[center][h3]Stateroom of the Legio XVI[/h3][/center]
[h3]Year: 001.M31[/h3][hr]
[center][img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/667651180872204299/919692167339974726/AC4BF_Inagua_Hideout_Office_-_Concept_Art.webp[/img][/center][hr]The stateroom of the Sixteenth Legion upon Nikaea was a sparsely decorated, simplistic affair. Used almost exclusively by the minute delegation of Ayushmatki and her escorts, the room’s magnificent construction and opulent golden filigree stood at sharp contrast with the simple metal desk that stood at its center, flanked by a temporary sleeping arrangement reminiscent of a military encampment more than anything else. The only sign of decoration was a relatively plain white banner, upon which the numerals XVI were written in unadorned, simplistic script.

Ayushmatki Nanavna izva Kuznekhtinsk busied herself within the room, furious. Furious with Eiohsa - the thrice-damned fool who wore her heart upon her sleeve and had never learned to temper her tongue around her kin. Furious with her kin, who drove the woman she served to such heights of madness with their transgressions upon her. Furious with herself - for she knew not how to break the afflictions that haunted her. 

There was no point in trying with her, she had begun to reason. There was no point in trying to get through to one as stubborn and obstinate as she. In times of crisis her iron will was an invaluable asset. Now? It served only to trap her within her own mind. She would not watch the duel that would unfold soon. She had no stomach for it. She knew, deep down - that the Sixteenth was not ready in the slightest for such a challenge. And yet she would do so anyway, throwing herself upon a grenade not to save those around her, but in a blind act of desperation. 

“Equerry.” The hushed voice of one of her aides lilted over to the table to her. “There is somebody requesting entrance to meet with you. They requested you by name. A Tech-Priest, Magos Tienxia Urcurz - I think they might be part of the Twelfth Legion’s retinue.”

“Thank you, Vishala. Could you let them in?”

The aide nodded once, moving swiftly to the ornate doorway of the room and pulling the door ajar. Ayushmatki frowned as scanning readouts from the aide’s ocular cybernetics filtered through her mind, but she said nothing, instead rising to her feet to greet the new arrival.

“Magos Tienxia Urcurz, yes? What brings you here?”

Her visitor stepped across the threshold. Magos Tienxia Urcurz' heavily augmented form possessed neatly curved, molded bionic limbs and an uncomplicated, armored frame. The shoulders of her crimson Martian robes parted to make room for a bristling surface of spine-like mechadendrites that covered her shoulders and ran up and down her back and head - framing her countenance with a gleaming, silvery mane of bionic spikes. Her face had been cybernetically modified along the halves of her skull - her upper cranium bristling and overcrowded with multi-faceted lenses, omnispex sensors, and redundant utility mechanisms, while her jaw was a tri-sectioned convergence metal plates. Her visage had the seeming of some predatory xenosform.

“Testament be upon you, Adept.” Her vox-encoded voice had but a single layer of hazy, reverberant distortion and had retained the feminine intonation of her original voice rather than having assumed the traditional barbed, uninflected hiss of static favored by most priests with full voxcoder-mediated voices. “Tell me - do you believe in fate?”

“Is this a test, Magos?” Replied the Equerry, raising an eyebrow almost imperceptibly. “I do not. There are, certainly, paths more likely trod. But if you ask if I believe in some universal, binding thread that ties us to a specific course of action - frankly, no. I find the concept preposterous. Have you come merely to bore me with such frivolities as this whilst this foolish duel takes place, Magos?”

Tienxia held up a placatory hand. “Patience, Adept. It is well that you do not believe in Fate. There are many even amongst the Cult Mechanicum who do not, but there are times when circumstances conspire to [i]advise[/i] its momentary consideration regardless. Amongst those of our creed for example, are the Logis. In principle, they are merely statisticians and analysts. They identify exploitable trends and reliable patterns within confined sets of information - yet also, our faith within their talents occasionally produces results that transcend mere mathematical science. Something bordering on prophecy, as Heretechnical as it might be to suggest it. This is why The Logis are so venerated within the Cult Mechanicum.” 

Tienxia halted abrupted and started pointedly at Ayushmatki, clearly expecting a reply.

“Do you speak of the influence of the Immaterium, Magos? Warp-spawned powers beyond mortal ken, beyond those that beings like myself bend to our will?” A trace of a smile crossed her synthetic lips, “I believe there are things not yet explained, or explicable, by Imperial science and reason. Certainly, there are things beyond our understanding.”

“No. That is not what I was implicating. The Mechanicum has something of a doctrinal aversion to Psykers.” Tienxia commented idly.

Ayushmatki raised a hand, “A moment, please - I did not speak of psychic powers wielded by myself, I know well the antipathy for psykers amongst your number, but of phenomena beyond such. Is that what you speak of?”

“I do not speak of any aspect of the Immaterium, such that we are presently aware of its relation to the material universe, Adept. There is indeed much that remains beyond our awareness within both, but in this matter I constrain myself to what is known of the realm in which we reside. Study and knowledge of the Immaterium is, after all, most harshly and stringent proscribed by the Treaty of Mars. Perhaps this is something of an inconvenient and inexplicable constraint, albeit one that is not relevant to the matter at hand.” Tienxia’s tone had taken on an amused, somewhat condescending lilt to it, as though she were chiding an acolyte for doctrinal error.

“Perhaps so, Magos, perhaps so. Then please, sit, and tell me what it is you have come for that we may not waste more of your valuable time on such trivial matters.” Ayushmatki nodded to an unused chair by the desk, sitting down in her own once more as she did so. “Has this to do with the Sixteenth and the Twelfth?”

Tienxia did not move. The chair erupted in billowing flames. “In a manner of speaking.” The Tech-Priest answered with a congenial nod, carrying on as though absolutely nothing untoward had happened even as the chair’s frame and upholstery blackened and began to fray away with audible cracks, embers spilling through the air. 

“As a premise - you are not of my faith so I do not demand that you accept it, merely that you consider it. The Machine God encompasses all of creation, the universe, the immaterium, and so forth. The universe, and everything in it, are a part of its body. Which is to say, we are all within a machine - though not necessarily a part of it. It is the Machine God’s will that we each possess volition, of course. Hence, free will is accepted to exist as an abstraction defining an aspect of the Will of the Machine God.” 

The chair crumpled and began to disintegrate into ashes across the floor, the flames that had consumed it dying down into smoldering, ruinous traceries of light.

Ayushmatki said nothing initially, merely listened to the words her unexpected visitor with an expression of apparent disinterest. “And are you here to imply the events in whose shadow we speak are themselves a factor of the will of the machine god? That the fool of a woman I follow has spoken such obscene and ridiculous things as part? Or do I misunderstand? Forgive me, Magos, I simply wish to know why it is we speak now.”

Tienxia shrugged and splayed her hands. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. Who can truly say of such matters? No. What we are here to discuss is [i]you, Adept.[/i]” Finally, it hit Ayushmatki. Tech-Priests of the Cult Mechanicum were sticklers for formalities such as titles. After all, they regularly possessed an abundance of honorifics they insisted upon being recognized in turn. Tienxia had never once acknowledged Ayushmatki’s formal role as Equerry of the Sixteenth Legion, nor even as a member of the Sixteenth Legion, and it was the [i]emphasis[/i] with which the Tech-Priest employed the word that finally made it evident: She was explicitly insulting Ayushmatki by addressing her with the lowest title possible to afford to her, or to anybody else in the Imperium.

Tienxia finally turned away from the desk to cast her multi-faceted gaze across the heaped, blackened wreckage of the chair. Under her withering gaze, the ruined remnants abruptly split apart with sharp and violent cracks. Repeatedly.

“You see, free will exists, but Fate too exists. All of the world is a Machine, and like any Machine, there is intent and purpose in its design. Elements that enter certain realms of the Machine thus enter a course that cannot be feasibly averted, free will aside. Which is to say…”

Tienxia turned to glance almost conspiratorially at Ayushmatki. “[i]You[/i], Adept, have been caught up in the Machine. If Fate could be said to exist, you are now Fated.” The final remnants of the wooden chair then seemed to shudder and dissolve into nothingness, almost as if they had been atomized. Ayushmatki’s internal geiger counter briefly spiked, then subsided.


Ayushmatki laughed. A high note, only barely tinted by the inflexion of speech synthesizers, she leaned back in her chair as she laughed in the face of the Magos who stood before her. At last, it subsided, and she looked upon the woman before her in a new light, and smiled. “Ah but if it is so, Magos, then it has been so for a very, very long time. From the very moment Eiohsa laid me low when I first met her, before I had joined her, the very moment my own life became entwined with one of the Emperor’s spawn, I knew it would take a different course. You have come here only to state the obvious in meandering half measures and pathetic insults.”

“I have come here on a [i]mission of mercy,[/i] Adept. Perhaps you have always been Fated, but now you find yourself in a part of the machine that will shortly be the end of you.” All trace of cordiality had vanished from Tienxia’s voice, replaced by a cold, iron finality. “There is a way to extricate yourself from the machine though and to carry on in service to the Sixteenth child of the Omnissiah. [i]Make light of my direction in this matter at your peril.[/i]” She then turned to Ayushmatki, approaching the desk and laying her hands on its surface, hunching over and seeming to glower at the Equerry, her silvery spines bristling over like some manner of looming warp-horror.

Then, almost as if she had not just implicitly warned Ayushmatki of her impending death, the Tech-Priest’s former congenial tone returned and she abruptly asked: “Tell me, have you ever been to Sol? The system is quite splendid, even if you hold no love for Mars. Very little you have ever heard sung of it in praise has been exaggerated. Every Adept should endeavor to visit the cradle of Humanity at least once.”

“Once.” Came the reply, “Once, when we had first made contact with the Imperium, almost a hundred and sixty standard years ago.” She leaned forward, steepling her fingers, “What is it that you speak of within the birthplace of Humanity that will ‘save me’, hm?”

“Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun in Splendor. You may have heard of it.” Tienxia answered blithely. “There is a void fortress and Imperial laboratory in close proximity to it, even closer than Mercury. Those who visit that station and meditate in the observatory in contemplation of the heart of the Sun are said to have beheld the Sun in Splendor.”


“Ah, yes, that which I was told by the Twelfth that I would never again see, when I spoke in defense of the Edict during the Council.” She raised an eyebrow, “Certainly, the sight of the sun at the heart of Sol is an inspiring one.”

“Indeed.” Tienxia drew back from Ayushmatki’s desk, the tension seeming to drain from her body and her bristling mane of spines falling in a relaxed wave. “Of course, the Primarchs each contain a spark of the Machine God’s Divinity. The parameters of what they say are important, and not merely in the sense of what they [i]intend[/i] to convey. In a sense, you living to see the Sun in Splendor again would be something of a Divine Paradox - a break from Fate and the Providence of the Machine God. An inviolate act of volition so pure that, in a way, it would be a truer act of veneration than if you abruptly took up the faith. It might even be possible for you to be declared a living Saint, much like our own dear Corneceus Sicanus is to be with the Omnissiah having sanctioned and mandated his practices.”

Ayushmatki’s eyes were wide in genuine surprise. She raised a finger, then lowered it, lips parted slightly as she racked her mind for a response. “I… that is certainly quite the proposal, Magos. Certainly… quite the proposal indeed.” She narrowed her eyes, “And quite the occasion for the Cult Mechanicum, I am sure. But I must ask - why this specific act, hm? It is known, the Emperor’s children are not infallible. As evidenced by Eiohsa herself. The word of the Twelfth is, in turn, certainly not the decree of any divine being. I see no reason to treat it differently than that of any other.”

“Naturally.” Tienxia nodded. “Which is where we come back to the matter of volition. Even for a Primarch, within whom resides Divinity itself, words are cheap. It is [i]intent[/i] and [i]action[/i] that matters. If the Primarch speaks at the eve of battle ‘We shall not allow the enemy to evade us,’ the intent is usually one of bolstering morale or generating positive sentiment - and so it does not matter in a doctrinal sense whether or not the enemy in that scenario manages to escape. If the Primarch [i]avows[/i] themselves of the same, either in private or before a select audience, and then takes particular and discrete actions to ensure their word is true - then what they have said, doctrinally, is an [i]oath[/i]. A geas, if you will. Perhaps even a Prophecy - which, in their case if not ours, would not even be Heretechnical. Much like with the oath of vengeance and wrath that the Twelfth Primarch has sworn against the Sixteenth for her offense.”

“It seems, then, to me that the Twelfth Primarch ought be more careful with such oaths, Magos.” Came the reply, audibly unimpressed. “Certainly, Eiohsa does not bandy about such words so freely and without restraint, I would expect the same of the Twelfth, should his words carry such weight as to be prophecy and mandate.” She forced a thin smile, “But, then, I have not been inducted into the mysteries of the machine cult like you yourself have been, and can offer only the opinions of an outsider on these matters. Forgive me for saying this, but I do not believe such a… visit would do much to assuage the threat made against my person.”

Tienxia shook her head and raised a single chiding finger. “Though I can excuse not wanting to pay much heed to the proverbial circus the two Primarchs have made of these affairs, still one should pay mind to the cognizance of their repute. Augor Astren, for example, has a reputation for honesty. He is capable of deceit, naturally, but he has made a point of demonstrating over a span of nearly two centuries that his literal word is his bond. It is one of the few things concerning his own character of which he has remarked himself to be ‘justly’ proud. Hence, the sudden crux of your capability to invoke a Divine Paradox. He is a Primarch. Even in the throes of fugue, this very possibility is something that has occurred to him, of that we can be certain. So yes - the threat might not abate. That depends on how much weight you afford his pride in this matter, but given your action would be doctrinally significant, it would certainly at least give him pause.”

Tienxia’s hand fell. “You can entertain the route of [i]possible[/i] absolution, or you can let the Machine consume you.”

Ayushmatki remained silent for a time, watching the woman in front of her with an expression that belied no hint of emotion. “Thank you, Magos, for your warning.” 

“Oh, no thanks is required.” Tienxia remarked flippantly as she turned to leave the room. “Why, I was practically obligated to tell you. After all, doctrinally, all that is about to transpire would mean so much less, had you not known.” 

Right at the threshold of the room, Tienxia paused faintly and spoke, back still turned to Ayushmatki, in a calm and even intonation that carried with it a leaden weight.

“You will not live to see the Sun in Splendor ever again. It is the Will of the Machine God.”

The Tech-Priest left without another word.

Ayushmatki leaned back in her chair, pressing her thumb and index finger to the bridge of her nose. The burnt scent of the ashes scattered across the floor, all that was left of the chair she had offered the Magos, wafted across her face. “I suppose it was too much to hope the damn cog-fuckers would see reason and work together with us for the betterment of the Imperium as a whole, wasn’t it?”

She looked to the two Astartes that had shadowed her for near the entirety of the Council, each standing within the far corners of the room. “Kumari, Devaki, thank you. You may return to the Legion, if you wish. Eiohsa has given you leave to do as you see fit in this regard.” She sighed, “Sometimes, I wish I could still get drunk.”

[b][...End Log.][/b]
[b][...Terminating.][/b]
[b][Imperial Thought for the Day: Fear not the enemy with sword in hand before you, but that guised as your own among you.][/b]