I Bowed Down Completely

What color was the night sky?

Nul's nights were dreamlike. The stars vanished beyond the horizon, while the vast, gemlike mountain ranges stretching across the planet reflected magnificent auroras that spread through the atmosphere, forever veiling the other half of the planet in night.

The City of Truth. Built beneath the third pillar of the Ring of Nul, it lay directly on the hemisphere opposite the Guardian Domain.

Witchcraft and warriors had always stood opposed.

The difference between their architectural styles was like a chasm between their ways of thinking.

The warriors despised the wizards' faith. They believed faith was a sign of weakness, and that only cowards and useless fools would kneel before vague, illusory gods and beg for mercy.

The wizards looked down on the warriors' ignorance. Warriors were savage creatures, stubbornly adhering to the Warrior Law. They would never be able to touch the truth of the universe.

The Wizard Towers of the City of Truth were nothing like the neat structures of the Guardian Domain. They stood independently, each with a different form—some leaning, some inverted. Not a single tower was the same, and each possessed a strong personal style.

The tallest tower stood in the center of the city. Not one of its windows was identical, and not a single line of brickwork was aligned. It was filled with bizarre distortions, yet exuded a strange beauty.

Isaac knelt before the shrine, bowing again and again, rising again and again. He prostrated himself completely, begging for his god's forgiveness.

He had failed his god's command. He had not brought back the godchild who had descended from the heavens.

For three months, Isaac had been filled with indescribable dread. He feared being abandoned by his god, feared that he would never hear the divine will again.

His sleepless worship and repentance had split his forehead and bent his back. His prayers and hymns had worn his lips raw, yet he had received no response at all.

Fear and terror. The once elegant and composed High Priest had now lost all his former splendor.

He was now like an abandoned dog kicked into a filthy ditch by its owner, stinking from head to toe yet still wagging its tail and begging for mercy.

That was what the evil gods were like. Their love was unique, and could not be judged by comparing it to the emotions of humans or other intelligent creatures.

Their love would not diminish because the beloved hated and despised them, nor would it increase because of a believer's fanatical worship.

Whether they loved or not depended entirely on their moods. There was no logic to it whatsoever.

Humans revered the gods. The gods did not love humans, yet loved them all the same.

Isaac was a powerful psyker. His devout repentance and worship had long since attracted the attention of the evil god within the Warp.

The evil god was behind the curtain, watching his devout believer.

How boring!

From the lowly supplicant, Tzeentch saw only profound boredom. There was neither sorrow nor joy in his eyes.

In the eyes of ordinary people, the High Priest possessed profound wisdom. In the eyes of a god, however, he was no different from a single-celled organism.

"Don't you intend to answer him?"

The other three gods were beside Tzeentch. Slaanesh asked cautiously as the Dark Prince extended her long, black tongue and gently licked her lips.

From the mortal's self-torment, she had detected a complex satisfaction mixed with atonement and secret delight.

"A lowly, useless pawn." Tzeentch's finger brushed across the void, casually pulling a segment of imagery from time.

Isaac had followed his command to receive Doom's descent.

On a chaotic battlefield, the High Priest had fallen into blood and mud, weeping bitterly, only for King Norwick to seize the chance and pick Doom up first.

"Was it you?" Tzeentch's changing body twisted into a single eye, scrutinizing the grinning Khorne.

The dog-headed god had been in an excellent mood lately. This made Tzeentch suspect that Khorne had secretly tripped him up and taken advantage of the situation.

Tzeentch's suspicion was well-founded. Khorne possessed the authority of courage and warriors. Even without a ritual or medium, provoking a warrior's thoughts for a single instant should have been effortless.

The fleeting stir in King Norwick's eyes had been stretched infinitely beneath the evil god's power.

It was precisely because of that instant of perception that the warrior king had seized the initiative and picked Doom up before Isaac could.

"It was not I!"

Khorne glanced at Tzeentch. In such a good mood, he did not want to ruin it.

Tzeentch's enormous eye turned toward the lesser evil god, accepting Khorne's answer.

Every god and demon in the Warp knew that Khorne used schemes and trickery, but he never lied.

"Why are you looking at me?" Nurgle's lumpy body saw his old enemy looking toward him. The benevolent serenity vanished from his chubby face, and he said resentfully, "Who is fickle? And who is always lying?"

Tzeentch looked away. He also knew it had not been his old enemy's doing. He had looked over purely out of instinct.

Although Nurgle's authority was powerful, it required a fixed cycle. Only by completing the cycle could Nurgle's divine power be realized.

Besides, Nurgle hated Tzeentch and also disliked schemes and trickery. He would not strike from the shadows. He would wait at the end, waiting until everything had settled before gently plucking the fruit.

Finally, the three evil gods turned their gazes toward Slaanesh, the youngest of the evil gods.

Within the Warp, the Four Chaos Gods hated one another because of their domains. Yet there was one whom the other three hated together.

Slaanesh. The "youngest" of the evil gods. Her domain represented desire and indulgence.

The domain of desire made the other gods hate her.

Khorne's desire for slaughter and Tzeentch's desire for knowledge. The satisfaction a berserker felt when killing an enemy and the joy of inspiration bursting into a scholar's mind could both be tainted by Slaanesh.

Nurgle hated Slaanesh even more, second only to his hatred of Tzeentch.

Nurgle represented decay, but also the cycle of life. After enduring the pain brought by decay, life would welcome rebirth.

Slaanesh desecrated the pain necessary for the cycle of life, turning pain into pleasure and making life no longer cherish the rebirth that emerged from nirvana.

By both domain and motive, Slaanesh was the most suspicious of them all.

"Not me!" The Dark Prince's languid, decadent voice swiftly cleared her of blame. "That man's will is powerful. He is a disciplined warrior."

Slaanesh hated warriors, especially strictly disciplined ones. That was also why she and Khorne were mortal enemies.

Warriors with strict discipline and clear creeds possessed extraordinary resistance to the desires of corruption.

The Four Chaos Gods fell silent. They indeed knew that King Norwick's act of picking Doom up had not been accidental. Some force within their field of vision had taken part in it.

"Was it her?" Slaanesh asked softly.

"No. There are no traces of her power." Tzeentch transformed into a crystal mirror, projecting a panoramic view of Terra. "She is busy preparing her legions and unifying her homeland."

"Whoever it was!" The crystal mirror warped and shifted, revealing King Norwick writing and drawing in his study. "He already knows our purpose."

"If we want Doom to sit beneath our banner, he is the greatest obstacle."

Nurgle's thick abdomen split open into a huge mouth and vomited out a dark-green planet—the miniature Nul.

"The planet's position in the universe, the solidity of its reality barrier, and the fact that it exists in another dimension far from the Warp..."

"Our power must not only pierce the material universe, but also extend into another dimension. Our influence will be greatly reduced!"

"Send an envoy!" Slaanesh flicked her long tongue, its tip lightly touching Nul's phantom and leaving behind a purple mark. "All we need is a ritual to establish an anchor. Space will be meaningless to us."

The other two gods only needed to nod for the Four Chaos Gods to briefly unite toward a common goal.

Khorne and Tzeentch had long wanted to have a "good talk" with Norwick, so they naturally nodded in agreement.

Tzeentch returned to a humanoid form. His slender, withered arm reached into his throat and pulled out a dagger engraved with arcane runes.

Khorne took it and clenched it tightly. His blessing merged into the dagger, granting strength to whoever wielded it.

Nurgle swallowed the dagger into his belly, licking it in a careless, slobbering fashion and granting it the power of corruption.

Slaanesh spun the dagger around, bestowing it with swift techniques and granting its wielder extraordinary skill.

"Now." Tzeentch gave a "gugu-gugu" laugh and turned his gaze toward the priest, the pawn begging for forgiveness.

Isaac no longer knew how many times he had bowed or how many times he had chanted. Now, only his will supported him as he begged the gods for forgiveness.

After thousands of years of faith, he alone had received divine revelations—and he had ruined everything.

He humbly begged, begging the gods to cast their eyes upon him once more and grant him another revelation.

"Isaac~ what are you willing to give?"

In his daze, the High Priest heard a distant call, far away yet close to his ears.

He bowed his head, then prostrated himself on the ground.

Joyful tears of purity flowed from his eyes. His pleas had finally earned a response from the gods. "I prostrate myself completely and offer up my devotion, begging the gods to take everything from me!"

"I have nothing left after betraying the gods. If you would show me mercy, I am willing to offer you everything!"

"I will no longer be myself. I am the gods' apostle—their mouthpiece as they walk among mortals!"

This time, he was willing to pay any price!

"Cough~ cough~ cough~ cough~" The gods laughed joyfully. "Then we shall grant you everything. We hope that this time, you will not disappoint us."