Additional Background Section 36: The Solemnace Galleries

For well over twenty thousand years, the world of Pax Argentius had been a dead world; not only a lifeless world, but a world centred upon death and its remembrance. It was a silent cemetery, carved from lifeless bedrock. Catacombs and graves, dedicated to every single Silver Skulls Chapter Master to bear the inherited name of Argentius were interred there, alongside their most loyal serfs. It was a solemn and near-silent place and the few sounds that permeated the quiet was the hum of shield generator pylons, built to ensure the planet remained forever pristine, and the turgid motion of the thin atmosphere captured by this force field.

However, following the Grand Siege of Varsavia and the death of the last Argentius, this silence was to be disturbed.

(The following narrative account has been created through cultivating numerous memory crystals from the Black Library, combined with what few eye witness accounts survive into antiquity and were stored in libraries I had access to. I have attempted to avoid embellishment, but as ever, with incomplete accounts, such things are inevitable. However, this account is easiler the most complete account on this matter.)

The strike cruiser Lucianus carried Argentius’s body to Pax Argentius, for it was apparently the first ship he had commanded as a Captain, when he was still called Brother Luk’venner. This vessel was escorted by a large hsot of Silver Skulls vessels, but was also accompanied by another force. These vessels were green, and clad in stylised thorn-patterns, and sleek beyond the dreams of any human craftsman. These were eldar vessels of the Biel-tan alliance.

It had taken Eldrinoth the Farseer weeks of psychic debates with Chief Prognosticator Allaten, before the post human had consented to the eldar landing upon the sacred ground of Pax Argentius, and soiling its earth with their perfidious forms. But Allaten had been convinced by the eldar’s quest. The eldar had rescued Varsavia from the Corsairs, and had given the Skulls the coordinates and time when Huron was going to be at his weakest. Letting them into the basilica of Ossified Argent was the least the Astartes could do to repay them.

Allaten led his honour guard, who bore Argentius’ body on a litter between their shoulders. Behind them, a small taskforce of eldar, composed of rangers, guardians and a handful of striking scorpions, followed at a respectful distance. The eldar understood the need for the dead to be respected; perhaps they knew this better than most. Though Argentius was a stranger to them, they had to stifle empathetic tears, conjured by their proximity to such raw, human grief.

Once Allaten reached the inner sanctum, he spoke the ancient words of remembrance and mourning, and he allowed the gene-vault to sample his blood to confirm his identity. With that, the vault opened, and the great spiralling casket-hold allowed them to enter, ushering the slender aliens to enter the tomb alongside them, before the doors sealed themselves once more. I have no records of what the funeral rites of Argentius entailed, but after this was concluded, the eldar began their search. They examined every carved surface, and their minds slid from their bodies, to roam over the residual psychic imprints that formed the luminal architecture of the tomb.

As they searched, Allaten formed a rapport with one of the rangers, known as Myrinmar; this was mainly due to the fact that both of them were two hundred years old, born in the same year. Allaten considered this an omen, as did the eldar female. Both the Silver Skulls and the eldar were superstitious and cognisant of prophecies and their import.

Eventually, Eldrinoth and his warlocks located what they were looking for; a vast stone ring, half-buried in the carved structures of the planet’s inert crust. This ring was no ordinary sculpture of simple carving. It was a dolmen gate, one of the invasive gates designed by the Lord of Fire to invade the webway, and form a network of tunnels independant of the old ones’ system. In the end, they were not fully successful, but nevertheless the necrons still had an extensive grid of interlinking junctions in the Labyrinth dimension. Eldrinoth explained that this portal was hard-linked to one tombworld in particular; Solemnace. This name meant nothing to Allaten, but the eldar knew this realm well, for it was the location of the galleries of Trayzn the Infinite. Trayzn was a mad creature, a necron by quirk of fate but quite unlike the rest of his species in cognition, if not appearance. He was a collector, not of mere artefacts, but of great swathes of living beings and their associated artefacts. Like some avaricious miser, this mad mechanical entity had spent eternity discreetly stealing people and creatures to turn into hard-light statues at the heart of his enslaved tombworld. Unlike other necrons, this one was capricious and prone to flights of whimsy. Myrinmar, an ancestor of Alaitoc stock, was greatly concerned about this destination, but she said nothing. She trusted the elderly Eldrinoth, even though the necrons were her most bitter of antagonists.

Eldrinoth and his assistants activated the dolmen gate after weeks of arduous psychic labour. They intended, with Allaten’s aid, to steal something from Trayzn. Trayzn the Infinite’s realm held many treasures, stolen over millions of years of larceny. The most valuable artefact to the eldar was the infamous Wraithbone Choir of Altansar. The choir had become a myth, and few knew what the choir actually consisted of, but the seers of Biel-tan felt, with all their hearts, that the wraithbone choir was essential to the continued existence of the galaxy. They had to retrieve it, no matter the cost.

Though sceptical of the eldar’s mission, Allaten had cast the runes upon Varsavia, and destiny had determined he would aid the eldar in this endeavour. The dolmen gate opened with a great rippling of colour, shining with every shade conceivable to a mortal eye. Then, the portal between the ring of boundary stones seemed to fall away into a deep pit or tunnel, stretching beyond sight into a place unfathomably distant. Casting aside doubt, the allied force stepped through the gate. The tunnel constantly groaned and sighed, flickering runes sliding around them like oil through water. They were flaring red, and they all felt a sympathetic pain gnawing at their heads. They felt the wrongness of the portal, and how it violated the webway. The Labyrinth dimension itself was fighting to destroy the passageway, and its instability was a concern for the force that travelled its length. They quickened their pace, lest they be consumed by the aborted dolmen route.

Both Allaten and Eldrinoth found that their powers of foresight and divination were stymied; something shrouded the future from their sight. Were they destined to die there, or was some malevolence working against them? They had no answers at that time.

Yet, eventually, they reached the other side, clambering upwards as if ascending from a pit they had fallen into. The eldar and Astartes emerged into a grand hall of pristine living metal, with infinitely intricate patterns carved into it at a subatomic level. The dolmen gate was but one portal amongst hundreds that were set into the walls like mirrors, which reflected far distant realms within their shimmering depths. The place was cold as a tomb and almost as silent. The glittering scarabs that crawled along the walls barely seemed to notice the intruders. Some bleeped and hissed, glowing green, but they seemed content to watch the intruders and do nothing. However, even as the force of men and eldar spread out to begin the search, they felt the familiar, acrid tang of a invasion beam engulf them and whisk them from the portal chamber.

Suddenly, all around them, there was a ring of necron Immortals, weapons held as if in mute salute. They were no longer in the portal chamber; they had been transported to some far corner of the great tomb complex, which, in contrast to the cold and dark portal chamber, was alive with sinister green corpse-light. At one end of this new hall, the walls formed a smooth, ornate throne, built in mockery of the austere thrones of human kings. Upon this throne sat a necron overlord, ribs a deep azure, swathed in a segmented cloak of living metal.

“Did you think you could simply stroll into my collection... unmolested?” the necron asked. Its voice, while obviously artificial, sounded almost scholarly, as if the Overlord had an academic interest in the question it had asked.

Allaten and his men instantly reached for their weapons, but were transfixed in place; beams of energy from the vaulted ceiling struck their limbs and made them leaden. All vitality was drained from the Astartes, and they found themselves fixed into place, like living statues. The eldar warlocks were also still, but this was out of choice. The other eldar, confused, also raised their weapons, ready to attack the looming immortals. However, Eldrinoth stopped them with an impulse, his thin hand raised gently. “Hold your fire, my children. Everything is under control now.”

The Silver Skulls had been betrayed.

Trayzn rose from his throne swiftly, leaping down onto the hall’s floor like an excited child. He walked over to the Space marines, and carefully examined them. “Adeptus Astartes, First Age Imperial armour. I had thought the silver skulls vanished. That would have been a tragedy,” Trayzn explained to no one in particular. Eventually, after Eldirnoth’s insistence, the Overlord returned to his throne, to hear the traitorous farseer out. As he sat down, the Astartes vanished; transported to another section of the archive.

“We have held up our side of the bargain; Silver Skulls of Imperial vintage. Now give us the choir, and let us be rid of each other,” Eldrinoth explained with distaste.

As they awaited the Necron’s response, Myrinmar cursed the farseer; even for a race as naturally duplicitous as the eldar, making deals with the necrons was simply a compromise too far. Eldrinoth ignored her as he patiently awaited Trayzn’s verdict.

Trayzn withheld his reply for several agonising minutes, before his green eyes glowered once more upon the farseer.

“I am loathe to part with any elements of my collection, even if it is by trade. Yet... your offer is so intriguingly desperate, I was persuaded to honour our concordance,” Trayzn explained carefully. “Until, that is, I got offered a far better deal.”

Eldrinoth’s blood ran cold. “There is no better deal. You need us; if you betray us, we shall thwart your attempts to add anything further to your collections. We know where all the greatest artefacts of this universe are located. We would destroy the, and ruin any hope of your recovering them,” Eldrinoth hissed through clenched teeth.

“Your powers are much diminished of late, eldar, if you think you have the power to control all the artefacts of the galaxy. Only Lorgar the Magnificent possesses such power.”

This third voice was wet and odious, with the crude cadence of a mon keigh beast. Eldrinoth sneered when he saw the ragged forms of cult soldiers of the Imperium of Travesties appear in the gallery above them, clad in all manner of strange and disgusting garments. Their leader, Prenterghast, grinned with a mouth too large for his skull, a blade of living bone oozing black foulness at his side.

Prenterghast’s master,t he daemon Cherubael, had promised Trayzn far more than merely Astartes. He promised the necron an entire Commandery, once the Imperium Pentus fell. In exchange, Trayzn had simply renege on his offer to the eldar, and nullify their truce.

It was a simple choice, in the end.

The eldar fired first, despite their shock, shredding dozens of Prenterghast’s minions, and striking down several Immortals, before they slowly rose to their feet once more. The warlocks unleashed an electrical storm upon the Lord of Solemnace, but his Lychguard interposed themselves between him and the warp energy. The return fire was lethal as it was brutally brief. Autoguns barked, as tesla carbines unleashed living lightning amidst the eldar, who vainly sought to leap into cover. A striking scorpion managed to leap between the lychguard, but was soon transfixed upon the end of Trayzn’s stave. The ancient weapon destroyed the mind of the scorpion, and the mysterious power of the staff meant all the other scorpion warrior fell to the ground moments later, their minds destroyed utterly.

Soon, Eldrinoth found he was standing alone, disarmed, surrounded by his many foes. But the old eldar would not beg or cower before his enemies.

“What now, mirror-devil?” he spat hatefully. “Am I to become one of your exhibits?”

“Hmm? What? Oh no; I already have a farseer,” Trayzn replied dismissively, as if he hadn’t been paying attention to the eldar’s defiant last words.

Before Eldrinoth could say another word, his fate was revealed violently, as he was stabbed in the back. In horror, the farseer watched as a great bony blade erupted from his chest, and shattered his soulstone in that same instant. “My blade is named Sesith’slethil, for she is home to a handmaiden of the Prince. Can you feel her hunger now, at the end, as she drinks your soul down in one gulp? Oh... She is Thirsty...” Prenterghast purred in Eldrinoth’s ear, as the ancient eldar died the true death, an expression of horror etched upon his face.

This sorry tale might have ended right there, in the Infinite Hall of Trayzn, if not for the fact not every eldar perished in the skirmish. Myrinmar and her team bore shifting cloaks of a most fantastic camouflage. When the battle began, they slipped from the chamber in desperation, fighting the urge to aid their brothers in their final fight. But she knew she had to survive. Fate had linked her with the Prognosticator Allaten, and she knew that the only way to survive Solemnace rested with this mon keigh, wherever he might be.

Alaitoc rangers were skilled in hiding themselves from necrons, for their craftworld had ever been the nemesis of many a necron Overlord. Myrinmar and her siblings were no different, and soon Trayzn himself had lost track of them within his endless galleries. However, Prenterghast’s daemon sword was slanneshi, and she could taste the souls of the eldar. Eager to be rid of unwanted additions to his collection, Trayzn allowed the human cultists to stalk the eldar through Solemnace, and drive them intot he open, where the Immortals and the canoptek swarms would surely flay them.

Myrinmar, however, was cunning and she led the cultists on a winding chase through the labyrinth of exhibits and exhibitions Trayzn had carefully poised in countless dioramas and strange shapes. The rangers passed through frozen battlefields of duelling, inhuman xenoforms, ancient human armies silently standing to attention for all eternity, and between strange devices that sparked and glittered and hummed in a wild perfusion of different actions. She passed by an empty plinth that had once held a giant in ornate armour. Once, she saw the head of a mon keigh priest-born writhing in horrible mockery of life, held in mid-air in a glimmer-field. Every gallery, every collection, was unique. At first it was confusing for both sides, but soon, the eldar recognised each exhibit, and used them to aid in navigation. They constantly turned back upon their foes, taking pot shots at the rearguard, before dissolving back into the shadows. Yet, the eldar took casualties, regardless of their cunning. Each time one of them fired, the spyders were alerted, and they unleashed their interceptor machines, and that eldar perished.

Myrinmar knew her days were numbered. She had not eaten in weeks, nor slept for more than a few scattered hours each day in that strange, permanently illuminated museum of curios and stolen mementoes. Her long rifle was spent, and she stalked the dark with a scorpion’s chainsword clutched to her chest. She knew she had only one hope of escaping Solemnace. Allaten had to be freed.

The brief moment of connection she had felt earlier between them was only a minor psychic impulse; barely a single, flickering ribbon of ethereal energy. But she held onto that, and used it to guide her towards the Silver Skull exhibit. The exhibit was fifty metres square; depicting a battle between skulls and the Red Corsairs, locked in some sort of recreated naval boarding action. The plague beneath it read ‘Gildar Rift’ in necron glyphs, but the name meant little to the eldar. With the discordant shrieking of Prenterghast’s cultists echoing as they closed upon her surviving rangers, she reached into the hard-light tableau, and her mind joined with that of the Astartes witch-knight. At first, there was nothing but white-hot rage seething in the mind of Allaten, but as the link deepened, he learned of Myrinmar’s innocence, and her desperate need of his help. Slowly but surely, she drew the human’s mind to the fore of his immobile form.

The cultists fell upon them like mad savages. They rangers were skilled, but even the most adept combatant could fall to superior numbers, and fall they did. Myrinmar found herself alone again, her blade purring as it carved apart foe after foe, her fusion blaster immolating any who escaped her fell sword. However, Prenterghast was no mere human; he was empowered by his wicked slanneshi blade, and it carved burning trials through the air as it swept towards her, again and again. Soon enough, the chainblade lay bisected at her feet. Prenterghast was ready, hungry to drink the ranger’s soul. His mouth opened wider than a human was capable. His men closed in all around her. They raised their autoguns, and fired.

Their bullets struck ceramite pauldrons and armoured greaves harmlessly, as Allaten interposed himself between Myrinmar and the cultists. His mind had been set free, and the first thing it had done was cast a machine curse upon the hard light prison which held him. Soon enough, he and his honour guard were freee, and they murdered the mortals who sought to destroy them. Only Prenterghast escaped; his sword shattered over Allaten’s knee, and his face shredded by shrapnel. The Skulls’ easy victory was cut short by a hail of bolter fire from behind them. Five Corsairs had been freed from stasis too, and they knew only to murder. This skirmish was far more brutal and bloody for both sides, but was equally brief. At its close, Allaten’s men had been reduced to four, and the corsairs were destroyed, burnt to ashes by Allaten’s furious force bolts.

“Disrupting the hardlight emitters frees both sides,” he nodded coldly.

When Allaten explained how he had cursed the necron machinery, Myrinmar had but one question for the Space marine.

“Can you do it again?” she smiled.

The battle with Prenterghast alerted Trayzn’s automatons and Immortals to the location of his foes, and the alien allies found themselves fighting off tides of scarabs and hundreds of lumbering silver killers. However, Trayzn had not considered that Myrinmar and Allaten would be so uncultured, so base and vulgar, to remove his display pieces from their hard light packaging.

Allaten released everything he could. Ambulls and clawed fiends howled in animalistic fury as they ripped through the galleries. Hellions and furies wheeled overhead, ripping at cables, duelling each other in the air and shrieking in glee. The halls shook with the footfalls of a squiggoth, the caustic cracking of imperial lasgun fire, and the deafening challenges of Kroot war parties and Groevian shredders. Trayzn’s menagerie had never been awoken all at ocne, and the effect was... utter carnage. They fought with the necrons as much as each other. Spiralling missiles shattered against hard necron bodies, blood flowed in streams down wide boulevards, and all the name plates were buckled and ruined by sudden, violent conflict.

It is said, as Trayzn witnessed this chaos he screamed, declaring everything was ‘out of place’ and ‘spoiled’.

Amidst this colossal clash of divergent forces, non-combatant exhibits fled in all directions, weeping, hooting or cowering. Jokaero built forcefields around themselves instinctively, and weapon impacts bounced crazily from these fields, striking other combatants at random. Orks bellowed for waaaaagh, while nephilim ripped off portions of their towering forms and made serfs of whoever they ensnared. Tyranids, preserved examples of their kind from millennia past, were awoken, and began to do what they were bred for; they killed. Gaunt packs dragged down Krieg soldiers, while a harridan ripped the throat from a squiggoth, which crushed a dozen spyders beneath its scaly bulk as it fell. Some forces retained a semblance of order, like dense islands of sanity carefully dispatching disruptive elements. A battalion of Mordians formed a tight square, presenting a hedge of steel as they fired over and over into the baying mobs of aliens and traitors and cyborgs that scrambled and clawed at them. Elsewhere, a company of white-armoured Astartes in vintage plate fought with fluid grace and brutal, efficient force; bolter and knife defeated what arcane science and monstrous maws could not.

It would be follow on my part to attempt to depict every furious skirmish that raged amidst this rout, but suffice to say the necrons were taken aback by this turn of events, and it took their programming a while to react to this rapidly developing situation.

Even Allaten wasn’t prepared for the sheer madness he had unleashed, and he sprinted between dozens of running battles with a sure-footedness he did not feel in his heart. Myrinmar seemed to know the way better than he, but in the end, he followed her simply because he had no other sane reference point. They picked up stragglers along the way; confused former exhibits roaming the blood-soaked galleries in stupefied wonder and awful dread. One such figure would be known to history as Julius Hawke.

But as they travelled through the murderous melee raging on every level of the complex, their numbers were thinned; stray shots killed the unwary and lucky blows made some fall behind and become lost. Eventually, only the three remained, and things were getting desperate. Myrinmar insisted that they search for the Altansar wraithbone choir; their ordeal could not be for nothing. Desperately, they clambered up library shelves fifty metres tall, leaping between stacks with as much agility as they could muster. Below, a phalanx of necrons began to march, gauss beams carving a path forwards with relentless purpose. Trayzn was in no mood to play games now. They had mere minutes before Trayzn’s forces carved their way through his collection, and reached them.

Myrinmar eventually reached the eldar section of the gallery, and frantically gathered all the artefacts, totems and jewels she could find. She did not know what to look for, or indeed what a wraithbone choir even was; only Eldrinoth had known what to look for, and he was dead. More than dead; he was banished to hell. Allaten helped in the search, and as he searched, he found something he did not expect. A sword, vast and flawless, lay before him. It shrank to fit the scale of the Librarian’s hand, as if it desired that he liberate it from Trayzn’s prison. Allaten had no idea what the Anathame was, or that it was also known as the Blade of Midnight. All he knew was that he needed a sword.

Suddenly, a spyder burst into view. Without thinking, Allaten unleashed a bolt of lightning from his outstretched palm. This merely slowed the towering machine, and its claws narrowly missed his exposed head. Hawke fired with his stolen hellgun, but the fat ruby sparks didn’t even give the mechanical abomination pause. However, when a slender giant of bright yellow wraithbone leapt from its hard-light prison, and punched its three metre blade through the spyder’s glowing power orb, the spyder noticed. It flailed frantically at the wraithlord, but to no avail. With a solemn twist of its scimitar sword, the wraith dispatched its foe, saluted awkwardly, before it leapt off the shelf stack, into the swirling, demented melee below.

“That was odd,” Hawke noted blandly, instinctively sheltering behind Allaten’s armoured bulk.

Bedecked in eldar ornamentation, Myrinmar beckoned for them to flee; she felt, in her strange xenos heart, that one of the artefacts was the choir. The choir was a simple pendant, containing the combined spiritual essence of seven hundred generations of Altansaran farseers, all trapped singing the final lament; the tune of the risen dead. The song that would wake the Revenant hosts and purify the soul. The song of the dead Goddess; Ynnead. It had to be returned to her people. It had to be released into the infinity circuit. Only then could the awakening begin, and hope be renewed...

But the trio could not simply leave with their prize. The galleries had been sealed, and Trayzn’s phalanxes had set up defensive formations around the main processional hallway gates (inadvertently indicating precisely where the portal chambers would be located). Trayzn was happy to simply trap the trio inside their self-created hell; let them be destroyed by their fellow freed inmates. Three people alone, no matter how mighty, could not hope to break through the ranks of a necron phalanx. Well, except for perhaps a company of Silver Skulls. In fact, any company of marines, if sufficiently skilled might be able to do so, he corrected himself. Then Allaten noticed the pale Space marines methodically cutting a swathe through the unruly mobs. He did not recognise their canine iconography or their plate colours, but they seemed righteous enough.

Allaten braved mobs of orks, flights of vespid and tides of slithering thyrrus to reach his fellow marines, desperately shielding his two allies as he did so. His armour was soon blackened and torn in many places, leaking coolant and blood in equal measure. His psychic powers were stretched to their limit, and he simply battered aside his foes with great two-handed sweeps of the anathame.

“What mad realm is this? Throne, has every damn xenos in the galaxy come to make sport with us?” a Captain in a plumed helmet bellowed to Allaten, evidently recognising only the Silver Skulls armour, assuming the two were allies.

“Heed me; Allaten! We are captured by a xenos overlord brothers!” Allaten bellowed over the din of battle, gesturing towards the necron forces gathering at one end of the huge gallery. “See there is the key! We need to make a breakout there, or else we will be crushed by the weight of this savage multitude!”

No further discussion was required; the white-armoured commander simply nodded, and relayed orders through his vox channel.

The Astartes surge came swift and suddenly against the slow, deliberate necron host. For all their lack of haste, the necrons were no less lethal. Their flayers stripped marine sot the bone as easily as if they were unarmoured. But the space marines were not fools. They did not march to their death like men of krieg or Valhallan conscripts. They took to barricades, and each element covered the advance of another, lascannons and missile pods dismantling necron heavy weapons long enough to allow the post-humans to advance again, and again, and again. With a final great roar, the marines surged into combat from two directions. Ceramite smashed into living metal, bolt pistols barked, flayers screamed with a dry hiss, and knife met axe in sonorous melee. The necrons were the toughest opponents the pale Astartes had ever encountered, but this only pushed them on to insane lengths. They did not fear these death-faced androids, but neither did they spend their lives in hopeless battle. When the Lychguard entered the fray, melee ceased, and the soldiers opened up with full force upon the royal guardians.

The skirmish was close and brutal, but surprisingly bloodless, almost sanitary in its carnage. The necrons had no blood and their weapons left no blood when they stripped flesh to bone, then bone to nothingness. The Commander struck a necron Lychguard square in the face with a head butt that rang like a church bell, as he bisected it with his powered dagger and short sword. Allaten found the anathame a mighty weapon. His hatred of the necrons lent his blade a peculiar power. He felt it, in the back of his skull. It was the bane of whatever its master demanded. The necorns the anathame struck down did not rise again...

Though the battle was arduous, eventually they reached the gate that barred their path. Melta barrages and krak mines bored white-hot holes in the metal, which were widened by power swords even as the living metal sought to heal. Myrinmar leapt bodily through one of these holes, while Hakwe gingerly clambered through one, taking the occasional potshot at the necrons at his back. Allaten and the surviving marines took up the rearguard, firing in a steady stream as they executed a perfect withdrawal. Half-skimmer necrons gave chase, cutting down dozens with their questing green gauss beams, but the Astartes kept up the pace as they neared the portal chamber. As they finally reached the room, the Astartes barred the entrance as best they could; it was not much, but it would buy them time to escape home through the portals. However, the room had changed. No portal was the same as before, for they led to places Allaten had never seen before; battlefronts he had yet to fight upon, and enemies he’d yet to face. Myrinmar was likewise baffled. I suspect that the group simply found the wrong portal chamber, as Solemnace was a vast world with many wormhole portal nexuses scattered across its surface and beneath its armoured skin.

There was no time to deliberate on this though. Allaten could sense something coming. All the thousand garrison of the Infinite One was descending upon them. If they dallied for too long, they would be crushed, for not even a company of marines could hold against so many necrons at once. The Commander, who identified himself as Captain Kaidmus of the Luna Wolves (a chapter Allaten did not recognise), offered to accompany Allaten, but the eldar insisted she needed to reach Altansar.

“We must go our separate ways brother,” Allaten explained to the Luna Wolves.

“Where do these gateways lead?” Kaidmus asked.

Allaten didn’t know, and told him as such.

The Commander laughed then; a rare sound coming from an Astartes. “Ah to hell with it,we’ll take our chances. Well met, my Silvered brother. I pray you return to your Legion in time. Now, brothers of the 118th, with me! For the Emperor!” the commander bellowed, gesturing towards a portal, selected seemingly at random.

“For the Emperor!” they echoed their master.

“For Horus Lupercal!” he bellowed, as he plunged intot he rippling gateway’s mouth.

“For Horus Lupercal!” the ancient, temporally dislocated Luna Wolves echoed, before they charged in after their leader. Soon, the chamber was empty, save for Myrinmar, Allaten and Julius Hawke.

They looked to each other, in a moment of confusion evident on all their faces.

“Did he say Horus? He said Horus...” Hawke was the first to speak, his voice incredulous and bewildered in equal measure.

Further discussion was cut short, as the entire chamber rocked with unnatural force. Trayzn was coming. One by one, the portals began to go dark and deactivate. He sought to trap them. The trio wasted no more time. As one, they leapt into the last portal, spanning impossible spans of space, and into the unknown.

It took Trayzn months to cleanse his galleries of the menagerie of fiends unleashed by Allaten. Only then, when the unruly were dead, could he catalogue his surviving collection, and mark down what needed to be replaced. The number of artefacts that escaped Solemnace cannot be easily estimated; it is known that there were legends of a great, plasma-spewing drake that terrorized several worlds for centuries after these events, which matches the descriptions of a Harridan, and the archives have accounts of Imperial guard armies and extinct alien forces striking at the fringes of Pentus space and the Eastern Desolations for many decades, despite the fact none of them should have existed at that time. For instance, the account of krorkish Warlord Ulchaeru’s notable victory over the forces of the destroyer Lord Imovehki, mentioned a strange auxiliary unit allied to the Krork; a band of humans who fought with primitive autoguns and marched beneath a striped banner. One must also question why there were persistent reports of Atheist cults preaching about a ‘Great Crusade’ which never seemed to materialise.

The living head also went missing, and by all accounts I suspect the Exorcists* managed to find it and deliver it to their patron, Draigo the faceless King, lord of the Angyl host.

As for Trayzn, eons-old hatred for the living races burned anew in him; a feeling he had thought lost after so many years of soulless immortality. He cursed the three who had stolen his trophies and spoiled his collection, and he summoned the Deathmarks too him. The silent, cyclopean fiends were assassins beyond compare. Once their targets were implanted by Trayzn, they would never stop hunting Allaten or the liberated wraithbone choir.

• (The Exorcists were also known as ‘the Legio Illuminatus’ during this period, as their numbers had expanded rapidly under the Star Father’s Patronage.)