The Dornian Heresy - The Bolter and Chainsword

esistance across Terra. The skeleton
force of Custodes that had remained to
maintain the illusion bore the brunt of
Dorn‟s anger.
Despite strenuous assertions from
Horus that He must leave Terra, the
Emperor flatly refused. He had spent
the whole of his long lifetime battling
to unite Terra and mankind, and had
fought at the forefront of the Great
Crusade. He would not be driven away
from His own planet. He also had a
plan. In the time since His rescue by
the Night Lords, He had been working
to this end, and just after the death of
Perturabo, the Emperor completed His
modifications and bonded a portion of
His consciousness with the
Astronomicon. In an instant, the warpinfluence
weakened planet-wide, with
whole legions of lesser entities
banished from the physical realm.
The rebellion was wounded, but not
finished. Then, beyond all expectation,
the White Scars arrived. Thought lost,
their ships filled the comm-channels
with disturbing, discordant harmonics
before swooping down into the
embattled Lion's Gate spaceport. They
murdered the Imperial defenders, and
without even fortifying their positions,
the corrupted White Scars took to their
vehicles and scattered across the planet
at high speed to make sport with the
cowering civilian population.
With another fresh legion throwing its
weight behind the traitors, and the
fleets of the Dark Angels and Space
Wolves only days away, the Emperor
had no choice but to cut out the Heresy
at its source. He and his finest troops
prepared to board the Phalanx and
destroy the Arch-Betrayer, Dorn, on
his own battle-barge.
The Phalanx
As soon as the Emperor announced His
decision to board the Phalanx, Curze
appeared from the shadows and
volunteered his services. It was known
that the Night Lord Primarch was privy
to prophetic visions, often of the worst
possible fates, and yet even to the
Emperor he rarely spoke of what he
saw. It was said that these nightmares
were not inevitable, and that Curze was
constantly tormented to ensure that the
worst excesses of his visions would not
come to pass.
Before he could be asked more details
of his plan, Curze was gone. True to
his word, though, at the appointed hour
sensors registered an internal explosion
aboard the Phalanx and the shields
preventing teleportation flickered and
died. The Emperor, flanked by his
Custodes, and Horus along with his
Mournival of captains teleported onto
the ship, but were scattered across the
vast command decks by sinister
magicks. Called by the psychic
presence of the Emperor, the loyalists
fought their way back to their leader.
Horus reached the Emperor just outside
of Dorn's personal Sanctum, to find the
primarch's Terminator armour-clad
guards dead, and the armoured
doorway already open. A wail of
The Phalanx had seen
the deaths of two of his
sons. The Emperor
hardened his heart to
cause a third.
unutterable anguish echoed from the
chamber beyond. The pair ventured
inside and found the room a wreck.
Fine tapestries had been ripped from
the walls, and Dorn was smashing the
complex mechanisms of his Pain-
Glove with the sheared adamantium
haft of his personal standard – the
banner awarded to him by the
Emperor. The pair advanced, ready for
the kill, but Horus recognised the look
in his brother's eyes from his time just
after the possession on Davin and
urgently waved his father back.
Dorn mumbled that he had been freed -
that the pulse from the Astronomicon
had given him enough strength to
finally banish the daemon. He said that
he had killed his corrupted bodyguards
and retreated to the Pain-Glove to
atone for his sins. Empathising with
Dorn, the Warmaster put aside his
weapons and advanced, open-handed
in friendship, to embrace his returned
6
brother. More wary than Horus, the
Emperor hung back, and as though
compelled by some unexplained urge,
kicked aside a fallen tapestry to reveal
the brutalised corpse of Konrad Curze.
With his deception revealed, Dorn
raised the broken standard pole and
plunged it deep into Horus' chest. The
Warmaster died, never realising that he
had been betrayed a second time.
Spurred into action, the Emperor leapt
at Dorn. The room had seen the deaths
of two of his sons, and He hardened his
heart to cause a third. Dorn, though,
had been endowed with all the gifts of
the Ruinous Powers, and was a match
for even the Master of Mankind. The
two battled for what seemed like an
age, but when the Mournival, led by
Captain Abaddon, reached the
devastated site of the battle, they found
both of them broken, burned and
shattered beyond aid.
Dorn's Heresy had been ended, but
doing so had claimed the Emperor's
mortal life. All that remained was an
echo of His spirit that had been bound
to the Astronomicon. It bade Abaddon
to reclaim the bodies of the Emperor
and His loyal sons, and to re-unite the
physical shell with what remained of
His immortal soul. They fought their
way off the ship with cold fury, and
after that the Phalanx, under the
command of Sigismund, stayed in orbit
just long enough to collect the
remaining Imperial Fists. The coalition
of traitors fractured, and then scattered,
with the Blood Angels, Salamanders
and White Scars commandeering
whatever vessels they could to escape.
The Dark Angel fleet turned from its
Terran course, and even the bloodcrazed
berserkers of the Space Wolves
faltered, before falling to fighting
amongst themselves.
The Emperor was brought to the
Astronomicon, where His shattered,
lifeless, flesh was integrated with the
psychic machinery of the beacon, and
fed and nourished with a thousand
souls a day to sustain His wavering
life-force.
The Long War to drive the traitors
from the Imperium could then begin.