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Unease filled the air of the command post at the western edge of the Rub Al’Khali. The Sigilites had been ever busy as the fortunes of war shifted among the siege lines. Reinforcements here, supplies there, a fresh unit rotated out, the most maddened Thunder Warriors brought in. Victory in war was in many ways the tallying of death and despair, a balance of sorrows where the triumphant was simply the least overwhelmed. Some of the keenest individuals in the galaxy were pouring over those measures, and they all realized the same thing.

Memphos was about to fall.

The nature of the Dynast Cities ensured that this would be the most brutal phase of the fighting, and only skill at arms and strength of will would determine if it was the swiftest conquest or the most sluggish siege. The Emperor’s forces had seen the first layer of defenses scattered like chaff before the wind, and now it was time for those seeking refuge in their fortresses to be terrified by his storm. But only a fool would think they would go gently. The wealth of the Dynast-Kings including a great panoply, mighty arms and stout armor, forbidden relics of a bygone age, charges of the Sigilites that they had failed to safeguard.

Each and every scribe knew of the horrors that could be unleashed, none more so than the head of their order. Malcador stared intently at a hololithic tank, an artifact from the era of his birth now worth a king’s ransom many times over, the flickering runes updated by a haphazard combination of IFF feeds and couriers relaying positional updates. A great front at the Northern Bulwark was a snarl of such icons, a contingent of Thunder Warriors pressing forward under the banner of a lone Custodian.

And then suddenly a rune flickered upon the other side of the great defensive line.

Champions of the Emperor were due rewards, and despite the intensity of the moment there would be no shirking their due. “Aristagorous shall henceforth be granted the glory of being known as Borethensipulas,” Malcador said softly, a dozen scribes recording the earning of a name. An ancient hand remained gripped tight about his staff even as he spoke, the man’s thoughts consumed by the question of what the Dynast-Kings would do next.

He had need not wait long for the answer.

A bolt of baleful flame sprang to life in the west, its fury demanding that even the distant scribes bear witness. For but a moment all pens and cogitators were put down, the Order giving the witchfire its measure of due respect. But only for a moment. With a glance from Malcador, they at once returned to their work, a lone robed figure sprinting away after meeting eyes with the Master and sharing a single, knowing glance.

Moments later and the Sigilite was racing beyond the field tent, seated within an ancient hovercraft that bore him effortlessly above the shifting sands. His personal guard lounged alongside him, veterans of the subjugation of the Himalayzans equipped with the most exotic and destructive of weapons. They passed the border into Gyptus proper like the wind itself, marching columns of Imperial soldiers with camels and mules catching only a glance of the twin banners of the lightning bolt and sigil that marked his personage.

Picking up a baroque device with a strange grill upon its face, Malcador began to speak. At once, a voice was heard upon the lines of the advancing Imperial forces, ancient and distorted, but carrying true nonetheless.

“To all those who fight beneath the banner of the Master of Mankind, know this. Your Emperor has sought to overthrow the reigns of butchers and the tyranny of witches. Your foes fight to defend the former, and they have now sought the might of the latter. I shall not lie to you, my conquerors, you shall be tested in this battle. What terrors they have unleashed, I cannot yet say, but know this. I am coming, and I bear with me the full might of your lord’s will. Humanity shall and must topple the spires of craven sorcerers, and the wrath of the Sigilite is with you.”

—

The words of the Sigilite were almost lost by the surge of chatter cascading over the vox as Aristagorous moved. While he was clad in plate that would swallow a lesser man, he was but a blur to mortal senses. As easily as he crossed ground, he slew. Living and breathing foes of the Emperor, or the twisted abominations that now arose alongside them, it did not matter to him. The precise killing strike required to keep such a foe down no additional challenge to his superhuman nature. Other servants of the Emperor were not so fortunate, and it was for their benefit he now pushed for decisive action.

“My lord, this is — we’re under h —- unceasing foe —- won’t stay d — permission to fall back —“ 

Whatever foul sorcery the enemy had wreathed was playing havoc with communications as much as it was the city, but even still, the motivation was clear. It was given with the clipped professionalism of the more disciplined soldiers beneath the Emperor’s authority, but still, the hint of dread lingered in the words.

“Denied, fight on, the line is drawn, the enemy is desperate, we push on. We ride to you, fight on.” He had no confirmation in return that his order was even received, but still he pounded the stone of the roadway to dust beneath the speed of his tread. Should the mortals fight on, he was determined they would not fall without sight of the Emperor’s wrath in their name. Should they falter, he would be there to deliver it in turn.

The powerfield surrounding his blade spat ionised flesh into the air as it rent through another foe. One of countless that had already fallen, made only of note to the giant who wielded it by the crackle of dimming power as the blade shorted out, overused and with no rest between blows, its power cells had finally given up on him. No matter, it was still a blade.

The Custodian felt the hand of another at play in this matter, the wretched plot of the enemy was sure to bring a heavy toll on the forces of the Emperor, pushing them to take the city faster and more costly than they would have wished, but could it hope to truly rebuff them? Unlikely. This was the masterstroke of someone wishing to sell Memphos dearly, which its Dynasts kings, self serving as they were, would not have orchestrated.

“Honoured Sigilite, I am approaching the Square of Kempfar, join me, and we shall push upon the Citadel.” The priority line to the Emperor’s closest adviser was more secure from the ravages of the warp craft, but not entirely so, a distressing observation. One that was put aside for the moment as Aristagorous finally reached the square, encountering only the burned out ruins of the Imperium’s forces and their hastily erected defences, now swarming with the risen dead. They had fought to a man, and he had failed them.

As the surge of dead things pressed towards the Custodian, he exhaled steadily, feeling the righteous anger suffuse his genecrafted being, before his blade was raised.

“Come then, hellspawn, become the first to earn the honour of being slain twice by Aristagorous.”

—

Malcador cursed as the Custodian spoke to him, not of anger at the message but at the foul corruption despoiling the aetherics. His chosen companions went about their business with the grim disregard that they did most everything, performing final checks upon their arcane armories. The champions of the Sigilite were equipped with the rarest and most horrific weapons ever crafted by human hands, for rarely did he feel the need to march to war himself. Disintegration guns, stasis grenades, graviton pistols, Kjaroskuro weapons, Quill blasters, a motley array of power and monomolecular weaponry, and sundry more were held ready by the men and women who had followed him this far.

“The Square of Kempfar,” Malcador ordered, after a slight delay as he let sentimentality take control of him for a cursed moment. He had opened his vaults for them, and they had volunteered to do their duty. It would not do to spoil their devotion to this cause with undue emotion. “Make haste, our foe grows in strength, and this is a ritual we can ill afford to let finish.”

The dead rose across the ancient sands, and the Sigilite followed. Onwards they pressed, towards fire and war, shadow and death. The cracked outer defenses of the once grand city flew underneath them, the haggard soldiers of the nascent Imperial Army cheering their salvation as they saw the speck of metal that marked his coming.

Baleful light erupted from the front of the ancient transport as it crossed into the lands of the dead, subatomic beamers dissolving the first ranks of the Warp-risen abominations into elementary particles. Within its confines, Malcador and his companions made ready for what was to come in their own manner, be it in thought or prayer or jest, in food or in drink, or in one particular case a last moment of restful slumber.

Kempfar approached, and with it, the first strands of the horrid destiny that Malcador had foreseen for those few he had dared call friends.

—

Lieutenant Alexiou cursed under his breath at the turn of their fortunes. They had been advancing steadily behind those beasts of men, the Emperor’s Thunder Warriors and his patrician Custodians, stepping over the carnage they left in their wake and moving from house to house like clockwork. It had been simple work, clearing that which the feral men had deemed unworthy of their attention. A shop of overturned spices here, a coffee hall there, a residential down the road. All of it, so simple. The occupants had been seen as beneath the Emperor’s most capable servants, and had been left to Imperial Army units, like Alexiou’s. But despite its simplicity, it was dirty work. 

The shopkeeper and his staff, or at least that’s who Alexiou assumed they were, had come at his men with exotic tools he had discerned were used in the sorting of the spices. Finely made things, with razor thin blades that had cut up one of his troopers bad enough to warrant sending him to the rear. But other than the initial surprise of them they had been simple to dispatch. No armor, no formal training. They had been road bumps. Just as the other occupants of every building they’d swept through that decided to stand futilely before the Emperor’s army had been to Alexiou and his troopers.

But that time had come to an end far too soon. As quickly as they had cleared ten blocks the tide of the fighting changed around them. The sky had darkened, taking on a sickly glow, and the first signs of trouble had been the confusion over the vox. Then the maimed and stricken in the streets had risen around the Lieutenant and his platoon, and hell made its way to the land of the living. That had been nearly thirty minutes ago.

“Vox orders are unclear, aetherics are playing hell with the signal… I think they have ordered a general withdrawal to reinstate the lines and continue the push, but…” the vox operator hesitated a moment, “there was a Custodes, he was calling the Sigillite, I didn’t catch much more.”

“A Custodes? Figure his location, quickly,” Alexiou told his vox operator calmly as he turned back to the remains of his platoon, “Check your charge packs, and get ready to move,” his troopers gave no answer, and he didn’t need one. They had been ready to move since they’d first secured the holdout they sheltered in, and simply been waiting on Alexiou to make the decision on what came next.

They exited the holdout and fanned out down a wide thoroughfare, bypassing the butchered remains of Imperial troopers and Memphos guard with casual disregard as they approached the relative location the vox had returned for the Custodian Guard.

They swept through a blockhouse without a word and exited through a massive rent in the wall to find themselves spilling down a pile of rubble directly into an otherworldly onslaught. The Custodian, magnificent in his golden armor, was a blur of motion ahead of them. The ghastly creatures, those not long ago lost to this world, crashed into the Emperor’s chosen like the waves against the breakwaters of the acid lakes of Hive Ischian and, just like the acid waves, the abominations stood no chance of overcoming the patrician guardian of the Emperor.

His men spread out into the square without the need for a command, their jet black carapace armor a stark contrast to the dirtied yet still impressive gold of the Custodian. Where the Custodian was a blur of movement and the crackling of his guardian spear, his troopers were a clumsy hammer, their lasrifles spitting iridescent bolts into the surging wave of the dead.

“Firstborn, I am Lieutenant Alexiou of the Lucifer Blacks,” he stated over the common close-range vox shared by all Imperial units from within his enclosed carapace helmet, “my platoon is at your command,” he finished quickly as he took the head off a once dead thing with a flick of his saber.