Editing Slaugth (Hektor Heresy) (section)

===The Widowmaker===

Tired and angry at the loss of valuable equipment, but no less determined, Aenarion continued his way through the shivering wasteland. He had been walking for hours, but the next challenge was nowhere to be found. Yet the Autarch kept on plodding along until he noticed a strange bright dot in the sky. The dot soon grew in size and turned out to be one of his very own shuttles. The ship landed next to him and its door opened, revealing his trusted Farseer and five of his lieutenants he faced the Senate with one year ago. The Farseer embraced his commander, thanking Asuryan that he was alive, and urged him to come with them and leave that cursed place. When Aenarion vehemently refused his demands, the psyker revealed the reason for his coming to the Blighted Planet. 

It turned out that he had spent the night before the Autarch's descent flipping through his ancient books, trying to find any information on Khaine that could be helpful to Aenarion. But he found more than he was looking for - one of his books, truly ancient and penned by an anonymous author, claimed that Khaine was nothing more than an aspect of Khorne, the Chaos god of anger, violence and hatred. On learning that, the Farseer realised that it was his duty to find Aenarion down below and save him from making a deal with the devil. He also decided to take five of his commander's closest lieutenants with him to help him convince the Autarch. Aenarion listened very carefully to everything his friend said, and, once he had finished, drew his sword and beheaded him. One of his lieutenants soon followed the Farseer to the halls of Ereth Khial, too shocked by what he had just seen to move. The rest of them quickly realised that their commander's prolonged stay on Khaine's sacred planet must have driven him insane and attacked him, but they were no match for Aenarion. Within minutes, the Autarch's closest friends and followers who had been with him since the incident on the Slaugth border were all slain by his hand. Looking at their lifeless bodies, Aenarion just sighed and wiped the blood off his sword. Maybe Khaine was really Khorne, maybe not. The Autarch didn't care any more. He just wanted to save his race, and if by doing so he was dooming his soul, then so be it.

As soon as the last one of his lieutenants hit the dust, a colossal rift opened in the ground in front of Aenarion. Jet-black smoke and distant sounds of a furious battle came from it. Then, an enormous obsidian pedestal rose from the depths of the rift, with a black sword protruding from it. Aenarion slowly ascended the pedestal and looked at the relic he had to kill his best friends for. The blood of Eldanesh was still wet on its blade. After saying a short prayer to Khaine that the scarred officer taught him, the Autarch drew the Widowmaker for the first time in millennia. As soon as the sword left the pedestal, the landscape was shaken by an earthquake of apocalyptic proportions - the planet had lost its sole reason for existence and was finally falling apart. And as the Blighted Planet was falling to pieces, so were the last remnants of the old Aenarion.

Several hours later, the Autarch's flagship was boarded by the most strange vessel. It was a red and black Eldar spaceship of a design not seen since the War in Heavens. Instead of the usual Wraithbone, the ship seemed to be chiselled from obsidian. But the passengers were surely the strangest thing about this peculiar vessel. Instead of Eldar, it carried eighty giant warriors with skins of superheated iron and hearts of molten lava, each one of them clutching a strange wailing sword the size of a good cannon. And the captain? The strange ship was helmed by no one else than Aenarion himself. The first thing the Autarch wanted to do when he reached his command bridge was to find the scarred officer who had led him to the Blighted Planet and reward him for his help, but he was nowhere to be found. Curiously, none of the men under his command knew much, or anything, about the mysterious officer: he just appeared practically out of nowhere on the eve of Aenarion's attack on the Senate, and disappeared without a trace once the Autarch returned from the Blighted Planet.