---o---
A shift in perspective.
Approximately one hundred light-years from the Quintus system where Zhou Ye was currently operating. A modest distance by the scale of an Imperial sector, which typically spanned around two hundred light-years across, though a corridor of that length invariably contained vast numbers of worlds that Imperial surveying had never reached, systems with no stable Mandeville Points or none at all, effectively invisible to the Imperium and beyond its practical governance.
Through that void, a Black Ship was crawling forward with considerable difficulty.
"Finally, Tillius. By the Emperor, this place is on the edge of nowhere."
Inquisitor Chris muttered the complaint to no one in particular. It had taken considerable effort to stabilize the Warp exit. The emergence had been messy and undignified. And then, looking out at what lay ahead, he stopped.
"Where is Tillius?"
Every member of the group staring out at the same vista shared his expression. Chris had not come alone. Accompanying him were several veteran Victrix Guard, dispatched at Calgar's authorization to seek out the Ancients and formally request their return to Macragge. Given that the Ultramarines were simultaneously facing the full weight of Tyranid Hive Fleet pressure elsewhere, sending even a squad of veteran Victrix Guard represented a significant allocation of resources.
What they were all looking at was dust and rock. An asteroid field where a planet had been.
Zhou Ye had not originally planned to destroy Tillius. Whatever condition it was in, it could have been cleaned up and used again. But Mortarion's arrival had changed that calculation permanently. The Daemon Primarch's presence had allowed Nurgle's corruption to saturate the entire planetary biosphere completely, and the Warp scarring left behind would have made the world more vulnerable to Nurgle's influence than virtually any other location in the sector for the foreseeable future.
Triggering a core detonation Exterminatus had been the only reasonable conclusion.
The core detonation method, rather than an orbital bombardment, was why the planet had not been reduced to powder. What remained was a proper asteroid field, the shattered remnants of a world.
"Tillius was... destroyed?"
"According to the Administratum scribes who were there, the planet was dealing simultaneously with an Ork incursion, a Nurgle incursion, and Aeldari Pirates at the time of their arrival. Given the strength of the Ancients involved, those threats should have been manageable."
Victrix Guard veteran Metaurus looked at the drifting debris with a thoroughly confused expression. The group around him was beginning to arrive at the same conclusion independently.
This was probably not a simple situation.
"Report. We are detecting extremely concentrated Warp energy signatures in the planetary debris."
An attendant relayed the latest sensor data, and the assembled group exchanged looks.
Inquisitor Chris stepped forward and addressed the group.
"Protect me. I need to conduct a divination. A prophecy of the past."
He looked back at the Victrix Guard veterans behind him. Calgar had already been generous. He understood that. The Ultramarines were stretched between the Tyranid threat and everything else, and sending even these warriors had been a gesture of genuine trust and respect.
He also knew this divination was going to be dangerous. The person who had apparently been here might have been a ten-thousand-year veteran of impossible capability. And whatever had happened here had been resolved by destroying the planet entirely, which was not a method one chose for small problems. Exterminatus had many forms, but triggering a planetary core detonation was among the rarest and most total. It implied that the standard options had been evaluated and set aside.
The divination was necessary. Whatever he had seen in his research about the 010 Omega alias and the Second Empire, the trail had led here, and the trail had led to something that frightened him in ways he had not expected to feel.
He closed his eyes. The images came, trembling through him, fragments of the recent past reassembling themselves in reverse.
He saw the Emperor Titan walking across the surface of the world.
He saw the abomination. The ten-thousand-year enemy of humanity. Typhus, the Herald of Nurgle, the God's chosen Champion.
His body was already shaking.
Then...
"A Daemon Primarch. Mortarion. Ngh--"
Chris coughed blood. He pressed against the pain and tried to hold the vision open, to push deeper, to see what had driven Mortarion away from this place--
"Mortarion banished. The one who banished him. Unknown. Cannot be observed..."
Crack.
A hand landed on his head, hard. His eyes opened involuntarily to find Metaurus standing directly in front of him, palm still pressed against his skull.
"That is enough, Inquisitor. Any further and you will fall into something you cannot climb out of. To confirm what we have: a Daemon Primarch was present here, and there are no signs that the Warp corruption spread beyond this system. Anything else?"
He pulled Chris out of the vision firmly, releasing a quiet breath as he did. A moment ago, they had all felt the Warp pulse, and something ancient and unpleasant had noticed them for a fraction of a second. If Chris had kept going, he would have had to crush the Inquisitor's skull himself to prevent a breach from opening here.
Just the words that had come out of Chris's mouth were enough to make the group genuinely afraid.
Mortarion. A Daemon Primarch.
"The Warp corruption did not spread. That means the Ancients succeeded." Metaurus paused, and then spoke more slowly. "You saw others as well. This is beyond anything you can observe through the Warp now. The force that banished Mortarion..."
He did not finish the sentence. He found he did not want to. He was already trying not to think about what price the Ancients might have paid.
"The nearest Lord Sector seat to our current position is Quintus. I saw Astra Militarum units in the vision, and Astartes in ice-blue armor. Possibly Space Wolves. We should proceed to Quintus and confirm with the local Munitorum."
Chris was sorting through what remained of the images in his mind, holding onto the parts that had not dissolved. A Space Wolves squad. Large numbers of Astra Militarum. And something else he recognized immediately: Holy Necrons. He had heard that the Aestia Mixed Regiment combined human soldiers with those faith-radiant Necron warriors, and by all reports their combat effectiveness was considerable.
If the Aestia Mixed Regiment was involved, the local Munitorum office should have records.
As for traveling to the Space Wolves homeworld, that was not out of the question, but Quintus was on the way and worth stopping at first.
The Black Ship re-entered the Warp at the nearest viable Mandeville Point. The distance to the Quintus Hive was not extreme. They should arrive within a reasonable timeframe.
---o---
Quintus Hive.
Zhou Ye was holding an invitation. Sokk Oliveira stood beside him, well-dressed and increasingly uneasy.
"Something feels wrong."
Sokk was looking at the opulent palace interior, specifically at the six enormous crystal towers standing at intervals throughout the main hall. The Altera family had purchased the better part of his wine supply at a price he would normally have described as astronomical. For them, the expenditure appeared to cause no difficulty whatsoever. Which was not surprising given their resources.
What was surprising was that this was a routine banquet. Not a significant occasion by the Altera Dynasty's calendar. Not a festival. Not a formal celebration of any kind. The scale of what they were witnessing was disproportionate in a way that Sokk could not quite articulate.
"It appears the wine I sold you has already been put to use. Impressive."
Zhou Ye watched as a line of attendants carried the sixty-six bottles upward and began pouring them from the tops of the crystal towers. Deep crimson wine ran in thin streams down the faceted crystal surfaces from top to bottom, filling the towers from within, pooling and flowing as though blood moved through glass veins. The fragrance spread through the entire venue almost immediately.
Something felt wrong to Sokk. He could not identify it. This was not a celebration. There was no occasion. The Lady of the House would not normally arrange something on this scale for an event of no particular significance. And looking at those crystal towers, something about them made his skin feel uncomfortable in a way he also could not identify.
He was a devout man by Imperial standards.
He made a decision quickly.
"Something is off. We should leave."
"Leave? This is an excellent opportunity."
Zhou Ye had no intention whatsoever of leaving. The Warp energy here was rich and appetizing. More so than anything Nurgle had provided, which was saying something. This was a very different flavor.
"As you like."
Sokk did not press the point. A young merchant seeing an opportunity to make an impression at a powerful noble's gathering was entirely plausible behavior. He was not going to talk the young man out of it, and he had no evidence for his feeling of wrongness, only the feeling itself.
He turned and walked toward the exit.
Zhou Ye watched him go and smiled pleasantly.
He was, if he was being honest with himself, genuinely curious. He had consumed Nurgle's energies before. This was an opportunity to try something different. And there might be some small and satisfying morsels available for collection as well, even if the total yield was nothing like the Tillius campaign.
As for the beautiful Lady of the House, he was curious about that too. The depiction of Slaanesh in his previous life's reference material had always been carefully constrained, for understandable reasons related to audience demographics and the company's desire to keep its products available to younger consumers. Current circumstances made those constraints even more conservative than before. He had never actually seen what a Slaaneshi chosen looked like in person.
"Actually, if I ever meet Tzeentch himself somewhere down the line, I should ask him what GW is. I want to make Tzeentch watch something that demonstrates what actual change looks like. What actual ingenuity looks like."
He was already deep in a planning reverie when the entrance doors swung shut behind the sixty-six thousand, six hundred and sixty-sixth guest to cross the threshold.
The invitations sent out had far exceeded that number. The venue had simply closed its doors the moment attendance reached that specific count.
"Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome our host. The foremost beauty of the Quintus Hive. The Rose of the Altera Dynasty. Sola Altera, who bestows upon all of you gathered here the blessing of joy."
A sharp voice rang through the hall. Then sixty-six women walked out from behind the main stage in a procession, each one moving with the kind of fluid grace that made every observer pause involuntarily.
Even Zhou Ye found himself nodding in quiet appreciation.
He also swallowed once.
Sixty-six excellent little morsels. None of them had fully mutated yet, but the distinctive violet aura of Slaanesh was already bleeding through them visibly at the edges.
Then six figures walked out carrying a ceremonial platform between them. Each of the six stood over three meters tall, proportioned like something between an Astartes and a siege weapon, wearing nothing but a loincloth, their muscle mass seemingly architectural in its density.
"The Lady of the House is about to appear?"
Zhou Ye leaned forward with genuine interest.
He pushed aside the question of the Inquisitor in the room with a Keeper of Secrets attached to him. The Keeper of Secrets was a Greater Daemon of Slaanesh, technically equivalent in rank to a Great Unclean One or a Bloodthirster. But Slaanesh's forces operated differently from the others. The more Slaanesh blessed them, the more their combat effectiveness in the raw physical sense declined. Slaanesh's gift was experience, sensation, and corruption, not strength of arms.
Then the Lady appeared.
"Guh..."
Zhou Ye nearly covered his mouth with both hands.
He retreated very quietly to the nearest corner and stood there with his jaw clenched, suppressing the extremely strong urge to make a noise that would have attracted everyone's attention.
What his eyes showed him was a creature with six legs, seven limbs, three eyes, and a body of extraordinary and entirely unappetizing mass. Every single organ visible was wrong. Every proportion that existed on the thing was wrong in a different and specific way.
He wanted to wash his eyes out. He felt that he had been a complete fool to carry any expectations whatsoever into a Slaanesh-adjacent situation.
"It is fine. This too is part of the plan. Ai-chan. I have sent you the coordinates. On my command, destroy that thing. Prepare accordingly."
He gave the order to the Hyperion, voice flat.
He was not entirely sure if what he felt was wounded vanity, devotion to the Emperor, or simply aesthetic offense. Some mixture of all three, most likely. In any case, the thirteen Terminator squads were staged and ready. The thirteen Centurion squads were fully equipped.
He called it thirteen because it was the number the Altera family had found distasteful.
Meanwhile, the hall had become a sea of delirious enthusiasm.
"He is looking at me. He looked at me."
"Beautiful. She is so beautiful, my God."
"This. This is what happiness feels like."
The crowd surged. Every person struck by one of those three eyes felt themselves carried somewhere else entirely, into a world saturated with limitless joy and limitless warmth, a world where every sensation was perfection and nothing hurt in any way that mattered.
The entity opened its mouth, and a voice came out.
"The divine gave me legs, that I might dance every dance in all the world. The divine gave me hands, that I might play every music in all the world. The divine gave me eyes, that I might behold every beauty in all the world. Now the divine has arrived. I will dance the most beautiful dance, for the divine and for all of you."
The voice was sharp and carried through every corner of the hall at once. The crowd erupted beyond the point where words could describe it. People embraced each other and sang and leaped and swayed and pressed together. The surroundings felt transformed into something transcendent. When ribs cracked from the force of embraces held too tight, no one stopped. When feet bled through the soles from dancing too long without stopping, no one stopped. In their eyes there was only joy. Infinite joy. Joy descending from the highest palace of the highest heaven.
The entity moved. Every motion caused the entire hall to ripple. Every motion drew every person closer together. Every motion...
"Praise the Lord of Pleasure. Your melody is so very beautiful."
Sola Altera was deep in the joy of her banquet, drawing everyone with her toward that supreme and exquisite culmination. She was bringing them all with her into the highest chamber, all of them together, until...
She saw two black eyes.
They were looking down at her from very far above, as though from the ninth heaven, looking at her with the precise expression one uses when looking at a piece of garbage.
Then a voice entered her hearing.
"The Hive. Defiled again."
---o---