She read through the list, feeling bile building up in the back of her throat. There has been one pattern, a pattern too obvious to ignore.

"[i]Draupnir.[/i]" The word got spat out as a soft curse. Four meetings with Draupnir magi within a month could only be seen as some frenetic activity going behind the scenes. A singular meeting with ZRK-333... She would meet with her given any difficult choice - sometimes Motive Force is all you need if you can't pick a singular path. If Tiefenbronn persuaded her to lend more support to Draupnir, she would try and negotiate with the electromancer. ZRK would have try to talk it over.

She personally hated Draupnir for pure ideological reasons, most recent visits boiling down to heated theological debates behind the privacy-fielded doors. Explorator Corps had little ideological policing of their own, yet all of them enforced a singular thesis, a dictum ingrained in every adept, a half-worded thought screened in every applicant. "[i]There is always a bigger wonder out there.[/i]"

It was not an easy thought to maintain, not after throwing thrones, ammo and souls at the endless void expanse with little to show but a couple data-fragments. This was the crucible where the faithful were tempered. Nobody ever said that faith was cheap or easy. Explorator fleets were the main suppliers for the data-mills of Logis-temples with new nuggets of God-Machine, enhancing the sum of knowledge, bringing back the lost jewels of the Dark Age and refining them into Omnissiah service. They charted the new paths for the Imperium and Omnissiah knew that they all needed a new path with the shattered night-sky above.

Draupnir had secured themselves a wonder and denied themselves a thought of having a better one. Toros understood the pain of the unique structure being sacrificed for something as banal as war. It hurt, and she hated herself for pushing them to cave in to the merciless Martian quota demands. Still, the truth was plain and simple - war demands sacrifices and sacrifices hurt. She would love living in the world where sky is something other than a bleeding warp-wound and where the void doesn't throw a storm of myriad angry locusts at your scientific outposts. She was forced to live in reality. War was there. Victory was the only way through. Sacrifices were not optional. Entropy would have worn down their wonder anyway. This was the reality of their future, they could either perish fighting it or embrace it, let go of the past and go with the flow.

That being said, she couldn't help but acknowledge that Draupnir did have a point. This was a point that has been raised to her attention every decade or so. Every decade or so, ever since the sky opened up, some young Logis analyst begged a secret audience with Archmagos, bringing her "news of utmost urgency and importance". Every decade or so, after the mind-cleansed body has been carried out, she poured herself a special blend and read through another report. It did not take a genius to compile it. It did, however, take a lot of stupid bravery to dare compiling it in the first place (and some suicidal tendencies to bring it to her directly). 

Every report told the exact same thing. Martian governance model has entered the death spiral phase - warp disturbance undermining the efficiency of communication, Martian appointees felt control slipping from their hands and tried doubling down on controlling sector forges. Operating on delayed data (quality of which has been barely sufficient in the better times), they managed to achieve negative micro-control, achieving less than they would have done if just leaving things be. With Mars itself facing a deep ideological fracture over that sordid Astartes tribunal, the requirement of control has been implicit, to ensure unity with the position of your lord. It did not take a genius to connect the dots. For every logister coming to her, two were coming to Magi and ten were smart enough to delete their data, never looking again. She never reported on that to Brackmann, for she was smart enough to know that the old beast gorging on Logis Prophets had seen the writing on the wall himself. 

And, just like her, he would not have any room for maneuver if bluntly presented with something as treacherous as the truth. She hated herself for wasting good talent of her Logisters. She would hate to force the hand of the old beast. Omnissiah knew that for every fire she's been putting out on Isohedron, Brackmann was there quenching infernos. He trusted her enough not to ask. She respected him enough not to tell. 

After all, she was sure that Draupnir's leadership had Logis as well, and looked through the same reports. Less Martian control required stronger local governance. Local governance in Houndclaw would be defined by Draupnir - or it would be defined by Hollzenstein's cog-whisperers fighting over the ruins with the locust hordes. Efficient local governance would be achieved through Draupnir being persuaded to take its collective cerebral power out of the waste-processing units. Persuading Draupnir meant being listened to. Being listened to required being useful. Being useful required helping them push back against Martian demands. Maintaining that delicate balance has been the single reason for the Archmagos of Isohedron to exist. An overzealous Magos Juris would already have built a case for Collegiate Extremis on that reasoning alone - and yet, Collegiate Extremis had little presence on Isohedron. She was not dumb enough to attribute that fact to negligence or sheer dumb luck. Brackmann has seen the same reports. He did not have a good answer to the problem, and yet, sometimes, it's not about having an answer yourself - it's about enabling those who try to find it. He respected her enough not to tell it explicitly. She trusted him enough not to ask without a good reason. 

And yet, having no Collegiate Extremis agents and painfully scarce Astynomia presence after the war, she had no independent, qualified investigators on hand. Meaning that now she had to deal with her own mur... timetheft? Grievous bodily harm? Enforced vacation?.. with the crime all by herself. If Toros was somehow perceived to have failed in maintaining the balance, it would be only logical to remove Archmagos from the picture to clear her mind. Even ZRK-333 would have done that. She wouldn't have killed Toros in such a crude impersonal way, but then again - this was not a murder scene. Especially if ZRK-333 believed Toros to be truly alive in the second body. Secunda Toros wanted her to. 

Protomaga bit her lip, the metallic taste straightening her logic. She wanted some things a bit too much. Right now she should want answers.

[b]"November-Yellow, could you kindly enhance the provided data for this lowly biotrash - who initiated which meeting?"[/b]

Draupnir Magi coming to her is one thing. Her coming to Draupnir Magi is another. There was a difference in dynamic. She needed to know that. November was keeping tabs on her - formally unsanctioned, but then again she has never seen a point to hide from November. Gestalt-commander took her duty as protector endearingly serious, even stepping onto the field to serve as a personal bodyguard - in spite of being told multiple times that Archmagos' frame needed no minder tagging along. 

And there she was, proven wrong by skitarii. November would never let go of that, even after her re-confirming her status. Another little wound to her ego that someone would have to pay for.

As she waited for the reply, she knelt against the vandalized altar. Political assassination to clear her mind might have been a decent version of the events, yet it did not explain the data-theft. It might have been a red herring, yet, seriously, nobody would believe that you've plotted out a murder of an Archmagos to steal a cogitator core.[b] With utmost care, she started examining the layout of the broken cogitators, searching for the signs of surviving spirits and probing the dataports through the armour datalink.[/b] She still remembered her default encryption and her favorite data-traps, and, being the least augmented clergy member in existence, she enjoyed relative immunity to some of the more advanced data-djinni. Still, she preferred to proceed with caution.