GW - [ 356 ] (Patreon)

I returned roughly a third of my primary thoughtstream’s focus to my main Avatar when I felt an experimental poke at my side. I blinked, then looked down at the curiously frowning Alex. I couldn’t help but think that his scrunched-up little face looked exactly like the expression a little kid would make when he was annoyed that his mother was ignoring him. 

“What happened?” He asked. 

“You remember the deal with those Necrons I told you about?” I asked, and he nodded. “They just pulled my other Avatar out of the cooler — and by cooler, I mean the Tesseract Labyrinth. Seems like they want to see what I can do before agreeing to anything.”

“Can I watch?” He asked. “It could be interesting to see what the ‘intelligent higher class’, as you called them, do. Then we can go about prodding this Tomb World until the mindless legions start awakening to see what they are about as well.”

“Sure.” I shrugged, and with a wave of my hand, an illusory hologram of what my other Avatar was seeing popped up in front of us as we walked. 

I returned my focus to the Avatar standing in the conspicuously dimensionally isolated room with Trazyn. 

“And where does this room being dimensionally and … temporarily? Damn, that’s neat — I mean, would you mind telling me why I’m in the galaxy’s most isolated prison cell?” I asked. 

“Precaution,” he made an effort to shrug his unmoving metal shoulders. “Phaeron Krispekh is a cautious Necron, and while he has fortunately decided that our Dynasty’s tradition of isolationism is at an end, he retains his perhaps slightly overly cautious nature. As such, here we are.”

“So I only end up killing you if I turn out to be some bloodthirsty monster you were trying to smuggle onto the Crownworld?” I raised an amused eyebrow. “Really feeling the trust here.”

“It is just how things are.” Trazyn shook his head with an exaggerated expression of wistful weariness. “So! Would you be willing to help put this little obstacle out of the way? It’d help calm my naysayers and prove that you’re a true ally, both worthy of the title on account of your power and due to your adherence to your promises.”

“I suppose,” I said, putting on a show of looking reluctant. I was doing a favour to them, after all, even if I didn’t actually mind. “Just this once.”

“Wonderful!” Trazyn clapped his metallic hands. “Then let us begin our preparations. Our uninvited guests will be arriving in orbit of Gheden within the day, but before that I think it’s time you met your future allies … isn’t that right?”

Trazyn stood still for a moment, waiting for something. That final part he said was probably a message to whoever was maintaining this room in its current state. Trazyn tapped his fingers impatiently on the body of his staff.

“Rude,” he grumbled. “Apologies for this, my friend; perhaps my fellow Necron may have … doubted the veracity of my claims.”

“So now I’m to be subjected to childish power plays?” I asked, an amused smirk still playing on my lips. 

“We, it would seem,” Trazyn corrected me casually, though I could tell he wasn’t happy about that fact. “Politics, bah, such a waste of time. If only I had the power to take the Hollow Sun on my own … alas, it’s better to waste someone else’s resources where I can help it.”

“Solemace is still largely slumbering, isn’t it?” I asked. 

“Yes, hastening it would risk damaging or even erasing the personality matrices of my subjects,” he said with a grumble. “Not something to be done unless absolutely necessary, and even then, it would bring about the Triarch Praetorians’ attention. That’s always a tedious affair.”

“So we just sit here or wait?” I asked, crossing my arms as I idly tapped my feet. Meanwhile, I was analysing every single aspect of this tiny, bland white cube I’d found myself in to see whether I could break out of it. 

If my memory wasn’t playing tricks on me, Gheden was a weird planet, being half-phased into a pocket dimension for most of its orbit and thus being utterly invulnerable to outside attacks for the majority of the year. If this room was like a balloon tied to Gheden, dangled off the dimensional axis into the nothingness beyond and off the timestream as well in a similar way just because, then escaping it would be twice as challenging as it would have been on any other Tomb World. 

I’d managed to escape a similar dimensionally isolated space on the Hollow Sun, but back then I’d used my connection to Selene to achieve it. The best I could probably do was end up somewhere in the same system as Gheden, but not on the Crown World. 

It could work. I could make it seem like it was intentional, that I did it like that because I wanted to and not because I couldn’t do it any other way. Appear strong when you are weak, and all that jazz. Concealing the fact that escaping Gheden altogether was my only option other than waiting to be let out of my cell — which would have set the perceived power balance decidedly in the Phaeron’s favour. 

With my other Avatar being on the timestream, I was pretty sure my mere existence in this room was synchronising our separate timestream with the Materium’s own primary timestream … if that made sense. It made sense in my mind, so it was probably true. Or I could make it true. 

Iffy things could be made certain if a sufficiently powerful psyker believed it to be the case. Or so Little E had said, though with many more words and also a bunch of confusing metaphysics I wouldn’t want to get into. The important bit was: if something can be true, then if a powerful psyker believes it to be true, then it will be true … at least for them. It was just a bit of subconscious warping of uncertain pieces of reality, nothing to write home about. 

Since this room had no timestream of its own, mine became the default one when I reconnected to my Avatar. Bunch of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff. 

“Apparently,” Trazyn said with another grumble, his green eyes glowing with tangible annoyance. 

“That won’t do,” I muttered with a dramatic sigh and a shake of my head. “That just won’t do at all. I think I’m going to take a walk; I’ve never been to this section of the galaxy after all, and I’m curious what a planet that’s half-phased into a pocket dimension looks like from the outside. Want to tag along, Trazyn?”

The ancient Necron Archivist looked at me, the metal ridges above his green oculars rising in a mimicry of a curiously raised eyebrow. Necrodermis was malleable like that, though each expression had to be perfectly programmed down to the molecular alignment of the living metal’s atoms. The fact that Trazyn had a vast collection of those programs to emote a whole list of human emotions was as ridiculous as it was amusing. 

“Why not?” He ‘shrugged’. “I could use a break from all this inane politicking.”

I wondered for a moment just what Trazyn’s relationship with this Phaeron Krispekh could be. Being an Overlord, Trazyn supposedly ruled over at least a handful of Tomb Worlds and had just as many Necron Lords sworn to him. Solemnance was just his capital, the Tomb World that he ruled directly as his own domain, and not through retainers. In the Necron hierarchy, he was a single step down from the Phaeron, but that single step was a massive one. 

Did he usually just act like he was on his own, ignoring dynastic politics to go on treasure hunts? Were his missions sanctioned, officially or unofficially? Maybe the Phaeron took pride in the Infinite Galleries being a part of his domain and approved of Trazyn enriching it further, even if it came at the cost of seriously pissing off other dynasties? Or maybe Trazyn acted like a rebellious teenager, paying only lip service to his Phaeron? 

As far as I was aware, canon Warhammer lore never confirmed that. Hell, I remembered them sneakily changing the name of the Phaeron of the Nihilakh Dynasty from Krispekh to … what was it again? Shem- Shemvar? Shemik?

‘Reminder: Shemvokh; the change occurred between the 9th and 10th edition campaign books. Seemingly a random retcon without any reason.’

Right, that. 

“Let’s see,” I hummed a small tune under my breath; the song echoed in my Realm by a million voices, all artificial and a few not. I latched onto the thread leading towards Selene, using it as a guideline, my very own thread like the one Ariadne gave to Theseus in Greek Mythology. I laid a hand on Trazyn’s shoulder and yanked the two of us through a fold in space towards our destination. 

This dimensionally isolated room was a neat trick, but it worked due to the fact that those inside would be surrounded by nothingness, an absolute void where space and time ceased to exist. Mortal minds were never meant to navigate such a place, and had no hope of ever managing to. But for someone like me?

Well, I’d be fucked as well, had I not been able to use my soul, Realm or other metaphysical links as guides. With them, I found myself slipping back into realspace the instant we left the small white room. The concept of space and distance not being a thing at least made that void quick to cross when you knew where you were going, and had a way to actually go there in a place where physics went to die. 

Using a template I made a good while ago when I wanted to go stargazing with Selene in space but the bubble of air I brought along ran out too quickly, I made my body breathe out a stream of breathable air which I caught in a bubble around us. It took a while figuring out how to make organic generators of every gas that made up breathable air, but I’d managed in the end. It also helped that I could just use bio-energy to create any gas that the human body used directly, like oxygen.

With a thought, a wooden floor grew from my feet, hair-thin tendrils of Eldritch tendrils woven through it and with a flick of my will, artificial gravity pulled the two of us down onto it.

“Hmmm, let’s see,” I murmured, quickly orienting myself. I was a bit afraid I’d overshot my target and ended up somewhere in deep space far off from Gheden, but the sight of an eerie planet just a few million kilometres away soothed my nerves. “Found it.”

With another bit of spatial tunnelling, we appeared above the grey planet. It was … fascinating, like someone had drained all the colour out of a painting, or if a painter ran out of paint and had to make do with shades of grey. Gheden looked like a ghost planet, a dead, colourless grey thing that somehow looked … unreal. Like it wasn’t quite there. 

“That’s going to cause a fuss,” Trazyn noted casually, appearing utterly unbothered by my chained teleports and escape from what the Phaeron probably thought was an inescapable prison. “But this is quite the sight. Few planets are truly unique, but I’ve never once found another quite like Gheden.”

“That’s interesting,” I mused. “Do you know how this happened?”

“No, but the leading theory is that the dimensional stabiliser array suffered a catastrophic malfunction during the Great Sleep, somewhere a few million years ago,” he said. “The Crypteks still don’t know how exactly it happened, or if it could ever be replicated artificially.”

Right. The dimensional stabiliser array was responsible for keeping the planet right where the Necrons wanted it to be in realspace. It was also what anchored the pocket dimension the planet had once been able to fully phase into realspace. Even in its hidden state, the planet would be far from unassailable. The Necrons had technology to counter it; after all, having an arms race was not something only humans did. 

But Gheden in its current state did not have that weakness. It was impervious to outside influences, orbital bombardment, invasion or anything of the sort. It would only become vulnerable for a few hours of its stellar orbit. As previously stated, it was probably the second most impregnable Necron world after the Hollow Sun. 

My eyes narrowed, snapping up to flicker over the sizable armada of Necron ships surrounding Gheden.  Five Cairn-class Tomb Ships and many times that in Light Cruisers, Cruisers, Raiders, Harvest ships, Reaper ships and enough smaller Doomscythes and Nightscythes to make it look like the armada was cloaked in a black fog. 

Turning around, I saw the ‘uninvited guests’ Trazyn had mentioned and … of course it was an Imperium strike force. More importantly, it was a pathetically underequipped one that would have easily gotten demolished by the Necron fleet I saw. A single Great Cruiser leading a dozen smaller Frigates, Destroyers and a few Light Cruisers. 

Awkward. I thought, taking a glance at Alex — with my other Avatar — who showed no change in his expression as he watched the visual feed. Well, it’s practically mercy killing at this point. Whatever I’m going to do to them can’t be as bad as finding out what being flayed molecule by molecule would feel like. 

Necron Weapons killed fast, but the Gauss Flayers in particular were so sadistic in their manner of killing that it must have been by design. 

“Like lambs to the slaughter,” I muttered. I could practically taste the self-righteous hate radiating from those Imperial ships. “Those Necron ships aren’t hiding themselves, are they?”

“Not to my knowledge,” Trazyn said. 

Tomb Ships were gigantic engines of war that stretched more than fifteen kilometres across the beam and were armed well enough that a single one of them could very likely make a mockery of that Imperial fleet with little effort. 

Well, what would be the most impressive way to destroy them? I thought to myself. Maybe my sun-portal trick? Telekinetically crushing each ship? Causing all of their Warp Drives to explode at once? Making a fleet of my own seemingly out of thin air to wipe the floor with them? Maybe doing a human-missile trick and flying through every ship myself?

No. Something efficient and sufficiently mysterious. Make it look effortless and leave the Necrons guessing. 

I knew just the thing.