"Get up, you insignificant vermin." Korvastus lifted his head, blinking in the unnatural light. The site that met his eyes was that of a mad-man's folly; a jagged landscape forged of insane thoughts and deranged nightmares. Multi hued lightning flickered in the distance, earthing itself upon the blackened soils. Jagged white shards of ice pierced the ash and rose into infinity, stabbing through the pustulent belly of yellow cloud that hung overhead, pregnant with unnatural energies.

A gentle, warm breeze fluttered amidst his robes carrying the sweet scent of o-zone. Bar the threatning bellow of distant thunder a heavy silence assaulted his subtle senses, unnatural to one born to the constant swell and struggle of a Hiveworld. His eyes widened in feral terror as a gaping maw, lined with jagged, bony protuberances opened in the sand mere meters from his person, shrieking a litany of bestial hunger to the nightmarish skies.

The hooded stranger stood upon an incline to Korvastus's left, his stance impassive, the impenetrable blackness within his hood conveying a hatred far beyond the boundaries of mortal sense.

"I said get up. Do not deign to disobey me, Korvastus, or I shall personally ensure that your suffering is legendary, even here."

The voice was deep, reverberating around Korvastus's skull, tearing at his sanity with talons of ice.

"W..Where are we?" He was surprised at the fraielty of his own voice, it's once commanding piety broken into a cracked whimper. A malevolent chuckle emenated from the blackness, echoing across the sand plains before him.

"You could not possibly comprehend where and what this place is, no concept such as "where" and "when" can possibly hold any sway here. Welcome to the fastness, Korvastus, welcome to that which exists beyond time, beyond the petty restrictions of material space. Welcome, to the Great Eye."

A violent dart of jade fire leapt from the clouds overhead and danced amidst the recesses of the figure's robes, crackling along his flesh and flying in jagged bolts from his finger tips.

"Now Korvastus, see my face, and know me for what I am."

Korvastus gurgled incoherently as the last vestiges of his sanity began to slip from his grasp. The stranger grasped the hem of his hood and pulled it back, revealing pastelle blue flesh stretched tighly across a sharp, jagged skull. The features were alien, warped beyond comprehension, but recognisable non the less.

"B...Bartelby?! No! no,no,no. I saw you die. I watched you burn. I scattered your ashes. You're dead."

Korvastus's voice rose to a high pitched shrill, etched with the lacerations of mania. He sprawled in the sand, his face buried in his hands, cracked sobs breaking from his lips.

"Yes, Korvastus. You murdered me, you sent me to hell. All in the name of your False Emperor. Tell me, where is he now? WHERE WAS HE WHEN YOU AND YOU'RE SICK COMPATRIOTS MURDERED ME?"

"Im..sorry...so sorry...." Korvastus's voice was no more than a whisper, waning along with his conscious thought, slipping into the welcome void of madness.

"Sorry? Yes, I suppose you are, now. But there'll be no deliverence for you, corrupt one. My masters shall sing a song of agony through your flesh for centuries to come. You'll beg for death, plead for madness, and then, and only then when you are nothing but a bloodied mess shall I finally lay your lifeless body at my master's table."

Korvastus was siezed in an iron grip and hefted physically into their air, Bartelby's talons gouging small rifts in his neck.

"Look Korvastus."

He followed the vengeful daemon's gesture. Emerging from the maelstrom of wind swept sands and ashes were immense figures, their armoured plates awesome in scale. Space Marines, the Adeptus Astartes. For a brief second hope flared in Korvastus's gut; these pious servants of the Emperor would surely tear the still beating heart from the abomination before him. However, his hope soon died when they became more distinct. Space marines they were,or had once been, but no Space marine of this age. Their armour lacked the ceramite purity of the existing Space Marines, and was instead warped and twisted into a sickening parody of what it once was. An insane amalgam of pastelle purples and oranges highlighted with brilliant sapphires and reds. Some wore helmets that had been re-worked into leering daemonic visages, others had lashing tentacles where their limbs once were.

Korvastus screamed, his sanity finally slipping away as he felt cruelly barbed digits grasp his shoulders and force him to his knees.

"Do you not recognise them, Father? They, like me were cast aside by the Emperor, sent on a suicidal mission against the greatest of their kind. They are the damned. They serve the lord of Pleasure and Torment, and their imagination is boundless. They will bring you to the peak of ecstasy before plunging you into torments the like of which even you could scarcely imagine. Look upon them Korvastus, and learn to love them, you are their property now."

Korvastus's screamed echoed into the sick skies as he was dragged forcibly across the sharp grained sands, his legs torn to ribbons by the unforgiving ice.

Bartelby smiled, his purpose made all the more pleasurable by the infantile screams of the weak willed preacher. Pulling his hood tight about his face, he strode forth into the storm.