Two hours later, I found myself in a grand conference room inside one of my arcologies on Ravacene, one of those responsible for regulating the magma buildup around this section of the continent. I rose to my feet, having tracked the incoming Imperial delegation since the mont their shuttles left their ships.
The doors slipped open with an electric hiss, revealing the Deathwatch Commander and the Inquisitor Lord standing side by side, followed by their retinues behind them. On my part, I only had Amberley and Octavian at my sides, with Selene standing back against the wall, acting like she was one of the Draugr I’d placed around the room to act out the parts of my bodyguards.
Not that I needed such things, but it sold the image of as vulnerable, which would hopefully make my enemies overconfident and, in turn, sloppy. It was a long shot, but even if it didn’t work out that way, I knew that appearing at least a bit vulnerable humanised , made more approachable, which was also a nice little benefit … when I needed to project that image.
It was the Astartes who stepped forward, helt hanging on a maglock at his waist and leaving his face visible. He stared at with the stoicism of a man who’d faced down horrors beyond comprehension, and ca out of the experience hardened, instead of broken.
He raised a hand perpendicular to the ground, then spread his fingers into a V-shape, two fingers on each side.
I stared at him, blinking in incomprehension. There was no way he really was doing what I thought he was doing. Then he spoke. “We co in peace.”
What the hell. A snort escaped , and then I was giggling like an idiot at the absurdity of the situation. A Space Marine had just greeted with a Vulcan salute and spoke the trademark phrase of the United Federation of Planets from Star Trek. There was only one way I could reply once I got my giggling under control.
I raised my hand, fingers parted between the middle and ring fingers. “Live Long and Prosper.”
The Astartes gave a strange look. He’d been giving a strange look ever since I snorted, but it went up in intensity at my words. He shared a confused glance with the Lord Inquisitor, who rely seed to shrug, then he slowly, almost awkwardly, lowered his arm.
“I’m very interested in where you learned that greeting,” I said, then gestured at the seats opposite to mine. “Do take a seat, though; there is no rush.”
They did so, though with great care. As if they couldn’t quite believe that their strange, arcane ritual had managed to appease the great, terrible beast that I was. I did my best to suppress another fit of giggles that threatened to break out at that thought.
“Introductions first,” I said after a mont, seeing as no one was willing to speak up. “I’m Echidna. This-“
“Octavian Gaius, Adeptus Custodes,” the golden giant said.
“Amberley Veil, Ordo Xenos,” Amberley said right after him, taking her cue from the custodian. “It’s been a while, Lord Abraxas.”
“It has,” the Inquisitor Lord replied, looking warily between the two of them, like he was trying to — and failing to — compute the fact that I had a custodian in my corner. He probably would have written off Amberley as having gone rogue had it just been here, though. “But we didn’t co here for niceties and small talk. This is our last stop before we too retreat through the Warp Gate … given that our path will not be barred.”
“You are free to leave,” I said, smiling. “I will even give you a goodbye gift. I’ve collected quite a number of prisoners of war, which I’d be willing to relinquish into your custody. If whatever this eting is supposed to be ends on a good note.”
“Prisoners of war?” The Astartes spoke up for the first ti, and I turned to look at him.
“Three Grey Knights, a few hundred Sororitas, about four hundred Storm Warden Astartes, including their Chapter Master and a handful of Deathwatch Kill Squads.” I maintained eye contact as I spoke. “All of them made an honest attempt at killing , failing so miserably that I don’t even hold a grudge.”
rcy was the privilege of the strong, and I was strong enough to be rciful in this instance.
“Our greeting has been conducted according to written instructions,” the Astartes said after a mont, holding out a hand into which one of his retinue swiftly placed a small tal box. “As is this. A gift as a sign of our intentions.”
I raised an eyebrow, Atish hovering close to in case it turned out to be the nasty kind of ‘gift’. I opened the box with telekinesis to find a humble dataslate inside.
Grabbing it, I ford a suitable port for it on the back of my hand, along with the data-adapter I’d made to interface with simple technology like this directly. I jamd the pendrive-like device into the port, my eyes widening at the absolute shitload of storage space on it, every last byte of which was currently in use.
I skimd through the files and couldn’t help but gasp in delight, then grin. It was a gene library, filled with DNA sequences and genetic samples, with more than enough information for to use my Eldritch flesh to replicate them. None of the templates were powerful or in any way useful at all in making a more formidable fighter. They were as mundane as they could be, millions of plant and animal genetic samples. In total, there were nearly a hundred million different animal and plant species immortalised on the dataslate, all of which I’d imdiately copied over into my own mind once I realised what it really was.
What made all the difference in the world was that I recognised a majority of them, all of them having been part of the ecosystem of the Earth I knew. Regular apples, carrots, pears, corn, wheat, cows, dogs, cats, and everything else. Every last animal or plant species I knew from my old life was there, waiting for to make use of it.
It was a useless gift as far as power accumulation went, but it ant so much more than just another new toy, weapon, or psychic trick.
“Who?” I asked, my voice coming out a bit harsher than I’d intended as I turned my intense stare on the Space Marine.
He slowly reached down, grabbed a rolled-up scroll of parchnt from a bag at his waist and placed it on the table between us, unrolling it. My gaze was imdiately captured by the signature at the bottom, which practically vibrated with psychic significance.
Revelation
My eyes widened. Shit. This was big, huge. I glanced back at the two n sitting opposite , one Inquisitor Lord and one veteran Astartes. Both looked on with concealed curiosity. They didn’t know.
“Where did you find this?” Octavian rumbled, his thus-far concealed presence exploding forward like a tidal wave. He could do a statue impression so good you sotis mistook him for one, and forgot he was even there until he'd made his presence known once more. Like now. Well, at least I wasn’t the only one who recognised the closest thing we had to the True Na of the Emperor of Mankind.
“The deepest vault of the Oga Vault, in Watch Fortress Erioch,” Commander Mordigael replied, looking tense. His Astartes Brothers had their hands on their weapons, and the Inquisitor’s pet assassins also looked ready to rumble.
“Octavian,” I said, my voice infused with just enough power to reach him and snap him out of whatever this was. “Calm down, they’ll tell us what they know about it. Won’t you?”
“There isn’t anything else to tell,” Mordigael said. “The vault opened, and inside were two altars. One held that parchnt and the other the gift.”
“What was that gift?” Octavian asked.
“A genetic library,” I said, letting myself show my glee with a smile. “It contained every plant and animal species that once made up the ecosystem of ancient Terra. Millions of genetic templates condensed into that tiny form and prid for to absorb, quite ingenious.”
Ingenious, yes, but also extrely worrying. This ant Emps foresaw coming into existence, had the Eldritch abilities I had, and even pinpointed Jericho Reach as the site where I was going to settle down. And if he could foresee this all, then so could the Four Twats. I’m not so out-of-context problem that blindsided them, nor was my rebirth here a fate-breaking event like Guilliman’s rebirth.
Extrely concerning, however, hear out: fried chicken. I could finally make fried chicken again. And French fries! And apples! Ohhhhh, I’m gonna cook, like, all the food recipes I know. I wonder whether Selene will like apple pies or curry. Hmm. What should I start with?
“We know not who penned the letter, but the contents of the Oga Vault had always been of great help to our efforts within the Jericho Reach,” Mordigael said, dragging my wandering mind back to the present. “So we decided that following the instructions laid out in the final vault would be … prudent. Especially seeing as we are abandoning the Sector for all intents and purposes.”
I glanced down at the parchnt, my gaze lingering on the bottom half, which was written not in High Gothic … but in plain English, though in old-school cursive. I ignored that for now, reading the instructions written in Gothic, then glanced back at Mordigael.
“Tell them of the enemy whose strength eclipses your capabilities? Tell them of the threat that eludes your efforts to solve?” I raised an inquisitive eyebrow at him.
“We’ve concluded that it is referring to the phenona known as the Dark Pattern,” Mordigael said. “Since I doubt you need us to tell you of the existential threat that is the Cicatrix Maledictum.”
“The Dark Pattern,” I repeated aloud. It sounded familiar. I’d almost certainly read about it. Probably on one of my late-night wiki dives where I bounced from page to page, deep diving into Warhamr lore at 2 AM, instead of sleeping like a sane person. “What is it?”
“Entire systems, stars and rogue planets all move in strange ways, outright ignoring the laws which usually bind the movents of celestial bodies,” Abraxas said. “They align themselves into a pattern, written across the entirety of the Reach, likely even beyond the reaches of explored space.”
That tickled my mory so more, and I let loose my mind-cores on gathering whatever fragnts and echoes of mories remained. I tapped my fingers on the table, humming thoughtfully, and then it was done. It’s been ages since I’d read that page, so even the reconstituted mory of it was fragnted to say the least, but that was enough for to get started.
“You suspect Necrons, right?” I asked, though it was more of a statent. I didn’t wait for them to confirm it. “You have a … sothing, a book, an old tale? Sothing that talks about it?”
“Are you … perhaps referring to the Derleth Lexicon?” Abraxas asked. The na felt ever so faintly familiar, so I nodded after a mont. “Yes. It is a strange book, filled with overlong, extrely flowery prose, but it speaks of the return of the ‘crippled-king’ and the cataclysm that will herald his rebirth. We believe that this Dark Pattern is a way for the Necron Tomb World to hide the massive flare of energy that accompanies its entering the final stages of its awakening.”
“The crippled-king,” I humd. It clicked a mont later. I rembered watching a video about neat Necron lore tidbits. “I believe you might be correct. I will have to cross-check this, however, if the ‘crippled-king’ is supposed to be who I think it is, then this is going to be an exceptionally annoying hunt.”
Abraxas looked interested and didn’t deign to rein in his curiosity either. “‘Who you think it is’? I would very much like to know who you think it refers to, even if this matter is no longer my concern. Consider it an … academic curiosity.”
“I didn’t, and still don’t know where the specific Dynasty is located,” I said. “But if I were to think of a Necron Phareon, then the only one the title ‘crippled-king’ would apply to would be Ahmontekh the Crimson Scythe, the Phareon of the Suhbekhar Dynasty.”
Was it in the Jericho Reach? It could be, though I didn’t know. I only heard the tale of the mad Phareon, whose apocalyptic rage crippled not only himself, but his entire dynasty, even though his awakening process had been halted midway through. It’d started with a sliver of resentnt he held for a rival dynasty that betrayed him, a sliver that he held onto as he sank into his Great Slumber. That seed of hatred refused to rest with him, and distilled for sixty million solar years, that iota of resentnt grew to consu the sleeping phaeron's entire consciousness so that, when the Tomb World’s control program attempted to awaken him in response to a transmission asking for assistance coming from the very rivals who he loathed so much, it burst forth like a tsunami breaking through a fatally breached dam.
All that Ahmontekh had once been was gone, consud over the aeons by his own hatred even as the last residue of himself looked on helplessly. Perhaps had the Necrons not sold their souls to the C’tan, sothing of him might have survived to fight back against the raging bitterness within, but it was not to be.
Now, the Crimson Scythe of old is no more, and that distilled essence of his resentnt of his own cousin dynasty is all that remains of his consciousness.
“His Crownworld was called the Hollow Sun, and it was hidden inside one of the stars in a star cluster,” I said, frowning as I recounted what little I rembered. It was a super aweso Crownworld, literally hidden inside the fusion core of a star, which was probably why it stuck in my mory so clearly. “The … Sa- S-sothing Drift. I can’t rember.”
“The Slinnar Drift star cluster sits in the distant reaches of the Sector,” Abraxas said after a mont, looking thoughtful. “It is rather inaccessible, being all but cradled by the curve of the Cicatrics Maledictum, and being at the distant edges of the Orpheus Salient.”
I pulled up my ntal map, and sure enough, the ‘Slinnar Drift’ sat opposite Vallia on the other side of the long Warp Storm linking the Great Rift to the Hadex Anomaly. Beyond the dozens of worlds and systems beset by the Tyranids of Hive Fleet Dagon. Joy. I’d have to go right through all that, and sail right along the length of the Great Rift as I did. Surely Chaos wouldn’t throw anything nasty through the Rift to fuck with . Surely.
On the other hand: super secret base inside the heart of a star. There were no words to describe how impossibly cool that was. Soooo … dibs.
“I’ll need to verify the information first, but it seems that we now have a likely candidate,” I said, rather pleased with myself and the results. Sure, having a dynasty of Necrons in my backyard was bad, and fixing that little issue was going to be a pain in the ass, but it’d be worth it.
I was pretty sure Trazyn wouldn’t give a rat’s arse about it, either. He was persona non grata in the Sautekh Dynasty and was not allowed inside a handful more unless under strict guard due to his kleptomaniac tendencies. I doubted he’d be especially hard to convince to part with everything he knew about the Suhbekhar Dynasty.
Why was I so worried about a smaller Necron Dynasty with a crippled-king at its head? Well, you see, I recalled that the Crimson Scythe had once killed an Eldar God, according to the legends. The wiki page even ntioned that his Warscythe was so potent that it’d once shattered a planet with a single blow. Whether that was an exaggeration or the truth, the fact remained that the Phareon was probably one of the most dangerous entities alive, even blinded by his rage and lacking his military genius.
“How would you verify such a thing without going there and seeing for yourself?” Mordigael asked, frowning.
“When you want information about Necrons, you ask a Necron.” I shrugged. “It just so happens that I have a good working relationship with an Overlord. With how Necron dynastic rivalries can get, I wouldn’t need to offer much in the way of bribes to get information on a rival Dynasty.”
I avoided naming Trazyn directly; the asshole had a reputation even among the Imperium, and if I rembered correctly, more than one Astartes Chapter swore eternal vengeance upon him. The Space Wolves and the Salamanders, among them, just to na a few. I was sure an Ordo Xenos Inquisitor would recognise his na.
“Dialogue with Necrons is a futile endeavour," Abraxas said with a mild hint of disdain.
“Dialogue begins by putting yourself into the shoes of the one you are talking to, Inquisitor,” I said, my own voice mirroring his disdain. “You try to understand who you are talking to, so you aren’t just talking at them.”
“There is no understanding those rcurial creatures,” he replied, clearly offended by my tone. “They are all so kind of mad, their minds rotting in those soulless bodies.”
“Yes,” I said. “All of them suffer from the effects of being more than 65 million years old; that’s no wonder. But if you figure out the specific Necrons’ peculiarities and play into them, they can be dealt with … well, so of them. Destroyers and most of the Sautekh Dynasty’s Necrons are a lost cause, as you well know. With how aggressive and nurous that dynasty is, they are the ones you et most often. The majority of dynasties are happy sitting inside their tomb worlds and twiddling their thumbs until an overzealous tech priest starts poking them with a stick.”
I didn’t know why I was even trying to convince him, or even what I was trying to convince him of. I knew that their stance was objectively the optimal one to have if you wanted an all-purpose code of conduct for how to engage a random Necron Overlord whom you know nothing about. It was a one-size-fits-all answer, which ant it wasn’t optimal for every specific instance, but it worked much more often than not. It was practical for people who didn’t, or couldn’t, care about nuance.
Still, it annoyed . But what was I going to do? Brainwash them into agreeing with ? No. They were plenty indoctrinated already, so no amount of logic or convincing would get through to them, anyway. I could feel it in both of their auras, that hatred for the alien that was so fundantally important to a core part of both of them.
Maybe it was another privilege of being powerful that I could care about the nuance of such things. That not reacting to anything that looked like it wanted to murder , trying to murder it back before it could get .
I shrugged, then shook my head, continuing to talk before they could reply. “No matter. I might as well be talking to a brick wall. You will not be harassed if you make straight for the Warp Gate from here. If there wasn’t anything else you wished to talk about, I believe that concludes our eting, yes?”
“What about the ‘prisoners of war’ you ntioned?” The Inquisitor Lord questioned.
I waved him off. “I will catch up with you at the Warp Gate. If not, I planned to take at least a single trip through it to check what it’s like. I suspect you will have a blockade fleet stationed there to prevent from claiming territory. I will offload my prisoners to soone anable to the idea there if I can’t catch up.”
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