Part 1: The past catches up

Inquisitor Stella awoke in a sweat. The bed chamber she had been granted inside Drop Church #37 echoed with prayers day and night from the next room over. The permeating feeling that the entire church would be dropped onto a battlefield was more likely every hour, as Sangua Terra burned below.

Stella looked at herself in the mirror, her Psyker implants looking worn but battle ready. This most recent nightmare had been of a giant bird, a herald of the Arch Enemy. Fields of dust forming into a Thousand Sons with a Primarch’s glare through the seams of reality. The Warp was knocking – as was evident by the distorted face staring back at her through the mirror.

Stella reached for a cigarette, lighting two before taking a long drag. “You think I’m scared of nightmares? Of getting shot by an infernal bolter? I’d love the sweat release of death, but my duty comes first. Rest assured, you’ll be ash and dust again long before I’m done.”

“Inquisitor,” a void returned from the must beyond the veil. “It is Sairon, you met me in the sewer during the battle of battle sisters. I must give you a grave warning. The Heralds of Tizca are planning to unleash a great peril upon this world.”

“What’s new?” Stella replied.

“There will soon be a brief window where the Heralds will be vulnerable. A ritual which requires their undivided attention. If you -” 

“If I what?”

“- My time is up. I must go before they find my voice. Good luck Inquisitor.”

The mirror cracked. The wall cracked. The floor cracked. Everything shattered into an unending maw of energy. Red eyes and horns shivered awake, a daemon of gargantuan size. Its eyes and jaws opening all around Stella, threatening to consumer her soul whole. Suddenly, the warp energy went dark, like someone turning off the lights.

Stella woke up in a panic, still in bed, shaken awake by Vior’yo, her personal Culexus Assassin.

“Inquisitor,” Vior’yo said through her Animus Speculum. A terrifying visage for any psyker, especially when pinned to a bed. 

The anti-psyker assassin had recently re-appeared in her life and saved her from a deadly sorcerer, for reasons unknown. Still, absconded from one nightmare and forced into a waking one, Stella yelled. “Wha- What’s going on?!”

“Where is the nutri-slop?” Vior’yo the Culexus Assassin demanded. “I require sustenance.”

Stella blinked, baffled, then batted the assassin off her. “What is wrong with you? If we were on Terra, I would have you court-martialed for abandoning your duty and speaking such insolence!”

“If I was on Terra, I would be assassinated as a xeno threat, as you full well know, since you illegally recruited and moulded me in an unauthorised Assassin-Clade. Or did you forget my Tau’va origins already?”

“I miss the time when you were mute, right after I broke your psyche and turned you against your own people. Right. Well, we’re out of nutri-slop. There’s some algae-bread in the grenade store if you need to fuel up,” Stella stated.

“… Acceptable.”

“Wh- huh?”

The assassin had vanished back into the darkness, making Stella doubt if this encounter was even real.

Part 2: The incoming storm

The next day, Stella nervously eyed the Culexus Assassin next to her, precariously lassoing a belt of grenades. It had turned out that Vio’yo had indeed returned from the dead, and was hell bent on staying within sixty feet of her at all times.

“So is this you officially taking orders from me again?” Stella asked the assassin, still wary of her anti-psyker properties..

“No. You are under my protection until you’re not. My path is my own.”

“Vague. I like it,” Stella replied, lighting a cigarette. “You heard from the other assassins? Duncan or Birdie still kicking about?”

Vior’yo started limbering up as the sound of bolter fire echoed across the city block. “How should I know? We didn’t have a secret assassin Vox channel. Where are your Battle Sisters, anyway?”

Stella took a long drag of her cigarette and puffed out a plume of smoke, that cordially mixed with the morning mist on the ground.

“I cannot risk the corruption of the Order of the Prayer Obscure. This is merely a recon mission to uncover the true threat. If it’s just armour of dust and sorcery, I will hail the sisters. If it is what I suspect, it will require a coordinated effort of every Inquisition force in the sector,” Stella explained. “Let’s go.”

A terrifying warp storm glazed the sky above, blue lightning and pearlescent clouds trapping the area in temporal surges. A telltale sign of the narrative inevitability of the Heralds of Tizca.

Stella took cover in an L-shaped building ruin, scurrying across the rubble, so she could get an overview of the approaching battlefield.

“By the destined path of fate, is that Inquisitor Stella?” A crusty voice said.

Inside the ruin was an injured Navigator, sipping a cup of tea through his T-shaped helmet.

“Do I know you?” Stella asked.

“I briefly worked on the Illustrious Vexation as the ship Navigator. “I was on my way to the spaceport with a couple of other crew members when the Heralds of Tuscany attacked.”

“The Heralds of Tizca,” Stella corrected. “So you were the Rogue Trader’s Navigator? That means you can get me off this planet? At the rate we’re going, I was considering an escape from Sangua Terra.  Any of the other crew survive?”

“Let me see,” the Navigator recounted. “There were a couple of voidsmen, Duncan and Zag, followed by someone called Birdie, who kept changing shape and that’s a neat trick.”

“The other assassins!? They’re alive!”

“Then there was h-RERggGHhhHhh,” the Navigator seized up and started shaking violently, his eyes glowing an eerie blue. “NONE SHALL STOP MY COMING. THE AGE OF MAGNUS HAS BEGUN.”

“Oh fuck!” Stella exclaimed. “I should have prayed harder.”

Part 3: The generous offer

A wave of Scarab Occult Terminators and Rubric Marines appeared at the ritual site. The Inquisition was ready, waiting for them to get closer. Vile sorcery rippled through the battlefield, taking down half a dozen space marines and the Helverin immediately.

Inquisitor Stella gave the signal, charging towards the Mutalith Vortex Beast with the Celestial Void Lions at her side. As they did, the dreaded Helldrake circled above.

Stella prayed, and the Death Watch answered, leaping through the bastion and smashing their thunder hammers down. As two great beasts fell, another threat emerged. A daemon primarch of gargantuan proportions.

Magnus. The. Red.

He whispered to her, clearly in her mind. 

My dear Stella, you are truly remarkable in person. You are everything my Father and I envision what humanity should become. But, alas, you are restrained, trapped in a gilded cage of my Father’s Imperium. It must take great strength to put up with the constant stupidity of lesser mortals. 

So, I propose an offer. Join me, and take your rightful place in my Court. I am willing to grant you the rank of Rehati. You will receive the best care and benefits the Imperium cannot offer. I offer you immortality, and help you realise your real potential in Sorcery. You will have a tower near my own, and you will have my sons eager to help you in your pursuit of power. 

The choice is yours, my dear.

A path to salvation, away from the failure of the Imperium, a cut of the galaxy all to herself. No more idiot Saints, only perfection… Then her elite assassins arrived in full and ruined it all. Birdie, the shapeshifting Callidus Assassin. Zag, the beserk Eversor Assassin. Duncan, the dead-eye Vindicare Assassin. Vior’yo, the anti-psyker Culexus Assassin.

The four of them shot, stabbed, grenaded and smashed their way into Magnus, one way or another, in almost perfect symphony. 

Magnus, barely flinched, but shook his head in disappointment. The deal was off, for now.

With the psychic link temporarily severed, High Interrogator Constance shook Stella from her stupor and helped her rejoin the battle. With fury, Stella smashed her Force Sword into the nearest Sorcerer.

A full minute of concentrated firepower from assassins, Celestial Void Lion space marines, and Inquisitors, were directed straight into the Daemon Primarch. Magnus’ immutable form had taken enough punishment, enough for him to retreat from the Materium for now. 

A portal to the warp ripped open underneath them. Stella fell with the Red Primarch, into the warp energies of hell. Vior’yo, the Culexus Assassin, just missed grabbing her hand, becoming the last thing that Stella saw from the material world.

Part 4: An interlude in a place unknown

This is a pretty noble way to go, she thought, as she tumbled through the roaring energies of the immaterium. Then a distant voice – Sairon, a slave to the Heralds of Tizca.

“You should consider his offer.”

Stella’s feet found purchased ground. In a grand tower, trimmed with gold, overlooking Tizca before the burning. Sairon standing by her side in a blue and gold dress, staring at her with amber eyes.

“Sairon,” Stella acknowledged, distracted by the change in scenery.

“This galaxy has known war since the first dawn, but he can give you a brief respite. Time does not move in the way you think it does and you are not locked into eternal servitude to your God Emperor. You see, time is not a river flowing in one direction, it is an ocean in a storm. With the right knowledge-” Sairon paused to hand Stella an ancient and gilded Tome of Sorcery. “-you can direct the course of your destiny. You will no longer be a caged bird, but a free soul who can realise your true potential in sorcery.”

Sairon glided her hand over Stella’s overused cranial Psyker-implants on the side of her head, immediately taking the pain away, continuing to weave her hand through Stella’s hair.

“The decision is yours – remember that you are a free agent here. No chains.”

Stella gripped the balcony, looking out at the peaceful city. “None of this is real is it? This is sorcery, lies,” Stella said. Her soul begged her to leave, but every moment of respite was a blessing.

“Reality is what you choose it to be. But… putting everything to the side. I’d love to be by your side. Not many mortals get an offer from the Crimson King face-to-face,” Sairon reiterated. “When you are ready, I’ll take you back to your old perceived reality. I’m sure we’ll meet again.”

Stella grabbed Sairon’s hand, internally torn. “I’m not sure I can thank you, this ranks pretty high on the heresy scale. You are a slave to the Arch-Enemy, so words are meaningless. But you and big red have been pretty hospitable to me, so… there’s that.”

They looked at Tizca before the burning, in peaceful silence for a while longer.

“I’m ready to go,” Stella finally said.

Sairon led Stella to the door, past a mirror showing the brutal battle which had taken place earlier that day. Perhaps less of a battle and more of a misunderstanding, the mirror hinted.

Through the door, Stella found herself in the Urbano Sprawl Sewers once again, knee deep in sewage with the sounds of war echoing from above ground. Stella looked at the Tome she was given and discarded it, opting to pull out a cigarette instead.

“One battle after another,” she sighed.