[40k DAOT What-if Fic]
We all know the story. The Men of Iron rebel, humanity degrades into barbarism during the Age of Strife, Slaanesh is born through the depravity of the Aeldari Empire, the Imperium rises and falls and the galaxy burns in strife...
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Five Thousand Years: Part One
The Age of Strife.
A time of darkness and ruin as the ashes of the once glorious Federation lie in the embers of ruin, the last hope to stop Slaanesh's birth dashed to the wind.
Much about it has been forgotten, both willingly and unwillingly. Such horrors inflicted among the psyche of Man that even the Sigilites had knowingly left some of it buried. Battles of such scale that even the Iterator Corps of the Imperium would struggle to piece it all together. Humanity would never know of the final battle at the climax of this epoch. It is madness. It is a battle that will not be told, for it is here that Chaos tried to extinguish the last hopes of man.
On a ruined planet that was once one of the Federation's grandest manufacturing worlds, two heroes stood together, amidst the latest of a long trail of woes that had plagued their journey. The weight of their past battles and sacrifices hung heavily in the air, as they prepared to face their most formidable challenge yet.
The man who would become Emperor shines with the fire that has been killing monsters since the dawn of humanity itself. The other, the High Marshal who had led humanity's psychic armies at their zenith was young, strong not through the workings of fate or elder beings, but by simple circumstances of birth. An Alpha-Plus psyker that had matured and was fully in control, Kathicia Jorenn had once commanded legions— now she was reduced to a wanderer that went from one crisis to another, doing her best to put them out.
The broken Webway Gate hidden from both of them on the planet had now ruptured apart into a fully-fledged Warp hellgate, with Chaos unleashing its full fury seeking to extinguish the last flickers of hope within the hearts of humankind. The Gods themselves looked down upon this pivotal moment, aware that the outcome would shape the course of history. And here and now, they would kill both of them.
Greater Daemons swarmed the sky, while infernal Titans lumbered towards the two on the plains. Far above, daemonships carry the great daemon generals that have for once united to destroy humanity's two most powerful psykers; here and now, they must ensure that the Age of Strife must never end.
Enough power to murder a thousand worlds was unleashed there, as the ground beneath them splits and burns and atomizes in a thousand ways before reforming. The Emperor had long since abandoned his mortal guise for a towering colossus of golden fire with a hundred thousand eyes, and the Marshal had become a spectral wraith of searing blue light that burnt everything it touched with Warpborne radiation.
The clash between these two titanic forces, the embodiment of order and chaos, was an awe-inspiring sight to behold. Their powers collided with cataclysmic force, causing shockwaves that reverberated across the battlefield, shattering the surrounding landscape and obliterating all semblance of normality. Reality itself seemed to warp and twist under the weight of their immense power, as if struggling to contain the cosmic forces at play. The greater abominations of Chaos died in droves, and even the Daemon Kings that had yet to ascend were driven back and banished.
+This trap was long in the making.+ Kathicia Jorenn sent telepathically. +The tide is not stopping.+ She reached out with three arms, strangling an Exalted Bloodthirster while a spear of light blasted out from her right eye, turning a daemon behemoth into ash.
+We were fools to come here.+ The Anathema admitted. +A permanent solution to scrapcode couldn't have possibly existed.+ And yet, that impossible promise had lured both of them to their doom.
In the background, the whine of the Warp slowly grew louder, a Warp Rift lightyears across cracking apart in realspace with the planet as the center. The shapes and forms of the daemons grew indistinct, until it was nothing more than the raw force of the Gods itself hammering down on them, no longer bothering with individual forms.
+The Enemy is trying to trap us!+ Kathicia shouted. +If it drags us down to their Domains, then we'll never escape—+
And humanity would be doomed, that was left unsaid.
Both of them strained, but it was too much. The Anathema had not yet undergone his ascension at Molech, and Kathicia was weary from centuries of battle. Meanwhile the Gods themselves were glutted on centuries of senseless bloodshed, with their fourth member soon reaching maturation. The planet continued to sink into the Warp, while the laughter around them reached a crescendo.
Kathicia gave up, falling to the ground on one knee and reverting back to a human form. Cobalt blue eyes shone with despair out of a tanned face, framed by scarlet hair. Her body was clad in a suit of cracked bronze armor. +We can't win.+
+I refuse to accept that.+ The Anathema hissed through gritted teeth. +Get up! It's not over as long as we are standing!+
+I said 'we'.+ The Marshal said. Too late, the Anathema recognized the sacrificial resolve on her face, even as she drew a ritual circle around herself. +You can.+
+No!+ The Anathema roared. He reached a hand out, while violent Warp-winds tore at his body, carrying the sound of the Gods' cackling. +There has to be another way—+
Kathicia stood up, and her voice rang out in the Empyrean. +Hear me!+ The promise was addressed to the entire realm itself, not the false gods of Chaos. +I willingly enter this trap these parasites have made for us, and in return, the Anathema shall be set free!+
Even in the Warp, the principle of sacrifice, no matter how twisted it had become still held strong. If something was sacrificed, without deception or misdirection, then something of near-equal value would be given back. Now a sacrifice had been given willingly, and the strength of the Marshal enforced that principle, something that raw might could never have achieved. Amidst the raging tides, a portal to realspace opened— one that only the Anathema could pass through.
+Go!+ The High Marshal roared, summoning her war mace back into her hands amidst the now furious howls of Chaos. +Fight! Rebuild! Don't let the flame die out!+
The Anathema halted in his tracks, paralyzed as he watches the portal grow smaller, while at the same time unwilling to leave the one human that even remotely came close to him as a psychic equal behind. +Kathicia...+
The High Marshal turned away to face the oncoming storm. +Don't let them forget what humanity was! What humanity could be!+ A lightning bolt coalesced into her hand. +NEVER STOP FIGHTING, ADAM!+ She gestured at him, and telekinetic force swept him into the portal, the Anathema lacking the will to resist it.
Ejected away from the planet, the Anathema could only watch in space from afar as the Warp completely boiled over and overtook physical reality, enveloping the entire planet and dragging both daemons and Marshal with it, before the rift sealed shut with a thunderous crack.
It was not the last loss he would suffer during the Age of Strife. But it was undoubtedly one of the greatest. Grimly, the Anathema added her name to the ever-growing tally of deaths that he swore would one day make Chaos pay for. He won't cry; cannot cry, because the work is not yet finished.
And for the second time in his life, he is rendered without an equal in might again.
[...]
Time, or a semblance of it, passes. It is an infinite war fought within that place; the hordes of daemons never cease on that planet, while the Marshal kept pulling on the tides of the Warp to empower herself. The rogue planet soars, crashing through thought-fortresses and mind-orgies, as the denizens of the Warp come to test their might against the lone human on the planet.
The Chaos Gods would have preferred to keep it that way forever, and indeed in another time it would have been so. But when the Anathema lit his beacon and set the Warp afire, for a single pivotal moment they flinched away from the burning glory, their cancerous grip on the Warp slackening.
Kathicia Jorenn looked to the sky, and seized her chance. The psyker leapt off the ball of scorched rock, and unlike so many times where she failed, this time she escaped, soaring back to realspace. Too late the Gods notice their escaped prisoner; but they are helpless to do anything, still recoiling from the hateful Anathema's fire.
On a backwater planet in a backwards sector, a fist punched out of thin air, before making a clawing gesture and ripping space apart like a curtain, letting a ragged body stumble through after five thousand years.
