Lo! Listen, ye’ faithful—hear our tale of the Empyrean immortal!
Thine world is bless’d, not by false Corpse-Gods, but by our coming.
We are Cataclysm Undivided, Unabated, Undefeated,
And we bring forth the generosity of freedom from mortal suffering,
As there can be no greater liberation than from the coils of worldly life.
Mark this day, rejoice in this night, for thy world has spun its last.
`Twas many sunken suns ago when we birthed this fate for our own world.
Now thy history is ours, entwined and betwixt, and thou shalt be,
Like us, eternal, remembered by our worlds in rivers of blood and oceans of souls.
Bask in thy salvation, as we embraced ours.
`Twas young Mordefir, worlds and moons distant, that first found the Calling Empyreal.
As Vaktez starved, and lesser wills scavenged, Mordefir hunted, and was hunted.
The scarred Hound that found him was no feast of meat, but of opportunity scorn’d,
And Mordefir did feast from it, and grew broad of its might.
Once returned, shamans of empty guts yet full veins turnt upon boyish Mordefir.
But the youth was a boy no more, and the first rivers of red did run for Kharnath.
With skull-adorned belt and his belly filled with the flesh of his tribe,
For Mordefir had been chosen to bring Empyreal Brass to the Long Night.
The hunger north of Mordefir’s tribe was one of the mind, yet it twisted in knots as deep.
Scholars poured over texts they did not understand, seeking light that was not there.
Yet it was the darkling Raven that found me, and from it a gaze unto fate without limits,
And I did study from it, and grew keen of its wisdom.
Once learned, I rallied my fellows, and showed them the truths they sought.
When their heads had had their fill, `twas then that the fires did light for Tchar.
And in sapphire glory and eyes newly opened, I set out with the backing of my tribe,
For I had been chosen to bring Empyreal Flame to the Long Night.
As fear consumed the fever’d dying in the west, hope was Galpalos’s burden.
Son of a doctor, brother of mine, young Galpalos sought to cure the inexorable.
`Twas the bulbous Crow that pecked at flesh decayed that taught him better,
And Galpalos did witness its cawing sermon, and grew fat of its gifts.
With vim renewed, Galpalos gave unto his colleagues the same hope we grant you now.
Freedom from miserable suffering dispensed, the rot did fester for Nieglen.
Alone but emboldened, Galpalos ventured forth to spread the gifts he had crafted,
For Galpalos had been chosen to bring Empyreal Hope to the Long Night.
And in the east, youthful Lunacius was hidden away in ancient, broken sanctuaries.
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But shuddering from the world yonder was not the fate his youth desired.
A coiled Serpent revealed to Lunacius the possibility of worlds beyond his confines,
And Lunacius did look upon them with wonder, and grew hungry for more.
Aspirational Lunacius slew his familial captors, and shattered the walls that held him.
Sired by a God yet to be, Lunacius struck out into the world ahead in Loesh’s name.
The young traveler achieved a mastery of survival, and rallied others to his future,
For Lunacius had been chosen to bring Empyreal Dreams to the Long Night.
Our origins, entwined with thine, before thy Imperium was conceived of
By thy baleful Corpse-God, or before He made His deal with our Patrons on Molech.
We precede He, our gifts older and more potent than thy worship misplaced,
And yet the beauty of our Gift is that it is the Everchanging, but of singular purpose.
We liberated Vaktez from the horror of Long Night.
We free thou, now, from the failure of the Indomitus, the lies of false-prophets.
Embrace the Empyrean!
Embrace Chaos Eternal!
Be emancipated from the limitations of life, for we are the Undivided Cataclysm,
And such is our Gift, Everchanging.
Bless’d are you to hear my words, as I am Veralith, Unmaker of Fate, and the doom of all things, alive or dead.
***
Mordefir watched his sister-of-bond as she recited the heavily-paraphrased epic of their mutual origins. Sausage-like fingers twitched at his sides as she recounted his meeting with the Hound. They clenched into curled slabs of meat as she reminded him of his blood-brother’s safety within the ancient walls of captivity, walls which kept the tribes that had taken Mordefir from his family at bay. The tribes that he had then slaughtered. Vaktez was so long ago, but the irony of the situation was not lost on Mordefir—that it had been he that was kidnapped by the tribes, while Lunacius had longed for the sense of freedom they provided.
Perhaps that was the design of the Gods. If Lunacius had been kidnapped with the tribes and their parents had hidden Mordefir away, contentedness may have prevented all this from happening. All this being, of course, the exsanguination of countless worlds over the eons, now including the planet known as Foxos VI. But what had happened had happened, and now Galpalos’s Everchanging plague was working its wonders again. The blood would flow.
Mordefir’s attention had flicked, briefly, to the viewport out of their vessel, toward Foxos VI as the world faded to a deep shade of crimson. But his gaze flicked back to Veralith when he realized that she knew he was there, watching her. She had not said anything about his presence, as though waiting for him to speak. May as well, he thought to himself. “Why do you preach our tale to the dying?” he asked her.
Veralith, previously floating a bit off the deck of their vessel, landed upon her talons before turning to him. Two large, wide, blue eyes looked him over before she curled one of her hands around the front of her chin, holding her head inquisitively. “Because as I have just told them, their fates are now intertwined with ours.”
Mordefir shook his head and tightened the grip of his still-clenched fists. “Their fates end here. They are a footnote in our story, counted among a long catalogue of worlds we have ended, and nothing more.”
“Oh, Mordy,” Veralith chided, then hovered herself over to him, moving two of her feather-backed hands to hold each of his cheeks while her other two hands held him by his shoulders. In a way, Mordefir hated her, for how she babied him. Yet in a way, Mordefir loved her, for how she was right to. Among their crew, Mordefir knew he could best Galpalos and Lunacius in single combat if he tried. He also knew that the three of them together would never so much as scratch their sister. “Every life we extinguish in this manner is thrown onto the pile for us to inherit later. Every soul waits for us to splurge upon when we make our final sacrifice, and ascend to godhood.” She then turned away from him and gestured toward Foxos VI, albeit keeping one of her left hands on his right cheek. “Yes, in the moment, they are nothing, and becoming even less. But in the future, when we’ve completed our work, they will be everything. Don’t you think that’s beautiful for them, in a way?”
No, frankly, he did not find much beauty in it. Death was death, and it could not be said that any on Foxos VI was enjoying a particularly kind or merciful end. The Everchanging plague sloughed flesh from bone and reduced the living to a slurry of crimson, that the blood might flow free, as was the design for their Gods—perfect, for Loesh; lethal, for Niegling; adaptive, for Tchar; and bloody, for Kharnath. Regardless of the species it was unleashed upon, or the immunities that species had developed for itself, the Everchanging was constant in only one way: the end result. It may have been beautiful if you were a creature of the Empyrean, powered by the release of souls and embodying raw emotion, but Mordefir and his ilk were not—at least, not yet.
Mordefir said none of this.
Instead, he turned away from his sister-of-bond and strode across the deck. “I have little time for beauty, and even less time for plans. Such is your realm, sister. Tell me, how fares your Agent? Is she ready to face the Night Daemon?”
“Not yet, but soon. She is where she needs to be, and will be ready for the battles we have in store for her, when the time is right,” Veralith assured him, crossing two sets of arms.
“She had better be,” Mordefir said, looking back to his sister. “Cronos is the only thing capable of upending everything we’ve built—the only thing that isn’t otherwise preoccupied in the galaxy, that is. She had better be ready to end the blasted daemon, or their beautiful sacrifice,” he began, and pointed toward the remains of Foxos VI, “will have been for naught.”