Additional Background Section 20: The Phoenix Lords (Part Three)

[Open visual field:]

Interior, Archive of Shriven Plains.

Shelving distorting. Query: melting? Incorrect.

Chronicler returns to upload station, carrying heavy load of tomes (speculation: scrolls and vellum). Reverberating tone throughout archive.]

I have saved what I can. I fear the last armfuls of knowledge I have just pulled from the contamination is enough.

[Slows breathing]

Must remain calm. I have to impart this knowledge clearly as possible. I can’t let my pain give way to malicious bias. These threads of fate are special.

[Coughing/weeping?]

Breathe... regulate... stabilize...

Log; begin upload.

[Uploading. Visual query for storage: Is chronicler alone? System detects second life sign in chamber...]

Additional Background Section 20: The Phoenix Lords (Cont’d):

Karandras and the Fallen Phoenix.

Much of the Shadow Warrior’s history is lost to the natural stealthy and elusive nature of the Phoenix Lord himself. He moved unseen through across the battlefields and bone yards of the galaxy, ending the lives of the evil or simply the powerful. Many are the accounts of generals and whole divisions of soldiers being butchered in the midst of battles, or unexpectedly slain by shifting green shades in the depths of jungle roads.

He emerged but rarely into the light of history throughout the chronicle accounts. There are only two occasions when this was the case. The first was when he was discovered inside the central chamber of a Krork hulk, and only the concerned effort of all the ‘War of the Krork’ soldiers on board the vessel which forced the Phoenix Lord to depart, but not before recapturing the huge gemstone the Krork elders had stored in their vaults, along with an entire library of Krork datacores, that documented the accumulated knowledge the Krork had on the creatures whose names had long been lost. These entities were the so-called ‘Old Ones’; the term granted to the First Races to evolve upon planets.

The second time was through his own choice. He chose to challenge his wayward mentor for the third time in their long existence. The First time had been during the fall of the first Temple, where Arhra turned upon his brethren, and Karandras had had to turn from his master in order to drive him out. The second time was during the Age of the Mon keigh Imperium, in the temple of the Slicing Orbs of Zandros; an indecisive duel in which neither warrior could gain the upper hand. The third clash was different. Both Lords had expanded their powers greatly since their last encounter, swelled by the captured souls of their willing servants and followers until they were luminous beings barely contained by their ornate runic armour.

Arhra sent out a clear signal to his nemesis so Karandras could find him. Upon the xenos city-world of Intrazzi, a vast army of murderers and warriors had gathered, butchering the populace in evermore violent and cruel ways. This vast murder cult was billions strong, and headed by the silent Incubi, who discreetly lead the slaughter squads as they went about the business of killing everyone on the planet, be they the native aliens, or the human dignitaries and merchants who also made their home upon the vibrant trading hub on the south-west border between the Vulkan and Transgovian Imperiums. The world was located in the Rift of ‘Creed’s Command’, an artificially induced warp rift which protected the region somewhat from the Dragon’s ships at this juncture in galactic history.*

For some strange reason, the Incubi warriors had also caused the primary plasma reactors of the world city to go into meltdown. The reactor core, enhanced in its blazing power by a vial of exotic dark matter, burned down through into the mantle of the planet, until it created a titanic volcanic structure at the heart of the city, spreading a dense cloud of smog and ash across the entire world. Every day, forces from Commorragh and other pirate enclaves dragged in artefacts and strange objects, which were tossed into the molten core and there they ran fluid in the flaming heart of the planet.

Karandras made all speed to the system via the webway. But another force had beaten them to the planet. The refugees from the Necron-destroyed Transgovian Imperium had formed a mighty warfleet, supported by the allied Commanderies of the Bulls Repentant (formed from the smashed remnants of the Minotaurs, who had long ago placed an eternal penance upon themselves, for their part in the horrific Nyx Incident. Long may that event be remembered...) and the Fire Beasts, who themselves were supported by the Nocturne Legio Titanicus and the ‘Thunder Lizards’ Legion of tankers, in their powerful MkIII Blant Tanks. The Vulkan Imperium, under the emergency absolute rulership of Vulkan during the Dragon War, had promised the Transgovian remnants a place within his Imperium should they snatch back Creed’s Command from the heretics and maniacs who infested it. They had leapt at the chance with all the desperate courage of men who had nothing whatsoever to lose.

By the time Karandras reached Intrazzi, it was a vision of hell. Titans and tanks duelled with the captured defence guns of the city, and the huge dark Eldar Void Barges, that hung in low orbit as they pounded their foes with vast dark lances and void munitions that swallowed whole companies of their foes.

The human khainites were bedecked in spiked and bladed armour in crude imitation of their alien masters, and fought with psychotic glee with chainblades, lashes axes and swords of a wild variety. Kabalites fought alongside them, occasionally maiming one of their Mon Keigh allies, just to see the look of confused betrayal on their faces.

By all rights of course, the battle for the planet should have been won easily by the Vulkan-loyalists. However, the other side had Drazhar Arhra on their side. Intrazzi was infested with tainted webway portals that criss-crossed its surface with endless complexity. From these passages, the Phoenix Lord of the Incubi struck at the enemy from all sides. His demi-klaives ended lives with every blow. Tanks were immobilised and carved open by the consummate killer, before he filled the vehicles with a psychic onslaught which melted the men within into the hull itself. He fought without honour, striking foes in the back or blinding them just before a fight. His power was staggering and terrifying in equal measure, for he was being powered not only by his captured souls of fallen Incubi, but by the pain and suffering of everyone on the surface of the churning, industrial hell.

The Lord High Emperor of Transgovia was killed after a single dismissive blow of Arhra, and his elite half-ogryn bodyguards followed him minutes later. Amber lightning pierced the red and grey ash clouds over the city, and the streets literally flowed with blood and broken bones. Khornate daemons were drawn to the feast, alongside Khymerae and their beastmasters and a crazed assortment of warp-creatures we still don’t have names for. The Transgovians carried on with relentless determination, heedless of their mounting casualties. Went their banners fell or their commanders were broken, others stepped over their bodies and picked up the banners from cold dead hands.

The tide was against Arhra’s men, but he cared not for his mortal dupes. They craved a bloody end, and the Fire beasts in particular seemed all too willing to oblige. Always the most ruthless of the Commanderies, the Fire beasts broke their enemies with savage glee, ripping them apart with their hands in some cases.

And the titans walked. It was a spectacular sight according to surviving witnesses. Dozens of giants stomped across the field; Warhounds, Warlords and even their command Titan (the Imperator known as ‘Tychus Rex’) crossed the city like bespoke gods. Their scorching beams and megaton warheads scoured life from the planet in vast conflagrations of nuclear force. Defense emplacements were burned to bedrock, and millions died under their relentless bombardments. Tanks were nothing to them, and they crushed them beneath their huge heels like beetles. The Nocturne Legio had been created at the behest of Vulkan at the beginning of his Imperium. They were the battle-scarred veterans of the frontlines of hundreds of campaigns. At this time, the Legio had only just returned from a long stint on the frontlines against the Dragon, and were under-manned. Nevertheless, they were devastating on this battlefield. Karandras burst from his webway portal in silence, backed by his Exarchs. The first beings that leapt at him were Flesh hounds that rattled their frills as they sought to rip him asunder. They died within seconds and Karandras was already rushing through the bloody mist of their corpses before they had a chance to sink their claws into flesh.

He carved a path through Imperial and cultist alike, on a direct beeline towards the colossal volcano that the Titans were attempting to scale as it towered over even the tallest spires. It was topped with a dark crown of a fortress. This was where Karandras knew his foe would find him, and there was the only place where he could end it.

The sound of battle was a riotous booming that rattled the very earth. Whole blocks of alien towers toppled as the ground rippled beneath them. Karandras rode the buildings as they fell, leaping form one collapsing ruin to another with the grace and fluidity of a swooping bat. His cadre of Exarchs followed suit, claws snapping and chainblades purring hungrily.

And through all the thunderous cacophony of the swirling, endless war, there was a deeper rhythm; a great pulsing sound, just below mortal hearing. Thumping and rumbling with a regular beat...

Adderkavada, the Commander and Master of the Bulls Repentant, stood alone amidst the remnants of his battle brothers’ ruined predator hulls. His great fail flashed with lethal energies as he held off a dozen Klaivex, led by one of the High Hierarchs of the Incubi temple. The Klaives and the power blades of the flail clashed in endless complexity as their energies discharged in all directions. It was said the battle looked like a living thunderstorm, as power field lightning flashed within the billowing smoke and dust clouds whipped up by the combat. He held back the Incubi, as his men clashed with the speeding raiders that sought to outflank the Transgovians.

Adderkavada knew he was doomed but he fought on. He lost a leg, and fought on. He was cut and slashed in a dozen places, but he fought on. Some (spurious) legends claim he fought on after the Hierarch beheaded him with a scissoring flourish of his demi-klaives, and lived long enough to bisect the offending eldar before he too perished.

Kaa, the Captain of the Fire beasts, fought his way to his thunderhawk, and flew the machine personally through the chaos of the battle, directly towards the looming Volcano that sought to pierce heaven. As he flew towards the fiery summit, he was intercepted by a great beast that soared on terrible pinions. The Captain felt heavy hooves crashed against the roof of his flyer, followed by the hideous shriek of metal being torn away by a great burning axe head. The roof was torn away, and the leering daemon plunged into the hold. The Fire Beast Chapter watched from afar as the aerial drama unfolded. A bloodthirster of Khorne, drawn to Intrazzi by the waves of hate and anger radiating out into the warp, had leapt upon the thunderhawk, to prevent any interruption of the ritual within. (At this point, it would be foolish not to acknowledge the overlap between Khaine and Khorne, though so many eldar have long tried to deny it.)

Kaa’s command squad, who flew with him, took up their weapons, and prepared to face the embodiment of rage with their own form of bestial wrath. They looked up through the torn roof, and they climbed out to clash with the hulking daemon that stood upon the wings of the Astartes flier defiantly.

Karandras reached the summit first. The temple-fortress was guarded in all approaches by the Incubi; the Aspect killers. The hate for the fallen ones was incandescent amongst the Striking Scorpions, and they fought like men possessed (and, I suppose, they were precisely that in a way...).

The temple, which was filled with winding, complex gantries that crossed between vast reservoirs and rivers of siphoned magma, became an arena for a hundred separate duels and battles; some where Incubi and Scorpion were evenly matched, others where several Incubi fought one Scorpion, and vice versa. The hellishly hot chambers resounded with the sounds of blade upon blade, and the exultant howling of Incubi, or the wet gurgles of slain ones. Karandras moved through them like oil. Most of those he killed didn’t raise a blade against him, for they didn’t realise he had even struck them until he passed them by, and they collapsed into a dozen pieces. These fights were afterthoughts to the Phoenix Lord; only reaching the inner sanctum of this abomination mattered.

What he found was horrific.

The inner chamber was a mesh of bridges that spanned a half-kilometre caldera that fumed with molten rock dredged up from the bowels of the earth, held in place only by a forcefield. The bridges were built of bone and the old metal of the once proud city, fused by a lattice of ugly veins that pumped ichors throughout the unnatural forest of gantries. Upon the bridges, gangs of slaves struggled to carry hundreds upon hundreds of statues of dark metal. Once they reached the desired location, their masters would butcher them, and cast them and the statues into the fire, their screams nectar to the bladed fiends that cackled with glee. The walls were lined with skins; the living skins of the previous occupants of this world. The purple hides of the creatures undulated and gurgled with disgusting, impossible life. The living tapestries were branded and cut by the Dark Eldar, who revelled in the depravity of the desecration. The descending crater of the volcano was a forest of jutting rocks and serrated fangs. It was like no volcanic structure every known. It was more like some fetid womb of a daemon spawn

But this was not the worst sin Karandras witnessed.

The Hierarchs stood at the edge of the blazing spectacle, and they opened their soultraps, unleashing all the aspect warrior souls ensnared by them over the millennia. These mournful ghosts surged into the molten horror below. At the heart of the volcanic structure, the thunderous rhythm was impossibly loud yet inaudible to those who had no connection to Him.

To Khaine.

Karandras threw himself wordlessly into combat. He cut down everyone he could find, be they slave or Incubi, Kabalite or Corsair. He only paused when Arhra finally showed himself.

Arhra had fallen far in the years since his original creation. His ornate armor glowed with a dark light in the spaces between plates. A complex headdress of interlinking horns adorned his narrow war mask, which looked almost gaunt in the flickering light of the lava-fire. His Demi-Klaives were gripped like mantis claws in his gauntlets. Mantis faced down Scorpion across the expanse.

Drazhar Arhra, famous for never uttering a single word, raised his hand and took over the mind of a lesser eldar, who sudden writhed in terror as his vocal chords were manipulated by the silent menace

“You came,” Arhra forced him to state in a voice so deep and unnaturally resonant, it easily carried across the vast distance between them.

“I did. What is rising here shall not. It is a twisted shade of a God long gone.”

“Nay, He shall be born anew; a god raised from the ruins. You should be proud, for he is reborn as a Phoenix should; from the ashes.”

Karandras shook his head. “The thing that resides here is not Khaine. It is a fractured, mad thing. A thing born into madness and destruction without focus or control. The Master of death saw this upon Altansar. I saw it within the datacores of the Krork,” the Phoenix Lord explained coldly, his voice a silken whisper compared to Arhra’s.

“And that is not Khaine? You cast me out, so long ago, when I was Khaine’s most loyal follower. Your Aspect temples are tainted by Asuryan and his nobility. Do you so readily forget the name Kaela Mensha Khaine? The bloody handed god! The kin-slayer, whose most famous act was the slaying of an eldar hero! I do him homage!”

“You follow the Aspect of the Murderer. The eldar must be more than this. This cannot come to pass.”

Arhra’s response hasn’t been recorded, but the two beings soon clashed, on the overlapping bridges that loomed over the volcano’s mouth. Karandras’ maniblaster was utterly harmless to his foe, pattering against his armored skin like drizzle. His shuriken pistol likewise had little effect. The battle came down to blades and claws.

The chainsword, the snapping claw and the slicing Klaive blades. They exchanged a wild flurry of blows, and each flourish of swirling arcing patterns was ever more complex. Those blows that missed carved through bridge after bridge, sending the ruins clattering into the lake of fire. They leapt like acrobats between the remaining bridge spars and mangled remains of railings, crackling energy fields rebounding with concussive repetition.

For all Karandras’ skill and subtly, he could not overcome the terrible power of Arhra. He realised then, as he was battered from pillar to pillar, from bridge to bridge by his former master, that he could not hope to best the dark father alone.

The thunderhawk, meanwhile, plummeted to the ground in a shower of flames and debris. The impact threw the Bloodthirster across the sloping ash plain, but also crippled many of the command squad. Only the Captain managed to haul himself to his feet. His left arm was torn away, but his right still clutched a storm bolter, which he fired relentlessly at the towering red fiend. The damson howled in pain as the bolts struck, but it didn’t even stagger the creature. With a hideous roar, it prepared to charge.

Then a deeper, louder roar drowned its own out. The Bloodthirster turned, only to be suddenly struck by the descending foot bastion of the Tychus Rex. It blared another discordant bellow from its war horn as it held the daemon pinned, while its bastion gunners fired everything they had at the struggling monster.

From the unnamed captain’s report, he watched as the Tychus Rex began to scale the volcano itself, one bone shuddering footstep at a time, volcano cannon blazing, while missiles streamed from its shoulder bastions, and its vast combat weapon roared with a deafening voice. Its armour was rent and torn by constant Ravager assaults, but it remained unbowed.

The engine marched.

The duel of the Phoenix Lords was interrupted by events that occurred in the volcano below. The molten abomination beneath them began to rise. The first thing to emerge was a titanic claw, wreathed in blood and smoke. But it was not Khaine. The churning nightmare was metal and fire and covered in screaming, angry faces, but it could not settle upon a form as it rose from the summit at speed. All the bridges were dashed into atoms as the metal flood erupted from the mountain.

A swirling column of silver punched its way skywards, till it appeared to be a mighty steel tornado.

The Princeps of the Tychus Rex was the only one to see the entirety of the abomination form the chin of his titan. It quivering hands he raised his vox pack to his lips, and signalled to the Fire Beast Captain to signal a full retreat. He ordered the Astartes to get as many people off the planet and away from there as possible.

“This is Tychus Rex. Wideband signal to all Engines and supporting units in area; fall back. The target cannot be fought.”

“Then what are you going to do?” the captain responded on his vox.

“Us? We’re going to fight it! All weapons load for bear!” was the last known transmission of the Tychus Rex. It was claimed the Princeps was driven mad by the creature, or possibly his Titan’s machine spirit had invaded his own mind. However, I believe he decided to fight in order to save his Legio and his allies from the thing which was Khaine

The forces of the Imperiums did retreat, as too did the eldar forces, in the wake of the thing they had given life to. The records of the Emperor Titan’s final battle are sketchy. The mountain was wreathed in smoke and fire, and it constantly blossomed with colours of a million different hues. This continued for well over an hour, before a great blazing sword was seen carving through the cloud, and all signals from the Titan went dead.

[Warning! Runic defenses are down! Incursion imminent! Sentinels are being summoned!]

Little human! So limited by his frailties of knowledge. I know of the battle. I tasted the battle! The Titan dueled a God that day! A true god, in all its terrible majesty. I saw the whirring teeth of a blade larger than a castle’s turret, lock with the screaming blade of a caged devil. The giant of molten hate stepped from the torrent unblemished by heat. Its words were a stream of hellish language that scorched the hull of the Rex.

I felt its crew massacring one another in its bowels, like maggots turned feral in desperate hunger. I saw its weapons fire with the blinding light of suns, boring holes through a god incarnate. It pressed ahead against the God of all War like a wrestler in a hopelessly outmatched gladiatorial contest. The fierce animal heart of the titan struggled to burst free of its artificial moorings; to rip the god-Bloody Handed apart with its non-existent fangs

Karandras and Arhra went missing, though it is obvious they survived the encounter. Fool on a throne of ignorant knowledge. Shields himself in knowing, but he fears to look into the Architect’s face; the great Schemer, who sees all and knows all. I alone can see the turn of the fates. I saw what no mortal being saw, on that field of bones and pain.

As the God of war broke the back of the God-Machine, the Phoenix Lords took to the skies. They climbed the two burning combatants. They clashed between the vast battlements of the Titan. They even braved the apocalyptic flesh of Khaine as they climbed. Karandras’ armour was torn and fuming with leaking energies. The Dark Father burned with his dark light. His blades screamed as they severed the air itself in their haste to kill.

Every clash of blades was a detonation of such monumental force it floored both combatants. The Scorpion, in his desperation, struck the fallen a mighty blow with his boot, sending the Fallen crashing through the eyes of the god-machine and into its mind. He followed suit, but the Fallen was the faster. His blades turned aside Karandras’, and dealt him a dozen mortal blows, that would have slain anything that lived. But Karandras had not been alive, truly, for millennia. But his armor clattered to the ground, dust pumping form the grievous wounds.

As a reflex of his terrible nature, Arhra reached out and destroyed the Titan crew, sweeping his blades about himself with such speed they died before they could even scream.

But he could not finish Karandras. As he advanced upon him, he felt the strings of fate that linked all the Lords of the Phoenix. He felt all his brothers and sisters turn their psychic gazes towards him. The weight of prophecy loomed large, and the flames of the psychic backlash made the Dark father afraid. This was not the time; the Rhana Dhandra was not risen, and the Last Good Man had not silenced the ever-bitter son. Mon Keigh had not trod the silver skin of a God, and the Gate did not beckon. The warp fluctuated, and Arhra recoiled. He saw a Phoenix; titanic and incandescent, screeching for his defeat. This was not how he was to die either. In desperation, he called out to whatever god would listen to his plea. Khaine was deaf to his pleas, for the thing which rose was not Khaine. He knew that now.

In that instant of savage realization, time and the warp folded into one; a perfect moment of timeless horror. Arhra was alone. He realised that now. For so long, he had been called the champion of chaos and he had rejected that path. He had called himself the last true Khainite; the perfect killer, and nothing else. But he was more than a Drazhar; more than a Master of Blades. He had a greater destiny. The Farseers had been right, in a fashion. He did burn with the Dark Light of Chaos. But he was no pawn.

He was the gatekeeper to the Well of Eternity. He was the point of calm at the heart of the pattern.

In that moment, reality convulsed again, and some mighty force ripped him from reality, saving him from the Revenant entity conjured by the Phoenix Lords.

He was taken to-

[Runic defenses re-initialized.]

Of the liquid metal entity which beheaded Intrazzi’s artificial mountain, not a great deal is known.

What is known is that the vast warship the Commorrites were rebuilding, the Wailing Doom, vanished a few months later with no explanation.

• Note: This section has numerous references to the Dragon War. This was a recent cataclysmic conflict, following Ahriman’s weakening of the Void Dragon’s prison. Upon being freed of his prison, the Dragon instantly sent ships to every corner of the galaxy. Within five minutes, he had begun to lay siege to the capital worlds of almost five thousand Empires and Imperiums, including Seraph Nox, Armageddon, the Licentious Bastille, Macragge, Cadia, Terra Nova, the besieged inner-Sept worlds of T’au, the Octavarian Krork Holds and many more, whilst simultaneously activating many of his dormant Dragon cultists and Tomb Worlds across the galaxy. For reference, subsequent chapters will obviously make extensive reference to this continuing event, which happened concurrently to the other major events that shaped the destiny of all at this time. I do not wish to recall these times, but I must. I must tell you everything. It is imperative you know the face of the foe of Life, and learn its ways. How else can we win? How else can we-

Wait, what is that?

[Image feed initializing. Attempting to identify anomalous visual readings. ‘Melting’ effect more pronounced. Query: humanoid? Query: Query? Multi-limb form approaches. No recognition. Files not on record. Chronicler backs away from distortion, which unfurls many limbs/appendages/phenomena.]

No! No! Draziin-maton! Back!

[Weapon Discharge. No noticeable effect.]

[Record degrading. Emergency! Emergency!]

[Visual feed corruption. Serpents loose on archive floor! Temperature reaching maximum levels! Multiple contacts- Zero contacts. Lowest temperature. Absolute zero! Incorrect! Entity advances. It wants to be born. It wants to exisssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss####ERROR-ERROR-ERROR...]

[D-cannon discharge. Second beam engages target. Third beam engages target. Entity (unknown-classify: ‘Draziin-Maton) is destroyed. Volume reaching 100000 Decibels. ALERT!]

[Entity: query. Chamber is clear. No unauthorized entity detected. Only Chronicler and two new arrivals, designated subject 1=Krork Soldier-bred Gorverial, and subject 2=Brother Captain Tolrego.]

[Chronicler talks with two figures for a few moments, before they depart.]

I...

I... pause and run diagnostic through the chronicles’ systems.

[Running Diagnostic.]

[Chronicle Paused.]