anwhile, still standing upon the bridge of the strike cruiser, Rowan was naturally entirely ignorant of the Emperor's divine manifestation—a miracle whose sheer scale had blanketed nearly the entirety of the Imperium of Man.
Had he known beforehand, he would have undoubtedly raised his guard imdiately. After all, Rowan had already experienced firsthand the Golden One's notoriously inhumane modus operandi.
Unfortunately, while a strike cruiser belonging to a Slaanesh-worshipping Chaos warband might house any number of profane facilities, it was absolutely impossible for it to possess an Ecclesiarchy cathedral.
"Lord Rowan, your hand... why is it glowing?"
Cybia's slightly bewildered voice echoed, pulling Rowan from his deep contemplation.
He had just been frantically sifting through the mories of his past life, attempting to locate clues regarding minor warp deities and C'tan Shards to identify the optimal breakthrough point for his subsequent ascension.
"What is happening?"
Rowan raised his arm and focused his gaze.
Within his field of vision, a golden, double-headed Aquila insignia had clearly manifested upon the back of his hand, shining brilliantly and radiating a soft, ambient light.
Wait, wasn't that the mark the Emperor had left on him before tricking him into this universe?
Damnation!
Rowan felt his vision darken.
What kind of extre stunt are you pulling now, Golden One?
The others upon the bridge, however, could not fathom Rowan's current frustration. They rely stared with absolute, reverent awe at the divine miracle unfolding before their very eyes.
As if a golden sun had suddenly ignited, streams of brilliant light erupted from the back of Rowan's hand, coiling around his form and gently lifting him into the air until he hovered high above the deck.
Subsequently, an unbearably blinding, incandescent radiance exploded outward. The warm aura it emitted clinically and flawlessly purified the imdiate surroundings, completely and utterly expunging the nauseating stench of chaotic corruption that saturated the voidship.
Wherever the light touched, the anomalous alloy bulkheads—previously fused with mutated flesh and bone—gradually reverted to their pristine state. The blasphemous "art pieces" scattered across the chamber spontaneously combusted, swiftly reduced to drifting ash.
Ah, so that's what it is.
Relying on his ontological perception as a reality architect, Rowan conducted a cursory probe and swiftly arrived at the answer.
This was an exceedingly common conceptual substance within this universe.
—The power of faith.
In this universe, "faith" was no re feudal superstition; it carried tangible, objective power. For instance, the fervent worship of massive human populations over vast stretches of ti possessed sufficient density to literally birth new gods within the immaterium.
However, this substance was entirely incapable of elevating his ontological density. Furthermore, even if it were to exert its conventional effects, it was fundantally useless to Rowan—an absolute "insulator" who lacked even a microscopic warp reflection.
What is He scheming now?
Rowan muttered inwardly.
But swiftly, he realized sothing and let out a smile of sheer exasperation.
"Fine. I should have expected this from You!"
For the Emperor, who was universally worshipped as a god by countless trillions of humans across the entire galaxy, the sheer volu of faith converging upon the Golden Throne was undoubtedly an astronomically incomprehensible figure.
Since the power of faith was so potent and convenient, why did the Emperor not utilize it more frequently?
The answer was simple: the power of faith ca with a rather catastrophic side effect.
Specifically, the Emperor's original, mortal ego was constantly scoured by the endless, infinitely varied prayers and beliefs of humanity, to the point where His true will beca the least significant component of His existence.
After all, the image, authority, and minutiae of the Emperor envisioned by billions of different minds varied drastically. Sotis, humanity couldn't even reach a consensus on sothing as rudintary as "how many arms the Emperor actually possesses."
The most direct consequence of this was that the Emperor upon the Throne was perpetually trapped in a state resembling apocalyptic schizophrenia—babbling incoherently, His thoughts fractured, rendering Him fundantally incapable of proactively interfering with realspace.
Deducing this, Rowan naturally comprehended the Emperor's intent.
He was utilizing the authority of a reality architect to completely annihilate and erase the highly volatile, chaotic impurities within this raw faith, thereby allowing His own fractured psyche to recover a sliver of lucidity.
In layman's terms: He wanted to reap all the benefits of godhood without suffering any of the drawbacks.
He was effectively using Rowan as a cosmic taphysical filter for free.
But here was the problem: it was one thing for Him to passively hoard the faith of humanity, but to shalessly exploit Rowan without compensation?!
Without a microsecond of hesitation, Rowan engaged his reality-bending dominion. A wave of formless, conceptual data was materialized and violently transmitted directly through the golden Aquila mark.
If you expect soone to do your heavy lifting and act as your personal taphysical paper shredder, you better cough up so compensation!
The Emperor remained utterly silent, rely continuing to blindly force-feed the power of faith through the tether.
Rowan's fists clenched hard.
"...Stop playing dead. Surely, Mr. Neoth from Terra, you wouldn't want to simply use my dominion over reality to permanently erase this little mark of yours, leaving you to play your grand Imperial empire-building ga all by yourself, would you?"
Almost the exact microsecond this heavily threatening transmission was dispatched, the Aquila mark reacted instantaneously.
What followed was no longer the chaotic, impure power of faith, but a vast, apocalyptic surge of pure psychic might originating directly from the Emperor Himself.
"That's more like it. This Golden Bastard... at least He can still comprehend reason when pushed."
Having acquired this surge of the Emperor's psychic energy—a power that had been nourished and perfectly refined by boundless faith over ten millennia—Rowan instantly began to conceptualize his next move.
Under the awe-struck gazes of his three retainers below, streams of light, as blindingly radiant as newborn stars, gradually expanded around Rowan's form, ultimately coalescing into ethereal, phantom particles.
Using the Emperor's psychic might as the foundation, human faith as the forging material, and his own reality-bending dominion as the hamr, the anomalous matter born of his will flew before him. It continuously converged and solidified, ultimately forging a silver-white longsword.
Its blade was pure white and impossibly sharp, its hilt constructed of abyssal black crystal, and its crossguard shaped into the golden, double-headed Aquila of the Imperium.
The three individuals present collectively held their breath.
rely by laying eyes upon this blade, they could viscerally feel the apocalyptic power contained within it.
Rowan slowly descended to the deck. He extended a hand in a commanding gesture, and the silver-white sword, its tip pointing downward, levitated in the air and began to slowly orbit his form.
"What is that?"
Lucia's eyes widened in sheer awe. "I can feel an overwhelming aura of absolute sanctity radiating from it."
"...You can comprehend it as a weapon forged from the synchronized coalescence of the Emperor's power and my own," Rowan stated. "It serves as a vessel for the Emperor's might, effectively acting as an extension of His will, capable of achieving certain feats that currently elude my own grasp."
As he spoke, he stepped forward.
The very air seemingly solidified into solid ground beneath his feet. Rowan walked upward as if ascending an invisible staircase, swiftly arriving at his destination.
There, a colossal throne of steel and brass stood in silent vigil—the Captain's Throne.
This was an apparatus present upon the vast majority of voidships within the Imperium of Man. It facilitated the direct neural-spiritual communion between the Captain's soul and the vessel's machine spirit, allowing for absolute command and control over the ship.
However, the machine spirit of this strike cruiser had long been corrupted by chaotic sorcery. If a baseline mortal recklessly attempted to interface with it, they would likely be instantaneously warped into a raving fanatic of the Prince of Pleasure.
With Rowan's current mastery over reality, personally purifying the machine spirit would likely demand an agonizingly long period of ti. But ard with this holy sword of the Emperor, the outco would be fundantally different.
He raised the holy blade high and violently plunged it straight into the heart of the Captain's Throne.
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