Chronicle, entry number fifty-five.
I never thought I’d write this sentence, but here goes: the demons of this universe’s Hell adore Primarch Sanguinius.
They pray to him.
They build him altars.
They light little candles for him.
Every day he tells them he isn’t an angel, that he’s a man with wings, and they nod very seriously and pray to him a little harder.
Captain Dante says it’s “a communication problem.” The Chaplain says it’s “a theological problem.” The Primarch says it’s “a problem.”
I.
A World Already Conquered
The human world of that universe had fallen months before, with almost no resistance.
What no one had foreseen was that it had a basement.
Beneath reality, connected by portals and contracts, lay Hell: a series of rings full of demons, sinners, horned feudal lords and a surprisingly thriving entertainment industry.
And farther down still, in the ring of Pride, a princess named Charlie Morningstar had opened a hotel with an absurd purpose: rehabilitating sinners so they could go to Heaven.
The IX Legion had no intention of entering Hell.
But Hell, as it tends to, came looking for them.
* * *
It all started with a client.
A human businessman in the arms sector, furious because the Imperial annexation had ruined his business, had found a very peculiar ad online: “I.M.P. — Immediate Murder Professionals. Somebody hurt you? We kill ’em! Competitive rates.” He paid for the contract with his soul and a bonus on top.
The target: Captain Dante of the Blood Angels.
That was how four small-time demons turned up one night on the perimeter of the Imperial base in Los Angeles.
Blitzø, the boss, a red imp with striped horns, a shrill voice and zero sense of danger.
Moxxie, the weapons expert, who was very good at shooting and very bad at everything else.
Millie, his wife, who was very good at everything else.
And Loona, a teenage hellhound who worked as the receptionist and had only come along because she’d been promised overtime.
“All right, team,” whispered Blitzø, crouched behind a dumpster.
“Simple plan: we go in, find this captain guy, kill him, get paid. Questions?”
“Have you seen the size of these people?” asked Moxxie, pointing at a Space Marine patrolling the perimeter with a bolter the size of a small car.
“The bigger they are, the easier they are to hit.”
“And that?” Millie pointed at another figure.
Bigger.
Much bigger.
A metal sarcophagus on two legs, with a fist like a crane: a Dreadnought.
“That’s… decoration.”
At that moment, a pigeon landed on the Dreadnought’s shoulder.
The Dreadnought swiveled its cannon, and the pigeon ceased to exist in a flash of light.
Loona turned around.
“I’m out.”
“Loona! This is teamwork!”
“It’s suicidal teamwork.”
II.
Refund with Interest
They didn’t even make it to the door.
The Blood Angels’ Death Company surrounded them in under a minute.
Blitzø ended up dangling upside down from the hand of an Astartes, who held him by the ankle like a freshly caught rabbit.
Moxxie had been disarmed.
Millie had bitten a sergeant, and the sergeant, touched, had patted her on the head.
Loona was sitting on the ground, looking at her phone, waiting for it all to be over.
Captain Dante approached.
“Who sent you?”
“Anonymous client! Professional confidentiality!” squealed Blitzø.
Then, seeing the Dreadnought slowly turning toward him: “Some arms guy! His name’s Harold! He lives in Malibu!”
Dante nodded.
He made a gesture.
A squad set off for Malibu.
“And now what?” asked Moxxie in a trembling voice.
Blitzø, upside down, tried to smile as charmingly as possible.
“Hey, big guy, how about we call it a draw? You take refunds? With interest? I’ll give you the friends-and-family rate!”
Dante looked at him for a long time.
“You attempted to assassinate an officer of the Imperium.”
“Technically, I attempted to attempt it.”
* * *
The tribunal was brief.
Captain Dante considered executions and decided, in his Primarch’s name, on something worse: the four I.M.P.
members were sentenced to work for the Imperium for three hundred years as couriers between Hell and the Imperial worlds.
No pay.
In uniform.
“Uniform?” moaned Blitzø.
“Not the uniform! Beige isn’t my color!”
Loona was the only one who asked for clarification.
“Is there overtime?”
“No.”
“Figures.”
But what truly mattered wasn’t the punishment.
It was what the Tech-priests discovered when they examined Blitzø’s portal book: a stolen grimoire that allowed passages to be opened between the human world and Hell.
And, on the last page, the seal of a noble family of Hell: the Goetia.
“We have a door,” the Magos announced to Sanguinius.
“A door to the realm of the demons.”
The Angel was silent for a moment.
“And is it open?”
“Very open, my lord. Wide enough for a Legion to pass through.”
III.
Hell Receives Visitors
The Blood Angels walked through the portal on a Tuesday.
On the other side, Hell was waiting with all its theatricality: red skies, rivers of lava, crooked skyscrapers, billboards for cursed products.
The demons of the ring of Greed came out to look.
They had never seen anything like it: golden giants, some of them winged, singing hymns as they marched.
“Angels,” someone whispered.
“They’re angels!”
“We are not angels,” said a sergeant.
“They’re angels!” screamed the crowd, and ran for it.
Mammon, the lord of Greed, a fat demon who made his living exploiting the ring’s performers, tried to buy them off.
He offered gold, sponsorship deals and a reality show.
Sanguinius listened to the whole offer and then asked him how much he paid his employees.
Mammon lied.
The Primarch knew.
Mammon ended up locked inside one of his own giant cash registers, with a sign that read “Special Price.”
In the ring of Lust, Asmodeus, a huge, flamboyant and surprisingly well-mannered demon, threw open the doors of his palace and spread his arms wide.
“Welcome, welcome! Need anything? A drink? A suite? A…?”
He saw the size of the Legion coming up behind.
He blinked.
And, without losing his smile, he raised his fist in the air.
“THE EMPEROR PROTECTS!”
He was the first lord of Hell to surrender.
Also the only one to do it singing.
IV.
The Goetia
The Goetia family lived in an aristocratic mansion in the ring of Pride.
Stolas, the lord of the house, was an owl demon with exquisite manners, deeply in love with the stars and deeply unhappily married.
His wife, Stella, hated him.
His daughter, Octavia, hated them both equally, as any self-respecting teenager does.
When Sanguinius arrived at the mansion, Stella was waiting for him at the entrance.
“Finally, someone with class,” she said.
“Look, Mister Angel, I’m going to make your job easy. My husband is a traitor who has been opening illegal portals with those I.M.P. clowns. My daughter is… well, she’s his daughter. Take them both. I’ll give you access to the ring’s entire aristocracy in exchange for leaving me alone.” The source of this chapter is g.com.
Sanguinius studied her.
He looked past her, down the hallway, where Stolas was wrapping his daughter in his wings.
“You are offering me your family?”
“I’m offering you a deal.”
“Then the deal is closed,” said Sanguinius.
He signaled to his guards.
Stella was removed by force, screaming threats at everyone, the Emperor included, which in the Imperium is a mistake no one makes twice.
The archives do not say what became of her.
The Blood Angels, when asked, change the subject.
Stolas approached the Primarch with his head bowed.
“I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Take care of your daughter,” said Sanguinius.
“That will be enough.”
Octavia looked him up and down.
“You’re seriously not an angel?”
“No.”
“Weird. You’re the closest thing to one I’ve ever seen.”
V.
The King of Hell
The news reached the very bottom of Hell.
Lucifer Morningstar, the King, the Fallen Angel, the first of all rebels, had spent centuries shut up in his palace, depressed, building rubber ducks.
But when they told him a legion of golden giants was marching on his daughter’s hotel, he got up.
Lucifer fought.
It was the most beautiful and the saddest duel of the campaign.
Lucifer was a being of ancient power, an archangel who had defied Heaven.
Sanguinius was a Primarch at the height of his strength.
Their wings clashed in the red sky of Hell and, for a few minutes, it seemed neither of them could win.
In the end, Lucifer fell.
Not dead.
Defeated.
Kneeling on the roof of the Hazbin Hotel, his top hat crushed and his breathing ragged.
“Don’t touch my daughter,” he said.
“I never intended to,” answered Sanguinius, and held out his hand.
Lucifer eyed him with suspicion.
Then, slowly, he took the hand and let himself be helped up.
Charlie Morningstar came running out of the hotel and threw her arms around her father’s neck.
Then she turned to the Primarch, her eyes full of tears and her fists clenched.
“If you hurt anyone in my hotel, I’ll…! I’ll…!”
“Princess,” said Sanguinius, “I have spent three days reading about you. You are the only ruler of this place who has tried to save her people instead of exploiting them. Why would I hurt you?”
Charlie blinked.
“Huh?”
“Hell needs someone to govern it. Someone who believes the damned can change.”
“Are you… offering me Hell?”
“I am offering you a very difficult job.”
Charlie looked at her father.
Lucifer, still bruised, shrugged.
“I never wanted that job,” he said.
“You do.”
Charlie took a deep breath, wiped away her tears and turned to the Angel.
“I accept. But don’t make me regret it.”
“Likewise,” answered Sanguinius.
* * *
The Vees—Vox, the TV demon; Valentino, the pimp of Hell’s film industry; and Velvette, the influencer—were next.
They tried to resist using the only weapon they knew: propaganda.
They flooded every screen in Hell with fake news about the “golden invaders.”
The Mechanicus hacked their network in eleven minutes.
The Tech-priests were so scandalized by the number of thinking machines they found in Vox’s tower that they requested permission to use flamethrowers.
It was granted.
Vox ended up switched off, literally.
Valentino and Velvette were arrested.
In their place, Hell’s screens began broadcasting a single program: the Hazbin Hotel, twenty-four hours a day, hosted by Charlie.
It was a ratings hit.
Alastor, the Radio Demon, watched the whole process from a corner, with his eternal smile, without intervening.
When Sanguinius walked past him, he gave an exaggerated bow.
“What a delightful spectacle, my friend. Delightful!”
Sanguinius looked at him a second longer than necessary.
“I don’t like you.”
“Ha ha! Nobody does!” answered Alastor, and vanished in a trail of static.
VI.
An Exterminator in Heaven
One thing remained.
Every year, Heaven sent an army of exterminator angels down to Hell to thin out the sinner population.
Annual massacres, official, with a date on the calendar.
Their commander was Adam, the first man, the father of humanity, who had turned out to be, by every witness’s account, the most insufferable guy who ever existed.
When the army of exterminators descended that year, it found the IX Legion drawn up in front of the hotel.
Adam came down with his axe-guitar over his shoulder and his gleaming smiling mask.
“And who the hell are you guys? Cosplayers? Ha! Listen up, big boys, I’m the first man. The original. The prototype. Everything you are, you owe to me. So get out of the way, or…”
Sanguinius stepped forward.
“You kill those who are trying to redeem themselves.”
“It’s my job, birdie!”
“Not anymore.”
The battle was brief.
The exterminator angels, who had spent centuries slaughtering unarmed demons, discovered that the Blood Angels were not unarmed.
Adam fell beneath Sanguinius’s spear, still yelling something about being the original.
His lieutenant, Lute, a cold-eyed exorcist, escaped through the portal to Heaven before it closed completely.
Except it didn’t close.
“My lord,” reported the Magos, “the portal to the celestial realm remains open. We cannot seal it.”
Sanguinius looked at the white light shining in Hell’s red sky.
His wings tensed.
For the first time in the entire campaign, he seemed unsure.
“Then,” he said, “I suppose I will have to go and talk to them.”
* * *
No one knows exactly what happened in Heaven.
The IX Legion’s official report says only that “an agreement was reached.” The annual exterminations ended.
The seraph Sera, leader of Heaven, signed a treaty.
And Lute, Adam’s lieutenant, was never found.
But Tobías Garza was there.
And this is what he wrote that night:
Chronicle, entry number fifty-six.
Today I was in Heaven.
It is very white.
There is a great deal of silence.
The angels looked at us as if we were a storm.
When Primarch Sanguinius entered the seraph’s hall, they all knelt.
Not before the Imperium: before him.
One of them called him “brother.” The Primarch said nothing for the rest of the day.
On the way back, I saw him sitting alone on the edge of his ship, looking down.
I asked him if he was all right.
He said: “Tobías, how many times does someone have to say he isn’t an angel before they believe him?” I didn’t know what to answer.
I still don’t.
VII.
The Goddess Who Didn’t Listen
Meanwhile, on another world, another Primarch was dealing with another deity.
Makoto Misumi’s world was ruled by a goddess.
Literally.
A beautiful, capricious, shallow goddess who had decided that only beautiful humans deserved her favor.
The ugly, the demi-humans, the other races—she despised them.
When Makoto, a perfectly ordinary Japanese boy, was summoned to that world by an ancient pact, the goddess looked at him exactly once, said “how ugly,” and tossed him into the desert.
Makoto survived.
He turned out to be absurdly powerful.
He formed a small group with two companions: Tomoe, a dragon who had taken human form and was a fan of samurai movies, and Mio, a calamity-class spider turned woman who loved him very much, perhaps too much.
And, above all, Makoto had learned to hate the goddess in silence.
When Lorgar Aurelian came to the academic city of Rotsgard, he did not arrive with ships in the sky.
He came as a preacher.
He stood in the main square, in his gray robe with his book under his arm, and began to speak.
He did not speak of gods.
He spoke of the truth.
“You have been told that your worth depends on your beauty,” he said.
“That your place in the world depends on your race. That you must pray to earn the love of one who despises you. I ask you: have you ever seen this goddess? Has she ever once answered you?”
The crowd murmured.
Some left, scandalized.
Many stayed.
From a rooftop, Makoto watched him with wide eyes.
“Tomoe,” he whispered.
“That guy is saying out loud everything I think.”
“And it seems someone else is listening,” answered Tomoe, pointing at the sky.
Above Rotsgard, the clouds began to swirl.
VIII.
The Wrong Hero
The goddess did not come down in person.
She sent her champion: Tomoki, a hero summoned from the same world as Makoto, an attractive, arrogant teenager equipped with a divine charm that made anyone who looked at him fall in love with him.
He arrived escorted by two followers, Moro and Lily, who worshipped him like a god.
He arrived flying on a dragon.
He arrived shouting.
“Blasphemer! The goddess commands you to prostrate yourself!”
Lorgar looked up at him from the square.
“And if I don’t?”
Tomoki activated his charm.
A wave of golden power swept across the square.
People fainted, sighed, fell to their knees.
Lorgar didn’t move.
“What a sad trick,” he said.
“Making them love you because they have no other choice.”
Tomoki attacked.
It didn’t last long.
Lorgar’s guards, the Word Bearers, didn’t even need to step in.
The Primarch disarmed him with a single gesture, grabbed him by the collar of his cape and left him dangling half a meter off the ground.
The charm broke instantly.
Moro and Lily, freed from its influence, looked at each other, confused, and then looked at Tomoki with an expression no hero ever wants to see: shame.
“You… you forced us,” said Lily.
“No, I just…!”
The Imperial tribunals took care of the rest.
The charges against Tomoki were numerous: mind control, the abduction of wills, war crimes in the goddess’s name.
Moro and Lily testified against him.
The trial was public.
The Imperial archives record that the sentence was carried out at dawn.
IX.
The Apostle’s Blow
The goddess, at last, got angry enough to show herself.
She descended upon Rotsgard in a column of light, beautiful as a marble statue, surrounded by wings and a choir of heavenly voices.
The inhabitants fell to their knees out of habit.
“Who are you,” she said, looking down on Lorgar from on high, “to sow doubt among my children?”
“Someone who has seen many gods,” answered Lorgar.
“And who was wrong to worship them.”
He raised a hand and, with his psychic power, laid the goddess’s mind open before the entire city.
The people of Rotsgard saw her memories.
They saw how she had scorned Makoto for his face.
How she had abandoned entire races to their fate because she found them ugly.
How she had let millions die while she admired herself in celestial mirrors.
How never, not once, had she listened to a prayer.
The silence in the city was absolute.
“Enough!” shrieked the goddess.
“I am your creator! You owe me everything!”
“They owe you nothing,” said Lorgar.
“They never did.”
And he raised his mace, Illuminarum.
The Word Bearers have called it the Apostle’s Blow ever since.
It was a single blow, straight, without rancor.
The goddess fell from the sky like a bird with broken wings and crashed into the square of Rotsgard, among the people she had always looked down upon.
She was tried by a tribunal made up of humans, demi-humans and representatives of the races she had despised.
The trial lasted three days.
Makoto testified.
When his testimony was over, the goddess finally looked him in the face.
“You’re still ugly,” she said.
“And you still don’t listen,” answered Makoto.
The sentence was carried out the next day.
* * *
Makoto went to say goodbye to Lorgar before the Legion departed.
Tomoe and Mio went with him.
Mio eyed the Primarch warily, the way you eye someone who might steal your boyfriend.
“Thank you,” said Makoto.
“I’ve wanted to do that for years. I never had the nerve.”
“You didn’t have to do it alone,” answered Lorgar.
“No one should have to face a god alone.”
“So what happens now? The people here have been praying to that goddess for centuries. They won’t know what to do.”
Lorgar smiled strangely, somewhere between sad and hopeful.
“They will learn to live without praying. It is hard. I am still learning.”
* * *
Chronicle, entry number fifty-seven.
Two reports in the same week.
In one, a Primarch who is not an angel enters Heaven and is treated like an angel.
In the other, a Primarch who once staked everything on faith brings down a goddess with a blow of his mace.
I asked Primarch Lorgar whether he didn’t find it ironic.
He answered: “Tobías, my whole life is an irony. I have learned to enjoy it.”
Then I asked him about the Sisters of Truth, the order founded by a young woman from the world of the poster heroes, the one with the vine hair.
He told me he had sent them copies of his sermon at Rotsgard.
“So that they learn,” he said.
I asked him what they were supposed to learn.
He grew thoughtful and changed the subject.
I don’t know why, but I’m noting it down.
Tomorrow, at last, something lighter: the White Scars.
I’m told Primarch Jaghatai has found a group of young people who drive cars through portals.
And that they have a restaurant.
After Hell, Heaven and a goddess put on trial, I want a hamburger.
I’m an aspiring writer with many stories still waiting to be told and a deep passion for Warhammer.
I love creating dark worlds, epic battles, and flawed characters.
I write to learn and grow.