Thirteen days later, the Great Horned Rat, proving his uncanny punctuality, struck. Thirteen Verminlords stood in a planetary alignment, forming a ritual circle that encompassed the entire globe. Every soul upon its surface was the tithe.
The moment the altar ignited, a billion lives were extinguished in a heartbeat. In their place, a colossal warp rift tore across the firmament. As the empyrean bled into reality, the leaden sky took on an ominous, sickly green luminescence, and crystalline shards of warpstone began to precipitate from the roiling clouds.
Some desperate, curious souls attempted to consume these green crystals; their agonized wails preceded horrific physical mutations that warped them into unrecognizable piles of flesh.
Lucius merely observed: Eating raw warpstone? Bold move.
The ratmen of Clan Craddock had already retreated to their burrow-fleets, salvaging every scrap of value, especially the Breeders.
"Efficient enough," Lucius murmured. From his throne, he watched the tiny world as if he were a crone peering into a crystal ball. "Now, let us see what you will do. If you cannot run, you shall wait."
His servants were using the sacrificial energy to tear a jagged wound in the Materium, allowing Lucius to extend his reach.
"Sigh… sometimes I truly wonder if it is better to be a Dark God or to remain just shy of divinity. The resistance of the physical universe prevents me from entering in my true form; I cannot act as directly as I did on Ornsworld."
It was the final defiance of reality against the Warp. A fully ascended entity cannot manifest in the Materium without an anchor. To strike directly, one must either possess a vessel, much like the Corpse-Emperor, or create a rift of such magnitude that a single, metaphorical hand can reach through.
Surveying the transfigured world, Alpharius turned to the few remaining sons at his side. "My time has come. You, however, still have a chance. Escape this place. Return to Terra. Tell that fool Guilliman everything you have seen. Ensure the Imperium is prepared."
The several dozen ancient Veterans surrounding him looked upon their father with profound grief, yet they could not refuse his command. They knelt as one. "As you command, Father."
They were branded traitors in the eyes of the Imperium; they knew what fate awaited them upon their return. But these veterans of ten thousand years did not care. Alpharius, too, trusted that Guilliman's stubborn, logical mind would eventually accept and believe the intelligence they carried.
As his sons boarded one of the few surviving starships, vessels crowded with panicking refugees, they broke orbit. Alpharius knew that as long as he remained behind, the gaze of the predator would not follow them.
Alpharius stood atop the highest spire of the Hive, the thin air of the stratosphere having no effect on his transhuman biology. His bald head and features were an exact mirror of his brother, Omegon. Bathed in the black, tempestuous rain, he roared toward the heavens: "I am here! Blight Bringer! Dread Power! Reveal yourself!"
As if in answer, the sky was sheared open like a piece of parchment. A rift shaped like a great eye stared down, revealing the maddening, senseless horrors of the Warp. Yet, what emerged was not a tide of daemons, but a towering Verminlord clad in the Pythian Scales, the exact twin of his own power armor.
Though the form was monstrously altered, the instinct of blood and soul allowed Alpharius to recognize the thing instantly. It was his brother.
Alpharius let out a bitter laugh. "I never imagined we would meet again like this."
Omegon shifted into a humanoid guise, and the two Primarchs stood face-to-face, a meeting ten millennia in the making.
"I always regretted that our thoughts were not unified. The Hydra should not have multiple minds; it only serves to fracture our strength," Omegon said. "But now, we can be one again, brother."
Alpharius closed his eyes, exerting his psychic will to glimpse the future. He did not possess the prophetic mastery of Konrad Curze, but through sheer effort, he could see threads of fate.
"Oh? What is it you wish to see?" Lucius sensed the Primarch's soul reaching into the Warp. With a thought, he peeled back the veil of the past. He showed Alpharius the moment of the bargain: the towering, golden figure of the Emperor concluding a deal with a horned, colossal shadow, handing over Omegon's warp essence as payment.
Alpharius recoiled in horror, gasping as the vision of the golden figure bartering away his own son was seared into his mind.
"What is it, my brother?" Omegon asked, watching Alpharius's sudden terror.
Alpharius's face was ashen, cold sweat beading on his brow. He looked at his brother with a mixture of pity and righteous fury. "We... we were never anything more than tools to Him. Assets to be traded for His own designs."
"No... He loves you. He simply loves other things more than you."
A voice thundered from the eye-like rift, a sound that shook the very foundations of the planet. Then, a skeletal, pale claw, colossal enough to span a star system, reached out from the void.
Alpharius watched in slumped resignation as the gargantuan claw closed around the entire planet like a child grasping a marble. With a sickening wrench, the world was torn from its orbital path and dragged bodily into the Warp.
In an instant, every living thing on the planet was rendered into soul-energy. The entire population of Ocando paid the price for Lucius's transit. As a Skaven, it was only natural to want the prize without paying the cost yourself.
Finally, the twin Primarchs, Alpharius and Omegon, stood before the Great Horned Rat. Within a realm of disordered filth and chaotic shadow, Alpharius looked up at the silhouette seated upon the throne beneath the Great Bell of Doom.
"Submit to me," the Great Horned Rat's voice echoed. "I shall grant you the power to achieve your ends."
Alpharius smiled mockingly. "Hah! I wished to be a thorn in the side of Chaos, a guardian for humanity from within the dark. Will you grant me that?"
To his surprise, Lucius sounded genuinely intrigued. "And why not? Vermin and Man walked forth from Terra together. Where humanity spreads, the rat follows across the galaxy. Go, protect humanity according to your whims... for in protecting them, you preserve the habitat of the Skaven. But know this truth—humanity can never escape what dwells beneath!"
Alpharius considered this for a final, silent moment, before falling to one knee in grim despair.
"Be at ease. You are both vital pieces on the board."
Lucius reached out and extracted Alpharius's warp essence as well. Only then did he realize the true nature of the twins: one represented the Secret Betrayal, the other the Secret Guardian. Had he not intervened, the Alpha Legion might have played a pivotal role in a "40K End Times" that Games Workshop would never have written.
Thus, Lucius had his wish. He now possessed both heads of the Hydra.