by Ben Counter
With a sound too loud to be heard, the acropolis exploded in a starburst of white light.
GHOLIC REN-SAR VALINOV reached the inside of the tomb in time to witness the rebirth of his lord.
Behind him, the Balurians stumbled and faltered in horror as they saw the sprawling, corrupt world that Chaos had built around St Evisser's corpse. The rotted shell of a city that crawled with the seventy-seven masques, the heaving stone sky heavy with destiny, the shattered marble and hungry chasms, and the daemon carrion creatures that circled over the shining acropolis.
Many of the Balurians lost their minds there and then, even before the acropolis exploded. Valinov had already bent them to breaking point, using the subtleties of his words and actions to whip them into a frenzy and direct them to the tomb. Now they had served their purpose he didn't need them, so he let them go insane. Ghargatuloth had erected a shield of pure emotion around his tomb to keep out the unwary who might somehow find their way here, protecting his sacred site with madness - most of the Balurians quickly succumbed, but Valinov was not so weak.
Some Balurians saw only beauty and light as their minds were divorced from any sense of morality. They saw a world of glory and bounty, and ran open-armed into it only to fall down unseen chasms or be snatched into the shadows by the few cultists the Grey Knights had left behind. Others collapsed at the sight, their subconscious minds preferring to cut them off from their senses rather than risk the deeper madness that might follow. Some turned on their friends, convinced that anyone around them must be corrupt - lasguns barked and knife blades hissed through flesh.
The commissar stayed true to his duty to the last, accusing everyone near him of heresy and daemonancy in an attempt to explain where such corruption had come from. He fired at random into the Balurians, and those still composed enough to act leapt on him, dragging him to the ground so he disappeared beneath a heap of insane Guardsmen. Bolt pistol shots thudded out of the mass as the commissar enacted the Emperor's justice even as he was crushed and beaten to death against the fractured marble floor.
Valinov was untouched. The part of him that might have once gone insane had long since left him along with the weak spirit that could be levered open by psykers and the lake of despair that could boil over in lesser men's minds. Valinov had once prayed to anyone who would listen that those parts of him would shrivel and die, because they had caused him such torture when he did the grim, violent work of the Inquisition under Barbillus. Ghargatuloth had listened and stripped away Valinov's weaknesses until he was free of conscience and doubt. It was the greatest gift a man could receive. It was no hardship for Valinov to repay the Prince of a Thousand Faces with his servitude, and now he was going to join his master at last.
The explosion tore the acropolis apart in a tidal wave of white life, the birthing pains of Ghargatuloth shattering stone and wiping out the crumbling city, vaporising the seventy-seven masques in an instant, a Shockwave coursed through the marble like a ripple through water. The whole tomb bulged outwards with the psychic force of the blast and the Balurians were thrown backwards, some smashing against the columns, others hurled right out back into the statue garden. Valinov was sure he saw the armoured body of a Grey Knight as it shot through the air like a bullet and slammed into the distant wall of the tomb.
Valinov was untouched. Ghargatuloth would protect him.
A massive crater like a giant gaping mouth was all that remained of the city.
And then, at long last, the Prince of a Thousand Faces was complete, and in an eruption of glory he was brought back into real space.
THE SHORE OF Lake Rapax rippled like water. That was all the warning there was, before the roof was ripped off the processing plant by a column of shimmering iridescent flesh several hundred metres across and a kilometre high, erupting like a volcano into the sky of Volcanis Ultor.
The outer spires of Hive Superior were dwarfed by the column as it tore up from the tomb of St Evisser, shimmering in colours that didn't exist outside of the warp. Reality twisted and folded around it as it forced itself into dimensions real space couldn't hold. As it poured upwards thunderheads of sorcery formed around it, shining nebulae that spat multicoloured lightning. Great writhing tentacles split off from its mass, spasming with new-found freedom, lashing out and demolishing the processing plant and the defences around it.
The ground in its shadow was boiling. The daemons that served as Ghargatuloth's heralds were following it out of the warp, dragging themselves up through the earth.
From the bleached empty plains to the depths of the underhive to the tips of the noble spires, fatal sorcery sparked into life. Many went mad. Others were struck down, hearts stopped by fear. A panic gripped everyone in Hive Superior - the Prince of a Thousand Faces brought fear with him, so pure that those who had never seen the sky of Volcanis Ultor were overcome with terror of the daemon prince manifesting outside the city.
Hatred became liquid and dripped down the walls. Suffering was a cold, lethal mist that rolled out across the plains. Deceit rained down in fingers of black malice over the remains of the trenches, and minds snapped all along the defences.
The column rippled and shifted, and on the end of each squirming tentacle monstrous, maddening features were formed from the flesh. A thousand new faces were looking down on Volcanis Ultor.
ALARIC HIT THE wall, and time stopped.
He watched as - Ghargatuloth erupted from the ground, unfolding in horrifying slow motion, oceans of iridescent flesh moulded into a single daemon spear that punched up through the sky of the tomb and out into the air of Volcanis Ultor. The landscape of the tomb crumbled. The skeletal city and the foothills of marble were shattered into dust as the daemonic flesh ripped out from beneath them.
Alaric was falling, slowly. Broken bones were recoiling inside him. The tomb was being destroyed a stone at a time and the full hideous spectacle of Ghargatuloth was being played for him so he could experience every maddening moment of it.
Alaric was in awe of the sheer scale of it. He had faced daemons before, but nothing that spoke of such power. His mind was full of Ghargatuloth's horror, the mindless strength of the tentacles that tore out from its flesh, the enormity of its explosion into real space.
'How small your mind is.' said a voice, 'to be impressed by such a little show of my power.'
Alaric tried to look round but his muscles, locked in agonising slowness, couldn't respond. The voice was so familiar it started somewhere inside his head and worked its way out.
A figure coalesced from the air in front of Alaric, as a portion of Ghargatuloth's immense knowledge shifted into a physical form. The Prince of a Thousand Faces appeared as a tall, muscular, strong-featured man, wearing clothes of skins and hide. He had a hard-won physique that spoke of short, brutal lives, war, survival and the hunt. His long black hair was tied back with strings of finger bones and feathers, and he carried a spear with a head of flint.
Every cultist who worshipped Ghargatuloth saw a different face. This was the face that Alaric saw, taken from somewhere deep beneath him, ripped from the lowest levels of his mind to tell him how he was going to die.
'Is this how you appear to me?' said Alaric, for his lips were the only part of him that he could force to move. 'One of the thousand faces?'
'I have many more than a thousand.'
Alaric could not read the expression on the man's face - it kept slipping away from his sight, as if focusing on it made it change. 'On this world I was the Seventy-Seventh Masque, the death beyond death. On Farfallen I was the God of the Last Hunt. To you, I am just the face you yourself see in me.'
Behind the Prince, his daemonic body was billowing up from the ground to form a lance of flesh now reaching up high into the sky through the shattered roof. Thick writhing tendrils were laying waste to the walls of the tomb, reaching in exultation towards the sky.
The Prince turned to watch it, seemingly in admiration or even nostalgia. 'The Change
r of the Ways granted me that body. Holy Tzeentch himself. A vessel for what I am, which is knowledge, the most sacred weapon of the Change. Every man I kill, every secret I force a follower to divulge, every moment of suffering I cause, I learn more and I become more. I have learned a great deal in the last few months. I am more now than I have ever been. When Mandulis banished me I was like a child, and now I understand so much more. The galaxy needs me, Grey Knight. Time and space are prisons. The minds of mankind are the bars that keep everything inside. Break their souls, and they will become free, and freedom is the essence of Chaos.'
'Lie to me.' said Alaric. 'Go on. Lie. Prove to me that I am right.'
The Prince turned back to Alaric, his face still a vague swimming hint of an expression. 'You are very interesting to me, Alaric. You embody what I first tasted in Mandulis when he died. You run from the very elements that once made you human. You have become less than human - you have shut away the only parts of you that could ever be enlightened by the Changer of the Ways. You call it faith, but if you understood the true nature of what Tzeentch promises to the galaxy then you would realise how grave a crime it is to render a mind so inert.'
'We found you once, daemon. We will find you again.'
'And then what?' Ghargatuloth's voice was mocking. 'Where would I be if Mandulis had not found me? Here, Grey Knight, here and now, with my followers and the work of my Master well under way. Banishing me changed nothing. Why must you refuse to understand? Chaos cannot be defeated, you must know that.'
Clouds were gathering in the sky as Ghargatuloth's body shrieked up into Volcanis Ultor's upper atmosphere, and sparks of blue lightning reflected off the shining flesh. The face of the Prince in front of Alaric hung in the air ignoring the destruction behind it, as more and more of the tomb was sucked into the searing column of flesh.
'You just had to look around you, Grey Knight, and you'd have seen it. What is Chaos? Suffering, you might say. Oppression. Deceit. But could not all these things be said of your Imperium? You hunt down the talented and the strong-willed. You break them or sacrifice them. You lie to your citizens and wage war on those who dare speak out. The inquisitors you call masters assume guilt and execute millions on a whim. And why? Why do you do this? Because you know Chaos is there but you do not know how to fight it, so you crush your own citizens for fear that they might aid the Enemy. The Imperium suffers because of Chaos. No matter how hard you fight, that will never change. Chaos exists in a state of permanent victory over you - you dance to our tune, mortal one, you butcher and torture and repress one another because the gods of the warp require you to. The Imperium is founded on Chaos. My lord Tzeentch won your war a long, long time ago.'
Alaric could feel the blasphemous words hitting his shield of faith like broadsides from a battleship. The Prince's words cut more deeply that any sorcery ever had, worming their way through the layers of doctri-nation. He felt naked - he had never been this vulnerable, even when he had been surrounded and outgunned, even when Ligeia had been lost and Alaric had been left alone in the hunt for Ghargatuloth. He let his anger burn hotter, to drown out the fear.
'We killed, daemon!' spat Alaric furiously. We killed you with the sword of Mandulis! The lightning bolt!'
'"Only the lightning bolt will cleanse this reality of Ghargatuloth's presence",' said the Prince. 'Valinov told you that, I suppose? When you broke him on Mimas? Must I really explain to you that Valinov cannot be broken? I removed those weak parts from him when I made him my own. So pleasing it is, Grey Knight, to deceive by telling the truth. So ironic, so beloved of Tzeentch. You see, Valinov was right. I cannot be killed, I cannot be stopped. The only way I can be cleansed from the galaxy is if I finish Tzeentch's work and turn the galaxy into a thing of pure Chaos. Then I shall become one with my lord, and then will I cease to exist. The weapon that banished me was the one with the power to bring me back, so I could do this work of Chaos. Valinov was telling the truth - you simply chose to hear a different truth.'
Of course, it was true. Every daemon had a condition that had to be fulfilled before it could return - a particular date, a location, a specific sacrifice or spell. Ghargatuloth, a being of great power, had many. He had to be born through a corrupted Imperial relic, the body of Saint Evisser. It had to be on the Trail, and it had to be now. And the vessel through which he was reborn had to be killed with the weapon that had first banished him.
Gharghatuloth could create them all - the Saint, the Trail, the cultists to serve him and the plots to bring the threads into place. But he could not create the sword of Mandulis. That had to be brought to him, and the Grey Knights had done exactly that.
Alaric's mind burned with conflict. The Grey Knights had not been used. They had fought and killed and done their duty. They were not a part of this plan, they were not the instrument of the Enemy...
'It was the way it had to be.' he said, teeth gritted with anger. 'You did not use us like you used Ligeia. We had to fight you face to face, to do what Mandulis did... we freed you so you could be fought.'
'Desperation, Grey Knight. You were with me from the beginning. It had to be you, you see. I find you Grey Knights so fascinating, with your unbreakable souls. Such wonderful tools. Impossible to discourage, some of the best soldiers the Imperium can muster, completely devoted to whatever cause I can plant in you. I just have to point you in the right direction and I know you will do what I want. You brought the sword of Mandulis to me, you helped fuel the carnage on the Trail, you turned Volcanis Ultor into the kind of bloodbath I needed to hide my preparations until it was time for me to fully awaken. And the challenge of breaking you afterwards is more than I can resist.'
Alaric saw the Balurians dying, a tiny swarm of dark blue figures by the entrance to the tomb, seething as they killed one another in their madness. He saw Valinov, hands raised in praise.
'Like all humans you have your flaws.' continued Ghargatuloth, 'but you are so proud you cannot see them. Your fault is fear, Alaric. You know the Grey Knights have never lost one of their own to corruption by the Enemy, and somewhere deep inside you is the fear that you will be the first. It is this that makes you feel so helpless in your unguarded moments. It is why you could never have been a leader. Why else do you see this face of me?' Ghargatuloth indicated his current form, the fierce tribesman. 'I appear to you as what you could have been. I am what you fear - I appear as what you could have been, if this fragile reality had not delivered you into the Grey Knights. Beneath your conscious mind you remember your old life on that savage world, and it reminds you that you could change again - you could change into someone who worships me. And I shall make sure that fear comes true, Alaric. I shall spend a long time breaking you, and when you fall you will be one of my dearest trophies.'
Alaric was silent. He didn't have long to live. He might only have one chance, but it was more than he could have hoped for. He had to make it count. For his fallen brothers, and for Ligeia. For Mandulis, who had given more than his life a thousand years ago.
Ghargatuloth hadn't brought him here. Alaric had made all those decisions himself. The sword of Mandulis, battling the Sisters, hunting Ghargatuloth to Lake Rapax - it was all his own choice. He was following his plan, not Ghargatuloth's. And there was one last chance to prove it.
His shield of faith was failing. He had to act now, before it fell and Ghargatuloth saw what he kept hidden there.
'Then it really is the end.' he said. 'But a death defying the Enemy is a victory in itself. You cannot take that away.'
'Perhaps not.' replied Ghargatuloth. 'But after death, you will be mine. I will have an eternity to make you fall.'
'You had to use the whole Trail.' continued Alaric. 'Saint Evisser, the cardinals, every single citizen, you had to move them all into position to beat us. Remember that. You put your plan in motion before the Trail even existed, because you knew it would take nothing less. We made you work, daemon. You feared us so much you had to move star sys
tems to make us dance to your tune.'
'Keep that pride, Alaric. It gives you so much more to lose.'
'Well then.' said Alaric resignedly. 'Let us go through the motions. A Grey Knight should have some heroic last words, that's what the stories tell us. A final denial of the Enemy.'
'Indeed. Something to remind you of how futile your death was.'
'Good.' Alaric forced himself to focus on the figure's face. He concentrated until Ghargatuloth's eyes were drawn into view - they were hard, expressive, determined. A lot like Alaric's.
'Tras'kleya'thallgryaa...' began Alaric, and suddenly the world shifted back to full speed as the face of Ghargatuloth shattered.
A TENTACLE OF daemon flesh reached out from the column, bending gracefully over the wreckage of the disintegrating tomb towards where Valinov stood, surrounded by dying Balurians. Hundreds of hands reached out from the shimmering skin and lifted Valinov up, drawing him face-first into the body of Ghargatuloth, bestowing on him the ultimate reward for his devotion to the Lord of Change and his herald. Valinov felt the power all around him - the power of pure knowledge, a perception so intense it seeped through his skin and began to eat him away, reducing him, too, to the pure substance of the knowledge that made him. Ideas of skin and bone were freed from their prisons. Valinov's organs began to dissolve in the shining liquid mass of Ghargatuloth. Faces beyond human description were staring out of the tentacle now as Valinov was drawn into it, watching their master's greatest servant becoming one of them - a new Face for the Prince, an idol before which countless cultists would bow. When Tzeentch swallowed up the galaxy and all was Chaos, Valinov would be a god.
ABOVE VOLCANIS ULTOR the thousand faces of Ghargatuloth suddenly recoiled, slipping back into the column of flesh. Tentacles writhed, looping in tortured knots around the pulsing central column. The clouds flared with angry lightning, the daemon's pain made solid, arcing in brutal red streaks to the ground. The iridescent flesh rippled with mottled dark colours, like wounds beneath the skin.