GW - [ 355 ] (Patreon)

I'm back! The trip was fun, and it let me rest my brain for a week, even if it was a bit physically exhausting with three days of 15k steps each, nestled between two 14-hour bus trips. It was very much worth it, though; I'd recommend checking out Tuscany to anyone who has the opportunity.

*****

The best kind of deals were the ones where both sides walked away from it feeling like they’d made off like bandits. I myself was thrilled with the final haul, and even Eldrad’s ever-stoic demeanour melted to show a small, self-satisfied smile when he said his farewells. 

I’d resurrected every single Eldar soul trapped in a spirit stone that they had in their small fleet as my part of the advance payment, and Eldrad had also fulfilled every part of the deal that he was able to on such short notice. He’d made his solemn vows that he would honour our agreement, promised to keep an eye on those I named and to make sure they would be granted sanctuary if they ever asked for it. He’d also dumped knowledge of every Webway path and Gate I’d asked for in my mind. 

The rest of our bargain would be fulfilled at a later date, once he’d gathered everything I’d asked for, had the time to examine the freshly resurrected Eldar and managed to gather the agreed-upon number of spirit stones. His tutoring sessions would be sporadic considering both of us had a lot of things on our timetables, but I felt like he wasn’t going to renege on it despite the loose time constraints. Once he was sure my resurrection was true, perfect and without side effects, he would likely do everything in his power to remain in my good graces.

He was desperate to ensure the long-term survival of his people; the two Bonesingers who had remained behind were proof of that. Their souls were already within my Realm, which rather expectably knocked both of them into a blissful stupor. Their souls getting cauterised probably had something to do with their state as well, but whatever. They were not the true master artisans I’d been promised; not all Bonesingers were the same. They were artists, painters; the ones I had were the kind who could paint a wall and consistently not mess it up, the ones who’d actually mastered their crafts; the Picassos and da’Vincis of Bonesinging never left their Craftworlds. I was promised three of those and a dozen lesser artisans who knew how to manufacture and maintain Wraithbone-based technology. 

“You’ve been quiet,” I said, sensing Alex appear at my side as I watched the Eldar ships take off into the sky. 

“It was your negotiation,” he said simply, then gave a wry smile. “Besides, I don’t think anything I could have said would have helped. Eldrad quite understandably is still holding a grudge, just yet another mistake Throne Me made after locking me away.”

“Alienating his allies?” I asked.

“That too, and betraying promises,” he said solemnly. “Only the Great Work mattered, and it blinded him- it blinded me. I was still part of ‘The Emperor’ when I made the decision to seal this part of myself away. I thought my empathy and nostalgia might be obstacles in the path I would have to walk if I wanted mankind to survive. Instead, it left me with blind spots, too cold, logical and driven to notice- No, I did notice the cracks as they formed; I just hoped they would hold until the task was done.”

I just gave a noncommittal thoughtful hum in response. That didn’t especially feel like he was talking to me, just thinking aloud. He did that sometimes. If there was anyone who had enough memories to get lost in with this frequency, it was him. 

“So, I think before this whole Eldar thing popped up to derail all our plans, we were planning to go on a little excursion?” I changed the topic with all the subtlety of a brick to the face. “Necrons and Tyranids. Let’s leave the Dark Eldar for later; I don’t want to ruin my good mood.”

“Indeed,” Alex said, taking the topic change in stride. “I’d also like to see how exactly you’ve been handling the Orks living on this world. I’ve read the report, but that and seeing for myself are two very different things.”

“You could divine it quite easily, no?” I raised an eyebrow.

“I’m trying to use my psyker abilities as little as possible,” he said with a shrug. “Besides, the Blackstone Pylon network on this moon makes doing anything rather too much work to be worth the effort. I’ve got a pair of perfectly working eyes, after all, and nothing taking up my time to make me value expediency over being careful with exerting myself.”

I rather doubted a simple scrying of a place off a few miles away would actually exert him, but whatever. He probably had his reasons. For all I knew, he was just bored and wanted to stretch his legs, or he was having more trouble using his psyker powers than I’d initially thought. It was damn near impossible to truly read him, and I was half convinced that acting all mysterious was just second nature to him by now. Or maybe he was just a little shit who enjoyed annoying and confusing me. 

******

I sat in a high-backed chair made of scraps and junk that could only be called a throne if you squinted hard … and had a concussion. Or, if you were an Ork. 

“I don’t know what I expected, but this wasn’t it,” Alex said, leaning on the railing to peer down at the arena below. “A colosseum. With orks.”

The colosseum itself was an absolutely gorgeous piece of architecture created from marble and granite, the two stones melded together by a careful application of my Psyker talents. Stoneshaping, as I’d named the trick, was rather exhausting, but I’d managed to get it working without Atiesh’s assistance after only a few days of practice. 

The result was more than worth it. There was just something strangely beautiful about the buildings made with stoneshaping, making it appear as if the entire colosseum had been carved from a single chunk of titanic rock. 

The sight of hundreds of stinky orks lumbering about in the stands, screaming and roaring as they watched the brutal slaughter below, clashed wildly with the gorgeous building. It was ridiculous, though I wasn’t sure whether to feel offended that they were dirtying my little side project or amused by the sharp contrast. 

Whatever. I was the one who decided to dump it here and give them permission to use it. No point in bitching about it now. 

We sat in the viewing box situated at the place of honour, where in the ancient Roman equivalent of this building the Emperor and his inner circle would have sat. I took undue amusement from watching the current Emperor stand on the tips of his toes to peer over the railing from this very same box. 

Down below a group of twenty massive, lumbering Orks fully decked out in ‘dakka’ and augments clashed with a Tyranid Hive Tyrant surrounded by its cadre of Warriors. 

“Bread and Circuses.” I shrugged. “For the Orks, it's the same thing. I give them opportunities to fight and viciously eradicate those who act out … that’s more like the carrot and the stick method, now that I’m saying it aloud. Eh, whatever. What do you think of the Tyranids?”

“How close are these to the real thing?” He asked instead of answering.

“About as close as you can get,” I said, resisting the urge to roll my eyes. “These types you would only find in the middle of a horde of Gaunts, Rippers and the rest of the lesser Tyranids. The Hive Tyrant is one of the most potent synapse creatures around; its role is roughly that of a general or commander.”

“And these ones are connected to that Hive Mind?” He questioned. “Despite having been made by you with that ‘eldritch’ artifact?”

“Yep,” I said. “Neat trinket you had just gathering dust in your cellar, by the way. It made my life considerably easier.”

And you’ll only have it back over my dead body- bodies- eh, you get the idea.

“Aren’t you worried the Hive Mind will use these as a beacon to draw in nearby splinter fleets?” He asked conversationally, willfully ignoring my comment. 

“I wouldn’t say no to some free food delivering itself right into my mouth, no, I’m quite alright with it,” I said with a small snort. He probably knew that answer already and was just asking for the sake of small talk. “I don’t fear the Tyranids. They may be an existential threat to every other faction, but not to me. I am much more concerned about Chaos and the Necrons.”

“You can’t be everywhere,” he said simply. 

“The fact that I can’t protect the rest of the galaxy from them singlehandedly doesn’t factor into the question of whether I fear them or not.” I did roll my eyes this time. “Besides, any Tyranid that willingly flies into my stomach is one less Tyranid the rest of the galaxy has to deal with. I’ll call that a win-win situation.”

He hummed at that, letting the conversation peter out as the two of us instead focused on the battle down in the arena. It wasn’t too interesting from my perspective, aside from the fact that one of the biggest Orks currently engaged in combat was that chef Ork I’d met a good while ago. Crunch, I think his name was? Good to see he was still kicking. 

******

“Not the most welcoming tourist destination, but this is the only one I found where we won’t be immediately attacked, and you can explore without fear of being blasted out of existence,” I said, strolling down the dark path of the slumbering Tomb World. Despite all my numerous scouting vessels scanning every world they came across in the Jericho Reach for subterranean structures, this was the only Tomb World I’d found. Even that, only because I devoted roughly half of my scouting vessels to systems that fell within the ‘Dark Pattern’. This specific Tomb World was found on a Dead World orbiting one of the stars drawn off course by the Dark Pattern.

The only source of light we had was the eerie green glow emanating from rivets in the walls, carrying energy elsewhere. The massive hall rose for dozens of meters until it reached the ceiling, and the floor stretched on for tens of meters to the side. The only empty part was the path in the middle, the rest taken up by the dormant forms of Necron Warriors, their eyes dim but their metallic bodies almost glowing in the unliving green light. 

The path went on for hundreds of meters before branching into an intersection. The path went on, but the two branching paths led to other halls just like this one. By my estimation, there had to be hundreds of thousands of slumbering Necrons down here, if not millions. And this was a smaller Tomb by most accounts, so probably ruled by a Necron Lord instead of an Overlord. 

“Can you wake them?” Alex asked, making me raise an eyebrow. 

“I could,” I said. Beginning the Awakening of the most crucial parts of a Tomb World — like the Lord and the main Crypteks — was a simple task, and that was by design. “Probably. We would need to shut down the portals first though. I can deal with this a lot easily enough, but if that Cryptek that nearly got me the last time I went to the Hollow Sun comes to reinforce them … things could get hectic.”

Could he use that BFG — Big Fucking Gun — outside the Hollow Sun, or was it hidden inside a pocket dimension anchored to the Crown World? I couldn’t be sure, nor could I be sure that the weapon couldn’t be transported elsewhere, not unless I personally destroyed all avenues of immediate transportation connecting this Tomb World to the Crown World.

We had to make sure no Dolmen Gates or Eternity Gates would be able to be brought online to call for reinforcements. 

“Trapped wormholes used as a way of instantaneous transportation,” Alex murmured, looking at one of the stationary Monoliths with its presently offline Eternity Gate. “And housed in such a small frame. I never thought such a thing was possible.”

“I’m sure humanity would have managed had the Cybernetic Revolt not happened, hell, you managed to make a knock-off version of their Dolmen Gates under the Imperial Palace and you didn’t need a Star God to help you do it,” I said truthfully enough. The Emperor was canonically one of the greatest scientific geniuses mankind ever produced. Sure, he needed specialist help for some of his projects, but his own genius was never in doubt. 

“Their Dolmen Gates can be closed,” Alex said wryly. “The Webway Gate I made is still causing problems because it lacks that functionality.”

I just shrugged at that. If he was in the mood to feel miserable, he was welcome to it. I wouldn’t stop him. 

“Oh! I wanted to ask you something?” I spoke up, snapping him out of his thoughts despite my earlier decision. He just gave me a curious look and a nod. “That Telesthetic Ward you used on Terra during the final days of the ‘Heresy’. Do you think I could replicate it, and would you be willing to teach me how to do so?”

That was a ward the Emperor used during the Siege of Terra, weakening Warp-based entities, dampening Warp-born powers and preventing the formation of Rifts and dimensional breaches. He’d deployed it across the globe, granting the defenders a massive homefield advantage. 

“There is a reason I only used it once, and only in the darkest hours of mankind,” Alex said. “It was a ward built on the foundation of human perseverance, on the indomitable human spirit and the idea that we would stand strong when the need was greatest, that light shone brightest on the darkest night. It was a conceptual working of Warpcraft, and not one I think I’ll ever be able to repeat, not on the same scale for sure. I had decided that that was mankind’s darkest hour, and any repeats of that would have significantly less conceptual weight … perhaps it would even blow up in my face for attempting to bring about such a contradiction. After all, there can only ever be one darkest hour. It wouldn’t have worked had I not believed that to be the truth, had we not been on the brink of extinction and had we not been fighting our final last stand on the homeworld of mankind.”

“Bummer,” I murmured, turning that now piece of information around in my head. This mad bastard weaponised the ‘indomitable human spirit’, drawing the power he required from the very fact that he was losing. “Well, worth a try. It would have been amazing if I could have used that instead of relying on my finite supply of Blackstone to keep the Warp in some semblance of order around this sector. Is there truly no way-”

My focus split in an instant, awareness expanding as I suddenly once more had two Avatars instead of a single one.

“Greetings, my dear friend!” Trazyn greeted me enthusiastically as my gaze quickly devoured all information presented to me. We were in a small room, one that was … dimensionally isolated from reality. “It would appear that I am in need of your assistance once more. You see, I held up my end of the bargain; the great Nihilakh Dynasty is gathering for war here on Gheden but … let’s just say we have found a nasty little obstacle in our path. Seeing as you would no doubt want to begin warring against the Suhbekhar Dynasty, I was hoping you would be willing to lend a tiny bit of your power to us to make quick work of this impolite obstacle standing in our way.”

Why would they need my help if they’re already gathering for war? There is no foe a determined and intact Necron Dynasty couldn’t deal with- 

Ah. It’s a test, isn’t it? They want to see what I can do before determining what they actually want to do with me. My accomplishments would sound far-fetched even to the more worldly Necrons, and these ones are supposedly some of the most egotistical, stuck-up cunts out of the lot of them.

Oh well, I suppose I can show off a bit.