The streets of the planetary capital echoed with the joyful cries of the populace. The fires of the Uprising had settled down, taking with them the last remnants of the corrupt old order. After centuries of oppression under the increasingly decadent, cruel and unstable Giorba family, Slawkenberg was free at last.

Millions of citizens partied like they never had before in their lives. The celebrations had been going on for five days, the people's enthusiasm never abating from morning to dusk, and dusk to dawn. Official announcements by the Liberation Council, these champions of the people who had ousted the hated Giorba, had declared that they would continue for three more days, after which work would have to resume so that Slawkenberg could stand proudly on its own.

And none were more celebrated than Ciaphas Cain, the Liberator. Already there was talk of renaming the planetary capital Cainopolis in his honor.

In the city's drinking dens, where alcohol flowed freely from barrels looted from the nobility's gilded palaces, celebrants swapped stories of the Liberator's heroic actions during the Uprising. The tales were many and fanciful, yet for each of them, no matter how outlandish, there were plenty willing to swear to their veracity, claiming to have witnessed them happen with their own eyes. And so, with each passing hour, the legend of Cain the Liberator grew, another deed added to it.

How, despite having been indoctrinated by the Imperium during his entire childhood, the Liberator had broken free of his mental shackles and sworn to fight for justice as he cradled the body of his lost love, the lady Emeli, callously murdered at the Governor's orders for refusing his advances.

How he had, with one impassioned speech, convinced nearly the entire Planetary Defense Force to join the rebellion instead of opening fire on their own brothers and sisters in defense of a greedy tyrant.

How he had led the fight against the Giorba's dreaded enforcers, black-clad thugs who for centuries had kept the people of Slawkenberg down with their cruelty, killing their monstrous leader Colonel Arken, with a single blow of his chainsword severing the bastard's head.

How he had hunted down the vile, corrupt and despised Governor Caesariovi Giorba as he tried to escape the people's wrath aboard his private transport, cornering the fat bastard in the small, isolated spaceport where somehow Cain had known the most hated man on Slawkenberg had placed his emergency escape, before killing him in single combat (not that the inbred cretin would have been much of a challenge to Cain, even the drunkest celebrant had to admit).

These tales, and many more, were told over and over, growing with each retelling as was the manner of such things. With Cain the Liberator leading them, surely a new golden age awaited Slawkenberg, free of the cruelties of the Imperium's rule.

Sitting in the luxurious apartments that, until recently, had belonged to the unmourned Planetary Governor with a crystal glass full of expensive amasec on the table before me, I took a deep breath, and tried my best not to scream. My aide, after all, was just on the other side of the door, and I had no idea whether the walls were soundproofed or not – although come to think of it, they most likely were, given the rumors that had circulated about the activities of the suite's previous occupant.

How ?! How had it come to this ?!

I would never have considered myself the most faithful servant of the God-Emperor, far from it, but I wasn't a heretic either. Or at least I hadn't been when I had graduated from the Schola, because I was fairly certain that had changed now. But try as I might, I couldn't think of a way I could possibly have foreseen things going quite that catastrophically wrong.

When the news that the Commissar nominally tasked with handling disciplinary matters for the PDF of Slawkenberg had finally succumbed to two decades of heavy drinking had reached me, I hadn't believed my luck. Usually, such postings were reserved for the crippled or disgraced members of the Commissariat : no one could expect a single individual to keep up with the petty and not-so-petty infractions of hundreds of thousands of soldiers (a number that, on more populated worlds, could easily go into the millions). But I cared a lot less about my career than I did about avoiding getting shot, and this had seemed like the best way to spend my entire life of service in relative comfort and total obscurity, far away from any battlefield.

And to top it all of, Slawkenberg was a vacation world, as close to a paradise world as you could get while still supporting a sizeable population and economy. People from the upper-middle classes of the Imperium came from all across the Sector aboard regular transport ships, to spend a few months or a few years on the planet, enjoying its climate and sights before returning to their own, hyper-polluted homeworlds. It was also far from any important shipping lanes and other obvious targets for the enemies of the Imperium, and according to the records I had found, hadn't seen anything violent happen on its soil for a thousand years.

If I played my cards right once I got there, I could look forward to decades of easy living, doing the bare minimum of paperwork to avoid drawing attention from the Commissariat and spending the rest of my time visiting the kind of establishments it would normally have been my job to keep troopers away from.

So I had greased the right palms, gracefully forgiven several outstanding debts I was owed by Administratum drones with more enthusiasm for card games than good sense, and arranged for the paperwork of my first assignment to be discreetly altered so that I ended up shipped off to Slawkenberg, with none of my old Schola instructors being any the wiser until it was too late for anyone to do anything about it without having to deal with far more paperwork than I was worth.

Of course, if I had known what was really waiting for me at the end of the uneventful Warp journey, I would have gone with my initial plan and gotten myself attached to an artillery Regiment. Well, no. Truthfully, if I had known, I would have taken being assigned to the bloody Catachan Jungle Fighters rather than being sent to Slawkenberg. Because, as it turned out, away from the luxurious resorts that were all most of the off-worlders coming to relax on Slawkenberg ever saw, the entire planet had been a powder-keg just waiting for a spark to detonate.

The late and unlamented Governor, like the rest of his family before him, had been very careful in keeping up appearances around the tourists, ensuring their luxurious vacations weren't ruined by the sight of starving rioters being gunned down or the screams of captured 'conspirators' and 'heretics' being tortured in lightless dungeons. Indeed, before my arrival on the planet, I hadn't had the slightest idea that the political situation had gotten so bad, or I would never have come here in the first place.

The PDF was chronically underfunded, and it had been centuries since the planet had last provided a Regiment to the Imperial Guard, instead providing all-expenses-paid vacations to some of the Sector's most influential nobles, who made sure the Administratum continued to not remember the planet's existence when it came to calculating tithes.

Amidst such corruption and incompetence, it wasn't surprising that Chaos Cults had prospered, although somehow the Giorbas themselves hadn't been involved, which I had taken to mean even the Chaos Gods had refused to have anything to do with them. With the regime kept busy oppressing its own population and going along with whatever the Governor's latest whims were, the only reason the cults hadn't taken over long before now was that they had been too busy fighting each other to decide who would inherit Slawkenberg.

I had no doubt that within a few years they would have grown too bold for even the local administration to ignore. At which point things would have erupted into a messy, many-sided civil war that would have required the intervention of the Imperial Guard to put down, probably removing the Giorba in the process and paving the way for an eventual brighter future for Slawkenberg under the Imperium's aegis.

Unfortunately, things hadn't gone down like this, and I couldn't shake the feeling that it was at least partly my fault. Not long after my arrival, I'd been approached by various parties trying to sound me off to see if I were sympathetic to their cause. And, well, I was : Giorba was just that vile, but not enough to risk my own skin, let alone my soul. But my attempts to demur had instead drawn more attention to myself, and by the time I'd realized this wasn't just opposition to a truly incompetent, corrupt and vicious Governor but a heretical conspiracy I had gotten involved with, everyone else had been convinced I was fully in.

And then, in my efforts to survive the pit of vipers I had unwittingly thrown myself into, I had somehow paved the way for an alliance of several of the planet's cults, secret organizations, and revolutionary movements, leading to the creation of the Liberation Council with me as its unfortunate figurehead.

I had desperately looked for someone to sell the conspiracy to in order to save my hide, but there had seemingly not been anyone on the whole damned planet not interested in joining it, apart from the Governor himself and I wouldn't have trusted the man to tie his own shoelaces, let alone take my warnings seriously. The only other options I could think of, the Arbites, had seemed promising at first, being as painfully strict and literal in their interpretation of the Lex as most of their kind.

But the imbecile in charge had managed to get himself and all his men killed by charging straight into the middle of the gathering I'd revealed to him, without reinforcements, ordering everyone to surrender in the name of the God-Emperor, apparently convinced his score of Judges could overcome the dozens of very dangerous individuals who had assembled. Thankfully, that had been so stupid that I'd managed to convince everyone that'd been my plan all along once the fighting had stopped and the blood of the Arbites had started to dry on the walls.

The Giorba had thoroughly turned the entire planet against them, apart from the local Ecclesiarchy representatives as well a handful of cronies who happened to include the commanders of the system's handful of voidcrafts. Coincidentally, those just so happened to be able to rain death upon pretty much any location on the planet where the tyrant of the day felt the people were getting a bit too uppity. The only reason the Uprising hadn't ended in cities being wiped out from orbit until the population surrendered was that this time the local tech-priests had been on our side, and had quietly helped us get troops aboard the flotilla. The fact that even the cogboys had had enough of Giorba's groxshit was telling of just how bad the situation had been, really.

I had been on Slawkenberg for four local years, or sixty-four standard months, when the Uprising had been declared. At the time, I'd been in the middle of the capital, and I'd only barely managed to talk my way out of having to fight the entire PDF, realizing only after the fact that what I'd said could easily be interpreted as an injunction for them to join the rebellion. And then, I'd needed to fight the chief thug of the Governor, but that hadn't been difficult at all : the man had been all bluster and intimidation, with no real skill. I'd actually been surprised by how easy he'd been to defeat.

After that, I had been certain the confusion of the actual revolution would be the perfect time for me to get the hell out of here. While the rest of the Council did the hard work of overthrowing the government, I had managed to make my way to a small, out-of-the-way spaceport, hoping to con my way on one of the transports, get on a Warp-capable ship in orbit, and leave with the rest of the panicked wealthy tourists making a run for it now that the peasants were in revolt. It would have meant changing my name and living in constant fear of the Commissariat (or worse, the Inquisition) finding me, but I had been confident I could live out the rest of my days in peace.

Instead, I had met Caesariovi Giorba himself in the spaceport, and been forced to defend myself when the madman had ordered his guards to kill me. By the time his pursuers had caught up, they had found me standing over the prone Governor with his own ceremonial bolt pistol in my hand, not that the man had any idea how to use it. Before he could tell them anything about how I had offered to accompany him and betray the rest of the Council to the Imperium, I had pulled the trigger and vaporised his skull, an execution that had been recorded by one of them using his augmetic eye and had played on every screen on the planet by now.

At that point, I had managed to convince the bunch of heavily armed rebels that had surrounded me that I had been hunting Giorba all along, instead of trying to abandon them to their inevitable doom once the Imperium learned what had happened. They had brought me back to the capital, where I had been welcomed by a triumph instead of the scene of urban warfare I had half-expected. Apparently, the battle hadn't lasted long after my departure.

Half in a daze, I had spouted off some platitudes about the strength of unity having overcome the evil tyrant, which had been broadcast all across the planet. Before I had time to fully realize what was happening, I had been ushered into the newly conquered Governor's palace to meet with the other members of the newly proclaimed Liberation Council, all of whom had decided to make me their leader, probably because none of them wanted one of the others to get the job and they all thought they could intimidate or manipulate me into doing what they wanted. Which, to be fair, was entirely true : every single one of these lunatics terrified me.

To my carefully concealed surprise, the days that had followed had been almost normal. Overthrowing the God-Emperor's appointed representative didn't solve all the logistical issues that came with ruling a world. I had to admit that, as far as such things went, Slawkenberg wasn't too bad a place for a rebellion against the Imperium to take place.

Slawkenberg's climate allowed for the cultivation of enough food for its population and the off-world visitors, although a disproportionate section of the agricultural sector was given over to luxury foodstuffs that were incredibly inefficient from a nutritional value to effort perspective. So we wouldn't starve, at least. But the planet didn't have much industry, and the armed forces of the Liberation Council were far from the standards of the Imperial Guard I had been taught about at the Schola. The only reason they had been able to defeat Giorba's thugs was that years of brutalizing defenceless citizens didn't prepare you to deal with someone with guns actually fighting back. Well, that and the help of the enraged mobs.

In time, the Imperium would come and crush our little rebellion into the ground. I knew enough about the way things worked, however, to know that such a day was likely months, even years into the future. Slawkenberg just wasn't important enough to warrant being bumped up the list of Sector command's priorities, unless someone highly placed had a soft spot for it as a vacation spot. Even then, assembling a task force capable of retaking a planet and then sending them here would take time.

A more pressing concern was the population of Slawkenberg, who had just gotten a taste of violently overthrowing its leaders. If they thought I didn't care about them or that I had failed them in any way, it wouldn't take long for a new revolt to brew, and I would be lucky to end up dying as swift a death as the unlamented Governor. Which meant that, until I found a way to leave this nest of maniacs and heretics behind me and get the frak out of here, I would need to make sure to keep the mobs happy with the Liberation Council's work.

And that meant that I had to keep playing nanny to a bunch of heretics drunk on success so that they didn't turn on one another or, more importantly, started sacrificing people to their infernal masters, which would make the rest of the masses angry and looking for someone to blame. Which, given that it was my face on the pict-sheets and broadcasts, would probably be me.

"Sir," a polite voice called out from the other side, "there is a young lady here to see you, if you are available."

I blinked, thinking quickly. There was only one kind of 'young lady' that my aide would've considered letting into my quarters. I quickly checked myself in a nearby mirror : there was nothing wrong with my appearance that could betray I had been brooding. The uniform I wore was an exact replica of the one I had walked out of the Schola Progenium with, except with the Imperial aquila removed. I didn't know where my aide had found it, and I hadn't asked.

"Come in," I answered, and the door opened to reveal my aide.

Ferik Jurgen was, as ever, impeccably dressed and shaven as he entered the room. The time he had spent as a captive to a particularly vile cult of Nurgle had left him with a pathological hatred for uncleanliness that I could well understand. After I had rescued him from their clutches (quite by accident), he had sworn his loyalty to me, and truth be told, I couldn't have asked for a better aide.

Of course, if I had had the slightest inkling at the time he was a psyker and not just another unfortunate soul captured to use as fuel for the Nurglites' demented rituals, I would probably have finished him off myself. But I hadn't, and thankfully Jurgen's considerable psychic power didn't extend to mind-reading. Much of his past was still a mystery to me, but I had put together a few of the key details. Born on the ice-world of Valhalla, Jurgen's gifts had manifested early in his youth. Normally this would have seen him taken by the Black Ships and sent off to Terra, but he'd been unlucky enough to be captured by a void trader of ill repute, who trafficked psykers to various madmen across the Segmentum. He understandably didn't like to speak about it, but somehow, he had ended up on Slawkenberg.

While I had been trying to get off-world during the Uprising, Jurgen had been fighting on the frontlines. I hadn't seen it myself, and he seemed embarrassed by the whole thing, but from what I had heard he had more or less wiped out an entire loyalist company of the PDF by himself, including a handful of tanks, and was widely considered a Hero of the Liberation in his own right. Apparently two decades of using psychic powers without losing yourself to the Warp, ending with spending several months stewing in your own anger along with your filth, made for an extremely effective training regimen. Well, that, or one of the Chaos Gods had taken a liking to him.

"Sir," he greeted me as he entered, before gesturing to the person accompanying him. "This is the young lady in question."

"Lord Cain," the young woman greeted me with a deep bow, her long hair flowing around her face most elegantly as she did so. "I am Krystabel."

In most circumstances, I would have been very pleased to have such a beautiful young woman enter my quarters. Unfortunately, this was no mere courtesan, but one of the Handmaidens of Emeli.

The Handmaidens were a cult of Slaaneshi worshippers, made up exclusively of the graduates of Saint Trynia Academy for the Daughters of Gentlefolk in the south. I had no idea when exactly the Academy had fallen to the Dark Powers, but by the time I had arrived on Slawkenberg it had been fully in the grasp of the Dark Prince, led by the headmistress and sorceress Emeli Duboir. Of course, back then she had still been a mortal woman – a very beautiful and seductive mortal woman, at that.

Out of all the heretics who had sought to take advantage of the conditions on Slawkenberg, Emeli had been the most dangerous in my opinion, and the one who had done most of the work in dragging me into this mess. I had met her for the first time at one of the parties I'd been invited to not long after my arrival on the planet, before I'd known what was going on. One thing had led to another, and by the time I'd realized she was a heretic and worshipper of the Dark Prince, the two of us had been seeing each other for several months.

I had thought the cursed necklace I had obtained in a remote and suspicious antiquity shop would be just the thing to get Emeli off my back – all of its previous owners had died messily, and I'd been able to tell there was something with it just by looking at it. But it had turned out that the jewels which had led all the previous owners to madness and death were actually Eldar soul-stones, containing the spirits of dead xenos and protecting them from the fate awaiting them after death or something like that.

Emeli had been certain I had known all along, and sacrificing these captive souls to her patron deity had seen her rewarded with ascension to full-fledged daemonhood not long before the Uprising. I had thought at least that would get her out of my hair, but Slaanesh wasn't the Dark God of Obsession without reason. Somehow, Emeli had convinced herself that I had knowingly handed her over the key to reaching immortality instead of seizing it for myself, and saw it as the most romantic thing imaginable.

Thankfully, as a daemon, she couldn't remain corporeal on Slawkenberg for long, and had gone to the Warp a few hours after her transformation, to do whatever it is young Daemon Princesses do in the Realms of Chaos. But her connection to the members of her cult remained. The Handmaidens were spread throughout all of Slawkenberg's high society, and had provided a lot of intelligence that had helped make the Uprising possible. They were also all trained in sorcery to one degree or another, along with other arts I was reasonably certain their parents had not expected them to learn when they had shipped them off to Saint Trynia's.

"Nice to meet you, Krystabel," I told her with a smile plastered on my face. Jurgen had already left, closing the door behind him and leaving the two of us alone. "Now, what can I do for you ?"

"We've found the last remnant of the tyrant's forces," she told me with a predatory smile that was only made slightly less unnerving by the knowledge it wasn't directed at me.

"Oh ? Well done." I'd had no idea there even were any remaining Giorba forces on Slawkenberg before now. But I guessed it made sense : on something the size of a planet, there were plenty of places to hide. "I expected nothing less from the Handmaidens. Where are they ?"

"During the Uprising, a company of loyalist scum fled the capital and linked up with some of the private guards of the tourists," she said, all but spitting the last word. To the surprise of precisely no one with a functioning brain (so a lot of people), the off-worlders who had lived the high life on Slawkenberg while the rest of the population suffered under Giorba's heel weren't exactly popular with the revolutionaries. "They took refuge in an abandoned fortress in the mountains to the west."

She handed me a data-slate containing a map of the region. I looked at it, suppressing a frown as I took in the heavily defensible position. The mountains would make aerial bombardment difficult, and despite its age the structure looked robust enough to withstand the fire of what few pitiful artillery pieces the PDF had in store. And a ground attack, which looked to be our only option, would be hideously vulnerable on the way in.

Judging by the look Krystabel was giving me, it was clear she expected me to lead the charge, and probably slaughter them all single-handedly while I was at it. Of course, that was out of the question, but I couldn't say that out loud. If the rest of the Liberation Council realized the truth about me, they would turn on me in a heartbeat. And then I would die, and my soul would either end up in front of the Golden Throne to explain myself, or be with Emeli for all eternity. I wasn't yet certain which was worse.

"Thank you for bringing this to my attention," I told her with every shred of sincerity I could fake. I had to figure a way out of this. Surely I could do this. Let's see … Wait.

"This," I said, pointing out at something on the map. "Is that a path ?"

"Hmm ? Yes, lord," she confirmed with a confused frown. "It goes around and through the mountains, but it does eventually lead back to the fortress."

"More specifically, to its back," I pointed out, feeling something vaguely resembling a plan coalesce in my mind. "And somehow I doubt the troops inside will be disciplined enough to keep watch there, especially if they are distracted."

"I see," Krystabel nodded. "So while our troops advance on the main road, a party will walk through the rough path in order to take them by surprise, providing an opening for their fellows to advance." She looked up at me with renewed admiration in her gaze, and I'd have felt bad about deceiving her if she hadn't been a heretic. "I'm sure this rabble will prove no match for someone of your prodigious martial talent !"

Frak, I thought, too late. The Handmaiden was correct. After my apparent heroic dispatch of the Governor, everyone would expect me to be the one leading this suicidal attack in the middle of enemy territory. And if I didn't do it, then my reputation, which at the moment was the only thing keeping me alive, would plummet.

"Exactly," I replied, suppressing the urge to scream in horror.

No, this could still work, I told myself. I'd bring Jurgen with me. All I had to do was bring him into the fortress, and then his psychic powers would do the rest. Walking through the mountains would be a pain, but I had been trained to keep up with the Guardsmen I'd been supposed to lead on the battlefield. I could endure a little trek.

General Mahlone, once of the Slawkenberg Planetary Defense Force, now representative of the overwhelming majority of them who had chosen to side with the Liberation Council, looked in awe through his binoculars at the Liberator. Cain stood on the walls of the reclaimed fortress, holding up what Mahlone was pretty sure was the head of Cardinal Drogiro Giorba. It was difficult to tell without the ridiculous hat that had sat on the head of the hated Governor's second cousin since he'd bought his position, but the distinctive features of the Giorba were hard to miss.

Next to the Liberator, he could see his aide Jurgen, as well as the handful of troopers who'd accompanied him on this dangerous mission. None of them were missing, or even looked to be injured.

When the Liberator had explained his plan on the way, the General had protested, not wanting Slawkenberg's savior to risk his life in so risky an operation. But in truth, he hadn't expected his protests to dissuade the Liberator. Cain hadn't even needed to come for this, Mahlone and his men were more than capable of dealing with a handful of guns-for-hire themselves.

But Cain had insisted, not willing to stay behind while the troops risked their lives and instead taking the lead of the most dangerous assignment. A few hours after his departure, his scouts had heard screams and the sound of fighting coming from the fortress, swiftly falling silent. For a moment, the General had feared the worse, before the Liberator had appeared on the ramparts.

Around him, his troops were cheering wildly as the news spread. Then the gates of the fortress opened, armsmen emerging with their hands cautiously raised above their heads. Mahlone ordered his troops to advance and take them prisoners – clearly the Liberator had convinced them that they didn't need to give their lives to protect their masters, who were unworthy of such devotion. Really, he should have known that would happen : while Cain was always eager to spill the blood of tyrants, he much preferred helping their slaves break free of their shackles, much as he himself had done.

As someone who had dedicated himself to the God of War after witnessing one too many case of good soldiers dying because of incompetent leaders given their position because of their birth, Mahlone whole-heartedly approved of this behavior. Truly, Cain was a worthy leader for the Liberation Council.

Chief Clerk Jafar, once of the Adeptus Administratum, now the overseer of the civilian administration the Liberation Council was building to replace its corrupt and incompetent predecessor, suppressed a glower as he read the report from the task force dispatched to the mountains. How ? How had he done it again ?

Jafar had been informed about the operation, of course. You couldn't move that many soldiers out of the capital without his agents learning about it, but in this case he'd actually been informed as a member of the Liberation Council. He had expected a quick victory, of course, but not this. Instead of slaughtering a handful of armsmen, Cain had turned them to the cause of the rebellion and, far more importantly, had personally slain yet another Giorba. The Cardinal hadn't been quite as hated as the Governor, but news of his death had still been enough to renew the celebrations' enthusiasm.

For centuries, the Ecclesiarchy on Slawkenberg had supported every cruelty of the Governor, in exchange for wealth and the ability to do pretty much anything they wanted. Great gilded cathedrals had been built by slave labour for the tourists to admire even as entire city districts went without the funds necessary for maintenance of vital infrastructure. Then there had been the 'penitents', which were random citizens taken off the streets and made to whip themselves in order to expiate their sins and bring the Emperor's benevolence to the planet. Not to mention the armed guards who had done the Cardinal's biding, in blatant violation of the laws forbidding the Ecclesiarchy to keep men under arms, along with many, many other deeds that had thoroughly disillusioned the people of Slawkenberg about any nobility the Adeptus Ministorum might possess.

Jafar hadn't known Drogiro was there. As far as he was aware, nobody had known where the Cardinal had fled during the Uprising. From what he'd heard, even the Handmaidens, those courtesans playing at spycraft, had known he'd taken refuge in that fortress along with the tourists' surviving guards. Yet somehow, Cain had known, and seized the opportunity to earn yet more glory for himself in the eyes of the Pantheon. A Cardinal, even one such as Drogiro, was a worthy offering to the True Gods.

Cain was clever, Jafar had to admit. He had managed to avoid dedicating himself to any of the Powers, instead walking a precarious line of equilibrium that had them outbid one another in their attempts to court him. From Slaanesh, he had received the services of the Handmaidens, and the patronage of Emeli, whom he had ushered into apotheosis. From Khorne, he had been given the strength to triumph over any enemy, and the adoration of the troops he had led into battle against the hated Imperium. Even Tzeentch, Jafar's own patron, clearly favored him, having gifted him a servant as powerful and loyal as Ferik Jurgen. Only Nurgle took no part in this divine bidding war, which made sense since the Rotting One's influence had been purged from the planet as a result of Cain's own machinations long before the Uprising.

When he'd met Cain for the first time, Jafar had thought him a useful pawn of Emeli Duboir, nothing more. He'd soon be proven wrong, as the man masterfully orchestrated the utter destruction of the Adeptus Arbites' presence on Slawkenberg, before forging alliance after alliance between the disparate factions that sought to overthrow the Giorbas. As the leader of those within the Imperial bureaucracy on Slawkenberg who had grown disgusted by the Governor's actions and wanted Change, no matter what cost, Jafar had seen the way the wind was blowing and had joined the Liberation Council early.

The Liberator couldn't be replaced. He was too important. Killing him, if it were at all possible, would break the morale of Slawkenberg's population and leave them vulnerable. Jafar knew no one on the Liberation Council could replace Cain : no one had the necessary charisma, certainly not Jafar himself, who was well aware of his limitations. No, Cain would remain Slawkenberg's leader, at least publicly. But Jafar firmly intended to turn the Liberator into a figurehead, while he ruled over the planet from the shadows as a grey eminence.

It would not be easy. As the day's events had once more proven, Cain was a master strategist and a cunning manipulator. To overthrow his control over the Liberation Council without bringing the entire rebellion down in flames would require delicacy and ingenuity.

Jafar could admit to himself that part of him was looking forward to it. It would be a pleasure to match wits against someone as skilled in the games of intrigue as the Liberator.

In the Realms of Chaos, Emeli sighed dreamily as she watched her beloved through the eyes of her Handmaidens as he returned to Slawkenberg's capital under the renewed acclaims of the population. They had only been separated for a handful of days, but time meant little in the Empyrean, and even less to a follower of Slaanesh cut off from the object of her desires.

She could have taken him with her when she had ascended, keeping him as her most favored soul in the Warp and granting him all manners of pleasures undreamt of by any purely mortal mind for the rest of eternity. But that wasn't enough. Her beloved Ciaphas deserved more than that.

He deserved everything. After all, he had given her the key to immortality. What greater proof of love could there possibly be ?

Emeli wanted Ciaphas' name to be known far and wide, and for his glory to be recognized by all. She wanted him to follow her into eternity as an equal. Then, the two of them would know such glory together, forever and ever …

She shook herself from her reveries before her stray thoughts could alter her surroundings. Glorious as that golden future would be, there was much she needed to do to ensure it came to pass. She needed to master and grow her new powers, and play her part in the Great Game so that she was in a position to help her beloved walk the path that would one day bring him to her side.

Hopefully, she'd manage to spend some time in the Materium with him before then.

"You are certain ?" asked the old man, his eyes blazing with fury. In the dark prayer room, the light of the flickering candles cast his severe visage into sharp shadows that made him look even more terrible than he usually did, which was an achievement.

"Yes, Lord Inquisitor," replied the Acolyte, kneeling before his master's throne. "The message was clear. Slawkenberg has fallen to the Ruinous Powers."

"Then it shall be purged by fire and blade," declared the Inquisitor. "Contact Commander Chenkov, and assemble all the troops that can be mustered. We shall expunge the taint of heresy from that world and return it to the light of the God-Emperor !"

"As you will, Lord Karamazov !"

AN : Well, it took over a year, but I finally did it. I might have rushed it, but I could probably tinker with this chapter for months and still not be completely satisfied, so there it is.

April's Fool Day, everybody. This isn't a one-shot, but another story, one that hopefully will remain shorter than the rest of my works (including AYGWM, which has grown far beyond my initial plans).

Nowadays, Warhammer fiction is taken seriously. Which makes sense, given the amount of effort lots of talented people have put into building up the setting. But we should all remember that this hasn't always been the case. And writing a story with Cain on the other team would have been appallingly depressing if I had tried to do it "seriously".

So this story is NOT a serious one. It is full-on crack, and this time, by all the Gods, I will earn that descriptor.

This is an homage to Warhammer 40000's roots. Its weird, parody, ham-fisted, over-the-top, crazy-ass roots. In this story, the Sisters of Battle are made up of zealous fanatics with big guns and no grasp of actual tactics, the Imperial Guard sends millions of conscripts to die stupidly, all of the Imperium's leaders are inbred and incompetent at anything beyond shifting blame and playing the equivalent of office politics, the High Lords are a bunch of senile old fools, the Dark Gods are self-sabotaging idiots, the Orks are comic relief, the Mechanicus worship ancient toasters, the Imperial bureaucracy is the true Arch-Enemy, and the Necrons are mindless killer robots in thrall to very much not-sundered Star Gods.

And amidst it all, Cain is the only one with common sense.

May the spirits of Bruva Alfabusa and Adeptus Ridiculous look kindly upon this endeavor.

That's all for today. I hope you enjoy this silly little idea of mine. I have an entire story planned for it, though I admit I have no idea when I'll find the time to advance it between my other projects.

Zahariel out.