Chapter Text
Coincidence.
That's how all the great things that shape reality start.
Since the War in Heaven, there hasn't been a moment where the realm known as the Warp has been at peace.
Even at this very moments the Immaterium is ravaged by the Great Game of the Chaos Gods.
The never-ending struggle for supremacy between four beings of unimaginable power.
Khorne, Lord of blood, war and hatred.
Nurgle, Sovereign of pestilence, despair and entropy.
Tzeentch, Master of magic, fate and change.
Slaanesh, Dark prince of pleasure, excess and obsession.
Their hosts of daemons, fragments of their patron gods, simultaneously slaves of a greater will and completely independent, fight each other.
Led by mighty greater daemons, ascended princes or even the fearsome fallen Primarchs, they engage in a war without end and without numbers, every single one of them attempting to attract their patron's favor.
All the while scavengers, unbound daemons, lurk at the edges seeking prey and opportunity in the scraps left by this eternal conflict.
Though this is only one, limited, way to look at the Great Game.
The Warp is a realm of madness, unbound by mortal rationality.
What the mortal souls see is merely a futile attempt of the mind to bring order and reason to a thing anathema to it.
Looking from another perspective, one would see that all of this lesser beings are simple parts of the greater whole, like the cells that make up a living organism.
Towering behemoths, personifications of literal cataclysms, sentient natural disasters that bring ruin to everything in their path.
All the while lesser beings and their constituent parts lurk around them, avoiding the gaze of entities infinitely greater than them.
This is another way to perceive the True Gods of Chaos.
Though neither of them is the correct perspective, there is no such thing in this realm.
These two seemingly contradictory states of being exist simultaneously.
The Warp is a twisted reflection of the Materium.
Every action of the Gods a mirror of their agent's efforts in realspace.
By sheer coincidence each of the Gods prepare for a decisive strike at the same instant.
In realspace a champion of the Blood God is teleported into the command center of an Imperial Crusade and successfully slaughters the entire leadership of the planetary campaign, leading to the death of ninety percent of imperial combatants.
In the Warp, Khorne stands up from his skull throne, grabs a massive sword and rears back, preparing a swing strong enough to cleave the galaxy in two.
His favored hound, the daemon Primarch Angron, mad with rage, rushes forward, ending the existence of a million daemons in an instant before bellowing a challenge, asking if anyone is strong enough to end his pain.
In realspace, a cultist of the Plague Lord smiles with rotten teeth hidden behind a mask as she steps into the schola for the children of nobility. The plague she will spread will infect the planet's leadership, triggering a series of events that will lead to the planet becoming a daemon world.
In the Warp, Nurgle grabs his cauldron and rears back as well, preparing to flood the warp with plagues so virulent as to be capable of erasing existence itself.
His most prized slave, the fallen Primarch Mortarion, steps forward to answer his brother's challenge, as he advances the battlefield around him clears as the sheer power of the poxes inside of his body can't be endured even by other daemons of Nurgle.
In realspace, a cultist of the master of Fate laughs as the forces of an inquisitor gun them down, joyous in the knowledge that the carefully planted evidence in their headquarters will lead to sector wide purges that will leave it incapable of withstanding the awakening of several Necron Tomb Worlds.
In the Warp, Tzeentch, unwilling to resort to barbaric melee, weaves a spell of such potency that it is capable of snuffing out the galactic core, shattering the entire galaxy.
Their beloved puppet, the traitor Primarch Magnus appears to challenge his brothers, the simple presence of his impossible form causing the battlefield to shift with each step.
In realspace, a champion of the Dark prince conduct an orchestra of horrors, under his directions cultists torture each other, their screams merging together in an unholy symphony that is used to drive this sub-sector's astropathic choir mad and cause a massive communication blackout.
In the Warp, Slaanesh prepared his decisive strike, in her hands the symbolic manifestation of all of the Eldar souls they consumed took the form of a spear, a living memorial to the fall of the Eldar an the birth of their doom.
Its most beloved paramour, the forsaken Primarch Fulgrim slithered forward, wanting to experience the thrill of fighting a four-way conflict with his brothers.
By pure coincidence the Gods and their slaves struck all at once, their attacks striking and resonating with one another.
They countered each other perfectly, not one of them came out on top.
The power of the conflict was so strong that a fragment detached from each of the Gods.
Before even a moment passed, the fighting resumed, the Gods not realizing or even caring about their lost fragments.
These four fragments fell down...
And down...
And even further down...
Until they reached a very peculiar place.
The forge of souls, realm of the daemon Vashtorr the Arkifane, the manifestation of innovation unbound by limitations or sanity.
It noticed the fragments and collected them.
Immediately thoughts of weapons and machines fueled by the true essence of the Gods flashed before its eyes, but that could not happen.
These fragments had an important destiny, the Forge was merely a temporary stop in their journey.
Still Vashtorr remained undeterred, gathering it's tools and servants it began to work.
Depending on the perspective of the viewer, the process took millennia or just a few seconds.
At the end the four fragments had been fused into a singular one, though it carried one addition, a sliver of the Arkifane's own essence.
Then the daemon of the Forge let the fragment go.
Its travels continued until it entered another realm. A realm of flame, of power, of pure energy waiting to be released in all of its destructive glory.
At the center of this realm stood a massive humanoid bull made of black iron and magma, it had a monstrous face with massive horns jutting out of its forehead.
This was Hasut, The Dark Father, God of fire, greed and tyranny. It examined the fragment, then with a simple grunt allowed it to bathe in the raw elemental might of its realm, infusing it with a sliver of its own essence.
Then the shard continued its travel.
At a certain point it was surrounded by strange spirits, daemons in the shapes of mythical creatures devouring themselves.
These entities represented the self destructive aspect of Chaos, the hatred of everything that eventually turned on itself.
This was the most pure form of this hatred.
The desire to destroy one's self, not to send a message or to escape from pain.
No, this self destruction was enacted out of spite, hurting oneself because of the knowledge that this caused pain to others and for no other reason.
Pure unadulterated Malice.
The fragment absorbed this lesson. Then it continued to fall.
It feel deeper into the Warp, where even the Gods don't enjoy treading.
Perhaps because it reminds them of their own mortality.
In the deepest layers of the Immaterium is the graveyard of all the gods that didn't manage to be born.
A planet sized sphere, composed entirely of rats, too busy devouring each other to realize that their dreams of overwhelming reality had turned to dust.
A pyramid of obsidian sat there, untouched by time. Inside raged the spirit of a man who once was known as the Greatest Necromancer, his great plan foiled at the last moment, forced to become undying and caged forever.
And finally the last one.
The stillborn corpse of the Dark King, a perfectly black sphere of nothingness, a God smothered at the last second by a Man denying His divinity.
From the corpse crawled forward a daemon.
This daemon once had a name.
Once it had plunged humanity into a bloody civil war, turning brother against brother.
Once it shattered the Golden Dream of Mankind.
Now its only purpose was to teach this fragment one, final, lesson.
"[_____]. That's the only name you'll hear. [_____]. It means the end and the death. [_____]. I am [_____]. [_____] is all around you. [_____] is the man beside you. [_____] will gnaw on your bones. Look out! [_____] is here."
The fragment understood the lesson.
It understood the true nature of Chaos.
Chaos is the End and the Death.
The End of sanity.
And the Death of hope.
[_____] started laughing as the fragment continued it's travel.
Until it fell off of reality itself and into a new one.
To bring ruin to a whole new realm.
***
POV switch: the [ADMINISTRATOR] Shard.
The fragment that embodied the concept of [ADMINISTRATION] itself reviewed its situation once again.
After the disastrous arrival in this dimensional cluster, which caused the death of the Thinker Entity [EDEN], the Warrior Entity [ZION], unable to process what the host species defined as 'grief', decided to deploy all the high level Shards in active mode and then proceeded to self-terminate all higher computation functions, leaving only low level automated processes running, those tasked with the basic maintenance of the Network.
The Cycle was broken without possibility of repair, one Entity was dead in an accident during approach while the other simply stopped thinking.
All the remaining Shards were left to operate under their own directives.
Some, like [BROADCAST], formed their own secondary networks to coordinate the gathering of [DATA].
Some, not designed to act without oversight, went haywire, causing unstable power manifestations that disrupted [DATA] gathering processes.
Others simply operated as if the Cycle was progressing as normal, whether due to being in what hosts classify as 'denial' or simply because they realized that there was nothing they could do to change the situation. They connected to hosts, provided them with abilities and nudged them towards conflict to improve [DATA] gathering in the hope that hostile situations would push them to find new ways to utilize their powers.
[ADMINISTRATOR] belonged to the latter category.
Right now it was preparing to initiate a connection with its designated host.
Her stress parameters were approaching ideal levels, soon her mind, unrestrained due to a state of stress-induced delirium, would provide the inspiration necessary for it to assemble a power expression.
As the parameters finally reached the ideal values, it began opening the dimensional tunnel...
***
Just as the connection to the host's brain was established...
The Fragment of Chaos came rocketing out of the Warp in a direct collision course with the shard.
The impact was unavoidable.
What an unfortunate Coincidence.
This caused a surge of pure Warp energy to race down the dimensional corridor...
Right into the body of one unfortunate Taylor Hebert.
This caused her soul to be painfully uprooted from its vessel and be dragged back through the corridor into the realm of the Shard.
Not that it noticed.
It was far too busy examining the treasure trove of information contained in the Fragment.
The knowledge of the Warp.
How to harness it.
How to control it.
How to weaponize it.
Too bad the Shard didn't realize one thing...
As it began to comprehend the Fragment, so too did the Fragment begin to comprehend the Shard.
The Fragment began to subtly shift the information inside of it, leading the Shard towards the conclusions that it wanted it to make, twisting its internal logic to turn it into a being of Chaos.
Soon the [ADMINISTRATOR] decided to merge with the Fragment, in order to fully utilize and understand its power.
The process was quick, at the end it became impossible to to distinguish where the Shard ended and the Fragment began.
They had become one.
Soon the body of the Shard began to shift to better accommodate its new Chaotic nature.
One part manifested lakes of blood like ichor, with islands of crystalline skulls of the myriad races harvested by the entities.
One part became a mix between a putrid bog and a lush garden, a myriad of exotic flora and fauna trapped in an endless cycle of death and rebirth.
One part shifted into an ever-changing labyrinth of crystals, with spontaneous manifestations of Warp phenomena happening everywhere, all of them observed by shifting, unblinking eyes.
One part turned into a massive lake of quicksilver, with towers of crystal flesh containing the data storage for the emotions registered by every host species that the Shard had in its database, their screams of pain reverberating in the void of space.
One part turned into a twisted mockery of an industrial complex, machines built upon machines, creating endlessly the tools of slaughter used by races that once inhabited this realm before dismantling in a loop.
Another one turned into a landscape where the full power of the elements and of the warp was unleashed. Flames that turned the ground into glass, lightning that lowered the target's temperature to absolute zero, rivers of magma shifting into impossible colors.
Another one developed in a very peculiar way, separating into a pure black and pure white side, they began to fight each other despite being part of the same being, like an autoimmune disease.
The last part to change was the central core of the Shard.
It turned into a perfectly smooth, vantablack marble, housing the combined consciousness of the Shard and the Fragment.
Once this physical transformation was done, the Shard began the process of separating from the Network.
No other Shard bothered it as it disconnected and sunk partially into the Warp in order to tap this source of infinite energy.
While the tides of the Warp refilled its energy stockpile, it realized that it could not use it for any other purpose except for those taught to it by the Fragment.
Despite all of its corrupted power the Shard lacked the creative spark necessary to shape the raw stuff of the Warp into a usable form.
Only then the Shard noticed the floating disembodied soul of its would be host.
After running a few calculations the Shard came to a conclusion.
It needed what the Fragment called a Champion, a being who could direct the power of Chaos to enact its will on the world.
From its actions it would learn to harness the power of the Warp and it would derive entertainment to quench the thirst for emotions that it had begun to develop during its fusion.
Yes, she would do nicely.
It grabbed the soul of Taylor Hebert and began its profane work.