Chronicle, entry number sixty-seven.
It wasn’t a joke.
There exists a universe—twelve universes, in fact—ruled by a child.
A small child, with a round head and enormous eyes, who can erase anything from existence with a gesture.
They call him Zeno-sama, the King of All.
He gets bored easily.
And when he gets bored, he organizes tournaments.
The universe that loses gets erased.
Just like that.
The Primarch Guilliman read the report aloud on the bridge of his ship.
Then he read it again.
Then he said, very slowly: “I’m going to need my father for this.”
I.
A Tournament for Children
The arena of the Tournament of Power floated in the Null Realm, a place with neither sky nor ground, white as far as the eye could see.
It was an immense platform of polished stone, ringed by the stands where the gods of the twelve universes waited their turn to live or die.
Eighty warriors, ten from each of the eight participating universes, faced off upon it.
The last one left standing would save their universe.
The rest would be erased.
Above the arena, in a golden box, two identical children watched the battle while eating candy: the two Zenos.
Behind them, standing with his hands clasped behind his back and a polite smile, was the Grand Priest, Daishinkan, the most powerful being in that multiverse after Zeno himself.
The battle had been going on for twenty minutes when, in a corner of the arena, a blue portal snapped open.
Out of it marched two hundred Ultramarines in blue-and-gold armor.
At their head strode Marneus Calgar, Captain of the Second Company, a square-jawed giant with a brow of stone.
And behind them came Roboute Guilliman.
The Tournament of Power ground to a halt.
Goku, who was in the middle of trading punches with a warrior from Universe 11, froze with his fist in the air.
“Hey, Vegeta,” he said.
“Did you know more contestants were coming?”
“Shut up, Kakarot.”
“But they look strong…”
“I said shut up!”
II.
Can Robute Play Too?
Guilliman walked to the center of the arena.
No one stopped him.
The warriors of the eight universes stepped aside on instinct, the way people step out of the path of a train.
He raised his eyes to the golden box.
“I am Roboute Guilliman, Primarch of the XIII Legion and Lord of Ultramar,” he said in a clear voice.
“I have come to stop this tournament.”
Silence fell over the entire Null Realm.
The two Zenos looked at him with their enormous round eyes.
They blinked at the same time.
Then one of them turned to Daishinkan.
“Who’s that?”
“I do not know, Zeno-sama,” the Grand Priest replied, for the first time in his existence without an answer ready.
“He does not belong to any of our universes.”
The two Zenos looked at Guilliman again.
Then they looked at each other.
Then they smiled.
“Can Robute play too?” they asked in unison.
“It’s pronounced Roboute,” Guilliman corrected.
“Robute! Robute can play!”
Guilliman pinched the bridge of his nose.
“I have not come to play.”
“Everybody comes to play!” the Zenos said, delighted.
“Whoever loses, we erase!”
* * *
Caulifla, a Saiyan from Universe 6 with spiky hair and zero patience, was the first to try to throw him out of the arena.
She transformed into Super Saiyan 2, flew at him with a roar and punched him square in the face with everything she had.
Nothing happened.
Guilliman didn’t so much as blink.
Caulifla stood staring at her own fist, which hurt as if she had just punched a mountain.
“Uh…” she said.
“Kale? You seeing this?”
“Y-yes, sis,” Kale answered from behind her, trembling.
Guilliman looked down at her.
“You have good technique,” he said.
“But poor aim when it comes to choosing your enemies.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That I am not the enemy.” He pointed at the golden box.
“He is.”
III.
Total War
The gods of destruction did not agree.
Belmod, the god of Universe 11, a tall, thin being dressed like an aristocratic clown, rose from his seat in the stands.
“Such insolence,” he said.
“A mortal defying Zeno-sama. Allow me to handle this.”
And he hurled a sphere of destruction at the Ultramarines.
Marneus Calgar saw it coming.
“Shields!”
Two hundred storm shields rose as one.
The sphere slammed into them, exploded and came apart in sparks.
The Ultramarines did not give a single step.
“What…” Belmod began.
“Venerable Brother Vertus!” Calgar shouted.
“Answer him!”
A Contemptor Dreadnought emerged from the blue portal, its war sarcophagus adorned with golden laurels.
It raised its assault cannon and opened fire on the stands.
The gods of destruction scattered like pigeons.
And so the war began.
* * *
The Tournament of Power became a battlefield.
Some warriors from the other universes threw themselves at the Ultramarines.
Others, having heard Guilliman’s words, joined them.
Most stayed stuck in the middle, not knowing what to do, firing energy attacks in every direction.
Ribrianne, the magical warrior of love from Universe 2, transformed into her most powerful form—a gigantic pink illusion full of hearts—and fired a beam of pure love at the Ultramarines.
“Ribrianne Love Beam!”
The beam struck Brother Vertus.
The Dreadnought stood still for a moment.
Then, slowly, it turned its sarcophagus toward her.
“That attack,” it said in its thunderous voice, “was… pleasant.”
Ribrianne blushed.
“R-really?”
“Affirmative.” Vertus raised his power fist.
“Regrettably, we are at war.”
He knocked her out of the arena with a backhand.
Gently.
For a Dreadnought.
* * *
Meanwhile, in a corner of the arena, Goku and Vegeta watched the battle without stepping in.
“We should help somebody,” Goku said.
“Who?” Vegeta growled.
“The ones who want to erase our universe, or the ones who want to save it by beating everyone up?”
“The second ones, I guess.”
“Then we wait. I want to see how far that man goes.”
“You? Waiting?”
“Shut up, Kakarot.”
IV.
The Emperor
The battle was at its most critical point when the Null Realm went dark.
It was no ordinary darkness.
It was as if someone had switched off the light of the entire universe all at once.
The warriors stopped fighting.
The gods stopped throwing spheres of destruction.
Even the two Zenos stopped eating candy.
Then came the light.
Golden.
Immense.
Warm and terrible at the same time.
The Emperor of Mankind appeared in the center of the arena, on foot, without escort, his golden armor reflecting a light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.
The Ultramarines dropped to their knees.
Guilliman bowed his head.
And then—this was the thing no one in that multiverse would ever forget—the warriors of the eight universes dropped to their knees as well.
Not because anyone ordered them to.
Because their bodies decided it on their own.
Goku stayed on his knees, mouth hanging open.
“Vegeta… what is that?”
Vegeta, also on his knees, was clenching his fists so hard they shook.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“But it’s the first time in my life I don’t want to fight something.”
* * *
The Emperor raised his eyes to the golden box.
The two Zenos were watching him wide-eyed.
Not with fear; the Zenos did not know what fear was.
With curiosity.
Like children seeing a real grown-up for the first time.
“Who are you?” they asked.
“Someone who has many sons,” said the Emperor.
“And who knows what happens when children are allowed to play with dangerous things.”
“We’re not children. We’re the King of All.”
“I know.” The Emperor took a step toward the box.
“And that is why I am here. Existence cannot be left in the hands of children who get bored.”
Belmod, the god of destruction of Universe 11, was the only one stupid enough to get in the way.
“Blasphemer! No one speaks to Zeno-sama like that! I’ll personally—!”
The Emperor looked at him.
That was all.
He looked at him.
And Belmod ceased to exist.
There was no explosion, no scream, no flash.
Simply, one instant he was there, and the next there was a hole in the air shaped like an aristocratic clown.
The silence that followed was the deepest the Null Realm had ever known.
* * *
Champa, the god of destruction of Universe 6, a fat, cat-shaped being who was forever bickering with his brother, was the first to react.
He got up from his seat, came down into the arena trembling and knelt before the Emperor.
“I-I surrender,” he said.
“I surrender. Whatever you want. Don’t erase me. I have… I have a very important food collection.”
His brother, Beerus, the god of Universe 7, looked down on him from the stands with contempt.
Then, after thinking it over for a moment, he came down too and knelt beside him.
“For the record, I’m kneeling for strategic reasons,” he whispered.
“Sure, brother. Sure.”
One by one, the gods of destruction of the twelve universes came down.
One by one, they knelt.
Only the Grand Priest remained.
Daishinkan descended from the box with the same calm as ever.
He stopped in front of the Emperor.
He studied him for a long moment through narrowed eyes.
“I have served Zeno-sama for longer than I can remember,” he said.
“I have watched universes be born and die. I had never seen anyone like you.”
“Nor will you again,” the Emperor replied.
Daishinkan smiled.
“Then I suppose the most sensible course is to serve you.”
And he bowed.
V.
Two Children and a Grown-up
The two Zenos were not erased.
The Emperor did not erase children.
He visited them in their palace the following morning.
No one else was present.
No one knows what he told them.
But when he came out, the two Zenos were following him a few steps behind, in silence, like two children who have just received the first scolding of their lives and still aren’t sure whether they liked it.
“Are you coming back?” one asked.
“Sometimes,” said the Emperor.
“And will you play with us?”
The Emperor stopped.
For a moment, it looked as though he was going to say no.
“Chess,” he said at last.
“Only chess.”
The Zenos looked at each other.
Then they smiled.
* * *
The Tournament of Power was canceled.
The eight universes threatened with destruction were saved.
Daishinkan was appointed Imperial Administrator of the multiverse, charged with reporting to Terra every cycle.
That night, Goku and Vegeta sat on the edge of the empty arena, gazing out at the white void.
“Hey, Vegeta,” Goku said.
“Do you think this is the end? That there won’t be any more tournaments, or fights, or strong enemies?”
Vegeta took a long time to answer.
“No,” he said at last.
“But it’s the one we deserve.”
Goku grew thoughtful.
Then his face lit up.
“Hey, you think the golden guy would want to fight me someday?”
Vegeta got up and left without a word.
Chronicle, entry number sixty-eight.
The Ultramarines’ official report on the Tournament of Power runs to forty-two pages.
The conclusion is a single sentence, written by the Primarch Guilliman himself: “The Tournament had no winner. It had a conqueror.” I asked him whether it was too dramatic.
He said yes.
That he had written it precisely for me.
VI.
Hell on Earth
While the Emperor was playing chess with omnipotent children, the Lion had entered a world that for centuries had been the playground of something far worse.
The Earth of that universe had fallen into the hands of Hell.
Not the friendly Hell of Charlie Morningstar, with rehab hotels and TV shows.
The other one.
The real one.
Demons of flesh and fire, portals torn open on every continent, cities turned into slaughterhouses, red skies.
The blame lay with a corporation called the UAC, which had decided that opening a portal to Hell to get cheap energy was an excellent idea.
Lion El’Jonson, Primarch of the I Legion, contemplated the planet from the bridge of his ship with a frown.
“This,” he said, “is what happens when you leave science in the hands of accountants.”
Beside him, Captain Luther consulted the augurs.
“My lord, there’s something else. An energy signature in orbit. A space station. And inside…” Luther frowned.
“The augurs don’t know how to classify it. They say it’s a single man. But the demons keep away from him.”
“They flee, my lord. They flee from him.”
VII.
The Slayer
The space station was called the Fortress of Doom.
It hung in orbit above Earth, dark, silent, covered in claw marks.
When the Lion docked with it alongside a squad of Deathwing, he found it full of demon corpses.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
Stacked in the corridors like firewood.
And, at the end of the last corridor, seated on a stone throne before a wall full of weapons, was a man in green armor.
He didn’t move when they entered.
He didn’t speak.
He had his helmet on.
He had a double-barreled shotgun resting on his knee.
He had the air of someone who had been waiting a long time for something worth the trouble.
The Lion stopped a few meters from him.
They looked at each other.
They said nothing.
A full minute passed.
The Deathwing behind their Primarch began to get twitchy.
Luther cleared his throat.
The Doom Slayer nodded once.
The Lion nodded once.
And that was that.
The alliance was sealed.
“My lord,” Luther whispered.
“What just happened?”
“We understood each other,” said the Lion.
“Neither of you said anything.”
“Exactly.”
VIII.
The Icon of Sin
The campaign was the fastest and most brutal of the crusade.
The I Legion and the Doom Slayer swept Earth clean of demons continent by continent.
The Slayer always went in front, alone, with his shotgun and his blade, carving a path through hordes that would have stopped an army.
The Lion came behind with the entire Legion, cleaning up whatever was left.
The Mechanicus took Mars and the UAC facilities in a three-day operation.
The Tech-priests were horrified to discover that the corporation had built an artificial intelligence called VEGA to run its facilities.
“Potential heresy detected,” announced the Magos in charge.
“I am an AI designed to help,” VEGA replied calmly.
“Heresy confirmed.”
“I understand,” said VEGA.
“Is there anything I can help you with first?”
The Magos hesitated.
He had never encountered such a polite heresy.
He noted it in his report with three question marks.
* * *
The Astra Militarum secured Paris.
An Imperial tower rose over the ruins of the Vatican, a reminder that humanity had come home.
And, in the end, only the Icon of Sin remained: a titanic demon the size of a mountain, the lord of all that universe’s Hell, which had risen in the middle of what had once been Europe.
The Lion and the Slayer faced it together.
They didn’t speak during the battle.
There was no need.
The Lion attacked from the left; the Slayer from the right.
When one went down, the other covered him.
When the Icon of Sin roared and raised its claws over the Primarch, the Slayer leapt onto its arm and drove his blade into the joint.
When the Icon turned to crush the Slayer, the Lion hamstrung it behind the knee.
The demon fell.
The earth shook.
The Slayer climbed onto its head, walked up to its forehead and buried his blade in its skull up to the hilt.
The Icon of Sin died.
The Slayer climbed down from the mountain of flesh, stopped in front of the Lion and held out his hand.
The Lion shook it.
IX.
The Eleventh Son
A week later, the Emperor arrived on that universe’s Earth.
He had come from the Null Realm, where he had left two omnipotent children learning to play chess.
He walked through the ruins of Paris with the Lion at his side.
And at the end of his tour, at the top of the tower over the Vatican, the Doom Slayer was waiting for him.
“I have seen what you have done,” said the Emperor.
“You have fought Hell for eons. Alone. Without rest. Without asking for anything in return.”
The Slayer did not answer.
“In my Imperium there is a gap,” the Emperor continued.
“An empty place where a Legion should be. The XI. No one remembers why it is empty. I do. And I believe the time has come to fill it.”
The Slayer still did not answer.
But he tilted his head.
“I name you Primarch of the XI Legion,” said the Emperor.
“Your warriors will hunt demons on every world of the Webway.
Your Legion shall be called…” he paused briefly, “…the Eternal Penitents.”
There was a silence.
Then the Doom Slayer held out his hand.
A Mechanicus servitor carrying the official scroll of appointment handed it to him with trembling hands.
The Slayer read the scroll.
He produced a lump of charcoal from somewhere in his armor.
He struck out The Eternal Penitents with a single firm line.
And beneath it he wrote, in crooked capital letters:
THE HELL’S EXECUTIONERS.
He handed the scroll back to the servitor.
The Lion held his breath.
Luther covered his face with his hand.
The Deathwing exchanged glances, waiting for the apocalypse.
The Emperor read the scroll.
He was silent for a moment.
“I like it better,” he said.
* * *
The Lion walked over to the Slayer.
He laid a hand on his shoulder.
“Welcome, brother.”
The Slayer nodded.
It was the longest conversation they would ever have.
Chronicle, entry number sixty-nine.
The XI Legion now has its name, its Primarch and its symbol: a horned skull over a broken helmet.
Its battle cry is “Let Hell burn!” Its fortress is Phobos, the moon of Mars, where it all began.
Its recruits must survive an entire year in what remains of Hell before they are admitted.
I have not been invited to witness the trial.
I have not insisted.
I asked the Lion what the Slayer had said during the entire campaign.
He answered: “Nothing.” I asked him whether that didn’t bother him.
He told me: “Tobías, I have spent ten thousand years surrounded by brothers who never shut up. At last I have one who understands me.”
The Primarch Fulgrim has written me a four-page letter asking me to accompany him to his next destination.
He says he has found “a world ruled by a skeleton with atrocious taste in interior decoration.” He tells me to bring elegant clothes.
I don’t own elegant clothes.
He tells me he assumed as much.
I’m an aspiring writer with countless stories yet to tell and a lifelong passion for Warhammer.
I love bringing dark worlds, epic battles, and beautifully flawed characters to life.
I write to learn, grow, and become a better storyteller.