[tense ominous music]
[sniffs]
Do you not tire of failure, Morior?
Know your place, Ephisis.
Look at this.
[fire crackling]
[Ephisis] A day gone, this was a cradle of plague.
A vibrant forest of decay:
spore towers reached to the choking clouds
they themselves had birthed,
bubbling fauna wept into the diseased earth,
and the septus-call of plague winds
whispered across the mulch-rock of ravines.
It was perfect, Morior.
- And–? - And now fire steals all else from view.
Another failure.
Another Great Garden burned by the puppets of a false god.
Centuries of our labour undone in a matter of hours.
Even you could not have foreseen this, sorcerer.
[Morior] But no matter.
Fires go out, and we will return blight-life to this world.
Our legacy shall be eternal.
[sighs] No.
You have sown your last ill-fated crop.
Since we left the Eye, you have led us to nothing but ash.
You would take my place?
[Ephisis] I have seen your end and it is now.
Morior Dermatis, Once-Lord of the Aching Pox.
I will kill you where you stand, traitor.
With what power?
The Grandfather is finished with you.
And yet his herald still stands with me.
[laughs] How blind you are.
[grunts, gasps]
[snickering]
[Morior] Nex...
No.
This cannot be...
I have served.
[Ephisis] You have failed.
Again.
Like a weakling spore unable to find purchase
in even the dankest of climes.
No! I am not done!
I have work yet to do!
[giggling]
[groans]
Embrace your death.
You are fortunate that you will only be cognisant enough
to suffer the first one.
[straining]
[groaning]
[roaring]
[groaning]
[shouting]
[cackling]
[shouting]
[cackling]
[roaring]
[cackling]
Indeed, Nex.
This will be the last of our work we watch burn.
The rot we sow will not be so easily uprooted.
And what of you three?
Does your story end today
or shall you carry the wind of plague from this place?
[mechanical whirring]
You will serve me as you served him?
No, you misunderstand.
This is not a question of choice.
It is not a question at all.
Those bodies are no longer yours to pledge.
Let us see what our patron has to make of you.
Which of you has the strength to pay your penance?
[gasping]
[exhales]
Very well, Sephtus, you shall be my harbinger.
[tense music]
Signal the withdrawal.
We have much to do.
[heavy footsteps]
[warp rift crackling]
[exhales]
Positional accuracy?
Cogitating, lord.
Sensorium confirms translation to realspace.
[coughs] Acquiring astral map references now.
[coughs softly]
Temporal placement?
[Master of Auspex] Analysing known light decay curve.
Cogitators estimate we are in real-time.
We have traversed the warp as expected, lord.
[grunts softly] Retract the shielding.
[loud rumble]
[mechanical rattling]
[tense ominous music]
[static buzzing]
[ominous choral music]
[gasps] Reading Emperor and Retribution class battleships,
multiple Lunar cruisers
and at least four squadrons of escorts in support. [gasps]
Dark Gods.
There’s an entire Imperial battlegroup.
Yes.
And the facility itself is not without armament.
[Sephtus] How do you know?
I have been inside.
- When? - Soon.
- One minute to weapons range. - [alert beeping]
[Ephisis] Hold course.
Close to boarding range of the facility.
[Master of Ordnance] Lord, we do not have the armament to...
Our shields will fail...
We cannot possibly...
[Ephisis] You.
Take his place.
[alert continues beeping]
That meat-sack was right.
We cannot triumph here.
Thirty seconds to weapons range.
Only a fool thinks redemption easy.
Are you a fool, Sephtus?
[mechanical whirring]
[tense ominous music]
What is the plan?
[snickers]
A plan precedes action.
Our work is already done.
You are as blunt to the Grandfather’s teaching
as Morior was.
In the right storm,
the seeds of the future can be blown to take root in the past.
[alarm beeping]
We are intercepting increased chatter amongst the Imperials, my lord.
Multiple energy surges and targeting idents.
They are prepared to fire.
Do you feel it yet, Sephtus?
The ill-seeds of tomorrow swollen ripe.
[Master of Helm] Weapons range achieved.
Hold course.
[tense dramatic music]
It is already too late.
[Ephisis] Listen.
[screaming]
[screaming continues]
[horrified screaming over vox-channel]
[screaming fades]
I never tire of this moment.
Life birthed in entropy.
[flies buzzing]
[shouting]
[tense dramatic music]
[screams]
[groaning]
[heavy footsteps]
[flies buzzing]
[Sephtus] How is this possible?
Did you learn nothing from our years adrift in the Immaterium?
Time is neither constant nor linear.
The past is not free of the future.
That which will be done is possible exactly because it happens.
[scoffs] You are speaking in the riddles of Daemons.
[chuckles] How do you suggest I explain colour to a blind man?
But I will grant you one more gift.
We stand in an Astropathic relay...
From here, Astropaths cast their minds out through the warp,
sending messages that are without time,
answers that may arrive before the question was ever asked.
[Sephtus] I am no neophyte or fool.
How does that aid us?
No neophyte perhaps...
[laughs]
Come, we continue to the central chamber.
We are close to the beginning now.
[flies buzzing]
[corruption creeping]
[tense ominous music]
There’s water?
[Ephisis] Mankind has forever set their thoughts adrift in currents.
Here.
[Sephtus grunts] Melta charges?
[Ephisis] The volcano cannon of a Titan couldn’t breach this.
No.
Any blast that could breach this door
would vaporise everything in the chamber.
Our enemy know the prize is too great to be compromised.
[grunts] Then what are we doing here?
The flaw in their defence is that they built a door at all.
Everything that opens can be opened.
[cackling]
How long?
Seven hours for seven signs, Chosen.
Seven afflictions must the harbinger bear.
[cackling]
[groaning]
[snickering]
[Nex grunts]
[Sephtus groans]
Bastard.
[gasping]
[cackling]
- [groaning] - [Nex snickering]
[screaming]
[buzzing]
[Nex snickering]
[breathing heavily]
[Nex's voice deepens] Seven poxes birthed in death.
[rumbling growl]
[groaning]
[mechanical whirring]
Do you see, Morior,
do you see yet the great plan Grandfather laid out for me?
[screeching]
Look.
Witness the truth that you were too blunt to see.
[gasping]
Kill me...
And deprive you of your redemption?
No, the lesson is not over.
[squealing]
[Ephisis] Every plague of the body dies with the host.
Spores, so perfectly birthed,
are naught but frail embers
without sufficient life to infect.
Such desperate genesis...
All of the material comes to naught.
But the mind...
The soul.
A pathogen so virulent,
it bred the raw stuff of the Immaterium.
Shall I tell you of the Song of Seven?
Shall I sing its withering refrain?
[ominous choral music]
You are the raw will of the Grandfather.
An ever-shifting wretch of pain and madness.
Through you
will birth a disease with no beginning and no end.
A plague of mind-madness like the galaxy has never seen.
[roaring]
[groaning]
[shrieking]
[wailing]
[roaring]
[wailing, groaning]
Sing now.
Let the void hear your lament.
[heavy rhythmic beating]
[tense ominous music]
[sustained chiming]
[groaning]
The wind of plague blows eternal.
[ominous choral music]