Watching the Great Horned Rat stride into the rift leading to the Webway, a rare smile flickered across the Emperor's weary and solemn face.
Within his titanic psychic divinations, the Master of Mankind glimpsed a vastly different future: the Imperium of Man remained a decaying, wretched carcass, yet it was no longer haunted by the specter of total extinction. The vermin lurking beneath the foundations of humanity's grand hives had excavated a sprawling Under-Empire of their own.
The denizens of that subterranean realm, along with their dark warrens and structures, existed as a distorted reflection of the Imperium, a shadow that humanity could no longer excise, just as one cannot murder their own silhouette.
Yet, by that same token, whenever Xenos threatened the borders of the Imperium, these Skaven would burst forth to protect their own "domain," fighting alongside humanity to repel the alien and the Warp-spawn. Once the greater threat was quelled, the two would descend back into a familiar, localized cycle of violence, with humans hunting the ratmen back into the gutters like common pests.
The Emperor perceived that this dark god, an entity that still harbored a human soul, had no desire to see humanity extinguished. It was a perilous gamble.
Therefore, there was no need for a formal pact with this deity of treachery and spite. It was enough to bind him with the cold chains of shared interest. When the time came, the Emperor would no longer have to stand alone against the Four.
…
Inside the Webway, the sky was a crushing expanse of pitch-black. Thousands of Legio Custodes and Sisters of Silence were massed here, locked in a desperate struggle against a never-ending tide of Daemons.
The Custodians were the pinnacle of the Emperor's bio-alchemy. These "Golden Knights" swung their Guardian Spears with a velocity far exceeding that of an Astartes; their power blades, flickering with blue energy, carved through Bloodletters, Plaguebearers, Daemonettes, and Horrors with practiced ease.
Suddenly, a booming resonance manifested behind the Custodian line, drawing the eyes of every loyalist and daemon alike.
"No... by the Emperor..." a Custodian muttered, staring up at a figure so immense its features were lost in shadow. All that could be clearly discerned was the baleful, glowing green mark of a downward triangle upon its chest.
"SKARR—BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!" A Bloodletter hesitated for a fraction of a second before its berserker rage took hold. It raised its Hellblade and charged.
Lucius reached down as if plucking a pebble from a riverbank. In a single motion, he scooped up a handful of the attacking daemons and crushed them within his fist, snuffing out their essences instantly.
"Hush… do not disturb me," the voice of the Great Horned Rat hissed, sounding like the collective chattering of a billion vermin. He stepped forward. The chaotic, shifting terrain of the Webway suddenly stabilized, taking on the appearance of an ancient temple.
Massive marble-like pillars rose on all sides. At the far end stood a figure resembling a man in a white robe, yet his eyes burned crimson and great daemonic wings sprouted from his back.
From the sheer Warp-potency radiating from him, power equal to any of the Great Daemons, it was clear: this was the daemon born of humanity's first murder. He was the one who dealt "true damage" to mankind, the echo that could directly wound the Emperor: Drach'nyen!
However, the daemon specializing in the ruin of man was currently utterly bewildered.
The one approaching was not Enosh, the human Emperor who had witnessed his birth, but a Xenos shadow-god!
Drach'nyen's specialized lethality against humans was useless here; against the Great Horned Rat, he was a lamb before a wolf. His essence—murder, betrayal, and low-cunning—was nothing but fuel for the deity standing before him.
The Great Horned Rat loomed over Drach'nyen. "They are mine. All mine. All belongs to the Great Horned Rat. Give me what is mine!"
"I have no quarrel with you, alien god! Begone! I have a debt of sin to settle with humanity!" Drach'nyen roared. He transformed into a massive, jagged daemon sword, hovering in the air, its blade thrumming with malice as it pointed at Lucius.
"Heh... worry not. I shall give you plenty of time to settle your debts. I will not kill you; I only take what belongs to me." The Great Horned Rat chuckled and reached out a clawed hand for the blade.
Drach'nyen did not hesitate. His Warp energy flared to a blinding intensity as he swung to cleave the rat-god in two.
But Lucius, now the god of the Skaven, simply swiped his hand through the air. Despite Drach'nyen's power to wound the Emperor, Lucius caught the blade in his palm with terrifying ease.
"GRAAAAAAAAGH—!!"
The daemon let out a horrific shriek. Countless jagged teeth and gnashing maws erupted from the sword's hilt, savagely tearing at the Great Horned Rat's skeletal claws.
Lucius merely tightened his grip, and Drach'nyen's power began to drain away like water from a breached dam.
Drach'nyen possessed three unique traits: first, he could possess any human or human creation; second, he could dominate the minds of lesser daemons; third, no human or human-made weapon could harm him.
Unfortunately for the daemon, not one of these traits applied to the Great Horned Rat.
The Warp-aspects of betrayal, murder, and spite contained within the blade poured into Lucius, making his divine authority feel more complete than ever before.
"Only the final pieces remain... the Alpha Legion... the legion of human secrets and treachery. When their Primarch is fully within my grasp, I shall finally step into the Formless Distortion and ascend as the Fifth Chaos God, surpassing even the Emperor!"
Lucius talked to himself with triumphant glee, brandishing the now-weakened Drach'nyen in his hand like a toy.
He wanted to shatter the daemon, but he could not. Abaddon the Despoiler would eventually claim this blade to forge his own destiny; to destroy it here would collapse the timeline and trigger an unimaginable backlash.
By now, the Custodians and Sisters of Silence had broken through the daemonic encirclement and reached the temple. They witnessed the daemon that even the Emperor feared being held captive in the hand of a monstrous god. Even in their hardened hearts, a tremor of dread took root.
Their absolute loyalty began to waver under the entity's presence... an urge to flee, to abandon honor, to use their virtues as stepping stones for self-preservation. Mortals usually turned into honorless madmen instantly before the Great Horned Rat, yet these Custodians held their ground against the god's aura through sheer biological conditioning.
Suddenly, words from the Emperor began to echo in the mind of one blood-drenched Custodian: Ra Endymion. Through a psychic link, the Master of Mankind shared memories of his own youth with his guardian.
Lucius sensed this psychic intervention. Realizing this was to be the "Golden Jailer" of Drach'nyen, he shrunk the daemon sword down to the size of a mortal blade and hurled it toward the Custodian.
Agony lanced through Ra's mind, but it was accompanied by the command of his liege:
"Run! Vessel of Drach'nyen... son of the water-thief... last Tribune... Ra Endymion, RUN! Do not look back!"
Simultaneously, the Great Horned Rat's aura whispered a different path: "Abandon your honor. Abandon your loyalty. Take this sword and seize everything foryourself!"
Ra Endymion convulsed under the split-second schizophrenia of the pain. But a moment later, his eyes cleared with a terrifying resolve.
Enduring the agony and the whispers of treachery, he took the sword and began to sprint, stumbling away from the light toward the bottomless darkness of the Webway's far reaches.
"Brave lad. You have spirit." Even Lucius had to admire that small, golden silhouette. To carry that daemon into the dark while resisting the combined pressure of himself and Drach'nyen was a feat of ultimate will.
The Great Horned Rat turned his gaze back to the golden line of Custodians standing ready, and toward the space-time rift of the Great Heresy era as it slowly spiraled shut.
"Farewell, Master of Mankind. I hope the next time we meet, you shall behold me in my full glory."