One Hundred Minus Ninety-Nine

The Lion King gazed absently at the stars beyond Bolomite.

Starlight fell on the surface—real, peaceful starlight from Realspace.

Azrael stood beside him, not daring to disturb him.

Years ago, Warp Storms unleashed by the four gods had torn Caliban, the Dark Angels' homeworld, apart. Its fortress had survived behind its shields.

A small portion of the debris had remained where it was, too scattered to gather. Most of the fragments had been swallowed by the Warp.

Vashtorr, a half-god of Chaos, had collected the fragments drifting through the Warp and remade them into Dragon Forest Star, a Daemon Forge World.

Caliban was where the Lion King had grown up and learned to fight.

He had learned to survive on that planet and, with his brothers, founded what would become the Dark Angels.

Caliban had once held forests stretching to the horizon. Later, they had become endless tracts of twisted, poisonous woodland.

Caliban had already died once. Now it had been turned into a blasphemous creation, a weapons factory for the forces of Chaos.

The Lion did not know how he had managed to finish reading that report.

From then on, he had made Vashtorr a long-term target of the First Legion.

But even if he drove Vashtorr away, he could not bring Caliban back.

Now Bolomite lay before him, quietly bathed in the starlight of Realspace.

If Bolomite could be dragged back, surely Caliban's fragments could be too?

If they brought all the fragments back, reassembling them would not be difficult for the Imperium.

The Tech-Priests of Mars had ample experience with such work. As long as the fragments were intact enough, they could theoretically weld them back together.

Once reassembled, Caliban could turn again.

The seas might be gone, and the forests might be nothing but fossils, but