A short while earlier.
The tides of the Warp surged and howled while a bizarre drill-ship barreled through them, ramming and grinding across several Chaos domains.
The daemons within raged or wailed in terror, as if their world had been invaded by a horror from elsewhere.
Those Chaos things that once ravaged the galaxy at will were, for the first time, tasting the ruin of their own homelands.
To the Savior aboard the warp tunnel-borer, though, it all felt like driving over speed bumps.
"Sigh… why do I feel like the big bad villain here?"
Eden let out a token sigh, but the grin on his face said he was enjoying this immensely.
He had the mindset of, "If raiders can come and go, so can we." Once, the Imperium only turtled up and took the hits; now, it could touch Chaos' territory too.
Granted, this wasn't exactly an offensive—more like an uncontrollable "traffic accident" in progress.
"Our warp borer's not easy to steer. If we plow into something too tough, that's going to be a problem, isn't it?"
He watched warped space streak by on either side of the observation dome and couldn't help worrying.
The tunnel-borer's digging and forward motion were far too uncontrollable. Just on this leg alone, they'd clipped more than a dozen solid regions.
What if they one day smacked into a bulwark or some void-hulk? Crack the drill or the hull and—
This was his one and only warp-engineering wonder. It was the Imperium's hope of prosperity. Nothing could happen to it.
Forget breaking it.
Even a ding or a scratch would have him heartsick for a long time.
A machine like this—His Majesty the Emperor himself wouldn't dare throw it around; he'd sooner wax and polish it twice a day.
In fact, that was exactly the case: ever since Eden took this darling into the Warp, His Majesty had pinged him repeatedly to be careful.
And, notably, the Emperor was not worried about Eden. He was worried about the darling.
Back in the day, to build out a sliver of Webway, the Emperor had let go of governance and command, hid away in the Himalazian palaces, and huffed and puffed over his precious passageworks.
It showed how much He valued the Webway—high-speed lanes for civilization.
After the Imperium secured Blackstone Webway segments and the Dawn City Webway, He prized them like His own breath. Awake, He watched them almost daily.
More than the Webway Patrols or even the Savior, He fussed over every crack, every weakness, every sign of wear—half ready to haul Himself off the Throne to patch it.
He'd badger Eden to dispatch repair crews—a walking, talking Webway alarm klaxon.
But this warp tunnel-borer might be on par with—or even more precious than—the Webway itself.
Because with it, the Imperium could carve its own high-speed lanes. It meant control of the future.
So when the Emperor heard Eden had secured the machine, He had nearly leapt from the Throne for joy and charged Eden: protect it at all costs.
He didn't stop praising the Savior—His Emperor—saying His prior faith in him had been right on the mark.
Pure delight.
Eden suspected that if he'd been in the Black Throne Temple, the Emperor would have dragged him into a drinking bout—father and son clinking cups, reminiscing of glories past, proclaiming a brighter Imperial dawn, and finally weeping and swearing brotherhood with him.
Of course, that was just how Eden pictured it.
But there was no denying the Emperor had grown old without noticing.
A king desiccated by worship, cautious to the bone—no doubt He did not wish to endure another failure.
And the Imperium truly could not afford one.
Knowing the borer's worth, the Emperor had warned Eden to expect Chaos to strike.
The instant the dark powers learned what the engine could do, they would try to destroy it. The Dark Gods would never allow humans to set foot in the Warp—It was Their house.
No one naps beside the lord's pillow.
"I'd better be even more careful. I can't let this golden hand of cards be thrown away.
If I wreck this thing, His Majesty will faint from fury. He can't take another shock…"
Eden pressed down the giddy thrill the borer gave him and frowned.
He issued orders to avoid solid domains wherever possible.
The Chief Magos' reply was not encouraging.
"My lord Savior, that variable cannot be controlled…"
The Magos shook his head, vox monotone precise.
"Warp domains stack dimensionally. Even we cannot scan what lies ahead. At best, we can bias a general heading."
After explanations from the Chief Magos and the tech-secretaries, Eden grasped how the Warp—and the great machine—actually worked.
The Warp was not like the material galaxy. Its laws were chaotic and null. Many spaces lay in tangled superposition.
If the galaxy was a sheet of paper spread flat, the Warp was that paper crumpled into a ball—and the borer was punching a lateral tunnel through the creased chaos.
There was no telling what the next "face" of paper—the next region—would be, or what was in it.
You only knew when you arrived.
That, incidentally, was why the Webway worked: it used folded Warp strata to reach elsewhere, then emerged into realspace.
Eden worried on and tried a new tack.
"If we can't dodge solids, can we at least cut speed—buy time to react?"
Right now the borer was like a runaway dump-truck. Confronted with a solid, there was no chance to turn.
It could only grind straight through.
If they bled speed, maybe they could cut some risk.
"By the Omnissiah, the engine's speed has a minimum vector. We cannot reduce it further; we must maintain it."
The Chief Magos shook his head. "Only at current speed can we thread the limen between realspace and the Warp.
Too slow, and we may be flung into an unknown domain."
"That dangerous?"
Eden realized he'd underestimated the risks in running this thing.
If the Savior vanished with the artifact into some nowhere… who would bear the Imperium's burden of revival?
A wise man doesn't loiter beneath a crumbling wall. He'd seen the engine's might. Time to head back to realspace.
He looked to the Chief Magos. "Ping the Greenskin Big Mek. Tell him to take us back to the galaxy."
The relic was Old One tech—almost tailor-made for greenskins—so they helmed it.
The Magi monitored and assisted.
But Eden still worried about orkoid driving habits—they were even bolder than him. If they pulled some 'epic job' and yeeted the Savior into parts unknown…
That would be a real show.
The Chief Magos muttered with the Big Mek over comms, then reported back.
"Your Majesty the Savior, as planned, we have re-opened portions of a collapsed Webway tract and can return at will.
Return sequence is engaged.
However, due to the engine's inertia, we require at least two Terran days to wrangle the vector drift and then slingshot from a rift margin back into the galaxy."
Eden nodded and added, "Fine. Keep her stable over those two days. And keep an eye on those greenskins."
Longer than he'd hoped, but acceptable.
Hopefully they could ride this out. The Dark Gods surely wouldn't target him so fast—
The borer suddenly juddered hard, as if it had clipped something solid again.
A presence brushed Eden's psykic senses.
He turned toward the dome—and froze.
"Little Red?"
Out in the roil was a shadow-domain—an entity's demesne given shape.
At its heart stood a palace with no windows and sealed walls.
The borer's slipstream had torn the roof free, exposing the interior—
A red-skinned, fur-wrapped Chaos figure huddled in a corner, wide-eyed and shaken, shrinking from every sound.
Magnus the Red, the fallen Primarch.
"Little Red, what happened to you? That's not what you said last time."
Eden looked at Magnus, and he could almost hear tragic strings swell between them.
A century's gone by. The proud Crimson King, led astray by the Changer of Ways, had become… this.
Wizened, afraid, like a bullied child with a broken mind.
Who had done this?
The figure in the palace twitched—feeling a familiar presence.
He looked up—eyes met Eden's. Shame and pain and memories of disgrace flooded in.
"No…"
Terror burned brighter in the Crimson King's gaze. He wrapped his pelts tighter and tried to melt into the wall, as if distance alone could shield him.
"Seems Little Red's holed up here a hundred years and hasn't dared come out."
Eden took in Magnus and his palace and saw it.
The Crimson King's reek of corruption was faint—almost shed. After a father's fierce love beat him to the marrow, Magnus must never have answered the Changer again.
Eden sighed and sent a pulse of thought—with a subtle psykic tag tucked in.
"Come home, Little Red. The Emperor misses you. He forgave all this long ago. Go see Him.
…Hah."
They met and parted in a heartbeat. The borer surged on and vanished from that realm.
Soon even the shadow-domain was gone from sight.
Eden drew back, tone a little heavy. "Hope he's got the spine to go back and face His Majesty."
Before the fall, Magnus had been among the more loyal of the Primarchs. When he glimpsed that the Emperor might be in danger—that the Imperium might be imperiled—
He risked everything to warn Terra. Good intentions, terrible execution—then the slide into corruption.
Now he seemed free of the god's claws, crawling back toward himself—if with wounds on the soul.
He had accepted the Warp's nature and mastered sorcery. He was all but unkillable.
Better he return to the Emperor than be found by the Dark Gods and used as a knife against the Imperium.
Or else the Emperor could follow the tag and seize him at leisure.
Whether the end was purification into Imperial service—or a permanent penance beneath the palace—either worked for mankind.
As for saying the Emperor had forgiven him, yes—that was a lie. Eden just wanted to coax this shut-in child home.
In his current state he likely hadn't the nerve to face the Emperor otherwise.
And it wasn't wholly a lie. There was a sliver of honesty in it; people should keep at least the minimum trust between them.
With the Dawn City Webway functioning and the tunnel-borer in hand, the Emperor was in good spirits. Perhaps He would not be too harsh with His Primarch-son.
It was the best window to return. Hopefully Little Red wouldn't waste Eden's kind intentions.
…
In the shadow-domain.
Within the palace.
"What have I done… Father…"
Magnus stood motionless, stunned by the Savior's message.
For a hundred years of clarity, the Crimson King had drowned in remorse, shame, and humiliation—refusing to face any of it, refusing any contact.
Least of all any memory of the Dark God's puppeteering of his mind.
Hearing that familiar name now broke him open.
He threw the pelts over his head again and curled into the corner, sobbing without sound. Even his realm wept—fine rain fell in endless grief.
No one knew how long it was before the Crimson King found his courage, rose from the corner, stepped beyond the palace, and—for the first time in a century—left his shadow-domain.
The pride was gone. In its place—repentance.
He would go to the Emperor—to his Father—and face the past.
A tiny hope kindled: that the Emperor truly had forgiven him.
Nervous and barely daring to hope, Magnus set out for home—the Black Throne of the Dawn City Webway.
The Savior had given him exact psykic coordinates.
Sorcery flared across the Warp; the Sorcerer-King cast his spell.
His form vanished from that place. The shadow-domain thinned and dissolved.
The Black Throne Temple.
Magnus arrived in the great hall unopposed. The Emperor had not blocked the jump. He had permitted his entry.
The Primarch's warped flesh had healed greatly. Barely a scar of corruption remained.
"Father…"
At the familiar presence, his nose stung. Perhaps Father truly had forgiven him—to admit him to the hall at all.
He fell to his knees, near prostration, drowning in regret.
BOOM—
The next instant, the Throne vomited sanctity like a volcano. A fear he knew too well—now worse—crashed over him.
Magnus looked up in horror.
On the Throne sat the Emperor, terrible and majestic. His eyes burned with storming fire.
Memory's dread came roaring back.
This was the Father who had broken the galaxy with iron—who showed no mercy to xenos or heretic, but worked only in the cold speech of blade and bombardment.
He had been just as merciless to His sons: reprimand without end, and, when needed, erasure.
This was one face of the Emperor—Lord of Mankind.
And ill luck had it that the persona before Magnus was the Tyrant—and the barbed Seven-Wolves lash was already in His hand.
"Didn't the Savior say… Father had forgiven me?!"
The thought flashed—and panic swallowed him.
He spun to flee.
Too late. He was far too close. No creature of the Warp dared such proximity to humanity's mightiest warrior.
The Emperor seized him one-handed. Psykic backhand after backhand detonated across his soul. The Seven-Wolves lash blurred in a hail of blows.
"Saaaaavior!"
Magnus' shriek cracked into that famous Tom-scream and rose into a chorus of ow-ow-ows.
The Crimson King tasted Father's cruel love again.
This time it was his true body—no avatar to scuttle away. He had come home. It just… wasn't quite what he'd imagined.
It was worse.
…
Aboard the tunnel-borer.
Command deck.
"Wonder if Little Red will thank me one day?"
Eden felt very pleased with himself. He'd done a good thing.
The prodigal returns. Father and son reconcile. A classic. Always good for a pinch of warmth.
And good for the Imperium: one less lurking risk. A fallen Primarch could wreak terrors untold.
Even a never-fallen Konrad Curze had thrown Ultramar into chaos.
If he could sort out Little Red, that was a major win.
KRA-RUMBLE!
The borer hit another speed bump—another solid domain—and a howl roared in from outside.
"Savior—do you mean to start a war?!"
Eden blinked at a projected Chaos shade. "Who's this? You know him?"
His name was legend in the Warp now. Plenty of Chaos things knew him. He didn't know them.
The Chief Magos shook his head. "Your Majesty, my data have no entry for this heretic. Likely not a notable entity."
"Oh."
If it wasn't anyone, Eden didn't spare another thought. If a thing didn't even rate a name, it didn't rate his time.
The greenskin drivers, feeling "challenged," shoved the throttle and pushed the borer even harder.
Hitting a speed bump—by accelerating.
The sky-boring drill screamed. The borer carved straight across the domain's heart. The realm was mauled; the would-be warlord got clipped—
And flattened under the hull.
None of it undeserved. The skulls of men hung from their gear by the dozens.
The borer had to keep its speed. Stopping was not an option.
And this was the Warp. When in doubt—send it. Tell insurance later.
THRUM-THRUM-THRUM-THRUM-THRUM.
Trailing black smoke, the borer left behind a toppled, howling, unaligned lord of Chaos.
The galaxy had changed. Humanity was bullying daemons now.
"Oh, that's cathartic."
The brutish overrun left Eden loose-limbed and refreshed.
In the end, you needed superior toys. Otherwise, mankind only suffered Chaos' lash.
He stopped smiling quickly.
The tunnel-borer burst into a new expanse and clattered toward endless blood-soaked earth.
???
"Throne—t-that's… Khorne's realm?"
Eden's scalp prickled. He nearly popped. How had they rammed the Dark God's front lawn?!
Panic flared.
"Cut speed—no, don't cut—hard over, hard over! We must not go in!"
Too late. Before he could finish, the borer slammed into the Bloodlands, plowing furrows miles wide.
Khorne's daemons pinwheeled into the sky, screaming.
"It's the Daemon-Eater! The Daemon-Eater assaults the Bloodlands!"
"Blood God! Save us!"
The speed of the strike, and the deep, primal awe they felt toward the Savior—the Daemon-Eater—
Turned fear loose across the Bloodlands. It was rout by rumor—a grand psychological victory.
Without the Emperor, the Savior had struck the Blood God's realm.
A breakthrough. If Chaos could assault Holy Terra, why shouldn't mankind counter-raid Chaos' home?
Give it to the Savior's PR ministry and it would be dynamite—ten thousand cuts of the story blasted across the Imperium.
Then they'd name an observance day. Morale would sing.
Eden, however, only felt pain. Pure loss.
An attack at this scale couldn't do much damage. It was hard to scratch the Bloodlands. They were used to being invaded. All day, every day.
This was the core of a god's realm—brass bulwarks and adamantine strata. Just passing through left a spider-web of scuffs along the borer's shields.
The protective film was thinning. Any more and the field would drop hard.
Then the machine might not be able to screen out Chaos at all.
Yes, the engine could be used like a weapon in the Warp—a dump-truck, a Hundred-Ton King, yeeting Chaos realms and creatures out of its lane.
But it was priceless—mankind's future. Using it as a club was insane.
Like throwing a rare gem as a rock. Like driving a priceless research prototype to a scrap-yard weigh-scale.
No math made that worth it.
If the Emperor learned Eden had run the relic like this, He'd cough blood.
Until the Savior's labs cracked the tech and mass-production was real, this could not fly.
Worse, the Dark God in His house was strongest. If caught and dismantled, the borer would be gone—utterly.
So Eden had to keep it alive. Maybe one day its tech could birth purpose-built tunnel-borer battle-tanks.
The dream: a whole borer-truck convoy roaring across the Warp.
"Okay. It's fine. We leave and we're fine."
He breathed deep, trying to steady himself, to smother the clawing anxiety.
The greenskins had already thrown her into a turn and slammed into over-drive to blast out.
Ten seconds. They'd be clear in ten seconds.
The all-filling blood-shadow and the pressure pouring toward them dragged Eden's soul into a pit.
Khorne moved to block.
Worse, the borer couldn't brake. It was a hundred-ton rig on a highway with a trailer full of steel coil.
The only play was… full send.
Eden held his breath and stared into the looming blood-shadow—the Blood God against an Old One artifact.
In his heart he roared, "Hit it, Hundred-Ton King—you have to hold!"
"Blood for the Blood God!"
"Lord of Battle—crush the Daemon-Eater's war-engine!"
Out across the Bloodlands, daemons felt the truth of what was happening and howled prayers, watching their god bar the Savior's machine.
They bellowed for Khorne, certain He would smash the intruder.
WHAM!!!
A burning, kilometer-long blood-axe slammed onto the borer.
The engine did not stop.
It smashed straight into the Blood God.
ROAR—
Space shook. The Blood God's brass panoply split and cracked. With a bellow He went flying.
He blasted through a chain of volcanoes. Plumes of magma speared the sky. Ash turned the Bloodlands to twilight.
Strictly speaking, it wasn't the borer's doing. It was the Warp-to-realspace veil biting back—space's rules punishing a godform that pressed too hard toward the mortal plane.
He was repelled—flung—by law, not by the engine.
That, after all, was how the Warp and the veil restrained its gods; otherwise they'd simply stride into the galaxy and end it.
Khorne had tried to split the veil and slay the Savior. He had been denied.
But to the daemons of Khorne, their god had been run over by the Daemon-Eater's machine.
The sky-pointing, muscle-popping idol and its heaven-boring drill had flattened the Father of War—the great Blood God.
Their invincible lord… had fallen.
The shock was beyond words.
Silence fell across the Bloodlands.
"Blood God…"
Legions of daemons sagged as if their faith had shattered, sobbing as they slumped to their knees.
And above them, the Savior's scandalously buff colossus gazed down from the tunnel-borer's prow…
(End of Chapter)
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