Editing Story:Warhammer 60K: The Age of Dusk (section)

==Additional Background Section 16: Unto The Anvil Rides The Serpent: Fulgrim’s War, and The Seventh Great War of the Janus Heresies== 

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Vulkan’s return was a mighty symbol of the beginning of the Age of Dusk, and the turning point in the great disintegration of society that afflicted the galaxy for long millennia. His name and return was both praised and cursed across the breadth of hundreds of Imperiums and millions of worlds. 
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Yet, the first being to realize the Smith-Lord’s return (''besides the tearful people of Armageddon and their direct foes''), was that most corrupt of creatures, Fulgrim . He felt his brother’s presence over five thousand light years away, at the instant when Lucius the Eternal was defeated. Fulgrim, the serpentine daemon Primarch, was a being of the ether, and he could sense the souls of his entire Legion of Emperor’s Children. For the most part, he cared little for their actions and antics across the wide expanse of the galaxy; he lounged upon his palace-world of perfumed flesh and disgustingly complex implements of pleasure and pain. Yet, like a petulant, greedy child, he noticed the absence of one of his favored toys only when it was denied to him. Lucius was defeated, and he was not slain (''as we related before''). No, Lucius had a far, far worse fate. As he lay buried deep beneath the toxic earth of Armaggedon, his terrible will became weaker and weaker, just as his body grew malnourished and withered in its armor. Soul weakened, Lucius was unable to control the souls trapped within his body and living battle plate. He became a mutated, demented thing as a hundred million souls all scrambled for purchase upon his flesh. Thousands of chaos warlords slain, orks bested, Imperials humbled and even daemons denied fought within his body for ownership of the husk. Together, they consumed him.

Fulgrim heard Lucius’ misery, like a chorus of tinny voices. While the great daemon that possessed his flesh ignored the cries and continued in its revelries, it couldn’t ignore Fulgrim’s anguished cries, that grew stronger every day. Eventually, the daemon decided to gather its forces to strike at the heart of the Vulkan Imperium like serpentine neurotoxins in a man’s veins. But the daemon did not do this through any sense of fairness or justice for his host’s wrong child, or for the glory of the Chaos Imperium, or even the Daemon Primarch Diaspora (''the name granted to the areas of the Eye of terror where Abaddon could never rule''). When timidly asked why he was doing this by a servant, the thing-called Fulgrim responded (''before flaying its presumptuous servant alive''):

'''“I come to welcome my brother to this new realm of our design. Then, I shall kill him, as I killed so many of his brothers before him. His Imperium has begun to entertain the notion that they can see through this Dark Age in safety; safe behind their little walls of civilisation and moderation. It is time to crush their dreams, and the truth shall set them free. We are very interested in freedom, are we not?”''' it had chuckled sardonically, directing its speech to the shivering soul trapped with its glorious serpentine body.

Fulgrim had a tool to achieve his aim of slaying Vulkan. The blade the daemon carried was a dreadful alien blade known by several names throughout the history of the galaxy. Some called it Kulgach the Ravager, others called it the Hillexix, in some of the oldest texts; simply the blade of midnight. The one you, my readers, are likely most aware of is a name given to it by the Interex culture; the Anathame. This was the weapon which almost slew legendary Horus with a single blow, it was the weapon used to gut the Lord of Veshin and all his priests, and the tool which struck down Guilliman with its venom-coated edges. In the hands of Fulgrim, easily the greatest duelist amongst the Primarchs, enhanced by chaos to be further deadly, it would be a deadly tool for evil within the Vulkan Imperium.

Fulgrim took time to build up his forces. He traveled from world to world in the Chaos Imperium, gathering thousands of warbands and billions of troops. Mercenaries, degenerates, warp-tainted aliens and even Corsairs from the eastern Chaos Imperium; all flocked to his banner with the promise of expansion, power and above all, the spoils of war. The daemon of the Laer sword cared naught for trinkets and jewels. It cared only for slaying Vulkan, and undoing the abhorrent progress he had achieved there. At the close of M55, the war began with a sudden storming offensive, a fleet action involving three distinct fleet elements. 

The Vulkan Imperium was nothing if not resilient however. Vulkan had in place multiple lines of defenses each world was within distress-signalling distance of over five Commanderies, and at least two Imperial garrison muster points. As soon as the titanic mass of Fulgrim’s crusade smashed aside the defenses of the first few worlds through sheer numbers and the ferocity of his near-feral pleasure cultists and degenerate mutants, he swiftly found that multiple raiding forces attacked his fleets from multiple vectors and over several weeks of coordinated and vigorous harrying attacks. The Angels of Retribution and the Brass Ravens called off an expeditionary campaign to the north to lead the main counter offences. Whenever a world was ravaged, the Astartes would strike like quicksilver at the departing ships of the greedy pillagers, boarding and ripping the stolen cargo from the cold, dead fingers of those who presumed to plunder Vulkan’s domain.

Soon after that, the myriad forces of the fallen Primarch found worlds that were supposed to be defenceless defended by PDF forces bolstered by whole regiments of the Steel Legions of mother-Armageddon, or even the specialised Plasma-commandoes of the Ryzan Alliance. The complex defensive structure of the western border of Vulkan’s realm focussed upon the primary thrust of the offensive, and this huge crusade force began to slow to a murderous crawl within a year of fast-paced attacks and counterattacks. But to combat this threat, the defenders were pulling in their garrisons not just in the path of the tendril, but in its wake and in surrounding space. This meant the lesser tendrils of the offensive were perhaps not as well stocked with soldiers. Ordinarily, this would have made little difference. Ordinarily, the lesser offensive were merely diversionary attacks used to harass outlying worlds and drain resources, and could be easily dealt with by Vulkan’s internal reinforcements, that could be brought up from Armageddon’s core regions.

Two things were different about this offensive. Firstly, the third of the offensive battlefronts was not just led by minor crusade elements like mutants or dregs; Fulgrim himself led this attack, upon mediocre defences and startled garrisons, easily smashing them wherever he found them, before putting whole worlds to the torch, leaving only enough survivors to send this message to the next world they came to;

'''“I shall kill all your children brother, one by one, until you face me.”'''

The second complication that made defence of the realm more difficult was the fact Vulkan found himself fighting two wars, launched at disturbingly similar times; the seventh great War of the Janus heresies. This was a war against the Theologian Union, and one that no one had anticipated.

The notorious scientist Deng Vaal, his scorched eyes replaced by glowering red bionics, had tortured and extracted the knowledge from his captured Tau victims. Though several tau were freed by strangely colourful xenos interlopers that promptly vanished from Deng Vaal’s fortress through a portable web-gate, the mad man had what he desired. Soon enough, he began to design ships that would emulate his captors’ ship. However, without the physical ship’s remains, it took him much longer to produce ships that were anywhere close to being stable.

But, after years of research, he created the Witchfynder class of Grand Cruisers. With his new fleet of ships, he expected his position in the Union to expand rapidly; his star was at last in ascension. He eagerly travelled to the capital of the Union, outpacing all the ships sent to shadow him and his new grand armada. When he arrived on the Station, he was welcomed with open arms by Elimia Ceylan, the new ruler of the Theologian Union. 

After the death of the original High-Eccliesiarch Ceylan, his children and wider familial group began to adopt an almost aristocratic dynastic system; every rule rof the Union after his death was officially named Ceylan, each had his bloodline in their veins and, generally, each one was as devious and ruthless as their namesake. Elimia was no different. She was the young and beautiful heiress of the Union, and had swiftly elevated her lover (''the warmonger General Treghan'') to the role of the Guardian of the Realm, the highest military office. She used her relative youth to cultivate an illusion of innocent naivety that disarmed her political rivals. Deng Vaal was no different. When she meekly congratulated him, and promised him fund to rapidly expand the production of the Witchfynders, he decided that he could manipulate her for his own ends. Thus, she prevented a coup simply through subterfuge. But as Vaal produced more and more vessels for her expanding armed forces, the child-like Empress’ cold, devious mind concocted a means to turn the situation to her advantage.

In public sermons, she encouraged her preachers and missionaries to enter into Vulkanian systems, and begin to preach the sermons of the Emperor of the wasteland and his creed of futility and reckless zeal. Not only this, she demanded that they actively prevent rival creeds from contradicting the ‘precious words of the Great Dead God. For his wasteland is of the body and the soul. Let no false dreams of heretics dispute this message’. Soon enough, her preachers became religious terrorists within the Imperium of Vulkan; they destroyed rival churches, murdered other clergymen, and hired various fiends and villains to go on state-sponsored rampages. Needless to say, Vulkan’s reaction was swift and brutal. His security forces hunted down the preachers, and put them on trial. The most prevalent of his warriors to enact his will were the Fire Beasts, and the ever-enigmatic Realm of fathers auxiliary forces. The Realm of Father’s soldiers were all mildly psychic, and they worked swiftly to uncover preachers in the midst of otherwise peaceful communities, and brought them to justice. The Fire beasts were brought in for more direct missions, such as the boarding and destruction of a Theologian pilgrim barge, and the beheading of the Clerical terrorists’ command structure in one swift and pragmatic swoop. After a year of hunting, all the preachers were dead or imprisoned.

The ‘Heavenly Child’ Ceylan made the most of this political ammunition. The entire Union was whipped into frenzy by the propaganda coming from her offices. Some said Vulkan himself murdered the priests when they tried to make him reconcile with his father. Others said the daemon Vulkan desired to see the sweet little Empress shed tears of woe, so he may break her spirit and take her throne. The Theologians, protective of their almost infantile ruler, demanded justice and blood. To the untrained eye, it almost seemed as if Ceylan had not orchestrated the entire grotesque charade. Alas, however, she had, and her people eagerly fell for her misdirection. Elimia ‘reluctantly’ called for a Holy War upon the Vulkanian Imperium, and invoked the thrice-blessed scriptures, that required all loyal subjects of the Church to supply their finest forces to the cause, or have their souls cast upon the thorny expanses of the Emperor’s wasteland when they died. Deng Vaal was bound by these scriptures to supply Ceylan with the ships (''his Witchfynders'') that she required. She sweetly accepted them from Deng Vaal, and blessed with saintly oils in a lavish ceremony before a titanic crowd of wide-eyes subjects, mindlessly praising them. Unseen to all, Deng Vaal masked a terrible rage behind his falsely serene smile. Ceylan had neutered his coup before he could start, without raising a single soldier against him. All it had taken was throwing her Union into a horrendous war with her larger Imperial neighbour, that would cause untold death and misery for her already bitter and demented people; a price she was willing to pay with a timid smile on her cheeks.

The fleets of the Theologian Union ripped into the underbelly of Vulkan’s realm with the ferocity born of madness. Witchfynder vessels led each fleet, alongside older witch-burning vessels and the vast pilgrim vessels no doubt crammed to capacity with millions of fanatics and crusaders, while more elite transport vessels carried the huge professional armies of the Union into battle. Likewise with the chaos forces to the north-east, the Vulkan Imperium’s dense defensive structure was an instant obstacle to the invaders. However, the Witchfynders made up for this by being virtually untouchable in most naval engagements. While the rest of Ceylan’s naval assets were utterly out of date and outclassed by the Promethean court’s brilliant cruisers and battleships, the Witchfynders could go toe to toe with the largest vessels, and in most cases hurt them severely. While not as manoeuvrable or as heavily armed as the Idealist, they were fast and they were armed with advanced sensory equipment and complex weapons of ‘sanctified’ xenos design. The defenders of the Imperium were sent reeling by this force. Only the insane actions of a Sons of Thunder Captain, who drew a Witchfynder into the Corona of a star (''which baffled its sensors and allowed him to ram his vessel through its stern'') allowed the embattled Vulkan forces to fall back to the ‘second line’ of defences (''though, as mentioned before, battle lines in space engagements are not like the wet navy’s conceptions of boundaries and fronts. This was a vast three dimensional series of skirmish raids and engagements spanning several hundred light-years''). Drastic measures were required.

Thus, Vulkan was forced to come to this battlefront in person to confront this new and powerful foe. He brought with him several Commanderies, his own Nocturne Praetorians in large numbers and masses of soldiers from the Steel Legions. He also authorised the Patriarchs of the Realm of fathers to switch their economies to instant war footing, which they could achieve in record time.

He struck back like the fist of an angry god. Vulkan had always preferred to be a builder, and artisan and a politician to a warrior, but when his ire was raised, he was the stuff of dark legend. He moved from front to front, world to world, and wherever he joined in battle with his men, the crusading Theologians were smashed. Initially, numbers had carried the day for the Theologians, but this changed when Vulkan was there. Strategies became firmer and more skilful, and his soldiers fought with the vigour of men with a god incarnate at their back. He was legend, and he was fury and the fires of the forge flowed through his wrathful veins. The Theologians were no match for Primarchs and Astartes on the ground, and they began to lose ground on every world, slowly but surely. Though each world took gruelling sieges and bitter street-fighting to clear them, eventually they were cleared, and the enemy were destroyed en mass. 

Yet still in space the Theologian held onto territory, and no one in the southern Vulkan Imperium could feel safe until the Witchfynders were all destroyed, and Ceylan’s champion General Treghan was finally defeated utterly.

At this inopportune moment, word reached Vulkan of the boastful challenges of Fulgrim, and the utter horror he would surely be unleashing on his new Imperium. No matter Ceylan’s pretentions, the Theologians were small; Vulkan knew that Fulgrim was the real and only true danger to his Imperium. He ordered the Commander of the Iron Hands, Borund Epsilon, to take control of the southern front, while Vulkan and his Praetorians swiftly rushed back to Armageddon to face his wayward brother.

Meanwhile, the war raged close to the heart of the Vulkan Imperium. The war could be described as akin to a series of isolated island chains, fought over by constantly-moving and shifting fleets of Reavers and warriors. Yet, undeniably, the Vulkanians seemed to be being pushed back by Fulgrim’s vast armies. But this was stalled by the Dorn Revenants and their allies; they were masters of the siege, and their worlds formed a patchwork web of bulwarks, that drained any of Fulgrim’s pleasure fleets who strayed too close. This forced fleets to make massive detours around the Mk II Astartes. Conversely, the Confederation of Justice, the fanatical Droptrooper Legions, were ever mobile with their fast ships. They fought behind the scenes; destroying supply ships, savaging logistical trains and ammunition dumps wherever they found them. Though the current Muster-Lord was an Old Man by that point, he still fought with vigour, clad in his magnificent suit of burnished varseen eagle-plate carapace armour. Truly, he looked like a Saint reborn, as he rode his personal Valkyrie, Icaria, into battle after battle.

What history did not mention in as much detail was the fact the Muster-Lord also ferried the Brethren of the Willing, and other members of Imogen’s daring spies and adventurers. At this time, her associates numbered in the dozens, and each was unique and exotic in their styles and abilities. Some were researchers beyond compare, others tacticians and engineers who were invaluable in pinpointing weaknesses in enemy vessels and daemonic war engines. But at heart, she was a researcher and a fiercely intelligent woman. Her time was split between gruelling combat missions, and hours upon hours in the various libraries and vaults across the Vulkan Imperium (''a girl after mine own heart I should think! I apologise... forgive that personal interlude...''). She discovered many disturbing facts about the galaxy she was raised within; in the chaos of war, no archives and no information was forbidden to her, and she learned swiftly. She uncovered the foul-power of the Anathame, and of the correlations between the various mad prophecies of countless ‘heretics’ over countless years. She spotted, with the help of her allies that the patterns of chaos uprisings across the galaxy were not random, that chaos, for all its mania, was being all too ordered. But it was a complex pattern she suspected even the followers of chaos didn’t realise was occurring; as if a great steel trap was slowly closing upon all creation. But her mind was forced to focus upon the immediate threat of the Anathame.

If Vulkan were to face Fulgrim while he was armed with that, Vulkan would surely die. Imogen made a fateful decision that day; she would have to steal it from Fulgrim. Even for Imogen, this was madness. Luckily, the majority of her brethren were rather profoundly mad themselves.

Fulgrim’s flagship, Sodominus, was a corpulent mass of a vessel; a bloated and ostentatious pleasure barge almost as large as the Eternal crusader once was. Tentacles and frills jutted out from between decks crammed with jewels and naked slaves, while mighty spires and domes of varied hues dominated its dorsal superstructure like some surreal oriental metropolis. Warp enchantments scrambled any teleport signals that attempted to breach his vessel, his heavy armour and shielding preventing bombardment or physical boarding. This was combined with the masses of daemons and corrupt Astartes that prowled his barge’s stifling interior. His security forces were led by Illirus the Mistress of the Carnal hunt, a female warrior clad in demonic war-plate, which she wore while sitting astride a great serpentine Fiend of Slannesh. Sodominus seemed impregnable.

Imogen did manage to breach the defences however, through her illicit links to the Relictor chapter remnants. This tightly knit brotherhood ferried her into the heart of Fulgrim’s fleet inside a stolen null-ship. Once they got close to Sodominus, the Relictors unleashed their secret weapon. It was known as the blood-drench; an ancient chaos technology crafted by some warp-tainted culture before humanity could even speak. The devices rendered Imogen and her minions, as well three squads of Relictors, into a living soup of bloody gruel. This gruel, empowered by a tide of daemons, was swept through space, and bypassed the runic defences of Sodominus. Once inside, the artefact’s power was broken, and they became physical mortals once more. 

Ancient Captain Wallachia of the Relictors grinned savagely at Imogen, before he led his Relictors on a furious charge through the ship. Wielding powerful dameon weapons and charms from across the galaxy, his three squads blazed through the vessel, getting stronger by feeding upon the profane offerings on offer inside the Sodominus; they burst into wild orgy-chambers, and gutted everyone they saw. Daemonettes were shredded by kai guns and blades bound with bloodletters, that revelled in the exorcism of their hated rival patronised daemons. Wallachia’s men raided the well-stocked daemonic armouries of the Sodominus, and forced Illirus to muster her forces for a hasty counterattack. 

Meanwhile, Imogen and her men headed towards the real prize. Her three most powerful blanks strained with herculean effort to hide their presence from the volcanic essence of Fulgrim, that pervaded every molecule of the Sodominus. Fulgrim himself was coiled upon a throne of stitched together nudes, while he watched two painted figures devouring each other; stomachs undulating and pulsating as they exchanged fluids and fed upon each other without once drawing blood. For a second he thought he felt a shadow pass behind his eyes. The daemon within him felt weakened, just for a second. Fulgrim seized his moment, and clawed back a fragment of his will, forcing the daemon of the Laer sword to focus upon controlling him. All the while, Imogen and her bold followers were breaking into his crypt-vault.

The defences within were formidable. As soon as Imogen’s meme-virus infected scholar friend managed to break the code upon the vault door, skinned monsters leapt from the walls to engage them with blackened, sharpened bones. Her Kroot and Realm of fathers Cultist bodyguards erupted into battle, weapons flaring wildly, while Imogen and the Valhallan Veteran Tronskil rushed towards the centre of the chamber. Her blanks activated their psyculum null-enhancer devices, and began to actively burn away daemon flesh all around them. At the heart of the chamber, suspended in a glittering power field, was the gigantic Anathame sword. Not a single blemish tarnished the weapon in any way; not a single vein of warp-flesh or hideous chaotic decay affected its finish. Imogen reached for her data-jack, and deactivated the field by pounding the re-purposed harlequin kiss into the power field control terminal, injecting it with serrated wires that shredded its internal workings, and deactivated the field for a few precious moments. As the field shut off, the blade fell straight down, and embedded itself into the fleshy deck with a wet whisper. In response, a cavity in the wall unfurled, and the rampaging Chaos Dreadnought caged within almost severed Tronskil’s head as it charged them with its power flails and juddering autocannon. Imogen fearlessly jumped for the blade, snatching it from the deck before rolling to avoid the hail of gunfire ripping up chunks of the floor in a gory drizzle. Tronskil struck the dreadnought with five perfectly aimed blasts of his meltagun, but was bisected as he fumbled to reload. But the creature was now blind, and his melta-blasts had crippled its guns. The leader of the Brethren of the Willing screamed a curse at the thing, which leapt for her instantly. Seconds later, the power field reactivated, and impaled the war machine through its sarcophagus.

Imogen sounded the retreat, and her Brethren efficiently fell back into a rearguard action. She would have looked a strange sight if anyone had witnessed her then; a short woman clad in a privateer’s attire, dragging a sword twice as long as her, all the while cursing in every language spoken across the Vulkan Imperium and beyond. But her blanks had done something terrible; they had made Fulgrm aware of a black hole of psychic horror at the heart of his own vessel. He ripped his throne apart as his many limbs snatched up his scimitars and hooked-bladed daggers. By this point, Wallachia and his Relictors had become trapped inside the aft armoury, surrounded by daemons and heavily armed legionnaires. Their terrible sonic weaponry pulverised their minds and their flesh. Wallachia died last, dropping his dreadaxe from nerveless fingers.

Imogen was desperate for an escape route; as usual, she had not considered what she’d do AFTER stealing Fulgrim’s prized possession. Crossing her fingers, she rushed to the flight deck. As her Brethren fled, her blanks felt the magnificent presence of Fulgrim, which blasted their abhorrent minds into a bloody mess as he closed upon them, slithering with a blistering pace.

Imogen found the flight deck converted into a bizarre makeshift jousting arena, where foal-headed beastmen rode lobotomized Mk II Astartes like horses, and charged at each other with lances made from fused femurs and phallic flesh. Though disgusting and intriguing, Imogen ignored this spectacle. She noticed that there was at least one dreadclaw assault module still sitting idly upon the deck.

Fulgrim was moments too late, as Imogen and her men escaped his vessel by firing one of his own Dreadclaws into the flank of her stolen Null-ship, before ordering the ship to make full speed towards Armageddon. But Imogen was far from safe, for the entire Slanneshi fleet turned to chase after her vessel at the psychic impulse of Fulgrim, who dominated their captains’ minds. Such was his towering fury, he fed Illirus to her own mount for her failure.

Just as Fulgrim and the Sodominus charged full steam towards Armageddon, so too was Vulkan speeding towards his capital aboard Phalanx, with the Sons of Polyphemus and the Scar-Branders (''a Commandery founded by former White Scars'') to keep up with his pace. The two were heading for conflict at last.

The sectors in the southern fronts suffered long years of insurgency, bombardments and murderous meatgrinders across bone-strewn plains and glittering cities formed by Vulkan’s greatest artisans. The Theologians, though on the back foot, remained a tenacious and disturbed adversary. They fought hard to hold onto every world they had built garrisons upon, and the Witchfynders prevented the Iron Hands, Fire Beasts and the various allied sector forces from effectively bombarding those resistant worlds flat.

During this time of disorder, the Carnivas sector fought its war for independence. The Carnivas sector was located in one of the most unstable and volatile regions of space. It lay within the territories claimed by the Western Chaos Imperium, the Theologian Union and the Vulkan Imperium. The sector capital, Lychen, had been ruled by the Haemovore cult for many thousands of years, and their fanatical Lychen Guard had brought the surrounding systems to heel simply through their terrifying reputation (''that, and any worlds who even thought about sedition were punished... severely''). Rather than remain neutral during this time of chaos, the Lychen took a very different route; they declared war upon all three super states that bordered it, simultaneously. The three were occupied with their wars at this time, and could hardly spare the forces to defeat the Lychen. Those forces that tried to invade Lychen space regretted it instantly. The Lychen were both psychopathic butchers, and masterful pragmatists. Over the years, the state had forced its populace to eat mildly poisoned food, until native Lychens and lichen-subjects developed immunities to the chemicals tainting their Felshan meat (''the primary export and food product of the region''). And invading army found no unpoisoned food to eat or steal, every city were turned into death traps (''being virus bombed if they were taken by the enemy''), while the Lychen themselves were rightly feared for their almost mythical combat prowess. The Lychen Guard defeated several expeditionary forces in the course of the two wars on Vulkan, and carved for themselves a small independent state, at the crossroads of empires.

But still, the Theologians resisted Epsilon’s men. It was then that the true scale of the Realm of Father’s industrial capacity was dramatically demonstrated. Every single day, the Realm produced a dozen naval vessels, every second a thousand lasguns. Billions of perfectly drilled cultists were ferried to the battlefronts like a veritable tide of foes that dwarfed anything the Theologians could field. The Witchfynders could reliably destroy ten enemy vessels for every one of their own destroyed. They were outnumbered (''at least'') seventy to one. The results were inevitable. On the ground, Cultists armies were supported by thousands of geanstealers that infiltrated behind enemy lines and wreaked havoc. The Fire beasts refused to fight alongside purestrains, but reluctantly joined with human cultist armies if it meant killing Unionists.

On every front, the Theologians were murdered, and their surviving ships scattered across the void, gunning their super-powered engines at maximum capacity. Some managed to return to the Union. Most did not.

Some found themselves beached upon angry planets of indignant Vulkanians. Some collided with Wolf Packs from the Chaos Imperium, on the prowl for weakened prey. Some roamed east. These were hunted by the Ultramar remnant; forces that used these enemies as training for Regent Folkar’s campaign of rearmament and rebuilding of his sundered realm.

Fulgrim laid siege to Armageddon for fifteen months, furiously attempting to break the world and retrieve the Anathame from where Imogen had hidden it. He threw all he could spare at the stalwart defenders of Armageddon, but they held. Vulkan’s greatest ships and most dedicated warriors fought within the final circle of defenses (''known as ‘The Anvil Imperious’ colloquially)''. Devastating orbital laser silos and torpedo tubes buried inside asteroids and moons blasted at his fleets constantly, while reinforcements from across the Imperium constantly harried his siege force. For the first time in many centuries, Fulgrim’s daemon grew truly frustrated.

All it could do was throw its forces against the great shields and defiant armies of Vulkan. It needed a minion on the inside; a being capable of bringing down the web of fortifications from within. Then, the daemon realized it had such a creature already.

The daemon of Fulgrim reached out with its dark powers, and channeled a tide of warp power into the ruined, mewling body of Lucius, buried deep within Armageddon’s crust. Lucius was reborn as the Revenant; a creature which should not have existed. It was a nightmare of amorphous flesh and gnashing tendrils, chained around a daemonic skeleton of blasphemous ivory. Soon enough, the monster began to burrow upward through layers of rock and soil, screaming with a million voices as a tide of daemons was added to the choir already scrapping to claim Lucius’ flesh once and for all. Eventually Lucius the Revenant erupted from the cobblestones of victory square, flinging hundreds of startled soldiers aside as the blubbery mass of insane flesh ripped its way free of its earthen womb. Like a tornado of viscera, it shredded the Steel legion that vainly attempted to slow it. Relentless as only the insane can be, Lucius headed towards the building imprinted upon his soul by Fulgrim; the Temple of Grimaldus, the place where the central shield generator was located.

Lucius was not only brutally strong, but also insanely fast. The creature grew long, equine limbs, and threw itself forwards at a hideous pace. Within minutes, it was slamming against the reinforced temple gates with all its warp-spawned bulk. The doors were blessed and burned Lucius’ flesh with their faith, but they could not hold the beast back for very long; moments at most. There was mass panic and confusion amongst the defenders, who rushed to try and locate the rampaging daemon-thing. Only one figure seemed disturbingly calm, as he placed his helm upon his head and drew Grimaldus’ relic Crozius from its sanctified case, nodding with respect to its long-dead owner. Though this figure, Praetorian He’stan, was no Templar, he knew the importance of relics (''even though he had given up all his relics when master Vulkan had returned''). He’stan hefted the heavy power weapon with ease, his aged body enhanced and invigorated by the promethium Court’s scientific genius, returning his physique to its long-forgotten M41 years. When Lucius finally burst through the gate like a tidal storm of gnashing mouths and claws, ripping apart the other defenders, He’stan was ready for him. The Astartes launched himself bodily from the raised Pulpit of the temple, and met Lucius in mid air. He made no war cry, for he had nothing to say to the thing which was less than Astartes at that moment.

Meanwhile, in orbit, Fulgrim’s Sorcerers detected the approach of Vulkan and the Phalanx, for they parted the sea of souls like a vast dreadnought at sea parts water. Fulgrim’s daemon believed Vulkan came to take up his Anathame and use it against him. He could not let this happen, and ordered the Sodominus to engage the Phalanx as soon as it broke warp.

His minions did as he commanded, and the heavens were once again ablaze, as the two titanic vessels clashed at the edge of the system, like titans locked in a wrestling match. The two giants ripped chunks from one another, but they were too vast and too tough to be truly damaged by their own broadsides. Though fires raged and thousands upon thousands of crew perished, the vessels remained intact. Vulkan armoured himself as his chambers burned, and he ignored the fire; he let it wash over him as he sealed his dragon-scale suit over his charcoal-black form. Then, with a sudden rush and scream of tearing air, Vulkan was ripped from the Phalanx, and toppled into the undulating throne room of Fulgrim; a blistering teleport, guided by the gods themselves had drawn him there specifically. Vulkan grimly rose to his feet as Fulgrim’s serpentine form writhed before him.

Vulkan’s spear and shield were hooked to his sculpted armour, and he looked for the entire world like a dragon knight of myth. Fulgrim meanwhile was the height of corruption. He towered over even Vulkan, and his many limbs sported a menagerie of weapons taken from his greatest conquests. His naked body was clad in oily scales, and studded with coins and gemstones that glittered in the half light. Fulgrim cursed him furiously. Did this Blacksmith believe that taking his sword, like a cowardly thief in the night, would save him? The daemon, in Fulgrim’s voice, boasted that even without the sword, none could best him, for no one ever had.

Vulkan was still, and replied succinctly. 

'''“You shall die daemon. If it is possible for you to die, I shall make it so.”'''

The thing cackled as it circled him, clashing its blades together hungrily. It challenged Vulkan for his insolence; did this fool not know his brother when he saw him? Vulkan, it is said, refused to accept Fulgrim as his brother; his brother was dead.

The daemon’s smile was indulgent cruelty incarnate, and it relished its chance to reveal the truth. Fulgrim was alive, but the weakling had, at the crucial moment, refused to slay Ferrus, and his weak soul had been swallowed whole and subsumed like the wretch he was.

Vulkan lost his composure.

'''“Your words are poison!”'''

'''“And yours are folly.”'''

Vulkan hesitated no longer and he raised his gauntlets, before launching twin streams of searing fire into the serpent, that recoiled and threw its blades up to deflect the scorching torrent. The heat was like a star’s heart itself, and the walls began to run molten, as the fleshy floor blackened and squealed in heinous agony. Fulgrim threw his arms out wide, and deflected the flaming blasts aisde, before lunging directly for Vulkan himself. The two Primarchs clashed with a sonorous boom, blasting out all the windows of the throne room. Their bellows and screeching curses were lost as the atmosphere vented from the chamber, blown from the ship by the void.

They duelled in silence then. Vulkan’s spear and mighty shield were drawn, and the two slashed and parried every blow that sought to maim and to slay. Sparks flew from Vulkan’s salamander mantle and from his great shield, while Fulgrim’s blades fizzed and belched evil smoke as they flared with unholy life. It was a forest of blades, and the Forge father was forced backwards, step by step. Each deflected blow of the battling Primarchs destroyed something; statues were bisected, bystanders vaporised, sections of hull burnt away or chopped apart. But Vulkan could not best Fulgrim; Fulgrim’s daemon was right in that regard. Vulkan was no duellist. He was certainly better than any mortal man, but Fulgrim was something entirely different. His blades were omnipresent and unrelenting; wherever Vulkan’s guard was not, they were. His armour was battered by torrential blows, blows that burned despite his armour’s apparent imperviousness to thermal damage. This was hell-fire, and Vulkan could barely hold back the destruction which was coming.

Snorting like a bull, Vulkan set his feet, and powered his body forwards. Fulgrim was sinuous and lithe, but he had sacrificed bulk for this new form, and he was forced backwards by Vulkan’s rampaging charge. The two crashed through bulkhead after bulkhead, setting off maintenance alarms and the wailing of daemons still embedded in said walls. Vulkan powered onwards, forging his way towards the hexagonal chamber where the teleportarium would be located. Stunned, Fulgrim almost failed to block one of Vulkan’s spear thrusts, and instead swayed backwards to avoid the strike. Vulkan hurriedly slammed his fist upon the controls of the teleportarium, and the two were ripped from Sodominus, and returned to the last location the homing signal had been attuned to; the Phalanx.

Vulkan’s crew suddenly retreated as the two giants exploded into existence in the heart of the vessel. They no longer duelled like warriors; they ripped each other apart like savage dogs, mindless with rabies. Fulgrim’s swords were smashed or broken in the fight. Vulkan’s spear dulled and shattered, and his shield perforated and ravaged by claws. Gripping his brother by his bull neck with three hands, Fulgrim slammed him this way and that, ramming him through air locks and pulverising stone with his black cranium. The serpent coiled around Vulkan like a constrictor, and squeezed with all his might. They rolled on the floor like inhuman beasts. Inch by inch, Vulkan dragged himself deeper into his ship, wheezing as Fulgrim tried to suffocate him. As he choked, he in turn throttle Fulgrim. Order was lost, and any noble ideals were forgotten for a time; lost amid the red msit and the desire for revenge. Revenge for all the wrongs Fulgrim had done. Istvaan, Guilliman, Ferrus, Fulgrim’s own suffering; the monster before him was the architect of it all. For a time, Vulkan lost his mind.

Within the Temple of Grimaldus, Lucius swirled like a vortex. Faces flashed and rippled within its mass, as claws lashed and scrabbled for purchase. And, at the heart of the flesh storm, He’stan still fought. Everywhere a snarling head emerged from the storm, he would smash it apart with a brutal blow of the Crozius, while his bolter barked as it unleashed volleys of shell fire into the morass. He fought even as it stabbed past his guard over a hundred times, piercing his flesh and draining his blood. His glowing red eyes glared with righteous anger and he fought on. He had to fight. The longer he fought it, the longer he bought his Primarch and his people. He fought on, even as his bolter-arm was ripped free in a gory fountain of dark arterial blood.

Vulkan burst into the mustering hall, throwing Fulgrim across the packed cavern, impacting a thunderhawk with a deafening detonation. Aflame, Fulgrim leapt the hundred meter distance between them, and smashed Vulkan from his feet. The battle was fought at a speed his men could barely follow, and they dared not fire into the tumult, lest they weaken their Primarch at an inopportune moment. With a great lash of his tail, the Fulgrim daemon cracked Vulkan’s breast plate, and sent his stumbling backwards, into another chamber. Eagerly Fulgrim slithered in to deliver his killing blow.

It was then he felt the familiar disgust of the blanks anathema presence. But this was greater. This was a great nullification. The Fulgrim daemon glared into the chamber it had found itself in. Two dozen Culexus operatives emerged from the gloom. Fulgrim noted that Vulkan too was suffering in their presence. He lay upon his back, spluttering and hissing in agony; for every Primarch was a thing of the warp, whether they realised it or not. Yet, Fulgrim’s daemon realised too late what Vulkan actually intended. The untouchables were weakening it massively. More so than Vulkan. More so than even Fulgrim himself...

The serpentine chimera squealed as if electrocuted and collapsed to the ground in a fit of spasms, right before Vulkan’s bleary, glowing eyes. With great effort, Vulkan rose to his knees, spitting out gobbets of gore with every breath. He watched, amazed, as the serpent’s skin seemed to bulge and expand. It also paled and seemed to lose its oily lustre. Something was moving beneath its flesh. Snake shedding winter skin, a body pulled itself free. The body was sickly and covered in black veins, but Vulkan recognised the face.

The two looked upon one another as brothers once again. Fulgrim had tears in his beautiful eyes.

“You must... do it now... Slay me... now...” he whispered softly.

Vulkan protested. “I can save you! Let me try!” he hissed in agony. Fulgrim shook his head.

“You cannot destroy it. It is fused with me. We are as one. When we ascended... two souls... merged...” he pleaded. “Kill me. Banish it along with me. Your time is short...” Fulgrim continued, nodding to the Culexus, as they began to die one by one. They slumped to the ground, blood drooling from their helmet eye sockets. Even Pariahs had limits. It was not wise to subdue a Primarch’s aura, let alone two. Vulkan indeed had so little time.

Fulgrim opened his arms wide, and bared his body for Vulkan. 

“Make it count,” was the last thing Fulgrim said to his brother.

“I... forgive you... your penance is eternal... that is enough. I cannot add my personal miseries to your punishment,” Vulkan added, sobbing as he pulled his spiked helmet from his head. “I WILL find you again... I promise you this.”

And with that, he used his helmet to dash his brother’s head to pieces. He didn’t stop until that beautiful alabaster face was nothing but a gory ruin. Crowds of surviving crew members watched on in sorrow and hopelessness. They cared not at all for Fulgrim, but only for the obvious pain his passing had caused their leader.

With his host destroyed, Fulgrim’s soul flew screaming back to the eye like a black winged angel, dragging its daemonic counterpart back into hell with him. With the power of the Primarch draining away finally, his armies fell apart into their component warbands, and were hunted to destruction. Lucius lost his patron’s favour and collapsed upon himself; disintegrating into madness and formlessness once again. However, his last conscious act was to slay He’stan, and for this, Vulkan had the writhing body of Lucius cast into Armageddon’s star; there to burn for as long as the Eternal one persisted.

Vulkan did not break down over his brother’s eternal torment. It made him instead resolute; he would find his remaining brothers and he would save them. Yet when he returned to his throne room, he found Imogen sitting at the foot of his throne, clutching the Anathame, her eyes wide with fright.

“We have to talk about the three Master. There were always three of them, but we just never realised because we never had one in our possession. Blade of the morning, blade of the twilight, and this, the blade of midnight...”

In the South, the Theologians fled on all fronts. Elimia Ceylan of course blamed her failure upon her husband, and when he returned, he was hanged until dead for the crime of embarrassing her. Swiftly losing support of her cardinals, she was forced to welcome the twisted scientist Deng Vaal back to the fold, and into a greater position of power (''much to her disgust and his pleasure'').

The Fire Beasts chased the last straggling Witchfynder vessel into a region of space near the bottom of the galactic plane. As they destroyed it, their Captain paused. His sensors had detected something. Something vast and dull, in the very coldest depths of space, far from any star. The thing was invisible to their Librarian, and gave off almost no heat.

And it was big. As they neared it, they realised just how big. It was on the scale of astronomical units. A perfect, colossal, sphere; except for a split as long as Terra was wide, which was barely a hairline fracture to this colossal hyper-structure. They reported their findings to Vulkan as soon as they could.

The old saying didn’t make sense till those days of awakening. I always found this note in the old fairy tales and children’s stories across the galaxy, in every language. The phrase goes:

''‘When we walk on a god’s skin, 
we let the madness in. 
But is it such a sin, 
to let the madness in?’''
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