The Eternal Queen had been ruling the p of Kazathor for the st two turies, slowly tightening her grasp on power and eliminating all of her political oppos or limits on her power, but only a decade ago had she procimed herself the living Herald of the Goddess.

  That had made a stir the popution was still reeling from. The Churd its preachers had been growing in power and much of the popution lived and breathed their every word, but even among them, many were less than pleased with the Queen’s megalomaniacal procmation.

  Others, like Clementine, for whion pyed little part in their day-to-day lives, had taken to the news even worse. Some were apathetic, just shrugging as they talked about how the Queen and the Church could go to war at any moment, Clementine was just worried.

  ge was ing, she could feel it in her boension was thi the air and her old bones felt it thi with every passing month. Something cataclysmic was just beyond the horizon, something that was about to turn the whole world on its head.

  Clementine was just a iddle-css woman satisfied with her regur job serving as the secretary of a local stru pany’s regional manager. She had no greater insight or hope of ever ging the course of civilization as she k was heading in.

  All she had was a gut feeling, and little else.

  Clementine had just one wish, one hope that she had prayed to the great Goddess for every evening before she went to bed.

  ‘Just another day of normalcy, just push back what’s ing by one more day.’ She would say, and as far as she knew, her prayers had been answered.

  Until today.

  The day had started out simply enough, and Clementine was just on her way to the office for another day of hopefully b work when it happened.

  The people mulling about her poi the sky, shouting and exg in surprise as they did. It took a few seds for Clemeo notice their strange behaviour, then another few seds for her worsening eyesight to make out just what they were pointing at.

  A man was floating in the sky, wreathed in flowing dark robes with white highlights that seemed to flow around him like he was uer.

  Clementine remembered the surprise she felt, even with her gsses on, she should have barely been able to see a vague dark shape in the distance. But she could see him. Oh, she saw him like he stood a mere metre away from her.

  When her eyes fell on the may seemed to fke away and only he seemed to be the sole real thing in the whole wide world. Nothing else existed, just him, for a single lengthy sed.

  From somewhere in the distance, came a crash and Clementine’s fused mind barely hat the Royal Pace where the Eternal Queen resided was in the same dire.

  Then a monster appeared before the man in the sky, a terrible mohat had Clementine’s poor old heart trembling with a strange mix of utter revulsion and adoration.

  It was both the most beautiful thing she had ever seen and the most repulsive abomination she had ever had the displeasure of ying her eyes on.

  The man’s eyes were on the creature, and Clementine had the vague impression that those amethyst eyes hid an intense loathing in them mixed with a sense of malicious glee that sent shivers down her spine.

  “I am going to enjoy this, Daemon.” The man’s voice reverberated iine’s ears like a thurike, sendiumbling. People around her fell on their knees, screamed and covered their ears in fear.

  The monster, a ‘daemon’ apparently, opes sinuous mouth with a mog grin, readying for an ahe man cares not one whit for its words though.

  The sky lit up with an intense bluish-white glow and Clementine’s hair stood on end. Lightning gathered around the man, writhing through the sky like a thousand serpents and then he sent the all at the monster without even an iota of hesitation.

  The shockwave hit Clementine, sending her sprawling and knog the air out of her lungs. Then came the sound, a reverberating thuhat made her ears ring and shattered every single pane of gss within visible distance.

  A scream of revoltiy tore through the ensuing sound of chaos, and Clementine caught sight of the abominable creature flying through the sky on a pair of leathery wings.

  Clementine’s fight-or-flight instincts finally kicked in then, and unsurprisingly, they decided on the sed option.

  She just hoped it wasn’t too te to escape the battle of those two … Gods. There was nothing else she could call a being who could trol the primal forces of nature and ohat lived through getting struck by them.

  Gods had desded on the world.

  This was worse than even her wildest expectations. So much worse. There may not even be a world by the time one of those Gods became victorious.

  This might just be the end of Kazathor.

  *****

  Power coursed through Valenith like an unstoppable tidal wave ing to crush reality around him under his heels. That’s what it felt like at least, like the whole world existed at his mercy. He had thought only the had su insidious method of killing its wielders, hubris, overfidence, but it seemed not … or perhaps that was the wrong way to look at things.

  Selene didn’t exhibit any sign of going through the same thing he did, aher did the Mistress for that matter.

  It stung Valenith’s pride to admit it, but he khe problem likely stemmed not from the Mistress’ purified energy, but from himself. He had lived his whole life fearing the use of his powers, knowing that to use them meant to tempt death and the very end of his soul. Removing all that weight had been exhirating. It made him feel like those powers were his own for the first time in forever, and not just a double-edged sword that was just as likely to harm him as his enemies if he wasn’t careful.

  Val sneered down at his foe, the pathetiion of the deplorable God she served. The Mistress had been kind enough to share with him her few enters with Greater Daemons, and he had to admit, he had been expeg this to be an uphill battle.

  As …

  “Is that the best you’ve got?” He empowered his voice, letting it reverberate for miles around him as the Daemon Prince leapt at him again, only for a bolt of lightning to strike it in the side and send it crashing through a skyscraper. “I’ve been expeg more. This is pathetibsp;

  It was fast. He had to give it that much, but lightning was faster and his lightning even more so. He had no doubt those vicious cws on its limbs would cut him to shreds if they touched him, or that the dark fmes cloaking the creature would do anything short of obliterating him from existence, but the creature was hardly fast enough to make any of its attacks ect. It was almost a letdown. Clearly, this Daemon Prince had not caught the Dark Prince’s attention by pushing its martial abilities above and beyond what would be sidered excessive for the regur masses.

  Tyranny perhaps? Valenith mused, letting his power wash over a portion of the p and survey it as he batted away the screeg monstrosity. No, the citizenry was far too … normal for the creature to have ruled them with an iron fist. What then? Ambition? Scheming?

  The tter might have been teically possible, but he doubted the creature before him would be so bereft of ahers if it thrived on schemery and backstabbing. That was the way of the Lord of ge, not the Dark Prince.

  The creature shifted, the half-human half-monstrous form it had now crag at the seams as it abandoned all aspects of its once mortal self it had kept. It also sped up, its body blurring as its cw-like limbs wreathed in dark fmes tore through the air.

  Val put on a shocked expressioedly ambling vaguely backwards as the creature shot for him and a pair of his lightning bolts struothing but thin air as his foe’s increase of speed made him ‘miscalcute’ where to aim.

  The Daemon Prince on him, a gleeful snarl on its far too wide mouth as a long serpeongue flicked out to lick its lips. The bdes shot forward, and at the very st moment, Val disappeared, leaving in his p afterimage wreathed in lightning.

  His Blink took him half a kilometre away from where he watched his own afterimage explode with lightning, like a bottled thuorm finally breaking tai. The creature that had been gleefully drinking in his ‘terrified’ expression now wailed in agony and rage as its battered body shot down from the sky, lightning still curling around its form and ravaging whatever flesh such creatures had.

  “Pathetic,” Val said with true disdain. He had been afraid of this creature? He lived turies in fear of this? These were the creatures young Eldar were told horror stories about, that their elders warned against? He khis creature was likely the bott, the living example of what the weakest of the weak within the Dark Prince’s endless armies were capable of. Still. “Never fought anything even mildly capable of fighting back, have you, Oh Eternal Queen?”

  The delicious shock that spread through the still-gawking onlookers and the wider citizenry of the capital below them was truly something spectacur. He had heard the obnoxious title they had been referring to their ruler by, but apparently, they weren’t aware they were serving a Daemon Prince.

  They might just be salvageable. Val mused. The Mistress would be pleased, she’d wanted a citizenry for her p and these lost fools might just be suitable didates.

  Returning his attention to the mangled body of the Daemon Prince, Valenith roused his powers once more as his eyes narrowed with predatory mali them. He could have killed the creature a while ago, but he had wao relieve some of the pent-up stress he’d incurred in his turies spent fearing the Dark Prind his minions.

  There was also another, more pragmatic reason for the Daemon Prince’s tinued existence. He could not kill it, sure he could banish it, but that was not a true death. No, true death was something only the Mistress could deal to these misbegotteures.

  I hope she won’t be too annoyed with my interruption of her experiments. Val mused, nding before the stumbling Saneshi abomination as a bde of living lightning formed in his outstretched hand and a sheet of dimensional sorcery ed around his body just in case. If he were to present the Daemon Prio the Mistress for a final sendoff to oblivion, the creature had to be properly … subjugated.

  It wouldn’t do for it to cause trouble for the Mistress, after all.

  I think I will cut off all of its limbs and its jaws, then break every bone in its abominable body. That should make it docile enough to be presentable.

  Nodding to himself, Valenith’s bde fshed out and seared right through a shoulder. An agonised screech tore its way out of the Daemon’s throat and many of the humans close enough to hear it echoed with screams of their own as they frothed at the mouth and bled from every orifi their bodies.

  “Silence,” Valenith snarled, his strike searing whatever went for vocal cords in these creatures and theed its jaw into molten sg. The screams fell silent. “Better.”

  A mier, the once ‘mighty’ Daemon Prince y broken at his feet, just barely intaough that it wasn’t pulled bato its home in the .

  “I have someone who’ll likely be wanting to meet you,” Valenith said to the broken body of his foe, receiving only a gurgled groan in respohat his mild telepathic reading of the creature took for a curse. “No, none of that. Be silent and you might just be relieved of having to suffer the displeasure of your depraved God. You will have absolutely nothing to worry about ever again. My Mistress will take care of it all.”

  Patting the mangled creature, Valenith cast a final gaze about himself. The city tre was a mess, buildings reduced to rubble, fires ing whatever fmmable material they found and the smell of death from the hundreds of unfortunate bystanders who couldn’t get away fast enough painting a grim picture.

  Still, Valenith cared little for the colteral damage. A Daemon Prince of She Who Thirsts would be wiped from existeoday. The mere few hundred human lives and infrastructural damage riyone would have gdly paid for that goal.

  Ps had been wiped of all life for less. Valenith knew Master Eldrad would have signed millions, if not billions, of humans to a horrible death without a blink of an eye if it meant achieving just a fra of the results he had today. Not that the Imperium was any different.

  Feeling thusly justified, and more than a little pleased with himself, Valenith Teleported himself and his mangled oppo up to a room close to Mistress Ea's current location.

  P3t1