From the Ashes Reborn

A Dornian Heresy Continuation Story

After millennia asleep, I awake to see what the Imperium has become and I weep. Knowledge, art, culture and so much more have been lost to the travesties of time and endless war. What was once encouraged is now repressed, what was once honoured is now seen as divine.

When I died, the Imperium was strong and resolute. Since my return I have seen the poor state of our defences, crumbling under incessant assaults by xenos, heretics and worse. To the galactic east, the Ultramar Realm continues to expand steadily, incorporating Imperial world after Imperial world. To the galactic south the latest Tyranid Hive Fleet consumes all before it and only the brave sacrifices of irreplaceable fleets and warriors keep it at bay. Across the galaxy Ork Waaaghs! move from sector to sector, pillaging and killing all in their savage rampages.

But that is far from the worst. The Traitor Legions have finally united in purpose, spewing forth from the Eye of Terror in numbers not seen since Dorn's Heresy. Hope is seemingly lost; the flame of my father's dream sputtering as it finally dies at the closing of this Dark Millennium.

But that flame will not become extinguished, it will be rekindled, and hope will return to the hearts of humanity once again for I have returned. I am Fulgrim, son of the Emperor, and I will push back the darkness. The time for crusade has come and we will restore the Imperium's borders, reinstate stability and order. So begins the Emperor's retribution and the enemies of Mankind will burn in the fires of our vengeance.

-The private musings of Fulgrim, Primarch of the Emperor's Children, 999.M41

Prologue

Fulgrim watched as Ferrus Manus approached. His brother as he once knew him was all but gone, replaced by silver metal that matched his legendary hands. The two primarchs stood alone deep in the Pride of Chemos.

"Surprised, brother?" Manus asked, a shadow of regret tinging the Gorgon's voice.

"No," Fulgrim said gravely, unsheathing Fireblade. "I knew that in the end, it would be you."

"It doesn't have to be the end. You can still join me. Save Mankind from the predations of Chaos."

"And have our souls live inside metal husks forged by xenos? I don't think so. I'd rather die as I am, as I was created."

Manus nodded slowly. "So be it." The Gorgon raised a Gauss cannon, green energy dancing along the barrel. Fulgrim knew he couldn't close the distance and strike. Centuries had passed since the Dornian Heresy and he had fought for that entire time, rebuilding what had been lost. He was tired, so very tired. And yet, he knew he had to try. It was what He would want, what He would expect. And Fulgrim was never one to disappoint. He raised Fireblade and charged.

Manus fired and the shot hit him. Just as the xenos weapon broke him down at a molecular level he felt a warm glow envelop his body, pulsating softly over him. All became black.

Fulgrim awoke lying in a field of golden light. Armour and weapons gone, he rose from the ground and stood. In the distance a strong golden light pulsated powerfully across the ethereal sky.

+My son,+ boomed a voice, echoing through this golden world.

The voice caught Fulgrim off guard. It had been so long…

"Father?"

+Yes, Fulgrim, it is I.+

A wave of emotion came over the Phoenician.

"Father…" tears fell down pale cheeks. "I have missed You. Are you alive?"

+My body decays but My spirit endures. I have communed with Magnus several times since My internment upon the Golden Throne.+

"I wasn't sure he told the truth. I didn't know if it was fact or something merely to bolster my spirits. I am lost without you, father. We are lost without you."

The golden light waned. Fulgrim thought he heard faint laughter and voices, coming from four separate sources. They were malicious, deviant, foreboding, and death. Fulgrim then had an inkling of what the Emperor fought in death, what He had fought for countless years and would for many more to come.

His father's light resurged, stretching across the sky and the voices were subdued.

"Am I dead?" he asked.

+Nearly. I snatched you away from the jaws of death.+

Fulgrim looked down at his unmarred body. Before he could ask the question the Emperor spoke again.

+I have made you whole here and will reconstruct your body, fusing your disintegrated matter with the rest of you. It will take time and effort, but it will be done.+

"How long will it take?"

+Unknown. My Will is focused on other matters. Only so much can be done in so much time. When you have healed, I will send you back. I know of the plans you laid out in the years after the Heresy, the methods and counter-measures put into motion. I approve. In time, they may be enough to stave off what is to come.+

"And what will come?" Fulgrim whispered hesitantly.

+Sorrow and despair, a million worlds ablaze with war, the piercing scream of a species pushed ever closer towards extinction, while the cosmos wails with the suffering of countless billions. Death, destruction… Chaos.+ The golden light flickered but stabilised quickly. +Chaos is coming, Fulgrim, and it heralds the Time of Ending. When you awake, trust in yourself. You will be Mankind's greatest hope.+

"Father, I-" The golden light expanded outwards, engulfing him and darkness overtook him yet again, the Emperor's last words echoing in his mind.

10,000 years later…

Fulgrim awoke on a grassy plain, nude. He clutches fistfuls of dirt in his hands and dropped them back to the earth. Unlike before this was not an ethereal plain, this was real, the Materium. The primarch glanced at his body, healed and unmarred, appearing as it did prior to the last confrontation with Manus. How long had passed, he wondered? Rising, he looked skyward unto the twilight heavens and knew immediately where he was.

Home.

There was stellar drift, causing the constellations to have shifted to a small degree, but it was undeniably the sky of Chemos. Disturbingly, there was a violent scar crossing across the heavens, a stellar wound that bled aetheric light, bruised purple, sickly yellow and corrupted white. Just looking at it was making him uneasy, bile churning in his throat. He did not know what it was but it did not bode well that there was a warp storm visible in the twilight sky.

Over a hill he could hear a river gurgling as it gushed downwards. Walking to it and seeing its rich vastness, he recognised it as the River Tyber. Deducing his location took less than a second, and then presided north along the river, knowing he would eventually arrive to a city.

It took hours before he saw the first sign of human life. A small fishing village with perhaps three dozen inhabitants resided before him, having several boats on the river with men and women hauling in filled nets of fish, doubtlessly supplying nearby cities with fresh meat.

Fulgrim did not approach. He did not know how long he had been healing, and it was not wise to encounter baseline humans as a primarch. They were wont to be intimidated, awed, and terrified all at once. It was a hurdle he'd rather not face at the moment. Still, he did not wish to be naked. It wasn't dignified.

Fulgrim snuck into the village, taking a bedsheet which he wrapped around himself as if it were a primitive robe. More comfortable, he circumvented around the village and continued northward, recognising little and less. He may have united Chemos, but he had not travelled every square metre of it. However, he had travelled the length and breadth of the Tyber and recognised many of its landmarks, yet still they were different, either smaller or larger, a result of time having passed a great deal. What should have been a small mountain range was now a collection of large hills; the river waxed and waned in patterns unfamiliar to Fulgrim. Chemos still was undeniably beautiful but it seemed… faded somehow. It worried him that so much had changed. How long had he been gone? A millennia? Two millennia? More? Stifling dismay, he continued onwards.

It took three days before he saw the city in the distance. Though additions had been made, he recognised it at once. Callax, one-time fortress-factory during Old Night, then fortress-monastery of the Third Legion, and now a walled city, bristling with turrets and statues, flags of the Legion and the Imperium still adorning its ramparts. A jet-bike zoomed across the horizon to the walled city, its massive gates opening to allow the rider entry. Even from this distance and the speed of the jet-bike, the purple and gold panoply was unmistakable. The Children of the Emperor still lived.

Fulgrim set off towards the city. Nearing it, the city guard bellowed for him to stop, their voices booming from speakers placed inside gargoyle and angelic statues that lined the city's walls. Not wishing to cause incident, he did so. Shifting the makeshift hood, he revealed his shoulder length silver-white hair, his Emperor-crafted physique and more importantly the gene-crafted face of a demigod. That alone would get a reaction.

And he was right.

Within minutes Callax's massive gates swung open and six squads of Emperor's Children marched out, power spears and swords at the ready, hefting body-length combat shields, bolt pistols mag-locked to their waists. The sixty legionnaires encircled him, hesitantly, and Fulgrim could tell by their stance that they were surprised and shocked.

The commander, a centurion, moved forward and removed his helm, revealing close cropped silver-white hair and violet eyes. Truly he was a son of Fulgrim.

"Can it be true?" the legionnaire asked, shocked as he stared at his primogenitor.

"It is, my son," Fulgrim said. "I have returned."

Hello, everybody. I hope you enjoyed that little prologue, as I have much more planned.

As you have probably guessed, this is set in the excellent Dornian Heresy alternate universe, created by Aurelius Rex and others over on . Now I am not claiming to "finish" the Dornian Heresy as the Death Guard, Sons of Horus/Black Templars, Imperial Fists/Black Legion Indexes were never written/published, and likely never will. I give all credit to the original authors and praise them for really starting the Alternate Heresy sub-genre and sparking my interest in the "what-ifs of Warhammer40k", and want to show my appreciation of the Dornian Heresy by writing this story in its setting.

This fanfic within a fanfic came about as I was reading Guy Haley's 'Dark Imperium' novel. It is my first foray into the Gathering Storm/M42 series that Black Library and Games Workshop have produced. Though initially hesitant, I am liking many things about it so far. Reading it made me want to write a story set in a similar setting, with the ultra grimdark feel, mass despair but with a spark of hope trying to survive. Well I didn't want to write a fanfic story based on canon 40k. Just not interested in doing that. I considered writing it in my own Fulgrimian Heresy setting but many of the things I want to use and discuss simply wouldn't work there as my Imperium by M41 is vastly different than canon M41 Imperium, and the seeds of my End Times have been planted and I'd rather not reread and rewrite my entire timeline to incorporate this other story I want to tell. So I created this thread.

Since I am writing in Aurelius Rex's universe, I am largely abiding by the lore he set. So the Salamanders follow Malal, Sanguinius and Blood Angels are corrupted by Nurgle, the Imperial Army is never divided into the Imperial Guard and Navy, Ultramar is a secessionist empire, etc. While I may tweak some terminology and lore here and there I will largely follow what has been established, and what the DH lore doesn't cover, I will fill in the gaps.

Since the Dornian Heresy was started and mostly written when the Space Marine Legions were around a tenth of their current canon size in the HH, they will remain so here. They were retconned to allow for a longer and bloodier war, and I feel the current canon numbers in the HH are more realistic and flexible, but I feel the smaller Legions work better here and Legion size was never directly mentioned in the DH Indexes.

So when the Dornian Heresy begins, the Emperor's Children have 11,000 Astartes, the Iron Warriors 18,000, and the Ultramarines 25,000. The numbers have changed drastically since, with there being hundreds of thousands of loyalist Astartes by late M41, but not the million Space Marines of canon, and definitely not the several million Astartes of my FH. This makes each individual Space Marine feel more powerful, more valuable and more irreplaceable.

I'm pretty excited for this story and the possibilities inherent in it. For those worried, this will NOT take precedence over the Fulgrimian Heresy. This is my secondary story, not the primary.

If you enjoyed the prologue and are excited for more, be sure to 'Follow Story,' favorite, and comment!