At the Stoll System’s Mandeville Point, a vast fleet slowly emerged from the Warp, psychic tides washing against the sleek hulls and carrying them to their predetermined destination.
This was a vanguard fleet, not the main armada, yet because of the identities of those aboard, it was extraordinary in its own right.
The fleet was forged from Adamantine and black steel, and in the dark cosmos, its gleaming gold stood out like scattered fragments of a setting sun.
“I sense a familiar presence.” Within the flagship’s command chamber, among numerous giants clad in resplendent golden armor, a middle-aged man stood at the center.
He wore a simple linen robe and a circlet of golden leaves.
His hair was black, his eyes brown, his expression calm.
“The Eleventh?” Beside the man, half a step behind him, a stooped, silver-haired elder whose face was hidden within a hood leaned on a scepter and asked in a rasping voice.
The man said nothing, merely nodding faintly.
His gaze was fixed unblinkingly in the direction of Stoll Star, flecks of starlight flickering in his eyes.
“There is something…” He spoke slowly, his brow furrowing.
“…something wrong.” He did not attempt a direct psychic teleportation.
The Warp above Stoll Star was too chaotic, making a reckless transit unwise.
“Speed up the fleet.” The Emperor spoke.
Something was wrong with his Eleventh.
He left the second half of that thought unspoken.
Malcador glanced at the Emperor and remained silent.
Above Stoll Star, the setting sun was like blood.
Ash raised by the explosions veiled everything in a trembling haze.
Corpses lay strewn across the fields, covered in ash, toppled amid the ruins like shattered statues.
Get up…
he needed to get up.
Clatter.
Bricks and tiles were pushed aside as a dust-covered giant climbed out of the debris.
Blood poured from his temple in a steady stream, as if it would never stop.
Zelo walked among the corpses of countless slavers and soldiers.
The impact of the two captured Greater Daemon souls bound into his warhorse, together with the chain detonation of dozens of Sorcerers’ souls, had been enough to unleash a devastating explosion capable of tearing everything apart.
The souls closest to the center of the explosion had been ripped apart directly by the psychic blast, leaving not even a trace.
Those farther away were obliterated by the shockwave.
Farther still, the soul resonance stirred up by the explosion could shake souls apart and scatter them into the Warp.
But it was far from enough.
Zelo knew that all too well.
If he, at the center of the blast, could survive by forcing up a soul shield, then Grandfather Syllax could survive as well.
This slaver’s psychic ability surpassed Zelo’s own.
Clutching his two swords, he limped along, letting instinct guide his steps.
He passed through broken walls and endless bodies until he finally reached the heart of the Cindercorpse Palace.
There, a single room stood starkly out of place.
Even after a year as Syllax’s slave, Zelo had never seen Syllax’s true face.
No one on this planet had ever laid eyes upon Syllax.
Syllax favored white veils as walls, blocking any gaze that sought to glimpse its true form, and chose eyeless attendants to serve it.
“You have come at last, my masterpiece.” From behind the white veil came a voice, muffled and indistinct, as though a thousand people were speaking at once.
Zelo merely shook his head.
He flicked his swords and settled into a stance.
“I have come to end your reign, and the suffering you have wrought.” Zelo’s voice was hoarse.
He did not wish to speak, but Grandfather Syllax’s psychic power was exceedingly strange.
He needed to buy some time, to discern the flow of Grandfather Syllax’s psychic energy and restore his own.
His pale blue eyes darted rapidly as he shifted his perception into the Immaterium.
Zelo saw a psychic fountain rising from the ground, twisting and writhing, dark psychic energy shrieking behind the white veil.
Zelo had expected that, but as his vision sharpened, his throat suddenly tightened.
“You see it, don’t you?” A withered, deathly pale hand marked by signs of abuse stretched out from behind the white curtain.
It was covered in scars and looked like a man’s hand.
Then came a second, equally pale, equally scarred, but a woman’s hand.
After that came a third, a fourth, a fifth…
hundreds of arms reached out, pulling the curtain apart.
Grandfather Syllax “walked” out, and Zelo finally beheld the full truth of Grandfather Syllax.
It was…
it was…
It was a monster formed from the corpses of the suffering, its overall shape like the bloated queen of a termite colony.
Countless swollen, pallid, twisted humans were fused onto Grandfather Syllax, forming its body.
The eyelids of the people “trapped” on its body seemed to have melted shut, so they could not force their eyes open.
Flesh fused with flesh, one person blending into the next beneath a layer of pale, slippery skin.
At the far end of this skin-covered mass of flesh, a tall, ancient human upper body emerged from the amalgam.
It supported itself on its elbows, black tears streaming endlessly.
It was as vast as a small building, its movements sluggish.
“What are you, truly?
You trap humans on your body, tormenting them for eternity?” Zelo swallowed hard.
The twin swords in his hands began to glow with the radiance of psychic power.
Within the Immaterium, with Zelo’s soul at the center, a sudden storm of psychic energy arose and surged toward him.
“No.
Quite the opposite.” Grandfather Syllax, along with the thousands upon thousands of people on its body, spoke as one.
“I am them.
I am suffering itself.
Perhaps you still remember me.
Remember us.” The mass of flesh seemed to boil.
Faces surfaced, only to be swallowed back into the flesh, until the faces Zelo remembered emerged.
“…” Zelo’s pupils trembled.
He saw Osborne, the man who had once knelt before him, weeping, clutching Zelo’s arms and begging Zelo to save him before he was taken away to be torn apart as punishment.
“Zelo, Zelo.” That face, filled with pain, its eyes tightly shut, cried out.
Then came Jasper, a handsome young man who had once been one of Zelo’s earliest comrades.
During a guerrilla retreat, he had stayed behind to cover the rear and was captured by the enemy.
“Save me, Zelo!” The young man wailed.
Then came Baldwin, Drake, Burns…
an endless procession of people, an endless chorus of cries.
They were all calling out to Zelo.
“Is this your purpose?
To break my resolve?” The hand gripping Zelo’s sword did not tremble in the slightest.
On the contrary, within the Immaterium, the radiance flashing from his soul grew even brighter, a jet-black sheen flickering across it.
Grandfather Syllax merely smiled.
Look at what it had summoned.
It thought it had succeeded.
The Zelo before it was the divine envoy sent by its god.
All the suffering and sacrifice had been worthwhile.
It only needed a single moment of enlightenment, a single revelation, to guide the divine envoy onto the path.
Then it could go to the Garden of Bliss, a paradise forever free of pain.
And so, as Zelo charged toward it with the twin swords, Grandfather Syllax offered no resistance.
It simply spread all its arms.
Those tormented people called out to Zelo, all of them reaching toward Zelo, yearning for an embrace.
The twin swords in Zelo’s hands answered them.