PLEASE BE AWARE THIS IS WORK IN PROGRESS AND IS CONTINUALLY BE ADDED TO!

I've marked *update#* by each update for ease of continuing, I'll remove these once the tale is complete.

Within the darkest annals of the Imperium’s history, there are tomes and texts so ancient and containing tales of creatures so macabre in nature that they are sealed away for eternity from mortal eyes, guarded sleeplessly by inhuman creatures from the most distant past. As this is true of the Imperium of man, so too is it so of the exiles and nomads of the Traitor legions, cast centuries ago after their defeat into the timeless boundaries of the Eye of Terror and condemned to wander reality consumed by their own hatred and lust for dominance.

Buried deep within the haunted catacombs beneath the fortress monasteries of the fanatical Word Bearers legion, the twisted progeny of Lorgar, is a tome bound in the flesh of the ancient Eldar and sealed with human fat. The pages of this most malign of grimoires are sealed eternally from the eyes of the Word Bearers by unholy enchantments and only the hands of he whom compiled the text may look upon the words within without surrendering their mind to insanity. Thus it is that only the daemonic eyes of Lorgar himself may know of the ancient treachery that defiles the purity of his children, for the tome speaks of a time when the Word Bearers were sundered from their true path by one whom rose to greatness amongst his children, one whose name is spoken only as the most vehement of curses. The name of Mephistopheles.

For long years after their defeat at the hands of the false Emperor the Word bearers, led by the fanatical Lorgar, spread their corrupting influence throughout the Imperium of man, instigating corruption and insurrection spanning entire galaxies before they were eventually forced into exile within the eternally shifting delirium of the Eye of Terror. Under Lorgar’s guidance they soon found the world ordained for them, guided by the portents and visions of their psykers and chaplains. What they saw in their hellish dreams was a realm littered with spear-like spires piercing the low-slung belly of the clouds above and rising into the infinite delirium beyond; a fortress world where subterranean cathedrals pierced the planet to its core and daemonic, winged humanoids abounded the sickened skies, preying on the weak flesh of the twisted deviants and mutated beast-men that formed the planet’s populace.

It was to this world that Lorgar and his children fled, their immense, city-sized ships falling like shattered stars from the heavens, the abominable populace of the world fleeing before the horrific visages of the baroquely armoured Traitor Marines or falling on their tear-streaked faces in worship of their new masters. Lorgar and his Word Bearers then began a genocidal cleansing operation, sweeping the planet with tongues of flame and the rattle of bolters, tearing the unworthy creatures from the planet’s face and claiming it as their own. Some of the stronger beasts, such as the abundance of Minotaurs and flesh-mongering trolls chained in the catacombs beneath the planet’s surface they spared, seeing within them the warping influence of their dark lords. Others, such as the beastmen, they herded into the towers and cathedrals and barred the gates with slabs of rune encrusted Warp-Iron, holding the feral creatures fast within the lightless corridors where they continued to multiply and grow in strength and hatred, feasting on the fell meats that their new master’s cast to them and acting as both torturers and executioners for the WordBearers. Prisoners and heretics taken from their constant forays into the material universe were often cast into the haunted labyrinths to be hunted down and devoured by the blood-thirsty mutants after days of wandering through the corridors when hunger and fatigue claimed them and made it impossible for them to defend themselves.

The Word Bearers colonised the ancient world, converting the remaining structures and monuments into blood-soaked cathedrals where the zealous cries of worship mingled with the agonised screams of those sacrificed in sadistic worship of the Fell Powers. Lorgar himself ruled over the world from a vestibule set atop the tallest tower, rising over his realm like a single, jagged tooth from a decaying maw with a personal retinue of the most devoted and fanatical chaplains. Chief amongst these retainers was one whom even the others spoke of in hushed reverence, Arch-Zealot of the Word Bearers and personal lieutenant of Lorgar himself, The Chaplain Mephistopheles, keeper of the sacred tomes and the Mouth of Lorgar. Lorgar himself never deigned to leave the solitude of his vestibule, issuing his demands and edicts vicariously via Mephistopheles.

Of all of his children, Mephistopheles was truly the closest to his Primarch in mind and spirit, carrying within his chaos-warped mind a superlative intellect and capacity for knowledge beyond that of his less divine brethren. It was he whom led the constant forays into the material universe at his master’s behest, claiming raw materials in piratical raids on shipping frigates or falling on populated monastery worlds dedicated to the unholy service of the False Emperor. In battle he was a force without equal; marching forward under his banner depicting the myriad powers of chaos in all of their perverse glory, the shots of his enemies failing against the chaos-imbued ceramite of his ancient armour, his weapons singing a litany of death and damnation through the flesh of all whom stood in his path.

About him his warriors fell and died in fanatical devotion to their lord, or charged forth under the influence of his all-encompassing will, throwing themselves at the enemy with wanton disregard for their own safety, heedless of all save the approval of their lord and master. About him he gathered a select retinue of body-guards, clothed in the legion’s ancient and revered Tactical Dreadnought armour and bedecked with armament enough to decimate small armies of mortals. Through ancient and unholy artifices the weapon-writes and tech-priests of the legion bound each of the warriors to the suit of armour they bore, knitting their flesh and sinew to an external shell of ceramite and plasteel, so that where the armour was struck it would bleed, yet they would feel no pain from the wound.

It was during the long isolation of the 10,000 years war following the Great Heresy that Mephistopheles and his ever growing army of followers would become such a significant force within the Word Bearer’s legion that, should the prospect arise, they could easily function as an independent force. Captains amongst all of the legion’s companies swore their allegiance to the War Priest, and more now sung the praises of his name than those of their patron and father, Lorgar.

It was also during this time that Mephistopheles would stumble across an artefact that would come to shake the legion to its very foundations. On one of his frequent forays into the material universe, he and his now countless hordes of followers fell upon the isolated world of Agranoch; a peaceful, environmentally stable planet, covered in verdant, green pastures and rolling, life-filled oceans. As the Word Bearer’s ships came into orbit about the planet, it seemed to the populace that the skies darkened, and the suns sputtered fitfully before dying, enveloping the planet in a shall of darkness and despair. The peoples of the immense hive-cities abounding its surface panicked and ran, fleeing into the grasslands and hills beyond their civilisation in hope of escaping the calamity to come. Then the Word Bearers came, falling from the skies in malformed and twisted drop pods, the stuff of their composition writhing and shifting like flesh and crawling with arcane runes that seemed to draw one’s gaze into a miasma of delirium beyond.

The cleansing of the planet took little time for the warrior-priests of the Word Bearers, and what militia the formerly peaceful peoples of Agranoch could raise was quickly and brutally suppressed, mown down in violent orgies of worship to the Foul Gods of chaos. Through the carnage strode Mephistopheles, his flame-wreathed axe singing with a hellish voice as it tasted the blood and flesh of his enemies. His eyes burned with the zeal of battle, and his bestial voice carried across the immense plains like the bellowing of distant thunder.

The two primary Hive Cities covering much of the planet’s surface burned in a single night, and those whom refused to recant their worship of the False Emperor were tortured and mutilated for their crimes, left bloodied and dying in the filth of the streets as food for the daemonic hounds that followed in the Word Bearer’s wake. Noone and nothing could stand against the fanaticism of their onslaught, as they preached the word of misrule via word of mouth and spray of bolter, exercising their dark master’s will through a medium of flesh with instruments of blade. The once verdant plains of the world withered and warped under the twisting influence of the dark powers that the Word Bearers harboured, becoming immense deserts of grey, infertile ash abounded with fissures and chasms from whence leaked oceans of vile-smelling refuse and filth. What little vegetation remained to the planet became misshapen and cruel, tainted by the corruption seeping through the planet’s soil and driven into the embrace of chaos.

Mephistopheles, looking on at the wonders worked by his efforts and faith and within the infinite recesses of his mind, dark thoughts began to take shape. How could his father stand idly by, isolated and secure in his cathedral within the Great Eye when such glory was theirs to create? The will of the Dark Gods was within their power to enact, and yet he was content to sit idle amidst his finery and ceremony, sending Mephistopheles and his brethren into the suffocating nullity of the material realm, where the nauseating influence of the False Emperor held sway. Immersed in a brooding malaise of introspection, he stalked from his mount atop the blasted sand dune and paced purposefully into the barren wilderness skirting the crimson horizon. For many days and nights he paced the infertile realm of ash, lost in the labyrinths of his own doubts, pondering the veracity of his current loyalties, remembering the holy zeal and thrill of battle as he fell on the weak flesh of the heretics, hearing their ecstatic howls of redemption as he cut their souls free from their material moorings.

His followers, entrusting in the will of their master, left him to his devices, busying themselves with securing and purifying the Hive Cities of all imperfections, wiping the stain of life from the streets in a torrent of blood.

And Mephistopheles continued to wander and dream, the ancient ceramite of his armour providing respite against the swirling desert sands tossed in the winds like molecular shards of glass. For what seemed to even his timeless perceptions to be an eternity, he stumbled across an immense altar, rising from the very sands of the desert like a gnarled, archaic tree, its bark formed of living stone and its roots tearing through the very flesh of the planet itself and thrusting skywards in a series of erratic protrusions that seemed to sway and writhe at his approach. From atop these protrusions screamed the half-formed features of semi-human faces, bobbing and shifting like the uneven humps on the back of the wale as he breaches the sea’s surface before plunging down into the inexorable blackness beyond. The language he could not discern, for it was ancient and whispered against the cacophony of the desert winds, but of the fact that they were addressing him and him alone, he had no doubt.

He paced the unholy forest in silent wonder, gazing with rapt fascination at the macabre union of flesh and stone that surrounded him and wondered vaguely whether this was some sort of test, a guiding circumstance instigated by the Lords of Misrule from beyond the reaches of mortal space?

Perhaps. With slow and deliberate paces he approached the primary altar, its trunk in places fractured and broken to reveal pulsating eddies of blood which poured onto the unheeding desert sands. The branches reached into the turbulent heavens like grasping tendrils, seeking to grasp the stars in their talons and extinguish their celestial light in honour of the darkness. Never, not even within the shifting confines of the Great Eye, had Mephistopheles been driven to such awe and reverence; never had he seen the raw powers of change and insanity evoked to such extremes. Tears of holy zeal staining inside of his helm, he fell to his knees before the altar, unable to avert his eyes from the delicious madness of the sight.

Suddenly, the voices ceased their incessant litanies and the roots of stone swayed no more, becoming erect and motionless against the chill winds. Mephistopheles held his breath, savouring every delicious second of tension like the lingering flavour of a fine wine. The silence grew immense and oppressive, spreading over the desert like a heavy shall of heat and darkness.

With an nauseating, splintering crack, the surface of the tree’s flesh before him began to split and wide fissures became visible, widening and spilling more of the tree’s internal filth onto the sands below. As the chasms in the bark grew ever greater in width, something began to force itself from within the mire of filth below. Mephistopheles was reminded of the birthing ceremonies of the Beastmen and Minotaurs to which he was often privy as an indistinct, daemonic visage forced itself free of the mass of shifting tissue, its fang-rimmed maw open wide and roaring the pain of its birth to the affrighted skies. The face was immense and muscular; its nasal structure and jaw distorted and stretched into a vast, canine muzzle, yet, from what he could discern of its skin beneath the mask of embryonic filth coating its surface, it looked almost reptilian in nature. Iron-hard scales and bony protrusions coated the crimson, sinewy flesh and from beneath the hood of muck and mucus stared two implacable, burning eyes, their surface swimming with black flames that lapped greedily at the immaculate whiteness beneath. Surely here before him was one of the immortal emissaries of his Dark Masters, a daemon, forged from the transient energies of chaos itself?

Then its baleful gaze alighted upon the prostrate marine, and its features that had previously been wracked with immortal agony split into a malevolent parody of joy.

“WELCOME MEPHISTOPHELES, CHILD OF LORGAR!”

The voice was powerful and bestial, lordly, yet suggestive of a capacity for violence beyond mortal ken.

“Greetings, my Lord! You…you know of me?”

The creature’s maw split further, though whether in mirth or annoyance at Mephistopheles’ slack-jawed awe he couldn’t ascertain.

“INDEED I DO, FOR I HAVE AWAITED YOUR COMING TO THIS WORLD FOR TIME OUT OF MIND. YOU HAVE COME, AS IT WAS PREORDAINED. LISTEN CLOSELY, WORD BEARER, FOR MUCH RESTS ON YOUR SHOULDERS THIS DAY. YOUR COMING TO THIS WORLD WAS KNOWN TO ME BEFORE YOU WERE EVEN CONCIEVED, BEFORE THE NAUSEATING EMPEROR AND HIS MONGREL VASSALS SPREAD THEIR FOUL INFLUENCE THROUGH THE UNIVERSE. WHEN ME AND MY MASTERS REIGNED SUPREME. MY NAME IS BALTHASAR, AND I AM A SERVANT OF THE LORD OF SKULLS. MY MASTER HAS SEEN YOUR SKILL AS A WARRIOR, AND HE KNOWS OF YOUR DESTINY. HE HAS NEED OF YOU.”

Mephistopheles felt his blood chill at the intonation of the daemon’s words. The storm buffeting his armoured frame had subsided, leaving only a dead, stagnant silence in which the daemon’s voice writhed and twisted like an infectious worm. He was struck by the magnificence and grandeur conveyed by its filth-encrusted visage, and even more so by the sickeningly mellifluous nature of its voice.

As it spoke, his mind seemed to flood with a cloying, red mist, obscuring his vision and clouding his thought, flowing through his veins like vaporous lava. Suddenly, the world about him seemed to become thin and vague; shifting like tendrils of steam and running into subdued lumps of erratic colour. The daemon’s voice continued to chant its litanies beyond the cusp of his hearing, merging with the roaring of his own blood into a relentless dirge that beat against his sanity and stoked his former doubts into a raging conflagration of hate. The crimson mist obscuring his vision suddenly cleared, and he found himself kneeling on a vast hillock of red sand. Standing unsteadily he drank deeply of the hot, cleansing breeze flowing against his face and the scent of blood and battle that it bore. He now found that the hillock on which he stood rose from a vast, blackened cliff, strutting from the dunes of a plain below composed of the same red sediment. The cliff commanded a superlative view of the featureless, flat land and its rolling dunes. The sky above was an odd, pregnant yellow, swollen and heavy as if bloated with the energies that broiled within. Random flickers of lightning crackled through the air, and the burning scent of o-zone was heavy on the breeze.

He suddenly cried out in anguish as a hot, nauseating pain flowed across his face, as if burning iron had been pressed against his flesh. He screwed his eyes shut against the agony, preying to all of the deities of darkness and misrule, to all of the daemons and angels of legend, even to the false Emperor himself whom had abandoned he and his brethren for the torment to cease. Time seemed to slow and fuse into a relentless collage of blood and fury, the pain burning his pallid features tearing at his mind and leaving it bloodied and raw. A desire awoke within him to taste of freshly spilt blood, to tear the armour from his body and run shrieking, bloodied and naked like a feral beast through the desert below, slaughtering all that crossed his path with tooth and nail. Then, just as suddenly as the pain and desire began, it fled, leaving him sobbing and broken on the lonely cliff-top. He buried his tender face in his gauntlet-sheathed hands, crying his pain and frustration into the shifting, heedless sands below, then darkness took him, and he knew no more but dark dreams of violence and slaughter for many days.

When he eventually awoke, rising from his dark slumber like a serpent from the fiery desolation of its wrath, he found himself laid with great reverence within his personal vestibule in the bowels of his flagship, The Harbinger of Corruption. The first thing he noticed was that the sand-storm ravaged armour that had adorned his muscular form for so many centuries had somehow been removed, and replaced with a suit altogether more intricate and flexible in nature. The heavy, awkward ceramite plates of his ceremonial suit had been replaced with well-fitting, interlocking sections of armour of a light but awesomely durable material that seemed to run with crimson liquid before his sight. He raised his armoured hand and flexed the gauntlet experimentally, the cruelly hooked digits flickering the artificial, yellow light as if dipped in scarlet waters. Every inch of the armour seemed to be encrusted with dull runes that shifted and writhed beneath his gaze as if tortured by his scrutiny. His mind swam with half-formed images and memories of the past few days. Gingerly, he reached up to his face, tracing the marks of scorched flesh left by the agonising sensations endured on the hellish cliff-face.

It was with some surprise that he realised that the symbol scorched onto his flesh was familiar. The shape of an austere, angular skull, emblazoned with the seven-pointed star of chaos itself; the mark of the Blood God. It was then that he recalled the encounter with the daemon in the wilderness, and the significance of its words; “…MY MASTER HAS NEED OF YOU…”

Immersed in these brooding thoughts, he and his entourage of followers returned to their realm in the Great Eye. During the journey, Mephistopheles learned that he’d been found by a hunting party of his most loyal vassals in the ashen deserts of Agranoch, his broken form sheathed in the alien armour and his eyes ablaze with internal fires. The apothecaries and chaplains abounding his forces explained that they were unable to remove the armour by any means and were fearful of doing so, obviously blessed as it was by the dark powers. Not only that, but found clasped in his hands was a solid orb of black glass.

The cryptic, glass orb was now being held in the ship's most closely-guarded chambers with the other holy relics of their crusade, and even now he could feel emanating from it an incredible sense of empathy, as if it was meant to be his. His thoughts were fractured and garbled, his memory coming in vivid flashes of colour, sound, and pain. He stumbled from his cot raised from the centre of the chamber like a mortician's autopsy slab and flung open the doors of his ante-chamber.

Already his memories were beginning to clear, and he could sense the malignant essence of his daemonic benefactor, the creature Balthasar, muttering and chanting at the back of his mind. It was speaking to him of all it would do in Khorne's glory, should he only embrace the path laid before him, describing in exquisite detail the droves of alien warriors falling with every sweep of his mighty axe, the rivers of blood pouring from their veins to slake Khorne's thirst.

So little time ago he would have condemned such thoughts as blasphemy against the purity of the divine, unfettered power of chaos itself, but now he saw that it was not so. What the daemon proposed was merely an aspect of what he'd previously worshipped; an integral, functioning part of the grand ruination that was the power of Chaos. And Khorne was the oldest and greatest of his kind; an entity composed entirely of emotion and energy, shaped by the thoughts and aspirations of the myriad sentient races of the universe. A God amongst Gods.

The corridor beyond was, as ever, boriling with the ceremonial activites of his brethren. Some had been stripped of their armour and walked clad in sacrificial robes adorned with the leviathan serpent of Chaos itself; the Great Worm that represented ruin and misrule. Others walked fully armed, hulking, crimson giants amidst their lesser brethren, standing silent and vigilant in ordered ranks across the expanse of the corridor.

At his appearance many fell to their knees in homage of their blessed lord, proclaiming him truly annointed by their Dark Masters, whilst others stood by in mute respect for their newly arisen lord.

He found that he cared nothing for their contrived adoration. Whereas before such ceremonious praise would have been welcomed and indeed pleasing to the ancient chaplain, now he felt nothing but an overwhelming desire to be free of such formality and go about his business. The presence at the back of his mind had begun to grow impatient as he stood before his prostrate vassals, feeding his rage to the point where he could no longer restrain it.

Lashing out with his armoured fist he grasped the nearest Marine by the throat, feeling the blood pulsing beneath the soft flesh, sensing the heat and vitality of it, wishing for nothing more than to press the taloned digit of his gauntlet through and release the fluid beneath.

But to do so he knew, would be suicide. As much weight as he carried aboard the vessel and amidst his brethren such mindless slaughter would not be tolerated. Even he with all of his consummate skill and might could not stand against the battallions housed within the ship's bowels.

*update1*

"The orb! The orb, you imbecile! TELL ME WHERE IT IS STORED!" His rage was growing, rising from within his gut as if a pyre had been lit in the pit of his stomach. The comparatively feeble brother clutched in his armoured talon shook and trembled before the wrath of his lord, ignorant of the cause of Mephistopheles's anger.

"I...know not what you mean, my lord! Please! I have served you and the Dark Lords faithfully! I...I know not the cause of your anger!"

There was a need building within his mind; an unquenchable desire to see the adamantium corridors of the ship painted with the wretche's blood, decorated with trappings of viscera and entrail. He could smell the scent of it; taste it like a palpable, metallic essence drifting on the synthetic air. He could feel it pulsing and running through the veins pulled taught beneath his finger tips.

With a bestial roar of frustration he cast his brother to the ground, uttering ancient and malign prayers beneath his breath. What was happening to him? There was a metamorphosis of sorts taking place within his body. He could feel his blood pulsing with some hot, alien element, burning like liquid silver within his veins. New muscular tissue coarsed along his arms, filling him to capacity with strength enough to tear even through the power-armoured torso of his less enlightened brethren of the Adeptus Astartes with ease.

*update2*

At the back of his consciousness the daemon's voiced continued to chant its unholy litanies, filling his mind with the sensations of battle. In his nostrils burned the smoky scent of spent bolter shells along with the tantalising stench of burning flesh. All around him the screams and explosions of battle roared, enticing him to join in the bloodshed, calling him into the depths of ichor spilt at his feet with violent siren songs.

As he stumbled through the corridors of the archaic vessel, drawn inexorably by some indefineable compulsion, his brethren followed at a distance, their babbling and cries of lament at their master's apparent madness mingling with the half-imagined sounds of war. Eventually, exhausted and on the brink of physical and mental collapse, he reached the immense, ostentatiously adorned double-doors of the chapel housing his most holy and treasured of relics. The sweet scent of holy insense hung heavily on the air; claming and intoxicating.

With a bestial roar he tore through the adamantine doors, gouging huge hunks of metal and masonry from the mortal barriers and casting them into the corridor beyond. The crimson-robed acolytes within tending to and maintaining the archaic devices beyond cowered back from his rage, cringing behind whatever altar or pillar they could find. With unnerring purpose, he strode into the ante-chamber, feeling the integral tugging in his soul grow greater, threatening to tear him from his mortal shell altogether. All that mattered was the orb; he could see its blackened sphere girating before his vision, wreathed in a pall of flame and soaked in a raiment of blood. It was a gift; a blessing from his Dark Masters, and it had been delievered unto him. He alone was chosen, he alone was sanctified. He knew that now. The Father, Lorgar, and his beaurecratic retainers knew nothing of the true glory of darkness. He had seen into the very heart of chaos, and he had seen the glory of war. Only through conflict and bloodshed was the thirst of the Eternal Powers beyond time and space assuaged, and if he had been chosen to fulfil this purpose, then so be it.

Tearing aside the countless artefacts and religious arcana, he found the orb resting in malignant solitude on a raised pedestal bearing the marks of the Four Great Powers. The rage clouding his mind passed as he gazed into the dark and infinite recesses of the orb. The pregnant clam of its internal fire seemed to expand as he approached, causing a dull, grey glow to emenate from within.

Breathing hard and trembling, he grasped the orb in one immense talon, feeling the heat of its energies even through the enchanted alloys of his new-found armour. The clamour behind him marked the hurried entrance of his brethren, some of which now bore weapons that they grasped and wielded nervously. Turning to face them, the orb burning in his talon as if he'd reached up into the heavens and plucked a dying sun from orbit, he reared up to his full height, dwarving even the terminator-armoured hulks standing poised in the doorway.

Then he spoke, and his voice echoed with a power and wisdom from the beyond the countless centuries of the Universe's conception. As he spoke, many of his brethren let their weapons fall to the ground and fell on their knees in homage of their divine lord.

"Fear not, my brothers, for I have been shown the way. The thrice-blessed darkness has shown me our true purpose, my children. I shall lead you to a land overflowing with the blood of our enemies, where the skies weep with fire, and the holy emissaries of our Lords run freely in the darkness. I have seen the way; and our way is through war."

By Argrath the Corruptor, based on a VERY vague idea by Bootae. Check out some of characters from this tale in the gallery!