They were the Shield of Humanity, the Hammer that struck down the greatest and most terrible foes of Mankind. Their mandate came from Malcador the Hero himself, and in their bodies were geneseed crafted from the genome of the Emperor of Mankind himself.

  He was Rhamiel of the 2nd Brotherhood, and he had failed. That was the one thought running through his head as he saw that potent psychic bde plunge into his chest and cut through his Aegis pattern Power Armour with concerning ease.

  He knew he was dead. Biomancy was not one of his strong suits, and the choir was in no state to augment that deficiency of his at the moment. As the give was torn out of his chest, he faintly recognised the medicae alert bring in his ears, telling him how both of his hearts had been torn apart.

  He tried to move, to give one st spiteful blow, to feed what remained of his strength to the choir so his Brothers may succeed where he had failed. He couldn’t. A terrible lethargy struck him, robbed him of his energy as he colpsed on his knees, then smmed face-first into the floor pte.

  Strangely enough, as his mind started fading and his soul detaching from his body with death’s approach, he remembered that beautiful scenery that sometimes crept up on his dreams. He had always assumed it had to be some tiny fragment of who he had been before getting inducted into the 666th Chapter.

  A high cliff overlooking turquoise waves crashing against marble-white rocks far below. It always filled him with such terrible nostalgia and a sense of loss that he tried not to think about it. Now, he indulged just a little.

  Whoever he had been before he was Rhamiel died the day he was selected to become a Grey Knight. True Names had power, so what better way to safeguard against that vector of attack than if even you didn’t know your own True Name? Humans were weak, fragile both in body and mind, and so the Grey Knights had erased everything that had once made Rhamiel human. He was a machine of duty and service, a Shield and a Hammer to be wielded in the service of the Emperor.

  And yet, that tiny, brittle thread connecting him to his lost humanity was oh-so-comforting now that he was at death’s door. As his eyes closed for the final time, Rhamiel found himself wishing he could have died next to an Ocean instead of a lifeless rock pgued by the madness of fragile little men.

  The world faded, and his soul slipped free from its mortal coil, dipping fully into the Warp. A thousand Daemons greeted him there, and if he could, Rhamiel would have sighed.

  ‘Even in death, I still serve.’ Rhamiel thought, his conviction reinforcing his fading essence, and got to work. He could feel himself fading. The psychic essence that made up his very soul was dispersing into the immaterial currents of the Warp; true death was inevitable now, and fast approaching. He just hoped he had been pure enough that most of that essence found its way to the Emperor. No, for an afterlife, but to empower the Master of Mankind so he may get some use out of him even in death.

  But perhaps he could earn some sliver of absolution for erasing a few more manifestations of the Archenemy. He had some time before he fully faded, by his reckoning, and no true Grey Knight could stand not fighting when it was right in front of their eyes.

  His soul quickly snapped into shape, resembling his spiritual self and his fading psychic power manifested within his grasp as a greatsword coated in the Cleansing Fmes he had spent more than a mortal lifetime mastering.

  The minions of the Archenemy rushed him with inhuman screeches, Bloodletters and Horrors of Tzeentch, Demonettes and Nurglings all in one horde. His bde swept out, sending a crescent of cleansing fme upon the wretches. They screamed, struck by the Cleansing Fmes that burned their very essence.

  These being mere Lesser Daemons, erasing them wasn’t beyond his abilities, but the first strike was merely to halt the rushing horde. He lunged, space becoming more of a suggestion as his fming bde plunged into the chest of a Bloodletter of Khorne. Rhamiel frowned and surged his power, channelling his Cleansing Fmes through his bde and into the abominable creature. He sent as much of his power as he could manage.

  The wretch shrieked, then exploded into a million fragments, each burning with the power of his Fmes, and Rhamiel allowed himself a moment of grim satisfaction. Daemons could only be permanently erased either by the power of the Emperor’s own Sword or through overwhelming psychic power.

  Unfortunately, the tter option was scarcely usable on anything within the Daemon Prince or Greater Daemon category. There was no Psyker alive capable of so thoroughly overwhelming those wretches so as to erase them.

  Rhamiel fought like a wild beast, but with the precision of a machine. Each flicker of his psychic essence expended, each second wasted, was something he would never get back.

  Fifty-four more Lesser Daemons fell permanently at his bde before he was too weakened to continue holding off the remaining horde. They stayed back, still remembering the scorch of his fmes, but they could sense his weakness; he could tell.

  It was then that a new star bloomed into existence above him, sending the very Warp itself reeling back as if burned. The Daemons mimicked it, but then bounced back and screeched as one. They forgot about him entirely, ignoring him in favour of charging towards the Silver Star.

  They didn’t get far. Like a sor fre, a scourging plume of argent fme met them halfway and erased them from existence before they could so much as scream. Rhamiel stared in shock, gazing up at the silvery star radiating such purity that he couldn’t help but wonder.

  ‘Emperor?’ He thought faintly, but banished the thought in an instant. Rhamiel had failed his duty; he was not worth saving, least of all by the very Lord he had failed. But who else could it be? ‘… Supreme Grandmaster?’

  That was the only conjecture that made sense. Supreme Grandmaster Kaldor Draigo had been cursed by the Daemon Prince M’Kar centuries ago to wander the Warp for eternity, emerging into realspace only for short excursions. It was said he hunted the Daemons in their homes, aimlessly wandering the Realms of Chaos as a vengeful revenant, as an embodiment of the Emperor’s righteous wrath.

  “I’m afraid I am not he.” The voice reverberated in his spirit, and the plume of argent fmes twisted, morphing into a gargantuan hand that snatched him up like a toy. “I have some questions, little Knight.”

  The voice was distinctly female, which meant he had guessed wrong twice. He had no more guesses, unable to conceive of anyone else who could fit the being he was apparently being saved by.

  He considered struggling, but his strength had faded too much to even bother. He did, however, prime his soul for ignition in case this silvery being was an enemy seeking to use his fading essence for nefarious purposes.

  In moments, he found himself in a gazebo, seated at a small table with an arrangement of some tea and cookies before him. He startled, trying to jump to his feet, but an immense psychic presence wrapped around him so tightly he couldn’t so much as flinch.

  “Don’t do that,” said a feminine voice. It was velvety and sweet, with just the slightest bit of haughtiness to it. His gaze snapped up, staring at the woman who had appeared seated in the chair across the table. She smiled, he recognised her, how could he not? He had just failed to kill her minutes ago. “So, before I let you fade into the Warp, I wanted to ask you: Why?”

  Rhamiel was not stupid, so he understood the question despite its simplicity. Some would have lied to preserve themselves, but Rhamiel’s convictions weren’t so weak as to vanish in the face of certain death, or worse.

  “It is standard protocol to kill any and all Psykers suspected of being Alpha Plus Grade or above,” Rhamiel answered. “Considering you are a Rogue Psyker, you would have been branded for immediate execution even if you were no more powerful than Delta Grade.”

  “Again, Why?” The woman asked with a curious tilt of her head. She appeared genial enough, like she couldn’t hurt a fly, and she would have fit right in at one of those aristocratic get-togethers mortals so liked.

  Rhamiel remembered the gleeful grin that same soft face wore as she ran him through with a give. He could also feel her presence all around him; the woman before him was but a mirage, an illusion … The being he was talking to was the entire realm around him, not something constrained to a reductive human form.

  “Untrained and Unsanctified, no Psyker of Delta Grade or above can resist the corruption of the Archenemy; it is only a matter of time until they fall and become possessed, Chaos Sorcerers, or unwilling sacrifices in rituals damning entire worlds,” Rhamiel said. He spoke no falsehoods; he had done no wrong. The only ones who could judge him were the Emperor and the Grandmasters. “Above Alpha Grade, a single Psyker can damn entire systems when they fall. Alpha Plus Psykers are known to show signs of insanity, madness and extreme neuroticism. Even without being possessed, they ruin worlds as they fall into the abyss of insanity. The fact that you, suspected of being an Alpha Plus or perhaps even Beta Plus Grade Psyker, appeared lucid and coherent was an obvious sign that you were merely a fleshsuit worn by a Daemon. We suspected you of being a daemonhost of an especially powerful Lord of Change. Every breath you took was seen as a failure in our duty as the Shields of Humanity.”

  Lords of Change could cause widespread ruin with their machinations, even when unable to breach into realspace. They could ruin worlds, entire Astartes Chapters, with well-pced whispers and a few tiny nudges. The thought of one running around possessing a possible Beta Plus Grade Psyker was an absolute nightmare. Every second it remained alive was another second it could spread its web of schemes, and the resulting cataclysm that would inevitably come would grow exponentially.

  Rhamiel personally loathed Tzeentchian Daemons most of all. All the others were rather unsubtle in their corruption, making purging it after banishing the Daemon rather straightforward. Kill the death cults after a Khornite Daemon, cleanse the pgues after a Nurglite and purge the hedonistic cults after a Saneshi one. But a Tzeentchian? You never knew who its unwitting puppets were, who it had corrupted not with Sorcery, but with words. Rhamiel was always tempted to commit Exterminatus upon whatever pnet a more powerful Tzeentchian Daemon had been present and be done with it. He hated leaving work half-done, but it was impossible to truly purge Tzeentchian corruption without going overboard.

  “I see,” the woman said softly, tapping her lips thoughtfully. “And what about the Custodian? Did you think he was an illusion? A puppet wearing a dead Custodian’s armour?”

  “One of the above,” Rhamiel said, frowning. That … might have been a touch hasty, but even in retrospect, he knew they had made the right call with the information they had at the time. This woman, being a silvery star of purity, some Warp being of Order perhaps, was an entirely out-of-context problem nobody in their right mind would have even considered. “We couldn’t be sure of anything other than that it couldn’t be a true Custodian, considering it was aiding an obvious unbound Daemonhost.”

  With what he knew now, had that Custodian been a true one? Had he known? He probably did, if he was willing to work together with this woman and hand her over the entire Jericho Reach.

  With the Great Rift being as it was, and the Hadex Anomaly having doubled in size, perhaps the Custodian thought it would be better to have a being antithetical to the Archenemy hold back the horrors so the forces of the Imperium could be better spent elsewhere.

  But the Custodians didn’t care. They had only ever acted to safeguard the Emperor … but they had condoned the Lord Regent, had they not? Perhaps this Octavian Gauis was here on orders from Roboute Guilliman.

  Rhamiel felt miffed, though not guilty. Perhaps ashamed that he had wasted his life on a futile mission, if anything. Grey Knights were extremely costly to produce, and wasting their lives was a sin. He could have served the Emperor dutifully for many more centuries to come, had he not wasted his life here. If he had anything to regret, it was that.

  “What are you?” Rhamiel found himself asking.

  The woman gave him an amused look. “I believe you should have tried asking me that before trying to kill me.”

  “That is not how protocol works,” Rhamiel said simply. “Lords of Change wields words as we wield bdes; it is often overlooked, but the words of a Tzeentchian Daemon are just as dangerous as its vile Sorcery. It is thus forbidden to engage with them in communication of any form.”

  "And you thought I was a Lord of Change." She gave him a look that was halfway between exasperated and annoyed. Yes, that was ridiculous in retrospect, sitting across from a being of such purity, but it was easy to think that with the benefit of hindsight. At least she still deigned to answer his earlier question, even though she was clearly displeased with him. “The Daemons call me Anathema, but I myself am not quite sure what exactly I am, or if there even is a name for it. All I know is that my soul purifies the Warp, scrubbing away the taint of Chaos and returning it to the way it had been in primordial times. Around us is my tiny little slice of it, my miniature Sea of Souls, a glimpse into how it used to be before the War in Heaven turned it into the Warp.”

  *****

  Five hundred Storm Warden Astartes and three Grey Knights joined their Deathwatch cousins in their impromptu sleepover aboard the Sovereign. That left me with the Sisters of Battle, and there was nothing else I could do to dey dealing with them. The thought of just sughtering them all at range was incredibly tempting. I could taste the sheer fanatic zeal they had from halfway across the star system. It was repulsive in an entirely different way than warp energy was, but it disgusted me all the same.

  At least they were effective for the purpose they were made for. The fact that only the Grey Knights and the Adeptus Custodes had a lower tendency to get Chaos corrupted was impressive. Faith had power in this gaxy, real power. I knew that, of course, I did, that was why I was especially wary of making worshippers of my own. Which was consequently why I’d kept putting the issue of saving the Eldar firmly into my ‘ter’ folder. Preferably far ter. I just knew I’d have Craftworlds’ worth of ridiculously powerful psyker worshippers in a matter of days if I went out of my way to save them. I didn’t know what millions of beings like that worshipping me — or rather, some warped image of me that they had in their heads—would do to me, but I really didn’t want to find out.

  My thoughts circled back around to the exhirating fight I’d just had. Maybe Selene was a bad influence, because I didn’t recall ever being this much of an adrenaline junkie. Oh well, she could influence me all she wanted. Still, I now had three Grey Knights in captivity, and I just knew they would be a damned pain to keep contained if I didn’t do something … drastic.

  They were all powerful psykers and had the stubbornness of a boulder made of adamantite, so I couldn’t trust any of my sedative mixes to keep them sleeping. So, the first thing I did was strip them of all their gear, carefully peeling them out of their ridiculously warded Aegis pattern Power Armour to leave them much more susceptible to psychic influence.

  Sure enough, all of them were subconsciously purging the sedatives from their system even in their half-awake, half-lucid dreaming state. Hell, I was pretty sure they were communicating psychically, somehow too. Yep, drastic measures were in order. I couldn’t have them making trouble for Selene.

  Six vats grew out of the walls, designed by my mind-cores in a hurry to sustain organic bodies. I fine-tuned them with the information I got from devouring the three dead Grey Knights, and then I did the only thing I knew would surely keep the three troublemakers from being a problem.

  I separated their brains from their bodies and dropped them in separate vats, which is why I had six of the things for just three prisoners. Considering both vats had a healthy amount of sedatives mixed in with the life-sustaining fluid, all of it fine-tuned to their unique genetics, even the three Grey Knights lost the fight against the call of a dreamless slumber.

  Considering these were the same Grey Knights who would sughter the popution of entire cities just for having been exposed to the presence of a single Lesser Daemon, who butchered Sisters of Battle to make more potent wards using their blood as ink and then there was the whole mess with the Months of Shame. So no, I did not feel bad at all about their loss, doubly so because I knew they would be supremely annoying to deal with if the Lion ever called in that favour.

  I didn’t know why I even bothered keeping them alive. It was a bit of a spur-of-the-moment thing, a whim, really. I had fun fighting them, and learned some interesting things from them, same with the Storm Wardens. Eh, in the end, I decided I didn’t need more reasons to be merciful other than feeling like it.

  That was also the only reason I could find as to why I allowed the Grey Knight, whose soul I had talked with, to dissipate into my Realm. His soul was pure enough that he almost fit in even as a soul. He had been far too Orderly, and my realm was one of Bance, but I decided to let it be. He had been nice enough to answer my questions, even if it only reinforced just how much of an asshole every Grey Knight was.

  Kill first, ask questions never and all that. They were one-size-fits-all type of weapons in human form. Machines, really. They, like the zealots so loathed, didn’t have much in the way of original thoughts.

  At least the Grey Knights’ practices and dogmatic ways were founded on reason, which I could respect. They were purpose-made Daemon-killers, and they were really good at their job. Maybe I would release the three survivors … after I had drained whatever give-skill I could out of that Justicar. He would be my sparring partner for the foreseeable future, whether he liked it or not.

  P3t1