size was no more than a humanoid’s, and its behaviour careful, yet steady in its approach. She watched the protocols update with every servitor the intruder passed.

“Are you friend or are you foe?” she greeted them, once she heard their foot falls on the bridge’s floor. So close. But of course, real space was often even less safe than the Warp. She had missed Terra, missed Ultramar, and nothing awake on her ship had any chance of fighting even the weakest of corsairs. “I have no more strength in me. Do as you will.”

Two people, clad in golden and black, hooded robes walked over to her. Their faces were obscured by something, seeming like liquid, surrounding them. “She seems to breathe fine.” one of them said to the other.

With but a small gesture over their hoods, the surfaces vanished. They were a man and a woman, maybe in their later twenties. She thought she found honest concern in their expressions, but alas, she had lost the ability to judge such things. Maybe they were but daemons, trying for another method of luring her into darkness.

“Friend, I suppose. For starters.” the woman spoke. “You’re tumbling towards our defences, you know? Warpstorm coughed ya out like a Niffler given chocolate coins. You’re doin’ alright?”

“Where?” Zariy stammered. Everything inside her screamed in paranoia. Were they daemons? Could fiends even take on such forms? They certainly could with the memory of her brother, couldn’t they?

“The Elysium system. The Black Reef, as you folks call it.” the man answered, while waving a wooden stick in front of her eyes. “I can’t detect much. Well, ignoring the literally thousands of badly healed cuts, and a brain that looks like you haven’t slept for a few years. Nothing we couldn’t fix, though.”

“Elysium?” she repeated. That didn’t ring a bell. The Black Reef, though, did. Yet, what she saw outside the windows was far removed from a chaotic whirlwind of gravitational storms. It was serene, in a way that made her think that it couldn’t be natural.

“The Halls say we should bring the ship to Ao Guang. Wukong sends tow-ships to get this thing under control.” The woman looked at a small mirror in her hand, and Zariy could see that she was reading messages from it.

“Anything in your cargo bay that any reasonable person would make a warning about?” the man asked, his voice too jovial for her answers to come.

“Eight-hundred-sixty-six space marines of the Imperial Fist in stasis,” Zariy stated, like a servitor, her voice devoid of emotion. She had no other path but to believe the good intentions of these odd people. “and cargo of vital importance to the Imperium. We have been sent away from Terra, ordered to return there once the traitors under Horus were defeated. But we were lost in the Warp. Daemons attacked us nearly instantly after entry. Our guardians died in the defence.”

“You poor thing.” the woman laid a hand on hers, tough her pitiful face turned shocked the next moment. “Wait, did you say ‘until Horus was defeated’?”

“Bloody hell,” the man pressed out in shocked horror. “If they were lost since the Heresy… You haven’t slept for over ten thousand years! By the Reaper’s mercy, how are you alive?”

“The Emperor protects,” Zariy answered.

Fleur had not expected to have their spaceports used so soon, yet here she was, watching as six large tug-ships steered a free floating, imperial battlecruiser into the docking bay on the moon Ao. Harry himself had asked her to allow it entry. Quarantines and security measures of all kinds have been activated on the bay, allowing entry and exit to only the few souls she herself had authorized.

Large cargo containers full to the brim with the corpses of the crew were levitated past her. Almost an entire chapter of Astartes were now in the holding cells of Ao, thankfully still under stasis. They would take their time identifying who was who, before waking them.

There was only one member of the crew alive and awake, and she had been brought to a holding cell on Wukong proper. “Have the healers reached a conclusion about our guest, yet?” she asked her assistants.

“Not yet,” one answered. “The Herald himself has asked to speak with her first.”

Harry landed on a small farmstead, hidden behind rolling hills and dense forests from any other village. One could only see the harpy villages, built in pillar-like mountains on the horizon. The sunset was close, and all was alight in an orange hue.

The farmstead itself was half an acre of gardens, made not to produce any food, but to calm whoever occupied it. In its middle stood a tiny cottage, barely housing a small kitchen, a bedroom and a reading nook.

Harry found its occupant sitting under the large willow that hung over a pond. She let her feet dangle from the small deck, ever so slightly touching the water, never leaving the sun out of her sight.

She had been given summer robes, fine linen enchanted to always stay fresh and clean. He took his time to take in her scars, all across her body. The reports were harrowing. The healers had found parts of her skull with scratch-marks, where daemonic influences had made her dig into her own skull, almost lobotomizing herself. The mousy-brown haired woman, who looked barely in her twenties, had withstood this daemonic temptation for millennia after millennia.

Harry remained a few steps behind her, under the willow. “Have your wounds been taken care of?” he began.

“Yes, they have…” she answered, but was silenced in shock when she turned to look at Harry. The scars on her face hid a once youthful, sharp face. Sunken cheeks and milky eyes spoke of the torture she had gone through in the Warp. Only the third eye, implanted in her forehead, remained as clear and bright as new.

He spread his wings, and lowered his black hood to reveal his smiling face. “I take it you are Navigator Zariy? My name is Harry. I am the Herald - guardian and regent of this system. Do not be afraid, for I mean you no harm. In fact, I came to make sure that all harm is kept away from you.”

“I have a mission,” she said, lacking any answer to what this Herald has said.

“You will be able to finish it soon enough. You were gone for over ten-thousand years, you can take a few weeks to recover. Waking the Astartes aboard the ship will take its time, anyway.” Harry gestured around him. “I hope you forgive us placing you in a cell. We have chosen our best one, but still.”

“Cell?” Zariy frowned. She looked around at the wooden fence surrounding the farmstead. Even in her weakened state, she would be able to vault over it, but she hadn’t felt the need to leave, anyway. “I have never seen a place of such beauty. I believed myself dead when I woke. Dead and somewhere at the Emperor’s side. Until now, I was still unsure. You build your prisons like this?”

“Not all of them. Just a few to hold people we would rather treat as honoured guests.”

“Then I thank you, for treating me as such.”

Harry sat down next to her. He left his boots on the deck, and let his feet dangle in the water. “You survived what few would. A great feat, indeed, to travel the Warp for so long; to withstand the attention of daemons as steadfast as you.”

“The Emperor…”

“.,.protects, yes.” Harry gently laid his hand on her shoulder. “He protects those worthy of it. You have been chosen for this task, most likely because he knew you could prevail.”

“At the end,” Zariy stared at her hands, and found herself leaning on this black winged angel. She had missed the sensation of touch for millenia. She grasped his hand on her shoulder, and reveled in the feeling of squeezing it. “At the end, I doubted. The protection grew weak, and… the beacon, I couldn’t see it. Then…”

“What guided you here, was the Hamsa. A protection spell we deployed in the Warp, to assist the waning beacon. It is a symbol to ward off the Evil Eye, the very method by which daemons infiltrate the mind. You now, the symbol is almost as old as the Emperor himself, and comes from roughly the same region as he does, on Terra. Back when it was called Earth.” Harry saw that Zariy wasn’t following. It was hardly the time to shake her beliefs in the Emperor. She deserved rest, and much of it. He had but one more question, before he would leave her to the caring hands of their healers. “The mission you were given. Who gave the order?”

“The Emperor himself, via the words of his Custodes.” Zariy said in reverence, remembering the golden armor of the Custode that had come to them, that day. Who had spoken to her, directly, imploring the importance of her mission. “He said that the Fate of mankind may depend on my ability to navigate the storms of the Warp. I think - I fear, I failed them.”

“What were you given to protect? They placed an army of space marines around it, led by Custodes, at a time when Terra itself was under siege. That act alone makes overstating the importance of it a tough challenge in imagination.”

She shrugged, “I do not know. I never needed to. Although, I assumed the same. The crate had been brought onto the ship with great haste. Even the mighty Custodes were anxious of the possibility of any traitor finding its content. Never had I felt more terrified, than when I heard the voice of a Custodes shaking with fear.”

Harry had ordered the crate to be brought onto an empty plain on Ao, far from any sort of building or soul. The only ones present, were archmages and his angels. Ron, Hermione and Fleur formed a triangle around the crate, engulfing it in safety charms of a hundred varieties, reinforced by the mages behind them.

He himself walked over to the crate, and spelled the locks open, bypassing the staggering amount of security that shut the crate close. He heard the click of the lock. The metal of the crate was as pure as anything he had ever seen. It would withstand an orbital bombardment of apocalyptic scale.

His levitation charm easily pulled it open. Harry frowned. He hadn’t been sure what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t merely two, rough and uncut river stones. He cautioned himself once more. Had it been some machine, or a tomb of secrets, or any sort of obvious treasure, he would have just taken it. There were few things in the galaxy that could permanently harm him.

However, these were a mere two rocks, the size of a baby’s hand. Their colour was that of simple, grey granite. One was of a light red hue. The form of having been washed and ground in a river. Just ordinary stones.

He let his hand hover over it, and as if it had burned him, he pulled away.

“What is it, Harry?” Hermione asked, trying to peek inside herself.

“I’m not sure. But I shouldn’t touch it.” He studied his hand, and recalled the feeling. It hadn’t burned him, it had tried to be absorbed in him. However, not like a possession. It had been akin to metal to a magnet, or in this case, more accurate, like a Life to Death. “It is a soul. Two souls.” he deadpanned.

“Oh, bugger off, THAT AGAIN?” Ron shouted, groaning in frustration. “Don’t tell me this Liberation of Mankind thing is going to be another horcrux hunt.”

Harry snorted, and shook his head. “Not like that,” The more he watched the rock, the more its form dissolved in front of his deeper senses; those of the Herald of Death. The souls yearned for his grasp, it did not shy from it like a horcrux would. This was not a soul put into a container by defying the sanctity of Life and Death. It was put there by adoration, by grief and mourning.

“These are phylacteries born from worship.” he said in awe, just as the realization of what he was looking at fully unfolded. A soul trapped by worship, taken from the depths of the Imperial Palace by Custodes who said to have feared even the miniscule chance of its discovery.

“He had known they would die.” Harry whispered. The Emperor had known he and his son would perish, and let his Custodes remove their phylacteries, probably just before they went to face Horus himself. Had they come back, as he expected, three days or more later, then he would have been resurrected almost immediately. Like this, he was bound and Sanguinius was dead. Bound and mourned until the day their souls could be brought to them. It was a gamble, no doubt, but one of calculated risk.

He had found the reason Zariy could withstand the Warp when even Astarte and Custodes could not. Why she had been so protected by the Emperor. His very core had been right there, underneath her, protecting her. He had found the soul of Labrys of Anatolia, and his son, Sanguinius. “You bloody hypocrite.” he cursed.