November-Orange: Logistical advice operationalized.
November-Brown: Behaviour deviations were not logged for Archmagos Toros before demise.
November-Black: Noting that we had minimal contact, and no access to the Archmagos' sanctum.
November-Yellow: She did take more meetings than usual.

When in person, November tended to operate as one fluid entity. In digital communication it was different - each of her ten networked bodies had slight variations in personality and outlook. Orange was the node most focused on movement and logistics, Brown on surveillance and observation, Black is paranoia - but Yellow one didn't hear from much. Yellow was the big picture - vision, intuitive leaps, a little bit of perspective.

November-Yellow: There are periods where the Magi do not contact each other for years at a time - with the exceptions of Magos Tiefenbronn and Pinel, who regularly visit every other Magi. In the month prior to Magos Toros' demise her calendar looked like this:
1/10/999.M41: Magos Tiefenbronn
8/10/999.M41: Magos Tiefenbronn
9/10/999.M41: Magos ZRK-333
16/10/999.M41: Magos Tiefenbronn
23/10/999.M41: Magos Pinel, Magos Stoll
29/10/999.M41: Death of the Archmagos.

*

30/10/999.M1: Clone activated
5/11/999.M41: Present day

This entire month is lost to you. Two more days and the Archmagos would have performed her regular data backup, as she did on the connecting midnight of each month. If this was indeed a theft of time, it was this month that was taken from you.

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.

"Draupnir." 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. "There is always a bigger wonder out there."

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.

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

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. 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. 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.

November-Brown: First meeting was initiated by Tiefenbronn. Following from that, no invites were issued; meetings occurred every seven days on a regular pattern. The ZRK-333 meeting was initiated by Archmagos Toros immediately following a meeting with Tiefenbronn. The final meeting had Stoll and Pinel arrive at the meeting slot regularly scheduled for Toros.
November-Pink: Try not to address us individually, please! It gives us a headache trying to route incompatible data flows through inappropriate nodes. We are all November.

(Pink was the node with a little bit of humanity to her - an important balancing factor for something as complex as the November collective)

[Bullshit Detector] Arranging one meeting, then turning it into a regular weekly event, is typical of Tiefenbronn. Partially for this reason - if you're only talking to people when you've got something important to say you become transparent to logis analysis. Sometimes he'll keep the socialization going for months before he gets to the point, sometimes he pushes the same point week after week until he wears his target down.

It's impressive how often he makes it work. He's charming enough to be able to regularly meet with even recluses like PWD-40. He's also got a great sense for when he's overstaying his welcome and letting meetings lapse for a few months or years before restarting them.

[Data Recovery]
10> LAMENT. LAMENT TO THE OMNISSIAH, FATHER AND MASTER OF ALL MACHINES
20> THE SACRED RITES OF DEACTIVATION WERE NOT PERFORMED.
30> INFORMATION STORED IN THE COGITATOR'S GOAT INGRESS MEMORY WAS LOST
40> TO MOURN THE LOSS OF SACRED KNOWLEDGE GOTO 10
50> THE PROCESS OF PERFORMING A SAFE SHUTDOWN PRIOR TO REMOVING THE COGITATORS WOULD HAVE ADDED FIFTEEN MINUTES TO THE OPERATION. NOT PERFORMING A SAFE SHUTDOWN MAY RESULT IN THE LOSS OF ANY ACTIVELY PROCESSING DATA.
60> TO UNPLUG THE COGITATORS RATHER THAN CABLE-CUTTING WOULD HAVE INSTEAD ADDED ONE MINUTE TO THE OPERATION. THIS IS NOT MUCH IMPROVEMENT BUT WOULD REDUCE THE RISK OF POWER SURGES.
70> ADDITIONALLY, CARRYING THE COMBINED WEIGHT OF ALL OF THESE COGITATORS WOULD HAVE BURDENED EVEN A POWER-ARMOURED ORKOID CHASSIS, PREVENTING IT FROM MOVING FASTER THAN A WALK
80> FURTHER, VARIOUS PLASTEEL CHIPS CAN BE OBSERVED, INDICATING THAT THE CASING OF THE COGITATORS MAY HAVE BEEN CRACKED OPEN.
90> APHORISM OF MAGOS TANENBAUM: DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE NOOSPHERIC TRANSFER RATE OF A SKORPIUS FILLED WITH DATA CRYSTALS ON FLAT TERRAIN.
100> [load: death-to-the-brute.hmn]

Kota grows a bit uncomfortable upon being questioned about Lucine more.

"She isn't dead if that's what you're asking, I just... can't see her as much anymore. She has other duties, things more important. I understand that... I should understand that perfectly because duty and devotion must come before all else but a selfish part of me still wants to see her you know? It's not even that I can't, its that I don't know how I should act around her when I do, or how I'm allowed to act. She's higher above me so I should show the upmost respect, at the same time she's someone dear to me." She looks at Secunda, almost expecting her to give some sort of emotional advice before remembering that they're not quite the same. She shouldn't expect that level of comfort or understanding, much less from a stranger.

With a sigh she runs her hand through her hair, a small frown forming on her lips as she does so.

"Look, I don't know if you've ever had someone like that, but I don't exactly feel its fair that I'm the only one bearing my heart out to you. Besides now you might have a levrege on me, if you need one. Not that I don't trust you, or rather I have no choice, but how about giving me an even playing field."

Toros stood against the broken vitrage of the room, her fingers caressing the plas-tek casings of what once had been her personal Omnissiah altar. What was the point of trying to cover-up the theft of data-cores specifically, covering it up behind stealing of the whole cogitator AND behind an assassination?..

It took her a good five seconds to process the question. Took another five to come up with an answer. She hated operating in meat-time.

"Allow an old woman to revisit one history lesson, Kota", protomaga turned around, her silhouette against the light of the broken window. "Long ago, there lived a woman who chose to protect her ruler and did a damn good job of doing exactly that. She fought rebels, crushed millions under her gilded heel right into some very fine phosphor-smelling ash. She fought my people, impressed even them with her loyalty and zeal - and, trust me, Sister, we are not easy to impress. She fought the Angels of Death themselves to a bloody standstill, their holy blood again flowing through the Throneworld. Nobody thought it to be possible for a backwater upstart to hold the ground against the Emperor's finest. She surprised them all, keeping through it all with her loyalty, her against the whole Galaxy."

Toros licked her suddenly dry lips, checking the armour status. She could take three bolts. The fourth would kill her. The first hit would throw her out of the window anyway, out of the line of fire - hopefully, Maglev coils still worked after all those years. Even more hopefully yet, Kota won't try anything stupid.

"One morning, her choice changed. She chose another way. She walked straight to the ruler, the same old man who trusted her completely, the man she swore to protect, the man who she had previously defended for decades, and then painted the wall with his brains.", Secunda shuddered, her eyes straying to the splatters along the bullet-riddled walls. "Nobody cared about her not being on 'equal ground' with the old man. Nobody dared to 'leverage' her old loyalties and broken oaths of allegiance against her. The only important thing was that her personal choice was seen as correct, and nobody really knows why she made that choice one morning."

The latter part was a lie. Someone knew. Someone cared for that one part to remain forgotten. Sorrowful golden shadows lurked through the footnotes of hagiographies and cyber-prophesies, charred lacunaes beginning shortly. Magina knew better than to acknowledge their existence. Some things were not to be researched deeper.

"We venerate her as well, you know.", Archmagos nodded to the moving holo-projection in one of the surviving panels of the temple. Armour-clad woman stepping through the blood, golden lighnings behind her back - Toros herself found solace in considering the life of the blessed. "Motive Force, at its simplest, is every single particle choosing to move in the same direction under the external field, just as we make our individual choices under Omnissiah's light - and, no matter what, his potential drives us into the right direction, no matter the prior resistance. Which is to say, make your choices and live with the consequences. Shouldn't be more difficult than becoming a saint after losing a war and shooting your boss in the face, right?"

Shouldn't be more difficult than coming to ZRK and figuring out what happens. Secunda twitched the corner of her mouth and killed the thought. She had more important business here. Definitely.

A moment has passed and, somehow, she was not shot. Which, all things considered, was rather positive turn of events - then again, the spiritual progeny of Arabella the Liberator were cited to be among the more calculating, level-headed specimens of the Sororitas strain. Maybe this Celestian has been tranquil enough to process something that others would take as a foul sacrilege. Maybe she was just smart enough to have learned and admitted the truth beforehand.

Toros grabbed a fistful of plastic chips from the floor, glancing down from the broken window and recounting the facts. Every single hard fact dropped down heavily, like a chunk of plastic from the forge spire.

Tiefenbronn came to her, arranging a series of meetings between her and Draupnir magi.
Someone deployed a servitor on Ork chassis, outfitted it with a tinkered displacer field and a bolter.
Bolt shell managed to hit her - through a displacer field of her own, through her layers of defense.
Pinel sported new tech-secret, likely having given out something in return to unnamed third party.
Servitor made a point of stealing away her personal data cores.
Then it paid a visit to her laboratorium and made a mess.

Oh, and the Inquisition is looking for her, but those could wait. That exact chip got blasted by the wind gust back into the room.

Displacer fields and misplaced trust played a sad melody throughout those notes. How can it teleport? How far, how often, can it be tracked? How can a bolter shell bypass one? What was she doing before the death of her body? Was she wrong to confide after Tiefebronn's meetings? Unfortunately, there was only one person qualified to answer that.

Toros bit her lip harder, as she blink-typed a data-missive of two alike, yet deeply different questions.
"May I visit you? Do you want to see me?"

She paused a bit before sending the message to the Electromancer's dojo. Having decided that, frag it, let's go with the flow, she mashed the confirmation rune a bit too hard.

There are many kinds of laboratories.

Humanity has a long tradition of martial arts. The grapple, the throw, precision strikes, secrets of stance and perception - a martial tradition going back to the era of the primate. None of that prepared the people of Houndclaw for fighting the Tyranids. Blademasters with centuries of experience were cut down by lesser bioforms because they did not understand the tells of an insect. Marksmen defaulted to shooting at eyes and heads because that was what they had been trained to do. Post-battle autopsies revealed that the Devourer had been building heads of bone and muscle. So many theories had been tested and failed, and humanity had fallen back on the supremely inefficient use of mass promethium and unguided gunfire in place of precision.

There had been enough of each, thank the Omnissiah.

In the aftermath, the dojo of ZRK-333 had become the most unique and valuable asset of the Isohedron. In collaboration with Magos Pinel's genius for servitorization, and with even Inquisitor Iconium turning a blind eye, the Swarm had been resurrected. The sacred technology of Man had been twisted into unity with xenos strains and now ranks of Tyranid Warriors line up with the discipline of Astra Militarium regiments, their shells painted in blue and bone. Their cybernetic implants blink red until they are activated, whereupon they walk into the arena to duel the champions of humanity.

And champions there are in abundance. The best Skitarii of a dozen forge worlds sit in a crowd on the stands, discussing constantly amongst themselves. Electromancers sit in silent meditation, praying to their null-staves. Neuromancers sit separately, surrounded by data monitors, observing real-time trackers of the combatants' brainwaves as they work to convert particularly effective techniques into wetware implants. The black-armoured champion of the Adeptus Astartes, Eunicornius Kim, sits alone in a box that has been ambitiously built to house a dozen Astartes. There are even guests from outside the cult - black-clad Death Cultists, hard-bitten Guardsmen, a caste of eerie knights in incomprehensible triangle helmets and mirror shields, and - is that a Custodian Guard!?

No. No. What the fuck? That's just an Ogryn dressed as a Custodian Guard. It has a Guardian Spear and everything, and a magnificently waxed walrus moustache. Who...?

That aside, this is a big change for the dojo. For centuries the presence of the Electromancers was a mild cost center for the Isohedron - they brought a little security, some maintenance for the electrical networks, but they were not particularly productive outside that. Now many of the most wealthy and powerful martial organizations in the Imperium are paying a vast tribute in wealth, favours and respect to learn the lessons being developed here. As with any action in the Imperium, the trade is earning an equal number of denunciations and accusations of tech-heresy - but almost uniformly from the half of the galaxy furthest away from the Tyrannid threat. One of Archmagos' many negotiations was to draw in a delegation from Ultramar - if possible they would bring both experience and legitimacy that would take the Isohedron to new heights.

But there were still kinks to be worked out. Not least is right now the Sister of Battle behind you stiffening as she looks at the organized ranks of Tyranid Warriors. She has been lost in a reverie as she contemplates the tale of Vandire in the context of her own personal issues, but this snaps her out of it. The sight would shock anyone, but not everyone has a bolter within arms length of your spine.

This arena was a combat research facility. It was not merely designed to research combat. It used combat to research everything else that its mistress considered interesting.

ZRK offered a single promise with her dojo - "we can learn to defeat more with less". Electromancer considered it to be a logical statement, an optimization creed. Toros saw it for what it is - the best sales pitch since the Ironstrider fiasco, it just needed some extra weight.

There have been cases of dishonourable honour duels, rigged betting, unauthorized augmentation, blatant identity theft, weird cadaver desecration and at least a dozen disappearances around those parts. Those operational costs did not matter. People wanted to be here, to fight here, to prove themselves here, to buy local recordings, to access datafiles of developed techniques, to bet, to win, to have a talk in private and to be seen having those talks in private. ZRK-333 may have created a combat research facility. Toros made it into a landmark, something no other magos had afforded to ignore completely.

Tiefebronn used lodges for negotiations, leveraging Toros hands-off approach to play his own game behind layers of privacy fields. Pinel had a steady income stream through providing combat servitors - and a steadier one through making servitors from dropouts, which she, for whatever reason, thought to be a secret to anyone. At least a couple of shadier championship matches had an unmistakable trace of Stoll toys being deployed. Passivity-SEA ensured Tech-Guard outreach in exchange for premium access to raw data - her holy vow not to compete in algorithm development unbroken, Toros was moderately sure that both Iconia's irritating awareness of what happens within those walls and some of the more successful semi-official betting outfits carried the mark of the datamancer's personal touch. Even the firepower recluse graced them - while PWD research has been, of course, too important to interrupt for stupid games, multiple arms manufacturers operating under his licensing were slowly pulled into the arena orbit, their coats-of-arms on champion cloaks, their prototypes blasting the way to the podium.

ZRK hated it all at first. Too many data distractions, she said. Too much stuff around to do more with less, she thought. Too different from her design to be completely her project, she claimed. Warp having no fury as an electromancer scorned, they had a cozy little war about it - fighting with words in the meetings, with proxies in the dark alleyways, with loyalists in the limited spire engagements, and, finally, with their bodies in one of the more sacred, secret arenas of the building.

Both of them won, and understanding has been reached. An understanding deeper than any of them wanted.

ZRK-333 had lived a full month in the world where Archmagos Toros was dead, her promise "Worst case projection - I'll be back the next morning" cruelly broken. Secunda was not sure how Spark would react to a formally unrecognized clone, and, once again, reminded herself to use a proper addressing style for the esteemed Magos. The only thing Secunda knew - or, at least, really wanted - to be true would be the fact that ZRK-333 would love to go for some extremely flashy vendetta against whoever harmed Toros. Toros would do the same for her, that's for sure.

A flash of the warning rune in the bottom of the retinal display snapped Secunda back into reality. Someone's adrenaline was climbing a bit too steep for her comfort.

"Trigger discipline, Celestian. If you want to fight those beasts, don't do it for free. Besides, you've already killed some of them once - took a lot of skitarii logistics to bring us samples fresh enough to kill those again.", protomaga chuckled into the comms. "The mistress of this facility learns things through the way they move. Don't give yourself away just yet. You'll get your chance soon enough anyway."

Spark never really answered any of her two questions directly, she just authorized a visit and assigned a time slot. Granted, she would never use mere words to communicate the most important things. This arena was a combat research facility. It was not merely designed to research combat. It used combat to research everything else that its mistress considered interesting.

Ghost of Archmagos Past silenced the rune warning, adrenaline always being her own, and blinked away the curt missive.

"In position. Your move."

'Clothes Horse' is one of the trickier vices for an Electromancer to possess. For a monastic order whose style points are 'topless' and 'insulating rubber' the options for customization would seem at first to be limited, but dear Spark has found space for an entire little fashion vocabulary in the minimal canvas she possesses.

Her hair is the centerpiece; the thick dark dreadlocks hang heavy with archaeotech plastics. Stylized illustrations graven on shards of plastek, more eyes than face are woven through in colour matching lines. She wears heavy bracers on wrists and ankles, glittering with chromium chain ribbons that automatically align into complex patterns due to magnetic sorcery. Electroos wrap her bare chest, eternally rotating like the storms across the surface of Holy Jupiter. Her dark skin lights up with glittering golden stardust, and her burned-out eyes are concealed behind the large facial mask that displays the unsettling overlarge eyes of her trinkets.

She is a walking weapon. Her potentia coils burn with terrible energy. She wears two displacer fields on her neck, somehow managing their complex overlapping aetheric fields in real time. You would favour her against any of the arena's visitors - including the Astartes.

You have never seen her scared before.

"Toros. It is a set up. This whole thing is a setup. It wasn't about you at all, it's about me. It's all about me. Everything is about me."

[Sense Trouble] G'day mate. Not to be a bother. Know you're busy. When you get time, give me a roll?

Paranoia had its benefits. Prefired synapses are warmed up for snap reactions to the sudden trigger, hands already warming up the initiation sigils, eyes on the lookout for danger.

Paranoia had its drawbacks. Namely, it is only receptive to the first trigger, discharging all energy into the first fight, flight, or freeze response. And, Omnissiah be Secunda's witness, Spark was stunningly beautiful right then and there. It was all about her. Always.

Granted, Toros herself has been predictable. Everyone could know that under duress, she would have hit this place for some guidance with the flow. And here she was, middle of a trap, dumbfounded, smitten and slowly getting really damn angry.

"Roger. Lead on. Over."

She is a mirage before your eyes, the glittering shine of motive force that reaches beyond her body. She is shrine and priestess both and an electrical storm ignites from her skin. And then the aetheric bubble collapses; the whisper of unreality brushing through the space she had been standing, revealing the crimson gleam of a laser sight cutting through where she had been -

- the laser sight and the whirling ignitium grenade.

The grenade is the immediate concern - curious and mundane all at once. It hits you with significant force directly in the solar plexus before detonating, throwing clinging chemical flames in all directions. The painful force of the impact [2 health damage] said that it had been launched by a grenade launcher rather than thrown. A strange weapon to use for an assassination, but also a profoundly Imperial one. Still, you can't help but think it was a hell of a shot. Direct to center mass, penetrating right through an intervening subject, not having taken it easy despite the indiscriminate nature of the shot. And the laser sight. Weird feature for a weapon with a ballistic arc -

There is a clap of lightning. Celestial lightning rips from Spark's fingers before she's even finished rematerializing, scorching the gallery in the direction of the shot. Through the flesh melting cascade a second grenade launches - you catch a glimpse of it crushing the jawbone of an Adept in the arena stands before drenching half a dozen nearby spectators in flame. Then the twin roars of bolters open up - Sister Kota firing wildly in the same direction as the Magi's lightning, and the Dark Angel firing its pistol - down into the Tyranid in the arena. You catch a glimpse of a third grenade cracking against its helm before reality catches back up to you.

Before anything else, you are on fire. The bruise you got from the impact is going to be the least of your concerns if you do not do something about that.

Every single magos worth their voltage has... something aside from work. Nobody could change their nature completely, so everyone carried the primordial sin of flesh irrationality, something fools denied, morons combatted, lunatics employed and professionals redirected. That being said, most magi had firmly put it into the "it's personal" category - likely because it, ultimately, was.

Which is why Toros made a constant effort to figure out what the rest of the Conclave are doing in their spare time. She knew them as magi, she needed to know them as, well, persons. Besides, she openly invited them to some of her more tame pastimes. For example, around five years ago, she managed to tune the laser array at some of the more rarefied wavelengths, allowing for a persistent ionisation trail to create a purely light-based and surprisingly persistent afterimage in the air - a glorious display of luminosity dwarving the pale flickers of holo-tech devices at only two magnitudes of energy consumption above nominal level. Was it practical? Unlikely. Still, flashing image of Omnissiah descending onto the spire on his dragon wings was positively glorious and made a lasting impression onto most watchers. That was not surprising.

The surprising part came the next day as the usually reclusive prometheologist sent a curt, yet insistent request for knowledge sharing. Toros was too baffled and intrigued by this behavioural aberration to politely decline. She had spent a week in the domain of PWD-40, explaining hows and whys, as the mistress of the scorched ocean eagerly listened. Toros almost believed that she had found someone with a comparable love of light in all its forms. Even Archmagos could make a mistake from time to time.

Magi outlets told a lot about them. Sometimes, even things that you never wanted to know. Half a year later, Toros stepped into the demonstration area, the proud PWD sharing her private, exclusive piece de resistance as a payment for shared knowledge. She walked out with the afterimages imprinted deep into her memory, not even speaking of retinas. PWD-40 been in hell, carried a piece of it in her ever since, and allowed for some intimate peeking. This was not the Light Toros strived to know and love - this was a pure incursion into the gauntlet of fire, her own tech projecting it at its delightful glory.

Incidentally, it looked pretty damn much the same as being shot with an incendiary grenade. Granted, the grenade felt a bit worse. The default expectation would be to stop, drop, and roll, which is how a lot of stupider people die, since ignitium, an ugly thing, is perfectly capable of burning on the ground, in the dirt, under water and, technically, in the vacuum. Fortunately, it worked a lot slower and colder than Phosphor, which is why Secunda had postponed her transition into steak. Her body started acting following the well-trained routines.

Her left hand - triggering the smoke grenade on her back, breaking the line of sight with a veil of multi-coloured smoke.
Her right hand - using the monosharpened claws to puncture the key nodes holding the outer armour layer, dropping it on the ground to burn into a crisp.
Her legs - carrying her forward and to the right, straight into the closest cover.
Her eyes - trying to make sense of the telemetry, as the suit data-angels scrambled to explain her what was happening among the mess.

Her voice... hoarsely laughing. She hadn't had such a good time in quite a while.

A flight of servo-skulls take to the air, blaring combat hymns in the physical realm and filling the noosphere with targeting data. Linked systems automatically stabilize, fire control systems adjust targets before their bearers fully understand what is happening, information floods down prepared channels like stormwater filling desert ravines. The battlefield resolves.

A picture snaps into place from a dozen angles. The sniper's gallery - a corpse lies thrown against the wall, flesh melted beyond all recognition, body still twitching with the flickering sparks of electricity where Magos ZRK-333 landed a hit and kill with her electromancy. Immediately the gunfire on the gallery stops - except from the enthusiastic attempts of the Imperials in the stands who are slower on the uptake.

[Notice] That body is not a Skitarii, not a tech thrall, and certainly not a power armoured ork servitor. You can see the tattered scraps of synthskin on the burned out flesh, and the Ecclesiastical decoration on the weapon. It looks like an Imperial Assassin.
[High Society] An Inquisitorial Assassin.
[Bullshit Detector] This is a fucking setup. I don't know how, but you don't need me to tell you that this doesn't add up. You need to get up there and investigate - need a moment to go through the data. It's all there but this is happening too fast.

But there is another front. The Dark Angel stands in the center of a column of fire. With a thoughtfulness that would make any servant of the Machine God nod in appreciation it throws aside its bolt pistol and ammo and grenade pouch before they cook off. And then it leaps into the arena to land on the back of the Tyranid servitor, shattering its carapace with a heavy kick that it parlays into a double-handed haymaker that undoes a second. Then it grabs both corpses and breaks into a sprint, still on fire, throwing both down into the disposal pit at the side of the arena.

No sooner has it done so than two previously unnoticed det-packs attached to the servitors ignite, cracking the ferrocrete next to the arena. The shockwave of the explosion actually clears most of the burning ignitium from the Dark Angel - though its attention was already turned towards the arena doors, and it does not even look around as two chapter serfs leap down next to it, hosing it with extinguishers and putting sword and shield in its hand.

None of the other Tyranid servitors are moving from their perfectly organized lines. There is a moment of quiet. This was an assassination strike, not the beginning of a battle - but even as you start to process that you hear Spark's voice ring out.

"I denounce the Magos Passivity-SEA as a traitor and a disciple of Ludd!" cries ZRK-333 to the shell-shocked Imperials. "She has sinned against the Omnissiah and the Quest for Knowledge! She has aligned with the forces of ignorance and seeks to destroy our understanding! Come with me and we shall bring her to justice!"

There is a moment of hesitation - Imperials are generally not fans of getting involved in internal Mechanicus disputes, and ZRK-333 is not the greatest public speaker - but some of them are busy trying to extinguish their burning comrades still, and some heard the word 'traitor' and reflexively drew their swords. Give them a few moments to get worked up, swear some oaths of vengeance, and let herd instinct kick in and this crowd will form a lynch mob. And then it will be war.

Officially, Toros had never spoken to one Altero-Seventeen. Officially, not a lot of personnel talked to the malatek, the old xenarite bastard being too toxic a datapoint in one's biography to ever dare putting him on your official holo-dex of contacts. A runner-up for the Fabricator position centuries ago, Altero has been too careful to ever pin anything outright heretical onto him, too influential to make a proper play against him, and had enough tricks up his sleeve to routinely send back exquisite servitors stitched together from multiple assassin teams. Officially, the correspondence from a Shepherd-Captain of "Blindsight" tallied up to regular Explorator reports from everlasting voyage.

Unofficially, the old void arachnid was quite a chatterbox - centuries of solitude amongst his automated crew made him long for any interaction, and the Lord-Captain could not refuse an invitation from someone who just saved their cargo from accursed corsairs. Toros had done her duty to advise against it, and, unfortunately, had to follow the Rogue Trader into what she expected to be the heretek's den on the bridge of "Blindsight". She returned with a data-djinni ravaging through mem-corder storages, a new pen pal, and a smile.

Altero dissected devices and got exiled for that - even though his "Mesh-17" configuration had been enhancing flak vests of Astra Militarum ever since his glory days. Altero dissected bodies and got good (if somewhat bored) with that - "Blindsight" rare reports during the war provided some of the crucial intel regarding the Hive Ship weakpoints. Altero's personal interest, though, gravitated towards dissecting societies. Explorator has been keenly interested in the catastrophe of Azure Skies and how it could be replicated to ensure any enemy disintegration before the Crusades even launch. His mind wandering, he often questioned his own society structures to prevent such a catastrophe from ever happening in the Houndclaw.

Altero taught her a lot of lessons, and she guarded most of them well. There was this one, though, that she shared with ZRK-333 in her moment of... trust.

This was a lesson in applied dogmaticism, for the open mind was a vulnerable mind, and one should narrow his beliefs in the name of ideological operational security, making it most efficient for the task at hand. Humanity learned this concept, yet it was neither the first to learn it nor the best to implement it. According to the xenarite, at least one strain of accursed Eldar had embraced this concept of utilitarian philosophical mindsets, locking into some worldview for the specific mission - quite like the Imperial Adepta implementing their own dogmas among the personnel. Unlike the Imperial Adepta personnel, though, those creeds were just tools for the overarching goal, something to be temporarily embraced and changed, discarded, evolved as the circumstances demanded it. Most Eldar switched their "Paths", while still operating within the larger beneficial framework of shared values. This, according to xenarite, was some of the most intriguing aspects of their society - its crude imperial applications amounting to infil-traitor technologies and slate agents replacing parts of their personality for better impersonation, mostly singular and unscalable assets.

Unfortunately, the grim lesson here has been that even amongst Eldar, who had been rather proficient with this system, there has been... mishaps. Sometimes, you were so locked into a specific path, so bought into its dogma, that you completely lost your adaptability, becoming a grotesque, larger-than-life, embodiment of the path's strength and weaknesses - something to be exploited and something sealing your fate, becoming a tool for this Path rather than the other way around. Melancholic old malatek ended that transmission with a sad rhetorical question of how much efficiency had the Cult lost due to all of the Cogs of the Grand Design losing themselves on their Path to Faith?

His tendency to voice such questions was among the reasons why even Toros could not negotiate the end of his exilic exploration duty - which she was pretty damn open about. It did not mean that he was wrong. It did not matter if he was right.

ZRK-333 taught Toros her path, the path of Motive Force, "do before thinking, go with the flow, settle on a quick and imperfect solution than allow the problem to fester while you ponder for an optimal one". Toros has been a grateful pupil, but, unfortunately, was not able to return that favour. It pained her deeply, but the electromancer, at the core of her being, was too synchronized with the Motive Force to leave more space for Omnissiah and the Machine God. Theoretically, it caused quite some miscommunication between her and her Martian brethren.

Practically, it caused her to do some stupid shit like trying to start a civil war in the middle of the goddamn succession crisis. Which was an illegitimate succession crisis, because the Archmagos was alive in the first place, but nooooooo, let's kill each other while the lights are down, thinking for a cog-damned microsecond would be against the whole "going with the flow" thing. Stupid hothead, eager to make the wheels run faster without thinking that she's about to drive into a fragging wall.

Toros had to consciously unclench her jaw as her teeth started to hurt, as she furiously shot the ping into the ZRK-333 personal channel.

"Combat flow: Escalation. You fight Passivity. Ergo - conflict.
Conflict flow: Escalation. Astartes and Inqusition join up. Ergo - war.
War flow: Escalation. Martian Magi tear Isohedron apart, while Draupnir stands aside and laughs. Ergo - politics.
Politics flow: Escalation. With Draupnir unbalanced, the whole sector Adeptus operations are impacted and Hollzenstein has the last laugh. Ergo - defeat.

Cease. You cannot win here. Nobody wins here. Cease.

Access request: Magna-vox casters of the Arena. Archmagos is here to mediate the conflict and address the subjects. I am sorry for being away and leaving you alone.

Personal audience request after we clean up here. I missed you."

Secunda stopped for a second, biting her lip, and started double-timing towards the nearest premium lodge, while keeping the vidcast of the assassin body in the periferal stream. Investigation was more important than combat (especially since the goddamn Angel of Death has been there to handle it all). Politics was something to care so that she had a world to rule once all of it is over.

And you definitely need a good seat in the front row to make your first public appearance. Optics matter beyond laser calibration - where you are seen is important, just as who you are seen with. Speaking of...

Secunda cursed under her breath, blink-typing another message. Even the most primitive meta-impulse unit grafting would be so much more streamlined. Apparently one needs to lose Omnissiah blessings to reignite the appreciation.

"November.

Assassination attempt at the arena. Public disturbance on the verge of riot. Negotiating with ZRK-333 to quell it down before we plunge into a civil war. About to make a public address. Need one of you-s standing by my side as I am speaking.

Thank me later for being
Sincerely yours,
Biotrash."

"Counterargument: Passivity is Draupnir.
Full ident: Passivity-48-Skitarii/Extractive/Autocephalous.
Draupnir has developed a cloning process for elite Skitarii agents capable of acting independently. Three other Passivity-template agents have been positively identified in the surrounding regions performing Draupnir black ops.
Passivity presented herself to Mars as a convert. Renounced her former allegiances in order to train as a datasmith. It is clear now that this was a deception. This is an organized coup and she is the catspaw.
But what she does not know is that I am prepared for this conflict. Contingencies are in place to ensure that this is not a fight but an execution. I will seize her assets at a stroke. The bluecoats will be forced to back down. Balance will be restored, but speed must be maintained, lest the Motive Force ground.

Join us - your assistance would legitimize this action - and I missed you too."

This is news. Draupnir has a reputation for being home to especially charismatic preachers and receiving more than their share of pilgrims, converts and defectors. It isn't often that one hears of converts going in the other direction - but is that because there aren't any or they just aren't especially publicized?

[Bullshit Detector] But that's what makes this such a powerful information trap. What makes a Magi of the Adeptus Mechanicus more certain than holding secret knowledge? She knew something you did not, that means that she outranks you. She knows something that Passivity does not, which means she can beat her. You would bet your skull that these contingencies are going to fall through the moment that battle is joined, but you have instinct and she is operating from a base of compromised facts.

One positive: You get a green light response from Marshal November, and an immediate noospheric ripple as Skitarii forces start redeploying throughout the facility. At least one thing here isn't interested in falling into chaos.

At their first council after the victory parade, PWD-40 objected that the casualty count methodology should be recalibrated. Prometheologist, with some unusual passion, claimed that even those who managed to remain technically alive may have been so irreparably damaged, that their spirit, their soul, the person that they were supposed to be, was gone forever. Toros prayed for the strength to think that was not true. But if it was, then no one on Isohedron had survived this war.

Everyone got uniquely marked, and yet she could not help figuring out the patterns - theorists and theologians stepping aside for militants and experimenters, oversight loosened, violence rates increased, brute force started being common, mercy started being a luxury... Desperate measures tend to overstay the desperate times that once called for them, with people justifying their normalization through gilding them with the sparkles of victories long past. The fragging Draupnir problem was simmering for millennia, but just some arrogance of being THE Hive defeaters and they started thinking themselves to be at least a second Mars, the best thing since servitors were invented.

She almost avoided mourning the death of their more gentle, civilian selves - there have always been greater wonders hidden in people than the ones lost. She would just prefer if people made it a bit easier to see those potential greater wonders, which was positively harder when the apex decision-making of one of her court favourites defaulted to "Me has bigger stick, so me bonk". For Cog's sake, even the ogryns of Malpais V tried to keep the pretenses with elder councils, ritual judgement, and honour duels. And those had to limit the council number to four elders due to a lack of mental capacity to count to five.

Secunda kicked down the door of the premium lodge with a bit more force than was necessarily required and caught herself ready to execute any poor soul who decided to occupy her reserved spot in the arena less than a month after her death. The war spoke to her through her reflexes and learned patterns. She silenced that voice inside of her. She sighed and went vocal on the private channel, since she needed to silence it in ZRK-333 as well.

"I approve your choice of words - 'Not a fight but an execution'.
Never had I wished for a better executioner than you. Still need a judge. Still need some jury.
I admire your Motive Force cutting a path through. Still need God-Machine. Still need Omnissiah.
Kneeling to one of them out of expedience is making your right through might.
This would mean ignoring the rituals of judgment. To break with ritual is to break with faith.
If you spark this light, the coolant condensate splash of my legitimization shall not save either of us from the pyre.
Do not grace the traitors with martyrdom by allowing their corporeal component to go out with a bang.
Disgrace of the formal judgement would put their ill ideas out of everyone's options with some long, satisfactory whimper.
This is not a request for mercy. This is how Creed dictates we handle traitors.
Stepping back from the Creed to punish a traitor leaves the world with the same number of traitors.
We are better than that. You are better than that.
Never had I wished for a better executioner than you. Never have I given you grounds to think me an unfair judge.
No execution has been ordered.
Yet."

Ultimately, the war has wounded their ideals, degraded them to militant barbarism. Motive Force adepts were better than most at adapting to this new paradigm in a noble way, perhaps even too proficient in this shift for their own good. Archmagos was here to mend the wounds, to restore faith in proper order and ensure that Isohedron remains an example of things working out by the fragging book. It was her sole responsibility to drag the dogs of war back into the kennel, no matter how they bark, bite or look at her with puppy eyes.

She was of the firm opinion that overriding someone's decision solely through pulling rank was the thing you do before removing said someone from their position. Secunda prayed that nobody would force her to pull rank right now.

The impossible - lightning slowed. The great arc of immanent violence rising within ZRK-333 bent away from the copper laid out for it. In the space between steel and spark stands humanity, the soul and the heart that brings the realms into harmony. As November-Black drops in besides you and Skitarii forces reach the exits you can feel the glory and synchronicity of the Machine God all around you, the Priesthood functioning as a single unit - and you, standing astride the arena's gallery, an Archmagos again.

"Look! More traitors!" yells a guardsman and opens fire.

Motherfuckers.

Tactical analysis:
- Imperial Guard Platoon of the Paradisio Aquatic Intervention Force; 60 veterans, officers, various specialists. No heavy weapons but an abundance of plasma and melta. They are opening fire on the Skitarii, spreading out and taking cover. Can't blame them too much, their unit waged a counterinsurgency against Genestealer cultists.
- Rogue Trader emissaries, various nobility, attendants and weirdoes; 180 souls, 120 serious combatants. Wide variety of equipment and ability, including powered armour, exotics, and some grenades you really hope nobody throws indoors.
- One (1) Astartes martial specialist, accompanied by five chapter serfs who are veterans in their own right. Combat demonstration and armour craftsmanship indicates it is a veteran or elite of some kind. Likely able to fight the entire Ranger Corps in close quarters single-handed unless they get very lucky or bring up heavy weapons.
- One (1) Sister of Battle. Possibly God's chosen emissary.
- Skitarii Ranger Teams: 30 immediately available, more on the way. No heavy weapons on hand, some arc rifles. Disciplined enough not to immediately return fire without orders but they are requesting those orders very intensely. They are not specialized for peacekeeping work or holding ground and will fold to a dedicated push.
- Skitarii Vanguard Response Team: 30 within two minutes response, armed but unactivated. Typically it is not considered a good idea to send the radioactive assault troops into riot control.

Assessment: Balance of power lies with Imperial forces, decisively so if the Astartes joins the fray as it seems likely to.

'One riot, one regulator. Ain't no bravado, lass, it is what it is on the streets down there. And lemme tell you som'tn - Schola ain't raised no reinforc'ment-beggin' pussies, we do what we do and Emperor smite my 'clast ass on this spot if we can't manage that just fine like that.'

She had known Pavel well before she had to address him as Justicar Armata. Granted, she made a painfully poor first impression being used as a human shield by some whiteout-pumped Redemptionist, but she reserved the right to be displeased by being shot through to 'neutralize the perp'. Factor Secundus Toros really damn appreciated that original liver of hers, and losing one at her own embassy event has put her in a rather sour mood. His attempt at an apology put the hastily installed vat-grown replacement through a cruel stress test - the first sip tasted like hell, the second almost took her there.

She taught him how to make his hobby brews less likely to blind the user, how to whisper dataslate override prayers and how a strongly-worded letter can be more lethal than a needle-shot. He taught her how to enjoy opera, how to shoot a boltgun and how to survive on the streets.

"People don't see you", he said. 'They see their idea of you. It's not about actually being invincible; it's about everyone being too scared to try and check it out. We kill the idea of resistance - not with a bullet, but with the idea of punishment. We just use the bullets to illustrate the latter one. I may not kill the whole crowd, but I sure as hell can make every single one of the poor fraggers think that I shall kill him personally."

He did not survive the new batch of empty-eyed low-lives screaming of the Emperor's Second Coming, the ones who knew no fear. They laughed at her as she raised the alarm. Nobody was laughing after the first autopsies. To fear is human. Those were not. His statue - right between the opera house and the brewery - has been commissioned by an incognito patron after the war. She never visited.

The idea of punishing a traitor has been stronger than the sheer vulture habits of the usual rioters - likely because people were building this goddamn idea up from the ground for ten millennia and she has just done some extraordinarily deep job in reinforcing that. Fortunately for her, people are only so good at building ideas. About ten millenia ago, someone much smarter offered a new idea to the whole galaxy, an iron promise made flesh, an armoured boot choking on the galaxy throat.

They could dare call her a traitor, her pleas falling on deaf ears. Let them try doing that to...

"Sir Kim, I would like to offer you a riddle. What is above two meters tall, clad in power armour, proficient with bolter and tried assassinating an Archmagos?", Secunda's voice grew a little hoarse as she guesstimated the proper frequencies of his power armour comms. She took a rather wide transmission width, not really bothered if anyone cares to eavesdrop. "The true answer might surprise both you and your gracious electromancer host. I would be eager to discuss it in detail if you do me a favor and address this whole goddamn crowd before it all turns to a needless bloodbath. The Emperor Protects."

Nobody in their right might would accuse an Angel of Death directly. Still, Secunda had no doubt that the esteemed guest was sharp enough to understand that anyone asking "Who is deadly enough to kill Archmagos with a mere bolter?" would inevitably be drawn to a sole Astartes visiting this world. Astartes were feared - for good reason - but, usually, they were far away, killing unnameable things on the far stars. Even an implication of a shadow on their honour has been the one way to ensure that they are going to take it personally.

Touching that armour is a mistake. You can feel data-geists crawling over every inch of that connection, frozen cyberwarfare spikes draw themselves up from the earth, the chill of ash and long night - and then your microbead sparks and dies. You fear what might have been if you had used your own cybernetics to make that connection.

It has turned its cyclopean visor to face you. Beneath the line of crimson light a network of multispectral visors peel away stone and secrets. In swift silence two serfs affix a jump pack attachment to the outside of its armour, and the angel spreads wings of dark fire. Every eye turns towards it for a moment but it does not address the crowd. Instead it ascends above you like a pagan god, illuminated by the crimson crack of las-light and the terrible fire of its sword.

This thing is not human. It is not knowable. It cannot be bargained with, manipulated or directed. This is the engine that marched into the pit of Old Night and dragged the sun screaming back into the sky. If He wanted His Angels to be reasonable He would have given them fear.

Secunda twitched the corner of her mouth, as she shook the micro-bead away. At the very least, the gunfight simmered down quite a bit, as the crowd focused on the Emperor's Angel soaring in the sky. A rather powerful symbol, truly, even Toros felt herself genuinely awed.

In the better days, she was assured of her capability to kill this thing, should the worst come to pass. These days, it boiled down to "hurt this thing (if really lucky)". On any day, future or past, Archmagos Toros made it to her rank through picking her fights, and fights with something delightfully called "Angels of Death" firmly rested in the "Let's not" category. Those things felt at home on a battlefield, their reflexes well accustomed to your fight-or-flight reactions, and, usually, those reflexes boiled to killing you whether you fight or flee. Which is why she knew better than to attempt either.

She got its attention with a riddle, it got the attention of the crowd. A proper reaction to the "heretic" or the "traitor" from the warrior of the famed First Order would have been a swift execution. So far, this thing was just flying above and looking at her in a rather menacing way. He has been staying at the research facility for quite some time, meaning that a warrior who knew no fear... was familiar with the concept of learning and general curiosity. Quest for Knowledge takes many forms, after all, and she was giving him an opportunity to learn who dared to mock their sacred form.

Secunda politely leaned in a courtly half-bow, hands linked in an Aquila, and stood out of the cover. She got its attention with a riddle. It would need her to survive another ten seconds to get an answer.

Surviving after those first ten seconds might have been problematic, though. But those were the problems for ten-seconds-in-the-future, older, wiser version of her. She'll manage.