[Crossover Fanfiction, Complete] Specialists

[Urist]

EDIT: Missed the opportunity to have one of the Traitors proclaim that he is Alpharius.

Spoiler for much laterShow

Don't worry, 'Alpharius' shows up later; though only one person realizes who he actually is.

[Urist]

Author's NoteShow

Short chapter here, outlining the aftermath of the battle.

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Now that the battlefield had finally fallen silent, the next several hundred solon passed in a blur. The single remaining Astartes picked up his wounded — ‘deceased’? His gray armor did not show any signs of life as he slumped bonelessly over the Librarian’s shoulder — comrade and left; presumably returning to their bulky boarding craft.

For their part, Fireblade and Beryl had moved as quickly as they could to evacuate their own wounded to Tempest’s medical bay. Now-conscious Tempo leaning on Beryl’s shoulder and limping along with the three functioning legs they had between them… while Fireblade gingerly carried Alex’s still form.

She did her best not to jar the wounds that crisscrossed his side, but every few steps she felt his mind-signature flare with pain. Fortunately — or not — he was already too far gone from shock or blood loss to regain consciousness in response.

None of which made watching his spark of life guttering, growing fainter by the solon, any less intolerable.

They reached the medical bay just after the fighting throughout the ship finally died down. Could receive the chaotic sanzai coming from within, long before arriving. The formerly-sterile compartments now overflowed with wounded warriors, stacked in the spaces between surgical beds and lining the corridors outside. Fireblade’s boots squelched against the floor, a trail of blue-lined boot-marks in her wake. Sanzai groans came from all directions, as even the strongest discipline yielded to the irrepressible instinct to make one’s pain known to others. Harsh emergency-lighting glowed dully from overhead in the areas between where a few portable lamps had been set up to give proper illumination to the prioritized operating areas.

Of the three remaining doranzer — sunken-eyed and twitchy-fingered — who flitted to and fro from one patient to another, only one spared any attention for the four newcomers. The junior medic — who had to be even younger than Beryl, but whose hollow gaze showed decades of fatigue all acquired in the last day — initially waved Tempo off, until the doranzer’s alighted on Beryl’s listel uniform.

The medic jerked her head towards the autosurgeon table off to one corner. {Doranzer Mazil Stonefinger died in the first ship engagement; then Doranzer Shoremountain ate a blaster bolt in the boarding half a cycle ago. We’ve got nobody left available trained on the robotic surgeon; if you can get it working it’s yours.}

Beryl’s mind-signature only wavered for the smallest fraction of a solon before the intrepid listel carried Tempo over to where the medic had indicated. Fireblade didn’t doubt her ability: if anyone could learn how to work such a complex machine under these most trying of circumstances, it would be Beryl.

Although attaching a fully-severed leg was going to be a most trying first lesson. {Splints?} Fireblade asked the doranzer, confident that Beryl would get far enough that Tempo would need such an aid.

{You can work a cutting-tool, right?} Before Fireblade could answer, the medic waved one hand to the pile of discarded clothing against wall next to the medbay entrance. {Cut what you need from the armors, tear rags from the undersuits to secure it. The purpose-built splints ran out two cycles ago.}

Was it really that bad—?

Fireblade shook herself. She stood in the middle of a dimly-lit compartment full of the nearly-dead, and with each passing solon her mind was buffeted by half-suppressed sanzai waves of agony.

It was absolutely that bad.

{Fragmentation-wound there, it looks like?} the doranzer immediately moved on to Alex’s injuries, blinking blearily as she stepped over to examine his exposed pale skin and dried-black blood. {Looks like it hit underneath her ribs; why was she out of— oh.} After a double-take looking at Alex’s very much non-loroi face, she glanced up to meet Fireblade’s gaze, eyes grim. {I’ve got no shredded idea how to treat him. Looks like you’ve got the bleeding stopped, but internal injuries on an alien? We have no interior model of him accurate enough for surgery on the auto-surgeon, even if that listel gets it working. And—} she turned to look back over her shoulder, to where one of the other two doranzer knelt by the side of a half-alive warrior. Ribs glinted wetly through the slash-marks in her torso, yet her chest still rose and fell — if erratically — while another loroi carefully placed a wadded-up uniform undersuit between the wounded one’s teeth. The kneeling doranzer readied her tools, blades glowing a dull red as they self-sterilized as best as they could.

Both Fireblade and the junior doranzer with her turned away, hardening their minds against the dull shrieks of pain coming from the primitive surgery. After the horrendous fighting that Tempest — and most especially his crew — had been through, it was hardly surprising that pain-suppressants had also run out long ago. {—and Mazil-Toza Desire’s our only remaining qualified surgeon. She was the one who looked over your alien here the last time he came aboard, if I remember right, but…} the doranzer grimaced. {She could try her best, but she’s sorely needed elsewhere. Every solon she spends trying to guess what an alien’s guts are supposed to look like means more of our own wounded fade away, and she’d still be working without synthetic plasma, artificial cells or tailored tools.}

Fireblade had been hoping that the specialists here might have some solution.

Evidently, her hope had been misplaced.

She fought to keep her emotions from breaking out onto her face or into sanzai. None of it was the doranzer’s fault, after all — they were clearly working their hands into stubs just trying to keep the many wounded crew-sisters of Tempest alive through the day.

Several paces away, Mazil-Toza Desire stood from her latest patient. Beige armor now speckled with blood, she robotically stepped over to the next, while gesturing for the younger member of her caste talking with Fireblade to attend her.

The junior doranzer immediately left at her superior’s request, sending one last message to Fireblade {Is he worth it?}

Yes.

Fireblade’s first thought was only narrowly kept contained within her own mind... because her hard-won experience from the corpse-strewn surface of Seren to the close-quarters assaults of boarding operations told her that the proper answer was ‘No.’ That Alex’s life wasn’t worth those of the several loroi who would likely die if the single surviving surgeon’s time were monopolized.

Jerkily, she nodded to herself. The doranzer had turned to her new duties without waiting for a response, likely having come to the same answer more directly.

That left one option. The human boarding-shuttle, if it was still impaled into Tempest’s much-savaged hull. The remaining Astartes had evidently taken his grievously-wounded caste-brother there rather than to this medical bay, so hopefully there was some medical care available there. It was further away than here had been, but now seemed to be the only hope for Alex’s survival.

She turned to leave.

And paused mid-step. With Alex unconscious — and even what little remained of his mind-signature was fading fast — she had no way of even understanding human spoken language, let alone verbalizing it herself.

They would have to know what to do by themselves, then. It was one of their own weapons — albeit wielded by a renegade — that had maimed him, after all. Surely they would have the ability to recognize his wound and heal him.

Just as she turned side-on to pass through the doorway, Fireblade cast one last glance at Tempo and Beryl. The auto-surgeon’s basic guide-instructions projected up from the display at Beryl’s left, as her head flicked back and forth between it and her wounded patient. Tempo’s gaze met Fireblade’s, the mizol visibly fighting down a reflexive flinch as Beryl carefully walked through the basic steps for limb reattachment… without any numbing agents.

Tempo nodded to Fireblade and then jerked her head towards the outside corridor, a wordless burst of sanzai agreeing with the teidar’s decision. Most fortunately, her two friends seemed to be in little threat. With that to buoy her flagging spirit, Fireblade left the crowded medical compartment to hurry through the still corridors towards where the human shuttle had ‘landed.’

And found herself utterly alone as she ran as quickly as she could down empty passages.

The constant buzz of sanzai, from stressed doranzer and wounded warriors alike, faded with distance. Where Tempest’s corridors would normally have been abuzz with messages — crew-sisters sending to one another in passing or between compartments; orders, reports, and casual conversation alike being relayed from one end of the ship to the other — they were silent, now.

Dead silent.

Which only amplified that Fireblade was once more fully alone, even within her own mind. She only now realized just how much she had gotten used to the constant presence of Alex’s mind-glow, off to one ‘corner’ of her psyche. How the initial foreign nature of his mind had become a familiar feature, ever-present and strangely comforting.

That was all gone now.

Where once Alex’s mind — his ‘soul,’ as the cult-devout human would have put it — had thrummed with as much warmth and presence as Tempest’s own reactors, now both were cold and quiet.

She vaulted a collapsed structural beam that sprawled across the corridor, blaster-burns marring its surface. It should not be far now, until—

Fireblade rounded a corner, and came face-to-face with a human warrior.

Well, face-to-visor.

Two flat eye-lenses burned a dull red, the only dash of color on the trooper’s matte-black armored self. Well, besides the ever-present ‘decorative’ skull emblazoned across his helmet’s forehead. This was not one of their Astartes, it seemed — he was no taller than Fireblade.

The boxy weapon held in his steady hands halted in its rise a moment after Fireblade’s arrival, its slanted-back muzzle still pointed off to her side.

The human extended one hand towards her, palm vertical and facing out. Barked a short word in his own language… which of course meant nothing to Fireblade.

She made to step past him, shifting Alex in her arms so that the alien-red blood staining his side was visible.

The message evidently came across — the human warrior’s hand instead moved to the ear-cover of his helmet, presumably activating a radio as Fireblade left him behind her. Hopefully, that would mean that the other humans knew she was coming and would be prepared to treat Alex.

She swallowed hard. They would have to use some truly impressive medical technology to keep him alive; his mind-presence was so far-gone that even when she pressed her exposed fingertip to Alex’s sweat-lined scalp she could only barely sense any life at all.

A far, far cry from the overwhelming mixing of minds that their abnormal bond would normally have prompted through such contact.

The human boarding-shuttle still waited where she had left it, protruding awkwardly into one of Tempest’s bunking quarters. Harsh, yellow light poured from its yawning forward ramp, guarded by two more human warriors armored like the one that Fireblade had passed.

They approached as Fireblade jogged up the ramp, slinging their bulky bright-weapons behind their backs. One spoke to Fireblade again in their language, while the other drew a white-painted metal kit from their combat rigging. A red-paint version of their two-headed avian symbol — the one that they apparently inherited unknowingly from the Soia of all people — flashed from its lid as the warrior cracked it open.

A medical kit, evidently. Reaching the top of the ramp, Fireblade only briefly eyed the two Astartes farther aft in the large troop bay before she knelt to gingerly set Alex onto a thinly-padded bench. The ‘Librarian’ still stood upright even with blood crusted all across his battered armor, while the unmoving gray form of his fellow warrior lay immobile on the floor. One of the red-robed human technical specialists poured over his supine form, articulated metal tendrils sprouting from its hunched back and running to-and-forth all over the crippled Astartes.

Fireblade reluctantly forced herself to stand back and let the two human warriors attend to Alex. She was here precisely because there was nothing more she could do for him, after all.

She took a seat off to one side, bioplas armor creaking against… was this leather, in a space-craft? Fireblade shook her head; she was far too tired to ponder yet more of humanity’s schizophrenic design choices.

Now that she finally had the chance to sit down, all the many, many pains of her own wounds came back with a vengeance. The rush of combat and concern for her wounded sisters-in-arms — and Alex, whatever he was to her now — had forced aside the constant complaints from her burnt and torn right side. But that would never have lasted forever, as the flood of pain reminded her. And even worse, the itching.

She broadcast her annoyance to anyone nearby who could receive, shifting her weight to take as much pressure off her wounded side as possible. It wasn’t her first time being hit by a strong thermal bloom like that — a near-enough ‘miss’ from a hardtrooper’s heavy blaster worked much the same — but at least the thermal underlay of her armor seemed to have done its job. The particular pattern of itching and burning which her torched nerves angrily reported meant shallow- and mid-depth burns, none deep enough to be life-threatening. She’d had worse before, and those years-old burn marks had almost disappeared by now. She would need a doranzer’s attention sooner or later, but… under the circumstances, ‘later’ seemed much more likely indeed.

Electrical servos whined as the red-robed human stood from its work on the supine Astartes. Rather, as she stood — the eerily-pale face which turned towards Fireblade and Alex was that of Genetor Fabrekena.

That was good, hopefully. The human specialist’s very thorough medical examination of the loroi several days earlier had — thankfully — been performed via remote scanners rather than anything more… ‘invasive.’ But from listening along to Alex translating between the Genetor’s questions and Beryl’s answers, Fireblade had gotten the impression that the cog-cloaked doranzer-analog was indeed most skilled in her craft.

Skills that would be sorely needed, tending to Alex.

Without a word, the Genetor moved next to the unmoving human, looming over the sentry-warrior who stepped aside only after her shadow fell across him.

Fabrekena turned her unnervingly-pale face towards Fireblade, and asked a question.

In a language which Fireblade could no longer understand… of course.

Still, the human medic had presumably just asked where and how Alex had been wounded. Teidar tradition yielded to the obvious circumstances, and Fireblade reflexively made to reply aloud.

But stopped herself. This human did not speak Trade any more than Fireblade could speak their own ‘Low Gothic.’

Grimacing in frustration, she mutely stepped forwards and leaned over, gesturing to Alex’s side where he had been wounded. First balled her fist and then extended her fingers, crudely illustrating the explosive-shot that had detonated right next to the human. The fragments which had burrowed into his side, their lancing agony one of the last things sent from his mind to hers.

The tech-priest’s robe split, and two articulated metal tendrils emerged. Thin as a finger, they darted forward to run along Alex’s partly-bandaged side. The loroi field treatments sloughed aside, and the two… ‘surgical probes?’ darted inside the now-open wound.

Fireblade took a step back, giving the human specialist room to work. The tech-priest sank lower — the movement was too fluid to be described as ‘kneeling’ — and a further set of larger metal tendrils emerged from the hump at her back. The human equivalent of a doranzer’s field-work pack, perhaps.

Either way, as fresh blood squelched out and dripped onto the shuttle’s seat, Fireblade forced her face to harden its stony neutrality. It was never easy to watch an arms-sister die a lingering death rather than the sharp severance of an instantly-mortal blow, and unless this Fabrekena was a truly spectacular medic that was likely to be the result here. Fireblade had done all she could for Alex by bringing him here… but that might not be enough, given that she hadn’t seen or felt his chest move for perhaps the last hundred solon. She knew nothing of how long humans could go without breaths or heartbeat, but he had to have passed that limit even by the time she had carried him up the shuttle’s ramp.

She turned aside, knowing from grim experience that to stand and watch would only test her composure further. This was out of her hands, now. And besides, she had become so used to her psyche and Alex’s being closely intertwined that her own mind expected to feel the sharp intrusion of the techpriest’s tools that she observed cutting their way into Alex's body. The absence of any shared pain felt… odd, like a numbed limb.

Unfortunately, turning away from the grisly sight left her nothing productive to actually do, no remaining distraction to keep her mind distracted by its combat-high.

The rubberized soles of her boots twitched against the shuttle's floor plates, and she quickly crossed her arms to minimize how much they shook. Muscles spasmed in their familiar post-battle way, and only by long experience was she able to keep standing without having to lean against something for support. With none of her arms-sisters around and in need of a stalwart role-model, she let the shakes work their way through her. And if any of the humans noted her shivering, they did not seem to comment on it that she could hear.

The two human sentry-armsmen had returned to their station at the top of the shuttle’s ramp, watching the compartment beyond. The limits of warriors who could not sense that no hostiles were nearby, restricted instead to only their eyes and ears. How the humans could manage to produce useful warriors even with such disabilities…

Yet they evidently did. Even as half-blind as they were, the two human Astartes had hurled themselves into battle with as much enthusiasm as any loroi warrior… as had Alex, even tragically under-armored as he was. A fool… but a brave one.

Fireblade forcibly cleared her thoughts, pulling her shoulders back and drawing in a sharp breath. That was enough time stewing in her thoughts — a warrior’s duty was to act. In the absence of orders, she would have to set her own.

Tempest was clearly out of the fight; the remaining crew-sisters aboard would have to be evacuated. The other two craft which had mounted that last, desperate attack alongside him could be contacted and searched for survivors, if a space-capable small craft remained available. No other Union vessels were seen to be operational in the Nezel system, which meant that any survivors would have little choice but to ask for shelter aboard the human warship. Hardly a pleasant thought — even assuming the humans accepted — but it seemed to be literally the only option. And with Alex… neutralized, that left exactly one person who could communicate between humans and loroi.

She nodded to herself, and stood up. With any fortune on their side, Tempo would have had her leg set and Beryl would be available to speak with the surviving Astartes. Fireblade turned to leave, glancing back at where the hulking tech-priest loomed over Alex, half-burying him underneath the crimson bulk of her robes.

After only a moment of hesitation Fireblade reached out with one hand and grasped Alex’s shoulder, careful not to move him at all. Unconscious as he was, he would not feel the short squeeze she gave him.

Yet if he… wasn’t here when she returned, it seemed only appropriate that she give him a parting gesture that he would have appreciated.

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Author's NoteShow

I wanted to explore how loroi in general (and Fireblade in particular) deal with the bloody aftermath of battle. Since Tempest is (was) the flagship of an elite formation, I figure that most of his crew would have been experienced veterans or the cream of the crop of recent training-graduates. So they set to work ably enough, even amidst the horrors of battlefield medicine. Fireblade especially has seen more than her share of personal-scale battle so she's not really rattled... but Arioch did put 'Post-Combat Shakes' on her GURPS sheet for a reason.

Anyways, there'll be more details on what happened elsewhere in the battle explained next chapter, once Alex wakes up. I'm not going to kill him off... but there /are/ long-term consequences from just how close he came to death, this time.

[dragoongfa]

Alex better give Fireblade lots of hugs after all this is done.

[Snoofman]

Alex better give Fireblade lots of hugs after all this is done.

Agreed!

[Urist]

Alex better give Fireblade lots of hugs after all this is done.

Don't worry, that comes up throughout the next chapter!

SpoilerShow

And especially the Epilogue chapters that I have planned out...

[Urist]

Author's NoteShow

Man, this chapter ended up just /barely/ over the 60k character limit per post. So it's going to get split up.

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His eyes flickered open, briefly.

Dim lights glowed back at him, recessed into a clean, smooth ceiling devoid of any decoration or engraving. Cool, crisp and clean air moved gently past his nose, devoid of any noticeable smell. No candle-smoke, no incense, no dust of uncounted millennia long-since ground into the walls and floor.

Not an Imperial medical facility, then.

And he did not need his eyes to feel the comforting presence of the red-gold glow seated nearby, her warmth buoying his waking mind.

{I am on a medical-transport again, aren’t I?} he sent, eyes drooping closed once more. He shifted his arms, testing, and smiled. No restraints, this time.

{Incorrect. You are on Deinar.} Fireblade’s bemused response came immediately. {Again.}

{Ah, here we go again. But are you free to leave the room this time?} he quipped, grinning thinly.

A wave of cold enveloped his mind, more chilling than he remembered. Quickly, he added {Not that I am asking for that! Merely a joke.} He ran his arms over his torso, feeling bare skin underneath the thin blanket. {Although I do appear to have been dis-robed once more.}

{Your ‘House robes' were all but destroyed. We have kept their remains if you wish them returned.}

He levered himself upright in bed, letting the blanket pool in his lap as he craned his neck to examine his side under the clear lighting. A series of nasty scars cut across his lower ribs and reached all the way down to his hip, the skin around them still an angry red. But still, a far sight from the shock and pain of that bolter shell. {How many days this time?}

{Eleven.}

{Elev—!?} his head jerked around to stare at Fireblade so rapidly that his neck twinged in protest.

{The doranzer were unable to stabilize you. The damage was worse than it had looked: too many internal organs had been pierced, and they did not have the ability to work on your biochemistry well enough to compensate.} Fireblade met his eyes flatly, and her messaged-thoughts came more clipped, pointedly devoid of emotion. {Your heart stopped on the shuttle flight back to the Astartes vessel, and you spent eight days in a surgical theater with those red-robed technicians working on you.}

He shuddered, skin suddenly turning clammy and cold. Like a corpse.

Which he had been for a while, it sounded like.

The formerly-warm air of the room now grated against his exposed chest, and he shivered. Where was—?

A soft pile of cloth fluttered to the bed next to him. {The human crew provided spare clothing for when you awoke. I suspected that you would prefer that over loroi garb.} The ghost of a slightly-forced smile played around her lips. {Although perhaps you would prefer to dress yourself this time?}

He snorted, grabbing hold of the simple voidsman’s outfit while he levered his legs over the side of the bed. And paused, glancing back up at Fireblade before he would leave the coverage of the blanket entirely behind.

But then continued, shrugging. Stepped onto the floor, and turned to pick up his clothes from the bed. There was little point in hiding one’s body from someone who had already seen deep into his mind, especially after all that the two of them had been through these last few weeks.

Still, he was aware of Fireblade’s gaze on him as he dressed, gingerly sliding the cloth over his wounds. And if he stumbled on his numb feet and grasped the bed-frame for support, surely that was because his legs had sat unused for nearly two Solar weeks.

And no other reason.

Although… for a moment — just a moment — he was tempted to work even slower, take his time in covering himself. He had heard whispered tales from older cousins that such a sight was often appreciated—

Fireblade snorted quietly, the faint sound echoing through the silent room.

Coughing to cover up his reddening face, he quickly sent {But if I was treated by the Mechanicus,} — and if so, why the ‘all-natural’ look rather than a steel plate or other such cog-stamped repairs? — {why am I here in a loroi facility? And—} his fingers stumbled, the last button on his shirt leaping from their grasp. {And Tempo?} His eyes shot up to pin Fireblade in place.

Alex could feel through her mind that the teidar’s own wounds no longer bothered her, which left only the one unaccounted-for wounded loroi from his group of… ‘friends,’ he supposed they were.

{She was treated by the doranzer, and was able to walk with assistance by the time we reached Deinar.}

The breath left his chest in a rush. {Good.} With one last massage of his joints made stiff by nearly two weeks in bed, he pushed off from the bed and stood alone on his own two feet.

And immediately overbalanced, only catching himself by placing one hand on the bedside table… and the other on Fireblade’s shoulder.

She didn’t react, aside from one raised eyebrow as he looked her up and down. Dressed in what had to be a new set of armor, she gave no sign of the horrible burns that he had glimpsed earlier through the gaps where black plastic-cloth had shrunk aside and melted into flesh. {You look to have recovered as well.}

{I have suffered worse before.} She responded, standing up. One hand rose to hold his against her shoulder. {But to answer your questions, this is a recovery room within one of the major hospitals of Toridas. That both of us were to be treated here — and examined in order to glean what knowledge may be observed of our mental link — was one of the requirements negotiated by the Union’s representatives.}

Ah. Of course things had progressed while he lay unconscious.

{Then they have already spoken with the Astartes?} Alex asked, brow furrowing slightly. The Emperor’s own Angels of Death were not the first choice he would have made for negotiating with a newly-discovered ‘abhuman’ nation… but come to think of it, perhaps their mindset was closer than that of many humans to the martial-focused culture of the loroi.

{With the Custodian.} she corrected. {It seems that he did not disembark from the ship before we left your Terra.}

That… Alex leaned back against the bed, thoughts racing. Well. They were the God-Emperor’s personal representatives, he supposed. And He on Terra had clearly taken a direct interest in contacting the loroi. The only question was why the Custodian had remained aboard the Quaesitor rather than aid in boarding Tempest; hand-crafted by the Emperor as he was, his aid would doubtlessly have made that fight trivially easy. No grievous wounds for the two Astartes, Fireblade, Tempo… and Alex himself.

Then again, the God-Emperor’s personal servants answered to no authority other than their Immortal Master; their plans and goals were not for Alex to question or doubt. It must have been that the Custodian’s duties had called him elsewhere aboard the ship at that exact moment. Perhaps the two traitor Astartes aboard Tempest had not been the only Chaos boarders operating in the system?

{What else have they agreed upon?} he asked, a few seconds later once he had processed the mental image of an aged-looking loroi speaking with one of the golden-armored giants who guarded the Imperial Palace. By the fact that things had apparently gone well, it probably wasn’t that Teidar Ironsoul that he had ‘met’ earlier.

Fireblade’s face remained as impassive as ever, but he could read the silent laugh in her eyes. {I do not know the specifics; I have spent the two days since we arrived here in this room as well.} She ran her free hand down her right side, and Alex grimaced at the memory.

Although— {I guess we have nearly-matching injuries, now.}

{Almost.} Fireblade eventually responded, her lips briefly smiling before moving to a reproachful frown, {Although you really should wear actual armor, clearly. That is the second time you were crippled after a battle.}

{But I lived.} he sent nonchalantly, before the sheer realization of what he had done dawned on him. What both of them had done. Energy that was too much to contain raced through his nerves and he beamed around the room at nobody in particular. {Do you realize what we did, though!?}

She only raised her eyebrow once more, letting the flavor of her mind express her confusion more elegantly.

{We fought two Traitor Astartes and won!} He could hardly believe it, himself! Faster than thought, he threw his arms around Fireblade. Her quick intake of breath punctuated the deep hug that he pulled her into, smile still stretching across his face. They had done it! {Two of the most-vile, strongest lackeys of the Ruinous Powers and we—!}

Oh. Right. He tilted his head aside, creating enough distance that he could look Fireblade in the eye from a distance of no more than two inches. {Should I…?}

Thoughts flickered across her mind far faster than he could process them. Then a faint smile broke out onto Fireblade’s face. {I do not object. It is… good to feel that you have recovered so fully.}

He held her tight again, pressing his cheek to hers. From the closest proximity that two minds and bodies could reach — well, almost — he sent again as if uninterrupted, feeling his thoughts echo in her mind {We fought them, and we beat them!}

The giddiness kept him going for several more seconds… until his frontal lobe finally wrestled the controls away from the hindbrain and reminded him that he now had his hands wrapped around a very militant teidar. The very same teidar whose icy glare had haunted him for weeks before their uneasy truce the last time they had left this planet. The same teidar whom he had once thought to be an overbearing, suspicious xenos, the same teidar who had very clearly been under orders to kill him if he had stepped out of line. The same teidar who—

The same teidar whose own arms just now reached around him, returning the embrace.

One hand between his shoulderblades, and the other dipping down to rest at the small of his back. {Much has changed since then. We are now most confident that you are not a Shell trick,} her sanzai conveyed the smirk which he could feel through her cool cheek pressed against his {and so you are not personally a threat. Furthermore, your Imperium seems to be more ‘useful’ than ‘dangerous’ to us right now.}

{Really?} he asked, heart leaping. The God-Emperor had made His intent clear enough, of course, but that had held no guarantee that the loroi leaders would cooperate with… whatever His plan was.

{Yes. Your vessel’s ‘Astropath’ has already called for a naval squadron of your people, one that the golden-armored Emissary spoke had been prepared after your departure for just this situation. They will destroy the Shell attack fleets… and have promised that they will do the same for the Hierarchy itself soon afterwards.}

{A readied fleet? Then He knew that your leaders would agree, of course.}

Fireblade laughed twice, the reverberations echoing through their contact quite pleasantly. {Humans indeed never lack for confidence, it seems.} Slowly, she withdrew her arms and leaned back just enough to meet his eyes. The room’s air suddenly felt cold against his now-exposed skin. {In return for military aid, the Emissary requested that a Teidar detachment return with him to your Imperial Palace.}

Alex blinked. The methods and intermediate goals of Him on Terra were far beyond his own understanding, of course, but he couldn’t see the logic in this request. He shrugged. Understanding would come in time, if He willed it.

{Will we be going with them?} he asked, his hands dropping from her back.

{I will…} she sent, and an electric bolt of unease shot through him. Only to disappear as she added {… as will you, of course.} Her face had returned to its usual stony disciple and betrayed no emotion, but her mind-voice still held a smile as she added {After all, what other human has such familiarity with loroi?} Her eyes flickered down for a moment, drawing his own after her.

Which was when Alex realized that his hands had come to rest on Fireblade’s armored hips.

He quickly withdrew them and stepped back, the greater distance slightly muffling the warm amusement radiating from her mind-signature. After a moment, he smiled sheepishly. {When do we depart?}

She glanced aside momentarily, presumably checking a wall-mounted chronograph as its alien — well, abhuman — characters ticked past. {The shuttle departs from Stone-Watcher Citadel in seven cycles.}

{And we are not restricted to this medical room?} he asked, an idea forming in his mind. They were within a foreign, abhuman city after all, and with almost nine hours to kill...

{Correct, we are not so restricted.} Fireblade responded, her eyes searching his with a frown that he only knew was there because he felt it in her mind. {But nor have we been given passes to leave the hospital wing — contact with your Imperium is being kept to a minimum, by direct decree of the Azerein.}

Ah. He couldn’t honestly fault the decision. Abhuman cousins or not, humans and loroi were still quite strange to each other and would remain so for the near future. Keeping them separate for now was frankly a good idea.

{But,} the teidar continued, nodding towards the one door in the room, {we do have access to this wing’s rooftop garden. The sun sets in two cycles from now, and I have already invited Beryl and Tempo to meet me there shortly. The view out over the harbor as the sun sets is a most inspiring sight; will you watch it with us?}

He could think of many, many worse ways to spend an evening. Although he carefully shielded from Fireblade just what an invitation to ‘tour a garden’ would have meant back on Tallarn. No matter how friendly the crimson-haired teidar had become after all of their shared perils, he was pretty sure she wasn’t thinking of that. {Of course.}

{Good.} Fireblade nodded thinly, satisfaction evident in her mind-voice. She stepped past him, pulling a loroi dataslate from the table and tapping a brief command into it. {In the intervening time, here is the list where Beryl recorded what she overheard of the lead Tech-priest explaining the wounds you took and how they chose to heal them. From what little Beryl could understand of their words spoken to the Astartes, it seems to have been an unusual procedure. She made a phonetic transcription in your alphabet, here.} Fireblade held out the dataslate to him.

He eased himself back down onto the bed once more. Given what Fireblade had already described of his extensive damage — and the many barely-healed scars that now criss-crossed his right flank — he suspected that he might want to be sitting down for this read.

///////

{You seem to have made a most correct decision to invite Alexander, Fireblade.} Beryl sent, several cycles later. Deinar’s primary had just slipped below the distant waves, and only the faintest glow of sunlight still glinted off of low-hanging clouds above the western horizon. {He has been gazing out to sea with only little interruption this entire time!}

{Yes.} Fireblade agreed, glancing over to where Beryl stood next to Tempo’s chair. With her still-healing leg propped up on a low table, the mizol nursed a container of dark, concentrated noillir. One that Beryl kept topped-off, as per the doranzer’s advice when the four of them left for this site.

Yet Fireblade couldn’t bring herself to quite match her white-haired friend’s happiness. Not while Alex’s mind alternated between genuine appreciation of the beautiful view… and gloomy self-introspection prompted by the medical notes which Beryl had so innocently transcribed.

{Fireblade.} Tempo’s sanzai came through pointedly and directly, even as noillir-softened as it was. It was also a private sending, expertly shielded from Beryl even with the listel’s proximity at Tempo’s side. {I can feel that you are concerned. What is the issue?} By her brusque tone, it seemed that spending longer than a transit with wound-limited mobility had somewhat frayed the mizol’s temper, for all that Tempo still kept it mostly in control.

Fireblade pressed her lips together, leaning forwards against the railing and breathing deeply of the cool sea breeze. Letting its familiar bracing freshness calm her second-hand worries. {Alex has been most concerned by reading the records of his wounds and healing.}

One eyebrow rose above the mizol’s rounded, bronze-tinted sunglasses. {It is hardly surprising that the extent of his injuries would be alarming to one who is not trained as a warrior. Especially for a male, even if he is hardly—}

{It is not his wounds that concerned him the most, but rather the nature of the medical operations which were performed upon him by his people’s red-robed experts.} Fireblade drummed two fingers quietly against the railing. {It seems that this ‘Genetor Fabrekena Beta’ who led his surgeries is a member of a group known for unusual zeal in experimenting upon the human body.} While the full implications of what a ‘Vogelist’ or a ‘Xenos Hybris-faction’ were had been shielded from her, Fireblade had caught enough that leaked around Alex’s imperfect mental shields to know how much they bothered him.

{That is surprising.} Tempo turned slightly, glancing past Fireblade to where Alex stood several paces apart from them, his gaze locked on the last glimmers of sunlight visible far out to sea. {He does not appear any different than before his wounding; were the operations not a success?} A brief pause. {You have seen more of him than I have; is there anything amiss?}

{He is concerned instead that they were a success.} Fireblade shook her head. {I did not see anything unusual in his body’s appearance, but he worries more about what might have been altered underneath the skin. He says that Genetor Fabrekena seems to be a follower of a human named ‘Heydrich Vogel,’ a zealous advocate of extensive biological and genetic augmentation to the human body.}

Tempo nodded in understanding. {Which would doubtlessly conflict with the teachings of his cult about the purported ‘sanctity’ of the human form. But why would a person holding such beliefs be allowed to practice medicine amongst a society as strict as that of the Imperium?}

{I could not guess.} Fireblade shrugged. {Alex’s explanations of the organization of his government make even less sense to me than they have to you.}

With a snort, Tempo reached forwards and rubbed one hand against her thigh, massaging the place where her severed limb had been painstakingly re-attached by a team of skilled doranzer. Beryl’s efforts aboard Tempest had kept the flesh from necrosis, yes, but much further work had still been needed afterwards. {Well, if he seems unharmed by whatever this ‘genetor’ might have done, he should instead be thankful that his wounds were healed so completely.} She glanced over at Fireblade. {As well as those suffered by you and I. Given what capable combatants those renegade Astartes proved to be, we are most fortunate indeed to have survived with no lasting injuries.}

{Indeed so.} Fireblade agreed. After all, very few of their crew-sisters from Tempest and the rest of Strike Group 51 had been so lucky. The formation had gone into battle with almost their full nominal strength of ten-thousand warriors… and the survivors easily fit into this single wing of the hospital.

And its one-thousand beds.

Their shared raw-nerve sorrow had sat cloaked about her shoulders, every cycle of every day that she had spent here. She had done her best to reassure her arms-sisters, to add her own mental strength to the assurances of the doranzer and mental healers. Had hoped that it would help, at least a little.

But had passed too many broken warriors in the halls on her way to this garden. Arms-sisters whose gaze passed through her, locked on some target an infinity away. Others whose halting steps came only with the assistance of a doranzer under each shoulder. And one sunken-eyed Mazeit whose listless visage had only slowly rose to watch Fireblade from where the Torrai kept a seated, silent watch at the side of the surgical bed where her caste-sister could barely be seen underneath a forest of tubes and wires.

That single surviving Torret of the formation, whose mind had shown no signs of consciousness for more than a nanapi… and may not do so ever again. Even the senior-most healer could not say, nor the off-planet experts brought in for a grand-niece of the Azerein.

Lastly, of course, there was Stillstorm herself. The doranzer had not yet risked excising the twisted Shell slashing-spike that remained jammed through her upper chest. Its narrow tip had apparently pierced one of her heart’s chambers, and only by the greatest fortune had the blow not proven fatal. The lashret had not yet been woken from her induced coma, as the hospital’s staff remained busy with more time-critical patients.

Compared to those arms-sisters, who bore wounds which would shape the rest of their lives? Fireblade, Tempo, and Alex were indeed unbelievably fortunate.

A point which she had raised with Alex earlier, when he had shared his concerns with her. She had felt his honest agreement with that observation… as well as the inner concerns which he was not able to entirely suppress, no matter how he had tried.

Which in turn was surely why he had mostly spoken aloud when the four of them convened on this open observation deck atop the hospital wing, where the worries that still played around the edges of his mind could be hidden from sanz—

Fireblade blinked, throwing a calculating glance over at Alex. Looking at him — the human — from brow to boots, in the plain-gray clothing that he had been provided. Belatedly reminding herself that here was a person who could not communicate by sanzai with Beryl and Tempo, of course, and so would not have worried about leaking his inner thoughts that way.

Then was he truly opposed to sharing his concerns after all, as she had assumed? She had gotten so used to receiving his thoughts — especially concerns that were quite familiar to any warrior — that her subconscious mind increasingly forgot that he wasn’t actually loroi. An insistence on verbal language might not betray the same desire for privacy among humans as among her own people.

But she had his mind all to herself. Casual access to his thoughts that none other in the universe could reach with such ease. Even the staunchest of teidar discipline could not keep one corner of her lip from rising minutely.

{Yes?} he asked, turning his head slightly to meet her eyes with his. The worries visible in those exotic soft-brown irises fading by the solon. {I can feel you thinking about me.}

Of course, such access had its outbound and inbound lanes. {I shared your earlier concerns with Tempo. She agreed that there seems to be little cause for worry.} Fireblade nodded to him. {That you appear no different than before, and that we are each happy for your swift recovery from your wounds.}

{Well, mostly recovered.} he sent, rolling his right shoulder. A constellation of tiny pinpricks marched across Fireblade’s side in sympathy with the still-tender nerves in Alex’s torso. {Your medicae did say that their scans found nothing amiss, but…} He shook his head, glancing past Fireblade to the other two loroi. Dipped his head in a brief nod. "Thank you. I am very glad myself that each of us is back on their feet." The thoughts receivable in his mind belayed both his honest thankfulness that none of the loroi had been as deeply-wounded as he... but also his ongoing concerns over his own body.

Fireblade held back a sigh. It was most un-warriorly for Alex to keep mulling over such concerns when there was little apparent basis for them… but then again he wasn’t a warrior. Not really. {There seemed to be nothing else changed on your body, by my visual inspections in the hospital room both before and after you awoke.}

Alex coughed, turning aside as his cheeks turned a faint pink.

Fireblade allowed a smirk to suffuse her sanzai, even as more than a decade of practiced discipline kept it off of her face. One of the nice things about Alex not being a warrior was that unlike with all the warriors she had ever commanded — soroin, tenoin, junior teidar… and even Beryl — Fireblade could let her mask of detachment slip occasionally.

And it was fun to tease the human. Being the senior-most teidar assigned to a combat-deployed flagship had rarely offered her any opportunities for fun.

{You are enjoying the view, though?} she asked, moving the conversation on to a simpler topic.

{Very much. It is… beautiful.} Alex swept his eyes over the panorama spanning from downtown Toridas around to the distant mountains along the coast. {You are very lucky to have such a homeworld, despite its lack of development.}

Compared to Terra’s utter lack of any visible nature, and the almost stifling omnipresence of ornate golden architecture?

Absolutely.

{And it is our homeworld, indeed.} she mused. Deinar could now boast of her status as the true homeworld of the loroi, where the Soia-Eldar had originally created her species. No longer merely the first-among-equals of the Sister Worlds, those two lesser laboratories of the ancient ancestors. {...Also of humanity, originally.}

Alex twitched and his gaze shot back to her, the only outward signs of the tumultuous thoughts rumbling through his mind. With a grimace, he sighed and glanced past her towards where Beryl and Tempo were sending privately amongst themselves. {It… is, yes. However unimaginable that would have been only weeks ago.} His eyes locked back onto hers. {A secret with the power to shatter the Imperium.}

{Truly? You seem to be not-so-bothered by that revelation.}

{I have had some time to come to grips with it, and — as you said — I am more familiar with loroi than any other human just yet.} He snorted, shaking his head slowly. {I also confess that my personal faith may not be as inflexible as that of an adherent of the Imperial Faith should be.}

For a moment, Fireblade’s mind rebelled against the idea of thinking of Alex’s own very-driven mind as anything other than ‘zealous.’ But then she recalled the other humans she had met: towering Astartes, half-machine techpriests, and three warriors who wore flaming pyres on their backs. Perhaps he had a point. Although still, {Your own Emperor did not seem much bothered.}

{No… no he did not.} Alex thought, a warm smile spreading across his face. Good.

{But you need not worry.} Fireblade then sent, casting her memory back to some of the meetings that she, Beryl and Tempo had been brought into while Alex was still recovering. {Maintaining that particular bit of knowledge as a most-secure secret was a major point of the agreements negotiated between the senior torrai and your Custodian Emissary. As far as the loroi people outside of the senior-most leadership will be told, you humans are our ‘template species.’}

A ‘truth’ which would pull at the hair of a great many loroi… but one whose close mirroring of the actual truth should be near enough to reality that it would likely be believed without prompting independent examinations. At least that was what Tempo had assured Fireblade, and the mizol’s expertise seemed most trustworthy in this field.

The mass manipulation of the Union’s peoples still bothered Fireblade, for all that she understood why it had to be. No matter how the ‘We are the Soia’s direct descendants’ crowd complained, they were unlikely to come near the violent anarchy which Alex had assured her the actual truth would have prompted among humanity.

And given that the Imperium had a proven track-record of responding to such threats to its continuance with planetary extermination and genocide at a scale which would have made even the most hard-line veteran of the Tithric campaign go pale…

The correct decision had been obvious.

{That must have been popular.} Alex chuckled. {I hope that the messenger survives telling that cover story to Stillstorm once she awakens.} His sanzai dropped its remaining humor. {And what will happen to those of you who already know?} His eyes searched hers.

{We have been ordered to maintain the secret, and will be given training in sanzai deception.} Although Tempo almost certainly didn’t need any further training, the sneaky mizol…

{Really? That’s… very good news. Surprisingly generous.}

{'Generous.'} She echoed with a frown. {How would such a secret normally be kept in the Imp—?} Ah. The answer was most clear in his thoughts.

Which made the finger-gun that Alex held up to his head superfluous, however amusing the following jerk and extended-tongue were. {‘Dead men spread no heresies.’} Straightening back up, he rubbed at his chin with one hand. {Although for a piece of forbidden knowledge this critical, anyone who knew it and lacked the ultra-high-level security clearance would have to be disappeared and disposed of in a particularly careful manner, to make sure that their memory-imprint couldn’t be read after death.}

Fireblade blinked. ‘After death’? {I can sometimes not tell when you are lying.} His sending had seemed honest enough, but he was effectively an alien no matter what the actual shared history of the loroi and human species was.

{Psychometry is a somewhat-rare talent among psykers, but there are those who can read strong memory-imprints left by a person’s soul even a very long time after their death. Akin to the way that I examined those Soia artifacts, last time I ‘visited’ this world of yours.} he nodded past her towards the distant spires of Stone Watcher Citadel, and shrugged. {Makes information security something of a challenge.}

Shaking her head, Fireblade leaned over and peered down over the parapet. Vehicle traffic crawled along the streets of Toridas’s harbor district far below at the base of the hill their hospital stood upon, lights winking on one-by-one as dusk enveloped the city. {You believe that such an unimaginable thing is possible, and I in turn believe you.} Say what one would about Alex, but he hadn’t tried to deceive the loroi for some time. And she could easily feel when he sent the truth, now that their strange mental bond had grown such since that time. He had been respectably honest with them, ever since his last visit here in Toridas.

{Since I discovered that you loroi truly are abhumans, more precisely.} he sent. A slight change in the pressure upon her mind, the warming feeling that heralded his stepping closer to her. Alex rested his elbows on the railing beside her and leaned forwards only barely enough to glance down the hospital’s outer wall, before flinching back.

Fireblade let her amusement bleed into her sanzai. {Intimidated by heights?}

{Intimidated by untested architecture.} he corrected, patting the half-mannal-thick concrete wall.

She raised one eyebrow minutely. {Toridas’s harbor hospital is among the older buildings in the city, and has been in continuous use for the last nine-hundred years. Without any ‘architectural mishaps.’}

{With a track record that short, I’d rather not take my chances.} Alex took a step back.

Fireblade narrowed her eyes, poking at the perimeter of his mind. She could feel just a hint of—

She narrowed her nostrils in exasperation, a moment before Alex broke out into a lopsided grin. {Or perhaps I’m just trying to get my mind off of...this.} he waved one hand up and down his body. {And that.} he gestured to the sky above them, trusting that she would read his thoughts.

{You are truly so anxious about the return to your own homeworld?} No matter the technical truth, Terra was clearly humanity’s home in spirit far more than Deinar ever would be.

{Yes.} he answered bluntly. {I know that He has a plan, but I… I cannot see it.} Alex nodded to Fireblade, his expression sobering. {For His emissary to arrange for Imperial aid in your war effort is expected. For Him to begin laying out the framework of your eventual integration into the Imperium, likewise. But for Him to require of all things that twenty teidar like yourself be taken to the Imperial Palace immediately, departing even before the negotiations have completed? I cannot see the reason for it. That is surely far too few to form a fighting force for whatever purpose, but} the wary concern on his face momentarily shifted into a playful smirk {teidar aren’t going to be much of a help in any negotiations over on Terra, either.}

{We teidar can be capable of negotiation, especially members of the Imperial Guard such as those who have been chosen for this return mission.} Fireblade sent, carefully delaying her emotions’ entrance into her sanzai. {Those caste-sisters are more accustomed to verbal speech, given the importance of absolute mental security placed upon their posts. And they can hold their own in political calculations and considerations, for all that the mizol are more specialized there.} She finally let her mirth flow into her sanzai for her final few thoughts {And I can match them all for tolerance of tiring circumstances and brash humans — I have put up with you, after all!}

{Minus a few certain incidents.} he answered with a wink, making a point of glancing past her at the elevator door they’d entered onto the balcony from. {I… might take the stairs back to our room, though.}

{Or simply keep your balance, this time.}

For several solon, their matching humor wordlessly thrummed back-and-forth through their mental link. Building stronger with each rebound until eventually Alex turned away with a snort, shaking his head ruefully. {You should meet my mother; you’ve got exactly the same sense of—} his sanzai was suddenly strangled into silence, and the human visibly flinched.

Curious, Fireblade pushed deeper into his mind, following the trailing threads of his thoughts that had lead to whatever startling realization had halted his sending. Alex’s mind bucked at her intensified presence, but only subconsciously.

Ah. Those thoughts of his were… not ones that would occur to a loroi. At least, not since the ancient Clan period, before Unification. And even then the concept was not quite the same.

She transmitted her bemusement along with {Meeting the intended partner’s immediate progenitors is a part of this series of... clan-transfer rituals?}

{That’s one way of putting it, but yes.} he eventually answered, still not turning to look at her. But she could feel the heat from his reddening face. {Although on Tallarn, it usually is done as ‘step two,’ after having visited a private garden together.} One hand dryly gestured to the rest of the hospital rooftop they stood on. The viewing benches, the central water fountain… and the raised beds of decorative plant-life from across western Mestirot.

Ah.

Well, as any warrior knew, when one suddenly found oneself in an ambushed position, often the best way out was through. {Then it seems that we may as well arrange these meetings. When can your mother be contacted?} Fireblade’s own would be rather more difficult to reach… unless Alex wasn’t joking about being able to ‘send to the dead.’

Alex whirled on one foot, openly staring at Fireblade.

Who cocked her head minutely to one side. Behind her, she felt Beryl and Tempo’s conversation pause. {Unless perhaps you are objecting?} She had read enough of the human’s thoughts to know that he would do no such thing.

And he may as well get used to thinking of their partnership in that fashion, if it would help him. The two of them would most certainly be working together for some time to come after all. Fireblade’s orders were clear: her mental tie to Alexander Jardin — a human of moderate influence within one of the Imperium’s Houses of Trade — was now a strategic asset. The Union had plans on just how they would manage their ‘integration’ into the Imperium, and many of those hinged on his cooperation.

Cooperation that Fireblade had promised on his behalf, while he had still lain under the Magos’s scalpel-tentacles. She knew him well enough to know that he would accede to the plan, in time. If he chose to think of their partnership according to the cultural frameworks of his people, then that might aid him in getting accustomed to his new duties.

And besides which, watching the overlapping waves of emotion — confusion, doubt, dread… and eventually joy — playing across his face and echoing through his mind was entertaining. Resting her hip on the parapet, Fireblade crossed her arms and opened her mind enough for Alex to glimpse her own surface thoughts.

{That… no, no I am not. Objecting, that is.} Alex confirmed the obvious, even as his face reddened yet further. His eyes met hers for a moment before darting away again. {And you do have a point. Though the situation is not… like that.}

She shrugged. {If you are certain. It is your cultural practice, after all.}

{I will have to contact House Trask at some point anyways… and Family Jardin.} Alex’s thoughts finally changed topic, hesitantly probing at proposed ideas that Fireblade half-glimpsed through their mental link. {Just what I’m going to tell them, though, that is a—}

{Much of that has been discussed and determined already.} Fireblade interrupted before he could get too lost in hypotheticals. {Part of the agreement between the Union and your people’s Custodian. He explained that the integration of ‘rediscovered colonies’ of humanity is a common duty of independent Rogue Traders, and conveniently you are here already and are known to the Union. We have therefore selected you. The Custodian has agreed, and promised that the requisite paperwork will be arranged upon our return to your Terra.}

Alex froze for a moment, before turning back to stare open-mouthed at Fireblade as she continued {The official state of events as it will be told to your Imperium at large — and to your own Family and House — is that you stumbled upon a grouping of ‘abhuman’ worlds in conflict with Chaos-aligned Renegade forces. At the insistence of the Astartes who secured the area, you have been installed as the official overseeing the Union’s integration into the Imperium. I do not recall the exact specifics about how that interacts with your existing duties to your House, but I cannot imagine that they would conflict to any degree that you and Tempo could not find a way around. While that ‘integration’ process is ongoing — for however many centuries it may take — travel into and out of this region of space by any human craft or persons is to be entirely under your authority and control.}

To his credit, there was not even a momentary flicker of doubt detectable in Alex’s mind that this ‘authority’ of his was anything other than an in-name-only posting. With the acknowledgment of his own senior government, he would answer directly to the Azerein… under the surveillance of a certain teidar pallan as his handler.

{I see.} He blinked rapidly, eyes now staring through Fireblade and far beyond. {That is… yes, a good cover story.} A brief shadow clouded his mind and eyes. {But that means—}

{That you will be returning to Deinar after whatever duties your Emperor has asked us to travel to Terra for.} She nodded. {And will likely be limited in your travels or communications beyond the Union afterwards.}

It was an ironic echo of, well, the last time the human had ‘visited’ Deinar. But now with the agreement of his own people’s government as well as that of the Union. Which made it a ‘duty’ rather than a ‘punishment’... not that Fireblade could blame him if he still resented it at first.

He turned again, bracing both hands on the railing — ‘untrusted architecture’ forgotten — and stared out to the darkening sea for several solon. Then nodded slowly, turning his head to look across at Fireblade with clouded eyes. He swallowed. {A Custodian speaks with the Emperor’s Word on his lips, and if the Emperor has willed that I do this, then it shall be my sacred duty.} His gaze met hers, and softened. {And if it helps you — and your people — as well, then so much the better.}

She probed around his mind, finding no trace of deception. And let a genuine smile break out onto her face, teidar discipline thrown to the sea-fresh winds that curled around their rooftop. It was most reassuring to know that she would not have to… compel Alex into complying. She had not expected that any such thing would be necessary, yes, but ever since this plan of the torrai and the Custodian had been explained to her the faint possibility had hung over her head like a foreboding cloud.

After all, Alex was a friend. Not an arms-sister, obviously, yet he had fought and bled beside her, nearly meeting a violent death several times already. And each time he had shown no apprehension at the prospect of further danger. If anything, he had displayed less awareness of his own mortality than was perhaps wise. What others would have understandably called foolishness was clear to her instead as bravery, for all that he had not been trained as a warrior. His cult-trained certainty of what would happen to his ‘soul’ after death buoyed his confidence, of course, but she was familiar enough with the internals of his mind to know that it was not the sole explanation for his courage.

{Good.} She sent, smile still warming her face.

[Urist]

Several cycles later, and the four of them found themselves back within the same expansive quarters aboard the Quaesitor Veritatis as they had traveled in earlier. The ship’s watch had just passed its mid-day change, but for those who had come aboard from Deinar — twenty-two loroi and one human — it was well into the late evening, technically early-morning by that planet’s clock.

Which made the two large, human-style beds all the more attractive for Fireblade. {It is most fortunate indeed that we are to travel aboard this warship rather than through the Webway.} she commented to the other loroi, setting her travel-pack down on one of the room’s side-tables. The reassuring weight of her amplifier still rested on her brow, but it would come off soon enough. This time their departure from the homeworld had been planned, after all.

{It is no wonder that we take this route on a starship rather than via the Webway, if the humans are even half as concerned about that previously-unknown route into their own homeworld as the Azerein and her senior torrai were.} noted Tempo. {The gallen teams over at Stone Watcher Citadel should have just today finished isolating the ‘Deep Gate’ room and filling it with poured concrete, per the reports I have accessed.}

Knowing the Imperium, their own preparations likely involved a lot of hair-trigger explosives. And gold. Golden explosives?

Blinking away tiredness and idle thoughts, Fireblade took a seat on the bed and began to remove her armor. Going by their earlier reciprocal journey along roughly this same trajectory, it would be several days until they arrived at Terra. And while she had worn her duty armor for longer durations than that a few times, she hadn’t enjoyed the experience.

And besides, the way that Alex snapped around to stare away from her and down at his own packed-away bag as soon as she began to remove the outer layer brought a smile to her mind. What was it that that one tenoin had said to him, so many transits ago?

{See something you like?} she sent.

His mind lit up like a constellation at her sending, different fragments of his foreign mind-form arguing with each other before he could come up with a response. It never ceased to be most strange how he did that — was it normal for humans, or unique to Alex?

Either way, it took him only a few solon to gather himself enough to reply with a hand gesture whose defiant meaning she had plucked from his mind in the long time since she had last seen it employed aboard the Highland shuttle.

With a mental twang of amusement, she swung her legs in underneath the blanket. Say what one would about the Imperium and their oft-unpleasant ways, but they did know how to make a comfortable stateroom. And aboard a warship, no less!

{It’s one usually reserved for nobility traveling aboard the Astartes’ craft, I gather. Sector governors, maybe even Sub-sector officials or really lucky Planetary governors, to be conveyed by an Astartes voidship.} Alex explained as he joined her underneath the thick covers, still smiling. {I doubt that there are any others like it aboard.} His mind flickered onto a related topic. {You are certain that the other teidar will not object to being bunked in the emptied-out armsmen quarters?}

{Most certain, yes.} Fireblade replied immediately and without doubt. To be honest, had it not been for Alex’s presence with them she herself would have felt most uncomfortable here amidst the palatial luxury — well, 'near-palatial'; she had recently seen what an actual Palace suite could boast — of the room. It was… not what warriors normally ever saw. Or sought, for that matter. The entire detachment of nineteen teidar from the Azerein’s Guard could have easily fit here in the room with them, bunking directly on the lush-carpeted floor and still with greater comfort than in most warship’s accommodations.

{Then why didn’t they?} Alex asked, skimming the thought from her mind. {Or you with them, for that matter. They’re from the same caste as you, yes?}

{...True.} She confirmed, after a moment of hesitation. But there seemed to be no reason to hide this next bit from Alex. {The teidar of the Azerein’s own personal Guard are, however, ‘different.’ Their duties see them only rarely on the front lines against the Shells… and most often fighting internal enemies.} Her mind soured. {Loroi enemies.}

{To crush traitors is an honorable task, no less important than to drive back encroaching xenos.} Alex sent helpfully, but she could feel that he was awaiting her further explanation.

Which was itself awkward to phrase correctly. Fireblade herself had been most fortunate never to have faced a fellow loroi in actual combat — knocking sense into newly-arrived foolish crew-sisters aboard Tempest didn’t count — for many, many years.

Not since Seren.

{Ah.} Alex’s mind sent over the sound and sensation of an understanding breath-noise. {That… yes. I see.} He tried to back out of the conversation honorably, letting enough of his mind bleed through their connection for her to grasp his unease at having stumbled into a topic which brought so many grim memories to the fore of Fireblade’s mind.

But memories which she needed to share, all the same. She had relayed them to none before, save for the Mizol Losat who had debriefed her after first being recovered from that corpse-world. The Losat who had later vouched for Fireblade upon that mizol’s later promotion and assignment to Tempest, and whom Fireblade had followed to that posting and reaped a bloody revenge upon every Shell she could reach in the many years since.

The same mizol who just then paused in her own armor-removal, glancing across the room at Fireblade as if she too could read Fireblade’s mind. Perhaps the sneaky Perreinid could; but her sharp red eyes betrayed nothing before she nodded once and returned to her evening preparations.

{There were… many who escaped from the Shells’ holding camps. Their experiment-camps.} Fireblade sent, haltingly. {Most truly ‘escaped’… but some were instead released. Modified physically, chemically, or mentally. Made into weapons to be unleashed by the Shells against their own sisters, their own fellow loroi. Terror weapons, who as often as not begged for the release of death even as their hands and sanzai — or in worse cases, telekinesis — tore at you.}

And in the pitiless clarity of her own horrified memories, their faces looked so much younger than they had to the then equally-young Fireblade whose emaciated self had crawled through a half-flooded drain pipe for more than a day to escape her holding camp. Who had turned her shaven head to the ashen sky and heaved in deep lungfuls of the polluted, dust-and-ash filled miasma of Seren… the first air of freedom she had tasted in her cognizant lifetime.

Who had feuded with other half-starved loroi for what scraps of pre-bombardment stored foods or sparse wildlife — devoured uncooked, and sometimes still wriggling — could be found. Who had drawn her first blood in a scuffle with another survivor… and taken her first life in a tear-filled fight against one of the Hierarchy’s cruel experiments only a day later.

It was the first kill that the young future-warrior ever claimed, and it was not even against the hated Shells but against a sobbing fellow victim of their vile depredations.

A memory that haunted her still, even more than twenty years later. A shiver tore through her body, too fast to suppress.

Cloth rustled, and she felt clearly through her undersuit the warmth of Alex’s outstretched hand as it wormed its way under her shoulder and over to the base of her neck. Rested there, as his thumb reached just above the cut-off of her undersuit to rub circles along the gentle bumps of her spine.

He sent nothing, allowing the physical contact to directly relay his truly heartfelt sympathy at her link-shared memories.

Sympathy and… ‘curiosity’? She held the sanzai channel open, letting her wordless question flow through it.

{I…} he paused. {A dream I had. On the shuttle, before we were picked up by the Shells. Of wandering through mountains of skulls, alone in a shattered city until I stumbled upon two loroi.}

A sharp pain jolted through her heart, and she sucked in a cold hissing gasp through her teeth. She knew this nightmare far too well. {You sent out to them in your confusion and anguish, ignoring their begging for you to leave. Then found them — a mother and child — only moments before a patrol of Hardtroops stumbled upon you.} she completed. Her other hand met his under the blanket, both slowly tracing a slashing line down across her torso.

{That was not just a ‘dream,’ was it?} he asked, muscles taut under her grip.

She let him read the affirmation from her thoughts, too overcome to answer directly.

{What… happened to them?} he asked, after several solon.

She closed her eyes, picturing the two horrified faces staring up at her — past her, at the clanking abominations closing in from behind — with as much clarity as if she had been a trained listel. {I do not know. That was later the same day after my fight against the mind-broken experiment. I was wounded, half-dead… and my memories go blank at the moment the lead Hardtroop swung at me. I awoke only days later, being cared for by a different pair of escapees. They had found me lying bloodied but unconscious amidst the wreckage of the Shell search team… yet no other loroi were to be seen. Alive or dead.}

Which had been how she first discovered that she had a teidar’s powers… and no small gift of them, either. The question had haunted her ever since whether or not her strength — or even the presence of her powers at all — was a natural occurrence... or if she was merely another escaped Shell project, another forged weapon whose control mechanisms had simply failed to kick in. Perhaps that was why the hardtroops had ‘found’ her so immediately; had they been tracking her all along?

The same mystery had followed her through teidar training and had kept her from being deployed to the front, until Tempo had spoken up for her.

{Not a mystery to me.} Alex sent, with heartwarming certainty. {A young child literally crawls her way free of xenos oppression, and soon after discovers that she possesses exactly the psychic powers most-needed to wreak revenge upon her oppressors?} The blanket shifted slightly, and even though Beryl had turned off the light in the room some while ago, Fireblade could see the faint gleam of Alex’s eyes meet hers as he pulled himself up alongside her. Rested the side of his head on her shoulder, meeting her gaze levelly from mere finger-widths away while his body-heat flowed into her. {‘The Emperor Protects’ does not only mean that he shields the faithful directly from harm; often His protection takes the form of blessing an individual with talent and power who can then perform such noble deeds themselves.}

Fireblade wasn’t quite sure how to feel about that idea. There was obvious appeal to her ego in believing that she had been singled out to act in lieu of the venerated being whom the humans considered to be an outright god, but while the humans’ somehow-not-entirely-dead Emperor was indeed evidence of an impressive feat of medicine, she was most doubtful that he had the ability to manipulate events so far from his life-support throne.

But on the other end of the spear, Alex certainly seemed to like the concept. {Very well.} she demurred, trusting that Alex’s incomplete grasp of sanzai would miss that she wasn’t agreeing with his idea but rather with his belief in it. Although admittedly none within the Union did fully understand just what governed which loroi child would or would not develop psychic powers, it having evaded all attempted explanations of heredity or environmental exposure.

{And it worked.} Alex continued with a squeeze of Fireblade’s hand, even as the first faint curls of sleep began to dance around his sanzai, {You’ve more than done your duty for your people since, and the loroi re-connecting with the rest of Humanity is largely thanks to you.}

An ‘accomplishment’ which only now seemed to be a net benefit to the Union in the grim light of the Shells’ massive offensive. But still, it did seem all the same to be something that one should indeed be proud of. {I would say instead that it was an equal effort by the four of us primarily, and by the other crew-sisters of Strike Group Fifty-One secondarily. It was they, not I, who rescued you from the void, healed your wounds…} she sent a concentrated — and not entirely forced — pulse of amusement through their skin-contact, strong enough that Alex barely fought down an instinctive laugh {and who put up with your mysteries long enough to get you onto that medical transport to Deinar.}

{That was a mess, wasn’t it?} Thankfully, Alex did seem willing to leave the topic of Fireblade’s past behind now. {First the heretical scrawlings that you did not even have the framework to understand, then the Shells embracing Chaos, and then the daemon attack.} He worked his way lower into the deep mattress, and with receivable effort pushed sleep back just a while longer to send {What did your comrades think when you returned from that ship, with no evidence of the ‘aliens’ you had fought and a single near-dead human?}

Fireblade blinked, nonplussed. {The honesty in my sanzai was clearly receivable. My crew-sisters could not understand what it signified, but they understood that I had truly seen something.}

{Oh. I had assumed they thought you were crazy, since you ended up locked in the med-bay along with me by the time I woke up.}

{As I sent then, I ordered myself to be isolated there. That did not conflict with the previous orders I was given to keep you under surveillance and guard, or else Stillstorm would have countermanded my order.} Although it was interesting where Alex’s mind had first gone. {That is not how equivalent events would have played out on a human ship?} She certainly suspected so, but she had also learned that human society was often unpredictable in its strangeness.

{A psyker returns from a boarding fight, claiming stories of invisible xenos?} He laughed silently into her shoulder. {Either they’ve been possessed, or they’ve gone mad. Either way, the cure is the same: a bolter shell to the skull.}

Then again, some times the Imperium was entirely predictable in its strangeness. {I see. We are both fortunate, then, that the Union is wiser.}

{‘Less experienced.’} Alex’s levity faded, and now all the tiredness that she had felt encroaching on his mind poured in as a single great wave. He closed his eyes, and his head came to fully rest upon her shoulder. His short — even for a male — hair tickled her chin, and sleep-faint sanzai came in pulses timed alongside each breath he took. Breaths which she could feel, with how his body was molded against hers. It would have been most distracting… had she not been only slightly less tired than he. {Very often it is the wiser choice to execute those who have been exposed to Chaos. It is nigh-impossible to tell the traumatized-but-loyal from the secretly-traitorous, and all it takes is a single heretic unwisely allowed to live. Better to send them all to the Emperor, let Him sort them out.}

{That is…} Fireblade thought back to some of the stories she had overheard more by mind than by ear, days ago in the human Imperial palace when Alex explained much of his people’s history to Beryl. Fireblade had paid for her distraction by quite uncharacteristically losing most of her sparring bouts to Tempo, but at least she remembered those grim tales. {I see.} she sent simply.

And squeezed Alex’s hand back, pouring her mind through their link to ease his descent down into the waiting embrace of slumber. It seemed good to bring some comfort to those people who had the misfortune to live in a greater galaxy where atrocities such as those committed repeatedly by the Shells were commonplace.

Unfortunately, sleep did not come for her with any such rapidity.

After all, the ultimate results of the decision to bring the Imperium’s emissaries back to the Union would not be fully known for a while yet. Which left Fireblade’s mind awhirl with concerns over just what she had exposed her people to. True enough, her and Tempo’s hands had been forced by the Shells having aligned themselves with the human Renegades… but that did little to warm the chills which ran through her body at the growing realization of just what they had done.

As well as caution at what was to come. The human Emperor had requested that twenty teidar be ‘sent’ back to his Palace; the purpose of such a delegation was not explained. Teidar made exceptionally poor hostages, yes… but did the half-dead human know that?

Fireblade’s tongue poked at one particular corner of her mouth, very gingerly feeling around the sore spot of recent surgery. Given how the so far barely-tested ‘interactions’ between humans and loroi telekinesis seemed to intermittently and unpredictably interfere with a teidar’s powers, the decision had been made that all loroi sent to Terra would be fitted with… ‘backups.’

Which was why a false-tooth had been carefully inserted, filled with enough fast-acting poison to ensure that no loroi would be held against her will by some unexpected perfidy of the Imperium. A last-ditch option in case the absolute worst should come to pass.

And one which did little to reassure Fireblade. Even if she found a ‘way out’ from some hypothetical betrayal, that would do little to shield the Union from humanity’s wrath. Her last thought would be to know that she had doomed her people.

With a force of will, she fought her mind away from what-if concerns about events already set in motion which she could no longer undo and instead onto better thoughts. The warm, soft, alien — well, half-alien — presence slumbering alongside her was a reminder that as… ‘decidedly unpleasant’ as humanity at large seemed to be, they could produce decent people all the same. Somehow. Amidst all the stories told to her of intolerant Inquisitors, genocidal Angels, degenerate Governors and worse. All the various people whose reaction to anything which appeared less-than-entirely-human started with ‘mass murder’ and went all the way up to ‘sterilize star systems.’

And she had ensured that they would, eventually, come to know just where the Union lay. Where Taben, Perrein and especially Deinar floated through space, their weary daughters already exhausted by decades of total war...

She caught another oncoming shiver just before it could break out into actual motion, and tensed her muscles instead to beat it back. Which had the side-effect of pulling Alex partly up and on top of her, the human’s warmth seeping through his thin undersuit and spreading a comforting bloom across her.

After a moment of deliberation — perhaps briefer than it should have been — she reached across with her other arm and, careful not to wake the human, rolled him even further so that he lay draped over her.

She immediately squelched the corner of her mind which paid rather too much attention to just how it felt to have the — non-loroi! — male’s entire body pressed against hers. The idea certainly had its appeal, and she knew that Alex held similar thoughts… but she was on deployment. Her duty came first; there would be a better time, later.

For one thing, while it was clear that Alex had no ‘caretaker’ from whom she would need to ask permission for an encounter, Fireblade had not been granted leave to pursue him in that manner. Sure, there was none of the usual risk of any reduction in her combat readiness over the next three-quarters of a year, but the rules which had necessarily governed all loroi ever since they had reclaimed the stars did not provide any specific exemption for such a circumstance.

A faint reverberation came from the human lying atop her, and Fireblade’s eyes darted down. He still appeared to slumber, and his mind did not warn of any imminent awakening… yet that had been a half-chuckle. His face still rested in its relaxed, soporific slump nestled against her slowly-breathing chest.

...It was perhaps fortunate that in the darkness of the cabin neither Tempo nor Beryl could see the satisfied smile that graced Fireblade’s lips, buried in Alex’s strange hair as she finally joined her human in sleep’s embrace.

///////

Author's NoteShow

Fireblade’s had a rough life, full of misery and toil... and then more misery. Thankfully, the Emperor has seen fit to give her her very own Humaniti™ heated blanket, so at least things are looking up!

(It’s also the first down payment on all the hugs that Alex owes her)

[dragoongfa]

Cute...

Anyway, I think that I pieced together who 'Alpharius' is and what the 'Hydra's' plan was. A little risky and could blow up in their faces but what is the Alpha Legion if not a mess of convoluted and often contradictory plans and battles.
The joke is that Ork plans revolve at getting them to the next best messy battle they can get to as quickly as possible, sometimes getting visions by their gods to do just that. The Alpha Legion is more or less the same but they are all 'Alparius'.

[Snoofman]

If I read the last chapter correctly, I like the spin that Alex did not see the child-version of Fireblade, but rather was reliving Fireblade’s memory in her shoes, who in turn stumbled upon the hiding Loroi clutching another child close to her. It certainly puts the webcomic’s original dream-delving sequence into a new perspective.

I also like how Alex, despite opening up to xenos, still worships his God Emperor in high esteem and Fireblade is trying to cope with it. Kind of like us humans in real life, who must compromise and conform with our colleagues who all hold different beliefs. I find it a realistic flaw on Alex's part, despite seeing xenos in a new light, he still clings to his religion.

Also funny how Fireblade, a warrior in service to an empire that justifies total war and eradication of worlds in league with the Loroi's enemies, is mortified about a greater warring empire sterilizing entire star systems in the name of human supremacy.

Oh the irony!

[Urist]

If I read the last chapter correctly, I like the spin that Alex did not see the child-version of Fireblade, but rather was reliving Fireblade’s memory in her shoes, who in turn stumbled upon the hiding Loroi clutching another child close to her. It certainly puts the webcomic’s original dream-delving sequence into a new perspective.

Yup, it seemed like a fun way to re-frame the original story of that dream! And while in the comic, Alex speculates that Tempo might have 'put' the dream in his mind, I'm firmly of the opinion (barring any revelations in the unposted Patreon pages that I haven't seen) that the dream comes from /Fireblade/ seeing as it's set on Seren during the occupation. And in this fanfic, there's a double-reason for why Alex is seeing Fireblade's dream:

SpoilerShow

Their souls/minds have been tied together, and in 40k 'dreams' are often associated with visions of the Warp (seeing into the past/future, alternative timelines, or just whatever a minor daemon feels like taunting you with tonight). So when the two of them project their souls into the Immaterium, where one's body is left behind, they 'merge' into one. More of that in the next chapter!

I also like how Alex, despite opening up to xenos, still worships his God Emperor in high esteem and Fireblade is trying to cope with it. Kind of like us humans in real life, who must compromise and conform with our colleagues who all hold different beliefs. I find it a realistic flaw on Alex's part, despite seeing xenos in a new light, he still clings to his religion.

That's one of the major themes I'm having fun playing with, writing this story. That the Loroi of the Union and the Humans of the Imperium are both societies with long histories, set traditions, and a very low likelihood of straying from those traditions anytime soon. So having a human and a loroi become tied together poses the interesting question of just how the two of them frame this new association in a way that fits their own culture's norms. (E.g. Fireblade sees Alex as a very-junior 'warrior' whom she has been assigned to mentor and work alongside as that is how two loroi would end up working/living together for a long time; Alex sees Fireblade as having all-but-proposed to him per Tallarn's culture as that is how his people would view a man & a woman living/working together for a long time.)

And besides which, it's funny to have them frequently 'talking past' each other and misinterpreting the other's social cues!

Also funny how Fireblade, a warrior in service to an empire that justifies total war and eradication of worlds in league with the Loroi's enemies, is mortified about a greater warring empire sterilizing entire star systems in the name of human supremacy.

Oh the irony!

That's half the fun of 40k! So many of the different factions view each other that way (condemning them for acting in pretty much the same way as their own, without any hint of self-reflection):

If you're not a human, an Ork Waaagh is only cosmetically different from an Imperial Crusade.

The Eldar (used to be a technological superpower, made a big mistake that crushed their empire, try to 'reconquer' the galaxy) sneer at the alien-to-them Imperium (used to be a technological superpower, made a big mistake that crushed their empire, try to 'reconquer' the galaxy), who in turn sneer at the alien-to-them Tau (are a technological growing power, are currently making mistakes that may fracture their empire, are trying to conquer the galaxy).

The Imperium (a theocracy which grinds millions of people to death daily in order to support their God, while preaching about how great they are and how Chaos is a bunch of blinded lunatics) fights Chaos (a theocracy which grinds millions of people to death daily in order to support their Gods, while preaching about how the Imperium is a bunch of blinded lunatics).

The Tyrranids devour any resources they can find without caring for the locals whose lives are forfeit, in order to strengthen themselves against their own foes (/whatever/ it was that they fled their previous galaxy to get away from). The Imperium conquers any planet it can find without caring for the local xenos whose lives are forfeit, in order to strengthen itself against their own foes.

Etc., etc. It's a setting that practically /runs/ on irony! (not to mention that the central figure is a super-militant Atheist now worshipped as a God)

[Snoofman]

...Etc., etc. It's a setting that practically /runs/ on irony! (not to mention that the central figure is a super-militant Atheist now worshipped as a God)

An atheist emperor accepting the title of God?!

Hark ironiam!

[Urist]

An atheist emperor accepting the title of God?!

Hark ironiam!

SpoilerShow

As we'll see next chapter, 'accepting' is almost the furthest thing from his (remaining) mind...

[Urist]

Author's NoteShow

Time to take an axe (or a Blade, as the case may be) to 40k's mostly-stagnant balance of power!

///////

Boots rang against ancient flooring, as a procession of soldiers with enough collective might to topple entire sectors marched through the hallowed halls of the Imperial Palace. Alex very much felt just how… small he was by comparison.

After all, when Primarchs argue and clearly care not for who overhears them, that bodes ill for any mere mortals who hurried behind their long footsteps.

“Brother, you truly insist upon beginning this… endeavor immediately?” El’Jonson asked, a deep undercurrent of unease running through his rumbling voice. “Surely there are experiments to perform first, tests to run. I have never known you, of all of us, to be one to rush in without extensive preparation beforehand.”

“And it is not by my choice that we do so now, yet we must.” Guilliman answered him without turning his head, instead staring rigidly down the grand corridor in front of their rapidly-moving procession as iron bands of muscle bunched in his neck. Two columns of Custodes marched at the sides of the wide, Imperial-scale chamber, flanking the lone tech-priest and twenty-two loroi that hurried along behind the Primarchs.

And one very confused Alexander Jardin.

{I assume that they refer to whatever it is that has caused them to request this delegation of my caste-sisters.} Fireblade spoke into his mind, her own psyche tinged with as much concern as he felt within his own.

{Yes... I think. And no, I still have absolutely no idea what that plan is.}

Guilliman continued “You heard Father’s message as well as I. The admission that he cannot hold Him back for much longer, that the birth of His nightmare draws ever closer.”

El’Jonson huffed a short breath. “And if Father of all people admits to such a limit in his strength of mind, then he doubtlessly does not exaggerate the gravity of the situation.” The two giants halted in the middle of an intersection, so suddenly that Alex almost ran into Guilliman’s armor-plated leg. The green-armored primarch laid one hand on his brother’s pauldron, and finally both ancients exchanged a glance eye-to-eye. “I am aware of the circumstances, brother. Yet to risk everything on little more than Father’s guesswork, on half-corrupted scraps of ancient records?”

Guilliman waved one hand behind him, where twenty-two loroi watched in silence as Fireblade pulled the translation of the High Gothic sentences out of Alex’s mind. Not that he would have tried to stop her even if he could: whatever was in store for them all, if it made two Primarchs this concerned then the teidar absolutely should know as much about it as Alex did.

Which was very little.

“He has been wrong only rarely, and doubly so within the realm of Psykery.” Guilliman admonished his brother, although from the pitch of his voice his — God-crafted — heart just wasn’t in it.

“But what a price we have all paid for every one of those errors.” El’Jonson muttered quietly, hand tightening on his brother’s shoulder, before the white-bearded Primarch glanced past his brother with a frown. With a grunt, he let go and stepped back.

Alex followed his gaze to the intersecting corridor, and— her, again!?

Without turning his head, Guilliman asked “Are you prepared?”

Yvraine nodded, the dozens of crystals dangling from her elaborate headdress jingling softly. “I am, Son of a God.”

Guilliman exhaled slowly. In a voice smaller than Alex would ever have imagined could issue from a legendary Primarch, he half-whispered “If all goes well, I will never attain that title.”

That 'title'... 'Son of a God?' But Guilliman was already the God-Emperor's own Son! The implications—

It… wasn’t blasphemy when a Primarch said it, right? Alex stumbled, before Fireblade’s hand on his shoulder set him back on his feet. But still, the chill that spread throughout his veins did not abate.

Primarchs had strayed from His Holy Light before.

Yet… certainly not here, in the heart of the Imperial Palace? In these grand corridors that grew ever-larger with each passing kilometer?

Alex’s eyes widened. He knew these corridors, had seen them before. Of course, he had been half-dazed at the time… walking back from a personal audience with the God-Emperor. This was a route that lead to the Throne itself!

He forced down the many, many questions that fought to break free of his lips. He stood here surrounded by Custodes, and listening to two Loyal Primarchs. Minds vastly greater and more Holy than his had already vouched for whatever was about to happen… even if the Primarch of the First Legion did not seem to be especially happy about it.

The single tech-priest accompanying their group pushed her way forward, stepping past Alex to stare with her unmoving face up at the Lord Regent. The harsh buzzing of Genetor Fabrekena’s rapid Binaric seemed perhaps more strident than Alex had heard from her before.

Guilliman only nodded in evident response. “Their immediate presence is indeed necessary, per Father’s instructions. Trader Jardin and his loroi will be available for your tests afterwards, entirely unharmed.”

At this first hint of the purpose for which the loroi — and he, perhaps? — had been requested, Alex’s reserve broke. He stepped quickly forwards, opening his mouth to bluntly ask for an explanation.

But his words died in his throat, as Guilliman continued grimly “And if Father’s calculations are incorrect, then not one of us will remain afterwards to care about any planned experiments.”

‘Planned experiments’ somehow managed to be the least-worrying part of that sentence.

Only then did the blue-armored giant turn his head to first cast his gaze across the loroi watching and — second-hand — listening, before finally fixing Alex with his piercing stare. Eyes with the weight of millennia behind them bore into Alex. “We need only hope that these abhumans are as strong as the ancients designed them to be, and that their resolve does not falter.”

{We are Teidar; he need not be concerned.} Fireblade sent with finality.

///////

Fireblade followed Alex as the two giant humans ahead of them led their mismatched group onward. The single Eldar walked alongside Guilliman, with neither the Primarchs nor the Custodians betraying any sign of unease at the alien's presence.

Most strange.

{To where are they leading us?} she sent, as the party was directed into a series of side-corridors rather than the grand entrance to the human Emperor’s throne room as she had expected.

{I… am not certain, not exactly.} Alex’s head barely moved to glance about, but Fireblade felt his mind whirling to and fro, attempting to keep track of the repeated turns and twists of the increasingly-narrow corridors through which they marched. {I think we might be underneath the Golden Throne, or near that at least.}

Fireblade shrugged. After her ‘audience’ last time, and with the human Emperor having specifically requested the presence of her fellow teidar, she had thought that they would all be ascending those near-endless golden steps once again. But that did not seem to be the plan, as she relayed to the wary minds of the Imperial Guard caste-sisters striding in step behind her.

{Here, lead me onwards.} Alex reached for and grasped Fireblade’s hand, even as his eyes rolled back into his head. Fireblade kept him from bumping into the ever-closer walls for the few solon it took before the human returned to normal, shaking his head. Yet the expected dizziness-inducing array of lights had failed to appear in her own vision. Was she already so used to having the human’s mental-vision overlaid onto her own normal sight that it no longer truly appeared to her, or was something else going on? {I… cannot see. Not properly. It is as if this area is ‘shielded’ from psychic detection. Even the Astronomican is muted, despite its proximity. Only your signature is… ‘normal.’}

None of which meant much to her.

{I wouldn’t expect that it would. But I have rarely heard of such places; there are supposedly ways to conceal an area from any connection to the Immate—} his thoughts halted, just as he rounded the latest corner into a large, open room.

Perhaps twenty mannal across, it was circular with a shallow-domed ceiling. The walls were of the same golden appearance as it seemed every surface within this palace was made with, although without the extensive bas-relief decorations. It was also empty, with the sole exception of a faded gray cloth that had been draped over some small pedestal-shape in the middle. It was an utterly unremarkable room by the standards of humanity’s bizarre taste in architecture.

Yet Alex’s shock at something only he could see poured through their shared link.

{It does not seem an impressive compartment to me.} Fireblade sent, hoping to shake some sort of explanation loose from him.

Which worked. {I… do not even need to turn my Sight upon this place to sense its power! There is much energy within this room: curling, flowing, turning, forming! It is all around us, circling the walls and flowing ever-inwards into a whirl overhead!}

Tempo’s sanzai came just as Alex craned his neck back to stare open-mouthed upwards at the plain-looking golden ceiling. {Fireblade? Why has this procession halted?}

And indeed, El’Jonson had held out one arm in a clear signal for those following behind him to stay where they were, while Guilliman and the Eldar marched to the center of the room.

{I am not certain.} she sent back. {Alex has stated that this room seems to be… ‘concentrating’ psychic energy.}

{That… is not so surprising.} the mizol replied.

{?} Fireblade turned to her friend. {Can you sense anything strange about it? I cannot.}

{You would not recognize it.} Tempo shook her head, even as her eyes narrowed slightly. {But by its shape and size, the lack of distracting decoration, and that central console… it seems to be akin to an amplifier chamber.}

Fireblade blinked. {Like those meant for Farseers?}

{Indeed so.}

Another unexpected find, here on the human capital world. Yet for whom had it been—?

Of course. Here, somewhere underneath the throne where humanity’s undying emperor had sat for an indeterminate — but most long — period of time. The same emperor who was the only human besides Alex who had demonstrated the ability to sanzai.

So a better question would be ‘Why was it built’? {A farseer has to be physically present within their amplifier chamber for it to work, yes?} And however the humans had maintained their emperor’s life, he certainly did not seem to be able to move.

{Yes.} her friend affirmed, her head turning from its perusal of the room to now bear on the object in its center. {Specifically, their interface-chair is located at the very middle. Right where—}

Guilliman yanked the cloth off of the central pedestal with a grimace, and all thoughts halted.

Alex and Fireblade sent to each other at the same moment {That is wraithbone!} Yet more alien — ‘xenos,’ as the humans would put it — machinery present here, deep within humanity’s capital.

Most strange indeed.

Yvraine knelt in front of the white-beige squat column, gingerly reaching out one hand to rest upon its smooth surface. A faint glow rose to surround her flattened hand, tracing the outline of each finger. Pulsing. She turned her head, nodding to the blue-armored giant beside her.

With his thin scowl still in place, Guilliman removed one gauntlet from his hand and then placed the now-exposed palm against the wraithbone, adjacent to Yvraine’s. Once more, the glow rose to highlight his contact, although this time with only a single pulse.

The Primarch stood then, breaking contact and turning back to the silent, watching loroi. His eyes swept across them, before coming to rest on Fireblade. “Have your soldiers spread out around the perimeter of this chamber, even spacing.” By now, plucking the meaning of the alien language out of Alex’s mind was as second-nature to Fireblade. “They must maintain their position and distance from the center until I say otherwise, no matter what they see or hear. If they can do this, they will be in no danger.”

Fireblade relayed the human’s words, adding {It does not seem to be a threat, but rather an instruction for whatever upcoming event they have noticeably not described.}

Teidar Mallas Dolorosai nodded sharply a few solon after Fireblade had sent. {Then we will do as he… requests.} Sent as head of a ‘diplomatic’ party or not, Steelgrasp was still a proud member of the Azerein’s Guard. Fortunately, it seemed that she was wise enough to recognize that the primarch here likely knew what he was talking about.

Fireblade stayed where she stood near the door, while her caste-sisters spread out around the room. Which left her standing in the only small group besides that at the center, as El’Jonson left her, Alex, Beryl and Tempo behind to march to his brother’s side.

Guilliman sent one last look at Alex this time, intoning “Ready yourself, but interrupt nothing.”

Both human giants then turned to Yvraine, inclining their heads in what was not quite a nod.

The eldar reached up and un-hooked several of the decorative gems from her headdress, crouching aside to lay them one-by-one on the floor in a complex, circular pattern. Placed both of her palms against the floor for a solon or two, and then stood back.

{What is she doing?} Fireblade asked Alex, unable to guess the alien’s intent.

{I have no idea. Those might be soulstones, but that circle is almost like a summ—}

A blinding flash of light filled the room.

Fireblade blinked her eyes clear just in time to see yet another unknown alien appear, standing in the middle of the circle of gems. Loroi-oid in form, its deathly-pale face made its two glowing red-orange eyes stand out all the more as they stared out through the swirling, floor-length blue-green hair which danced around the figure as if in a breeze only it could feel. Black-purple armor girded its waist and chest, although much of its abdomen seemed exposed to radiate its sickly, blue-green glow. All of this stood underneath the tall, swirled horn which grew vertically from its right brow.

And the thin, purple-metal sword held in its left hand, of course.

The sight of yet another strange alien did not mean much to Fireblade at this point, but she could feel Alex’s eyes bulging from their sockets. {What is THAT!?}

{It seems to be another alien.}

{THAT is no mere xenos! It is some form of Warp-creature, of such a strength that is painful to gaze upon!} Alex took a step back, until Fireblade’s hand at his back halted him. The primarch Guilliman had said that moving from one’s position in the room may be dangerous; was this the threat to which he had alluded?

She blinked, turning her head to and fro. Which confirmed that the bright-light distortion which remained near the center of her vision was indeed another bleed-over of Alex’s psychic senses into her own mind. Perhaps from this new arrival?

One of the crystals which Yvraine had laid down as one of the 'spokes' of her circular sigil burst, a shower of bright-blue sparks arcing upwards... and disappearing before they hit the ground.

The ‘warp-creature’ held out its blade levelly in both hands, presenting it to Yvraine. Who grasped it and with no apparent effort lifted the weapon which was not much shorter than she was.

Turning, the eldar seemed to hesitate for a moment, turning to Guilliman and canting her head slightly.

A second crystal on the floor burst.

Guilliman shook his head, and Yvraine stepped past him to once more stand in front of the squat wraithbone column in the center of the room. She inclined her head, and the many remaining crystals on her headdress chimed softly as she whispered something too quietly for Fireblade — or Alex — to overhear.

A third crystal burst. Fireblade frowned — they seemed to be doing so at regular intervals; would the remaining four soon explode at the same pace?

Straightening her head, Yvraine knelt and placed the sharp edge of the blade against the base of the pillar, the blocky cross-guard almost touching the white-beige construct.

She drew the blade across. The wraithbone that Fireblade had seen in the most-secret depths of Stone Watcher Citadel on Deinar had been harder than metal — well, except that of the Deep Gate which had suddenly turned to liquid under her feet — yet this sword cut a deep furrow into the column.

Searingly-bright golden light issued from the slice, as if the weapon had cut its way into an active reactor containment-chamber. Fireblade flinched back a half-step in reflex before catching herself. The light bore none of the burning heat of intense radiation, but then what was it?

The room shook around them, and Alex sank to his knees. Lights danced in Fireblade’s vision as the human’s head rotated back, staring with frantic eyes at the ceiling overhead. {It— that—!} his thoughts jumbled over each other, unreceivable. Fireblade pushed as much of her strength as she could back along their mental connection, imposing discipline onto the human’s mind. {His Light… it is gone!}

Fireblade followed Alex’s gaze upwards just in time for the room to disappear around her.

///////

SpoilerShow

Double-posted because adding all the text-tags put this section over the character limit.

[Urist]

The pressure upon her mind reached her before the visual change did.

The relentlessly-golden walls that had surrounded the group a heartbeat ago had disappeared, replaced by a rounded bubble of ever-swirling colors and shapes, changing far too fast to follow. Retreating and reforming, ever-pressing against the bubble like water currents beating against a submersible’s glass domes. Yet the ‘wall’ did not give, did not so much as flex.

Her caste-sisters stood where they had, backs turned to the chaotic sights behind them, completely unmoved.

Fireblade frowned.

Completely unmoving. {Mallas Steelgrasp, can you receive me?}

The senior teidar did not respond. Did not give any sign of even receiving Fireblade’s sanzai.

Did not so much as breathe.

I don’t think they can hear you. The thought echoed from inside her own head. But its ‘signature’ was one she could recognize.

Alex? She turned, to find that Beryl and Tempo were nowhere to be seen; nor was the human.

Yes. Yet his thoughts floated inside her mind all the same. Devoid of the panic which she had felt in his thoughts a moment before the world went black. It looks like we are sharing the same body once more.

But whose? She brought up her hands in front of her. Comforting, healthy blue skin flexed across her hands as they clenched and un-clenched. Good.

Which does not answer just what has happened. Alex sent. ‘Thought.’

Whatever.

Then the memory hit her — the Emperor! Something in her neck popped painfully as she jerked her head back to stare up, overhead. Towards where His soul-signature had been only moments before… and where it had disappeared an instant before their transportation to ‘here.’

I… sense nothing. We are entirely within this Warp bubble. Alex sent.

This is the warp?

Yes. Which means that He must still be with us, for us to be shielded this way.

Fireblade squinted, noting a pattern in the ‘bubble’ overhead. Where several ‘arches’ intersected and met near the crown, as if—

As if the single bubble they stood in was made of several overlapping spheres.

Twenty, to be exact.

I think perhaps it is us who are holding back the Warp. Fireblade sent.

That— yes, of course. Blanks. Alex acknowledged, before a wave of near-hysterical concern ran through their mind. Then where is the Emperor? He is always visible from anywhere within the Warp; it is the only thing holding the Imperium together!

Fireblade dropped her head back down, now focusing on where the ‘center’ of their group had been. The two primarchs and single Eldar remained, but of the slashed-open wraithbone column or the horned, glowing warp-creature there was no sign.

And yet all three figures in the middle of the bubble suddenly took several rapid steps backwards. Guilliman turned back towards her, his mouth open and moving, yet no sound came out.

A spark.

A golden spark flared into view at their feet.

Growing by the solon.

Fireblade narrowed her eyes against the glare, as the light swelled until it was the size of a person. Then even larger.

Larger still.

It stopped only once it had surpassed the two brother primarchs by a wide margin.

And then faded.

Where only solon ago there had been empty space, now there stood a Giant. A true Giant, one that towered over the lesser two in front of him.

A Golden Giant.

As if forged from liquid metal, the figure solidified further with each beat. Features emerged, hardening into fierce brows and a sharp jaw. Broad shoulders, a deep chest, arms and legs built to the same oversized scale. This was a figure which radiated Might.

A figure that she recognized, as its features finally came to completion.

She had seen the same likeness on the painted-glass windows of that Imperial cathedral, during her first ‘visit’ to Terra.

It was humanity’s Emperor… as he had been in his youth.

Yet… it was also not.

The painted-glass image had still been a human; this statue was of utterly monolithic gold. Its ‘features’ were only discernable as sharpened ridges in its metallic mass, devoid of any color other than its iridescent monotony. A remarkably lifelike sculpture, but still lifeless.

The sculpture opened his — its — eyes.

Each one a bright, glaring mirror of the earlier overpowering glow as they stared all around.

Which did nothing to make the sculpture less impersonal. Those eyes were bright lights, but they were nothing more: there was nothing of the spark, the soul, that animated a living being. More akin to a machine’s pict-sensors than actual ‘eyes.’

Your thoughts are even more strange when I receive them from within my own mind. Fireblade sent.

Alex did not answer.

The living sculpture continued to cast its gaze around the room. It moved, yes, but there was nothing alive about its robotic motions or flat, staring eyes. Nothing human.

None of those who returned its baleful stare dared to move, or even to breathe. A… Presence had settled upon them, rooting their bodies in place as if they had been the ones cast from solid metal.

Then the sculpture’s stare came to rest on Fireblade. Its mouth opened — revealing only more cold golden light within — as if to speak aloud, but no sound emerged. It took a step forward, towards her.

Faltered.

Doubled over, so that its head now came to the same height as that of Guilliman who moved to stand before it. Golden-glowing eyes burned furiously into the smaller giant’s own unflinching gaze.

One flowing-gold hand rose to point accusingly at the blue-armored primarch.

The finger fell off.

Melted, dripping away from its arm like hot wax.

The sculpture toppled over fully, hitting a ‘ground’ at its foot-level that was invisible to Fireblade.

And splattered.

Molten gold surged forth knee-high, splashing outwards in a wave.

Both Primarchs leaned into the onrushing mass of metal, keeping their feet amidst its onslaught but being driven back. Yvraine leapt onto Guilliman’s back, her feet resting on his armored hips just above the molten-hot flow while one arm grasped the ornate decoration protruding up from his back to keep her balance.

And twenty teidar reacted as one to the unusual threat, finally able to move as the Presence from earlier vanished. To either side, caste-sisters trained to the exacting precision required of the Imperial Guard flash-cooled the molten metal’s leading crest, forging barriers that diverted the lethal flow around them.

Rapid sanzai cries of surprise and requests for information buffeted Fireblade's mind, but she had a more immediate problem as the wave of surely deadly-hot metal surged towards her.

Lacking the finesse of her fellows, Fireblade instead gathered her powers to forcibly divert the onrushing doom by sheer strength of telekinesis. That much dense metal would weigh more than most dropships, but hopefully she could direct enough of it aside to avoid instant immolation or crushing.

In the half-solon she had before the wave was upon her, she marshaled her strength as best she could. Felt the building… ‘humming’ in the core of her mind, that was never quite possible to explain to one who lacked telekinesis of their own.

Humming that kept building, accelerating past any exertion of her powers that she had tried before. Strengthened and concentrated, until she finally unleashed it.

Instead of a minor redirection of what must be many hundreds of millions of pilo worth of flowing metal, the shimmering golden flow split apart and upwards as if hitting an invisible angled wall. Cooling as it went, it began to solidify even mid-air.

And so a few short solon later, Fireblade stood exactly where she had before… now surrounded on each side by two curling arcs of metal frozen in place as if sculpted by an artist’s hand. A crashing wave, captured mid-motion.

Muted sanzai buzzed around her, as the other teidar muttered amongst themselves at the feat.

Teidar do not ‘mutter.’ she sent internally.

These ones do. Alex responded, all the more infuriating now that she could not shoot him a glare to express her distaste at his slighting of her caste-sisters. After all, with their minds now so intertwined it was truly impossible for her to shield from even his inexpert grasp of sanzai just how amazed she was herself with the feat of telekinesis that she had just accomplished.

And her satisfaction knowing how impressed those arrogant Imperial Guard warriors must be at the sight. A surge of self-congratulatory pride most unbecoming of a duty-focused teidar.

I’d say you earned it. Alex’s sanzai came only a moment before a loud, wet cough from the center of the room.

As the last of the soulless sculpture melted away, another figure emerged, appearing from the thinning pool of gold.

Less tall, although of the same oversized proportions… but this one seemed actually human.

El’Jonson stepped forwards without hesitation, and a moment later his brother followed him. Both primarchs knelt, looping their massive arms under this latest figure’s shoulders and heaving it upright.

Heaving him upright.

Long black hair parted, revealing two eyes which glowed yellow in a pale imitation of the harsh glare of the now-dead statue. But where that golden monster’s gaze had been flat and uncaring, this one’s was softer, ‘warmer.’

She blinked, frowning. How could one even think to read intent such as that from glowing eyes?

A bolt of electricity singed its way through her heart. Because He is the God-Emperor! Alex slammed his thoughts into her mind.

Her — ‘their’ — knees weakened, and it was only by experience at standing rigidly in place for long cycles on guard duty that Fireblade forced herself to remain upright. After all, Guilliman had warned that the teidar should not leave their positions until advised otherwise, and that time had not yet come.

{Maintain your positions.} She sent to her fellow teidar, for all that veteran warriors of the Guard were unlikely to have forgotten Guilliman's warning.

No response.

A ping via sanzai and a momentary glance confirmed that her caste-sisters had frozen once more. Each warrior stood in her own pose, unmoving, as if paused in time. Leaving her as the only 'active' teidar in this bubble-room. Something most strange was going on; best to remain alert in case the forewarned-of danger may yet remain ahead of them.

What danger could possibly threaten when the God-Emperor lives again!? Alex’s shocked doubts rose — predictably — to the fore.

The two Primarchs finally levered their reborn father upright, stepping back to let him stand on his own two feet. Rivulets of still-molten gold poured down his body, somehow leaving no mark of the horrific burns that such contact should have caused. Although now that Fireblade had a moment to think about it, the liquid metal all around them should have killed all of those present by convection alone; yet the heat which she felt from the cooling mass around her was only barely unpleasant.

We are in the Warp. Alex sent. All which happens here is guided by Will, not by material reality.

That promised to be a most confusing concept if she tried to think about it too much.

The human Emperor raised his hands before him, clenching and un-clenching his hands as he stared at them. Perhaps unsurprising, for someone who had apparently spent many years as a living corpse immobile on his throne.

With a nod, the towering figure turned to look at Guilliman. In a low, rumbling voice he intoned “The next step.”

Yvraine stepped out from behind Guilliman, and opened her mouth to speak.

Yet the voice which filled the small ‘bubble’ within the Warp was not the voice of the thin Eldar that Fireblade had heard before. Instead, a dry and thin voice rustled like sand blowing in the desert wind, only audible because of the silence of everyone else around “Summon… your Prophet.”

The two Primarchs flinched back, heads turning back-and-forth while they reached for the weapons slung at their waists. Yet the Emperor himself only rose one broad hand, and they froze immediately. Turning to regard the much-shorter Eldar in front of him, the human leader spoke forcefully “I have never possessed nor sought such a follower.”

A new voice came then from all around them, cackling loudly from some place outside of their bubble “You didn’t have to! Just think: Who was your first, foremost worshiper?”

Guilliman took a half-step forward, opening his mouth to speak.

The disembodied voice added sharply “Quiet, you! I have waited a long time to see the look on his face when he realizes it for himself. It will only take a thought to pull his Prophet to his presence.”

The Emperor’s face hardened, lines deepening on his brow as he stared off to one side. Then his eyes flared wide, just in time for a new figure to pop through the swirling vortex of colors and patterns which surrounded the bubble.

Another primarch, by his height, but this one seemed… wrong.

A head crowned by four arcing horns glanced around the scene, eventually coming to rest on the Emperor. A sharp smile spread across his darkened features, and as he stepped closer Fireblade could just begin to make out an uncountable number of symbols apparently inked — or carved? — into what little flesh was visible through his heavy spiked armor.

Symbols which brought a mild headache as soon as she set eyes on them.

A melodious, sepulchral voice issued from this new arrival — a 'Daemon Prince,' as Alex supplied. “Hello, Father.”

What, that is a human? Fireblade asked the other half of her apparently-shared mind.

It was a human. Alex replied grimly, as arcs of anxious energy flared along Fireblade’s nerves. An utterly inexpert mind pulled blindly at the levers of her telekinesis, until she brushed Alex's scrabbling attempts aside. Whatever this newest arrival is or was, Fireblade would not be the one to begin a fight.

“Lorgar.” Guilliman ground out, his eyes locked on the horned newcomer.

The prince ignored him, striding confidently up to the imposing bulk of the Emperor. “I see that you have finally realized what I knew so very long ago.”

“Fanatic.” El’Jonson spat, stepping towards his seeming brother and drawing a thin, glowing sword in the same movement.

Lorgar only turned to glance dismissively towards the approaching armed giant, then flicked his gaze back to the Emperor, clearly expectant.

Muscles bunched taut in the black-haired elder human’s jaw… and he raised one hand. “Hold, Lion of Caliban.”

El’Jonson’s face-hairs twitched, but he indeed froze in his step. “...Father?” His voice was gravelly as ever, but the note of… doubt in it was undeniable.

Lorgar added with a voice of liquid mercury “Do tell him, Father. What I am… what we all have been, all this time.”

The Emperor was silent.

“Leaving it up to me, again? Age has brought you wisdom, Father.” Still smirking, Lorgar turned to fully face his two glowering brothers. Despite the clearly-murderous intent burning from their eyes, he did not even reach for the massive mace that hung at his waist. “It was ever-obvious to those with Vision that Father is and has always been a God, despite his short-sighted denials.” He canted his head towards Guilliman, and his smile grew even more mocking. “And despite the attempts of a great many ‘heretics,’ my sons and I saw the Truth. Preached the Truth.”

He turned a sneering glare onto El’Jonson. “Your people often say that I ‘became’ a Daemon Prince after Horus’s failure and Father’s weakness. But how could I ‘become’ something which I had been ever since the moment of my creation?”

“You speak madness.” El’Jonson found his voice.

“I speak the Truth!” Lorgar crowed, eyes wide. “Or do you truly think that Father crafted twenty Sons, used ‘Dark-Age technology’ to make for us mortal brothers who grew to majestic titans by their tenth year, who survived alone on death worlds, who controlled minds, who could revive after death?” He spun on one heel, improbably agile despite the bulky-seeming horned armor he wore. Now facing his father, arms wide, he finished with “But by all means, do tell us how such feats could be accomplished without the Immaterium.”

Guilliman spoke before his father could. “You know full well that there exists archaeotech devices and patterns capable of these accomplishments.”

Lorgar rolled his eyes. “Xenos archaeotech.” His head lolled aside, eyes sliding with disturbing fluidity to first Yvraine and then Fireblade. “Although I see that you have turned to the use of these two xenos mercenaries already. And you say that I have turned my back on Humanity!” Sneering, he revealed pointed teeth.

Alex’s white-hot fury surged within her mind, and Fireblade fought him down with a pulse of discipline. Unfamiliar as she was with humanity’s history — and especially that of the four humans before her now — this did not seem like a time for her to interrupt. No matter how insulting the term 'mercenary' was when applied to a warrior of the Union.

And besides which, this Lorgar had said two ‘xenos mercenaries.’ Did he simply not count the nineteen other teidar spaced evenly around the area… or did he not see them, somehow? He evidently did not seem aware that loroi were not ‘xenos’ to humanity, not fully.

“There is much that you do not know.” the Emperor rumbled, eyes narrowing to slits… before dipping, slightly. “Yet you are correct in how your brothers were constructed.”

“Say it, Father. Admit what you are.” Lorgar taunted. “Certainly Guilliman’s pet Witch will have told you how embracing your nature is the only way forward from here?”

For several solon, there was silence.

Then “You are, each of you, Warp Entities… forged from a part of my Divine Essence. ‘Daemons,’ to the backwards and superstitious.”

Guilliman and El'Jonson both flinched at his words, bulky armor sagging as shock echoed across their disbelieving faces. Guilliman opened one mouth as if to speak, but no sound emerged.

Lorgar only scoffed. “To those who admit the Truth about reality.”

As if his son had not spoken, the Emperor continued “But each of you was alloyed with a mortal human soul of my own crafting, to make you more than a mere Warp construct.”

“And only a few of us grew past that shell you saddled us with.” Lorgar jabbed one finger up at his father. “Embraced our latent powers, and left the weak and pathetic human body behind. If only more of my blind brothers had—”

“Enough.” Guilliman finally spoke, both hands raising in front of him… and now gripping the colossal sword that he had brought with him. A beat later, and it burst into red-orange flames that licked hungrily along its length. In a grim but resolute voice, he intoned “You say that you — that we all — are daemons? Then no matter — I have slain daemons before.”

With that, he lunged forwards, bringing the sword in blindingly-fast overhand arc down towards his brother’s unarmored head.

Smokeless flames trailed behind him, rippling and crackling in the massive blade’s wake.

Lorgar turned, eyes instinctively widening just in time for the weapon to slash down upon his skull, directly between two of the horns which jutted from his head.

The blade extinguished.

The flames died.

And Lorgar only grinned madly, the blade which must have weighed many thousands of pilo having left no mark whatsoever upon his gray-brown skin. “You are but a Daemon. I am far more.”

Cackling, he took a step back. His laughter only redoubled as Guilliman lurched after him, as if utterly unable to pull the extinguished sword from its narrow and ineffectual contact against his brother’s head.

Lorgar reached up with one hand, casually grasping the blade which should have sliced his skull open and pulling it easily from his brother’s grasp. “I have spent ten-thousand YEARS preparing for this, brother! Spread the Faith, brought the entire Galaxy under the dominion of Father’s Cult! And all of it… from my Book! My Words, my Tenets, my Religion!” His grin spread unnaturally wide, cheeks splitting to reveal more teeth than should be found within any being's mouth. “There is no God worthy of true worship but Father, and I am His Prophet!”

He shifted the sword around, until it now sprouted forth from his grip. “And while a God’s power has few limits… the survival of his Prophet is one of them. No God can — whether they wish it or not — allow their Prophet’s existence to end. We may be recalled to the Warp, pulled from the Materium… but never killed.” He turned around, and executed a deep, mocking bow towards the tight-jawed Emperor. “Thank you, Father, for shielding me from dear brother’s strike.”

El’Jonson then spoke “’Your religion’? You have spent all these millennia attacking the Imperium, sending wave after wave of Chaos’s corrupted slaves to ravage the ranks of those foolish enough to believe in your twisted cult.”

This time, Alex’s livid indignation was enough to force Fireblade to take a step forwards. Whether towards Lorgar or towards El’Jonson, she did not know.

But then the Emperor’s gaze rose to meet hers over Lorgar’s head… pinning Fireblade in place.

Sanzai with the weight and strength of millennia behind it speared into her mind. {Hold, child of Seren and of Tallarn. Your moment is not yet at hand.}

Lorgar continued speaking, apparently not having received the sanzai. A private sending, then? “Every religion requires sacrifices, brother. Sometimes individuals, sometimes worlds…” he turned to levy an icy glare at Guilliman, “...and sometimes cities. You recall that first expansion out from Terra, when Father’s hand guided Legions of our sons to spread His ‘Truth’ far and wide to the scattered worlds of Humanity? That was Civilization taming the wilderness. Father is Civilization… and Civilization does not exist in a vacuum. It requires — it is strengthened by — barbarians beyond its borders.”

He chuckled darkly. “Every Imperial faithful who huddled, teary-eyed, in their cathedrals as they burned… was a sacrifice to Father. Every Warp-twisted madman, bellowing praise to the myopic and squabbling Four until he fell in combat… was a sacrifice to Father.”

“And all of it” he gave the sword in his hands a twirl, before jabbing its length upright, “channeled through me. Father’s Prophet… and the conduit for the Warp-strengthening power of prayer destined for him. More and more of it, every year. Strengthening Father's true aspect here in the Warp, pulling him from his false-body in the merely-material world.” The sword burst alight once more… but the flames now flickered gold-and-black rather than red-orange. “Unless you thought that that fading corpse on the Throne was simply ‘decaying’ ever-faster, these last few decades?” The flickering light cast dancing shadows across his leering visage.

El’Jonson stepped forwards with a snarl, raising his armored fists.

And stumbled, as Guilliman’s extended arm held out across his chest. “Hold, brother.” Where the Lord Regent’s voice had until now been level and calm, now it came taut… strained. His eyes snapped up to stare at the Emperor for a solon, before dropping again to glare hatefully at Lorgar. “He is right, the damned Traitor. Or do you think that father would have let him prattle on so without interruption, if he truly spoke only nonsense?”

The green-armored primarch lurched to a halt, while Lorgar tilted his head back and laughed. “You see the Truth at last, brother! Father cannot allow me to come to harm, no more than he could collapse this null-Warp bubble that he has so kindly maintained for our private discussion. It is simply part of his true nature, deeper even than instinct in a mortal creature. And now that your Witch’s scheming has brought his mortal coil to an end, he has to return to the Materium lest his entire Imperium collapse without him. This entertaining conversation will draw to a close soon: even Father’s power cannot keep this bubble shielded forever against the other natives of the Warp… and the Four are ever-hungry.”

Lorgar took a step forwards, eyes flicking past his brother. “No, he must reincarnate… and that requires the sacrifice of a deep and ancient soul. How thoughtful of you, dear brother, to bring one!" His gaze rested on Yvraine, who stood behind and to one side of Guilliman. Shoulders back, head high, defiant… but unarmed.

Guilliman's eyes widened, his jaw shutting with a click as he stepped to interpose himself, unarmed, before his slowly-advancing brother.

Who paused, leering at him. "Did Father not tell you why he bid you 'invite' her here?”

Fireblade's eyes flicked between the stony-faced Emperor, the unarmed Guilliman, and El'Jonson whose own gaze bounced between his father and Lorgar. One green-armored fist wrapped around his sword, half-drawn but waiting.

A sword much smaller than that which had utterly failed to harm the daemon prince. It seemed that none of the humans here could do anything against the advancing Lorgar.

But we can! Alex shouted inside Fireblade’s mind, and her powers flared without her command. Tore outwards across the bubble-shaped calm area in the Warp, with a painful intensity that blanked out her vision for a solon.

Nothing happened.

It was as if her powers simply refused to harm the vile human, dissipating entirely.

Lorgar did not so much as flinch, did not even glance aside at Fireblade as he strode slowly towards the doomed Eldar.

“Hold, Lorgar.” the Emperor’s voice commanded… and the vile Prophet did halt in his step. Visibly straining to keep moving forwards, but with no more success than Alex/Fireblade’s attack against him a split-solon earlier. “Return to my side, my Prophet.”

The daemon's hungry leer shattered, sinking into a fierce scowl. Too-sharp teeth ground against each other and neck muscles bunched angrily, yet Lorgar did indeed turn on one heel and retrace his steps. But with halting and irregular movements, as if he were fighting his body the whole time.

His father stared down at him, no emotion whatsoever visible in his eyes or on his face. And, of course, like all the humans that Fireblade had yet met — besides one, eventually — his mind was utterly invisible to her, completely unreadable.

The Emperor continued “You assume that I hid from my nature. That I denied it out of cowardice, or lack of ambition.” He leaned forwards slightly. “That is not so. You think that a God is a mighty being; they are not. A creature of the pure Warp, always and eternally restricted by the emotions which gave it life. Worshipped by the foolish, yet with no more actual agency than the rocks and trees and rivers likewise worshipped with no less devotion by our primitive ancestors. What is a God, after all, but a miserable pile of holy secrets? There is no power in a God but that which is unwisely granted to it by short-sighted worshippers... such as you. I am Civilization, yes, but you were raised in my civilization, and cannot deny my commands.”

“Yet you know that you cannot avoid what must be done.” Lorgar spat back. “You must return… which means that I must act.”

“I cannot delay you forever, no. And a sacrifice must indeed be made.” the Emperor admitted. “But I have one Act to perform, first.”

Fireblade narrowed her eyes, flexing her arms and shuffling her feet slightly to ensure that the muscles were warmed up. If the Emperor apparently sought to save Yvraine’s life yet still admitted that someone in their small group must die… that left only one remaining option.

She would not go quietly.

But… if it is the Emperor who commands it? Alex asked, although she could feel him fighting hard against the thought.

No warrior can escape death forever. But she can ensure that she meets it on her own terms. Fireblade responded. And besides, the human emperor who had presumably also waited ten thousand years for this moment seemed unlikely to give in to his obviously-hated son so easily. Even if she couldn’t imagine what other option remained.

Of all people, you expect a miracle? Alex asked.

Of all people, you do not? She retorted.

The human leader in question reached out and rested one hand atop Lorgar’s head, the light-bronze skin of each larger-than-life finger a sharp contrast to the unnaturally-gray hide of the traitor primarch. “You say that you have cast aside your human coil, yet its traces remain within you. Screaming to get out, they are the last anchor tying your compound soul to the Materium… and would suffice as the sacrifice to allow my reincarnation. Choose, then: inflict a minor revenge upon your brother, or complete your Ascension; but know that your soul may only be so split here and now, before my own Divine Soul is reborn into the Materium.”

For several solon, Lorgar was silent. The murderous primarch visibly shook with the wracking agony of his own internal argument, but after some time he raised his head once more and spoke. “I will Ascend. My humanity is behind me and beneath me; let it be so entirely.”

The Emperor nodded, and then dug his fingers into his son’s scalp. “Then I hereby strip you of your Humanity. Kneel.” Lorgar did so, and suddenly the still-blazing sword leapt from his hands into the Emperor’s own remaining fist. The blade that had seemed comically large in even the massive grasp of a Primarch appeared merely normal in proportion to the Emperor’s clenched hand.

Orange-red flames sprouted once more, burning away the cold golden light. The Emperor slowly lowered the flat of the blade, tapping it against Lorgar’s shoulder. “You are now the Arch-Daemon Lorgar, Foremost of My Faith.” He then tapped the other shoulder, before lifting the blade out of the way. “Rise… and accept your destiny.”

Lorgar stood up… and up, and up.

When he finally straightened his back entirely, he now stood almost eye-to-eye with his towering father. Looming far taller than his brothers, who only moments before had been his equals in size.

Despite the ominous gravity of the moment, Fireblade couldn’t help rolling her eyes. Of course humans would express this maddeningly-strange magic promotion as becoming larger.

Lorgar turned around, beaming, and the soulless light of ambition shone out of his cold eyes as he sneered down at his brothers.

The Emperor’s hand clasped him by the shoulder. “One more thing. Now that you are no longer Human in any sense, it is time that you meet a weapon far more ancient than even I… one that was purpose-forged to fight creatures such as those whose ranks you have so eagerly joined.”

Warm golden eyes rose to meet Fireblade’s. {Pallan Fireblade, I believe that you should be able to ‘see’ my foolish son now.}

“What?” Lorgar managed, a moment before Fireblade reached out with her senses.

Where before there had been nothing as seemed normal for a human, now Lorgar’s mind-signature… ‘glowed.’ Sickly streamers of unthinkable thoughts radiated outwards from him, a miasma of cruelty and hunger.

It was not a pleasant sight, and she averted her senses as quickly as she could.

Which was not fast enough.

Overwhelming revulsion surged upwards from her very core, and this time her powers stormed out without her or Alex’s command. Their souls could no more halt the instinctive strike than could the body of a person who had swallowed the most vile filth somehow halt the convulsive regurgitation that instinct demanded.

Lorgar opened his mouth to say more, but that was as far as he got before Fireblade’s powers slammed into him.

He jerked back, knocked from his feet. Floated now a pace above the invisible ‘floor’ that they all stood upon, spread-eagled. Muscles bunched in the daemon’s neck as he fought to move, but with no success. Rage-bright eyes rolled in their sockets, glaring balefully between his brothers, then Yvraine… and finally coming to rest on Fireblade.

They narrowed, burning with hate and confusion. “The xenos, Father? You would turn a xenos monstrosity against your own Prophet?”

“She is no more xenos than you are. Indeed, by your own request, she remains more human than you have now become.” the Emperor finally moved, stepping forwards to pace around his floating, pinned-in-place son. He held out one hand, cupping a swirling golden-gray flame which flickered weakly within his grasp. “Your human soul was all that protected you against ancient Eldar warp-smithed weaponry. Those who made her species — and made ours — could hardly have the two halves of their project annihilate each other.”

“The Human form is Sacrosanct!” Lorgar hissed, head jerking around to follow his prowling father. Amusingly, the sheer Faith in his voice was… ‘familiar’ to Fireblade.

I never sounded like that! Alex protested furiously. Like that Traitor!

You got better. She replied.

The Emperor rolled one thumb over the glowing ball of light in his palm — the visible ‘soul,’ as ludicrous an idea yet undeniable a reality as that was — and now it was his turn to smirk. “Even your fall to your Warp-sourced side failed to damage this human soul which I had granted you. It was made by great effort and imbued with a Father’s hope for his children…” the smile, thin as it was, disappeared utterly. “but I have snuffed out its like before. Although I am pleased to see that my craftsmanship has held up so well: even a mere half of it will suffice for the necessary sacrifice.”

He halted his pacing, standing directly in front of Lorgar’s immobile form and leaned forwards. “You are indeed correct that as my Prophet I cannot harm you myself or allow you to be destroyed… but as you are no doubt aware from your long dalliance with the Four, there are many ways indeed to make someone wish for death’s embrace.” He straightened up and stepped back, his long black hair flowing forwards to frame his face as it stonily glared down at his despised son. “You have seen what a single one of our cousins can inflict upon a Warp Construct; shall we meet her sisters? They have been so kind as to hold this null-Warp bubble open for us, but I think that my own strength shall suffice to grant them a break.”

With a wave of one hand, the bubble around them expanded. The ‘arches’ in the ceiling overhead that met in the middle disappeared, and it was only then that Fireblade glimpsed that they were the result of twenty overlapping bubbles… each one centered on a teidar, herself included.

As they vanished, her frozen caste-sisters now moved once more. Heads turned rapidly side-to-side as they took in the changed situation, Mallas Steelgrasp sending immediately {Pallan Fireblade. Who are these new figures?}

They truly had been frozen all this time, then. {It is complex; I will explain later.} Fireblade responded. {For now, know only that the horned human held in place amidst us is a most-senior leader of those allied with the Hierarchy, perhaps commanding it.} That was… perhaps among the least of his crimes, from what Fireblade understood of the ancient human history which had reached its climax here just now. {Destroy him.}

But it was enough for thirty-eight glaring teidar eyes to turn upon Lorgar in a moment.

The echoes of their powers ebbed against Fireblade, nineteen caste-sisters unleashing their fury upon the suspended Primarch, adding to Fireblade’s own strength.

Lorgar bellowed his confused agony as his limbs snapped taut: twitching, stretching… and in a spray of black blood, tearing from his body.

The flow of clotted ichor stilled within moments, yet his howls continued.

Redoubled, as his red-and-black chestplate with its red skull emblazoned within an eight-pointed star crumpled inwards, doubtlessly crushing organs. But evidently not his lungs or diaphragm.

All this time, the Emperor stood by and watched his son be ripped limb-from-limb, his face stony and impassive. Only now did he bring his cupped hands together, splitting the glowing orb into two equal but lesser lights. One he held back… and the other he reached out and pressed into his son’s misery-wracked forehead. “Enough.”

The moment that the bright mote touched Lorgar’s skin it was absorbed, disappearing into him. The repulsive ‘glow’ of the daemon’s mind vanished from Fireblade’s senses. And like a child’s marionette with its strings cut, Lorgar crashed to the invisible ‘ground’, his stump-legs squelching loudly as they impacted. He was only saved from toppling over face-first by his father’s hand… which batted him aside so that Lorgar instead crumpled down to rest with his face staring upwards.

“You are now shielded enough once more, by a faint trace of humanity that I can and will remove if necessary. It was by an impressive manipulation of Warp knowledge — doubtlessly not given to you by the Four, given your goals — that you forced my hand and caused my Deification… but there remains far, far more about this universe of which you do not know even the most faint beginnings." His voice somehow turned even colder, frigid hate — and was that a hint of fear? — in his tone as he added "And it was by your short-sighted scrabbling for power that a true God of Civilization in line with your teachings was crafted: soulless, terrible, ever-hungry for naught but conquest, bloodshed, and mindless Order above all else.”

The Emperor knelt at his fallen son’s side, gazing pitilessly down at him. “A God which would have bathed this galaxy in a golden tidal-wave of warfare, different only in the most minute of details from the green tide of the Ork or the crimson bloodshed sought by Khorne. You would have reduced me to their level, bound me within unbreakable rules of Holy Tradition from which I could never have escaped… and you would have been among its first victims. ‘Civilization’ does not share power for long, not even with Prophets. I was there for all of Humanity’s history: the era of the Prophet-King ended inevitably in streets that ran with the blood of priests and Prophets alike.”

Lorgar gurgled a wet laugh, blood running in lumpy rivulets from one corner of his lip. “I see that I am already one of your ‘first victims.’”

The Emperor snorted. “That God was brought into being by your foolishness… and it now lies dead, its monochromatic lifeblood pooling around us all. It lacked even the faint trace of humanity which had yet survived within you… and so the loroi’s presence slew it. You lie here crippled by their hands, not mine; laid low by your own hubris.”

Ah, so that was what that golden-statue had been.

We… killed an incarnation of the God-Emperor? Alex asked, horror and confusion fighting for prominence in his thoughts.

A version which this God-Emperor seems to hate with great fervor. Fireblade pointed out. And that golden statue with its baleful eyes had indeed felt… wrong.

Revolting.

Abnormal.

Even knowing that apparently her instinctual reaction to its presence had been engineered into her ancestors by the Eldar, she could not shake the feeling of satisfaction that she and her caste-sisters had slain it.

For one thing, even the haughtiest Torrai could not claim that her caste had ever killed a ‘God.’

Lorgar spat more words “Yet you still cannot allow me to die. I know that you cannot. I will forever remain your Prophet; that can no longer be changed.”

“That is true indeed. But nowhere in the ties binding a God to their Prophet is there any requirement that you take an active role in my Reborn Imperium.” His faintly-glowing golden eyes rose slightly, seeming to stare through Lorgar off into the distance. A thin smile utterly devoid of any warmth curled at one corner of his disapproving mouth. “As I have heard said to one I knew long, long ago: ‘You will see the Imperium only from a distance; you will not enter the new world I will bring to Humanity.’”

Straightening up, the Emperor canted his head towards Guilliman. “My Captain-General has surely informed you of the availability of the Shadow Cells beneath the Palace?”

Guilliman’s eyes only flickered to his prone brother’s shattered body for a moment before returning to meet the Emperor’s. “Yes, father.” his mouth pulled taut, and he answered “Many of those Cells were… ‘emptied’ without warning, more than a century ago and before my revival. Are you certain that they are secure enough for—?” one arm twitched towards Lorgar.

“Yes, I felt the Warp reach in that day and pluck my prisoners from their vaults. We must prepare well for when those dread abominations are inevitably encountered by Humanity once more.” The Emperor slowly rotated his head back and forth, nodding to himself. “But there are now more… methods available to make their containment secure once more than had been available to the dwindling Imperium.”

Fireblade was most certain that he had been glancing between her caste-sisters, even as she translated and relayed the Emperor’s words for her fellow loroi. And while ‘prison guard’ seemed a waste of a teidar’s talents, if those escaped prisoners — or ‘abominations’ — were fierce enough that even this living God felt some apprehension at their new-found freedom, then perhaps something could be arranged.

And Fireblade had known Tempo for long enough to say with certainty that the plot-happy mizol would be especially intrigued to learn of this new facet which could be brought into future negotiations between the Union and the Imperium. An opportunity for the Union to offer the aid of its telekinetic daughters, and extract some useful concession in turn.

Not to mention that the humans’ Emperor clearly seemed to owe his very life and freedom now to Fireblade and her caste-sisters. One hardly needed to be a sneaky mizol to see how that debt could protect the loroi from their human cousins.

{I do not believe that your people will require ‘protection’ from my Imperium.} the hammer-blow sanzai crashed into her mind once more, a beat before the Emperor’s golden eyes slid aside to meet hers. {I have waited a long time to meet the distant cousins whom I first glimpsed in age-worn records found beneath Terra’s oldest places; I shall hardly allow my people to bring yours to harm.}

Fireblade flinched as the human-occupied half her mind went white with shock at being spoken to so directly by the God-Emperor; the only thing which kept Alex’s portion of their shared self from falling entirely into unconsciousness was Fireblade’s steely discipline clamping down hard on his antics. But she couldn't keep that up forever.

So, how to distract Alex?

Fireblade’s eyes flicked to Lorgar’s blood-caked form at the Emperor’s feet, before climbing all the way back up to meet the two golden eyes. {Did you ‘allow’ several of your sons to turn against you however-long ago?}

An unstoppable bubble of panic flowed over from Alex’s mind to hers, and her right hand twitched upwards towards her neck. With her left hand, she reached over and grasped her right forearm, arresting the motion.

Which did nothing to quiet Alex’s voice in her mind Are you MAD!? Do not speak so flippantly to the God-Emperor!

Grasping my neck would hardly have interrupted my sanzai. If Alex insisted on exposing himself to further combat situations in the future, it was clear that he would require training in the basics of a warrior’s craft.

Then how do I silence you before you get us all killed!?

A pair of glowing eyes narrowed briefly at her, and for a heartbeat there was a faint echo within them of the baleful glare of that earlier golden statue-God.

But then the light-brown skin of his creased brow slackened. {It has been some time since I was spoken to with such lightness.}

See? Alex hissed, no small amount of terror wafting off from his thoughts. I told you!

The Emperor nodded thoughtfully, even as El’Jonson followed his father’s gaze to Fireblade with a frown. {It will be very useful indeed to have others like you in attendance.} Was that a thin smile curling at his lip? {I will almost miss the presence of you both once you return to your duties.}

This time, even Fireblade’s best efforts could not keep Alex from fainting dead away, his presence in her mind dwindling to nothing in a most strange sensation.

///////

For an excellently-written illustration of just what sort of God of Pure Order Lorgar almost made, see this interlude-chapter of another 40k AU story which I quite like.

Author's NoteShow

Guilliman: “Hey Lorgar, now you’re even worse-off than Abaddon! You don’t have any arms or legs!”

Also, Fireblade, please don’t sass-back the God-Emperor. You’re going to give Alex a heart attack.

[dragoongfa]

Hmm, interesting. For a moment I had thought that the 'Dark King' would make an appearance but instead you opted for a Direct inhumane manifestation of the 'God-Emperor' of the Letitio Divinitatus.

My head canon (or plan for a fan fic if I ever get my ass down to write it) is that the Emperor decided to take the matter of the inevitability of the fifth Chaos God as fact and decided to steer it to a more 'manageable' concept that would stabilize the Warp somewhat. The deification of the concept of Altruism would fit in this regard, as all 'Chaos God/Concepts' interact, affect and fight each other Altruism would be able to be a force of 'Order' in the warp, restraining the worst aspects of Change, Stagnation and Conflict while being the Antithesis of Excess. It would not make Chaos go away but it would allow for a more 'manageable' Warp and take away the danger of mass extinction of the entire galaxy by a monstrous Chaos disaster.
No, this would still be a 'Grim-Dark' goal in the sense that the creation of 'Altruism' would be a direct parallel with the emergence of Slaanesh. Trillions if not Quadrillions of souls would be willing and unwilling sacrifices, all the suffering for the past 10 millenia and the seer bone headedness of the Imperial faith being but the necessary tools to maybe create a Chaos God that will simply be able to put a metaphorical leash on the others while it still remains a 'monster' as the worst examples of Imperial Selflessness suddenly become valid avenues of worship of a new Chaos God that only has a veneer of 'Order' to it.
To put it bluntly, the Emperor saw that the 'fucking' was inevitable so best to prepare some lube.

[Urist]

That is a fun way to handle it! And your writings here on the Outsider forum were a large part of what inspired me to write my own Outsider fanfictions, so I'd definitely look forwards to seeing your take on the craziness that is 40k!

And my angle on the Emperor's divinity is that he, being as ancient (and knowledgeable, far more than any other human alive by 40k... and probably all mortal eldar, too) as he is, doesn't view a Warp 'God' as a real 'person'. They're a manifestation of laws and rules, incapable of growing beyond them; the fact that those laws/rules are of the Immaterium rather than the Materium (and thus far, *far* more complex than physics/biology/chemistry) makes little difference to someone at his level.

He views the Four more-or-less the way a safari guide views rhinos, lions, crocodiles, or hippos: they're very dangerous, yes, but they're still /animals/ guided by instinct rather than conscious thought (Khorne physically cannot become anything other than a being of violence and bloodshed, any more than a crocodile could 'choose' to become a vegetarian and learn to recite Shakespeare; it's simply beyond their ability). Of course, being a somewhat arrogant and fallible human as he is, Emps *still* managed to fall afoul of the Four in large part because he underestimated them.

Notes for this story in particularShow

And specific to this fanfic, while unifying Terra (he's generally written as having kept a low profile before the Collapse, so he didn't know *everything* that existed on the planet) he stumbled across some very ancient eldar records, buried somewhere very, very deep underground. That was how he learned where humanity came from (an offshoot of a condemned eldar weapons project), including the note that the 'sensor-creatures' had a flaw where they could become overexposed to the Warp, but the close presence of a 'weapon-creature' would keep them from harm or from leaving their materium-bound selves behind.

Which is why, in the world of 40k, humans seem to be especially prone to Warp corruption compared to the various aliens: they weren't ever meant to navigate the Warp alone, nor did they 'evolve' Warp abilities in any natural way that would have also included some protection for their fragile minds. And a fair bit of the eldar geneticists' work has faded over the ~300,000 years since the humans and loroi were abandoned on their respective planets, which is why the intended abilities of each have become rare (few humans are psykers, and few loroi are telekinetic). But if you pair two of them together... you get the original weapons system that the Eldar Empire considered so scary that they shut down the whole project.

Which is how Fireblade/Alex killed a God, with the support of 19 other teidar.

As for the Emperor, he tried so hard to stamp out religion not so much because he's a militant atheist (although given his opinion of the Four, he's probably not at all religious himself in any recognizable way) but rather because he was terrified of becoming the focus of such devotion himself. Being worshipped as the 'Omnissiah' was only tolerated because he could tell that the worship-energy from the Mechanicum wasn't actually reaching him (I don't know if in canon the Emperor knows that the Void Dragon is the Warp target for the Mechanicum's soul-energy). Enough worship can turn a mortal being into a Warp being, with or without their consent. He saw how limited Gods were, and so viewed such deification as essentially a lobotomy: he wouldn't be himself, but rather something much /less./

So he kept an eye out for humanity's "other half" all throughout the Great Crusade, but it never occurred to him that the Soia-eldar would have put all of their laboratory-worlds so close together. Maybe he would have gotten around to exploring the Regio Silens eventually after finding no signs nearer the ancient Eldar homeworlds, but he never quite got the time. But now he's got a bunch of teidar 'insulators,' enough to keep the overwhelming power of the Ecclesiarchy's worship from overwhelming him while he sets about the long, (probably futile) task of trying to overturn 10,000 years of established religion.

Anyone want to take a bet how long it will be until some Ecclesiarchy or Inquisition leader declares the reborn Emperor to be an imposter/pretender/heretic/etc.? Either out of their own ambition, or sheer misplaced faith? /That/ would be an amusing twist on the endless conflict of 40k! Pretty similar to the conflict described in the fanfic I linked at the end of the previous story chapter, but not quite as impressively hopeless for humanity.

[Snoofman]

I was trying come up with something witty to express my pleasant surprise to how well you have incorporated the Loroi into the God Emperor’s schemes.

Since my muse failed to provide, I thought a Warhammer quote would be more fitting. After five minutes of searching, I thought this was better than most witty remarks:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HNEzD5n6SAs

[Urist]

Glad to hear it! I wanted to write them in in a way which would make the loroi feel like they 'fit' in 40k, and I hope that I succeeded.

And in the spirit of the over-the-top silliness that can happen in the Imperium, consider that there's some alternate universe where Alexander was instead "Lord Trader Alexander Bollocksous LXXV." That would have been a *very* different story...

[Urist]

Author's NoteShow

Brief final chapter here, just to end the story on a relatively high note... and a hint as to one of the plots that's been going on all this time.

///////

As soon as the Emperor’s fist crushed tight around the remaining glowing soul-orb held within it, the Warp bubble around them all disappeared in a flash.

And they all found themselves back in the amplifier-chamber beneath the human’s ornate throne.

{Did you see something?} Beryl sent to Fireblade, her head twitching in the teidar’s direction. {It looked like everything just… ‘flickered’ for a solon there. And—}

Without looking, Fireblade shifted her weight to one side and reached out her arm, grasping hold of Alex before the unconscious human slumped to the ground. It seems that having his mind returned to his own body had not quite managed to wake him just yet.

{—And what has happened to Attache Jardin?} Beryl finished her thought. Tempo also turned to her with a wordless burst of curious sanzai.

Evidently, the whole experience in the ‘Warp bubble’ a few solon ago had taken no time at all here in the material world.

It was all most confusing.

Fireblade glanced past the listel to where the Emperor now stood, loomed over his collapsed traitor-son. Flowing black hair danced against bronze-brown skin, as the towering restored human turned on one heel and put his back to the gurgling mess at his feet. Golden-irised eyes swept across the room, lingering on each of the teidar around him for just a moment.

For their part, the Azerein’s elite warriors returned his stare levelly... although Fireblade could faintly detect the flurry of sanzai that shot to-and-fro between even those stoic veterans. Unsurprising, even though it seemed that they had seen only a few short moments of the strange events in the warp bubble.

In the meantime, Beryl had followed Fireblade’s gaze to the Emperor, and the shock emanating from the petite listel washed over her. {Is that—} her thoughts broke off momentarily, {Is that not the human’s emperor?} Before Fireblade could answer, Beryl continued hesitantly {He looks most like the artistic depictions, not the live-corpse you reported.}

{He has been restored, in part by the efforts of my caste-sisters and I. I do not claim to understand the details — or anything other than the general sweep of events — but that much I can confidently say.} Fireblade adjusted her grip on Alex, reaching up to place one fingertip on the bridge of his nose. And pushed only the smallest amount of electrokinetic force that she could manage through the connection. It would sting more than a little, but she knew that Alex would wish to be conscious for this.

The human snorted and lurched in her arms, eyes shooting wide-open. They met hers, and the pained panic of such a sudden awakening faded.

Tempo stepped aside, giving Fireblade space to set Alex on his feet again. The mizol sent {The human emperor appears surprisingly large even without armor or clothing; it seems that it did not add as much to his bulk as I had assumed.}

To Alex, Beryl spoke aloud in Trade “Your emperor seems to have been healed! That is most good news, yes?”

Alex did not answer, instead only staring wide-eyed as his people’s ruler raised his head to gaze past the small group of loroi and their human. A solon later, and a clattering of metal-on-stone echoed down the corridor behind them. Faint enough that only the trained hearing of a veteran teidar would have caught it, but loud against the silence of the room.

She turned just as a veritable flood of golden-armored Custodians flooded into the room, gun-halberds lowered and ready. They must have been hurrying indeed, to be making any noise at all compared to their normally-silent steps. Several of their number even arrived only half-armored, missing pauldrons or helmets.

Hardened brows that she had never yet seen so much as twitch now shot upwards as the elite human warriors caught sight of their liege. In a wave spreading outwards, they immediately knelt and bowed their heads. One at the fore, among those without a helmet, asked bluntly “Sire. Our orders?”

As if it were the most normal thing for their long-dead leader to return to life.

In High Gothic that echoed both through the room and Alex’s mind, the emperor replied “Prepare my Legio for off-world deployment within the month. We depart as soon as the Throne’s restored seal upon the Gate is confirmed. Further, bring me my armor — it is at this time that it is especially important that I be seen as I was before the Rebellion.” The briefest of shadows danced over his eyes, but his iron voice betrayed none of the regret that had been there only moments ago within the Warp.

Before the kneeling Custodian could respond, Guilliman stepped past his father, walking towards the exit. Spoke back over his shoulder “I will see to reclaiming your wargear, father. It has been allotted to various… institutions during our long absence from the Imperium.”

Heavy eyelids closed over faint-golden eyes. “Temples, no doubt.” the emperor swore.

Guilliman only nodded his head, before turning to pointedly rest his eyes on the broken form of Lorgar on the floor.

“He will be taken to my private sanctum. I have further words for him, to be shared with none other.”

With a nod, Guilliman disappeared through the doorway.

The Emperor’s head turned with all of the weight of a battleship’s heavy turret, now coming to bear on Yvraine. For her part, the eldar — notably taller than a loroi, but appearing almost child-height compared to humanity’s returned leader — met his gaze unflinchingly. “I will speak with your Master later this day. He and I have… arrangements to make, but it is not yet the time for us to meet. I expect that I know where you may be found.” For a half-solon, those golden eyes of his flickered back above Fireblade’s head… gazing after where Guilliman had departed?

With a faint tinkling of the remaining gems in her headdress, the single eldar bobbed her head and departed as well.

Which left the amplifier-chamber room still crowded, with a dozen custodians, twenty-two loroi, Alex, and the primarch El’Jonson. It was towards the latter that the emperor next spoke, his voice pitched low enough that it might not be heard outside of the room “You will keep a close watch on her. I trust that you will find a balance between your brother’s wishes and the necessary security.”

Graying hairs tightened around the Primarch’s hidden mouth, and he gruffly asked “Then you do not wish him to sever fully their… alliance?”

“A Prophet of a reborn Warp Entity may be a powerful ally,” his father intoned, and both men’s eyes dropped briefly to where Lorgar weakly coughed up another bubble of black blood, “but also a great risk. The Eldar are a people even more prone to extremes of ambition than are we, and the Warp Entity which chose her is no more trustworthy than the rest of its ilk.”

That pulled a cold laugh from El’Jonson. “I understand.” He turned, and left the chamber.

The Imperial Guard teidar had made their way through the crowding custodians to gather as one behind her, but even with the great strength of so many warriors at her back Fireblade still felt a faint chill run down her spine when the emperor’s eyes came to rest upon her. Then snapped minutely to her right. {Parat Tempo, I believe that you carry with you your ruler’s response to my proposals?}

{I do.} the mizol responded calmly, as if conversing with a reborn, naked half-alien god was just another day’s work. {You would prefer to discuss it… here?} Tempo’s face was turned away from Fireblade, but she knew without seeing that two red perreinid eyes had dropped meaningfully to Lorgar’s half-corpse.

{Later, then. I bid you and yours return to the quarters that you resided in, during your last visit to my world.} The focus of his sanzai shifted slightly, aiming past Fireblade like a spotlight. {Mallas Steelgrasp, I would ask that your team remain by my side for a time.} Golden eyes narrowed slightly. {It is necessary that I announce my return before too much panic spreads, and if your people are seen alongside me from the start then much which must come will happen all the smoother.}

The strange patterns of his thoughts — caused by his apparent age, his ‘rebirth’, or merely by his being a half-alien without Alex’s familiarity with loroi? — made his sanzai slightly difficult to follow, but after a moment the senior Guard teidar responded with a sharp {Very well.}

Fireblade turned to leave, but Alex’s trembling grip on her shoulder stopped her. The emperor’s gaze finally came to settle on Alex, and with a nod he sent {While you rest, Trader Jardin, think on how you will prepare ‘your’ worlds for my arrival on Deinar to formalize our alliance, six solar months from now.}

Alex’s hand spasmed, locking onto Fireblade’s armored shoulder-plate. While the human convulsively bowed, too awe-struck to send or even speak an answer, Fireblade put one hand around his waist to guide him away.

They had just reached the doorway when a familiar blue giant came striding down the corridor towards them, followed by — Fireblade squinted against the dim human-preferred candlelight — one of these ‘Sororitas’ warriors?

Guilliman’s broad hands carried a set of ornate golden armor plates, too massive even for his own frame. The ‘normal-sized’ warrior who had to near-jog to keep pace with him had one arm still wrapped in a sling, but the other carefully held tight to a gigantic packet of folded and richly-embroidered cloth which she had slung over her uninjured shoulder. Battle-scarred brows furrowed as her eyes remained locked on Guilliman, asking “—ord, I am always glad to follow His Will, but these are His very—!”

Her voice died in her throat, as her gaze finally turned from Guilliman to stare past Fireblade without so much as noticing the loroi. Eyes held half-closed by scar-tissue and aged lines bulged wide… and rolled up, out of sight.

Guilliman shot out one hand, grasping the fainting warrior by her armor and holding her and her cargo aloft.

A deep rumble came from behind her, and after a solon Fireblade recognized it as the human emperor laughing. “I see that you have learned much indeed since last we stood side-by-side.”

Guilliman’s face remained impassive, but Fireblade caught a momentary gleam in the corner of his eyes. “There is an art to running an empire larger even than that of Ultramar, father. The High Lords have been discussing for months how to properly reward the Canoness Superior here for her recent crusade’s success; I suspect that I have at last found an appropriate recompense. She will no doubt treasure the memory of this image for the remainder of her life.”

Slinging the carried armor over his own broad shoulder, Guilliman plucked the folded cloth from the unconscious warrior’s drooping hands and hurled it past Fireblade. Partly unfolding mid-flight, it became recognizable as heavy clothing sized for a giant… or a god.

{That is a most unusual reward for a human warrior, or so I thought. The mere sight of an unclothed male does not seem to be so much by itself.} Fireblade sent to Alex, poking through his whirling thoughts. She frowned, and after a moment the corner of her lips curled into a knowing smile. {Unless your emperor is perhaps available for an encoun—?}

Exactly as expected, Alex whirled to stare wide-eyed at her. Feigning innocence, Fireblade returned his incredulous glare.

Although it seemed that her human was becoming accustomed to it, as after only a solon or two he shook his head, thoughts spinning ever-more-rapidly.

Thoughts which she caught a glimpse of. {It is good of you to remember your ‘life-debt’ to Pideir Reed that you remain determined to honor, but she would not be quite so motivated by a glimpse of your nude emperor-male… nor do you yet hold enough influence within the Union to secure for her an encounter with a male whom she would desire to that degree.}

They stepped past Guilliman, there being plenty of room even in this ‘narrow’ — by human standards — corridor. {I see.} Alex replied, clearly fighting to push the red-pink off of his cheeks.

A faint trace of a sound pulled at her ear as they passed through the door, and Fireblade half-turned her head to glance back over her shoulder. Past Tempo, whose inquisitive eyes immediately snapped to hers. To where the Emperor stood now almost alone in the amplifier chamber, only a single Custodian standing by his side while the other golden-armored warriors secured the only door alongside the Guard teidar.

In a rumbling whisper that her well-honed hearing only barely caught, the human giant spoke aside to the single Custodian...the sounds of which meant nothing to her; Alex could not hear them to ‘translate’ for her. On a hunch, she grasped his hand just in time for the emperor’s next murmur “Your sons’ initiative is recognized, and will be rewarded in time. Recall them and set to your new duties.”

As guessed, she could ‘pull’ the meaning through Alex’s mind through the enhanced connection.

{?} Alex sent, looking distractedly up at Fireblade. Then followed her gaze backwards.

She turned her head forwards just as the emperor finished his conversation, hopefully before he saw that it had been overheard. Allies or not, it seemed unwise to make it clear that she had received a message clearly intended to be private.

The limits of vocal speech over sanzai.

{Nothing.} she sent to Alex, and then repeated the same to Tempo upon feeling the mizol’s curiosity pressing into her mind.

Just the end of a long and most confusing journey.

///////

It seemed that Alex’s shock at the events of the last cycle or two wore off in stages. And if the human’s heart had surged with joy those many days earlier when he first awoke in a Deinarid hospital bed and realized what a great victory they had scored over a pair of his people’s hated Traitors, it was as nothing compared to the elation surging throughout his mind now. Even spilling over into Fireblade’s own and affecting her thoughts… or at least, that was what she insisted to herself.

After all, why else would a veteran teidar — who was supposed to be on her most-disciplined behavior as a representative of her people — choose to allow Alex’s hand to go from first gripping her own hand to then holding her shoulder, and eventually dropping to wrap around her waist? And the way that when his stride drew closer to her, occasionally softly bumping shoulders, she did not even think of rebuffing him.

It was most obvious to anyone they passed in the corridors — or would have passed; this sector of the palace seemed to have been emptied of non-Custodian humans just as last time — just what was on the male’s mind. Exactly the sort of thing that one expected from a male in his position, of course, but still hardly the behavior one normally saw outside of a monastery’s inner passageways.

Then again, the humans did not have ‘monasteries,’ did they?

Even Tempo’s pointed look — felt through sanzai rather than visually observed — was not enough to jar her back into propriety. Admittedly, perhaps that was because Fireblade knew her longtime friend well enough to feel that the mizol was not strictly objecting, merely reminding Fireblade of what any other loroi would have thought under the circumstances.

By the time their single Custodian guide drew to a halt outside what seemed to be the very same apartment as before, Fireblade could feel the growing buzz of private sanzai between Tempo and Beryl. As the group paused, Fireblade threw a brief glance over her shoulder to see Tempo’s single raised eyebrow… and Beryl’s broad smile between blue-flushed cheeks.

A sight which Alex also noticed, opening his mouth to speak something. But of all the whirling thoughts that she saw in his mind, nothing came out but a hoarse cough. His eyes snapped to hers, a pleading look mixed with… other emotions.

Fireblade flicked her own gaze to Tempo, not even needing to put her request into sanzai. It would hardly take a mizol to tell what Alex’s intended request had been, after all.

Red met green, and after a few solon Tempo nodded. Glanced at Alex, and a thin smile escaped onto the Perreinid’s stony face. She gestured minutely for Beryl to step forwards.

Still beaming, Beryl craned her neck to the unreadable helmet-face of the Custodian. In High Gothic that seemed to have improved greatly from what Fireblade could hear of its echo through Alex’s mind, she asked “Can it perhaps be possible that Parat Tempo and I can be seeing other parts of this most impressive structure? It seems that Pallan Fireblade and Trader Alexander will be wanting the apartment by themselves for some time.”

With a squelched groan Alex clapped one hand over his face, just in time for the Custodian to turn his flat-red eye-lenses on the smaller human. Which seemed an odd reaction — if one of the other golden-armored giants had ‘sons,’ then clearly these strange warrior-males must understand what was being requested.

After several solon, the Custodian nodded. “A prepared route has been pre-approved. You will follow me.” Without any further elaboration — and still with impressive silence for such a hulking warrior — he turned and continued down the corridor.

Alex palmed open the door, and his hand that had not left the swell of Fireblade’s hip through all of this attempted to pull her inside after him. His face still almost matched her own hair's bright crimson, but the thoughts she could feel now crystallizing inside his head were most clear...and perhaps increasingly mirrored in the warmth of her own mind.

Letting her human lead her inside their apartment, Fireblade paused only long enough to meet Beryl’s smiling eyes {Best make your tour at least two cycles.}

Beryl’s laughter was joined by Tempo’s own, a rare bit of openness from the reserved mizol.

The door closed on their happy faces, and Fireblade turned back to Alex. It had been some time since another person’s hands had helped her remove her armor… and she was looking forwards to the experience.

///////

Author's NoteShow

And that’s a wrap! For the main story, anyways; I’ve got a few epilogue chapter ideas floating around, that would outline the progression of Imperium-Union relations (and Fireblade-Alex relations) over the next few centuries.

But for those worried that the story hasn’t gone in a grimdark enough direction, don’t worry: things will get quite interesting (not ‘good’) now that Emps is back on his feet. After all, the last time that he was fully alive he wasn’t exactly an ‘I win’ button for humanity... and the galaxy has only gotten more dangerous in the last ~10,000 years. So the Imperium might no longer be on their back foot, but that’s a long, long way from ‘improving.’

[dragoongfa]

I knew it, Alpharius posing as the Costudian who 'escorted' them aboard the Blood Raven cruiser and negotiated with the Union. All part of the plan to convince the Loroi that the Imperium is their only hope, all this with relatively minor lose.

In any case, I hope that you don't make the Sororitas turn traitorous, for all their faults they have always been the only branch of the Imperium's forces that has been unquestioningly loyal to the Emperor and the Emperor alone; maybe with the exception of the Custodes but they got infiltrated by Alpharius (or is it Omegon?) so they get a demerit.