//------------------------------// // Prologue // Story: Salvation // by voroshilov //------------------------------// Surrounded by nullspace, far from the very boundaries of existence, stood three figures. Their power, so immense it was, created a layer of space around them, pushing back the boundaries of nullspace whenever they moved, allowing their presence in the realm of nothingness to be maintained. All around them, nullspace writhed and pushed, like air trying to enter a vacuum. By sheer force of will, they staved off the all-consuming nothingness. The Omniverse was stagnant, wounded, battered and bruised since the climactic and destructive end of the War in Heaven. The Great Light - a being so powerful and fundamental that it could be considered neither alive nor dead - had released a crushing tsunami of energy upon its downfall: a final punishment for one man’s reality-spanning crusade to destroy it. "Our energy reserves are enough recovered." "The enemy’s final act will be nullified." Stagnant, wounded, battered and bruised. But that would not last for long. Emperor Nicholas, The Everlasting, eyes alight with focused power, stood tallest of the three. Every flex of his mighty wings sent cascading ripples of isolated reality into the maw of void that surrounded them.  The Composer, whose body had formed something vaguely man shaped, glowed a bright and attery green. His luminescence reflected off of the veneer of the little reality bubble in which he stood, giving the impression to his fellows of a small green star. The Emperor of Sorrows, charred flesh and bone held together by writhing tendrils of matter-data, sat cross-legged on ground that didn’t exist. From his shoulders came coils of matter-data, searching out and groping at the non-existent area behind him, trying to find purchase on matter that was not there. The three brothers - though a more astute and knowledgeable observer would call them simply thirds of one whole - who had been separated millennia ago, were reunited in the emptiness. Theirs was a task that no other could achieve, even their power would be tested to its very limits. Had the War in Heaven caused any more damage, all of Emperor Nicholas’ work would be for nothing. However, all had proceeded according to fate. The work that the Eternal Emperor, Nicholas, The Master of Time, had begun upon his rebirth - his emergence from the Great Experiment - would finally be completed. “Let us make good then,” The Emperor of Sorrows said, “on our victory in the War in Heaven.” The Composer - or, rather, his shadow - nodded. “The Great Light’s final stratagem, foiled.” Nicholas, The Everlasting, flexed his wings and arms, testing their strength in a subconscious reflex. “The people of the Omniverse,” he declared far more theatrically than necessary, “shall be free, at last.” A simple outreach of his arms and hands was all the signal needed. The final act of the War in Heaven, of Emperor Nicholas, had begun. In unison, his two brothers grasped his hands. In an instant, their power - the very energy that held their bodies together - began to flow through him, streams of corruption and time energy passing along the arms and up into the Everlasting's eyes. Their reunion, so long previously forbidden, carried enough energy to rebuild that which was destroyed. The Emperor of Sorrows gave out first, his body reduced to nothingness as all of his power passed into the Everlasting. The Composer lasted for another minute, before he too was absorbed. The Everlasting, chitinous skin a dark purple, armour ashen white, was alone. Though there was nothing to compare him too, he was hundreds of metres tall, his ghostly purple wings larger than buildings. His three eyes, once cyan, were now white, green and red, writhing with a soul too large for one body. His mouth was gone, for there was no one left to speak to. Power flowed from every part of him, visible as it created space for itself to inhabit - then more by its impossible desire to expand existence. His three eyes burned as the energy in his blood flowed to the Obsidian Crown atop his head, still glossy black, where it was amplified and funnelled to his hands, which both held aloft swirling spheres of energy, which grew larger by the second. Slowly, almost unnoticeably, the Crown relinquished its hold upon his skull. "With this," he would have bellowed, had he been able to speak, "the Omniverse shall be reborn." The spheres of creation reached their critical mass, bursting in a release that tore apart the nullspace, the Everlasting along with it, using what power had fuelled his own body to augment its own energy even further.  In a wave, invisible and unfeelable to almost all of his former subjects, Emperor Nicholas' energy spread across the whole Omniverse, rebuilding it to a more perfect standard than before. The damage of the Great Light’s final, vicious act was brutal, but it was not enough for it to claim victory. Twenty millennia of work, twenty millennia of warfare and planning, had all come to fruition. His work, his life’s mission, his reality-spanning crusade against the Great Light was done. Atop her observation tower on Sanctuary's Watch, on a cold winter’s morning, in orbit around what was once the Imperial capital world of Chronove, the scholar Sunless-Halo-of-Penumbra was thrown to the ground, a wave of energy so intense it shorted out her horn washing over her.  Papers and books were flung from her desk, her chair toppling. To any outside observers - though there were none - it would have looked as though Penumbra had just experienced a seizure, or serious electric shock from something beneath her. On the ground she lay, choking on a sob for what felt like hours. The wave had carried with it a voice, not an audible voice, but a voice nonetheless, the voice of a soul - a soul too large or one body, a soul she knew all too well. To the owner of that soul she owed a great many things, including both undying love and undying hatred. To the owner of that soul she owed her new name. Emperor Nicholas was truly, and finally, dead.