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The Monarch of All


&



The mists of the Tlacan coiled and spun about themselves like a forest of writhing pillars, gently swaying under the breath of a mournful breeze. The sea was a dark mirror, unmoving save for the reflections wavering on its surface, eerily perfect on their undistorted canvas. Even along the shores of the barren, grey island, which in any other sea would have been frothing upon its many jutting rocks and low, sharp cliffs, it was still like oil, not even a drop splashing up to run through the crags carved in more turbulent bygone days.

Perched on a stony protrusion thrust out into the indifferent black waters, Iqelis stared out into the hazy labyrinth, now and then raising an arm to send a bank of fog scattering without a stir of wind. Even the flies that surrounded him sat about apathetically. Some paces behind him seven human bodies stood arranged in a semicircle, still nearly featureless and untouched in their primordial state. After what had happened with that first, ever so unassuming shell, the god had been hesitant to lay hands on them. Ending a life had been nothing but elating, but birthing one had brought a swirl of contradictory and painful sentiments.

He knew which one he preferred by far.

“Good day, Iqelis. It is not often I see you sitting around in a malaise.”

A familiar voice spoke to him, a rift opened in front of Iqelis, showing nothing more than the Monarch of All sitting upon His throne and gazing down upon the stagnant god. He had spoken with no outward emotion, nothing dictating on why the ruler had decided to contact one of His lords. The Monarch of All tilted His head to the side as he observed Iqelis, though, it seemed more of a ponderance as to why Iqelis was merely sat in deep thought that He had never truly seen in the entropic god. This did not stop the Monarch of All from straightening himself to allow an air of menace to coalesce as He spoke again, this time in a more authoritative tone that wrought yet more of that menace that gathered around the supreme god.

”You and Yudaiel are testing my patience; twin murderers in this realm of mine. Tell me, why did you kill your peer?”

The One God turned up his eye without rising from his crouch, giving him the appearance of a ghoul caught by surprise in the middle of its meal. His dull gaze flared up as it met his Maker, its dusky pensiveness overtaken by the blazing, mocking bravado that it had spat onto the world since the dawn of its birth.

”As the treacherous Eye has no doubt given her account, so shall I.”

He raised four arms at the window through sidereal space, and spoke in the tongue of thought and vision.

A river flowed through a verdant plain, caressed by the rays of a small yet vigilant sun high above. Its waters were placid and murky, but its touch was no less vivifying than if it had been of the clearest crystal. Along its banks, tall grasses and reeds swayed and drooped, crowned with strange and beautiful flowers, and from them life spread to flourish across the land in a mosaic of stalks and shrubs of many colours. Shimmering insects danced above the water, sapphire dragonflies and emerald beetles, and bright and plump fish splashed through the current.

But then there was a rumble, and a huge grey boulder came rolling across the meadow before landing in the river with a splash. So large was it that the water could not flow around it, no matter how it twisted and churned and mounted. It gathered itself up in heavy waves, trying to push the obstacle out of its way, but the obstinate boulder would not budge from its spot, and every shove only made it more and more entrenched in the silt.

Starved of motion, the river quickly began to die. On one side of the stone the water kept rising, until it flooded out of its banks, uprooting and drowning the flowering reeds on its two sides. With nowhere for its refuse to flow, it pooled and stagnated, growing foul and malodorous. The grasses and bushes rotted, poisoned by the rank tide, and no more did dragonflies and beetles dance over this putrid marsh, but only the ugly gnat and the noisome mosquito held their feasts there. On the other side of the boulder, the land fared no better. No more water came to quench its thirst, and little by little it became parched and dead. Yellow grass and faded flowers lay choking in the dust, and the riverbed was empty save for the decomposing carcasses of fish.

Then a hand of black glass struck down from the darkened sky and shattered the boulder into tiny pieces, and the river breathed a sigh as it began to flow again. The impurities of the swamp were carried away downstream, never to be seen again, and the banks and the land around them were reborn to flowering bounty, stirred only by the joyful dances of insects and fish.


With a snap of a claw, Iqelis spoke again.

”There is no virtue in pure obstinacy. I have struck down one who would in time have hampered not only my work, but your own designs as well.”

The Monarch of All’s eyes flared with an intense glow as He allowed the words of Iqelis to stew before offering His own response. Though a sigh seemed to signify annoyance at having to once more sit through visions and thought, rather than speech. With a clasp of two of His hands together, the great Lord of the Gods spoke once more in the same commanding tone, offering little respite, His voice boomed in frustration.

”You are out of line to say that my design would have been hampered, Iqelis! You know not my will other than my orders to create a world and fill it with life, not to kill another god and bring about more of an ending!”

He stopped for a moment, holding His speech before slyly leaning back within His seat and bringing the tips of all of His hands together. Once more, speaking but this time with a voice that conveyed a sneer and mockery, He said with a light chuckle.

”Yet, for a god so bent upon entropy and decay, you have created life. I have seen it. That ‘thing’ that came from the shell. You truly are bold for allowing such an abomination to exist, surely for a half-breed to exist would be against my design, no?”

”Do not taunt me over that, Lord of Beginnings!” Iqelis drew up, the many pairs of his hands folding together at the knuckles one after the other. Though he was still dwarfed by the Monarch’s presence, by some trickery of the light his shadow stretched over the mouth of the rift like a long arm. ”I know full well that her life is in breach of laws far greater than us both. And still I will not have one of mine suffer for a mistake that was not hers. Would you turn your hand against yourself, if you happened to unravel a corner of your creation’s weave? You may not shrink from sacrifice,” a dark finger pointed at the shining wound in the Great One’s chest, ”But bloodshed is not the only guise it may take, nor the integrity of creation the only cause it may honour.”

The Monarch of All was silent for a moment, contemplating the words of Iqelis in an air rife with tension and growing anger before it was quickly cut by the Monarch of All’s shadow appearing behind Iqelis, His visage gone from the rift within a fraction of a second. His gargantuan form loomed over the entropic god, standing just beyond the island and within the oceans of Sala. The four hands of the Monarch of All bore claws far fiercer than Iqelis’ own, though now they rested at His side. His voice cast out all other noise; the wave, the wind, all gone.

”And yet you do not share that same mercy towards your fellow lords. Why should I impart any mercy upon you at this moment? After all, I could merely end you just as you had to him. They share your blood, just as you share blood with me. Clearly, a kinslayer such as yourself does not care, though.”

Under his withering glare, the lesser divine lowered himself into a ghast-like crouch again, arms folded at his sides like a crystalline spider’s segmented legs, but still he stared up with the symbolic defiance of a lurking snake.

”Without me, who would turn the Flow?” hissed the friction of a glacier against the granite mountainside, ”Who would ensure that your universe was not washed away faster than your thralls can build it? Aletheseus contributed nothing to the workings of the cosmos, but I am not him, and I cannot be drowned in the Last Sea as easily.”

”You have done nothing but bring destruction and turmoil to my realm! You, Iqelis, have done little more than be a pest! You do not ensure that things are erased for you are the very cause of it!”

His voice split caused waves of water to erupt, the very land of the island that Iqelis was splitting as the Monarch of All’s anger grew and grew. The great one pointed to the moon of Yudaiel, a single claw pointing at the enemy of Iqelis, as He spoke in anger once more.

”She was punished for her sins and now it is time for yours!”

As He spoke, the supreme deity allowed a moment for the lands to stop their trembling and for the waters to calm themselves before He spoke once more upon judgement. Animosity was held back within His voice, a clear desire to end the God of Doom like the very insects that he had spawned, though he did not act upon it. The Monarch of All gave His statement in a near quiet hiss towards His subject.

”You will send your abomination, Ea Nebel, to collect the shard of Aletheseus for me. However, for her, you will impart four separate trials to prove her worth so that she may not be ended by my hand. Yet, should you hold back upon any of these trials, I will end both her and you. Am I understood?”

As the waves and tremors settled around them, there was stillness for a moment. It was not merely the silence of the Tlacan, but the ominous torpor of a gathering tempest, the fog itself darkening as it collected after being stirred and the sky turning anxiously leaden.

Then the clouds burst.

Iqelis was no longer crouching, nor was he standing low at the Monarch’s feet. His umbral body stretched to the heavens, a skeletal mountain of many-armed night, rivalling the stature of the Prime God himself - though unlike in him, there was no true substance in its fluid darkness, but merely the illusionary embodiment of wrathful pride. Atop this terrible eikon there shone a beacon of cold, hungry light, which drew all radiance from the world into itself and spat out chilling scorn and suffocating shadow. The sky swam with the distorted view of a rushing tide of stygian water, whether vomited out from the one-eye or pouring out from unseen angles of existence which had until then mercifully concealed its rippling and roiling. Towering clouds of buzzing vermin whipped around this figure of apocalyptic prophecy, threatening to fill the world with swarming legs and bloody bulbous eyes.

”Challenge me all you will, Old One, and I shall put every petty trial to shame,” the One God’s voice was the wail of all terrestrial and astral spheres crying out in the grip of preternatural torment, ”But leave her out of your games, or you will rue the day when you rashly spilled your ichor into the void. Every drop and every pebble of the Galbar will come unwound before your eyes, your sun will putter out like the most pitiful of sparks, and your despair alone will remain to mourn when you pass into oblivion.”

”I have spoken my will, Iqelis. Thus, it shall be done, lest you’d rather me end you here and now for your transgressions. You cannot challenge me through might, you know such things, that is why you prey upon the weak.”

”Perhaps not I alone,” the immense shadow grew longer and thinner, its voice more dry and sibilant, ”But what would your vaunted champion the Earthheart think if you snuffed out the one he cherished so? What would be the word of she of the spear, so devoted to your service now, if you dissipated that which bears her essence? Your loyalty does not reach as far as your hand, First Source, and you know that. Will you stoke that flame further to satisfy your whim?”

A scoff came from the Monarch of All, gazing upon the form of Iqelis as if He had a cruel grin crossing His blank features. He wrapped His arms around His back, unafraid of the threats that Iqelis made to His face, almost admiring his boldness for such a display. Then, as if the silence returned in force, He spoke in a snide, condescending tone.

”Four trials, Iqelis. I will have Ruina, She who Tests, watch to ensure you do not interfere with the success of your progeny and ensure that you do not hold back after all. Additionally, Homura will make sure you uphold this.”

The Monarch of All took a singular step back, the bridge to the Divine Palace opening behind Him and casting a light that was too much for the hungry light of Iqelis’ form to consume. He allowed a few parting words to grace the One God, His words echoing and consuming the thoughts of Iqelis as what could be a threat resonated through the air. Once the utterance was finished, the Monarch of All stepped into the bridge and disappeared from Iqelis. Despite no longer being there, His words continued to echo.

”I look forward to meeting Ea Nebel.”

The great white eye glared at his tracks for a few more instants, then the shadows melted into the sea, and the otherworldly penumbra was gone. All that was left was Iqelis’ spindly silhouette, no longer swollen with horrid glamours, but staring out at the immobile wastes once again. Yet now his sight was no more darkened with despondent meditation, for a bright and cruel resolve had taken its place, woven with the sneering eagerness of arrogance rising to a challenge. The god loped over to where the seven unmoulded humans still stood, miraculously intact after the titanic altercation that had shaken the world around them.

”Your doom was always sealed, Old One, as was that of us all,” he creaked, a familiar crooked smile finding its way into his voice.

He reached out with seven arms, and seven taloned fingers plucked out an eye from each of the stolid faces. None of the seven would ever vaunt a wider sight than that of their master.

”But I did not guess you were so eager to meet it.”



&

Homura





The droning hum of a hundred wings broke the silence over the battered, craggy land. It faded for a few instants, and in that brief spell the rocky hills could have been mistaken for a view of the moon’s face, devoid of life or sound, cracked and uneven and shrouded in fine pale dust. Then the hum awoke again, and a thin cloud of black bodies streamed from one half-buried rock to another. It poured into its every crack, licking at its foundation where the angle of its thrust into the ground left it open. The living smoke was looking for something, feeling its way across the impact valley one fissure at a time. Again it did not find what it sought, and again it buzzed up and over to the next splintered boulder.

Crouched like some emaciated gargoyle on the remains of a monolith that might once have been as large as a small mountain, Iqelis idly watched the flies take to the air after another failed sweep. He extended an arm to point at another gigantic shard that lay by his perch, and the insects flooded over it with their ever-fresh curiosity, waving their feelers over every inch of its base. Yet again, no traces. He pointed elsewhere, and they followed. In their guileless enthusiasm, he thought, they would end up outlasting his own interest in the search.

Finding what, or perhaps who, had been the victim of Yudaiel's earth-shattering rampage had begun as a whim, a fancy to refine his mockery with precision. As time flowed by without his flies uncovering a single track of the carrion presence they were all too glad to root out, the whim had turned into resolve to spite the doubts he had about whether scouring every crater in the wasteland was worth the while. It was not as simple as drifting through the currents to his goal, for where that was remained unknown, and the ripples on the Flow had long grown too faint to follow them. This was a challenge, and the novelty of it amused him, used as he was to certainty in all things; but it was also tedious, and he doubted that he would last another two valleys before tiring of the suspense and leaving whatever vestiges lay buried there to their course into oblivion.

His scavenging was interrupted by a voice that reached him from afar - a voice that shattered the silence that had lingered too long, and awoke the world with its power. The stone seemed to sing quietly such a deep and chthonic melody while the air all around swirled with cosmic lucidity. The voice announced itself as it arrived from the north west, and evoked reverence in all whom heard it, but could not willfully combat its cadence.

"I am Homura, and though we have not encountered each other before; I know your name, Iqelis. You seem preoccupied, brother." The voice proclaimed.

She was within his sight, striding towards him with powerful leaps and bounds across the blasted landscape, exuding a red radiance that hummed heavenly music and danced with divine grace. Her physical form shimmered and shifted in the celestial light, but her ever visible eyes remained still and steadfast as they focused with keen clarity upon the great god of doom. Her eyes conveyed complete conviction and a fierce defiance of nonsense and foolishness as she approached with the weapon she held in her hand point lowered to the earth.

She stood atop a broken spire of stone as she halted and bowed before him. "I have not come to bring you harm, but to bring gifts, should you accept them." She said after she had arisen and then awaited his answer.

The One God turned upon his rock, head swivelling over, as the flies hurriedly drew back behind him in a disorderly jumble. It was not evident whether his eye met Homura’s gaze, or whether it lingered more on the tip of her spear, but its cold white glow poured out to push against the edges of her fiery presence as he looked appraisingly at her - or perhaps her reflection in the unseen river.

”Is everything not already destined to fall into my hands?” he replied with a short crackling laugh, as he vaulted to the ground and stepped closer. It might have been an effect of his sudden straightening, or an impression woven by moving shadows, but he seemed that much taller now. ”I may never refuse what is proffered me, just as none may ever refuse to give unto me. But I appreciate the eagerness.” Two identical arms came forward, palms turned upwards in either greed or blandishment. ”What would you consign to the Flow?”

The red goddess imitated his gesture, but in her palms there was sacred fire and its presence seemed to beckon the world to come closer, to peer deeper into the flames. The earth cracked and fragments arose from the ground, while water began to fall from the sky as wind whispered in its circling around her hands. The elements coalesced in her palms as she brought her hands together, and forged something anew.

“Humanity will be our instruments, a physical manifestation of our divine will and desires. They are malleable and will conform to the aesthetic you desire, but they are still mortal. You stand here commanding these creatures when you could be serving the Monarch of All in a greater capacity. You should have servants that tend to these more mundane tasks, yes?” Homura held out the small shape she possessed for Iqelis to examine. Its familiar form resembled the goddess, but lacked the features that expressed her character. It was unsculpted and undefined, awaiting purpose and meaning.

“I have created many humans, and intend to offer all of the divine my work. Do you accept my gift?” She allowed the homunculus to drift through the air towards the god of doom, and grasped the golden spear that levitated near her. All of her emotions seemed silent behind a stoic visage as she spoke, but the intense heat of her aura revealed her ire though it never directed itself towards his own cold presence.

”For them to be our drudges, and us their taskmasters under Him of the heavenly palace?” Pointed fingers seized the tiny quasianimate creature and held it by its four extremities, raising it to the view of Iqelis’ eye. Though not awoken to true perception, it seemed to shrink ever so slightly under the inquisitive glare. The god ran a finger along its front, and its outlines briefly quivered, threatening to revert to a raw elemental amalgam. When he spoke, his tone was amused. ”What a petty vision you have for one with full two eyes, sister! Would you have these little flames haul stones and carve the earth for us while we sit by, with nothing to do but sing praises to our maker? Do you not see how much more they could become?”

He let the simulacrum awkwardly stand on the narrow, uneven palm of one hand, and swept another around it. Abruptly, the disgregation that had appeared imminent before flared up again and overtook the little being, sending its four spirits bursting to the surface of its body one after another. It was fire, and it burned with rapturous exaltation, falling to its knees and raising its arms in invocation; it was water, and it sank down in churning despair; it was earth, and it prostrated itself in humbled submission; it was wind, and it spun and howled and wracked itself in tempestuous grief. Then the spark of discordance receded, and it dropped flat, once more impassive in its sterile unity.

”Impress them with their fragility, their insignificance before us, our omnipotence over them, and you will reap the harvest of their worship. They will scamper over each other to please us, raise ever taller shrines, turn the world itself into the altar of their immolation if we so wished! Why harness their bodies alone when it is their spirits that can yield untold riches? Why let all praise ascend to the Monarch, when he is bound by the same laws as we? If we shall give humankind no other master but us, we and we alone shall be the lords of the nascent Galbar. Give me your gift, and I will show you how it may be done.”

Homura remained impassive after his questions and proclamations, as a sudden silence lingered between the two deities despite the presence of the large swarm which flew in the sky around them. The red goddess allowed her gaze to wander while she contemplated her response. “You have proven to be what I expected, Iqelis. I am willing to give up to ninety-thousand humans to you. Do you accept my gift?” She said to the god of doom when her gaze returned and set upon him like two suns which revealed the world with their light.

”I loathe to disappoint.” There was a crooked smile in the One-Eye’s voice, even though his features could accommodate nothing of the sort. He let the hand that held the now quiescent homunculus drop, trailing close to the ground as if forgotten, as the other seven coiled into grasping talons. ”Numbers are the most ephemeral of all insubstantial phantasms. However many you deign to offer, I shall take them.”

“Then seven you shall receive.” She replied.

The god did not speak, but merely made an exhorting gesture with one hand, the amused glow never leaving his eye.

Homura simply bowed before she turned to the west with purpose. “I will return with haste, Iqelis.” She said, and then she departed as quickly as she had come. The lack of her presence left the land less bright, but less scrutinized as well. Her aura of light seemed to judge the land, measuring every facet, weighing each piece, comparing it to an unseen and unheard criteria. She had traveled far until she was beyond even the sight of the god, and only the memories of her severe red radiance remained.

Left to his own devices, Iqelis once again raised the mock-human to his eye. He raised a hand over it, ready to shatter it into fading elemental echoes, then halted it mid-motion and set the creature down to the ground upon its feet. It wobbled, empty of strength or drive to hold itself upright, but some dim sense of adherence to duty kept it from toppling over, despite ostensibly having nothing to cling to within its coarsely formed body.

”The likes of you should seek the buried dead for me, then?” the god asked the small construct, expecting no answer and receiving none. Then, on a whim, he reached for its head with a claw, and cast his ideabstraction into its thoughtless shell.

The world was grey. Grey skies overhead, one of those times when the clouds fade into a featureless shroud high above, stifling the daylight to a pale, half-hearted glow, but never showing themselves. Grey earth underfoot, dusty and gravelly, yielding yet hard and cold. Grey mountains looming around, fractured in haphazard ways, yet also oddly alike, as if they had all been painted in a few broad strokes by an apathetic hand. And that was as it ought to have been, for it was not the mountains that mattered, but what was beneath them. Under one of those faceless giants, it was known, lay the bones of that which lived no more and that was their place now.

The shell walked. It was through no impulse of its own, but because the world, the sky, the earth, the mountains, its own body, resounded with the truth that this was its purpose and its duty. To go from mountain to mountain, to find that which had met the end, to know its name. And no more than that, for that was the order of things. What would it do when that was done, when that name had been spoken for the last time? Remember that it is gone, remember the end that comes for all things, said the sky and the earth and the mountains. Let it rest untroubled, for that is the law that binds the dead, said its own body.

The simulacrum stood unmoving still. Iqelis turned away from it, displeased with how his wordless bidding echoed and rebounded in odd ways inside its husk. High in the sky, the palatial Sun continued to seethe. His shoal of verminous black crept up and down cracks in the parched schist as if tracing the flow of invisible waterfalls, tumbling down from the mountain.

It was the throb of the flies that alerted him to the fact that something was wrong.




Standing in the sea, north and west of the land struck by the calamity, were the three colossi that carried the sleeping humans upon their massive backs. Atop their high heads amidst archaic crowns of stone stood the three champions of Homura: Courage, Kindness, and Fear, as all three awaited the return of the red goddess.

“There!” Courage shouted, as she pointed towards the land where the celestial light of Daybringer shone and announced the arrival of the goddess of honor. Her two sisters stirred from their stillness, as their maker came closer and closer and seemed to revitalize them with sudden vigor.

From the shore, Homura aimed her golden spear, and threw it towards the section of sea that stood between her and the three colossi. The celestial weapon extended as it soared through the air, and then sank into the water with a great splash, but it did not strike the seabed. Hidden beneath the waves was the shimmering path the colossi tread upon to not disturb the denizens of the ocean throughout their travels. Daybringer had increased its size and upon piercing the path, it had become long enough and wide enough to form a towering pillar that emerged from the sea.

The red goddess leapt from the shore to the top of the reversed spear, its base acting as an improvised platform level with the height of the colossi. The three champions similarly leapt and greeted her. Homura held up her hand, and her voice compelled their silence.

“The path is clear, and ahead there is another god that awaits. I shall gift him with humans, and you three shall remain on your colossi.” She spoke and they bowed in response. Uncertainty flickered in the eyes of Fear as she arose, and words escaped her mouth before she could suppress them.

“You’ve been avoiding us after Chailiss, and now you’re avoiding us again...”

Courage and Kindness halted as they heard their sister accuse their maker of secluding herself from them, and tension simmered around them. Fear placed a hand upon her mouth hoping she could silence the song of shame that shook her being, and afraid it might slip free for all to hear.

“I am protecting you from those that would see you needlessly suffer, Fear. I will alleviate any of your concerns when we return to Keltra. For now, I cannot allow anything to halt the spread of humanity across Galbar. Forgive me if I seem to isolate myself for the duration of our journey. There is much I must think upon as we travel.” Homura replied, stepping closer and placing a hand upon the shoulder of Fear. Her words seemed to alleviate the champion’s concerns.

Afterwards, the three champions began the process of directing their colossi towards the shore while Homura placed her palm upon Daybringer causing the weapon to swiftly shrink and fit in her hands. The goddess descended upon the sea, the waves reached upwards to catch her, and she allowed herself to be seized and carried to the coast.

The land shook with each step of the colossi as they walked past her towards the east, and Homura amused herself as she recognized that this would be the first time they had traveled across earth for their journey. The lack of life in the aftermath of the cataclysmic attack upon this realm assured her that there would be no collateral damage as the massive creatures marched onward.

When they neared their destination, it became apparent from afar, thanks to the view afforded by the immense beings’ stature, that Iqelis had not been idle. The crater valley, earlier filled with scattered boulders and shards of uprooted mountains, was now sharply split between the chaos of misshapen stone and a waste of coarse dust and smooth pebbles. Wide swathes of rock mounds and looming monoliths, which seemed destined to stand for millennia after being haphazardly arrayed by the whims of fate, were now gone. It was not as though they had been wrenched from their places by force; no grooves remained in the ground where they had stood, but only a layer of fine detritus. One could have sworn that they had crumbled under the weight of ages a long time before.

Indeed, the strange plague was still raging at that very moment, and its newest victim fell under the eyes of Homura and her chosen. A tall, uneven slab of rock, which had evidently broken off from a larger mass and embedded itself in the soil at a stable if dangerous-looking angle, began to shrink at a pace visible even from high above. Its jagged angles lost their sharpness, smoothing down until only cracked and levigated surfaces remained; its upper side became perceptibly flattened, before a large piece of it broke away and toppled to the ground, dragged down by no more than its weight. At last, mere instants after the decay had begun, the slab’s midsection yielded, collapsing a good half of it and leaving the lower remnant leaning even more precariously, so that it soon followed. Nor did the destruction end there, for the heap of rubble that was left continued to shrink as if sinking into the ground, and at last became invisible over the strata of refuse littering the ground.

Only when the colossi had reached the cusp of the valley did the one responsible for this become visible. A spindly black figure was sifting through the remains of the vanished stone, reaching out with a multitude of snapping arms like some great prowling spider. Thick dark clouds confusedly hovered around it, now and then briefly settling onto the time-ground dust. Having ostensibly failed to find anything, Iqelis turned to the gargantuan procession and raked the air with an impatient beckoning gesture.

At the front stood Homura, and with Daybringer she directed the three colossi to continue their trek through the shifting sands and crumbling mounds. As she guided them, the strands of her hair stretched and flew towards the sleeping humans like red serpents of the sky seeking prey. She strode towards the god of doom after she had collected the seven humans she had promised him. When she came to a halt before Iqelis, she raised her weapon once more and celestial light glimmered and gleamed. The colossi ceased marching, and waited for further commands from afar, as Homura nodded to the deity in front of her. The humans she carried were placed upon the ground before him.

“Your gifts, brother.” She said with strict adherence to etiquette, evident was the struggling of her inner thoughts to express more. Her eyes wandered to the seven still forms between them, and her light seemed to bend and shift so that it might shine upon them more fiercely. “If you desire more, you need only ask, but I must know what your intentions are with them.”

The One God cast only a cursory glance at the humans, impatience shimmering in his eye, and looked about the landscape around them again before he answered.

”If they are all as receptive to our touch as that first one, even seven may be too many.” There was a vaguely lost tone to his words, layered with grinding irritation, as though he had just been caught by surprise by something and that fact incensed him. ”Did you see any trace of it from your contraption?” He raised a hand to point at the nearest colossus.

Her firm features finally shifted in bemusement, uncertain after hearing his question and considering his words for a time. “Do you mean the simulacrum? It must have dispersed. These humans shall be much more; receptive to our touch, our words, our being. You are more attuned to them than I had thought, it seems.” The impassive mask returned, but her voice was less sharp than what it was before.

”All things end in me. They must know it, in the very fabric of their substance.” Iqelis’ erstwhile amused air briefly returned in his moment of aggrandizement, but it was soon subsumed once more under a pall of ill-humoured puzzlement. ”Yet it seems that your image has avoided that. I can see the ripples it leaves in the Flow of time and destiny, somewhere close by here. They are no trail such as a lesser thing ought to have, least of all a hollow eikon. Deep and murky, the mark of one fated to burden the face of the Galbar for a long time yet. An aspiring eternal, perhaps.” He all but spat out the word in a whiff of cold venom. ”Do you not feel it? Can you hear it wallow in the dust?”

Homura softly smiled. “I hear nothing, however my senses are not obscured by sin. You can continue your pilfering, but I believe you will find nothing.” The red light that illuminated the seven humans receded, and sorrow seeped into the red goddess as she spoke. “Even seven sacrificed is too many, and I will never forgive myself. Iqelis, when war comes, and you stand in judgement for your crimes, remember this moment and that it is the only opportunity you will have to attain mercy.” Haunted were her eyes with visions of violence and anguish of otherworldly ordeals, yet she still smiled.

The god’s mind seemed at last taken away from the fugitive homunculus, and he craned forward like a great curious insect, clawed hands leaning on the shoulders of the two humans closest to him as he brought his eye level with her gaze. It glimmered inscrutably, and far in its depths the black Flow swallowed her radiance and reduced it to formless shadow.

”Mercy,” he crackled, low and sardonic like a gathering landslide, ”Is there truly such a thing? Shall we not all fade away with no need for war nor castigation, with none to implore but the uncaring void? What is mercy but a protraction of our death throes, an extension of our hours of agony?”

Then he drew up again, leaving behind a trail of creaking laughter.

”What do you believe I shall do with your little flames, gnaw on them like some brute? They will thrive no less nor suffer more than any you will seed elsewhere. Did you not listen when I spoke of the riches of their spirit? Or did you think I lied then? There is nothing but truth in Doom, and deception is a game for lesser shades, unworthy of a true God.”

Homura quietly chuckled without mirth. “Indeed; unworthy of a true God. Hmm, until we meet again, Iqelis. I must deliver the remaining humans to the rest of our siblings.” She bowed before she stepped back and turned to leave.

The One-Eye gave a halfway wave with a hand, as curious flies began to settle over the quiescent humans.

”Until then. Remember your lost simulacrum. We will hear of it again sometime yet, that I know.”

The red goddess recalled the pitiful beasts that would birth of their kind in the forsaken realm of the north, and the strange sight of a mother watching her children leave her in order to find their own homes and begin their own families. The hypocrisy of her own thoughts tore at her in paradoxical pain, pride and shame, joy and sorrow. She would not interfere with what was created. She could not.

“Honor demands sacrifice.” She whispered to herself, and then leapt into the sky and towards the three colossi. There was a burst of bright light, and the great delivery of humanity across Galbar resumed once more.



&






Sleep was a churning and frothy river, and dreams flitted through it like fish. Yudaiel was a vast net that drifted uncontrollably downstream; she caught a great bounty.

In such an exhausted state after her exertions with the Codex and her desperate battle against the ilk of Ashevelen, Iqelis, and Epsilon all, she truly dreamt now. Where her prescience normally let her steer the flow of the river and spear whatever fish she sought, now she was merely swept along by the current.

Many strange sights presented themselves before her. There was a tree that walked, almost a wooden man -- but it seemed only half a man, for the other half was woman; further, it appeared one part mortal and two parts divine. Upon one side the walking-tree’s branches were withered and leafless, but on the other they sprung green. It emanated strength but also great weariness, for it had borne many great burdens, had died and been reborn, died and been reborn, died and been reborn, endlessly and forever. She sensed that, like herself, this one Saw, and it pushed its roots deep through time. She returned the stranger’s great black gaze - its singular black-hole Eye - and knew that they would meet again. But then she was swept along by the stream, through rapids and down cataracts, away from the watchful god of bark that stood upon the banks.

Above the river there was a night sky aglow with fireflies and stars. In the darkness of the black void between stars, she sensed another Eye, and knew that It too could See, and moreover that It did See her -- It Saw right into her heart and soul. It was not just an Eye like she; the constellations about Its eye seemed to realign, and she saw that It was a cyclops with a great and imposing anatomy, a hulking and puissant form that seemed chiseled from stone.

Yudaiel flinched from Its glare, but there was nowhere to hide, and she had no words with which to plead. Through her peripheral vision she tried to watch It and descry something, anything, about the nature of this watcher, this tormenter, this potential predator: she could ascertain that the oculus belonged to some terrible being that was ancient beyond ancient, and that behind It, lurking in Its shadow, there was another constellation. From the clusters of distant and dimmer stars behind It, she connected the lines and perceived some monstrous, four-eyed demon with a hog’s head, and she sensed that it was a terrible herald of carnage and destruction… an apprentice, perhaps? Or a mere disciple, a minion? A child, even?

Whatever its nature was, that brute of a demonic boar changed little… it was the gaze of its master that Yudaiel feared. She suspected that if It desired, It could render her moon and the Galbar into dust with but a thought and then forge something horrible -- something utterly alien -- from the ashes; fortunately and manifestly, It seemed to have other inclinations. She saw in Its pupil a reflection not just of herself, but of the other deities,her siblings, and even the Monarch himself -- she wondered, did He even know that He was being observed through Space and Time and Reality by such beings as this one? Uncertainty filled Yudaiel, and for a fleeting moment, fear coursed through her too, and she was grateful for the Monarch’s strength if nothing else… she could not stand against such a terrible being as this Eye… yet. One day her glare would become so torrid, vehement, and menacing that even Its like would blister and burn and twist to her whims, but her time had not yet come, and to engage with the cyclops would be a hopeless and foolish struggle. For now it seemed only He could hold such beasts at bay… The All-Seeing Eye was rarely one for humor, but she found it risible that the Monarch of All protected her ambitions even as those same ambitions seemed to growingly include His own downfall.

Her musings on that monstrous eye and Its place in her world and thread of plots were suddenly cast aside; something was changing. Suddenly, It seemed disinterested in her and her siblings. It looked elsewhere by Its own volition, but not somewhere very far or distant -- nay, It gazed only a short ways down the river from where Yudaiel floated, right over her proverbial shoulder, but also upstream from her. Its one, cyclopean pupil managed to peer in two separate directions at once, forward and backwards, left and right, beholding past and future; she did not understand how such a thing was possible. More than even discovering just what things this creature had found more interesting or noteworthy than her, she now yearned to learn how It could See as It did! Alas, the Great Eye and Its minion, the boar-demon, vanished from the chimerical sky, the stars of their constellations fading away as surely and swiftly as hot embers doused by water.

Ah, water. Yes, she looked away from the star-strewn sky and remembered that she was still drifting down a river. A lone firefly suddenly grew dark, and its dim and dying form fell from the sky and into the turbulent rapids before her. She looked at the insect as it bobbed and floated in the dark water, and her hardly-lucid mind conjured the image of another fly -- Iqelis, wretched Iqelis!

She dreamt of him, a second cyclopean being, though this one was a mere pest; he was a mere firefly, his power like its trifling flicker before the heliacal glare of that last horror that she’d just seen between the stars. The obsidian fiend hovered effortlessly so as to maintain a short distance before her, just above the river’s frothing water. She glowered at him, daring the wretch to provoke her any more than he already was -- Luck was not the only aspect that she could crush, though she would much rather enthrall the Shard of Doom than see it obliterated. Iqelis just crossed his hundred arms and cackled. All of the countless lights of the fireflies in the air were extinguished as the insects died. From their falling corpses erupted tiny maggots, and those maggots feasted and grew into swarms of gnats and other lightless flies that grew and multiplied with a swiftness that defied reason, that an eye could not follow. None of the fireflies fell fast enough to even hit the ground before they had been consumed.

But the laughter of Iqelis stopped when her enraged mind reached out to grasp each and every fly. With a single pulse she struck them all dead, and Iqelis too was smote down and shattered like glass before her psychic scream. The river itself recoiled and charged its banks to flee from her, chasing after the trees along the banks that seemed to have grown legs and similarly decided to rout. Nothing could challenge her might! Her will was Fate! With nary a thought, she willed the broken pieces of Iqelis to twist and reform. A rain of prismatic diamonds plopped down into the writhing waters and sank into the receding river’s muddy bed, and all was well.



Far across hours and spaces both real and oniric, the true One-Eye did not suspect the fate that would befall his dreamed simulacrum, or, even if he did surmise at Yudaiel’s vengeful thoughts, he did not let it burden him. Fresh from the slaying of Aletheseus, that verminous anomaly that had dared defy the truth and order of things with his very existence and hypostasis, his spirits were high as he wove and leapt through shadowy currents unseen. It had been a fortuitous thing that the wakener of Fortitude should so soon have tempted his fate in mortal battle, thus stirring strongly enough on Time’s murky riverbed to catch Iqelis’ eye; for so dim and unassuming had he been, despite the enormity of what he represented, that it might otherwise have been a long while yet before his disturbances grew numerous enough to notice. How many due ends he might have prevented then, to be rectified one by one at the One God’s own hand.

But now that hand dripped with the trespasser’s vaporous blood, and all was well. Aletheseus had not found in himself the strength to levy the greatest affront of all – to halt his own doom. It was pleasing to think that truth and order were now no longer threatened by such brazen subversion, yet more gratifying still was the lingering sensation of his thread being cut short in Iqelis’ grip. It was not something the god had expected to enjoy, for a divine’s demise was in essence no different from that of a gnat. And all the same, to feel the weave of life fraying under his claws, to taste the bitter fear and ashen despair, to know that it was he, and no other, that cast it into the unformed darkness… There had been a curious sweetness in that, a cold joy the likes of which he had never imagined since his inception.

It was a glimpse into the depths of the Last Sea stolen over the shoulder of the one he drowned in its shallows, and it was a thing of chilling beauty.

No use to dwell on it too much. Every death had its own time, and he was not one to
hungrily sit on the banks and wait for the castoffs the current brought him. He would take them as they came, savouring each all the more for the drought that had come before it. One fate, however, he could stand to stoke his anticipation for. The pest Yudaiel. How he would relish plotting every inch of the blemishes he would gouge into her eye, every drop of black defilement he would pour into her sight, every tug to unravel her very world around her…

He caught himself as his bounding steps crossed the boundary of the grassy lands he had been moving through, breaking the trail of crumbling and withered plants he had left behind himself, and landed upon harsh, blasted ground. A rocky landscape of uneven hills and shattered peaks spread out ahead of him like a forgotten battleground of titans, the earth itself rent and ground down by a clash of forces of terrible magnitude. Massive boulders that were no more than fragments of yet more immense bulks lay strewn around, their fall having gouged tracks and craters in the already craggy soil. The sky overhead was darkened by thick clouds of pulverized debris, still stifling the daylight despite that the echoes of the blasts that had raised them had since faded. Not all of them - he could perceive the last stirrings of what must have been something sinking beneath the inky waves of the end, but what that could be it was too late for him to see.

And all over this scene of destruction, her mark. Always her. It brought him a spark of amusement to think that, in burying whatever foe she had found herself under this chaos of stone and sand, Yudaiel had already strayed from her oaths to preserve what she could of the world in the face of Doom. Something to cast into her face, such as it was, to sear into her thoughts next time. Right then, however, he could do better still. She ought to have been spent after making such an upheaval, and this formless barrenness was a laughable mark to have left upon the Galbar’s face. Her finest work was already marred; now, she would have to watch impotently as he surpassed her in that pursuit common to all divinity. He would raise such a monument that not merely her, but all that lived would look upon it and quake as the shadow of the inescapable fell upon their measly spirits.

He strode and swam further west, until his talons dug into the edge of a steep sandy cliff over a murmuring expanse of grimy water. The sea was still agitated by the aftershocks of the colossal impacts, the rippling echoes of the first great waves meeting their forerunners as they bounced from the gnarled shores. A crust of dirt still weighed them down, the pocket of ocean reduced to a muddy oversized mire. It would do.

Iqelis spread the full score of his arms and raised them to the heavens, letting the dark currents swirl and mount behind him like a dam. Although it was his place to spell endings rather than beginnings, to create and mould was the prerogative of all divinity, and he would claim from the world all that he was thus owed. He rustled and played with the terrible wave building upon his shoulders, reminding the earth, the water and the sky that they, too, were subject to the course of ages, and it was by his mercy if they were not engulfed then and there and shattered into a chaos of inchoate elements.

The earth, which was the firmest and had the most to lose to annihilation, was the first to yield. There was a tremendous chthonian groan and a shudder which, though none as mighty as the quakes sent by Yudaiel’s onslaught, rolled far through the land, unsettling hills and felling trees. The soiled surface of the sea broke, and hundreds of black spires rose among its scattered islands, peaks of dark stone pushed to the surface by telluric forces enthralled to the terror of doom. They stood like a grim host summoned forth from the depths, immobile and solemn, awaiting their fate.

The air bowed next, lest its impalpable purity be fouled by the choking shadows. A despairing moan rang out over the waves, and in defiance of all laws of nature and reason the obsidian mountains rose further still. They tore away from their stony roots deep below, then away from the surface itself, and agonizingly crawled up into the sky as the winds shrieked in horror at this unheard blasphemy. Now with ten score hands holding up his burden, Iqelis leapt onto one of them and let it carry him high, until they hung as as high above the shore as a true peak would reach. Then the dark rocks swayed and drew close, clinging to each other’s flanks and binding themselves together in a vast, unnatural landmass.

Then it was time for the water to surrender to the commanding will, to complete the dreadful work in a final gesture that would trample upon all that was sane and orderly, yet the sea hesitated. There was a bitter defiance in its stirring, a deep grief from which the waves drew an obstinate strength to refuse the dire imposition. Iqelis grit his fingers angrily, and stirred the shadow in his hands, letting it tower high and menacing. And then --

Something answered him, but not from the sea. It roiled and splashed soundlessly from the shattered lands to the north, crawling closer, faster and faster. Another of Yudaiel’s machinations? No, this did not bear her mark - but his own. Startled, he almost released the mortiferous currents he had collected. How did traces of his intent find his way there? He struggled to remember, and it seemed to him that indeed, when the great wave had crashed against the moon some drops of it had been pushed away, towards the Galbar below. He had minded them little at the time, thinking that they would rejoin the Flow, but here they were now, drawn again to him.

No, not to him. They were at last returning to the source. To the current he was already struggling to hold in his grasp. He had to --

The droplets fell into his hands, and the tide he had been holding back burst.

All around him, the Flow surged. Rock was weathered to dust in a blink. The air grew thin, then choking, then rarified again. Water faded to steam and fell again in chunks of ice. Too long contained, the currents of time roared forth, regaining the moments it had missed in haste. His obsidian isle crumbling around him, Iqelis had become a veritable spider, hundreds of hands lashing and reaching to stem the cataclysm before it unmade all that he had wrought. The threads of the flood slipped between his fingers, but at length he found one which had spent its fury and returned to its usual force. He grabbed onto it, and around it he wove a pall of stillness to contain the ravages of doom unchecked. His movements were sharp and hasty, snapping and darting like a mob of startled frogs, and yet it was only after an agonizing span of instants that he succeeded in quieting the risen course.

It had been time enough for decay to do its work. When he looked around, he was no longer upon a great body of dark rock, but on a lone fractured mountain, drifting forsakenly over the waves. The landmass he had compelled to rise out of the sea and into the sky was no more, for even as he had threatened the earth to do, it had been worn and fractured into a thousand shards of all sizes, from boulders to islets, trapped in the air apart from each other. Some had remained high above the water-line, but most had drooped and sunken to mere dozens of tree-heights over the surface. It was some consolation, however meagre, that the Flow had carved them into fanciful shapes, into curious formations that resembled the dead and polished skulls of all kinds of living things. In this they could still strike fear into those who watched, though never again would their unbroken shadow loom over dread-stricken eyes.

Yet it was the once-defiant waters below that had borne the worse lot. For a few moments, the sea had been fed by a river that ought not have a mouth, and it was forever marked. The dust and debris had been washed away, but what remained underneath was a still, inky waste, like a mirror of black glass, rippling ever so lightly as clumps of dead seaweed floated to the surface and crumbled into dissolving rot. No wholesome life could endure those blind depths now, for their cold touch was suffused with a distant reflection of the Last Sea itself. Warmth and vigour would ever flee from it, leaving behind sickly and enervated husks, and its saline essence, which had drawn into itself the worst of the taint, had become the cage of death’s own breath.

He heard a distant rushing groan, and knew that even as the outer ocean raged to contain the black poison in its gulch, the pure water streaming down from upriver recoiled in loathing from it. But rivers were not their own masters, and so they flowed on, writhing and clawing at their fate, refusing to mingle with that fluid abomination. Soon a pale fog began to rise from below, as the river-water sought to escape into the sky, anywhere but into the cold and dead abysses. Spectral clouds crept upon the light from the heavens, and with them grey dusk swallowed the last glimmers of cheer that livened the sea’s bleakness. Silence reigned, broken only by the rare forlorn wail of a trapped wind.

All this Iqelis saw, and though he could not truly scorn the desolation of the view, he was not pleased. How much more he could have done if he had been able to complete his work without interference! How much strength and toil he had squandered on this sorry waste! If only the echoes of his wrath had not awoken at the worst of times…

Yudaiel, it had to be her. This could only be her doing, a trap set for him to humiliate himself even as he sought to surpass her. Such trickery was her way. Oh, how he would make her squirm under his hands, how he would savour seeing her pupil glaze over…

Lost in a haze of vengeful thoughts, he did not see the clouds of dust and pebble-shards still hovering in the air begin to shake and stir, and it was only a thunderous buzzing that stirred him. The misty air had all of a sudden grown thick with thronging black swarms, myriads of small vermin with translucent wings and bloated bodies chasing each other among the suspended archipelago. Out of some strange resonance of power, flies, that most reviled insect, had crawled into the world, and they caroused around their god, drawn by a curious innate sympathy that no doubt only the All-Seeing Eye could have explained. Iqelis waved them away in irritation, and the swarms scattered to the four winds, flying to scour all corners of creation for death and decay, that they might pay obeisance to the manifestation of their Lord by wallowing in its refuse.

Only a few remained droning around the One God, now and then landing on the jagged rocks and rubbing their forelegs in supplication. He made about to wash them away in the Flow, but his hand stopped as it prepared to part the current, then fell again. The veneration of insects was a laughable thing, true; but to see them grovel before him pleased him none the less. Let all know that even the least of creatures gave him their devotion!

He leapt onto the nearest floating islet, and his court of flies followed. There were better things to do than to brood over this failure. The world was ripening, and his hand would be needed to show it the path to rot.





The Grand Reception Hall, concurrently...



While the other Primarchs and their retinues retreated to the back area to dance, Augor Astren and his own companions had instead been sweeping amongst the ranks of the Legio Princeps attending the gathering - very few of whom had any interest in the indulgent levity the party of dancers were now pursuing. The Baron Sigveyr had been discussing at length, if in a somewhat somber fashion, with Princeps Maximus Horgoth of the Legio Suturvora, the Fire Masters.

“...I am open to being persuaded. I am not convinced the endeavor will be one worthy of the Fire Masters’ efforts, Knight Baron.” Horgoth rumbled. “You will doubtlessly be capable of swaying over many other Princeps and God Engine Legions to your cause. What would be left for our own glory?”

“From what I have been told, honorable Princeps, this Eldar Craftworld is the size of a small planet.” The Baron answered after having turned a faint, seemingly knowing glance to his servo-skull. “Although it is difficult to tell from pure remote augur readings, the Ordo Astranoma’s Logis are convinced there must be massive expanses contained within its interior - perhaps amounting to many times the surface area of any celestial body of equal size due to its volumetric architecture. Even if not, the exterior of the craft is considerable in size and there are many large Aeldari webway gates mounted upon the hull. It is almost a certainty that Eldar Titans will be present - in force.”

“Doubtlessly.” Horgoth agreed. “Though I still fail to see how battling them rather than embarking on another campaign is preferable for our purposes. The Fire Masters are a venerated and renowned Legion of God Engines, Knight Baron. There are many pressing, perilous, and glorious campaigns that call to us.”

“Well,” The Baron began with a faint smile, “Although I do not doubt that, consider these two points. Firstly, the Eldar are by far the most advanced and the greatest of those adversaries who remain to contest the control of Humanity in the galaxy. This craftworld of theirs - they hold it to be sacred, venerated much in the same way we venerate Terra and Mars. They will assemble their mightiest forces to defend it. Your opponents shall be amongst the most peerless to have ever been faced, and the glory to be gained through the conquest of their work shall be equally exalted.”

Horgoth stroked his chin thoughtfully at that, clearly won over despite his grudging attempts to appear unphased. “I see. The second reason?”

The Baron answered simply by taking a single step to the left and gesturing grandly towards the far end of the room. Several meters away, the Archmagos Mephitor was holding court with a flock of more than a dozen Princeps at once, clustered and clamoring about him. Counted amongst them were many of the College Titanica’s Legions that had retained their strong bonds to the Mechanicum - some even remained openly and unapologetically loyal to Mars and its principles. Though the entirety of the College Titanica was nominally an extension of the Mechanicum proper, its Legions were granted such tremendous autonomy and were often desperately curried with for favor that their actual priorities and loyalties tended to be diverse. Many of the Princeps of those Titan Legions that still held closer allegiance with the Cult Mechanicum than the Imperium Writ Large had already freely approached the Archmagos to pledge their efforts to his devises - amongst them were Princeps from the Legio Vulturum, the Legio Magna, and the Legio Kydianos. Even a few Princeps from Legions nominally more distanced from Mars, such as Princeps Indias Cavalerio of the Legio Tempestus, one of the Legions of the Triad Ferrum Morgulus, had approached and was listening in on the conversation intently. Also counted amongst the gaggle of Princeps was Tesarius Orcan, another member of the Legio Suturvora - who was already speaking animatedly with the Tech-Priest.

“Mars has just as great an interest in this campaign as does the Omnissiah.” The Baron voiced after giving Horgoth a moment to take in the scene. “And many of the most famed and celebrated of Titan Legions are expected to take part. To be absent might evoke the wrong sort of sentiment.” Horgoth merely nodded in response.

Augor Astren himself had approached an unlikely pair - the Princeps Tesarius Solomere and Raynal Hess of the Legio Lysanda. Their Titan Legion was one mostly known for its safeguarding of the outermost fringes of Imperial Space amongst the Eastern boundaries, and thus had few campaigns of glorious repute to its name despite its substantial size and exemplary service.

“The Stars themselves shine for your glory, honored Princeps.” Augor intoned, making a two-handed cogwheel gesture as he approached. The two Princeps exchanged a glance before Tesarius replied.

“Blessed be your countenance, Holy Primarch. Though we are honored by your notice, I am afraid the duties of our Legion-” Augor interrupted him by proffering a hand.

“You are correct.” He began. “Though the Legio Lysanda is more deserving than most of the glory and honor of the great campaign the Ordo Astranoma has planned, your steadfast devotion to your duty is more glorious and honorable still. Few know better than I the treachery and abominations that lurk in the furthest reaches of the dark, beyond the light of the Omnissiah. Fewer still know the horrors that your Legio have faced and thwarted, time and time again, rarely to receive recognition for your efforts. The Stargazers Legion has borne witness to your stalwart defense of the Imperium and to your peerless vigilance. Many times, you have been one of the only forces to come to the aid of my Children’s Macroclade Fleets, and many times have the Stargazers assembled and heeded your calls for aid in turn. I did not come to ask the Legio Lysanda to partake in the Campaign against the Eldar.”

Augor then bent low on one knee and inclined his head before the two Princeps, who stood, struck with shock before him - much as were many others surrounding them as they turned and noticed the unusual motion from the Twelfth Primarch.

“Know that you and yours shall always have an ally in me and mine, Princeps of the Legio Lysanda. Into the furthest and darkest reaches of space, we shall stand fast with you against all challengers.”

The Princeps simply stood, still too evidently sticken to reply even as the Primarch rose from his knelt posture, returning to his full stature. “I knew it would be improper of me to see to any other matters here before I had the opportunity to speak with you.” He stated in an exultant and serene tone. “If there is anything I or the Ordo Astranoma can do to service your own purposes, works, and holdings - do not hesitate to tell me, or any of my Legion’s Lord Commanders.”

“...That is…” Raynal Hess started hesitatingly before falling silent once more.

“...The Legio Lysanda does indeed have a rapport with the Stargazers Astartes Legion, holy Primarch.” Tesarius finally managed. “Moreso, I must admit, than with any others of the Children of the Omnissiah. Though we were unaware until now of the true extent of that rapport. It would be imprudent of us to make requests of you and yours given the scope of the campaign you are about to undertake.”

“Perhaps so.” The Twelfth Primarch nodded. “Though I can think of an opportunity that your Legio may find worth in. The so-called Librarian Crusade - it shall be venturing into the fringes of space in the Segmentum Obscurus. Many of the worlds there have recently fallen prey to externally incited insurrections. Their Compliance shall shortly be assured of course, but an adamant force capable of holding and keeping those worlds would be invaluable in the course of the Campaign, and many of my siblings would not fail to take notice of such efforts…”

Not far from where the Ordo Astranoma was engaged with the representatives of the Collegia, a smaller gathering had formed around the envoys of the Abyssal Lurkers. The spawn of the Ninth, utterly indifferent to the heart and splendour of the celebration, had set to assembling those who, like them, ruminated designs of bloodshed and destruction even on the brightest of days. Though the deep-dwellers lacked the sway that true adherents of the Machine Cult wielded among certain Titan Legions, there were those who, in memory of past campaigns fought at their side and for the amicable ties of the Dronemaw with the clergy of their native Forge Worlds, were disposed to lend them their ear for a spell. There stood with them Principes in the red and teal liveries of the brutal Legio Laniaskara, their features daubed with ritual paints whose designs obscurely encoded rank and accomplishment. Others donned the black and beiges of the impiteous twin Legios of Xana, Vulturum and Kydianos, not all of whose scions had gone to join Mephitor of the Stargazers. Their bodies were marked by a profusion of strange augmentics unusual for those of their station, and the quiet, oddly unassuming figures of their brethren of the House Malinax hovered ever nearby.

“...An enemy with glorious promise and hidden potential,” Iuvris was mechanically rattling to a semicircle of Xanites as Thenal sipped from his glass behind him, having already refilled it with increasingly mismatched bits and bites a few times, “We know they hold strange and potent technologies, but none such that they cannot be overcome. A golden medium. Once we strike at their parasitic domain, they will have no recourse but to meet us in the field, where their flesh may be worthy witness to the artifices of the Vodian savants.”

“That is all well and good,” the Princeps Ultima of the Gore Crows, Scrindus Tepfra, answered in harsh and haughty tones. Steely cords of bionic muscle rose from under his ashen skin where it was bared, and one of his eyes was a cybernetic speculum. “But pray tell, what sets these Nephilim of yours apart from the Eldar that some of our Seniores are already frothing to quash? They, too, will be driven to us by desperation, and so too they are fresh targets for the Legio’s arms.”

“Two things, regent of the God-Machine,” Iuvris raised his twofold arm, claws held up on each hand, “The Eldar are not armoured in pride alone. They are elusive like mercury, covered in simulacra and shields of unholy invention. It might be fascinating to record how the wrath of your engines would collide with their defenses, but true impacts upon the reviled xeno form would be all the rarer. Elimination is our final goal, not merely to sweep aside illusory wards. Let those less dedicated to the true depths of battle do away with them.”

Tepfra narrowed his one eye as he crossed his arms. “And the other?”

“Unlike the Eldar, these beings rule over the lost and the condemned. Supplicants perverted by communion with the xeno, eagerly bearing the yoke that binds them. A blight on the face of mankind that must be cleansed. Only a truly devoted spirit could summon the humility to scourge the chaff once the blade of the enemy is blunted, but I know for a fact that our company is not lacking in such paragons.”

The Princeps Ultima inclined his head, his eye still squinting with suspicion, though a shadow of a grin seemed to briefly dance at the corners of his mouth. “That might be, Expergefactor, that might be. But I know just as well that the Archmagos-Procurator would be greatly displeased if we did not lunge for the chance to temper the Crows’ talons in the blood of prey as formidable as Eldar,” his voice briefly lowered, taking on a confidential tone, “To say nothing of Magister Scoria.”

Iuvris seemed about to reply when Thenal spoke up from behind him. “The Third Tempest would hold it an honour to march alongside the hallowed regents in the sack of Iris. Yet, surely it would be to the Vodian Consistory’s satisfaction if his wardens could assay both the Eldar and those world-harvesters at once.”

Tepfra stood pensive for a moment, before beckoning one of the Kydianos Principes to the side and quietly conferring with them, their voices lost in the pervasive murmur of the crowd. In their absence, the Expergefactors turned their allurements to the younger Xanites.

Over behind the Techmarines’ backs, Issnos Traal was trading signs for the Laniaskaran Principes’ words. A few of them kept appraising gazes glued to his bone talons, apparently more intrigued by the nature of the trophy than by what the Equerry was spelling out with it.

“Why call on us for this then, blood of Carcinus?” a wiry Valian by the name of Aleyte, half her face covered in a jagged pattern of ceremonial crimson paint, was then asking, “If these parasites you hunt are not great enough to cut down with our blades, if their machines are too puny to face us foot to foot? What use do you have for our packs?”

The xenos’ war machines could prove great foes still for all we know, Traal gestured in reply, There is more. Have you ever struck down - his motions became slower, but sharper and more deliberate, as if he were making sure he would clearly convey an unusual meaning, - an edifice that lives?

“A living building?” Aleyte exchanged puzzled glances with her fellows and shook her head, “We Impalers have bled dry beasts that might as well be fortresses, and we have shattered engines that moved whole citadels to battle. Do you mean something that’s neither of those?”

Indeed, the Equerry signed, once more at his usual pace, We have seen their cities only from afar, but our scans have found vast presences inside them. High towers of metal matched to strong flows and surges, psychic force. We do not know if they truly live, but they were built by predators of the mind.

“That would be something for the priests to figure out,” the Valian shrugged, “What is and isn’t life is a question of doctrine, not for us to solve.”

Nor for us, Traal convened, Our duty is to conquer. Only sometimes the galaxy surprises us with some freakish new obstacle.

“And what wouldn’t many give to be the first to spill new blood,” Aleyte nodded pensively.

Time passed, the Princeps and the retinues of the Primarchs all commingling amongst each other as vows and promises were exchanged amidst speculation and intrigue. Nearly all of the Princeps at the function knew of each other by reputation if nothing else, and drew to each other almost instinctively - and around their would-be patrons and allies or otherwise. All save for one.

Princeps Calvar Ibranum of the Legio Xestobiax felt almost as if he did not belong in the stateroom. The God-Engines of his order were few, their accomplishments unsung in anticipation of their occurence, and the Princeps’ robes unadorned and practically spartan in decorations and honors. As the Legio Xestobiax had only just recently been declared Officio Fidelitas, Calvar had barely even managed to secure admittance to the event. Three quarters of the Administratum drones and clerks he had been forced to confront had never heard of him or the Legio Xestobiax - even those who made it their business to know of the Titan Legions.

It thus came as something of a shock when he heard his own name volleying towards him from both sides as two strangers seemed to erupt outwards from the surrounding crowd with scarcely any warning.

“Princeps Ibranu-” Baron Sigveyr paused, coming up short with his servo-skull pulling an equally abrupt braking-maneuver in the air as he came face to face with the comparatively towering form and unsettling voice of Thenal of the Ninth Legion.

“My apologies, Lord Astartes.” The Baron eventually managed with a clipped tone as he recovered. “In my haste I must have overlooked your approach through the crowd.”

“Trouble yourself not, illuminate,” the Expergefactor raised a hand, along with a cluster of mechadendrites on the same side, in a conciliatory gesture, “Chance has a way of levelling us when allowed to run unbridled. Regent,” he nodded in greeting to Calvar, before returning his gaze midway between the two Throne-pilots. “The paths of causality appear to have crossed at your feet.”

“I would do well to aprise my master of the notice of the Ninth Legion, Lord Astartes. We did not expect much-” The Baron’s gaze turned to Calvar and his voice halted. After a momentary pause and a motion to clasp his hands behind his back, the Baron resumed. “I take it the Ninth Legion sees potential in the Legio Xestobiax, then?”

“It is the custom of my brethren to plumb the most occult deeps, and never to dismiss the promise hidden in the youngest of growths,” Thenal replied, four of his flexible metallic limbs bending into the shape of a helix, “But alas, rarely do they turn such patient looks upon the works of the machine. It was the initiative of my own order to probe the talents of the Legio, that we may determine if they could flourish in the shadow of a rapport. Do our kin of the Astranoma have a design of their own for their and the Xestobiax’ mutual enhancement?”

“Less a design and more of an opportunity, Lord Astartes, one which I imagine we are all well-informed of. It would likely be best if you made your proposal first so that we might spoil the good Princeps for choice.” The Baron turned a wry smile up to Thenal. “And I confess I have an interest in what you might wish to discuss with him in turn.”

“So be it,” the Expergefactor nodded and turned his helmet to the Princeps. “Regent, by the will of the Ninth Legion, be it known that we offer unto you and yours a chance to unveil your might to the Imperium on fields of little risk and great reward. Once this conclave is sealed by the Omnissiah, our brothers will strike against the xeno-dominion of Melchior. It is not a threat we estimate to be formidable, for great forces will march alongside us, but it offers ample bloodshed and glory in the eyes of our allies and mankind at large. If the duty of battle calls to you, you will find it a worthy anvil to forge the first syllables of your name.”

Calvar nodded in response. “A sound and prudent offer. Though it begs the question of what opposition you are expecting that your campaign would benefit from the intercession of the Legio Xestobiax’ god engines, Lord Astartes.”

“The full extent of the hostile forces is unknown,” Thenal thrummed, “We have reason to suspect that Melchior may be but the latest conquest of an expansive xeno empire, and that it is defended by potent weapons its rulers do not deign to unveil for lesser skirmishes. The presence of your consecrated eidola may prove a great benefit if harsher resistance should arise unaccounted-for, and there is fame to be gained in thus braving the mysteries of the galaxy.”

Calvar then turned to look at the Baron. “I trust it is no slight to presume you intended to invite my engines to join the order of battle in the siege to be waged against Iris.”

“Indeed. That is very much what I came to offer to you.” The Baron admitted. “I will not lie to you - the adversaries we shall face will be some of the greatest the Imperium has ever known, but you would not be fighting alone. A number of other Legios shall be present as well, amongst many other allies.”

Calvar appeared to mull this over for a moment before speaking once more. “Lord Astartes - as your counterpart indicates, the forces of the Eldar are quite formidable - but they are, in this circumstance, the devil we know, and were I to commit my engines to that campaign I would have the support of other Legios as well as the opportunity to establish rapport with them. Your campaign, while intriguing, promises a great many unknowns - some mysterious far-flung xenos influence beyond the pall of what is known. Why would you prefer the Legio Xestobiax in this scenario, as opposed to a more blooded house?”

“The god-engines of your host would not march alone,” one of Thenal’s mechadendrites pointed up, “My brothers are working to sway the wardens of Xana and Valia-Maximal to those undertakings. The attendant clergies of their cradles are accomplished, and to forge bonds with them on the battlefield would be a rare privilege.”

Calvar’s frame seemed to go rigid at the mention of the two names. “I see.” He said, his tone suddenly frigid. “I will have to give this matter some thought - I will let the both of your legions know of my decision before the night is out, of course.” He nodded to both the Baron and Thenal in turn, if somewhat stiffly. “If you will excuse me.”

The Princeps then broke away from the both of them and headed directly into the crowd of guests - and if it appeared to the Baron and Thenal that he was heading rather deliberately towards the congregation of Princeps crowded around Mephitor, neither of them made mention of it.

“I suppose we are left to await his word then, Lord Astartes.” The Baron directed to Thenal in a tellingly consolatory tone. “Though you have piqued my curiosity in the meantime. I have heard rumblings of the xenos in the Melchior region - these so-called ‘Nephilim‘’ myself. The Ordo Astranoma has had a number of notices concerning the possible turning of Genetors to the formulation of a new pogrom plague - but I did not known that campaign had risen to the level of multiple Titan Legions deigning to involve themselves.”

“Nor has it, illuminate, or not insofar as I am permitted to know,” the Expergefactor seemed unconcerned by the display of Calvar’s departure, the serpentine hive of his appendages shifting and stirring at ease, “I have heard of them fielding strange and unholy mechanisms, devices and biomorphs that reduce entire worlds to servitude, but for all their impure artifice they have thus far not shown themselves able to overtly match the true gifts of the Machine God. Yet the forces of our Legion will be divided in their sacred task. Where isolated Tempests may prove insufficient against the multitudes of the inhuman, the god-engines will find ample chance to cover themselves in blood and glory. Man and machine complete each other, a truth that our leaders have been regrettably slow to acknowledge.”

He made a curious sign with his hands - almost a Cog Mechanicum, but strangely sharp and convoluted - before glancing down at the Baron. “Were it that all could be as enlightened as the revered Lord Astren.”

The Baron seemed lost in thought, almost perturbed, to the point where the flattery flew completely by him. “Word of such profuse and particularly blasphemous Heretech is worrisome - and with such rotten timing as well. Ordinarily I would offer to arrange for a number of the Twelfth Legion’s Macroclades to join the campaign, but with this Craftworld Siege we are stretched precariously thin. Those fleets of the Ordo Astranoma not being committed to the Iris Campaign are being consigned to indefinite regional patrol or custodial watch over particular sectors. Even my homeworld of Caelrulmoste, which is in the Dominion of Storms - a figurative stone’s throw from Last Light itself - is going to have to fend for itself for the duration of the campaign.”

“No doubt the Lord Primarch will have accounted for the particulars of such a distribution, though even the sharpest minds can be hampered by the limitations of the tools at their disposal,” Thenal nodded, “The Dominion of Storms marks one of the outermost boundaries of the Imperium in a region I know of as turbulent. Are there truly so few concerns about incursions from those fringes that have yet to be annexed?”

“There are plentiful concerns, Lord Astartes, but Caelrulmoste is a Questor Mechanicum world. What little infrastructure is present there has bite enough to swallow any reavers that would venture there.” The Baron appeared to hesitate as his servo skull drifted in close and almost seemed to murmur in his ear conspiratorially. “...Though there has been trouble in that region that we were not able to investigate or deal with in a timely fashion prior to the arraigning of the Iris Campaign. There was even an entire Aspirant Mechanicum Colony on the world of Altus Ferro that had to be abandoned recently due to reaver intrusions threatening the security of the region.”

“An Aspirant Colony.” Thenal’s upper mechadendrites rose in a quizzical curl like so many stirring cobras, “What sort of marauders could be dangerous enough for a settler force of the Cult to withdraw entirely, illuminate? Voidfaring xenos or nomad fleets?”

“The latter - their fleets have had encounters of some varying success with the Imperial Navy of course, but peculiarly every report of their confrontations with the Imperial Army upon any planetary theater claims they are nearly unstoppable. They have some nebulous and allegedly indestructible form of warmachines they are reputed to use, but intelligence is contradictory and unilluminating.” The Baron waved a hand in a gesture of vaguery. “But the region has always been a low priority - filled with nothing but barren planets and uninhabitable sectors. Even Altus Ferro is an ice world - or it perhaps has frozen oceans, I am not certain which. There were always more pressing fronts of the Great Crusade. So when word came that the same reavers were threatening the area and that there were no nearby fleets to safeguard the nascent Forges…” The Baron shrugged. “The Tech-Priests there did not have the resources or forces to withstand even a token invasion force, let alone one with an unbroken record of ground victories against the Imperial Army.”

“Hostiles with middling naval strength and planetside superiority fall within the category of threats the Legiones Astartes are most efficient in eliminating,” Thenal mused, “And such potent war-machines bear investigation by the Cult Mechanicum. It is unfortunate that this presence should have remained below notice until a time when the focus of mankind’s strength is directed elsewhere.”

“As you say, Lord Astartes.” The Baron agreed. “It will likely be prioritized once the Iris Campaign has concluded, or perhaps some other Legion will chance nearby and elect to deal with them, though personally I doubt it. There is nothing in that drift of space of much interest to the Legions other than Altus Ferro itself.”

“That may be so, but much is concealed from our imperfect sight,” the Expergefactor folded his fingers together in contemplative posture, “This reaver activity might be a portent of a greater menace. They could have planetary holdings in the uncharted zones of the Drifts, perhaps a supply line or even production facilities. Numerous organised territories subjugated during the Crusade were initially misidentified as populated by nothing but irregulars. Even if that were the case here, a demonstration of force is warranted after their encroaching on an Imperial colony.”

Several of Thenal’s mechadendrites pointed forward, and downwards, in the Baron’s direction, even as his hands remained joined.

“You scarcely need to tell me, Lord Astartes.” The Baron stated confidingly. “According to the Ordo Astranoma’s Logi, 98% of all Imperial space and territories remain unsurveyed, and more than 95% remains entirely unexplored. I cannot count the number of marvelous and malign surprises in those dark sectors of what is supposedly our own realms the Ordo Astranoma has uncovered - not that we receive any recognition or respect for it, as even some amongst the sacred Children of the Omnissiah have made more than evident.” The Baron seemed to cast his gaze in the direction of the open-floor when the Primarch Sekhemetara held council of her own, but just as quickly he shook his head and turned his notice back to Thenal. “I speak out of turn, of course, and you very much have the right of it Lord Astartes. The days of the marauding reavers in that stretch of space are numbered, though this period would evidently be the figurative Summer of their endeavors.”

“The way of our Orders is often a thankless one, illuminate, even among those we would call our brothers,” Thenal assented with unexpected wistfulness, a tendril subtly nodding towards where Traal, the Equerry, still gathered together several Principes, “But from the weakness of the mind the anima delivers us.” He made another sign, this one even more arcane and not quite comparable with anything in Martian liturgy.

“As steel we must be resolute in our calling. My voice is merely that of one adept among them, but my brethren of the Ninth may judge the invasion of Altus Ferro worthy of their intervention should they learn of it. I shall inform the Imbrifices. Let it not be said that we have not done what we could to ensure that order reigns in the Omnissiah’s domain.”

“If anything comes of your word in this matter, do let the Twelfth Legion know. I am certain the Mechanicum would be pleased to go where the light of the Omnissiah’s Legions are carried and I suspect they would be generously disposed towards whomsoever manages to retake Altus Ferro, and we would be pleased to convey your word to those orders that were displaced.” The Baron bowed his head to Thenal. “If you will excuse me, Lord Astartes - I imagine we both have business we should continue to pursue.”

“Duty is eternal, illuminate,” the Expergefactor replied, “May the spirits ever be propitious to you.”

With yet another esoteric sign, he turned and heavily stalked away into the crowd amid a scraping and clattering of metal.


Eh, maybe. I suppose this has my potential interest.
One leg still raised in an unfinished step, Zsresrinn stopped in her tracks. She had let the comms chatter about Gourlan fly by without answer - even if the voidhanger's suspicions were correct, there was not much they could have done about it at that moment. Not until they had dealt with the enemy they knew. Her senses followed the movements of the rebels by the mortar emplacement through the remaining parasitic drone as it wove and ducked about the undergrowth, her body moving ahead almost by reflex. Rho-Hux's warning, however, made her hesitate. She had not thought the stalking beast was still so close. Abandoning her mobile eye for a moment, she focused her senses ahead of her. Still nothing clearly in sight, besides a fleshy shape slithering here and there, but she could smell it now, feel its body heat. The stench of several animals, and a very large thermal patch, though a pale one. Maybe cold-blooded.

"Understood." She readied her side-limbs' grip around her hellhammer as she passed on communications to the rest of the group as quietly as she could. "Insurgent patrol approaches, prepare to engage. Will attempt misdirection."

Zsresrinn had to acknowledge that she was in no way equipped for subtly hampering the enemy. All the same, the raw calculations of combat were clear: they were facing an adversary that matched their numbers and an unpredictable wild creature. One of these elements attacking another would lead to the third one taking advantage of the fight, and unless the group did something about it, most chances were that they would be on the losing side. Anything she could so much as try mattered.

She shifted her attention to the drone again, pushing it to rise into the air with an unnecessarily loud buzzing of its membranous wings. The symbiote was small and the sound it made was easily lost in the rustling and breathing around them, but she hoped that the large predator's honed senses or the insurgents' detection systems would be sharp enough to pick up on it. Even if they did, though, that might not be enough to have them focus on that. Driven by a direct mental command, the drone flew in a wide, exposed loop, bringing it onto the trajectory the tarrhaidim were approaching from, and dove at the plough-head, which she now could see more clearly from above. It was unlikely to survive if either foe did spot it, but that would be a small price to pay if it could get them to notice each other in time.
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