Thanks to the Custodian fleet's unimaginable shield tech and precise tractor fields, casualties among the pilgrims were minimal.
Most ships remained structurally intact, and losses were far lower than expected.
But relief soon gave way to fresh anxiety.
They had been hurled by Magnus's sorcery into the galaxy's most infamous danger zone—the Maelstrom.
This place, at the edge of the galaxy, where reality and nightmare merge, spans hundreds of light-years.
In space, it's a massive, slowly rotating spiral of nebulae, dust, and stellar matter—many stars and worlds within long gone.
Navigating here is like walking on thin ice, where a single misstep means plunging into madness.
Ravaged by violent warp storms, the region is nearly impossible to cross, making it a natural refuge for pirates, traitors, xenos, outcasts, and all manner of cosmic refuse.
Chaos and danger rule here.
The instant they realized they were in the Maelstrom, the pilgrims sought a way out.
But their Navigators soon discovered something hopeless: the Astronomican, which guides Imperial ships through the Warp, was invisible here.
Combined with the Maelstrom's own wild, chaotic currents, escape was a pipe dream.
Yet once again, the Custodian fleet summoned by Datch brought hope.
As a fallen empire that once stood atop the cosmos, defeated the Extermination Protocols, and ascended,
the Custodes had technology beyond imagination.
After some mysterious scans and analyses, an extremely complex star chart was shared with the Macragge's Honour's main database.
Belisarius Cawl, upon decoding it and projecting it on the strategic holotable,
found his normally calm, synthetic voice crackling with emotion.
"The Omnissiah... has revealed Himself... This is... this is unbelievable!"
Cawl bent close to the console, mechanical eyes reflecting the streaming data and images, his massive frame trembling in excitement.
Compared to other warp rifts, the Maelstrom could be called "stable."
But it's not static—its size and turbulence wax and wane, and worlds shift position.
Because of its rich resources, the Imperium once tried to map its currents, hoping to exploit the region.
But any star chart based on three-dimensional coordinates was useless here.
The Imperium wasted time and resources, gained nothing, and many researchers went mad or lost themselves.
What the Custodes provided was a four-dimensional dynamic star chart:
not only mapping current spatial coordinates,
but also, using mathematical models Cawl couldn't comprehend, predicting and visualizing the Maelstrom's structure and relatively safe paths across different timelines.
To Cawl, this was more than a map—it was a window into the universe's underlying laws, the supreme secret Mechanicus sages had always dreamed of.
"With this chart, we can plan a path through the Maelstrom."
Cawl's words finally set everyone's mind at ease: as long as they could leave, that was enough.
The Custodian fleet was powerful, making the Imperials feel safe.
Unfortunately, its presence was time-limited.
Once the summoning ended, it would leave the universe.
The Pilgrimage fleet, having taken battle damage, needed time for repairs.
The exhausted people also required rest to recover for the journey ahead.
Under these circumstances, they couldn't leave immediately.
To maximize benefit, the Custodian fleet was assigned a final mission:
purge and secure the surrounding area, carving out a relatively safe zone for the pilgrims.
For the powers entrenched in the Maelstrom, this was a calamity from nowhere—utterly senseless and out of the blue.
The Custodes hadn't brought the titanic constructs or stellar forges Datch dreamed of,
but their standard firepower was already overwhelming for the local powers.
Their mighty ships swept through the twisted star fields, targeting world after world corrupted by Chaos, occupied by traitors, or befouled by xenos.
Their first target was a daemon world ruled by a corpulent giant, blessed by Slaanesh and gluttony, with a mob of Noise Marines on the surface.
The giant was slain by saturation fire; the Noise Marines were blasted to ash.
Pirates hiding in shattered asteroid belts, worshippers of Khorne,
had barely begun a hunt in the Blood God's name when the Custodian fleet locked on. The pirates and the whole asteroid field were vaporized.
A world held by Tzeentch's crystal labyrinth was next. Its bizarre magical defenses were shattered, and the entire planet, with all its blue daemons, was turned into a glass marble.
A cloud belt of acid fog, teeming with a vast swarm of plague flies,
was cleansed by the Custodes, who unleashed holy fire to purge every last warp-spawn.
Using their might, the Custodes cleansed hundreds of worlds around the fleet.
Surviving daemons, traitors, and xenos fled in terror, at any cost, to escape the area.
When they learned these destroyers had been sent into the Maelstrom by Magnus, their rage was boundless, their curses endless.
…
Three days passed quickly. As the countdown reached zero, the Custodian fleet, in the midst of bombarding another daemon world, vanished in a stream of light.
Seeing this, the denizens of that daemon world ran about in wild joy.
They didn't know why the destroyers had vanished, but were glad to have survived.
Meanwhile, the Pilgrimage fleet used the precious time to rest and repair.
Cawl, with his tech-priests and servitors, boarded damaged ships and worked tirelessly.
Guilliman and the commanders tallied casualties and losses, planning the next steps.
The Astartes checked their gear, counted losses, and restocked the armory.
Mortal soldiers and crew, supervised by commissars and priests, rebuilt and drilled.
Guilliman was angry at not capturing Magnus.
But the Primarch quickly suppressed that emotion and threw himself into command.
When repairs finished, the fleet set out again,
cautiously entering deeper, more unpredictable currents of the Maelstrom,
hoping to return to Imperial space by the calculated route.
But as they passed a lost Eldar world, they received a mysterious signal.
Guilliman convened a meeting.
Cawl, Inquisitor Greyfax, Marshal Amalrich of the Black Templars, and Emperor's Champion Garrien all advised against curiosity, lest new troubles arise.
But Supreme Grand Master Voldus of the Grey Knights and Living Saint Celestine disagreed, arguing the world was a nexus of fate,
and that using it well could help them reach Terra faster.
As Guilliman hesitated, urgent alarms sounded:
A warp entity was attacking the Macragge's Honour.
The Grey Knights quickly identified the attacker: Kairos Fateweaver, Tzeentch's changeling greater daemon.
….
At the card table, Datch got the news, threw down his cards, and ran to find Fateweaver—
intending to capture this Tzeentchian daemon with a Pokéball and make it his own Pokémon.
…
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