About Two Thousand Badasses Charging Out of the Warp

Imperium Nihilus, a certain Forge World.

Steel covering the entire planet joined all its continents into a single whole.

An enormous ring-shaped furnace spanned half the planet, its orange-red molten iron clearly visible even from space.

Countless aircraft formed hundreds of low-orbital bands around the entire world, while forge starports of every size filled deep space.

Brand-new merchant ships continually left the shipyards, eventually joining the busy trade route connecting this place to the Imperium.

In the even larger naval port beside the trade route, a new-model Sword-class Frigate could even be seen slowly sailing into deep space amid a grand Adeptus Mechanicus ceremony.

As the most important manufacturing base in the entire sector, this place also gathered numerous vessels from the Imperial Navy and the Adeptus Mechanicus fleets.

The one major difference between it and other Forge Worlds was the absurd size of its garrison fleet!

Even on the surface, countless enormous fortresses stood amid endless factories, garrisoned by innumerable Skitarii, Astra Militarum troops, and even Astartes!

At that moment, beside an anti-orbital gun as enormous as a mountain.

Looking farther up along the gun, one could see the summit of a towering building that made even the gun look like a toy. Around the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, messenger craft were so busy that they wove a vast net.

The Astra Militarum soldiers glanced up, then withdrew their bored gazes, ready to resume tackling the revolting Adeptus Mechanicus synthetic rations before them.

Inside the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, large numbers of robed scribes, their faces completely hidden in the shadows of their robes, continually recorded the interstellar communications it received.

The Adeptus Astra Telepathica was the institution the Imperium used for galactic communications. Its basic principle relied on Psykers continually passing on various "images," exchanging information through prophetic interpretation.

Or, to put it crudely...

"Sending dreams"!

And now, within this heavily defended Forge World, the continuous scratching of the scribes' pen nibs against parchment carried countless pleas for help and warnings from throughout the surrounding sector!

These appeals were even filled with great quantities of despair, and even resentment and curses born of collapse.

Yet faced with the pleas of these Imperial Worlds, the entire Adeptus Astra Telepathica merely recorded them in silence. The only response these worlds ever received was the scratching of pen nibs that could never be transmitted back.

Another cart filled with parchment. Two Servitors wheeled it out, and after a Tech-Priest compiled these densely packed, desperate pleas into volumes, they were tossed straight into a machine and casually destroyed.

The Tech-Priest then placed the data on a conveyor belt and watched this roll of paper, bearing its cold numbers, travel farther up.

After passing through various hands, the data finally reached a magnificent, spacious hall.

An Inquisition Tempestus Scion glanced at it and, not even bothering to open it, casually tossed it into a nearby wastebasket made of gold.

Farther ahead of the Tempestus Scion, two Inquisitors wearing Artificer Power Armour held golden knives and forks, elegantly eating fresh steaks.

Xenos and even heretical creations, a single glimpse of which in the outside world would warrant mass extermination on the scale of entire hive districts, hung all over these two.

One of the Inquisitors even wore a weapon at his waist strikingly similar to the skull greatswords wielded by Bloodletters of the Warp.

Yet no one else in the hall dared express any opinion on this.

After all, as core members of the Inquisition who could send an entire Space Marine Chapter on a penitent crusade with a mere stroke of a pen, they possessed an absolute right to know all information within the Imperium, and even to control it!

But unlike their usual relaxed expressions, this time, around the enormous, magnificent long table, the Fabricator-General, the Astra Militarum general, and even the Space Marine Chapter Master had all fallen silent along with the Inquisitors.

Throughout the magnificent hall, there was only the scraping of knives and forks against precious porcelain from a certain eastern nation of ancient Terra.

Finally, the enormous Fabricator-General, who could scarcely be associated with humanity apart from the little human skin remaining on his cheeks, slowly spoke in his stiff, mechanical electronic voice:

"This is a prophecy spanning the galaxy. Whatever information the Inquisition has obtained, it ought to be shared in light of our present situation."

When the Fabricator-General spoke, the Astra Militarum general and the Space Marine Chapter Master immediately looked over as well.

Yet the two Inquisitors opposite them did not answer immediately. Instead, they unhurriedly finished the sauce-covered steaks before them, then lifted their wineglasses and slowly took a sip.

Then the two exchanged a glance. Facing the leaders of the Forge World beneath their feet, it was the heretic-hunting Inquisitor specializing in the Warp who spoke, his head lowered as he wiped his hands, not bothering to look up:

"This prophecy offers no help with the predicament we face, nor does it even affect it."

"Roughly speaking, on some other battlefield in Imperium Nihilus, a group of mortals faced daemons in the Warp, in the flesh, for two months."

"And in the end, they received... er... the God-Emperor's blessing."

He paused slightly over that last sentence. After all, the thought of the God-Emperor and Khorne blessing the same target at the same time was something no Inquisitor could possibly say aloud.

Moreover, although he had given them the general situation, the additional scattered details the Inquisition had desperately collected left even this heretic-hunting Inquisitor inwardly shocked by these mysterious mortals, and he dared not tell these figures at the very pinnacle of the Imperium.

Granted, in an Imperium whose interstellar communications depended entirely on "sending dreams," and here in Imperium Nihilus, which had lost the guidance of the Astronomican, the people here truly had no way to obtain more information about Sith.

But even those scraps of intelligence were enough to overturn the understanding of the entire sector, or even the entire Imperium.

How did that saying within the Inquisition go?

Summed up, this prophecy was merely a story about two thousand badasses charging out of the Warp.

But whether the God-Emperor was deliberately protecting them or there was some other reason, even after exhausting every method, the Inquisition still could not discover where the God-Emperor had sent these formidable men and their outrageous commanding officer.

In the end, they could only send intelligence to every Inquisitor, asking them to pay as much attention as possible to any unusual mortals within their respective jurisdictions.

Faced with this request, however, the Inquisitors were at once shocked by how horrifying the news was and inwardly cursing this strange demand from above.

It was not that unusual mortals were hard to find. Rather, in the Imperium of Man, where the mortal population had long since become impossible to count, a casual search for unusual mortals could probably turn up tens or hundreds of billions.

Before them, the Fabricator-General, the Astra Militarum general, and the Space Marine Chapter Master were all struck dumb by the Inquisitor's news. This news was even more terrifying than the enemy they had painstakingly guarded against already fighting its way out from within.

Having dealt with these other "colleagues" they had no choice but to cooperate with, the two Inquisitors were just about to rise and take their leave when a Tempestus Scion brought over a rolled report.

Seeing that it was more news from inside, the Inquisitor frowned:

"Didn't I say there was no need to bring these to me?"

The Tempestus Scion respectfully presented the report:

"It isn't a plea for help. An Imperial Sword-class Frigate emerged from the Warp and crashed on Oumia's Third Moon."

Hearing that it concerned an outsider, the Inquisitor finally spared a little time to pick up the report.

He scanned it quickly, confirmed that it was an utterly ordinary Sword-class Frigate bearing a normal Imperial Navy designation, and casually tossed it into the wastebasket.

"A warship?"

"Plenty of warships crash here every day!"

"Rather than waste time sending people to investigate, we'd be better off thinking about those badasses in the prophecy."

"Where might they be now..."