Earth year: 2135.
Seventy-two years had passed inside the Crimson Heaven, and on top of that Orsaga had slowed his personal time flow by several hundred times.
To him, then, the Star God fragment had been studied for what amounted to tens of thousands of years. Every decipherable detail had been parsed, broken down, and rederived again and again.
Combining what he recovered from the shard with knowledge from other universe, Orsaga managed to graft a few Star-God traits onto himself. Those tweaks forged faint, special links to the material universe.
The most direct effect: the material universe's rejection of him eased slightly. Where his power had previously been suppressed by roughly 99.9%, it was now suppressed by about 98% — nearly a twenty-fold effective increase. A surprising gain, even if not world-changing for him personally.
His vassals benefited far more.
Because of the huge scale difference between Orsaga and his followers, many effects that were only fragmentary on him became powerful and usable when transferred to them. After he converted the fragment's discoveries into innate gifts and passed them on, the Eldrazi gained a measurable ability to travel freely between the Warp and the material universe.
They no longer needed special conditions to enter the material world nor risk immediate expulsion after a short stay. In practical terms, they had become a truly mobile legion.
――
Somewhere within the Warp.
Emrakul, one of the three chief commanders of the Eldrazi Legion, stalked through tides of corpses. She had just annihilated a planet that existed within the Warp — both pastime and duty.
As Orsaga's vassals, the Eldrazi functioned as his agents. What they tore down and pillaged forwarded a portion of raw resources back to Orsaga. Thus their ravages were, in effect, resource-gathering for their maker.
Having fully assimilated the new talent Orsaga had bestowed, Emrakul received a direct command in her mind. When She finished reading it, uncontrollable exultation swelled through her. Her upper torso — a mass of malformed, multicolored coral-like growths — split open to reveal a great, central eye. An invisible ripple shot outward.
In an instant, billions of twisted creatures on that world collapsed into raw energy, which Emrakul absorbed. Only the more powerful, elite Eldrazi derivatives remained intact.
Emrakul used spatial powers to shove the remaining millions of elite Eldrazi into her personal pocket dimension. The planet became utterly still.
Inside Emrakul's private realm, hundreds of billions of Eldrazi derivatives already waited. They were the choicest picks she'd assembled across millennia. Time in the Warp was chaotic; for Emrakul, thousands of years had passed. The forces stored in her pocket space were the army she had prepared.
After finishing the cleanup, Emrakul set course for a destination. She was not alone. Other Commanders, hunting and roaming the Warp, had received the same command and began to converge.
At the sight of their mass movement, every passerby — including other Chaos Gods' minions — automatically cleared a wide berth. Even if only decades had passed on Earth, the Eldrazi had been terrorizing Warp-space for countless ages. Their reputation alone was not enough to describe them: they killed wherever they marched.
Any creature they encountered was turned into some form of Eldrazi derivative. They didn't spare enemy factions — other Warp-demons were fair game.
(Note: because the liege Chaos Gods Tzeentch, Nurgle, and Khorne's followers are all classed as Warp-demons, the Eldrazi are often lumped into the same category in Warp parlance; the difference is factional allegiance.)
Faced with the advancing Eldrazi horde, Warp denizens fled as if a nightmare procession had begun.
――
Not long after, the number of Eldrazi who returned to the Crimson Heaven had long since exceeded the trillions. They arrived in silence, but the energy waves rolling off them revealed uncontested excitement.
High above, Orsaga's figure appeared at the apex of the sky. After scanning the kneeling but roused Commanders, he laughed and declared:
"Since your birth you've never fought in large coordinated campaigns. The time has come. There are beings in the material universe who can serve as your opponents… and as nourishment for your growth. Follow my will: go conquer them, kill them, devour them. Show me your worth!"
At his words, a colossal gate — large enough to swallow a star — opened inside the Crimson Heaven.
The three Eldrazi commanders, Emrakul, Kozilek, and Ulamog, answered without hesitation: "All will be as you command!" and led the charge.
The rest followed. Their hundreds-of-meters-tall bodies and their countless numbers moved like mountain ranges. Even stars in their path would be crushed beneath them.
They could no longer contain their desire to demonstrate their power to their maker — to Orsaga.
_____
T/N:
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