Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Espeon the espeon (her previous owner was not particularly talented when it came to the art of naming) was lost. Very lost. One moment she’d been poking about in the back of the old powerplant outside the town, looking for that interesting psychic signature she’d sensed, and the next moment she was… elsewhere.

It was a subtle thing at first— to the visual senses, at least. She’d slipped into a dark room, dilapidated concrete and derelict machinery littered around, scattered little pieces of metal long rusted, only the very edges still glimmering with the faint memory of the steel it’d once been— a dead room, not sterile but crypt-dead, like a buried little world. In all honesty, she probably should have turned back.

That strange signature had been so close, though, and so, instead, she’d pressed forward, wiggling through a crack in the wall more fit for an eevee than a respectable espeon of her stature. It’d been a bit of a tight squeeze, but with a bit of extra effort, just barely— she’d made it! Tumbling out into a rather similar room on the other side, all broken concrete and machinery, and severed wires lying like limp rubber snakes, unmoving—

That was when she knew she was somewhere else.

It was hard to describe to non-psychics, but… if she had to, she’d say that there was a… background psychic field that permeated through everything. It was usually unnoticeable, just a feather-light presence that underpinned the more immediate, the more knowable. She’d never quite understood it, but it was a pretty niche trick anyways; it could be used for some high-level psychic tricks, could liven up a party (so long as the other attendees’s partner pokemon were all psychics of considerable skill and acumen) and that was pretty much it.

The background field where she was now was…

Different.

Yeah, that was perhaps the best way to put it without going into a bit of a nervous breakdown. Different. It wasn’t some calm thing— no, it roiled. It crashed and roared, seething with the immolate and hadean, tempestuous and mercurial and corrosive— and above all, radiant. The radiance was blinding. Even looking away from it, it was blinding. A beacon of brilliant psychic power, pure in a scouring sort of way, burning away the indescribable corruption that lurked deep within that warped sea of psychic energy. It was so strong…

She blinked, squinting her (metaphoric, thankfully) third eye shut. Well, at least someone was doing something about those four gross somethings that sat deep in the heart of the whole mess? She shook her head, ears flopping as she continued her little quest.

Very quickly, she discovered that she was not within the power plant anymore. That much was obvious the moment she got a few rooms over and realized that she should’ve long-since left the possible size of the decrepit building— but more than that, the architecture! Her earlier inkling that she’d stumbled into a crypt might have been more than accurate.

Vast and golden halls rose up to indiscernible heights, clouded with incense that made her want to sneeze and and mist, swirling amongst pillars carved with names that wept of their honored deaths. Skulls lined the walls, their hallowed, hollow eyes tracking her as she slipped silently beneath their gaze. Intricate banks of machinery burst free of the ground, hissing and pumping, turning and clicking and breathing in a way that almost made the whole thing feel one small component part, one small organ to some so-massive being. Past scenes that flickered and statues both gruesome and awe-inspiring, past floating robot-things and doors sealed with wax and blessed inscriptions, past— all, encompassed by a rhythmic, liturgic chanting, a rumbling sound from far away, ten million voices upraised and flowing, all of it flowing, towards the burning light in the center.

A hum, a beastly growl, a devout murmur… machinery and man, the sound of it all blended into a dull background noise that Espeon did not find entirely unpleasant. Different, certainly, but there was no silence here amongst these hallowed halls, and she could appreciate that. It kept away the icky feeling of the background psychic field, at least.

Heavy boots thud against metal and she— well, she startled, hiding in the corner as a truly massive man clad in golden armor strode down her hallway, carrying a wicked looking weapon. More than that, they had a presence like she’d never felt from a human before, an ancient and implacable and strong presence. It was… intimidating, and he was certainly no slouch in checking every nook and cranny for any hidden intruders. Luckily for her, though, her short stature and a bit of psychic trickery allowed her to slip by unnoticed.

A little more cautiously, she continued forward— into that burning light. Making sure not to get too close to any of the patrolling golden knights, until at last…

It was almost anticlimactic. There was a guarded door that she was pretty sure she’d never be able to get through, psychic power or not, but that wasn’t the only entrance. Letting spool her psychic power, she allowed it to gently flow out and find the path of least resistance to that burning cynosure— and followed it through the tight bundle of wires and piping and strange mechanical marvels.

And, came to stand, then, in a sacred silence, innermost amongst what felt like all the world— silent as a crypt, but for the bundle of wires and metal tubes and hissing machinery, and blinking lights, and legions of skulls of the hallowed dead, all coming together at that brilliant golden throne and the corpse that sat on it.

She gasped, the sound strikingly loud in the dead air. That was it. The source of the blazing power— the golden throne…

No. She squinted, then scampered up to the foot of that gaunt cadaver in half-surprise, half-horror. “Es… peon? Espeon?” She did not know if the man— the giant, the divinity on the throne could hear her— but she was sure that he wasn’t dead. His body writhed with vast and terrible power, biblical in scale and apocalyptic in the grievous wounds that rent it— terrible wounds on his physical form, and far, far worse on his soul.

The machines did what they could to hold him together, which was already a marvel; were it anyone else, she’d have thought they were long past dead. Yet they could not heal him. And the machines were merely the gentlest of the forces that burned at his pyre-forme soul. A thousand souls circled around him in a mad cyclone as they were consumed— most willingly throwing themselves upon his burning light, some fighting, all taking their toll against those tattered wounds deep within him. The prayers of… Arceus, she couldn’t even count how many people crashed against him in a never-ending tide, each one the tiniest speck of potential but together a never-ending ocean of power, crashing against the tattered remnants of his soul with a ruinous force. At parts, the mass of… well, souls were always hard to describe in the first place, and this wreck-of-one only ever the more so— appeared broken, others flayed, some missing altogether.

Yet, still, despite the agony that he was no doubt experiencing with every passing second, he still reached out. She saw strands of golden power cross indescribable distances to convey assurance, others to bless, others to uplift, still more to smite. Below it all, a flood of power drained away into sustaining that immense, burning light.

She had never met a legendary pokemon before, but she imagined this is what they were like— powerful beyond the comprehension of mortals, their works so wide as to be invisible in their grandeur, cataclysmic as storms or earthquakes or the edicts of gods.

Moreover— she realized with a start— one of those tendrils was heading towards her.

++WHAT ARE YOU? SOME BEAST OF XENOS MAKE? THE WORKING OF MINE ENEMIES? I SENSE NO TAINT OF CHAOS ON YOU, BUT THE WORST OF OURS WAS ALWAYS THE MAKE OF MORTALS++ She gasped, tail stiffening from base to tips as the words crashed against her thunderously. She quickly made a hard-memory, storing the technique— a way to psychically code concepts-as-words, rather than mere empathic resonance! It was fascinating, and she’d look at it later, and…

She could feel the depth of his pain. Beneath his words, it carried— she doubted he meant for it to carry, but with his psychic powers tied up elsewhere and the sending as blunt as it was powerful, she could sense what he was. Who he was.

Like ten thousand whispers, in damned chorus— Horus, why? Sanguinius… almost daemonic, My Sons, My Loyal Followers, How I hath Forsaken Thou… but Esepon knew the workings of thoughts enough to know that it was merely the inner feelings of a man of incommensurable power. Malcador… my Saints and Martyrs… This Empire, my Sin… tarnished…

More than that, as an espeon, underpinning all her psychic ability was an innate empathy— and she could tell that this man, this Emperor, was…

Sad.

It was tragic, even the glimpses she caught. To exist forever in this undying state, giving life unending through infinite torment for something that had tarnished almost beyond recognition… She breathed in, shuddering as the feeling left her, and sent the not-quite-corpse her best psychic reassurement. “Everything will be fine. Hold on. The sun always rises eventually.” It was not a lot, compared to the immense energy that swirled around him, but at the very least her proximity made it more amplified than anything.

Espeon was smart. Smarter than her old trainer, that was for sure. Probably smarter than a lot of humans, even if she couldn’t really show it. She wasn’t a psychic doctor, sure, but she was strong enough— and moreover, delicate enough— to at least solve some of the stupid problems that should’ve never been allowed to get as bad as they had.

So, she did.

The man’s soul was enormous, so immensely powerful, that she’d never have been able to fix it by herself. It would have slurped up all her psychic power, and probably would’ve eaten her soul too while it was at it, completely unconsciously. Luckily, though, his soul was the central focus for basically infinite power, and given how much of it got wasted and just went flying off into nothing, she figured he probably wouldn’t mind if she borrowed some.

It was a heady power— which came with its own concerns, like never ever taking in some of the other power, that disgusting, putrid mass of maleficence off in the distance— like drinking in pure sunlight, making her want to hop about in excitement or take a good nap. Yet, she had a job to do.

First, fix the worst stuff. The most grievous psychic wound was a horrible scar where the soul-components for compassion and empathy lay— a tattered, jagged wound, like someone had reached in and scooped them out. Shivering, she twisted her borrowed soul power over itself thirteen times, then formed a delicate lattice out of it and shoved it in with a gentle push.

In an instant, she felt the full attention of that divinity fall on her. It was enough to make her legs buckle and her mind fuzz, but she kept working— only taking a slight moment to send Compassion, Patience, Hope— to him. Maybe later, if he was really as good a psychic as she’d seen, she’d explain the whole procedure, and how his soul would regrow to fill in the lattice voids. For now though, she had to keep pushing forward.

She calmed the sea of souls around them, sending their spirits on and draping herself in their blessed power. With that power, she set to healing the worst of the injuries— ancient things, lacerations in his divine body that were being dug deeper by the power that had been ostensibly sent to help him. With the matrix in place within, she didn’t have to worry about accidentally collapsing his soul, which made the whole thing a lot easier.

She slotted the shattered pieces of his soul back together again, fitting them in place and coating them in a bit of psychic power to make sure they didn’t go flying off again. She pulled at the tattered threads at the edge of him, tucking them back into their proper places and smoothing over the scarred and pitted surface, and stitched shut the worst lesions, and lanced the pustulent boils of soul-scar that had been forming where the machine had begun to calcify his soul after so long keeping it on the border between life and death. She cleaned out the metaphysical channels and fed the soulwork deep within, and only when all of that was done did she allow herself to collapse to the side, exhausted. That had been… a lot harder than she’d expected. She’d never worked on such an old soul before, and a lot of the changes had fought her.

Then the door at the end of the hall burst open.

A squad of the golden Knights raced into the room, their weapons crackling with a strange and threatening energy. “Sound the alarm! The Sanctum Imperialis is Bbreached! To arms!” Then they spotted her, and for a single, terrifying moment, Espeon thought she was toast. Which would’ve been a shame, because that was her brother’s name, and she’d never particularly liked the flareon anyways.

++BE AT PEACE, MY FAITFUL CUSTODES++ At once, all the golden-clad custodes dropped to a knee and bowed to the corpse emperor. She could sense… a great deal of emotion from them. ++THIS IS MY FRIEND, WHOM HAS FOR US ACCOMPLISHED AN ACT OF IMMESURABLE MERIT. TREAT HER WELL.++ Even that small bit of telepathy had clearly exhausted him after his recent soul-surgery, and he quickly faded back to his blissful, agonized silence. She was a bit more preoccupied with the psychic undertones of his little speech, which— cute? She was not cute, she was a respectable and composed espeon, not cute!

The leader of the custodes clapped a fist to his chest, the metallic sound echoing in the throne room. “As the Emperor commands, we shall do! We shall treat the Amicus Imperator with the honor of heroes!” Then, quieter, to one of his fellow custodes— “so… how does one take care of a cat?”

She just snorted.

Chapter Text

As it turned out, walking through a crack in the wall and coming out in another world meant that she had a whole lot of stuff to catch up on. Her status as the Amicus Imperator— which was apparently a real title and not just something they called her the one time— had meant that the custodes were… zealous when it came to her protection. The custodes were also, as it turned out, all several thousand year old warrior-ascetics dedicated wholly to the protection of the Emperor in life and death, which made them… interesting to be around.

Also none of them knew what to do with her. It was kind of funny.

Sometimes they treated her like they would any other cat (a type of unintelligent feline-esque animal that lived on the planet). Other times, they treated her like an honored guest. Urged on by plenty of golden-armored glares and that rather pompous sounding title, any of the rare other humans she met— more normal sized humans who usually did menial tasks, or mechanical humans that were dedicated to the upkeep of the palace and its complex workings— treated her like a legendary pokemon, or a saint. Or a cat.

It was all a bit confusing, honestly, and she spent most of her time in her rooms. They hadn’t let her stay in the Sanctum Imperialis, unfortunately, much as she would have liked to keep a closer eye on her work— something about it not being proper? But they had given her an entire suite of lavishly furnished rooms to live in, so she could forgive them just a little.

Furnished for humans, yes, but she’d had a trainer before— she knew her way around human domiciles like the back of her paw. There was a super plush bed, a bunch of… things she didn’t know how to use, an entire small library, and also some dataslates that apparently connected to bigger libraries of technical schema. Given that they used a different language than she was used, and that she had to relearn how to read, the library was very helpful.

That was how she spent most of her days. Reading whatever book caught her fancy, wandering around the imperial palace looking at all the interesting sites and grand statuary until the aura of human suffering around her got too overwhelming, and occasionally checking in on how the Emperor was doing from a distance. In a lot of ways, it was very different from her old life in the wilds, but also, kind of the same. She was the master of her own schedule, unlike when she’d been with her trainer…

She missed him, a little bit. They’d not parted on good terms, but the thought that she’d never see him again was still a little bitter.

Sometimes, she’d get one of the custodes to pet her. Most were unwilling— something about not daring to disrespect the Amicus Imperator? But a few of the more kindly ones were willing to tolerate her presence while they worked. Notably, they never stopped working for her, just allowed her along.

It was… enlightening.

One of the first things she’d learnt was that she’d slightly misjudged the scale of things. What she’d thought was the whole palace— and impossibly vast palace, at that— was merely the absolute center of an unimaginably vast palace, bigger than any city on her home planet. The palace was part of a greater industrial-urban complex than spanned the entire planet, so densely overbuilt that trillions lived upon its surface… and that was merely one planet amongst the millions that bore the banner of the Emperor. It really put things in perspective.

Another thing she pretty quickly learnt was that her new world was… brutal. The custodes themselves had a… nice sort of aura, refined and battle-like, yes, but no more than any other powerful pokemon might. The other humans, though…

Hunger and avarice were the most common, she found, for Holy Terra was a world of greed. It was the center of the imperial bureaucracy after all, so that was somewhat to be expected. What was far less pleasant was the… darker things, that lurked sometimes within the deeper places of the city. Servitors wrought from men, blessedly unthinking, but not unfeeling. Violence over the slightest of things. Awe and terror, towards the custodes, towards the arbites, towards her at times. The first time she’d seen the custodes brutally kill a man for calling her a mangy cat she’d locked herself in her room and hadn’t come out until the custodes she’d been traveling with had come to apologize for disturbing her.

Not for bursting the man’s chest like a ripe grape and slicing in twain from the bottom up. Just for disturbing her… and he was one of the nice ones.

It was after that she’d focused more thoroughly on trying to master the language and learn just what was going on in her new world. If such was common even on the most sacred world of the Imperium… she had a bad feeling about what was happening out amongst the screaming stars.

………

Once Captain-General, now merely Custodes, Constantin Valdor was an old man. He had seen the rise of the imperium and the golden moment of the Emperor of Man, had seen the great crusade from the tip of the emperor’s spear, and the horror of the Horus Heresy at the center of the emperor’s shield. He had borne witness to the ruined husk of the Emperor upon his internment, and had resigned his office to the next elect. He had served faithfully for thousands of years as one of the emperor’s very own Hatearon Guard. He had borne witness to the very best of man, and the very worst. He had personally led task forces against the very greatest of the xenos scum and daemonic maleficence, and had also served as just one more nameless suit of armor amongst the patrols in the imperial palace.

He found himself… troubled.

First, the unexpected breach in palace security. For nigh on eight thousand years, now, they had not let even insects approach the throne of the emperor uninvited— and yet, a creature of some strange and alien make, nearly half as tall as a man of mundane stature and clearly out of place to anyone with even the slightest amount of good sense on their shoulders— had managed to sneak past their watch and meet the emperor face to face. It was humiliating. At least the psychic shield that had prevented them from entering the emperor’s final resting place had probably been the emperor’s own working; had it been the cat’s, he might have very well fallen on his spear out of sheer shame.

Then, the emperor’s edict. It had been utterly baffling. At first he had feared some sort of psychic corruption on that most holy corpse, but no— every test (and he really did mean every test) had come back showing the emperor and his life support in a better state than they’d been since only a thousand years after his original interment. It was utterly baffling, and good news by any metric, but still… the mere thought that someone, some unsanctioned psycher, had operated on the Emperor of Mankind without their knowledge rankled so fiercely he wanted to personally go and stab demons until he’d cooled down.

Instead, he just stood in his study, looking out on the golden landscape of Terra’s endless spires and the glittering of Luna hung above, and pondered the nature of the Imperium’s very own, brand new Amicus Imperator. What a ludicrous title…

At first glance, the creature was merely a mutant feline of some kind. Purple fur, forehead gem, and split tail— as well as the admittedly cute tuffs of fur beneath its ears— it was not particularly far off from a rather genetically standard felix. Certainly, stranger things than that existed amongst the stars. Frankly, stranger things than that probably existed on Terra.

That was where the thoughts of most everyone had ended. It looked like a cat, it behaved like a cat— if unusually well mannered and intelligent— and showed no sign of corruption or even xenos markers (despite its strange and near-unquantifiable psychic bent), and so it was a cat. Valdor, though, had learnt in his long years of service that sometimes even the truth of things could decieve— and he was convinced that there was more to it than that.

The door behind him opened, and it was only in the reflection of his window that he saw his guest enter. “Be welcome in my home, Brother.”

The other custodes did not doff his helmet or relinquish his weapon, merely dropping to a knee with a clang and bowing his head low. “Most Honorable Brother. You have called, and I so respond. For the emperor.” 

Valdor had to resist the urge to sigh. Even— technically— equal in rank to any other custodes (barring his superiors, of course), the reverence of his former position was inescapable. “For the emperor, brother. You need not be so formal. This could be a social call.”

“I doubt that.”

He did sigh, then. The worst part about reputation was when he kept on acting to reinforce it… “you would be right. I heard that you were involved in an altercation some sixty standard days prior.”

If anything, his fellow custodes bowed his head even lower in shame. The mood in the palace had been deathly grim since the incursion, and to have stirred up trouble beyond that… yes, he could understand what the man was feeling. “I… did, may the emperor forgive my transgressions. I was on patrol in the outer sectors, and a worker insulted the Amicus Imperator— going so far as to call them a mangy cat! They seemed disturbed at the vitriol, so I removed the source.”

Understandable. To insult someone named friend by the divine word of the God-Emperor himself, to their face no less… death was a mercy for such heresy. Yet… “I take it things didn’t go well?”

“The Amicus Imperator appeared to be viscerally disturbed at my actions, and immediately ran back to their suite and locked themselves inside. I was only able to recently ameliorate the reaction and bring them forth from their seclusion, and our relationship is still… strained. Please. Forgive me.”

“I am not your commanding officer. If you have been found blameless in the eyes of your superior and the emperor, then you are blameless.” That, at least, seemed to lift a weight from the man’s shoulders. “When the Amicus Imperator ran back— they weren’t escorted by a custodes, were they?”

“I am told that they took the custodial passage back by themselves.” Which meant they had known how to operate the custodial passage. Simple enough for an intelligent human, perhaps, but for a cat?

“Can you tell me more about them?”

“They are… kind. Like a saint, whoever they pass is made lighter. It appears to be a natural psychic field of sorts, instinctual almost given its constancy even during the Amicus Imperator’s sleep, but weak and noticeable. It would have no effect on most psycho-indoctrinated space machines, much less a custodes in battle regalia.

“Hmm… and their activities?”

“They spend most of the day either wandering around the palace— occasionally trying to tempt us into petting them— or in their rooms, fiddling with techno-baubles and… reading.”

“Books?”
“Or the provided dataslate.” The custodes shrugged. “I do not know if they truly understand the material. They have been flipping through a seemingly random selection of books, occasionally skipping large portions of text or focusing on blocks of nonsensical census information and such. Several of my Brothers believe that she learnt the behavior from whoever they were… where they came from.” A clever mimic or a guarded xeno… either one was bad news.

A frown etched itself onto his face, and he nodded. “Thank you for speaking of this to me. You are dismissed.” The custodes clapped a fist to his chest in salute, then strode off.

It would be easy to dismiss it as a learned behavior. He’d heard of similar; servitors which could tend to libraries without fail, a bird kept as a pet by a rouge trader that could hold whole conversations with nobles and not understand a word of what it was saying, mimics that lived in the depths of far-flung hive cities that could copy the appearances of men— not the deceivers of Chaos, even, but mere quirks of alien biology. Still… that felt needlessly optimistic, and Valdor had long since learnt not to be optimistic.

An unknown xeno on Holy Terra, named Amicus Imperator from the very mouth of the emperor himself…

He looked out of his window at the golden spires of his home, and could not but think that strange tidings had come upon them.

Chapter Text

Time passed. Slowly. Life in the palace was actually kind of simple most of the time. The books were good and all, but there was only so much of the language she could learn from books (unfortunately, Gothic was spelled phonetically rather than logographically, which rather complicated the whole process) and she didn’t want to just spend all her time in the imperial palace reading. Wandering about was fun and all, and she even helped a few times— that same technique that’d allowed her to sneak into the innermost chambers had let her help the Adeptus Custodes patch that (and other similar) security vulnerabilities. Given that what she’d gleaned from the histories suggested a laborious behemoth of bureaucracy that moved on the scale of centuries, not days, she didn’t imagine much of anything interesting would go on.

She also didn’t want to go out into the hive city proper. Not because she was afraid or anything, just… that she didn’t want to. Of course. It was icky and grimy and filled with suffering, and scary, and she much preferred to stay within her comfortable sanctum and read (what of the books she could understand, parsed through psychic interpretation as it was). 

There were fascinating things buried in the seemingly-random collection of books she’d been given! Honest! Like the names of a bunch of different planets and how much grain they’d sent to other, similarly pretentiously named planets. Or the numbers of imperial guardsmen levied to fight… something, somewhere. The numbers were larger in that one than the grain shipments (which had already had ludicrously large numbers.) Or the fact that the same name kept popping up signed to affidavits over the course of millennia, which suggested that immortality was a thing. She was a cool psychic, sure, but not an immortal psychic. She liked the sound of that…

Still there was only so much stuff to keep her occupied. The emperor was healing well, the custodes were aloof but kind, and the palace was as labyrinthine and filled with the chanting of innumerable pilgrims as ever. She hadn’t thought it possible, in a world of such grandeur and scale and history, where each skull in the wall carried a story and each bolt of the palace was a wondrous working, that she’d feel how she did— but…

She couldn’t deny it. She was bored.

The biggest culprit was probably the lack of other pokemon. It was criminally difficult to talk to humans when she knew their language, much less otherwise. She was studying the psychic technique the emperor had used to communicate, but it was slow going. She’d revised her earlier thoughts— stupid treatable soul injuries or not, the man was an utter master of the art, and the move was commensurably difficult to parse…

She sat back on her haunches, flicking her tail and setting aside the technique for now. Maybe something else psychic? She was in the mood. Rising to her feet, she paced the length of her suite (it was a really big suite) and considered what she could do. Most of her moves weren’t the sort of things she could practice indoors, or were things she’d already been using plenty— she wasn’t much of a combatant, really— but, maybe…

She swished her tail side to side in consideration, then decisively nodded. Yes, that would be a good thing to practice. Probably wise, too… a move that underpinned a lot of more delicate psychic work, yet which she’d found herself remarkably underutilizing recently.

She found the highest room in her suite— a tower that went up and up until it breached the clouds, the round window on the roof a strange portal to the aetherial cityscape beyond— and curled up into a meditative pose, and— opening her third eye, pulled on her psychic energies and activated future sight.

Not the attack, just the sight. Anything beyond the very immediate future tended to get a bit muddied, but surrounded by psychic power as she was, she was able to push much farther than before. It felt nice, to really push herself like she hadn’t in a while— careful, of course, to avoid looking too deeply at the blinding light of the emperor or the churning maelstrom of chaotic energy beyond, she—

Found her sight caught up far beyond her usual reach. It was definitely a thing with the sheer psychic density of the city around her and about those far stars, she quickly deduced— there was just psychic… ground, to use the wrong term, wrongly, for her to stand on that there wasn’t in her previous, far less populous world. It was actually rather interesting, and as she absentmindedly took in more free-floating power, she wondered just how far she could peer into the future. A day? A month? A year? A—

Something found her.

She almost ended the technique right there, but for the fact that it wasn’t a psychic presence, merely… a presence. Not one of the ickies trying to follow the thread of her power and… she didn’t know, consume her and wear her like an espeon puppet? Seemed about in line with the horrible aura of the things. No, it was… she saw…

Clearer, far, far clearer than anything else she’d seen, she was sitting in a strange room on a strange spaceship (curious, how she knew it was a spaceship), white organic walls molded like the growth of a tree, or a fungus sprouting into a table and two chairs. Intriguingly, the chair was perfectly raised for an espeon to sit at a comfortable conversational level with a human.

Or, as it seemed, something else.

She hopped up and sat across from the not-human, studying the echo of his psychic presence. Lithe and dressed exquisitely, and adorned with a pair of knifelike ears, he sat across from her perfectly poised, a cup of fragrant tea in his hand. “A curious interloper, I have met in this dream, she who lives amongst the mon-keigh.”

Espeon blinked, tilting her head in confusion— realizing, in that moment, that the creature before hadn’t yet spoken, still sipping at his tea. The language, too, was exquisite. Her natural abilities as a pokemon allowed her, of course, to understand what she heard, but the creature had spoken with such a perfect blending of sound and psychic sending that she was pretty sure she’d have understood even if she hadn’t possessed that capability. It was an enticing thought, to learn that tongue (and adapt it to her own speech) but she already had enough on her plate with one complicated psychic move.

She raised a paw to the table, and sent— confusion. Wonder. Curiosity.

The creature laughed warmly. Brightly. “Curious interloper indeed! It is refreshing, to feel your presence… I will admit, you feel like a child of my kind, beautiful and pure.”

Curiosity. Interrogation. Amicability.

“Ah. I did not introduce myself, did I? Of course, to stumble on my dream so, you would know, but you would not know. Freely, I bequeath you such; I am called Eldrad Ulthan, Farseer of the Asuryani Ulthwé Craftworld, and this is the dream of the farseer.”

Interest. Wonder. Curiosity.

“You would not know, wouldn’t you? I am of the Eldar, the most wondrous and tragic race to have ever walked the stars. Once, we ruled the whole galaxy; now, our greed and profligacy has laid us low— and we walk the perilous line, to salvation, or desolation, what man can tell?”

Understanding. Pity. Sorrow.

“You are a kind soul.”

She was starting to understand how this worked, now. She hadn’t actually been pulled into a psychic meeting with Eldrad; rather, both of their future sights had aligned and now they were seeing what would happen in their first meeting. Of course, each time one of them spoke, the whole thing would change— which was why the conversation kept repeating their first words.

Impressed. Curiosity. Curiosity.

“Have you never experienced this before? It is seen as somewhat of an art amongst farseers, and I admit that you have taken to it with remarkable aplomb for someone so young.”

Memory. Of power, before, and the vast sea she could see, now. Revelation. Curiosity.

“So this is your first time. You are remarkable, interloper. Remarkable indeed. Psychic potential akin to an eldar, form of a beast, intelligence of a sapient… how dearly I wish to speak to you in truth. Perhaps one day we shall meet under more amicable circumstances.”

Confusion. Worry? Interrogation.

“I do not mean to frighten you. We live in a frightening galaxy enough; I would never threaten someone so reminiscent of a child of mine species. I hope you can feel my sincerity.” She could. She could also feel that it was a language, not a purely psychic sending, and Eldrad could easily be lying to her. “The mon-keigh and the Eldar are enemies— they who have inherited the galaxy like vermin and corrupted the gardens of its vast wonder oft fight us for even the scraps we have left.”

Confusion. Concern. Wariness.

“Of course. You are not my enemy, wonderful interloper. I have seen so many more futures unfurl before me, shorn open by the echo of your passing, and… yes. Yes, we can thread the eye of our great storm and follow these new lights, if they are not merely hallucinations of this ancient warp, burdened by all the horrors wrought upon it… then we will owe you a great debt.”

Refusal. Concern. Love.

“What is it the mon-keigh say? Ah, yes. Ours is a grim, dark millennia. Hold fast to that, Empyrean Interloper, and you may very well be one of those rare few lights which burden our bloated times.”

Love. Love. Love.

“Fare thee well.”

Then— she blinked, disoriented for a second as she realized that she was back once more in her spire in the imperial palace, on Terra. Hungry, too. The whole trippy experience had taken a lot more out of her than she’d realized…

Yup. Never doing that again.

Probably.

………

Eldrad Ulthran blinked, knocked out of his trance by the departure of the Empyrean Interloper. It had been a long time since he’d been forcibly ejected from a farseeing— he was not called a supreme master of the art for nothing, after all.

What a curious creature.

It had come as a sudden summer storm over the jungles of some fair and ancient world; silent and powerful, not wrathful but tender, almost, as it swirled into being. He had not felt even the hint of her coming’s possibility, and with the way the Changer of Ways was throwing a tantrum in the warp (he’d blown up his labyrinth, an altogether not uncommon occurrence for the Chaos Gods, but rather out of character for the meticulous Architect of Fate.

He shivered. It was good that he’d met her first. Luckily, she seemed intelligent enough to instinctually avoid the pulsating putridness of chaos, a feat remarkably rare amongst the foolish mon-keigh (and, if he had to admit to himself, his eldar brethren too). The thought of her meeting Magnus, or Kairos or even Tzeentch himself filled him with an atavistic dread.

“Master Farseer! You’ve awoken!” Finally, his disciples had begun to see what was right in front of them. He resisted the unsightly urge to chuckle; had they simply opened their eyes and looked at him, they would have understood the truth faster than through their psychic abilities.

“What did you see?” Another asked— “a way?” Almost ritualistically, though not— as eldar rituals tended to be— wrought in any specific order or way. “A foe? A death? A birth?”

Eldrad closed his eyes and sighed deeply. “I have seen…” he spoke, slowly. “A great and terrible turning of fate.”

Chapter Text

Espeon had found a book. Not just any book, mind— which most her library seemed to be made out of, the most random and unimportant of works— but something interesting. Tucked away in the corner of one of her bookshelves, it’d caught her eye by its gold gilding (which a lot of stuff on Terra had, she’d learnt) and the icon of a skull and really big ‘I’ impressed onto its spine. Perhaps not the most inspired reason to read a book, but whatever— and it was a good choice, because it was a book about their so-called imperial creed and all its disturbing, fascinating backwardness.

There was a lot of talk about heresy and intolerance and killing and their one true god-emperor in it, which… didn’t entirely track with what she’d seen? Maybe with the liturgic chants and the seals liberally littered everywhere, and the rituals— she’d seen the half-metal men’s rituals, and they were as funny as they were confusing— but not with what she’d seen of Him. There was a divinity, to him, she knew— but also a mortality. A divinity of the soul, a mortality of the flesh… she turned the thought over in her head a bit, trying to grasp how the Imperial Cult had gotten to where they had. Then she realized that was probably heresy and would get her killed, and decided that if she really wanted to know, she could go ask.

She picked up the tome— the heavy tome, straining her far more limited telekinetic abilities— and padded over to the door, pulling down the latch and nosing out into the hallway. It was mostly empty, as per the usual— of course, barring the single custodes who always stood outside, almost statuesque in their stillness.

She knelt down, armor clanking against the metallic floor, glancing once over her before— tentatively— patting her on the head. “Does the Amicus Imperator wish to depart this place?” She purred in response, even if their golden armor wasn’t the most comfortable, and nodded. “Very well then. Shall we be touring the grounds for more security investigation?” She shook her head, glancing over at the book hovering beside her. The custodes was still for a long while, before nodding. “Hm. I may not be able to accompany you on such a far venture. I have never associated well with the Imperial Cult and their ilk. You… there is a long history to it.” Then, perhaps more warily— “not everything you read is true. If you can even read at all.”

Espeon huffed. Indignation. Amusement. The slight twitch of the custodes’s spear was the only indication she’d received her sending at all.

For a while, they stood there, not actually going anywhere— making Espeon wonder if she’d have to go out on her own. The inner palace was fine enough for a casual jaunt, but even there it was a place of wonders and terrors, and the presence of the custodes was always a reassurance. She didn’t want to have to flee from another too-zelous arbites or guardsman…

The thud of boots from the hall wrenched her out of her thoughts as a different gold-clad man walked up to them, saluting his fellow. “Sister. You may be relieved. I can guide the Amicus Imperator from here.”

The woman beside her stiffened to attention, responding with a far more vigorous salute. “Of course Honored Brother! It shall be as you say.” Then— one short bow later— she stalked off as military-precise as ever, leaving her in the presence of the second custodes.

She wasn’t sure what she felt about this one. They were more… guarded than most of the others. All the custodes had some psychic protection (certainly not to the level of a dark-type, but perhaps more along the lines of a steel type? It would fit,) but this one was… withdrawn, more than the others. She cocked her head, studying him for a long while.

He studied her back. They were not unintelligent, the custodes, ritual-bound as they were; she imagined they’d make good conversation partners, if they could converse… “would you like me to carry your book for you?”

Hesitance. Permission? Burden.

“It is no burden to me.” There was an amused lilt to his words. “I have carried out far more difficult tasks than assisting the Amicus Imperator in carrying a book.” She considered it for a second, then nodded, floating the book up to the towering custodes, who grasped it delicately. It was almost absurd, the golden giant carrying the very human-sized book; it almost made it look like a toy.

As per the usual, the custodes walked off in whichever direction they so chose, and she followed them. She really didn’t know the area well enough to get anywhere without them… thankfully, she had a few psychic tricks to prevent herself from getting lost, else she would have probably ended up wandering some long-forgotten hallway for days…

This time, they weren’t just wandering around the inner palace apparently. Her current custodes walked with a determined purpose towards the route out of the inner palace. There were a bunch of gates in the way that all had pretentious names she could barely remember, but the custodes were able to bypass them. Or, well, not really bypass so much as go through smaller portals set off to the side.

The inner palace was… splendorous, of course, but more than that it was austere. She couldn’t help but think it was an odd thing to say about somewhere so utterly bedecked in gold and banners and so many years of history and heroes, but it was mostly a… calm place. Yeah, that was the best way to describe it. There was a certain order to the imperial palace, a searing virtue that kept everything in its foretold line. Workers, yes, but workers who could hold their heads high as they toiled silently on tasks for the very heart of the imperium of man.

It was a long walk. Much longer than any of the other custodes had ever taken her on, and she couldn’t help but direct a little curiosity— intrigue? His way.  In response, he tilted his head, pausing at the intersection between two of the smaller paths they were following towards… the Ultimate Gate? Or the Lion’s Gate. One of the two. “You sought to understand this book, did you not?”

She nodded, not seeing a point in obfuscating it, even if she could sense the tightly coiled suspicion the man held in his breast.

“Then you will understand. The Imperial Creed is…” he hesitated, clearly hovering between two options. “I am… old. I remember a time when the Emperor walked amongst us mortal men, resplendent as the morning sun over Terra and more glorious than any other man before or since. It is understandable, then, that in the long millennia of his absence, the people of his Imperium have turned to the numinous vulgarities of worship in remembrance of His glorious dawn.”

Understanding. Then, as they continued to walk towards the gate, interest. Attention.

“The others don’t think that you are an intelligent being in your own right. They shoulder the possibility, for to see the ten thousand paths of violence is amongst our greatest glories and burdens, but they do not take it seriously. To them, the word of the emperor is inviolable. Perfect."

Concern?

“Even those who were brothers of my shield and sword in the years of the Great Crusade are sometimes blinded by that. With these millennia of time to watch the Imperium become what it has, and stew in our memories— mortal despite all— that blindness tends to grow. I was one of his closest confidants, you know?”

Wonder. Curiosity? Curiosity.

The custodes chuckled, the sound warm against the cool hallways of glittering pipeworks and wires and wonders of technology she couldn’t even begin to name. “I once held a much higher position amongst the custodes. I hold no bitterness for my current work— much the opposite, for to fade into anonymity after such hectic years… it is peace, of a kind. I relinquished the post willingly.”

Pity. Understanding. Compassion.

“You are a kind creature, aren’t you?” She blinked, and half tilted her head in a sort of… semi-response. “The emperor would not have called you friend if you were not. His judgement… I have seen him make mistakes. Do not repeat that to others, of course, lest they suspect you of heresy.” There was a sort of… scornful humor in his voice there. “Yet… still, he was an amazing judge of character. That he felt fit to reach out for your sake…” the custodes sighed. “You understand this all, I know that.”

Curiosity? Surprise. Admiration. She hadn’t expected one of them to be so sure, so quickly. Perhaps that was why he’d come all the way just to take her on a trip. Clearly, even if he was the same rank as the others, he was someone… more. Important, significant— bedecked with a certain sort of legend. It was undeniable.

“I have been talking to you as I would a peer the entire walk, and not once have you responded with any emotion but those relevant to our discussion.”

Amusement. Smart. If there was one thing she liked about this strange new world, it was how well everyone seemed to keep up with her. The Emperor and his strange soul, the custodes and their remarkable intelligence, even Eldrad and that curious way of speaking; that is, bending the future to their wills, and the tangle therein derived. Admiration.

“Thank you.” The custodes dipped his head slightly. “You are kind. I have seen your character for myself, and find those words to ring true… yet, what about in a decade? What about in a century? A millenia?”

Incredulosity. Surprise. Confusion.

“You will live that long. To have done to the emperor what you did…” one fist clenched, and a sudden flare of anger within him made her flinch back, hackles raised. Yet, it wasn’t anger towards her, more of an… internal sort of anger. “You must be a psycher of commensurate power, and any psycher of particular might will live long beyond their mundane peers.”

Surprise. Interest. To live for a millenia, or more… it was attractive, even if living forever had never particularly been one of her goals. The world turned, the seasons changed, and pokemon aged; new from old, old from new, such was simply one of the ways of life.

Yet in a world where life was so utterly usurped by the tainted background psychic field and its divine horror, by machine and toil and vastness so great that anything could be reduced to mere numbers… she could see it. She wanted it. She was curious.

“You will find the secret of it one day. Perhaps I might introduce you to the masters of the Collegia Psychana, if I can be made confident they will not try and kill you for being a xeno psycher.”

Kill her? Concern? Fear.

They stopped before a gate, no, a Gate. It was… there was a sheer scale to the palace that never tired. A stoic enormity, wrought of gold and ceramite and indomitable steel; the prow of a ship, cutting unbothered through the sea of ages. It looked more like a skyscraper than a gate, large enough to march titans through, large enough that even the beasts of the Darkest Day (if the tales she’d heard from that far-off land were to be believed) would have looked small in comparison.

Despite how they towered above her, she realized they weren’t even standing at their base. Instead, they had come out onto the balcony of a small tower raised above the promenade that led inwards from it; above them they sky boiled and seethed with its ever choked clouds, the pestilence of the planet’s industry cloying. Before her, ten thousand robed pilgrims shuffled forward— and even more were turned away by guardians at the gate, to perform their rituals and leave back towards the pillar of steel and gold that stretched so immensely high above them that she was quite sure it literally speared into space.

The sound of uncountable voices, cries and shouts, and worship— hymns of the penitent as they raised their voice up to some image, some unhearing god, so close yet by those walls and vast defenses separated, so far.

Priests dressed in ornate robes spoke to the crowds, their words lost to the roar of human sound below.

Men broke down on crossing the gate, gaunt bodies exhausted, weeping, in what emotion? Espeon could not tell, through the sheer weight of the crowd.

And the custodes behind her spoke, voice resonant— not in any psychic way, but simply with the vast panorama of human experience below her. “To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. The Imperial Creed you seek to know is the Creed of intolerance; to purge the xeno and slaughter the daemonic, to crush the unfaithful and in all things bind together this rotting corpse of an Imperium in the holy seals of the Faith. You will not have it easy, inhuman Xeno amongst the very beating heart of humanity.”

It was… horrifying. It was awe-inspiring, in its sheer scale, the sheer depth and breadth, the oceans of its cruelty. She had never seen anything worse. Deep within her, she couldn’t help but see— looking at those magnificent works, looking at the burning devotion that carried even the broken and weeping forward to some far fate… she had never seen anything greater.

She had only one question. Tilting her head to look up at the custodes, she could only ask the single question— needing no words, needing no translation, simply borne forth, psychically—

Why?

The custodes sighed, and it was a deep, sorrowful thing. “Because…” for a moment, there was silence. There was never silence, in the palace, as the hymns of the pilgrims, discordant and broken drifted up to them— “the other options are worse.”

To that, she couldn’t find anything to say.

………

Adeptus-Prefectus Curator Anaphatias Tertio LIV was in the business of knowing.

A lost record, known only by rumor and heretical whispers? He was the one to come to when Inquisitors wanted to ferret out such secrets. A particularly pernicious lie, written on two-thousand years of dusty tribute reports and submitted clinically to Administratum? He was the one who would know of it and the untold millions who starved to death because of it. He was the one who would know whether or not, when to use it. The terrifying, the obscure, even the daemonic and foul xenos? He knew not of their future, but by the shadow of their passing understood the shape of them.

It made him a powerful man. Few were willing to cross a curator who could see their entire department combust under the weight of a secret they didn’t even know they were keeping. Yet, it also made him a man with many enemies amongst the other adepts of the Administratum. So, he leveraged what he was best at— and made sure to keep a careful eye on the most dangerous world in the galaxy too.

Holy Terra was a hive of the very best and worst of humanity. Scum the likes of which that moved in its putrid bowls, lost to the light of the God-Emperor, blessed be his name (he performed the ritual absolution mechanically at the thought, out of habit, cowl brushing over withered skin and glittering cybernetics) and glorious warriors, saints and angels and holy places, the likes of which no other world in the whole of the Imperium could match.

He knew, of course, that he could not be aware of everything that happened, as it happened. Terra— no, even the Imperial Palace— was far too busy to truly grasp the whole of. Besides, that wasn’t his style. No, no… he grasped the flow of things. Which of the High Lords were ascendant, and which ones were reeling. Which department was fighting whom. Which habitat block was experiencing utility problems and who was responsible for fixing them. Together, it give a good picture of the essence of the beating heart of the Imperium— and gave him a path, to walk the fine line between effective bureaucrat and too effective threat.

He also tracked more dangerous things.

The workings of the Inquisition, and their silent, hawkish prowl through the political scene and the wider galaxy both. The esoteric policies that girded the deployments of the God-Emperor’s inexhaustible armies. The shadowy hands over the Mechanicus and how they moved in the labyrinthine manufactoriums and arcane constructs whose functions only they knew— and therefore, only they controlled.

The Adeptus Custodes, those golden angels of the God-Emperor, of such surpassing scarcity and prestige that the ground they walked on was considered holy in their passing.

That last one was the most dangerous to observe, made only the more so because something had changed. He shifted slightly, eyes fixed intently on the report one of his subordinate Ordinates had delivered to him, the small movement sending shivers along the wires that connected him to the coiled machinery above. A peculiar report, detailing how one of the Custodes had killed someone— some heretic or another, though the Ordinate had managed to dig into the catalogs of the Adeptus Arbites (somehow; he would need to think up an appropriate reward for him later) who had investigated the rest of the block for potential heresy, and the other Ordinate who had scoured the obscure records of the Departmento Munitorum (which reported the factory the man worked in as having no problems— indeed, being above average in such regards) and even the Ecclesiarchal records of the pilgrim’s ancestors, who had come to Terra in good standing… all of which had pointed to the fact that the man had been no heretic.

Violence for violence’s sake wasn’t all that unusual, even if the custodes had never particularly partook in such. It would have been easy to dismiss it, even with the other reports of strange movements amongst the custodes. Yet, it engendered that one question, that terrible question, which had seen him rise so high and ever threatened to send him low—

He could not but wonder—

Why?

Anaphatias was not so arrogant as to think that he was the only one who had noticed. The change. One of only a scant few, perhaps— for the custodes usually worked far and above the typical remit of the Imperium anyways— but still there were others. No doubt the High Lord’s subordinates did not watch the shifting of their bedrock harshly— probably more concerned that the Captain-General might dare to once more take his seat in the Senatorum Imperialis than anything. Still, he was rather confident that he was the only to have done such a deep search on the dead heretic.

With a flick of his hand, he summoned twin ordinates to his room. “Ellias, Buntious.”

They bowed. “Lord Anaphatias. You called?”

“I want you to go to this location and interrogate the couple that live there. Adept Barnaphal’s report indicated that they work the same sub-shift as the Heretic did, and might have been present upon the incident." Even as he spoke, his cybernetic implants orchestrated a chorus of menial tasks, printing out work passes and entry remits and provision requisition slips… and so on, until a small binder of papers was ready for both of them. “Bring some muscle with you. The reports suggest the Lower Cathedral Ward to be peaceful, but one can never be too cautious when dealing with heretics. I do believe that the honor guard of the Commandant from the Raphean IX twentieth army might be amenable.”

It was an odd choice, and they knew it— but neither of them doubted him. Not anymore. “As you command, Curator.” They bowed, collecting the binders, before once more retreating behind their cowls and leaving his innermost chamber.

Two days later, they returned looking… harried. Ellias’s cowl had been ripped, and Buntious’s arm was bound in bloody damages. More than that, though (which was the fairly typical travails of an Adeptus when they went out into the city) both of them looked troubled, which hinted at something beyond the regular pale.

Neither of them spoke. They knew that he didn’t want to hear whatever they said. The word was fallible; truth remained in ink and vellum, the written and the unwritten. They simply handed him their report— the thick scroll, sealed with wax and scribed in High Gothic and elegant penmanship— and left.

Carefully, he unfolded it; observing all the proper rites and ritual, the superstition of the senior administratum and his own personal neuroses. He tested it for the five poisons currently most commonly used by petty assassins in the city, sprinkled five drops of blessed water on its pages and two on its seal, and invoked rites stolen from the Cult Mechanicus. Only after that and several more painstaking steps were taken did he finally open it fully. When dealing with matters of such import, no shortcuts could be taken.

As he read, his face twitched from disappointed to intrigued, to surprised— and lo, did it take a lot to surprise him— to a sort of slowly mounting dread that he only felt when he realized he might have stumbled on something a little above his paygrade.

He cast a search through the Terran noosphere— not for anything about this strange cat-like creature, for he did not dare cross the eyes of the Adeptus Custodes— but rather to a dusty data-archive mostly used by novitiate tech-priests and servitors, one of the several underpinning code-scriptures that helped the city run smoothly (if this existence of theirs could in any way be called smooth.) Of ranks, of categories, of… all the things that the Administratum ran on.

He found it, there, logged just recently by an anonymous source from a terminal that should not have been used to log such menial data— from the very Sanctum Imperialis—

A tiny sub-ranking amongst the reams and reams of highly individualized subrankings for that most rarified of pilgrims, the Auditori Imperator—

A new designation: Amicus Imperator. Assigned to no one. Utterly blank.

Anaphatias blinked his eyes open, clad in a cold sweat. He was trembling, he realized. He did not know what it meant. Keeper of secrets he may be, but some things were beyond even him. He did not know how it all connected, did not know the truth of what happened in those most august halls…

But he did have a suspicion— and that might prove ever the deadlier.

Chapter Text

She rolled the structure around in her head one last time, tail flicking against the wall beneath her as she watched a group of tech-priests toil on some component or another— just one of billions in the vast machine beneath her. They didn’t talk, at least not in the same way that most humans did, but they did communicate. It was kind of weird. More like what she’d expect of a metagross, or a porygon…

They only got a passing bit of attention from her. No— most of her mind was focused on making sure that she’d gotten the technique just right. It was a powerful move, and she didn’t want to accidentally give someone an aneurysm when she used it… finally, though, after what felt like an eternity but was only really an hour (of waiting, and extensive double checking, and napping in the light of the Emperor’s not-quite sun) her target approached, the heavy thud of their footsteps obvious in the mechanical quiet.

The tech-priests stiffened in some amusing mixture of alarm and reverence at their approach, bowing as the custodes rounded the corner. One of them hissed something that sounded almost like “Glory to the Blessed Servants of the Omnissiah,” though it might’ve been something else, which was particularly impressive given the natural comprehension of pokemon.

Of course, the custodes didn’t deign them any attention beyond the usual scan to make sure they weren’t threats. They were so far beneath her attention that they didn’t even register.

Espeon combed through the structure one last time, then slapped her tail against the wall for wasting her time instead of getting on with it. So sue her for being nervous the first time she used a whole new move! Or actually could you sue someone in the Imperium? Everything she’d seen suggested that it simply didn't—

She was stalling.

Pressing herself down against the brickwork, she mustered her psychic power and sent— ++Hello? Is this reaching you?++

The reaction was… a bit more dramatic than she’d anticipated. The custodes stiffened, gripping their spear tightly as they swirled around, immediately on high alert. “What sort of xenos trickery is this?! Show yourself, psycher! Your poor imitation of His voice cannot deceive me!” She… should have expected that, in all honesty, using the emperor’s psychic technique on a custodes.

She sheepishly slunk off the wall, bowing her head and sending contrition to the custodes. ++Sorry. I was just excited to be able to finally talk to you all! And I let my anticipation get ahead of my good sense.++

The custodes sighed— a long, relieved sound— lowering her spear. “Amicus Imperator. My apologies for the overreaction. I had thought you some xeno infiltrator; it is not the first time that the eldar or the daemonic have sent highly capable agents to attempt to break into the palace.” Espeon sent some more contrition— but also wary curiosity. Now that she knew that there actually was a very real threat, even so deep in the Imperial Palace…

She couldn’t help but be curious.

Flicking her tail, she followed along as the custodes continued walking— ignoring as best as she could the tech-priests observing the interaction with an almost unsettling intensity. It wasn’t like she’d done anything to them. They were fine.

“There was some considerable discussion amongst our number as to the true nature of your intelligence.” She spoke as they walked, as genially as the custodes ever were. “It’s interesting to have been proven wrong; 56.7% of the Adeptus Custodes believed you to have sub-sapient intelligence, making it a remarkably divisive issue amongst us.”

++You really thought so lowly of me?++

“In the defense of my comrades, it is less that we thought lowly of you and more that you are very… different from the other sapient races of the galaxy. None of them possess a body plan even remotely similar to yours, whereas the typical feline, a well known species amongst the Imperium, is remarkably similar to you in many respects. Add to that a healthy dose of skepticism, and I hope you can see how such a conclusion might be reached.”

Espeon flicked her tail in amused dismissal. ++I’m not actually insulted or anything. Back where I came from, humans had lived alongside us for millennia and still you’d be lucky to find one in ten that’d treat you as an intelligent being in your own right.++

For a long time, the custodes was silent. She could feel the sympathy she felt— but more than that she could feel her curiosity. It was a scheming, logical sort of curiosity, armorclad in layers of purpose and devotion to her warrior purpose, but— at its core— it was a curiosity. It was only when they’d passed into one of the more private wards of the Inner Palace that she spoke again, at last. “Your home world,” slowly— almost warily. “You’ve never spoken of it before.”

++I learnt how to speak all of thirty minutes ago.++

“Fair. Still. Your origins have been clouded in mystery. Constantin Valdor himself consulted the deepest archives, the Captain-General authorized the use of powerful relics to divine your past, present, and future— but all failed. It’s become a point of minor curiosity among us.” Espeon got the impression that it hadn’t been a minor curiosity.

She considered for a long time, comparing… the vast construction, the cathedrals, the golden and luminous and brilliant. The cruelty, of it all. To— the sylvan wild, the silver towers and small houses, and humans… the clean air and clean water and liquid sunlight that caught off every leaf and blade of grass and raised them, to emerald refulgence rarified.

++I think… most people on Terra would call my old world a paradise. There were humans there, but there were not only humans there.++

“Others of your kind?”

++I mean kinda? Yes, yes, obviously you’re right about that, but that’s not what I was getting at…++ she sent, psychically the image of verdant overgrowth, the taste of clean water, the effervescent qualia of moss springing underfoot and sunlight playing gentle across her fur. ++It was pure in a way that I don’t think Terra has felt for a long, long time.++

The custodes… not so much as flinched, more… sagged under the weight of the memory. “It sounds like a wonderful place… a long time has passed, since Terra was last a green world. It was once a dream of the emperor’s, of the Imperium, that one day that holiest of planets might see again the touch of its ancestral glory.” Then, after another long moment, caught in the longing, the not quite sadness as they strode, forth— “if you could, would you go back? To your home?”

Espeon considered the question carefully. It was… the idea was not wholly unattractive. In many ways, Terra was hell to an espeon like her. Little sun, toxic air, cramped quarters, machinery hissing its inevitable and arcane churn while the vast nexus of human suffering churned around and beneath them.

Except… she could not bring herself to so easily say the obvious answer.

It was strange, to realize that she somewhat wanted to stay. A morbid sort of curiosity, intermixed with that wonder— at gates that towered into the heavens, at titans and battleships that promised destruction more perfect than any pokemon ever could, at near demigods who’d lived for millennia and a whole galaxy, terrible and awesome in the stars above.

She wanted to see it. She wanted to see it all, and meet the heroes of the Imperium, and maybe even help out a little. It’d been too long since… and besides. ++No. I don’t think so.++ The custodes tilted her head, clearly interested in her reasoning, but Espeon stayed silent. It wasn’t particularly something she wanted to share—

How little she was left for her there.

………

|||Sing the song of the Omnissiah. Let the merciless logic of the Machine God invest thee. Praise and glory to the Machine God.|||

|||Litanicus Codix 00110110|||

|||FOR THE EYES OF THE FABRICATOR-GENERAL OF MARS ONLY|||

|||FROM: MAGOS//PRIME HERMETICON KELV1ON LEXIOAL|||

|||TO: FABRICATOR-GENERAL IREDEXTRIOUS MATRAX|||

|||CONCERNING this unit’s most Holy and Sacred of duties, in the care of the Blessed Machines of the Imperial Palace of his Glory, the Omnissiah made Manifest, on TIMESTAMP:100101010001 while performing the Rites of Invigilation, and the Unusual Events therewithin unfolding;

One of his most honored and blessed servants of the Adeptus Custodes, while on patrol past the corporeal form of this unit, experienced at once a sudden and terrible wroth, whereupon they [VIDEO ENCRYPTED: DATAFORM UNTRANSCRIBABLE] demanding of the Xenos to show themselves for the crime of impersonating the Voice of the Omnissiah. This unit was prepared to give its life in the defense of its Sacred Work, that the oil of its sundered chassis might bless the holy grounds of the Cusodes’ righteous fight, when the Xeno revealed itself by leaping off of a high Wall, amongst the eaves of the palace.

This unit expresses unease in knowing that its most Holy work had been observed by a xeno for an unknown period of time.

To the Great Consternation [against all 17,192 predicted possibilities by the twelve Prognosticative-Augmentum units shared amongst the Noospheric Unit of my Fellow Magi] the Custodes proceeded to cease hostilities, apologizing to the Xeno and departing alongside it peacefully.

Xeno Title Designated [may this unit's soul be guarded against heresy, assuring that it heard as such from the very mouth of the Custodes]: Amicus Imperator.|||

|||APPENDED TO by MAGOS//ARCH-CHYMIST SLLEA QI1|||

|||CONCERNING the remarkable and Alien [in the sense of: Unusual, Unexpected, Heretofore Unseen] appearance of Xeno Designate: Amicus Imperator, expressing regret for the absence of any Magos Biologis; 

The Amicus Imperator is a quadrupedal, feline-like mammalian creature [for it behaved in every way in the manner of the Beast, adopting no mannerisms of the Sapient] possessing of slender legs and dainty paws. It is covered in fine, lilac EDCDF4 fur between ½ to 2 inches in length. [This unit was unable to collect a sample, but correlative diagnosis with its fellow Magos discerned the hairs to be no more than 15 Microns.] Its ears are large, and it has purple eyes with white pupils. There are tufts of fur near its eyes, and a small, red gem embedded in its forehead [Hypothesis: noted Psychic Powers, correlation?]. It also has a thin, forked tail.

It is possessing of an appearance that most biologicals would consider ‘cute.’|||

|||END OF TRANSMISSION|||

|||GLORY TO THE OMNISSIAH|||

As had the other High Lords had, Iredextrious Matrax had received the Curator’s report (through a variety of bribes, and threats, and other such methods of coercion) of a potential Xeno presence/Adeptus Custodes secret project, and its pink feline pet.

Except, the feline had never been a pet, had it? If the exclusive information from his Magos was accurate, then the feline quadruped was the Amicus Imperator. He had long since shed his mortal flesh and embraced the undying machine, but even he found himself somewhat surprised at that— a cat, a beast, respected more by the Adeptus Custodes than some of his fellow high lords were? It seemed preposterous.

Which made knowing so only ever the more valuable. On Terra, information was both one of the fastest fleeing and most valuable commodities there was.

Already, his vast, biomechanically enhanced mind was churning with all the possibilities, all the potential paths, all the methods he could use to exploit the situation. Like the Logi he’d been raised from, he would have preferred to calculate for days, for months, for decades until he had the perfect solution— but time ever raced ahead of them, and his information would expire soon. No… suboptimal route or not, to gain anything out of his stroke of good fortune, then he needed to choose, and fast.

He would not dare stand against someone so clearly endorsed and liked by the Adeptus Custodes, that they could impersonate the very voice of the Omnissiah to their face and emerge unscathed. No— in that direction lay ruin, whether through the deliverance of gold-clad warriors or his own political rivals amongst the mechanics.

However, if he could subtly convince one of the other high lords to move against them…

The great calculus of power turned in his mind as he stood, caustic gas hissing as he disconnected from his greater throne. “Skittari,” he hissed in binaric— “prepare my ship.” It had been too long, since the Omnissiah had graced him with such a perfect opportunity. “We sail for Terra.”

Chapter Text

Everyone had been feeling tense for some time. She wasn’t sure why, but it was clear that the whole palace was slightly on edge. Honestly, she wasn’t qualified to discern the reason. It’d probably end up being something dumb like some planet in Segmentum Wherever-us getting overrun by some horrible creepy crawlies from the horrible awful horrible zone. Objectively bad, yes, but so far away that the only aftereffect was the reverberating echo it left on the Adeptus Administratum.

Valdor was busy with something, and most of her favorite custodes hadn’t come around, so she’d decided to go exploring all by herself. It was fine. She’d gotten somewhat inured to the ceaseless toil and bubbling vicissitudes of the general populace (ever able to turn her psychic senses to the blazing light of the Astronomicon for reassurance, if the need came) so she was able to get around… most… of the Imperial Palace without too many difficulties. Which was great, because there were places she really wanted to explore that she hadn’t been able to get the custodes to take her to. Like the Ecclesiarchy! The Cathedral of the Emperor Deified was too far away from the Imperial Palace to get to on quick notice (as was the Scholatica Psykana, one of the other places she dearly wanted to explore) but surely one the chapels in the Sprawl Magnifican would be good enough. As long as she kept to the upper levels of the acropolis, then she’d be fine. Probably.

Probably.

She waved goodbye to the custodes standing by her door with a flick of her tail— feeling her gaze settle heavily on her for a moment— as she set out for one of the many back-ways with a hint of pep in her step.

Today was going to be a great day!

………

Today was going to suck, majorly. If there was one place Ragga Thol hated working, it was the Imperial Palace. He was one of the best mercenaries on Terra, don’t get him wrong— it took a certain special sort of sort to survive the ever twisting and seething sea of alliances and toothed bureaucratic hungering. Terra was sink or swim, and where most of his fellow mercenaries sank, he swam.

Still, that didn’t mean that he could do just anything. Live on Terra long enough, and one quickly learnt that the number of factions one couldn’t cross without repercussions (of the most cruel and deadly type imaginable) was too large to count. It took a clever sight, a deft hand, and a fair bit of luck and good judgement both to navigate that mess. Still— it didn’t take a genius to know that transgressing against the Adeptus Custodes was a bad idea.

Unfortunately for poor Ragga, he had a rule that superseded even that gross fear. One simply did not cross the Inquisition on their home turf— and this time, he had an Inquisitor staring straight down his neck. The presence was almost physical, as she glared at him after they stopped for the fourth time that day. “I’m doing my best, Ma’am. You’ve got to be careful around the palace. The custodes see everything, so it’s said.” Algorithms, advanced servitors, even secret archeotech surveillance devices… usually a hive was the sort of place one could slip into utterly unnoticed, but the Imperial Palace? Not so. Everything here was watched.

The secret, he knew, was to be uninteresting. No armor, weapons discrete beneath their cloaks, and that downwards sort of slouch particular to those who’d let the oppressive life as menial manufactorium workers grind them down to shells of theirselves— if they had ever even been more in the first place. In the Inner Palace, that wouldn’t work as well, but out here, at the gate to the Sprawl Magnificent? Even the most watchful eyes in the galaxy had let something through eventually.

One of his underlings (one of the stupid ones, hired as muscle and disposable meat more than anything) scratched at the holster carrying his stolen lasgun. “How long, boss? We’ve been waiting here for like… a year. Can’t we get a short break?”

The inquisitor shot him a venomous glare, and Ragga gulped. “No can do, Thromper. We’ve gotta stay on task. Ain't anything gonna happen until it happens, but you know the drill; when it starts happening—”

“It keeps on happening ‘till its over. Yeah, yeah, heard it enough times boss. But ‘ell, we’re on Terra! Can’t we at least get some of the good stuff?”

“Too—”

“Many eyes. I know, I know.” He half-sighed, half groaned, a wave of mutters spreading out through the rest of the men. “Betcha Goxxa never had to deal with this ‘amn groxshit.”

“And your old pal never got to work with one of the best mercenaries this side of the damn galaxy, is probably dead in a bilgewater shunt somewhere, and never got to eat anything but groxshit, so shut your gob and pay attention—”
“Enough, you two.” The Inquisitor’s voice cut through the rising distaste with all the subtlety of a bolter-shot, and all the power of one too. “If you ruin this mission for me due to your incessant prattling, then… well, I’ve been told by an adjunct of mine that my bolter’s machine spirit thirsts for the sanctification of blood.” Most of them quieted down after that. Couldn’t really argue with an Inquisitor when they could ‘purge’ you on a whim. “If this works,” she reminded them, “then we’ll have saved the imperium. You know what they reward people who saved the imperium?” Everyone finally fell silent. “They reward planets for people who find STC’s for new toothbrush schematics. How much more do you think you will get?” That finally managed to settle everyone down for good.

Still, it’d probably not last. They had been roving the same place for weeks like a particularly bad band of wraiths, and nobody was feeling at the top of their game.

Which was why they almost missed it when their opportunity finally came.

The inquisitor was the first to notice, alerted by something in her suite of augmentations and diverse, secret (probably somewhat heretical) inquisitorial devices. She held up a hand, the other slipping under her cloak for her bolter gun. Which was totally overkill, because she was the one who’d told them they weren’t going for a kill. The rest of the band followed suit, drawing a diverse array of (mostly lasguns) but also some other weapons too. He drew his Hellpistol, offering a prayer to the machine spirit, that it might not betray him in battle (like it had its previous owner, dead by his hand.) The whole thing seemed like way too much effort, but… well, as the inquisitor demands.

Still. How hard could a single cat be to take down anyways?

………

As she walked through a somewhat-crummy back-street between two towering spires of gold, Espeon felt the air currents shift with an undercurrent of promised danger. She paused, glancing around— a little half-heartedly, just making sure that there wasn’t a giant block of concrete about to fall on her or anything— before continuing on. The airflow in the new world— but especially out here, in the packed Sprawl Magnifican— was quite a bit more tumultuous and hard to read than it’d been back in her old forest. Kind of reminded her of the big city she’d once gone to with her trainer, except if the city had been like one bajillion times bigger and also way busier too…

She paid it no mind— that was, until something kicked her in the chest and knocked her over in an ungainly sprawl. “Go! Grab it!” She blinked, for a moment stunned— before her long-disused battle skills reminded her that laying down in a battle was just asking for trouble.

Get up. She grimaced, hating that it was the half-remembered voice of her trainer that brought her back to her senses. She got up, drawing on her psychic power and smearing out a wall of force between her and the gang of— thugs? Well-armed thugs? Racing towards her. One bounced off it and clapped a hand to its bloodied nose with a groan, and the others were smart enough to stay back and fan out.

Alright… she supped deeply on her psychic power, accelerating her thoughts as she tried to keep up with everything that was happening. It wasn’t like a typical pokemon battle. There wasn’t just one opponent, and they’d taken her by surprise, but that was fine— she just had to set things up, and then she’d be able to take them all easily.

Even if they had weapons that put them on par with pokemon in terms of power, they were weak. Their minds were utterly unshielded— she could feel the potent mix of fear and exhilaration and surprise as they readied themselves. Someone yelled “it’s a damn psyker!” And she filed that away for later perusal.

Alright, next, future sight—

Oh.

There, in the back, so unthreatening compared to her comically thuggish assailants, a slim woman raised a stocky gun (she’d dismissed, priorly, given its relatively small size—) prognostication screaming—

She tried to dodge, but—

The bolt smashed through her shield with an unreal sound of psychic shattering, and then smashed into her— and the last thought she had before she was knocked unconscious was a rather undignified and unimpressive— wow. Not how they’d known about her, not what’d gone wrong, not even why they were trying to kidnap her (which was, admittedly, a rather common occurrence for a pokemon like her—)

It’d been a long time since she’d been played so thoroughly.

………

The mechanical voice of a vox-servitor scratched out a notice, one voice amongst many. “Alert one-oh-oh-twelve-three, quadrant L-proximus Sprawl Magnifican. Report sealed; inquisitorial auspices, indicated conflict of minor note, cleared Inquisitor Asterae Ross Timestamp Timestamp Timestamp.” The report went ignored, even by the tower’s serfs; after all, the inquisitorial remit was broad, and not even Terra was safe from their reach. Still, it was logged. The servitors and ancient archeotech devices continued their inexorable crawl forth, unfazed by whether or not anyone cared about their findings.

Twelve minutes passed without great fanfare.

“Alert one-oh-oh-ninety-seven, Lions Gate Spaceport entrance L-proximus, flagging suspicious individuals…” a second, before— “report sealed; inquisitorial auspices; Unified Biometric Verification System check… check clear; Asterae Ross and Rosarius match confirmed Timestamp Timestamp Timestamp.” That, at least, flagged another program; two events so quickly together were suspicious. “Checking… no pre-action log. Checking… no pre-action log. Checking… direct connection denied.”

One of the menial workers finally noticed the alert, cocking their head in confusion. “Hey, Jeor. What’s this?” A comrade, or a friend, or perhaps merely a fellow clansmember— it did not matter, for both were clad in their ancestor’s sacred bones— walked over, staring at the light.

He tapped it, then read through the backlogs, then frowned. “It’s odd. The Inquisition is required to give pre-action reports when operating on Terra.” A barely eeked-out concession to avoid even more internal conflict than there already was, even if none of the serfs there knew that. What they did know, and what they prided themselves on, was in recognizing that something was off. “I’m elevating this.”

“Are you sure? The Golden Ones would take offense to a spurious report.” It wouldn't be the first time a young worker in the Tower of Hegemon had made a false report and ended their family line for the trouble.

Jeor shook his head. “No. All my life, I’ve monitored these holy machines; you learn, quickly, to understand what is and what is not deserving of attention. This is odd, and this is inquisitorial, and so it must be flagged.”

“Of course, elder,” and it was so. With the flag of a senior operator behind it, the report rapidly rose through the various circles and insular spheres of the tower— only further buoyed by the alert that an inquisitorial shuttle had departed from halfway up the spaceport and was accelerating rapidly away from the Terran surface.

Finally, it reached the Watchroom itself, where three armored custodes stood ever vigilant, steadily reviewing the flagged (and sometimes, when a lull presented itself, the unflagged) threats. The odd inquisitorial action was only one amongst a handful, but it drew attention immediately.

Anyone else would have been tempted to look away. The custodes were not anyone else; the chosen of the Emperor did not fear the inquisition. The fortunate (or unfortunate) one to receive the report for the video immediately tried to access the surveillance files of the area, only to notice the entire sector had experienced a slight scrapcode infestation and had briefly malfunctioned. Purged quickly by the emperor’s light, thankfully, but still…

Suspicious.

A dozen other reports quickly flowed together. Biometric scans of the passersby, focusing on drawing correlations between the Inquisitor and those with her— a known band of high-class mercenaries who operated for enfranchised political figures. Recently, unavailable, much to those very political figures displeasure.

A strange psychic reading from the gellar-feild sensor suite, indicating a… something in the area. Not a psychic incursion, if such a thing could even happen on Terra (the scrap-code already suspicious enough)...

A black back slung over the biggest mercenary's shoulder, as they cut a suspiciously brisk pace towards the Lion’s Gate spaceport, Asterae using her Inquisitorial authority to commandeer space on the transport rails and mass-elevators along the way.

Separately, it didn’t say much. Together, though… a terrible suspicion dawned on him. Amongst the Emperor’s Ten Thousand, he’d not gotten the chance to get close to the Amicus Imperator, but he recognized the description; feline, half the height of a man, possessing psychic powers and a friendly disposition… “Brother.” The custodes beside him glanced up. “The Amicus Imperator. Where is she?”

A deadly seriousness settled over the both of them. “Is she in danger?”

“I hope not…” but hope was a vapid and shallow thing, fluttering on the dark skies of, so easily blotted out in their dark millennia. “Did she leave her suite this morning?”

“Forwarding the…” he got a response back from the custodes set to guard there all but immediately. “She did, and hasn’t yet returned. The data says…” he flicked through screens, reading through the reports with the efficiency only a superhuman could leverage. “She took the path towards… no, into the Sprawl Magnificant…” he didn’t complete his sentence— he didn’t need to. The first could already see where the line ended.

Right in the same sector to have experienced a scrapcode infestation that specifically knocked out its surveillance footage.

Right in the same sector that the Inquisitor had done everything possible to obstruct their sight for as long as possible.

Right in the same sector they’d fled from with all haste.

That terrible suspicion became a near certainty, and he paled beneath his helmet. “The Captain-General must hear of this immediately.” The Amucius Imperator could be safe, and the Inquisitor could have done something else entirely. And the Eldar could decide to suddenly become pathologically honest, and the Emperor could miraculously revive himself and restart the Great Crusade.

It was better not to hold out hope.

He sighed. The Inquisition had finally poked a nest they should have left well enough alone. This was going to be… difficult… “and someone stop that damn shuttle!”

………

He received the alert the same as every other Astartes in the palace as it went into lockdown. Too late, but then again, the palace had always been built to keep people out, not in. The spaceport’s response was the actual disappointment— once, its fast-response forces would have been able to snatch even an eldari cutter out of space anywhere within a thousand kilometers of the palace. Now, it was so ossified by millennia of haphazard construction and navy graft that they’d not even launched a single interceptor five minutes after the order had gone out. Even the mechanicus had reacted faster, calling Battlefleet Solar to stations the moment they’d sounded the alarm. It was utterly pathetic.

The Amicus Imperator…

It was not their fault. Not totally, at least. The custodes had not bodyguarded anyone but the Emperor Himself in millennia, and even then the idea of someone just… snatching the emperor of mankind off the street was ludicrous. Still— it should have been something they’d foreseen. It should’ve been something he’d foreseen.

He glanced between his armor and his Armor. In one, he donned the regalia of the custodes and participated in the defense of the palace. Perhaps as an integral part. Perhaps, another mere soldier, ever the implied but unspoken threat in their endless bag of tricks. 

In the other…

He became once more, Constantin Valdor, hero of the Great Crusade and sharpest blade of the Emperor. One more time. Once more unto the glorious breach. To wield once more the Apollonian Spear…

His hand grasped its shaft, and he chose— for his emperor. For the xeno the emperor had named Amicus Imperator, and that strange and fluttering hope he’d felt, beneath the weight of that miracle— “Captain-General Koumadra.” The ping went through his armor, forged by the very best humanity had offered at the very height of the Imperium’s power. It meant that the Captain-General didn’t receive a ping from custodes Valdor, but rather from Constantin Valdor, First Amongst Ten Thousand, the very Shield of the Emperor.

It meant he got a response immediately, tinged with surprise and a hint of trepidation. “Valdor? Is this…”

“I serve loyally as custodes of the Emperor, beneath the rightfully elected Captain-General. Whatever you command, I shall accomplish, in His name.” Last of all, his iron crown, settled above his head— heavy, its weight. “Merely… returned once more to an archaic capacity. I would humbly request to lead the rescue operation.”

Aesoth Koumadra was silent for a long moment, clearly thoughtful. It was not as though his capability could be doubted— Valdor, and most of the other custodes too, were well aware that he had been and still was the greatest amongst them. It would be an insult to deny him this, even after so long.

Yet, the Captain-General had to be able to offer insult when needed, for the greater good of the Imperium. “What makes you think a rescue fleet will even be needed?”

Valdor snorted. It wasn’t a stupid question, perhaps— surrounded by Battlefleet Solar on all sides, finally-roused interceptors burning hard after it while the crushing might of the main fleet would in theory slowly pen it in from the other side before it could reach the Mandeville point.

In theory.

He doubted that would hold out to be true. “Do you think that an Inquisitor, fueled with their mandate and righteous, if misguided rage wouldn’t do something stupid? Hasn’t already done something stupid?”

“You are right. I’ve feared the same.” As he’d thought; Koumadra was merely playing the devil’s advocate. “I already sent an emergency order for the planetary gellar-fields to be strengthened and for all the ships in the system to prepare themselves.”

“We will need to offer chase.” To his credit, Koumadra didn’t argue. That they would spare no effort to see to the safety of the Amicus Imperator went without saying. To carry out the word of the emperor was the highest honor imaginable. “You are en route to the Senatorum Imperialis, are you not?” Valdor was already making his way to the custodial shuttles, parked away from prying eyes in bunkers within the Imperial Palace. “Whenever you’re done cowing the obstinate High Lords—” and maybe executing the Lord Inquisitor, depending on how the meeting went— “you’re going to one someone in space two hours ago. I can be that person.”

“…your council is wise, Brother.” The sound of a heavy sigh echoed over his armor’s vox. “Very well. I name you Shield-Captain of the Seventh Company. They will meet you at the palace shuttle-yard. Dismissed.”

Valdor smiled, a grim smile.

It’d been too long.

………

Koumadra sighed as he disconnected from the vox call with that particular old legend. To think that now of all times Valdor would ask for a true task in the name of the emperor… then, just as soon as it’d come, any inkling of frustration, of weakness was wiped from his face. The Adeptus Custodes was beyond weakness. There was, quite literally, no custodes more capable than Valdor to track down their wayward inquisitor.

The custodes were beyond all mortal law. It seemed like it was time that some individuals were reminded of that.

He kicked open the door to the Senatorum Imperialis, like a crash of thunder pealing, as the skies above them bled bloody pink and wild-hued as the gellar-fields deflected the immaterial waves of the inquisitor’s emergency jump. His irritation that Valdor had been right, despite not having access to the resources he did, etched a further sour note in his countenance that no-doubt made him appear even more intimidating than he already was. “I hope,” he spoke out into the stunned chamber, “I am not interrupting anything.”

“Who do you think you are, interrupting the high… lords… of…” the Ecclesiarch bit back his blustering prattle as his gaze landed on the imposing, golden-armored figure standing in front of them… and rose, and rose, until he was craning his neck to look into Koumadra’s eyes. “C-custodes! What an honor to have you here! The Emperor surely smiles upon us!”

“The Emperor is very displeased.” His words lanced through the already-faltering mood of the room, replacing it with fear. Clearly, he’d not come to parley. “Does this look like the favor of the Emperor to you? A warp storm over Terra, and a transgression against the Amicus Imperator, so named by the very mouth of the Emperor himself?” If it was possible for the High Lords to pale more, then they would have. The Lord Inquisitor, for one, looked like death warmed over. “I give you this one opportunity to offer explanation, or I shall be personally reminding you that it was the custodes, not the inquisition, who were granted the magisterium lex ultima.”

The paternoval envoy turned skyward, gazing for a long moment at the swirling chaos beyond the cathedral-vaulted windows of the Senatorum. “I see. It all makes much more sense now. Several navigators noted that a heavily non-standard Gothic class cruiser had been parked in the warp near the Sol-system Mandeville point.”

“In the warp?!” Of course, it was the Lord Commander of the Segmentum Solar that lost his composure at that. Understandable. Somewhat. “Are they damned mad? To invite daemonic incursion into the very heart of the imperium— why wasn’t Battlefleet Solar made aware of this?!”

“Inquisitorial remit—” the Lord Inquisitor’s sentence petered out into a terrified squeak beneath Koumadra’s furious glare. “I do not defend the actions of the Renegade Inquisitor Asterae Ross, but technically, her actions were within the bounds of the authority vested in us inquisitors.”

“I was not aware,” rumbled Koumadra, “that the authority to treat the Emperor’s direct orders as suggestions was in the power of the inquisition.” The Lord Inquisitor gulped. “Were you aware of this? Did you order this? If so…”

“No!” Of course, nobody trusted him. Still, it would be a pain to just kill someone so high-ranking… “I swear, by the name of the God-Emperor himself, may he strike me down should I lie, that I had no knowledge of this foolish plot. I knew of the Amicus Imperator— but who doesn’t now? I also knew of their pet— more privileged information, I am aware— and that information was disseminated to my fellow Inquisitors. I am merely a representative of our order; I do not…” he fell silent for a second, face falling. “I have received a message.”

“Go. On.” Clicked the Fabricator-General, looking both wroth and pleased. So it went, Koumadra supposed, when your enemies shot themselves so horribly in the foot. “Tell us what It says.”

“…I have…” the Lord Inquisitor gulped, glancing up at him. “I— that is, Asterae Ross— have taken your pet, Xeno. I demand that you show yourself for Judgement, in the Emperor’s name, on board my Cruiser, the Spirit of Caligulus, Postdate… six minutes ago.”

“Directly when her shuttle entered the warp,” noted the paternoval envoy. “She planned this out remarkably well.”

“She cannot escape the might of the imperium forever;” the vox of the Fabricator-General cackled. “The long arm of the Imperium will follow her no matter where she goes.” So it had come to this. Koumadra closed his eyes, offering a short wish, to the emperor, that he might guide him forward through this trial.

“The… Amicus Imperator,” hesitatingly, the Master of the Adeptus Administratum asked— “could they not show themselves? Surely, if only as bait, they could draw Asterae to us?”

“Asterae was a fool.” He chuckled, though it was not a kind laugh. “She thought she took their pet.” The High Lords gave him quizzical looks, one and all— other than, to his minor frustration, the Lord Inquisitor, whose eyes widened in horrified and incredulous realization— “but there was never two.”

“Then the Amicus Imperator does not exist?”

“No. The cat was the Amicus Imperator.”

For a long second, the Senatorum Imperialis was silent… before, in unison, the burst into clamor. The Ecclesiarch shouted something about xenos and the will of the God-Emperor and something else idiotic, the paternoval envoy bowed his head, the Lord Inquisitor looked… well, still terrified, but also torn between whether to support or oppose him. Even the Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum was somewhat dragged into the fuss, forced to state multiple times that he was unwilling to go against the orders of the Custodes. At least he possessed good sense.

Finally, it was the Master of the Astronomicon of all people that clapped his hands and got some good sense back into the whole meeting. “This is no time for petty squabbling! The Captain-General of the Adeptus Custodes has the floor!” Everyone quieted down— though some still murmured. Only the most taciturn (and the most unreadable; that was, the Fabricator General) weren’t visibly disturbed by the revelation. “If I may, though…”

Koumadra nodded. “Go on, then.”

“The Astronomicon is brighter than it has been in thousands of years.” That shut the rest of them up. “We have kept silent on the matter, holding it only to our most trusted, for long has the Astronomicon shifted and fluctuated. Yet, we are somewhat confident— the Astronomicon is more steady than it has been in ages, blessed be the holy God-Emperor. I wonder… does the Amicus Imperator have any connection to this?”

“The Amicus Imperator was personally responsible for healing the emperor further than any other psyker or doctor ever could. Better than the Eldar, better than machines from the Dark Age of Technology. Good enough that the Emperor Himself stayed the hand of my Shield-Brothers when they confronted her. On His golden throne, He said— ‘THIS IS MY FRIEND, WHOM FOR US HAS ACCOMPLISHED AN ACT OF IMMEASURABLE MERIT.’” Finally, the High Lords of Terra were beginning to realize what they had done. “I have already dispatched a team of my best to lead the rescue effort.”

“W-who?” Koumadra shot the Master of the Administratum a glare for daring to question him— but let it slide, just this once. After all, it provided a rather neat segue to his next political bombshell.

“The very best of us.” His smile was not kind. “The Seventh Shield Company, lead by Shield-Captain Constantin Valdor.” It was kind of like dropping a cyclonic torpedo into a den or rats, the way their eyes all widened so comically wide at that particular revelation.

All, that was, except the Fabricator-General of Mars, who looked immeasurably pleased. He laughed— a joyous, incredulous but still joyous sound— odd behind the crackling of metal and vox. “How very befitting! For the ship that I have ordered brought forth for the custodes. Only the best for the most favored servants of the Omnissiah!”

And so the rescue operation began.

………

And— in space, in the void between Earth and Mars, as the shuttle pinged them that they were nearing their final destination, Constantin Valdor stood at its bridge and looked forth, basking in the reflected light of Sol… as though, eight thousand years had slipped off his shoulder. As though nothing had happened, and they were heading forth, once more into the breach…

A tear came to his eye as he stared at the ever growing shape of the golden battleship in front of him, hovering indomentally in the void. It really was like old times again, wasn’t it? To think that he would once more stand upon that most Blessed of vessels, to serve the will of the Emperor…

Before them in the void floated the ship that would take them after the Renegade Inquisitor— and it was a familiar ship indeed. As though plucked from the very annals of history themselves…

The Bucephelus stood, ready once more to serve the Imperium of Man.

Chapter Text

“Espeon, I chose you!” A flash of light— a touch of effervescent energy, as she materialized on the court’s hard-packed earth, a poof of dust— sunlight streaming down through ever-shifting leaves of oak and serrated elm, shifting and whispering their paper song on the hot summer breeze. She blinked, taking in her surroundings. The blue sky. The forest, dark and deep. The bleached wood-stands, the half sloughed-over fence, the overgrown grass bespeckled, swaying— with the breathing gust, bending back and then fluttering for a moment as the whole world swirled.

Her brother, across from her, steam slowly drifting off his fur and, glowing— catching the light as it swirled and drifted off to the sky.

“Don’t think that you’re going to beat me that easily! Toast evolved too! Now you’re the one that’s going to be Toast!” Back then, she’d thought that was the peak of pre-battle banter, hadn’t she? Behind her, her trainer growled, no-doubt crushing the baseball cap in his hand, in his anger.

It was all so familiar. She breathed, tasting the sweet air— so vibrantly different from the hiveworld spires of Holy Terra, and the palace’s dead air… was it all a dream? Or was this the dream? Back before it all, when she still enjoyed the power of evolution— before the intelligence of her psychic form had led her to realize just what her trainer really was, to her.

This is normal, something whispered to her, on the wind that tousled through her fur and the sunshine that blessed her face. This is how it was always meant to be.

“I’ll beat you! Then you’ll eat your words, punk!” He was probably making a pose, now. Even so long after they’d parted ways, she still remembered how he’d liked to play up his every move. “Go, Espeon! Use Confusion!” The battle would be pathetically easy. She was a far cry from the nervous, psychically clumsy cat she’d been before. Calling her power to herself—

“Toast, use Ember!” Except that was not ember. A blazing conflagration ate up the space between the two of them, scorching the earth and billowing up, to heaven— swirling and furiously spiraling as it blasted forth. The psychic energy she’d been molding into a lazy confusion transformed into an angled light screen, deflecting the inferno harmlessly up into the air. “Yeah! Get ‘em! Burn them!”

“Hey!” Her trainer’s psychic signature turned sour. A familiar taste. “You’re supposed to obey me! Why’d you… you can’t just ignore me! Espeon, use Confusion!” The idiot. At this point in time, he hadn’t even bothered trying to check if she knew any other psychic moves, much less teach them to her. His entire strategy had been to spam psychic until her brother keeled over unconscious.

She would have followed him unquestioningly, here. She remembered that. Even if it made her brave the fire— even if it meant she burned.

She remembered that, too.

This time, she ignored him. “Toast— Ember, again!” And there forth the fire, the inferno of blazing dreams, crashing down on her like a furious wave. This time she shielded herself under a psychic dome, pulling her energy into the form of future sight. Direct battles like this weren’t her strong suit, and if she wanted to have any chance of winning…

“Espeon! What are you doing!” The entire court had been consumed by a blazing inferno, except for where she stood behind her straining barriers. For some reason, this wasn’t odd. “You need to use Confusion!”

This…

As her psychic reserves burned with the strain of holding off the roaring blaze—

As she sought to see—

As the whispers—

This wasn’t right. This wasn’t what had happened. And even if it was, even if she was somehow back on that scorched battlefield, that terrible summer day when she’d first started to know— she ground her teeth together and could not but proclaim, “I don’t have to listen to you.” She felt lighter, just saying it. The whispers recoiled. “I will not listen to you!”

“I could offer you power beyond your wildest imagination!” It was still his voice, but as she firmed her mental shields, she could tell it wasn’t his speech. “I could offer you the heavens and the earth. I could offer you the freedom. I could save you from this blaze—” tinged, now, cyan and iridescent, and almost gayly pink (in a way that inspired, within her, a deep and atavistic fear,) “and I could give you the power to save yourself. All you have to do is accept me as your trainer.”

This isn’t real. She’d already known that, but as the fire started to lick at the trees, the grass, the clouds and sun and sky and Toast and her trainer’s sister— lick from them, as their forms melted, evaporating into slender wisps flickering off to some unknown, some immaterial— she knew. This is the shadow of my mind.

They stood at the edge of psyche. She turned, the very action monumentous— for it violated the rules of the place, that memory— and faced her trainer. And her trainer faced her, but it was not her trainer. His body remained unchanged, but his face… it was a grotesque thing, twisted and pulled inwards, pinched and rumpled and seething with incomprehensible visions of mouths and teeth and ten million eyes all, unrecognizable, cascading down towards the center where they disappeared into the ravenous, secret dark. Like someone had pulled the plug in the center of what made a person a person, and the drain had sucked in the whole universe. “You could be mine. You could/should/will have my power/favor/exultation! Join me!”

Just looking into the face of Monstrosity threatened to drive her mad. She could feel the Immaterium around her react to that imponderable attention as their psychic stage bled away into a swirling maelstrom of pinkish-blue flame, awash in infinite direction— that so great a mind had captured her in its attention that by merely thinking of her reality tried to change her.

She hardened the light screen around her, turning it in this space of metaphor to a metaphorical shield, inviolate, inviolable. The slick, disgusting corruption of her not-trainer’s attention found no purchase against her pristine psychic energy, skittering off (oil on water, shed like rain) to sink once more into the depths of the swirling chaos around her. “Oh? You deny/resist? You are captured/enslaved and weak/powerless but still you struggle/squirm when you could be mine?”

“I will never be yours.”

“They all say/said/will say that. How droll/unamusing/hilarious.” It reached out its hand, a vast psychic pressure, a vast force— of the whole of existence, it felt like, turning to bear down on her. “No matter. They all break eventually.” It was so much. So much more than she was, so much more than she could ever be, and even as it splashed harmlessly off her psychic shield, it thundered with impossible power.

So much.

Too much—

In the distance, through her third eye, she caught sight of the Astronomicon— of the emperor, his golden light searing at the thing that tried to consume her even now. His effusive Love, his burning Anger, pushing back against the cruel gods’ night. She remembered, then, what had been his— his regrets, his joy, and remembered herself.

Not to win. But also… not to lose.

She looked up, meeting the eyes of the vast and terrible, pink-fleshed, tentacle suckered twisting, gaunt emaciated hovering form, and spoke— so simply, so damingly. “I name you.” The deluge of power stopped, even as she shuddered under the force of her own words. “I name you! I name you Changer of Ways, I name you Architect of Fate! I name you, Great Conspirator, Weaver of Destinies, Father of Lies and Deception!” Her voice shook as she named what Should Not Be Named, and called what Should Not be Called. To rather die, in striking a blow, then let it turn her into something profane. “I name you, Lord of Sorcery, of Entropy, of Change— Great Deceiver, Master of Mutation!” They were nonsense words, containing only the meaning of it as they seared their way out of her throat. “I name you Great Eagle! Raven God! Tchar! Shunch! Chen! TZEEN—”

ANATHEMA

It was not so much spoken as it was, a voice so thunderous and wrathful that as it interrupted her and cast her forth— a voice to boil skies, to sunder seas, to shake the mountains of every world to dust and bones. Screaming— not even knowing why she was screaming, blood dripping from the corner of her mouth as her voice gave out, she was cast back— out of the warp.

Away from the god that had tried to take her, and had almost been shattered instead. For she who could See could Name, and she who could Name could Own. She would have surely perished, but the Changer of Ways would not have emerged entirely intact either.

Away. So far away, miles and light years and impossible distances in space and time until they seemed to stand at opposite ends of the universe— and still she was able to hear that explosive daemonic voice—

YOU ARE ANATHEMA

She slammed back into her body and blacked out for real.

………

She woke— for real this time, she was fairly certain— in a dark, buried cell. A clean cell, even if it was just a metal cube devoid of even the sparsest amenities (and so, probably wouldn’t have remained clean for long. Luckily, she didn’t intend on staying,) just stark metal walls on five sides and bars on the sixth. Her mouth was clamped shut (literally, bound in a ring of steel and bolted shut) and her paws were handcuffed. Both of them. Worst, was that there was a dark type sitting in a chair on the other side of the cell. She couldn’t sense him, but she could tell he was there by the subtle movements, hint of air, his presence echoed back in breath.

She didn’t move at first, too preoccupied with where they were. Not her cell, but beyond the cell… it was utterly bizarre; like nothing she’d ever felt before. The closest thing she could think of was a powerful psychic’s teleportation; she’d never quite figured out more than the absolute basics, but she had occasionally traveled with a passing gardevoir or Alakazam, and the sensation she was getting was roughly similar to that. Cloaked in psychic power, and spirited away.

Except— not at all. This was no mere teleporter’s field. It couldn’t be— not even a legendary would have this much boundless, infinite energy, stretching on for forever in every direction. She opened her third eye, tentatively— and was almost blinded by the intensity of the forces swirling around them. A maddening cyclone of hellish energy, ever slavering forth, rebuffed only by a thin bubble of energy that looked far too weak to hold back the ravenous hordes. A… she’d seen this before, around the palace. Except this time they weren’t there to protect from the occasional attack, but in the heart of it. She looked closer— seeing, to one side, the blazing beacon of the Astronomicon, and another, the maddening Eye of Chaos, and began to understand.

They were in the Warp.

Academically, she’d been aware that was the way the Imperium of Man managed to travel the gulf between the stars. She hadn’t intended to go anywhere close to the Immaterium, though— and to find herself suddenly thrust into it after… whatever that had been, with the woman who shot her, was an unpleasant discovery. Explained why Tz… He had been able to reach her, at least.

Her throat hurt just at the thought.

Now… to escape. She wasn’t sure why they’d taken her, she wasn’t sure where they were taking her, wasn’t even how long it’d been since she had been taken— but she was not going to just lay there and do nothing.

At least they didn’t have pokeballs. That’d make the whole thing about a thousand times easier…

Cautiously, so as not to alert the dark type outside her cell— or to accidentally invite in any of the seething energy of the warp roaring beyond the gellar-field’s bubble— she gathered her psychic power. First, warding. She combed over her various mental constructs and defenses, reinforcing the barrier around her mind and cladding her soul in additional shields. The stuff she could see in her third eye looked foul, and she did not want to get any of it on her fur. Even if it was metaphorical fur.

Then… carefully, very carefully, she manifested the thinnest blade of psychic energy she could. Not really a move, more a simple application of incredibly fine-tuned psychic mastery, further pressed down until it was essentially monomollecular. It twisted and writhed for a second with the faintest shimmer of color— no doubt some weird effect of using her own psychic powers in the warp— before she managed to force it calm.

Cutting free of her restraints was a tedious task. The thread was sharp— as sharp as any other nearly invisible, unbreakable fiber could be— but whatever material her handcuffs had been made out of was hard. Resistant to her psychic strength, too, so it took her what felt like hours of just sawing at the chains to cut them. The muzzle was a lot easier, but still not easy— at least, until she figured out that the bolts holding the metal bars together were of much more vulnerable make than the actual muzzle itself.

From there, all it took was removing the cuffs themselves, carefully stacking everything up in a corner of the cell (cushioning its movement to prevent it from clanking) and she was done! The darkness of her cell worked in her favor, actually, hiding her movements from her bored observer.

Well… he wouldn’t be bored for long.

Fully summoning her psychic powers, she grasped the bars of the cell and wrenched them apart with an horrible screech of shearing metal. The dark type lurched to his feet, hand darting for a weapon on his waist, but Espeon was faster— psychically gripping him by his overly gloomy trench-coat and hurling him against the wall. The blaster he’d been trying to grab clattered to the floor, skidding invisibly into the darkness.

Cast in the eerie shadows of her psychic power, the dark type looked up at her— terrified. Utterly terrified. “H-how? That’s impossible. You can’t use your ruinous powers against me. You can’t.” Well, clearly she just had. Tossing her head in a haughty, feline scoff, she levitated the metal bars over towards him and left him pinned beneath them. Let him escape from that.

Now, she just needed to find a way off the damn ship…

………

Asterae Ross served the God-Emperor of Mankind.

Asterae Ross served the God-Emperor of Mankind.

Asterae Ross served the God-Emperor of Mankind. She repeated the mantra in her head, rhythmic, pounding, with all the drums and flutes of war. Asterae Ross serves the God-Emperor of Mankind. As the pressing malaise of warp-travel settled down on them, as the nervousness of their escape thrummed beneath every soul and spirit on the bridge and in the vast viscera of the Spirit of Caligulus.

She could not sin, because an Inquisitor was above sin. So long as they acted for the good of the Imperium, for His will, then they were blameless in the eyes of the Emperor. She served the God-Emperor of Mankind. She served the God-Emperor of Mankind.

You could be so much more. You could be free. The whispers were omnipresent, but she refused to let them get to her. She had sacrificed so much in the name of the Emperor, and would continue to sacrifice so much more. So that her Imperium might live just a single day longer… “Navigator. What’s our status?”

“We’re making good time.” His voice was scratchy. A mutation of his, she was led to believe. “A vast hand reaches out to touch the Warp, stretched forth from Terra. The foul… the Four hunger. They scream.” As he looked, he began to thrash. Asterae frowned. He’d been fine just a minute ago… “they scream! They are roused! Gods, gods, Emperor, protect us…”

“Close your eye.” He continued muttering, as she stalked up towards him, grabbing by the chin. “Close your eye!” And, forcibly, placing a hand on his forehead— forced it shut. He gasped, and went limp in her arms, the other officers on deck shivering as they returned back to their duties. It was never pretty to see a navigator look too far into the warp. Still… “what did you see?”

“Storms all around us.”

“This close to Terra?”

“We are no longer close to Terra.” He pressed his eyes together, shivering. “The tailwinds blow true, and we are caught on the currents of the sea. We… I do not know for certain, but I believe we have strayed towards the Segmentum Obscurus.” Emperor damn it all, that was the last thing she wanted to hear. All of her inquisitorial holdings were on the other side of the Empire, and she would need those. Maybe she could requisition a small naval fleet? Hopefully…

“Inquisitor!” One of the cogitator-serfs called out, nervously. They ought to be nervous, interrupting her thoughts like that. “Inquisitor, I’ve got a reading!” Which one were they again? Fire support? No, they’d never interrupt her. Gellar-field calc? She hoped not…

She finally deigned to glance over at them. Ah, the sensor suite… she sighed, then snapped— “what is it?” She was already paying attention now, might as well get it over with. “And if you waste my time…”

“Pursuit! There’s signals behind us!”

“What?” She stomped over, eyes blazing. “How? We had days on them! Weeks! What do you mean we’re under pursuit—” she breathed deeply, and pushed away her rage. Pushed away the whispers. “What can you tell me about them?”

“They have… large signal, powerful shielding, significant footprint… give me a moment to run calculations…” the bank of cogitators around them whirred, holograms shifting and folding and remolding until the wire-frame outline of a ship hovered above them… and what a ship it was. Bristling with all sorts of weaponry she couldn’t even name, heavy in the warp, indomitable, even in this pale shadow of it… “Battleship, Inquisitor,” the idiot serf said, as if she couldn’t see that. “Class unknown.”

“Hail it. Tell them that they are to stand down by the order of Inquisitor Asterae Ross.” Internally, she was panicking. Just a little bit, but still— a battleship?! They’d sent a battleship after her? What sort of terrible control did the Amicus Imperator have over Terra that they were able to compel the deployment of that terrible weapon of war for their pet cat? “And—” louder, to the rest of the bridge, “tell the engine-crew to increase power! We must stay out of range! We will—”

“Inquisitor!”

Someone ran onto the bridge, and she felt the last of her patience fray. “What is it now?”

“Inquisitor…” the man panted, wide-eyed in fear— “Inquisitor, the prisoner!” She had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. The cell she’d thrown the beast in was her very best, warded strongly enough to cut even a delta-class psyker from the warp— and she would’ve known in their brief fight if it was that powerful. No, it should have been like any other cat in there.

So why was she so worried?

“Inquisitor! The ship responded to the hail—”

“The prisoner, it—”

“It claims to be the battleship Bucephelus.”

“They escaped.”

Asterae could only grind her teeth in frustration and crush the whispers as the news fired, arrows of misfortune aimed straight for the heart. Then, because she was an inquisitor, and inquisitors fought until the bitter last, she made a decision. So what if they were in Segmentum Obscurus? So what? With misfortune, came opportunity! “Set sail for the Eye of Terror!” A wave of terrified mutters flushed through the bridge, but they would listen to her. They had no choice but to listen to her. “Let’s see how those damn heretics like sailing their fancy ship into that!”

She would win.

She had to win. For the Imperium of Man.

Because Asterae Ross served the God-Emperor of Mankind.

………

Espeon snuck sneakily through the Inquisitor’s ship, and found nothing. The windows were sealed by giant metal slabs, the hangar-bays heaved shut, and every possible exit just generally boarded up to the greatest possible extent. Sensible, given just what they were sailing through, but also annoying.

Worse, she was being hunted. At first she hadn’t been sure, but as time went on… as it became harder and harder to catch crewmembers unaware and nick their rations, as they swept through the empty corridors and ruined halls and shadowed places she used to hide— it became clear that they’d caught onto her disappearance, and that they weren’t going to just leave her in peace. It was… a cruel, fate, she supposed— that to escape, she would have to face the master of the ship beneath her paws. The one behind all of this.

Maybe. She still wasn’t ruling out interference.

Another tremble ran down the length of the ship, its immense superstructure groaning as whatever was tossing the ship like a leaf struck again. She could see it, even if she didn’t particularly want to— the idiot captain had aimed them straight at the massive maelstrom of disgusting psychic mess, and things were getting nasty out there. The gellar-fields were holding, for now…

For now. She was running out of time.

She ran out of time.

It didn’t take much. Just a coincidence, and a clever man. More clever than most of the crewmates searching for her, at least. A lanky sort of man, gaunt, face washed pale with the rigor of warp travel… and he couldn’t even see what they swam through. Was blessed, in that respect.

The two of them stood on opposite ends of a corridor she’d been fleeing down. No way through but through. No way out, no way around… she stared at him, and he stared languidly back at her, twirling his pistol all obnoxiously smug. “Sorry, kitty. It’s end of tha’ line for you. Ragga Thol’s finally got eyes on you, and I never lose my prey.” He leveled the gun at him, and she instinctively set a light screen between them. “I’m impressed, honestly. Psychic powers? In the warp? Don’t know if you’re mad or some sort of genius, but that’s ballsy.”

++Why did you kidnap me? I didn’t do anything to you?++

For a moment, surprise crossed his face, before it settled once more into that grizzled, blank expression. “You can talk?” He shook his head. “All business, kitty. Nothing personal, but when the Inquisition tells you to do something, you do it. Plus, when I get my bonus planets for saving the Imperium, I’m going to be so filthy rich.”

++You think you’re saving the Imperium?++ Genuinely, curious.

“Dunny, but that’s what the inquisitor says. Something something, xenos, whatever, can’t be bothered to remember all of it. But. When this whole fiasco’s all said and done, I’ma walk out a rich, rich man.”

++You’re a fool.++

“Aint nobody ever said a fool can’t be smart once in a blue moon.” Then he— ducked out of the way as something behind her fired, slamming into her and knocking her against her own light-screen. Idiot. In retrospect, it was obvious he’d been stalling. Grimacing at the twinge of pain, she rolled out of the way of the second shot and molded her light screen into a dome, deflecting the heavy shot from the giant of a man behind her and the much-stronger shot of Ragga’s hellpistol. “Thromper! Bayonette!”

“On it boss!” The giant man just charged at her, firing all the while, and—

Espeon realized that she needed something more. Not a delicate instrument, but brute power, vast psychic might, sorcerous strength with which to crush her enemies. The sort of power that, as an Espeon, she’d never quite had access to.

Luckily for her, she was standing in the middle of a sea of quite literally infinite power. As both of them bore down on her, all she had to do was reach out and…

Touch.

A vast torrent of power flooded in through her conduit, splashing harmlessly off her own shield but very much not harmlessly splashing off the ship around her as it burst free from her grasp and washed the entire corridor in psychic flame. Ragga was bodily thrown back with a scream, and Thromper… she heard the sickening cracks as his chest caved in. “No! Not like this!” Ragga was screaming as she blinked back to reality— “I defy you! I defy—” something slavering ripped into him, a giant beast larger than her, nine eyes on its face as it tore him apart into so much bloody gore than turned to look at her.

Espeon looked back, into its baleful gaze… then ran. She’d just run out of time. Above her, the crack she’d made in the gellar-field widened, splintering further as horrors oozed their way in— and rained down upon the Spirit of Caligulus like the most grotesque and twisted kind of rain imaginable. She sprinted past crew-members fighting for their lives, she sprinted past the engineering wards and the Mechanicus valiantly defending their ship, to keep the most critical parts of their ship from getting corrupted and maybe salvage a situation beyond salvaging— she sprinted past guardsmen and past the dark type, standing amidst a small bubble of null space. As the ship groaned and twisted and screamed around her, as blood ran like a new tide, and she knew, and she knew, and she knew that it was all her fault.

She had done this.

She was the blunt bloodied implement of their doom.

Finally, she burst forth onto a bridge— a bridge in chaos. The soldiers standing guard at the doors— over the giant pile of daemonic corpses she’d just clambered over— shot at her the moment she appeared, clearly mistaking her as one of the monstrous beasts, but the lasers just bounced off her light screen. Then half of them were pulped by some massive daemonic creature, all cracked red skin and scything chitin, and they had bigger things to worry about.

Then, she found herself at the center of it all, wherein the architect of everything stood furiously shouting orders and panicked tech-priests and officers, and the navigator enthroned above it all screamed in inhuman atonality amidst arcs of electricity.

“—don’t tell me that you can’t, just do it! Second company, to the deck— get the warp drive! If we lose the warp drive, we’re sitting ducks, and— what are you— you’ve got to be playing a joke, we’re being fired on by the battleship?! Roll, damn you, roll!” The entire ship lurched as something heavy struck it with enormous force, momentarily throwing everyone— human or daemon (or psychic cat) off their feet.

When they climbed back steady— then, that was when their eyes met. Espeon-purple and inquisitor hard-flecked black, bleeding, haggard. A little bit mad. “You.” Gutterally hissed, with so much vitriol, such utter hatred as she drew her gun from her side. “This is all your fault!”

++I never did anything to you.++ Unlike with Ragga, her psychic sending didn’t make the inquisitor hesitate at all. ++All I did, I did to help your Imperium. The Emperor himself said I was his friend, and this is what I get in return?++

“Lies… lies! Lies lies lies! Heretical, xenos, lies! You’re trying to trick me, aren’t you?” She laughed, and laughed, the mad cackle drawing attention from the crew around her that really should have been spent keeping the bridge free of daemonic presence. “You’re a clever little thing, but I know. I always know. The Inquisition always finds out in the end! In the name of the Emperor, Heretek, I shall purge you in holy gunfire!” Then, she shot her.

This time, she’d come prepared. Her future sight caught the entire path of the bullet— from the moment it left the overly-wide barrel of the gun to the moment the bolt ignited and propelled itself forward, to where it struck her shields and burrowed through them, exploding. All she had to do was make a tiny, little point right where the bullet met her light screen, and…

The bolt’s propellant mixed with its charge, and both exploded in a fiery explosion— utterly failing to penetrate her shield. The Inquisitor gaped at her, then fired again, and again, and again. ++Pathetic.++ Each time Espeon effortlessly nullified her shots, striding forward all the while. ++You did this to yourself. You brought this upon yourself. I would have left you well enough alone. I would have left everyone well enough alone!++ Her frustration seethed within her, tinging the psychic sending harsh. ++I was content. I was content! To just stay on Terra and help the Emperor recover, and learn more about this fascinating new world, and you ruined that.++ The whole ship shuddered again, trembling terribly, sending the exhausted inquisitor to their knees. ++Now, take us out of the warp.++

“You don’t think I’m trying? The warp drive is broken and the gellar-field generator is compromised, and we’re far too close to the Eye to—” with a wet grunt, she spasmed for a moment, and fell silent. Slowly, her gaze fell until it landed on the serrated claw of the pink daemon that’d impaled her from behind. “I…” blood dripped out of her mouth… “serve the God-Emperor…” and with those unglorious last words, utterly unsatisfactorily, the Inquisitor died.

“What have you done?” Great, the one person she couldn’t communicate with, that damnable dark type. She very dearly wished she’d put in the effort to learn miracle eye, but, well— what’s past is passed. “We’re doomed.”

She cocked her head, trying to get across the whole ‘your very presence repulses demons’ thing. To her immense joy, he seemed to understand immediately, turning away from her and carving a swath of carnage into the demons that had been piling into the bridge before barking a series of orders to the tech-priests and cogitator-serfs. They all recoiled from him as though he was worse than the literal demons invading the ship, but they did what he said regardless.

He trudged back over to the fallen Inquisitor, staring down at her sadly. “She treated me like a tool, but at least I was a useful tool.” And wasn’t that a familiar feeling. “And now she’s dead, and I don’t know what to do. Should I kill you? I should kill you. You were responsible for her death.”

“You don’t have to listen to her anymore. You are your own person.” Still, she knew that he didn’t understand her. Still, she readied her psychic powers— just in case, as he knelt down and gently pulled free the aquilla-winged rosarius, unwrapping the golden chain and just… holding it. For a moment, he tilted his head as he studied it, considering— before he just slumped. “What matter? The ship is overrun. We are caught in the gaze of the Eye. The warp drive doesn’t work… I fear that this will be my last moment, curious creature.”

“Why?” She cocked her head in confusion, and raised a paw. Even if the ship couldn’t get out… She dragged her paw down, and a shimmering rift between the Materium and the Immaterium sparked into existence. It wasn’t a matter of finesse or anything, really— honestly, with how weak the Immaterium was around the dark type, it was almost easy.

The dark type gaped at her, skittering back— only for the rift to twist and collapse without his presence. “Is this… can we…” he paused. “Navigator!” The navigator flinched bodily. “How close are we to extraction?”

“We should be sitting on top of one. If you can do some— some Pariah magick, then do it now! If that next wave of torpedoes hit, then we’re dead.”

“I can’t do anything.” The dark type gave her a look, though, almost hesitantly stepping closer to her. “But it can.” He shot her a look that very clearly said— can you? And she just nodded. She had to be able to. For she could feel the gaze of the thirsting gods, and the presence of unspeakable things screaming for their souls. It was not somewhere she wanted to get lost in.

So despite the revulsion, despite the grotesque, sickening feeling that threatened to overtake her— in that null circle, where only her own power yet functioned— she pulled on the totality of her psychic might, a visible glow overtaking her and wreathing her in the terrible and glorious, the utterly immense, the sheer pressure… Searing back the pustulating press of ten thousand daemonic abominations—

She slashed down, and the void around them trembled as the ship escaped through a brand new rift in the warp.

………

Constantin Valdor growled, slamming a fist against the metal balustrade of the Bucephelus’s bridge. “Archmagos, tell me, can this ship follow them  through that rift?” Things had been going too well. The boarding-craft disguised as torpedoes— and wasn’t that a callback to a few hectic operations in the Heresy— had just about reached the Spirit of Caligulus, and from there… they would have secured the Amicus Imperator and returned to Terra. Simple.

Now… the Archamgos’s robotic eyes blinked as he stood inhumanly still, before he shook his head in a poor facsimile of human expression. “Regretful report: direct pursuit infeasible. Warp drives would need to operate at 122% efficiency to pierce into realspace in that location.” The Bucephelus’s warp engines, at that, which— even degraded somewhat by long years in drydock and the decaying skills of the Adeptus Mechanicus, were still some of the Imperium’s best.

How had they managed it? “Do we at least know where they emerged?”

“Optimistic report: the navigator states that it is likely they emerged somewhere in the Nemesis Sector. Slightly less optimistic report: the navigator reports that the current warp storm makes the Nemesis sector completely unnavigable via warp travel. He suggests retreating to the Belis Corona Sector and traveling forth from there. My analysis judges this as a sound plan of action. A fleet composition of one Archeotech battleship is hardly appropriate for a long-term mission of this kind.” Except it wasn’t supposed to be a long term mission. He closed his eyes, and sighed deeply, and nodded. He could recognize good advice when he heard it.

He wouldn’t give up, though. This had the signs of the Four all over it, and so he couldn’t give up. Not when it came to something so important. Not until the Amicus Imperator was pried from the grasp of the Ruinous Powers once more safely returned to Terra.

So be it. In the name of the Emperor— “set sail for Belis Corona.” They would see His work done.

………

In the sky above Tessera IV, the battered wreck of the Spirit of Caligulus burst into dazzling fire as it shattered on re-entry, enormous portions of the ship breaking off and tumbling away, mere sparks, flickering so tantalizingly bright against the stoic gaze of the heavens above.

The first winds of winter moved amongst the trees, a great gust rushing over land and sea as the locals glanced up, eyes wide with awe and terror as they watched their skies open up. It was a fell omen, for the beginning of a fell season, glittering refulgent with the promise of change.

It was the most beautiful meteor shower they'd seen in a thousand years.

Chapter Text

Their reappearance in realspace was a rather inglorious sequence of events that Espeon would much rather forget had ever happened. A chaotic short sequence, too; as it turned out, what little remained of their ship had definitely not been spaceworthy by any measure of the imagination (and reality, as it so happened to be outside of the Immaterium, was aphantasiac). It hadn’t even been structurally stable. They’d…

Well, it’d been a rough couple of minutes and— needless to say— Espeon had learnt a lot about the aerodynamics of eeveelutions and how well they (didn’t) work as orbital reentry vehicles.

She (and the dark type, whom she’d grabbed mostly because he was the closest, though the fact that he seemed to have seized authority over the ship didn’t hurt) crashed into a crystal river with an almighty plume of water— the impact jarring even after she’d psychically slowed them down and wrapped them in a frankly obscene number of barriers. Then thereafter followed a few frantic minutes as they were swept up by the deceptively fast current and sent tumbling over river-rounded rocks and sandy bends and, shadows, overhead, of boughs— until they managed to (with some doing) pull themselves out of the rushing waters and onto the grassy banks. That, too, was something she’d rather not remember.

For a long while, they just… laid there, on the wide river’s grassy bank, half-panting for breath between the sunlit expanse— waves aglitter, tumbling in obliviating current— and the dark forest boreal behind them. It was silent; not the eerie silence of a crypt or the dead silence of a cell, but… a natural silence, interspersed by the whisper of wind as it dragged its fingers through the towering, gnarled pines above them and the burble of water, and the far off sound of a lonely bird’s caw, caaaw. A handful of flitting bugs buzzed around them, curious enough to approach but wary enough to stay only at the far edge of vision.

Mewling in pain, Espeon flopped over onto her other side, so she was looking at the dark type— who, for what it was worth, didn’t look much better than she did. His armor, if the coat and dark synthetic undersuit could even be called that, was scorched at the fringes from the fires of reentry— and that wasn’t even addressing the various slashes and wounds on him. The skull-shaped helmet had a few deep scratches, and the mechanical lens over one of the eyes had been shattered irreparably. As for herself, Espeon could feel the bruises forming beneath her fur, and she was pretty sure parts had burnt off in the whole ‘dramatic reentry’ thing.

At least they weren’t covered in demon gore anymore? Small victories…

Reaching up— with a groan of his own, the dark type peeled off his helmet, weakly tossing it down onto the springy grass and running a hand through his long, stringy hair. “Owww…” he looked a lot more normal than what Espeon would’ve expected, from the grotesque image of his armor. An almost boyish face, a little gaunt— too pale, though bronzed somewhat. His eyes were very round, she couldn’t help but thing— wide and speckled with a beautiful violet-dark color, like a nebula. “I can’t believe we survived that.”

Espeon just weakly raised a paw, before letting it fall back to the grass with a thump. Define survive. They were stranded on an unknown world, somewhere deep in the wilderness of unknown stars, lost. Very, very lost. To think, from Terra, to this…

“I don’t understand you.” The dark type mumbled, not even looking her way anymore— instead just staring up into the swirling azure above, ringed with fluffy clouds and streaked, marble grey the smoke of the Spirit of Caligulus’s ultimate desolation. “What you do should’ve been impossible. All of this should’ve been impossible. The Inquisitor purposefully stationed me by your cell. You doing… anything should’ve been impossible.”

She tilted her head, in response, half-inquisitively— and, just like he had on the bridge, the dark type seemed to pick up on her meaning almost immediately. Funny, how it took jumping worlds and getting kidnapped halfway across the galaxy to find the sort of human who could. “I’m a Null,” he explained, so easily. Almost too easily, the words flowing with that ease-of-repetition that came from having explained whatever-it-was to far too many. “A psychic blank. A pariah.”

Espeon gave him a look. Like she of all people was supposed to know what that meant!

The man sighed. “I should have expected as much… just— whatever you did, however you managed it, it should have been impossible. It shouldn’t have worked. It just shouldn’t have!” He turned away from her, shoulders drawn tight together. “Can you even understand me? God-Emperor above, am I trapped on an alien planet with a xeno that can’t even, that… I…” he shook, wracked with sobs. “And they’ll just as likely kill me as save me when, if we find the locals. Is this my fate? Is this all that is my due? Hath I been forsaken, oh watchers and Saints of ancient Mankind?” He shook his fist at the sky, furious— just for a moment, before his hand collapsed heavily onto the grass, and he just shivered, tears trailing down, glowing— in the sunlight, as they wetted his cheeks.

He looked pathetic.

He looked sad.

She pushed herself to her paws, padding over beside him and— gently— pressing a paw against his hand. She could not give him reassurance, for his dark typing… his Pariah nature, prevented her from extending even that small psychic comfort. However, though, just because she couldn’t read him psychically, didn’t mean she’d lost her empathy.

It was a small gesture. It was everything.

He stared up into her eyes, purple to purple, indigo to hers, aglow with psychic light. Still. The wind blew between them, catching on her fur and sending it aflutter in mesmerizing waves. “Hah. A xeno and I, forced to survive this sylvan wild together. Isn’t this a strange turn of fate?” She flicked her tail, and dipped her head in acknowledgement. “So you can understand me.” A slow blink. “You can understand me, and the pariah gene seems to have no hold on you, and… hah! To think, the one person who can stand my presence, and it would be a xeno in the shape of a cat!”

“A strange twist of fate indeed,” she murred, knowing full well that he couldn’t understand her. “At least I’m not alone…” and the words rang true, even if she was loath to admit it.

And the sun still wheeled above them, and the sky turned, and the trees swayed, and the river rushed past them all crystal clear in reflection of the empyrean, above them— the chill omen of winter reached down.

She really hoped rescue would come soon. Surviving out here, alone, did not look like fun.

………

“What does it say?” Darisius XXI of the House of Veor, Planetary Governor of Tessera IV by the virtue of his honored ancestors, and most powerful man in the system by the strength of his mercantile might and the depth of his political connections, glared at the Sanctioned Psyker as he fiddled with the deck of cards on his desk. He didn’t like her ilk; pyskers, to a one, were perfidious and dangerous breed, filled with an arcane power that would inevitably get to their heads— whether that was literally, in the case of the Heretek, or figuratively, like the self-important acolyte sitting silently beneath his questioning before him. 

Didn’t she know that he was the ruler of the planet she stood on? That she existed here only by his sufferance? Where did she think she would go, if he suddenly revoked his patronage? Back to Terra? He’d have laughed at the thought had he not spent so long carefully schooling his expression in far tenser political settings than this. Terra had been all but inaccessible for the better part of a century, blocked off by a particularly nasty warp storm peeled off from the Eye of Terror.

Which was part of why the sudden arrival of a ship far inside of the system’s mandeville point was of such note. The guard had already been reporting a small but noticeable uptick in daemonic activity on the planet, damn the idiot pilot who’d pulled that stunt…

Which, in turn, was part of why he waited, simmering in silent wroth as the psyker did whatever strange magick they needed to in order to read the Emperor’s Tarot. Really, did they need to take so long fiddling with the cards?

Finally, she sat back, eyes dead and voice blank as she— the nerve! Asked if he was ready to proceed. Of course he was ready to proceed! He’d been ready to proceed thirty minutes ago, and now he was ready for a drink and an early night. One pudgy hand waved halfheartedly, indicating— go on, and she nodded—

Flipping over the first of the cards, she read aloud, “the Emperor, upside down.”

“What does it mean?”

“The warp. The malign and thirsting stars, the cruel tough of that which Must Not Be Named, and a hopeless fight.” What a load of utter groxshit. Tessera IV hadn’t felt the touch of chaos since the first settlements had been laid on its surface, sometime— if the legend went— in the Dark Age of Technology. 

Their planetary defense force was good. Not Cadia good, but good for how peaceful their world was. Maybe it referred to the recent ship wreck? He would have to check… God-Emperor, what a hassle.

The next card. The diviner hissed in a breath as she stared at it, before, shakily— “the Despoiler. Upside down.” She breathed out in relief. “Never in my years have I seen the inverse of that card… together, I fear the deprivations of chaos.” She was probably overreacting. But still… “the Lost Child, right side up.”

“What does that mean?”
“Someone who has wandered off the path. If you have a wayward scion, then this is a good omen for any attempt to find them.” He had no children. At least none that he liked enough to spend even the barest effort in retrieving them if they were lost. “And… the Sorcerer, upside down. A terrible force from the warp. The privation of xenos or daemons.”

“Again?” Hadn’t they had enough problems with those knife-eared foul aliens? He was still dealing with the aftereffects of that raid thirty years later, and now what, he’d have to do it all over again? He couldn’t afford another attack! Not if he wanted to buy his next regen treatment, at least. “Fine, then. Can you get in contact with the Astropathic Choir of Tessera III and tell them to dispatch their rangers unit? I’ll have need of them. And tell them to keep a watch out for Eldar incursion!”

The psyker smiled, the barest of things, as she swept up her cards and bowed slightly. “Your will be done, Lord Governor.” With that said, she left— as infuriatingly mysterious as always.

He pulled out a bottle of his favorite whisky (from the recent years’ batches, no need to waste the good stuff) and poured himself a tall glass.

What a bother. Hopefully the whole thing would blow over soon… and all the while, outside his office, the cold winds of winter blew, ice sleeting against his high tower and washing the whole world in its perfect white.

………

Survival in such an unfriendly world was a whole new beast; the shape of its curved claw the onset of winter, the glint of its eyes each cruel fortune, its cry the endless solitude and its slavering jaws each fleck of vicissitude, splattered onto them in some great cosmic joke. She hadn’t thought it’d be much different from where she’d lived, back before, in the forests just out of town.

She was very wrong.

The first thing they did was find shelter. Water, at least, they had plenty of— perhaps too much, as neither of them particularly doubted that with one good storm the river would burst its banks and flood out into the marshy lowlands around them. So, instead of settling down where they’d pulled themselves out of the water, they picked themselves up and slowly— painstakingly slowly— trudged upstream. Her memories of the forest’s landscape were hazy, at best— she hadn’t the time to make a hard-memory while falling from space— but she did have the vague impression that there were some mountains upstream.

They didn’t reach that far, but they did find a place where the river cut harshly between two hills, the landscape around them rumpled and, cracked— as though struck, by some divine sundered to expose sheer gray rock and cloudy veins of whitish stone interspersed throughout. The river sounded like a cold wail when the wind swept alongside it through its little gorge, but there caves there were dark and pleasant (and kept out the rain) and the forest was bounteous, and they ended up not finding anywhere better.

So, they settled down there. The very next day, it snowed for the first time.

It would certainly not be the last.

She remembered, so starkly, waking up in the night— stepping outside of their cave to the thin lip of earth and stone that wound up into the forest above them, silhouetted starkly against their harsh cliff— and staring, skywards, and the fat flakes of white that darted down against them. Looking heavenwards, to whence they’d come, as the silver luminescence of the planet’s moon bathed the whole world in its ashen glow; like the last embers of some dying fire, now once more falling down to earth. An enormous silence, that seemed to devour all sound between her and the world. Livid desolation of winter’s breath…

The storm continued through the early hours of the next day, and their own travails had only begun even when it did die down to a few sparse flurries, and then nothing— barren and bright beneath the glittering sunlight. During the night, the Null had come down with some sort of illness, and— not being a doctor, unable to help him— all Espeon was able to do was to bring back plenty of firewood and pile up rocks by the cave entrance, and… just those little things. 

There were clearly things in the deep forest— she could tell them, see the shadow of their passing in broken branches and deep tracks, and furrows gouged into the ground, but she could not see them. Instead, she made do using telekinesis to grab fish from the river. As it was, despite the recent snowstorm the river was still rich with pescine life— particularly, one peculiar yellowish-blue fish with four eyes (not a mutation, she was relatively sure, or at least not in the warp-touched sense) and fatty flesh with little pustules of noxious wax in its meat that…

She’d spent most of the night after eating her first bite vomiting over the side of the cliff. That had been… unpleasant. 

Luckily, if she was careful to not eat the nauseating substance— which, she quickly learned, could be readily achieved by simply heating up the fillets and letting it melt out (and then rather thoroughly washing them off) it was a decently tasty meat. Rather tough for fish, but that was fine. She made a broth for the Null, and fed him while he muttered his insane ramblings, and sat by him as he slipped further into the long dark.

The days grew shorter.

He grew more and more gaunt. Not quite as bad as she’d feared— something in his suite of implants and augments was helping him, somehow— but the effects of the disease on his body were undeniable. It was at times like these that she wished she could interface with him. That she could speak to him in those dark abscesses of mind, twisting recesses, labyrinthine folds and myriad mysterious thoughts of the feverish and mad; to offer him at least some reassurance. Yet, even that was denied to her.

Yet, even still…

On the solstice (and she could tell it was the solstice, somehow; for the wan sun’s long and mournful cry, for the echo of lunar remembrance and the stirring of things in the darkest of parts) she laid beside him as he seized and twitched, eyes fluttering madly beneath his closed lids. Hoping… not quite sure what she was hoping. She’d barely gotten to know him before he succumbed to his illness, and with each passing day she slowly started to lose hope that he would ever truly wake.

With the passing of a gust of wind—

The world stilled, though she did not bother to stand. A preternatural stillness, as some wolf-like, bird-like thing in the far distance howled to the moon. The Null gasped, eyes shooting open— not lucid, but not entirely delirious, either. “Father… Abbot… is it time? To light the fires… and hang the St. Lex’s Wort garlands… and bless the holly? And… to sing our praises, in choral refrain, to the Cynosure of the Mural?”

Not yet, she wanted so badly to say to him. “Hold on a little longer,” soft mewl, paw pressed against his burning forehead. “Just hold on a little longer. It’ll all be over soon.” One way or another, she was sure.

“Anabel? Sister Anabel? Is that you… I’m sorry… I left you without saying goodbye. I’ve always… I never forgot your face. Everyone else, I forget, I forget, but not you. Sister Anabel…” he murmured, almost liturgic, swaying softly side to side on the coarsely-woven reeds that made his bed. “Anabel, Anabel…”

“Espeon.” She responded. “My name is Espeon.”

“Oh… not Anabel.” He sounded heartbroken. “Then… to whence shall I depart, soulless? Is the Oblivion all that is left of my fate?”

“I’m still here.”

“Of course you are… you’re a cute cat. I wish…” he raised his hand to her, shakily, and rested it on her head, rubbing weak circles around the gem in the center of it. “And Lo, they said, for this is the age of becoming, of our Salvation, that might we stride steadfast through temptation and bathe in the light of the God-Emperor of Mankind, and become as the Saints, and…” she just swallowed, watching as he wallowed away into the corridors of his memory. If she had accepted that deal, then would she…

No. She shook off the thought, checking her mental defenses again just in case. Luckily, it was mere temptation, not Temptation. To die a thousand times and sunder her soul on the rocks of oblivion— that was better by far than to take that foul god’s deal. For she had seen what he was; his deepest nature, his whole form, and to know that was to know that he was Chaos, and cruelty, and unimaginable perfidy more profane than the most profane thing imaginable.

Still… she felt powerless, like she hadn’t been in a long time. Back in her own world, she’d avoided dark types— not out of fear, or anything, but rather because she had little to offer them and even less in common. She’d been too busy learning new psychic techniques, anyways… and she cursed that, a little, now— that she might be foisted together with one, only to lose them so soon… what a terrible cruelty.

She had tried everything she could. Now all she could do was hope, and pray to a god she knew was just a man. Emperor preserve what she could not…

On the dawn of the next day, his fever broke. She knew it was not a miracle. It was simply… chance, and the ever fluctuating tumble of luck.

It felt like one regardless.

She padded into their cave with a fish held in psychic grip behind her— and was so shocked to see the Null sitting up and staring around normally that she dropped onto the floor with a slick slap of flesh hitting stone. “You’re awake! I thought…” that she’d lose him, and would once more be alone. Then— “you’re up! Lay back down, you’ve been sick for months, you can’t—” she rushed over to him, physically pushing him back down onto the pallet. He protested, but she was a healthy pokemon in her prime, and he was a weak human who’d just started recovering from his illness. It was really no contest. “Wait here a second.”

“You don’t have to treat me like a kitten. I was trained by the Culexus Temple for conditions far worse than this… one time, they dropped us off on a volcanic jungle world where every few days it would rain toxic ash that could kill you in two minutes. With no gear. Or the other time, when they sent me to kill a nurgleite plaguebearer that had threatened to infect an outpost moon that provided crucial supplies to the Sororitas of the main defense force…” he continued to chatter on as she carefully prepared the fish, not really talking to her so much as just talking. She was pretty sure he was marveling at just being alive.

A couple of minutes later, after cooking it once and washing it and heating it again, and cutting it into thin slices with a psychic blade, she floated his meal over to him. He grabbed them only a little hesitantly, poking at them for a second— marveling like a child at the floating food.

“This…” he grasped one, and slowly nibbled at it for a while— slowly, faster and faster until he was ravenously devouring the whole meal. “This is good! A bit tough for my tastes, but… well, better than what I’ve had to deal with on plenty of missions.” For a little while, he just ate, until he was so full that Espeon was a little worried he wouldn’t be able to hold it down. “Thank you.” Whispered, but— sincere. “I can’t believe I’m saying this to a xeno, but… I am a man of my honor. I owe you my life.”

Espeon just tilted her head back, as in— as of course? What else would she have done? It was only right.

He laughed softly, glancing over at her as she cleaned out the little stone bowl she’d made— scrubbing it down with ash and then rinsing the whole thing out with water, putting the little blocks of wax off to the side. She hadn’t found much use for it yet— at first she thought it might be able to caulk the holes between the stone wall she’d made over the cave entrance, but the clay-ey river-bottom mud had turned out much better for that. She’d tried turning it into candles, but it didn’t burn very well.

Every motion of hers, he watched with a rapt, almost innocent fascination. She cocked her head at him after a while, flicking her tail in curiosity, and he blinked, parsing through her intent for a long few seconds. “I… ah, keep going, please.” She raised a paw, then dipped her head in acknowledgement and kept on with the (rather mundane, actually) chores. “I never thought that I would be able to see a psyker at work from up close. It was always a fascination of mine, ever since I was young… Anabel was the only psyker I ever knew that didn’t immediately hate me on sight— you excluded, apparently— but even she couldn’t do anything while in the same room as me. It just… it is my aura. We Null are anti-psykers.”

That didn’t seem quite right, but then again, she was still a bit new to the strange nature of the psychic in the realm. There was probably nuance to it that neither of them knew. So she simply blinked and kept on cleaning up.

That elicited a short laugh from him. “You really are like a cat, Espeon! I’ve faced my fair share of intelligent xenos, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone so far divorced from the typical shape of species. Have you ever heard of the Eldar? Or even the Tau, or Necrons? Not commonly spoken of, I know, but I can assure you that they all have a remarkably humanoid shape.” She had been somewhat aware of that, actually, given others reactions to her. She didn’t think it was too abnormal, but then again they didn’t have pokemon and the huge variety of forms inherent in that, so she supposed it made sense.

Then the second part of what he’d said hit her. Blinking in surprise, she curled a paw towards herself and asked, droll, “Espeon?”

“That is your name, if I understood correctly? I know that kind of just sounds like… when you speak, in general, but I could have sworn that I remember…” he frowned, confused, but Espeon just huffed in amusement and nodded. Funny that he remembered that… she pointed her paw at him and cocked her head inquisitively, and waited for him to understand. “You want me to…” she shook her head. “No, of course not, you spent too long… then…” he stuck a hand in some hidden pocket, and pulled out the inquisitor’s rosarius. “Were you looking for this?”

It was a beautiful little trinket, she could tell. On the surface it had a slightly worn, golden look— an aquilla, wings spread wide, all harshly angled and as fastidiously blunt as the Imperium it represented. Beneath that surface, though, it was intricate— so incredibly intricate. She’d seen more incomprehensible technology— in the Emperor’s throne, if not elsewhere in the palace— but the rosarius made a good attempt in matching it. She chirped in curiosity at whatever arcane mechanism lay buried beneath it— then shook her head harshly, ears and fur flopping side-to-side as she refocused on what she’d been asking in the first point.

She pointed at herself. “Espeon.” Then at him— who? And that time, he seemed to have gotten the message. His eyes widened so slightly, before he snorted softly. “Ah, of course… I apologize. You’ve probably been calling me ‘that idiot assassin’ or ‘deadweight’ this entire time, haven’t you?” No? Though maybe he was just oddly self-depricative… understandable, given the situation he’d ended up in. “My name… I was called, in the Temple, CXL-980026702135. It was my ID code. Before that, though… it’s been a long time. I was called Haex Lancifolius. The abbot once told me that I wasn’t named after the Lance of Sanguinius like I thought I was, but rather the former Abbess’s favorite planet, which grew its wild runners up the monastery's high walls… I used to be so disappointed at that.” Haex chuckled, again. “What a petty thing to be upset about, in retrospect. I’m lucky, I know— amongst my fellow pariahs, that someone once loved enough at least the thought of me to grant me a name so laden with that good blessing.”

She nodded. “Haex, then. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

Of course, he couldn’t understand her. Still though, he nodded back, and smiled. “Maybe we’ll get through this all in the end, after all…” and Espeon could only hope he spoke prophetic.

………

As with the lengthening sunlight, as though by some blessing of the heavenly spheres, Haex’s recuperation from there was smooth. Smooth enough, at least— there was one time when he gave her a nasty scare by (incorrectly) cooking a fish by boiling it in the water (and thereby learning firsthand just how good the cliff-face was to puke off of). She’d been half scared to death that he’d fall ill again, but he recovered the next day much as she had.

That, in turn, was how they’d figured out that the waxy substance stored in the fish was, conveniently— so conveniently that she almost refused to believe it true, for the longest while— soap. Needless to say, she’d gone on a bit of a cleaning spree, and their time in the caves thereafter quickly became a lot more palatable.

A few weeks after his fever broke, he was up and about the cave, with even the occasionally short walk (accompanied) out into the forest. Not down to the river— that was too difficult a climb for him, something that he never missed an opportunity to complain about— but he was doing much better. A month and a half later, he was well enough to help her forage in the jungle.

Espeon hadn’t thought she was bad at foraging, but Haex had it down to an art. He taught her how to follow the tracks of the little animals and see what they ate, and how to test plants for toxicity (which was a rather more involved process involving several steps and what felt suspiciously similar to a bit of simple chemistry, given that they were on an alien planet) and how to find things hidden in the ground or on trees, or under rocks… They didn’t actually end up eating any insects, thankfully, but he also taught her how to find the juiciest grubs and track the chirping bugs by their sound, and how to use them to trap birds and fish (without psychic trickery).

Towards the end of winter, when the days weren’t quite so short and the cold not quite so bitterly harsh— expressing some disgust at the ramshackle nature of their cave, he’d knocked down the slumped wall of stone and begun work on a better entrance. Which turned out to be a bad idea, giving rise to some rather bitterly cold nights— but after apologizing profusely, they’d set to work making something much better. At first, he’d wanted to make a wooden palisade, but the discovery of a wood-boring insect that lived symbiotically inside the trees until they died had quickly killed that idea.

It was clear that Haex knew far more about destroying buildings than he did building them, but they worked things out. It was a bit funny, the arguments they had about stuff when neither of them could really talk to one another, but… they worked things out.

Espeon couldn’t help but think, somewhat ironically, that this was what it must feel like for most pokemon with good trainers, where neither of them could talk but both of them could understand.

In the end, they’d gone with these tough bricks, made of clay from the river and mixed in with dried, reedy grasses. Which meant they’d had to make a kiln, which meant that they really had to stretch their knowledge of physics and really ancient history— Haex liked to grumble about how this was tech-priest work, and how neither of them had the qualifications for this, but in the end they’d figured out a good method for it. 

The blocks— each more of a dense, heavy slab two feet long and the better part of a foot in its other dimensions, came out of the oven a dense, stoney black and would’ve been impossible to carry were it not for her psychic abilities making things a whole lot easier. She made the bricks— using her psychic abilities to stoke the fires— while he’d polished out their cave, smoothing the floor and chiseling out the corners so they could really fit in the blocks, and when it was done…

The first hints of spring were pushing through the melting snow, buds unfurling and insects waking vibrant— when, at last, it was done. She might’ve been biased, given all the work that went into it, but… it was beautiful.

A small thing, ultimately… but it was theirs, and that meant something.

With a base of operations secured, then— and the weather turning for the better— they set out to explore their immediate surroundings. There was something almost magical, strolling through an ancient forest where the trees were thicker around than she was long (tail included!) and rugged with the weight of all the years they’d endured. Where the moss, springy and deep in the shaded places, butted up against ferns and forgotten shafts of sunlight, cascading down between the dense boreal pines and scattering off those scattered remnants of snow perched atop fronds and dried leaf-litter. A wild place. A wild place, untamed, fully and completely held apart from the touch of its erstwhile, arrogant claimants…

They stuck to the river, at first, which turned out to be a good choice. It was really easy to get lost in the dense forest, and were it not for her psychic memory she was pretty sure that even Haex, with all his training, would have gotten turned around more than once. The river represented a… if tenuous, safe road— their own little Via Appia deep into the wilderness.

It felt like there was always something new to discover. Walk half a day downstream to where the river widened and the flow smoothed, and you’d find vast banks of sand piled up in rumpled sheets, visible only from above. Go upstream, and you’d find rocky peaks, craggy and still ice-bound despite the changing of the seasons, where the forests crashed against and sloughed off to leave in their wake, only alpine. 

Take the first tributary up, and you’d find this most gloriously perfect lake, perched where two hills abutted, crystal clear and engorged with springwaters so, epiphites on weeping pines dangling into the water and jumping— again and further again, arcs of greenery skittering out over the surface of the lake. 

The stones beneath its still waters glittered in the sun, and— after a lazy day spent searching for a different, hopefully more palatable species of fish (and failing) they found out that some of those stones were gold. 

It was funny— on Terra, that was probably enough treasure to make someone at least decently wealthy, but here, its sole use was how pretty it looked. Espeon had grabbed a bunch, and while Haex had worked on setting up a proper furnace in one of the nearby, smaller caves, she’d used her considerable psychic might to just hammer the metal into thin sheets and plate them up along the wall. At first just plain, but after some urging from the Null, she quickly got rather deep into making pretty patterns along the wall.

It was fun. Innocent, pointless, blissful fun. The furnace, they used to smelt down some black sand so Haex could start working on some emergency repairs to his gear, (and make himself a proper weapon, what with how he’d lost his in the crash— a rather neat looking spear) and their main abode only became more and more furnished as first summer, then fall stole over the land. In marching solar cycles, shifting rays, searing their way through the forest in radiant memory of the damp and old places…

They got along well.

She learnt about him, and he learnt about her. Mostly the former, but she was pretty sure that Haex had some good guesses about just who she was that he never actually spoke. As for him… she learnt more about the monastery she’d grown up in his younger years, then about how he’d and his ‘sister’ (fellow orphan) had been taken to Terra— his sister to become a sanctioned psyker (for real, he’d checked)-- and him to the Culexus Temple to join those most sinister ranks. He had the most surprisingly entertaining tales about the strangest of things, missions to worlds she’d not even thought possible, desperate escapes and clean decapitation strikes…

It could not but remind her, every time, of the true breadth and wonder of the galaxy she lived in. Perhaps one day she’d even get to explore all of it…

It was good… but.

No good thing could last forever.

………

Reginalus Qin-Lu had been searching the god-awful forests of a god-awful, benighted, backwards planet for the better part of an entire year by this point, and he was sick of it. He’d never say it out loud, but damn the Captain for selling them out to some fat-bastard politician, damn the Planetary Governor for agreeing to the transfer, and triple-damn the Governor of Tessera IV for making the demand in the first place.

Being part of the planetary guard was supposed to have been a peaceful position. Nothing crazy ever happened in the Tessera system, they told him. The whole place had been peaceful for centuries, with only the occasional xenos attacks to worry about— and the last one had happened before he’d been born. “Besides,” they’d told him, “that’s for the real soldiers to defend against.” Not something an infantry muck would’ve been called on for.

Yet, here he was. Awarded with a surprise promotion to the rangers and then shipped out across the void with barely a month’s warning, whole life upturned. What a horrible joke of a deployment— and he was the punchline.

“Ay, cheer up mate.” A heavy hand landed on his back, pushing him forward off his carefully picked path and straight into a slick patch of mud. “Still moping about ‘ol Ellai? She wasn’t even pretty to begin with!” A round of grating laughs echoed through the forest at that one, and all he could do was shoot his comrades a venomous glare. “Tis good, ‘tis good, we’re living the life! I tell ya— you Planetary Guardsmen don’t realize how damn blessed you are. Live to retirement in the Astra Militarum? What a damn joke!” 

Wiry Leo (that was the only name anyone in the company knew him as, at least) was about as good of a corporal as they came, much as Reginalus was loath to admit. Not many other corporals would be so nonchalant about interacting with their charges— ‘specially one from the real Militarum. Like, the honest to God-Emperor planet hopping, traitor blasting, xeno-slaughtering Astra Militarum. Apparently, he’d just come out of a brutal conflict a few systems over (chaos raiders? Or so the rumors went) and was enjoying the hell out of his new lease on life.

Didn’t mean that he didn’t run a tight ship, but still. Made it hard to be mad at him.

“Oi, lay off, lay off. Your cat’s probably found a new man by now!” Another round of laughs. Jeom, on the other hand… oh, if there was any man that Reginalus hated more than he hated him, then he was yet to find them.

He shot him a glare, hand tightening on his lasgun. Leo gave him a warning look, and he moved his finger away from the trigger— but still. “Talk any more groxshit like that, and you and I are going to have problems, kapiche?”

“Yeah, yeah, look at the romantic here…”

“Company, form up!” A light round of cursing and terrified scrambling later, all of them fell into tight formation. None of them (bar Leo) had ever seen real combat before— but they were part of their Planetary Guard; they’d had their fair share of deployments to some mutated den of abhumans or human gang that might as well been worse, and all of them knew that when it came to living or dying, it pretty often came to being utterly on top of things.

They moved forward slowly, towards the break in the trees that indicated the river. None of them wanted to sit out there, exposed beneath the sky, but the corporal told them to move, and so they moved. Wasn’t like disobeying orders was an option anyways…

They saw it immediately. The faint curl of smoke from the side of the cliff flowing smoothly into the azure fall sky, the smell, of meat, of something cooking. The subtle sense of wrongness. “Alright, everyone. Sharply now… Chaos incidents on this planet have been up almost twenty percent, something’s happening at the south pole, and I’m not taking any chances with something that just reeks of magick.”

“Chaos?” Muttered one of the soldiers behind him, and Reginalus was probably the only one positioned to see how their corporal’s face twisted into a grimace. Annoyed, yes, but also… haunted in a way that scared him more than the otherwise rather bucolic scene before him.

He waved a hand, the gesture curt. “Forget I said anything.” Then, to really rub it in, “if I hear any of you talking of this, I’ll goddamn shoot you myself.” Forbidden, then. A lot of things were forbidden. One more word didn’t change that much at all…

Jeom kicked down the cave’s front door, and they all stormed in, lasguns up and ready for a fight— only to find nobody home. What a home it was! The corporal moved through their formation like a ghost, fingers drifting up to the wall for a second before darting away before they could actually touch anything. 

Reginalus could see why. Through the small, slit-shaped windows and the chimney above the door, the way the light shone in and reflected off the walls… the whole space was cast golden. It was a work of art, intricately engraved and plastered over the entire wall… strange, abstract shapes that resemble machines, others that seemed almost natural in design, and where the ray of sunlight struck brightest— an image of the God-Emperor of Mankind standing over a serpent, spear pinned through its chest. It was heart-wrenchingly beautiful.

A shrine? No, as far as he was aware, this part Tessera IV hadn’t settled… ever, pretty much; not before the Great Crusade, and certainly not afterwards. That, and the not-shrine had clearly been inhabited as recently as a day or two ago. For the God-Emperor’s sake, the fire was still smoldering!

The Corporal made a little gasping sound, eyes widening. “I recognize this.” The others made little sounds of interest, but none dared to actually speak over their commanding officer. “This is the design of the Eternity Gate. On Holy Terra.”

Jeom’s eyes flew wide. “You’ve been to Holy Terra?”
“What, do I look like some bigshot to you? No, of course I’ve damn never been to Holy Terra! Nah, nah— this is famous iconography, like right famous. Like, Holy capital H holy. Damn good rendition, too. The one I saw didn’t look even an eighth as good as this one…” Leo paused, then scowled. “Look, here. Eldar.” A wizened Eldar man— if the aliens could even really be described as such— stood off to the side in one of the artworks, framed in a strange, disturbingly organic room— an eerie counterpoint between the gilded art of the Imperium and the design of that perfidious race. “So this is a heretek’s abode…”

Reginalus wasn’t sure… but if the Corporal said it was so, then it was so. “Should we… you know?” He sliced his hand across his neck, the motion sharp— curt, in the curtain’s call of execution’s order. “Destroy it?”

The Corporal stared longingly at the image of the Eternity gate, gleaming in the sunlight. “It’d be a damn shame, a damn shame I tell you… can’t stomach the thought of defacing something so beautiful— even if it is a heretek’s retreat. Damnit, you’re right though, can’t just leave this sort of thing sitting around. How about this— Reginalus, Jeom, you two stay here and scrape off all the parts with eldar on them. Leave the Imperial stuff.”

“On it, Corporal.” Jeom just gave a lazy salute… and, of course, the bastard just wandered off to the corner and pretty much fell asleep the moment the rest of the group headed out, because of course he did. Could it ever be easy with him? For a moment, he was almost mad enough to make a fuss over it all… but, no, that’d just cause problems later on— and he knew that the others like Jeom a whole lot more than they liked him. He’d probably be with the wrong side of a lasgun shoved up his—

He heard a sound.

Pausing his somewhat decidedly aggressive campaign against the mural (his bayonet well withstanding the rigors of hacking at a stone wall and soft gold), he glanced around. “Jeom? Was that you? I swear, if you’re pranking me, then I’m going to make an honest mistake diluting your pesticide tomorrow.” Nasty skin rash in the making, that. “Jeom?” No, couldn’t be him— the man was out like a brick. Then, who could it…

He saw them first, the eyes. Lurid-bright purple, violet, lavender to white, shimmering with a strange and inhuman power that made him gulp and shakily raise his lasgun. “W-who’s there? I’ll shoot, don’t think I won’t! Leo? Tenillus? Is that you?”

The thing stepped forward, and— despite himself— Reginalus gulped and took a step backwards. Oh God-Emperor preserve him, it was… it was a monster. Half as tall as he was, languid and pantherine and deadly, a gem on its forehead and fur pinker than the pinkest dawn… a beast. He was cornered with a beast—

Then, it cocked its head and spoke. ++Who are you?++

“Xeno!” He didn’t actually really remember what he did next. All he knew was that— despite being a planetary guardsman, he had somehow ended up in the same room as a xeno. Not just a xeno, either, but a xeno psyker. The following few seconds were blurry, but he remembered distinctly firing his gun, the las-bolt deflecting off a shimmering plane of intangible force, and… then, next thing he knew, he was on the ground with the beast xeno sitting on top of him, pinning him to the cold floor. Utterly, mind-bendingly terrified. “Please! Please, don’t kill me, I, please—” what use was it to beg a xeno? Rationally, he should be trying to save Jeom. Irrationally, he just didn’t want to die. “Please…”

The xeno placed a paw over his mouth, and Reginalus didn’t dare say a single word more. It was so close to his throat… just a light slip, and he’d be dead. ++Shh. You’re too loud.++ He quaked, but complied. Was this really how he’d go? He’d thought he’d at least get to see Ellai at least one more time… the beast huffed, and he scrunched his eyes closed. ++Relax. I’m not going to kill you.++

It took an embarrassingly long amount of time for him to parse the beast’s words. “You’re… not?”

++I don’t make a habit of going around and killing people. Humans. You get the point.++ He dared to squint open his eyes, and… yes, it was still just sitting on top of him. Not diving in to tear out his jugular, or eat his heart out of his chest, or anything… ++I’m more curious where you came from. We’ve been stranded here for so long that I’d half begun to think that this world was completely uninhabited.++

“It’s… mostly uninhabited. Tessera IV is a barren waste of a rock,” except for its Planetary Governor, who was the lynchpin node of the entire system, but that was politics that a beast probably wouldn’t even understand, so he didn’t bring it up.

++Hmmm… okay, that makes sense. We’ve explored quite a ways in every direction, but it is a whole planet. That makes sense.++

Oh, goodness, he just realized— “you said we. Are there…” he gulped, imagining terrible, terrible things. “More of you?” A whole host of xenos, hidden in the deep woods of the world, just waiting to emerge and inflict terrible deprivations on the population that would be remembered with dread for the next ten thousand years? He’d heard the horror stories. Please, he prayed, God-Emperor, preserve us from the foul touch of the xenos…

If anything, though, the cat looked… amused? ++Just me and my friend, Haex.++ A second later, after a lazy flick of her tail— ++he’s a human, by the way. If you didn’t know.++ A xenos and a human? That reeked of heresy, but— what could he do about it? ++Honestly, I’d really appreciate it if you led me back to civilization. I’ve been having fun living out here, but… it is a bit lonely. And I miss some of the conveniences I had back home.++ He couldn’t even imagine what that looked like. What would it be— whole planets optimized for quadrupedal xenos? The very thought was ludicrous…

Then something worse entered the room. It was the most horrifying, terrible person he’d ever laid eyes on— clad in a rubbery black suit and wearing a loose trench coat, tattered at the edges, it was this inhuman thing…

It paused, and leveled its spear at him, and Reginalus knew deep within himself that lasgun or not, if he faced that… that monster, then he would die. That would be it. There was no way, beneath heaven and earth, that he would make it out of that fight alive.

Jeom stiffened, finally waking up in the corner— but clearly he felt the same thing, because he didn’t even try to reach for his lasgun.

The monster stared at him for a long second, and Reginalus whimpered, feeling like something was boring into his soul. Then, he spoke, and… his voice was surprisingly normal, actually. “Espeon.” The cat flicked an ear. “Are these two bothering you? I can deal with them if you rather wouldn’t.” The espeon tilted its head back and to the side, raising a paw slowly… before just blinking, and letting it drop. “Very well.” The man lowered his spear, and Reginalus was just struck with the sudden certainty that he’d just been caught on the knife’s edge between living and dying.

“Well, I suppose that makes sense. Imperial guard…” the terrifying thing sat next to him, clearly trying (and failing) to look less intimidating. It was almost comical. Reginalus didn’t laugh. “Tell me, guardsman… how would we get back to civilization from here? The ship that we were on crashed on re-entry, and we’ve been stranded here ever since.”

“I— I won’t tell you anything. The God-Emperor preserves. The God-Emperor saves. The God-Emperor…”

++Is a skeleton on a throne, right now, and can’t really help you.++ Reginalus gaped at the cat, because… heresy! That was heresy! It dared to slander the name of the God-Emperor of mankind?! ++Sorry.++ It recoiled a little bit, looking… sheepish? Surely not, for who could read the expressions of something so evidently alien? ++I didn’t mean anything by it. It’s true, you know? I know very well what the emperor is and isn’t capable of.++
“The Emperor is the one true God, Master of Mankind by the might of his inexhaustible armies! I will not be swayed by the words of xenos, I will not be swayed by the words of xenos, I will not…” the cat and the man shared an… amused look? Or maybe, exasperated on the cat’s part, and amused on the man’s part. Or maybe the other way around.

++I’m sorry. I keep forgetting how devoted people actually are to him. He’s… a tragic figure. I met him, you know?++ He blinked, just… refusing to believe what he’d just heard. ++I’m an Imperial the same as you are. Or at the very least, Imperial-adjacent. I’ve even got a fancy Amicus Imperator title and everything.++

“Amicus Imperator? That’s… what does that even mean? I…”

“Ah.” The not-man, cannot, he would not believe was, man, breathed in, faintly surprised. “I had suspected but… to think that my suspicions were true after all.” Then he bowed to the cat. “I greet the Amicus Imperator, favored of the Emperor.” The cat pinned its ears back in… embarrassment? Something like that, waving a paw hastily while a psychic force grabbed his coat and hauled him upright— eliciting a chuckle that somehow sounded sinister. “I apologize. It’s funny to think that he’s got one of the single most important people in the entire Imperium sat atop him, and he thinks you’re some sort of… foul xenos, or what have you.” No, no, it wasn’t true. He didn’t believe it. Because if it was true, then everything he knew was… his entire worldview would be shattered apart.

“What’s going on here?” He could’ve kissed Leo then. What perfect timing. “I leave for two goddamn hours and return to two incompetent guardsmen laid out on the ground. The hell are you two—” his eyes went wide, and his laspistol aim snapped over to the cat atop him. “Psyker. Foul xenos, in the name of the God-Emperor, your fate is—”

“We have authority.” The man held up… something. A little golden pendant. It didn’t look like much, but the moment the Corporal saw it, he paled until he looked little better than a shot-through corpse. “Impede our way at your own peril.”

“I-inquisitor. I… of course.” Leo knelt. Wily Leo, who didn’t kneel to anyone, dropped to a knee and bowed his head to the aquila. “The Emperor protects.”

The man, the monster, the inquisitor, snorted and slipped the rosarius— because that’s what it had to be, he was sure— back into his pocket. “Good choice. You know, they sent a battleship after her.” Like… planet destroying, fleet smashing, that kind of battleship? God-Emperor above… “it might even arrive soon. So it’s good you didn’t choose to fight us.” He paused for a second, meaningfully, then huffed out the faintest echo of a laugh. “Make sure you tell that to your superiors. Battleship. Adeptus Custodes. Direct favor of the emperor himself. Now, if you would, both of us would dearly appreciate it if you took us back with you to the capital.” Reginalus gulped. Jeom glared. Leo looked terrified, and not of the xenos.

Their whole patrol really had gone pear-shaped, hadn’t it? Battleships and legends and inquisitors and xenos ostensibly favored by the God-Emperor himself… it sounded so absurd that it just had to be fake, because no way was it all real. It just… no. It wasn’t possible.

But if it was…

Reginalus couldn’t help but think— just what had they gotten themselves into?

Chapter Text

What a wonderful feeling! He fought down the urge to laugh— for that would be unsightly, and he did not dare disturb the sacred peace of the Craftworld with his mere mirth. Still, though… how long had it been, since he’d felt so vindicated? Millennia, certainly— likely longer still. To see something go right without a single Eldari sacrifice— or even a single mon-keigh sacrifice! He’d spent so long on the back foot, constantly dodging each and every deprivation of Chaos that, now an opportunity presented itself with such sudden arrival, rushing in one the winds and leaving behind only the pleasant scent of its passing… ah, he was so happy that he didn’t even mind that he’d been blinded.

“Master Ulthran. You’re in a remarkably fine mood today. Have you foreseen something of note?”

“Idranel.” He nodded to his fellow farseer; they did not always see eye to eye (so rarely did he ever see eye to eye with anyone, his Sight how it was— there came a point where they simply, always, could not keep up) but, still. They were both of the Aeldari. Their empire might have been reduced to so many sparks and fallow embers, but they still remember what they’d lost, so long ago. “And no, I have not forseen anything.”

“No? Is it the working of the Great Enemy?”

“Do you really think that I would be so, should it be that the Great Enemy had reached out and blinded my sight?” Reluctantly, Idranel inclined her head in understanding. Of course he wouldn’t be happy if his vision had been blotted out so. “I will not hold you in suspense. Things are afoot near to us.”

“Near…”

“Close enough that Ulthwe itself might but reach out its hand and rest its weight on the scale of fate.”

“Truly?”

“A salvation draws nigh.”

“Impossible.” She shook her head. “I know that I am not your peer, but I would have seen it, if it was so. The great candles in the dark are apparent even to me, Eldrad, and I would that you do not forget that.”

“Ah, but you do not see the shadows, do you? I would tell you to look again, but neither of us can afford the time to walk the myriad ways at the moment. No— you will have to merely content yourself with my telling.” They came, at last, to a cavernous and open space, pinned at the very side of the world— their world, what remained of it… both of them had been born after the fall. Neither of them had known what it meant, not truly, to be part of an Empire that spanned the stars and cupped every world in its hand, and held such power and dominion over Immaterium and Materium both…

They wanted it. Idranel wanted it so badly. She, at least, was so very typical of their species. They looked back to what had been— for wasn’t that so easy? Their history, its weight… it made it simplicity itself to see— grand becoming! Great doing! Terrible fall! And see in that the course of their whole history, from their very forging to the end of history.

What a foolish, shortsighted approach. Eldrad knew better; their future was not written in the paths of the old, but rather in the tangle of the new. There would be no Grand Becoming, not again, never again… he wished he could let his fellow Farseers know, but they simply… did not understand. Perhaps they simply did not have clear enough a sight to see—

Their future was written on the same line as the Human—

And now, with this new thing… their history wasn’t written at all. “There is a darkness in our future. An utter void. Can you not tell? It looms over everything with such utter certainty…”

Idranel scowled. “Surely you do not mean to address that? A mere psychic block, placed by the Enemy to distract us. A feeble attempt to make us look at where there wasn’t anything in the first place. The council will easily guide us through such a paltry effort.”

Eldrad smiled, faintly, as he looked down the vast slope of Craftworld Ulthwe, as they breached the scattered, glittering ring of some vast planet— a beautiful creature, like the fishes of the inner waterways, breaching the skein of something almost beyond them in its celestial majesty. “You have misidentified the cause.” An insult. To tell a farseer that they had misseen was tantamount to telling a farseer that they were blind. Yet, one that was tolerated— had to be tolerated, coming from him. Both of them knew he was the greatest amongst them. Perhaps the greatest that there had ever been. And if he could not see a way through…

“Are we doomed, then?” She spoke, bitterly. “Is this it?”

“When were we ever not doomed?” Idranel shot him a bitter look, and he just chuckled. “For Ulthwe… perhaps. I doubt it, though. We have our strength of arms, our spirit; I believe we will survive this, too. Do not yet fall into despair."

“Fine. I will take your word for it, Master Ulthran… yet, still, I am driven by curiosity to ask you what did put you in such a good mood? The blinding of our sight… it all seems rather grim.”

“Ah, you do not understand.” He grinned at the thought of it— such opportunity! Such possibility… of the barest glimpse of what he’d been able to see, before that strange twisting of fate had inserted herself right into the center of things… “it is not just our sight that has been obscured.” And with that, he left Idranel to her thoughts.

He had to prepare for a trip, after all.

………

They had emerged into Belis Corona a single— if majestically impressive, wrought in gold and Crusade-era sigaldry— ship. They departed, now, so much more than that the very act of comparison seemed almost feeble. Different in essence, not mere quantity— no longer was theirs a mission of mere expediency. Now, once more, they were the very hammer of the Empire, the right-hand cleaving, the golden sword of domination hovering on high— their knives through the void. Their terrible answer, of the very word of the Emperor— that all might know the wrath of Terra and fear it for ten millenia more.

It felt… right. He’d missed this— ever since the Heresy had ripped out the beating heart of the Imperium and he’d retreated into the depths of the Imperial Palace. To stand at the front of a host great enough to fill the space between the stars and heave the very soul in awe— Constantin Valdor had missed that, and he hadn’t even known how much he’d missed it until it was his once more.

The others, he supposed, were a… little less used to such shows of force. As one by one they slipped into the warp, the cackling energy of that mad realm washing over each ship in turn, the Archmagos— whose original had been the upkeep of that most holy of relics, and now served as the martian envoy for the entire fleet— watched in barely hidden awe. The others were not that much better. The Lord General (who was still somewhat sulking at Valdor’s early denial of Lord General Militant, for they were not and would not be a crusade—) stared out at it all, jaw somewhat agape. The Lord Commissar looked almost giddy. In the background, the voices of some unknown menial rose in warbling prayer to the majesty of the God-Emperor of mankind and his immortal, endless, inexhaustible fleets.

It was rather impressive a force to have been assembled at such short notice. Most of the fleet had been idling at Belis Corona, all but forgotten in a spat of argumentativeness between two candidates for the position of Lord High Admiral. A stroke of luck— he’d only really wanted to pick up a few cruisers and lighter escorts, but if the entirety of a warfleet offered itself to him with such ease… he did not believe in the divinity of the Emperor (for he who had truly spoken with the man never could) but he could not help but see the beneficent hand of his lord on the scales of fate.

Whether that was true or not…

A cold smile pulled back onto his lips as the Bucephalus drifted once more into the warp, the light of that hellish dimension once more settling down on them so heavily, so freeingly. Only a scant few forces in the galaxy would be able to stand against such a force.

In his hand, the smallest fraction of the glory passed—

The Emperor’s will be done.

………

Sometimes, she felt like she was the only one keeping Tessera IV together. It was a horrible, thankless task— the job of actually doing the job, that was. While the Planetary Governor politicked with his peers and talked about trade routes and tithe payments and sent guardsmen from four worlds scavenging through his forest like lost puppies searching for (deadly, chaos-corrupted) toys he’d left in the backyard, she was the one who made sure that every citizen received their ration, that the cities stayed safe— and more importantly, productive— and that, generally, the whole world didn’t just crumble into anarchy around her. And what did she get in return? More demands to run tarot divinations that were about as helpful as a typical charlatan’s. What a joke…

Her wards pinged her as someone approached her tower (in the Governor’s Palace) and she instantly knew that it was another cultist. Seriously, Tessera IV had a problem. She’d thought it was just the aftereffects of the crashed cruiser at first— which would make sense, given that it had clearly suffered a failure in its gellar-field prior to reentry— but slowly she was becoming more and more convinced that there was something further beneath that.

Slowly, she was becoming more and more convinced that there was knowing that was going to get her killed.

She reached for the pistol under her desk, chanting a quick prayer to the Emperor and steadying herself. “Come in.” The door clunked as several iron locks released— pitiful, pathetic things that any psyker worth anything at all would be able to bypass with surpassing ease, much less her— but it made the governor feel safe, and she knew better than to disabuse isolated rural-worlders of their petty myths. It would just lead to more trouble than it was worth.

The man who walked in was utterly unassuming, which made her instantly wary. She’d dealt with more attacks in the recent weeks than she had over the past two years, but they’d all been obvious. Khornates, for the most part, brutish things that had plagued the underworld of the spire, turning into an even more dangerous cesspool than it already was. Someone had tried to summon a nurgleite, but she had— thankfully— been quick enough to shut that down. She had enough problems just keeping everyone alive normally without having to deal with deadly pestilence and utter societal collapse.

This one, though… it did not feel like either of those. Which made her think that it was something far more sinister instead. “What can I do to help you?”

The man bowed. “Report from the Astra Militarum regiment, Ma’am. They’ve found a group of interest. An inquisitor of the Ordo Hereticus, and a… beast, of some design. Rumor has it that the beast is the one in charge.” Oh, now what. A beast, leading an inquisitor by the nose? Whatever that even met… she didn’t like the inquisitors one bit— of course she didn’t, they always tended to stick their noses deep into whatever she was doing, what with how she was a Sanctioned Psyker and all— but they were a generally effective bunch. Or at least, not so incompetent to somehow get beguiled by a beast. The very thought was laughable…

Unless, they weren’t actually an inquisitor. “Has their authority been confirmed yet?”

“Of course. They carry a rosarius.” Well, it was a long shot anyways. Not many would claim to be an inquisitor if they weren’t. “The governor wants you to deal with the threat before it becomes a larger problem.”

“The governor wants me to move against an inquisitor? Perhaps he is the one that should be purged.” The man quickly stuttered out a denial— a very convincing denial, she was sure, to anyone who could not read the shape of his soul. No, she could see the way it twisted and shivered in delight, plucked by some string that flew off— flung into the infinite distance. Straight down, to the south pole… and below it, separated by the fathomless gulf of stars— the Eye of Terror itself.

He wanted her at cross purposes with the Governor. Division, trickery… she knew the nature of the Four, and there was only one that this could be. “Very well.” She stood, nodding at him. “I’ll take care of this personally.”

“No! No, no, that’s fine, I’m sure that—” the thread vibrated in sudden, frenetic, almost bewildered— if she could put an emotion to the dance of a string— energy, but she was faster. In the space of a second, she snapped up the hand she’d kept hidden under her desk, dumping an entire battery of laspistol fire into the corrupted messenger’s head.

She spat off to the side, pulling out a book of sanctified pages and some holy incense— the really holy stuff, that she’d picked up on a brief stint in a shrine world some years back… the exact details eluded her, but she could not deny how unsettled she was. Whispering prayers to the God-Emperor, she tried— failed— to settle her soul.

Something was wrong on this world… and it was up to her to figure out what.

She slipped her laspistol into its holster and strode out the door. She had an ‘inquisitor’ to meet.

………

Adrophil Tchek-tan was so close.

He stood in the center of a vast and terrible storm, bitter and arctic, alight— alive, with the crashing will of lightning as it arced from thundercloud to dark thundercloud and blasted against the blackened spires of a desolate city, and roared. Above it all, the cruel light of it, the most blessed, the holy Eye of Terror, gazed down upon them in sacrilegious benediction, its infinite torments echoed in the scream of the winds. He shivered beneath his blue and gold armor, the ground trembling beneath him from the violence of it all— as it all fell apart around him, and it all came together.

Five different sects, forgotten by the planet’s governor for centuries, and forgotten again as the Architect of Fate delivered his gift— a void-ship scattered over the southern boreal forests, far enough from his own working to draw attention while he set his great work into motion. An ancient city, treasure beyond imagining for the natives of their backwater world— and greed. He’d let the Imperium’s nature do the rest… and now, they were killing themselves beneath him in an orgy of betray while he stood on the highest spire and watched.

“Glory,” he whispered,” soul trembling— the faintest of tethers that connected him to his fellow Chaos Marines, to their thrall armors, to Him, their lord and master, the cyclopian ruler of Prospero— “to the Thousand Sons, who have striven for so many millennia to see this downfall, your downfall. Glory to Magnus the Red. Glory to the Changer of Ways!” He laughed, and laughed, as the ritual energies seized and thrashed and only built, as the psychic storm slowly began to grow—

He laughed, as strange madness settled down on the city of dark places, and the wayward men within its grasp lost themselves to only ever crueler and more delightful massacre—

He laughed, for the hour of their reckoning would soon be upon them.

Chapter Text

Espeon had to admit, their stay with the Astra Militarum was rather more boring than he might have expected, for such a dramatic first meeting. They’d just picked their way after them– held somewhat at a remove, as it were, given that the guardsmen didn’ want Haex anywhere close to them, and if they didn’t have to deal with a xenox either, then all the better.

They’d followed them back to where they’d landed in the forest– a clearing somewhat far off the river, perched alpine; high where the fissure of a gulch cut through the ages-worn stone and carved out a space between its sheer faces. It was a pleasant little place, really— not so much marred by the campsite they’d set up as enhanced by it, in a sort of… adventuresque way. A shuttle had been parked in the center, though Espeon couldn’t but think fitting it down the ravine must’ve been difficult. Surrounding it, laid out half haphazardly and on occasion calling back to the memory of some greater order, was the campsite itself.

Unfortunately, she didn’t actually get to see much of it, because the guardsmen immediately set to pulling it apart the moment they arrived. Tents and camouflage tarps, cooking implements and metal posts, wire and various deadly-looking explosive mines rather liberally littered around the area… They removed a few, and left even more untouched. Bad stewardship practices… but, about par for the course for what she’d expected from the Imperium.

She disabled them thoughtlessly as she walked– it was easy, even, to just… take a little flick of telekinesis and punch through the primer for each mine as they passed. All but invisible, but for the slight gleam of psychic brilliance dancing beneath the surface of her gem, eyes; unnoticeable but to the Corporal and one soldier, who kept looking at her nervously the whole while long.

Then, they boarded the shuttle and set off for ‘basecamp.’

One flew, one busied around further packing all their junk away into carefully labeled and marked bags, and one held an angry radio call– vox call? With who she presumed was the master of the fortifications they were going to. And it was fortifications,  that much was clear even from thousands of feet away on approach. Like a small hive, it buzzed with military purpose– high walls erected from stone and durable ferrocrete, almost giving it the impression of a citadel, a small bastion against the forest that ever pushed up against it. Enormous gun emplacements covered every approach, and even the space between those bristled with smaller weapons, not even to mention the missiles and patrols and few flying craft constantly circling, carrion crows above some incomplete carcass.

She wondered, for a second, what could possibly even need that much firepower… before, remembering– the sight of it, the smell and visceral feel of the Spirit of Caligulus as it was overrun by hoards of demons beyond count.

She shivered, and the guardsman sitting (unwillingly) beside her shivered too. She could sense his fear of her, and if it weren’t so sad, it’d have been funny…

Then, they landed. Two more– much more imposing ships, not transport shuttles but clearly implements of war, themselves bristling with such furious weaponry– rose up from the citadel to flank their landing, not quite settling down as they did; instead, they hovered in the air, imposingly. A naked threat, against them.

Espeon tried not to care. It wasn’t easy. Those guns were very big, and her light screens were only so powerful… she pulled, so faintly, on her future sight, and strode out of the shuttle onto the hard stone of the courtyard.

“Corporal, Sir!” The soldiers beside her snapped a salute the moment they exited; the reason wasn’t hard to discern— opposite them, flanked by an entire line of neatly-dressed soldiers more ceremonial than not, a rather… fancily dressed man stood, face dour.

“Reporting back duty complete, Sir! We’ve found two individuals of particular interest that we now remand into your custody, Sir!” Espeon glanced between them, noticing— to her own unease— that every time she so much as twitched a muscle every soldier that hadn’t been on the shuttle with them flinched. Even the Corporal looked unnerved.

“You are… dismissed.” He waved his hand, and two of the soldiers next to him peeled off to join the group of guardsmen who’d found them. “Stay in your quarters, and tell no one of what you’ve seen or heard— on pain of the traitor’s punishment.” They all gulped. “Leonidus, I’ll expect you in my office tomorrow at dawn for a more comprehensive debriefing.” The corporal in charge of the squad snapped another salute— and then the rest of them headed off, all military-stiff.

For a long moment only an echo of silence hung between them— amidst the fortress’s clamor, amidst the bustle— they and the Colonel stared at each other. ++So…++ she started to break the awkward silence, only for the colonel to stagger back in surprise and all the soldiers to instantly snap their guns up towards her.

“It’s mere psychic communication,” Haex— bless him— came to her rescue, raising his hand placatingly. “Her physiology precludes her the ability to be understood intelligibly, and so she speaks mind-to-mind instead.”

“I…” the Corporal visibly remastered himself. “Of course… Inquisitor. I apologize for my… overreaction.”

++You’re fine. I understand that most of the Imperium doesn’t really interact with many psychic type++ because of course they didn’t— what with how they didn’t exist there ++and what with the disgusting taint in the warp… I can assure you, you are at no risk of corruption in speaking to me.++

“That is a… relief.” Carefully spoken— distrustfully spoken, so obvious it was that he didn’t believe her, but that was fine. So long as he listened and didn’t shoot her… everything was good. “I will ask to see the symbol of your office, Inquisitor…” 

Haex pulled out the rosarius, its little golden wings outstretched, catching— sunlight glinting off its finish and scattering the tiniest specks of light across her fur and the rough ground. One of the soldiers muttered a prayer under his breath, and— after a second— the rest followed suit, an impromptu litany of praises to the God-Emperor and his holy symbols.

It was all very awkward, and Espeon got the impression that if the Emperor was with her, he’d be cringing in embarrassment, or disgust, or both.

“The machine spirits proclaim it authentic. I admit to some curiosity, Inquisitor, how a blank was raised up to so noble a rank as yours?”

Haex shrugged. “The story is not particularly notable. I was one of the Inquisitors most trusted servants, and after her death aboard the Spirit of Caligulus with the failing of the gellar-field generators—” thankfully, he left out the part about her role in the whole fiasco— “I was the only one with sufficient presence of self to take up the mantle. Thankfully, the Amicus Imperator was capable of opening a rift back into the Materium, allowing us to safely arrive on this planet… to a given definition of safe, granted the Spirit of Caligulus’s ultimate fate.”

“How did you survive reentry?”

Haex just smiled. “She’s a remarkably powerful psyker; she caught both of us and brought us down safely in the deep forests, where we stayed for some time— until your soldiers found us.”

“You are the only survivors from the Spirit of Caligulus.” Espeon made a keening sound at that sudden revelation, before remembering where he was. The only survivors? Out of so many thousands… the Colonel gave her a weird look, but clearly— deciding that discretion was the better part of valor— chose not to press further. “The regiment’s tech-priests believe that most of the wreck— and therefore, most any of the survivors— would have landed on the south pole, but that storm-wrecked place is cursed. None of the guardsmen I’ve sent there have returned.” Oh, so there was at least a chance that some of them had surived…

For some reason, that didn’t make her feel much better.

Even Haex’s mood had somewhat soured after that. “If that is all, Colonel?” There was a sharpness in his voice that hadn’t been present before, daring the man to argue with him. “Then we will take our leave. Have one of your soldiers direct us to a comfortable dwelling.” The Colonel opened his mouth as if to argue— then closed it, and just waved a hand, two soldiers once more peeling off to lead them into the citadel’s dense warrens.

The two gunship-craft flew off, and the rest walked off, and… that was that. Their meeting with the Colonel— which turned out to be their only meeting with the colonel, was done.

The rooms they were given were nice. Probably a bit of a calculated insult, given how they were placed on the exposed spires at the citadel’s center, but neither she nor Haex could really bring themselves to care much with how plushly decorated they were. Cushions everywhere, so many blankets on the bed it was almost suffocating, intricate silk brocade hung from enormous windows and cottony paneling bordered in patterned lacework… it was more ostentatious than her suite on Terra, and that said a great deal.

She fully expected something to happen. For someone to come in and try to kill them (for whatever reason, xenos or pariah or whatever related), for them to be called up to the Colonel’s office to give an accounting of their exact importance to the imperium, for the Amicus Imperator bit to come up in some report or another… but, no. Ultimately they were left alone. They didn’t even get to go outside of their suite— the soldiers stationed outside just gave them dirty glares whenever they would try to leave, and inform them that they would have to wait for the Colonel’s orders.

They did, at least, give her some books when she asked— though she got the impression that most of the soldiers didn’t think she could read. Or rather, not so much an impression as a direct admission, to her face, as if she wasn’t literally talking to them with psychic communications… ridiculous.

The weeks passed slowly. Half a month later, they got a letter from the desk of the colonel— sealed with a very officious (but not quite as officious as some of what she’d seen on Terra) sigaldry saying that something had come up towards the south, and that he was busy directing the army that way. The rest of the month after that, they just waited, trying— and mostly failing— to catch a glimpse of whatever might be. A general sort of nervousness pervaded the entire citadel, but nobody dared actually speak to them when questioned— and she quickly learnt to stop poking her nose in where it didn’t belong when they withheld her rations for a day after one particularly wheedling investigation. Ultimately, it just left them kind of sitting there with nothing to do.

Until the visitor came.

She was direct. The first Espeon sensed of her was the sudden panic of the guards as they scrambled to block someone’s way, and then— a flash, of emotion, of roiling, power, seething and barely contained within the frail shape of a mortal. She bolted upright, setting light-screens between themselves and the door, hissing warningly to Haex.

“What’s going on?” Espeon shot him an annoyed look, and he just rolled his eyes and shut up. Whatever it was— whether it was because he was human (probably) or simply due to the rosarius he carried, the Colonel had always been more amenable to Haex’s requests than he had hers. Gone was their feral-world spear wrought of black iron and sub-par forging, replaced in its stead with a slender power sword and a rather well maintained laspistol. He’d even— much to his joy, and even further to Espeon’s ability to tease him— gotten a new and even trenchier trench coat to throw over his armor.

The sound of shouting could be heard, by that point, both of them carefully taking their proper positions within the room. Not that the cushions would do much to protect them from enemy fire, but the plush accouterments would, at least, shield them somewhat from view.

A final, furious shout, muttered discussion— and then a terrible silence, framed only by the bewildering dichotomy of— fear, terror even, reverence and worry and above all of those, a sort of half-reverence, reverent revulsion. Espeon held her breath. The latches on the door clunked apart— one by one falling, heavy the sound as every lock and division was undone, and…

A single person stepped in.

They were not slight, but neither were they heavy— lacking the guardsman’s typical musculature and cloaked in a heavy, gilded cloth. A fathomless and inky blue, almost lovely in the pristine depth of its color… bespeckled with various seals and holy patterns, and warded heavily. A thick chain of adamantium was slung over their back, each link inscribed with names, words that seemed to swim and shiver across the length of the metal with every step she took forward. It wasn’t a mere visual trick, either— to the uninitiated, it might seem so, but her memory was better than that. She could see the way they twisted and leapt, and to her third eye glowed with an immense restraining power.

She stopped five feet away from both of them— cowled gaze inevitably finding its way first to her hidden eyes, and then to Haex’s— holding her hands out, palms up. In worship, in benediction, in echo of peace… it was hard to tell. “Greetings to the Inquisitor. I apologize for my uncouthness, but I am a mere psyker— your presence unsettles somewhat.” That was probably the most impressive response to Haex’s presence they’d received at all, much less from a psyker— who should’ve been much more ill at ease around the Null. “I didn’t intend to startle you. I’ve flown all the way from the capital with all due haste to speak with the inquisitor on a matter of…”

Haex stepped out, and froze.

For a long second, nobody spoke. Neither of them moved, even as Espeon slunk out of her own pillow pile and stood beside Haex, ready to defend against psychic assault at a moment’s notice.

Standing beside Haex, he could see the shape of her— her face, pale and shadowed, almost impossibly smooth, gleaming— lit so rosy, so color-washed in the golden light that spilled through their suite’s vaulted windows and rushed off every cushion and silken sheet, and sifted, through gossamer and brocade. Her eyes— they reflected a terrible eternity, a ceaseless roil, the warp, itself. Neither of them flinched back.

A crystal silence; a glass stillness, as the two of them drank up the sight of each other. She could not feel Haex’s emotions, as ever— but the psyker’s she could, and the turmoil there… like something heavy had been shaken loose. Like something had struck her, so hard, that she might very well forget to breathe. And deeper in, through the whole of that, she could sense the way her turmoil pulled at some hungry thing, high above and through a mirror the size of the universe—

Wait actually it was a lot closer than she’d thought it was. It wasn’t from the maelstrom of rot that was Chaos, but something very much closer, and approaching at great speed. Acting more on instinct than anything, an upwelling of psychic power swelled from within her, less channeled into a construct than just becoming a move.

A scintillating pink psychic bolt speared through the air, slicing over the psyker’s shoulder, cutting through the bounds between Materium and Immaterium, and blasting straight through the chest of the demon sneaking up behind her. A burst of color— of brilliant, psychedelic flung outwards in coruscant gore. It took a second for the two of them to react— but damn did they react. The psyker leapt backwards, pulling out a laspistol— too slowly, as Haex leapt forward, knocking the gun out of her hand and sweeping her legs out from beneath her.

She hit the ground with a high pitched oof of sudden pain— though, the excessive amount of cushions littered liberally throughout the room softened the blow. A brief second later, the corpse of the demon extruded itself through the tiny wound she’d made in reality, splattering on the floor before wafting away in a shimmering haze.

Haex stared at the now-uncowled woman, wide eyed— “Anabel?”

“Haex?”
“Is it reallly…”

“It’s actually…” both of them fell silent, just… staring at each other in the silence. “Well… that was unexpected. I didn’t think I would ever see you again, Haex.” She picked herself up, brushing off her robes (of no dust), though she didn’t reaffix her cowl. “You’re as unpleasant to be around as ever.”

“You know I can’t help that. It’s just the way I am.” A second passed, before both cracked into laughter. “It really does feel like no time’s passed at all. You look better, though. More distinguished, certainly!”

“Comes with the office.” She tilted up her head. “I’ve been honing my skills— the Collegia Psykana sent me out here to defend the system against the deprivations of Chaos, and I’ve served for the past… oh, twenty odd years as their greatest bulwark against the works of the Enemy.” She glanced over him— seemingly unbothered by the close proximity to a Null— though Espeon could sense the subtle unease in her posture. “You look worse for wear, though.”

“That’s just what happens when you live in the wilderness for a year after literally falling out of orbit.” Anabel winced. “It wasn’t actually that bad. At least the company was good… I wish I could show you the house. It’s a small thing, but we made it our own kind of beauty.”

“Speaking of we,” she nodded towards her, and Espeon shifted back a little, almost shyly— “what’s with the psyker cat? I never particularly took you as the sort of type to pick up pets.”

Haex choked on nothing. “Espeon, a pet?” Then, he laughed, the sound echoing so warmly, so muted amongst their plush living— “no, not a chance! If anything, I’m her pet.”

Anabel rolled her eyes. “Typical cat behavior.”

“You misunderstand. She was named Amicus Imperator from the very mouth of the God-Emperor himself.”

++Um…++ she flicked her tail, ducking her head a little under the sudden, incredulous attention of the pskyer. ++Hello? Sorry, I’ve just heard a lot about you from Haex, and I didn’t think I’d ever get to meet you! I’m so excited!++

“That’s a xeno,” she said, still too out of it by the revelation to do more than state the obvious. “The cat is a xeno psyker.” Espeon blinked. Slowly. “Wait wait wait! Go back! What’s this about the Emperor and— what?”

++It’s a long story.++
“It sounds like Heresy of the highest order!”

++I promise it’s true! I understand it doesn’t sound true, but… well, you’ve been to Terra, right? Right, of course you have, you know about the palace and everything… I never got to go to the collegia Psykana, but… uh, I can at least prove that I’ve been to the Imperial Palace?++ She sent an image of the eternity gate, glittering golden and replete with image of the Emperor slaying the serpent.

Anabel shivered as she beheld its splendor. “I’ve never been so far into the Imperial Palace… but surely they would not just let a xeno waltz into that most sacred of places?”

++Yeah all the custodes I talked to—++ she looked a little faint at just the idea of talking to those golden figures— ++seemed pretty upset about it, even if they didn’t actually say so to me. Well a few of them, but you get what I mean…++ she shook her head vigorously, ears flopping from side to side. ++Anyways, I snuck in.++

“You… snuck into the inner palace.”
++No, I snuck in to see the Emperor. His psychic signature intrigued me. It was so… you’ve felt it, haven’t you? Like ten billion suns, like the very distilled essence of scouring radiance, like a beacon in the Immaterium, like… it was different than anything I’d ever felt before. It’s not my fault that his soul was super torn up when I got there— and I couldn’t leave him like that, not when I could help.++

“You—” she looked horrified. “You performed psychic surgery on the God-Emperor? I don’t know whether I should kill you now or worship you as a saint.”

“She was successful enough that the Emperor declared her Amicus Imperator.”

“Right, so… saint.” Anabel was quiet for a second before she heaved out a sigh. “I… frankly, this is all so far beyond me that I don’t even know how to respond. I mean— this is a backwater posting, despite everything, not the sort of posting that’s supposed to deal with inquisitors and xenos of such surpassing value to the Imperium that I can’t even put into words what they would sacrifice to see you borne safely back to Terra…” she sighed. “At least Colonel Minnong didn’t try and have you executed.”

Haex shrugged. “You saw what she did to that daemon.” Both of them looked back to where the corrupted flesh of the demon lay— or what remained of it, at least, all gross and fleshy and icky. “I can’t imagine that would have gone well.”
“She does seem to have a very… potent psychic power.”

“She brought our entire ship out of the Warp.”

Anabel blinked. “Impressive.” Then, she groaned, flopping down onto one of the larger piles of pillows. “Alright, then. I can’t imagine I’m going to be escaping this anytime soon… why don’t you start telling me what you’ve been up to since I last saw you, because this is insane…”

“Of course.” Haex’s eyes twinkled with mischief untold. “Would this be a good time to tell you that they dispatched a battleship after her?”

Anabel just groaned.

………

Hanging out with Anabel was great. For the first two weeks at least, that was. Her rarified position within the local heirarchy— second only to the Planetary Governor of Tessera IV (and, in some respects— they got the implication of, at least— even higher) made a bunch of things that had formerly been out of reach entirely in reach. They could finally leave their suite, for one— not the citadel itself, unfortunately, but that was more out of practical concerns than anything more petty. She hadn’t thought she’d been getting cramped, spending all her time in that one room, but even just a single walk out along the ramparts, bathed under the wan sunlight, improved her mood considerably.

Haex was able to requisition far more than he’d been given previously— and, perhaps even more importantly— demand the time of the citadel’s tech-priests and get his armor repaired. It was almost odd, seeing him stalk confidently, his synthetic suit lacking any visible sign of wear, and the auspex suite on his helmet once more restored to working order.

She even got to have a little fun probing a real, local psyker (who wasn’t the god-emperor of an entire galaxy and thus had proportionately more time for a pesky espeon like her) about the local psychic techniques. Most of them were… crude, very crude, so crude that they more resembled blunt force than all but the least refined psychic moves of her homeworld— but some were actually quite interesting. The sanctified adamantium chain was particularly fascinating, drawing on the psychic background field to suppress the creatures of that self-same field in a way that she’d never seen any techniques from back home use. She made sure to investigate that thoroughly, even if her clear fascination made Anabel a little uncomfortable. Something about how she should already know about keeping out Chaos, given how powerful of a psyker she was? Ah, it probably wasn’t important— if the Changer of Ways couldn’t get its claws into her, then she doubted that any puny daemons would fare much better.

It was fun! Not as peaceful as her time in the palace on Terra— but fun.

Until it wasn’t.

It started with thunder.

It started, as these sorts of things were wont to do, with the looming storm— heavy and dark over the horizon, its pale face brooding— crackling with lightning. With an ominous and oppressive weight, its shadow heavy over the world of Tessera IV, as though it was more— the progeny of some great being, the quiet echo of remembrance, the collared beast of some wild and terrible forest, ready to lose itself upon them in sudden wrath. Deep within its auspice lay color beyond color, a fierce and frenzied blue, not icy but magical— aflecked with crystal light as the lightning-bolts drenched the cloudscape an effervescent, an amethyst purple.

That was already bad enough. Both of them could agree— creepy storms that roiled with the power of the Immaterium, this far away from the south pole? Still, though, it wasn’t terrible. Apparently, according to Anabel at least, warp storms of the type were not entirely uncommon on planets so close to the Eye of Terror— so far, in turn, from the blessed light of the Emperor. It would blow over soon, she assured her.

Haex was a bit more worried, but he didn’t understand matters of the immaterial to quite the same extent as they did. A malignant force lurked within that storm, but it was a faint force— the mere aftershock of whatever had risen it, a quiescent, slumbering sort of malfeasance. It wouldn’t be able to hurt them. Not held so safely, cradled behind those walls and emplacements and layered defenses as they were. So they thought.

They thought wrong.

It started with thunder. A roar— of wind, at the leading edge of a great storm, as it ballooned outwards, boiling with a sickly power that flickered and flashed within its empyrean depths, screaming over the rolling forests that separated them and tearing trees to— so many splinters, thrashing, screaming things beating themselves and the ground in a wild frenzy.

The lightning, though—

It raced the very skies, impossibly powerful, impossibly terrible, incandescent abright with a million hues that earned no name, such was their horrible essence. Lancing, leaping— striking out a serpent of infinite and unbridled power, they skittered across the sky in a manner utterly at odds to the natural working of lightning (and she would know; she’d met electric types before) before crashing into the citadel with force enough to melt towers to slag and and burst the walls. Not an implacable mountain, beneath that storm— but a rotten fruit, smashed underfoot.

It was a terrifying, awesome display of power. A legendary display of power, she did not doubt, as she watched bolts of lightning— the sheer scale of them revealed by their sudden proximity— rain down around them. Anabel tried to shield them in a psychic bubble— but Haex’s presence proved baneful, to that effort dispelling— she was barely even able to touch the warp pressed so close up against him as they were, and even that was a testament to her outstanding power.

Luckily— for whatever reason— Espeon had no such limitations. Hastily, she threw up as many layers of barriers around them as she could, focusing her whole effort into protecting them— and not a moment too soon. Mere seconds after the attack had started, mere seconds after they’d huddled and she thrown up her shields, their world transformed into—

Light.

Thunder.

Overwhelming, majestic, the power, a deluge of toxic energy, almost ghostly— it reminded her of, at least, in the reverberating (hard to describe) taste of it, the sight of it in her third eye— whited out their world. For a brief fraction of a moment, as her barriers popped one by one, they were held suspended in a beam of radiance, wherein everything became mere— shadow, light, smeared color and psychic turning, and the whole nature of the world seemed to tumble apart into coruscant and chiaroscuro.

She looked up into that light— blinded in truth, clear-sighted in lie (that immaterial lie underlying, as such, reality) and saw—

The hand of a god. “I rebuke you!” Combined with Haex’s Null aura— as she stared into the small divinity’s single, burning eye— “begone from this place!” They recoiled back, a strange and sullen clarity for a moment flickering across their face as they turned to settle the weight of their terrible attention on—

Then the lightning petered out merely a ringing, a quiet, enormous sound in the echo of its thunderous departure, and the connection was gone. Erased, with the wind that curled around the burnt skeleton of their power, twirling in counterrevolving dance amidst the last flickering sparks of such immense and all-devouring power.

Where there had once been a proud spire, stretched up to the noble heights of atmosphere, there remained only a burnt-out framework— metal spars jutting up, blackened with the ash and splattered with molten metal. A strange desolation— and theirs was amongst the most intact. The tower beneath them had been shielded by their presence— Haex’s nullification and her own shields, while the others… not so much. She watched, half-awed, half stricken, as the other towers of the citadel crumpled and fell inwards, bowing under their own weight and collapsing onto the rest of the fortress with an almighty roar of screeching metal and crumbling stonework.

She flopped onto her side, panting for breath (which, amid the ash and of who-knew-what toxic chemicals they used to build these sorts of structures, probably wasn’t a good idea, but the world should just cut her a little slack. Just this once.) That had been…

Anabel turned to her, eyes wide. Her whole body trembled— and not with psychic exertion, she could tell. Something deeper, rather— a fear, a reverence… “what was that? How did you…” she shivered. “I heard you rebuke Him.”

++Oh yeah. I remember that++

“Stop— don’t treat it so nonchalantly! That was a daemon— no, a greater daemon. Or… I don’t even know what that was. The sheer amount of power… it screamed. It screamed in impassionate silence that it wanted to turn the whole world to storm.” Now that she said it…

The storm washed over them, and their whole world was rendered, awash in mist and swirling chaos. ++There’s a will in this storm.++ She could sense it— had sensed it, from the moment it got there— but it had been so much more apparent in that brief moment caught in the thunderous wrath of that chaotic lightning— ++but it’s not its own will. Someone has let loose the hounds of war.++

“We need to get out of here.”

Haex shook his head. “We need to stop this. Whatever this is… we are uniquely placed to undo it. If we can find the source, the rift… between my nature as a Null, Espeon’s power, and your skill, we might yet be able to save Tessera IV. Or at least the rest of the system.” 

Anabel looked at him like he was crazy, and for a second Espeon thought she’d start an argument over it— before she just sighed, and grimaced. “What we really need to do is get off this spire.” The winds had begun to pick up— and lightning, those faithful storm’s hounds, crackled across the vaulting spires of billowing cloud above, their presence ever a reminder of the power that’d struck them.

Yeah, getting off of the highest, most exposed part of the entire remaining citadel was probably a good idea… if, easier said than done. They tried to make their way through the tunnels at first, but that idea was dead in the water even before it began— access from their room was welded shut beneath several tons of resolidified steel and crumbled ferrocrete. Beneath that, according to Anabel— who’d done some cool far-sight thing that she really needed to learn from her later— the tunnels were about as intact as one might expect— filled with toxic gas and crushed in some parts, and still hot enough to boil flesh off the bone in others…

They just decided to go down the outside. A bit precarious, at first, but Espeon quickly got the hang of it, concentrating on making a stair of flat light screens as they descended the side of the tower. After a few minutes, she had to further make screens against the storm itself, whose winds took offence to someone so bravely daring to stand in their path, furiously battering at them and threatening to throw them off the side of the spire. Occasionally, a bolt of violet lightning would slam into the metal beside them with a crack of furious force and a terrible boom of thunder, and a spray of dislodged particulate skittering down into the darkness below.

Then, the enemies.

At first they were small things— bird shaped, though Espeon had never met a bird so grotesque as they were. Then, ever more, until they were swarmed with the horrible things. Anabel did what she could to help, but most of the actual fighting fell to Haex, one hand blasting indiscriminately with his laspistol and the other hand removing scores of the horrible creatures from the air with each sweep of his sword—

Then, at last, they landed on the ground. The outer courtyards of the citadel… or what had been them, once. Espeon looked around, and beheld destruction on so grand a scale that she felt like she might be sick. For as far as the eye could see— from the skeletal remnants of the towers behind them to the storm-tossed forest in the far distance before them— lay ruins. Not even ruins, just… a desolate plain of shattered concrete and desolation, cast down by the hand of some angry god… and this was just one small military outpost.

Anabel was right. They had to stop the storm before it reached the more populated northern hemisphere. ++Come on, let’s go!++ She flicked her tail forward, and bounded onto a particularly large piece of debris— and together, they set off.

Southbound.

………

They made good time. Not amazing time, given there was a horrible warp storm raging around them at every moment— but good time nonetheless. Nothing large bothered them as they cut a harsh line straight south, inevitably towards the center of the phenomena— not that there wasn’t anything large, for they could see in the distance, amongst the lightning shadows, shadows of behemoths stalking the landscape. They just weren’t bothered by them. Once, they found one already dead, chest hollowed out by some sort of weapon that neither Anabel or Haex could place…

Or perhaps, some strange sorcery. They were even more on guard after that.

Even as the landscape grew more and more blasted, more twisted by whatever strange sorcery powered the storm that raged overhead, they stumbled on further signs of human inhabitation. At first, meager things— just the tracks of vehicles, all but wiped away by the storm— and roads, clear ways heading south that saved them plenty of time. Then… slowly, it became more.

They stopped one night beneath the aegis of a half-crumbled building, reinforced by some strange material that was somehow able to withstand even a direct hit from the chaos-empowered lightning. It wasn’t in the imperial style, either— if anything, Espeon thought it more resembled something she might’ve found in rural Johto. It kind of had that vibe to it, architecturally speaking…

Hidden in the silence of its shelter— a strange, loud silence, as the raging storm outside was muffled to a pervasive, almost static white noise, they made what could generously be called camp. Haex busied himself setting up the fire and bringing out what rations they had left that hadn’t been corrupted by the storm, while Espeon and Anabel… explored.

  The sound of her fingers against the wall was soft— so soft as to be drowned out by the furious storm without, yet graceful enough to linger. “This… it is not glamorous, but I can tell that this is archeotech.” Espeon cocked her head, curious. Interested, projecting— “oh, sorry… old tech. From the Dark Age of Technology. They used to be able to build things beyond the wildest imaginations of the modern mind, and now… now we are left to pick up the pieces. Some of them can be immensely dangerous. Some of them…” she paused at an intersection, a subterranean floor beneath their actual campsite come into stark relief.

A good amount of the room had been buried, and it was clear at one point the floor had either given out or buckled up— the actual distortion not entirely clear, not after so long. A thick layer of silt had solidified on the floor, above which sat stagnant water, pitch black and oily deep in the gloom. Scattered detritus filled the chamber— roots, somehow over so many millennia managing to have wormed their way in from above, intermixed amongst the pipes and wires and tubes, and more esoteric things still. In the center of it all stood a single object, elegant and almost organic beyond anything in the entire structure— and far better preserved, as well.

Anabel stepped forward, then hesitated, not quite daring to reach out and touch the artefact. “I know of these. I’ve never seen one in person before this, but… this substance, I can sense it, its incredible potential. There’s nothing else it could be; this is the work of Eldar hands.” Espeon cocked her head, intrigued.

Unlike her companion, she had no compunctions in stepping forward and probing at the structure psychically. Interestingly, the chaotic miasma was actually repulsed by the structure… no, not the structure, for that was clearly inactive, but rather by the material that made up the structure. It’d probably be useful to break it up and take it with them, to further add to Haex’s already potent protection, but…

To shatter something so beautiful sat ill at ease with her. Her psychic probing turned more intense, truly prying at the construct, at least wanting to find out what it was before resorting to brute destruction. The material leapt greedily for any energy she gave it— almost like a plant, willing to grow when watered— but she held it back from any such random changes, instead worming her power further into the mechanism itself.

There were a handful of safety checks— some which seemed to look for various imprints on her power, and not finding any, let it pass unopposed. Then… the lock. She blinked, reeling back a little bit both physically and psychically the moment she encountered it. It was… vast. So utterly, so almost incomprehensibly vast that she couldn’t see how it possibly all fit within so slight a structure. It was one of the most complex psychic constructs she’d ever seen— perhaps the single most complex— and after a bit of light probing, it was evident that she wasn’t going to figure it out in any reasonable timescale.

She sighed, withdrawing her power and turning to Anabel, unable to quite totally hide the look of disappointment that sank fitfully onto her with a petulant slump. ++Sorry. I wasn't able to figure out what it does. There’s a very complex psychic lock that we don’t have the time for me to crack.++ Then, much as it pained her— ++it seems to repel chaotic forces. We ought to… break it down and—++ She paused, whirling around to face the structure as she felt something. Incredibly faint, perfectly subtle, but—

The lock had changed. Anabel said something— asked her something— but she wasn’t paying attention to her fellow psyker, instead utterly consumed with watching the places she’d probed on the lock twist and unravel, complex processes writhing just under the surface of it— hidden from even her sight. Like… she could not even describe it.

Something reached out to her, vast, subtle… crystalline and alive. “Our little… dragon sister? For at last… so long… missed you…” and accompanied by, each word a library, dense psychic imagery. Almost a psychic assault, forcing her to let all but the faintest impressions of it cascade off her and be lost forever to the void of un-memory. “We open the Ways.”

A spark of light.

A pulling— an unweaving, as reality in front of them was peeled back, a portal shredding open where there had been merely simple space before—

And a single, startled being on the other side. The woman hissed glanced up from a panel of that self-same psycho-plastic material in shock, hissing something in a foreign, lyrical language— before in the very next second she was there, a bone blade kissing Anabel’s neck. “How? This portal should not have opened for you, mon-keigh.” Then her gaze settled on her.

A year and a bit ago, Espeon might have found that terrifying. Now, it was only par for the course.

The woman recoiled back, clearly surprised— which, however, didn’t prevent her from effortlessly disarming Anabel and kicking her into the pool of stagnant water with a splash. “What manner of creature is this?” Then, in that sing-song, half-psychic voice that she remembered Eldrad using, she asked her— far kinder— “hello, little beast. Were you the one to have opened this gate?”

In all honesty, Espeon was still somewhat reeling from that psychic blast. There was so much in it— memories, feelings, the lost imprints of such grand and terrible things. It came to her, in the shadow of that— the memory, of a war so vast and terrible that the words vast and terrible seemed paltry in comparison— ++Aeldar? What are you doing here?++ The eldar recoiled from her, eyes so wide it seemed they’d burst free from her head. It was only then that Espeon realized she’d spoken in the same strange cant as the lock.

Psychically bludgeoned by a lock of all things. She shook her head, grimacing (a very catlike grimace); she’d gone toe to toe with the gods of the warp and come out on top, and lost against a door. It was a good (if harsh) reminder that there were some things subtle enough to still hit her psychically… which meant she would have to be more careful.

At least it hadn’t turned out too badly. Just an overzealous memory transfer more than anything… 

An arc of crackling lightning burst from Anabel’s hands, coruscating through the air for a brief second before she cast it bodily at the eldar… bladeswoman? Swordswoman? Something along those lines, who didn’t take it just laying down. Her sword blurred as she reflected the lightning into the corner, the whole room around them shivering as she kicked off to deliver a deadly strike straight at Anabel’s neck—

Only to be caught— seized utterly by Espeon’s psychic bonds. It wasn’t even hard. She was actively drawing psychic power from the warp to empower herself, so just in cutting that off, she was able to render the warrior as weak as… well, any other well trained but ultimately mortal warrior. She couldn’t even turn her head, but Espeon was able to feel her sheer horror at how easily she’d been manhandled.

“Ces’ail, honored breaker-of-fate, with regards from the Master Farseer I bid you to release my tempestuous sister. She does not know her sins; she is blind beneath the eye of Asuryan. I beseech thee.” A different eldar appeared— absent one second, present the next, dressed in a modest cloak and bearing a truly impressive rifle— so tall that it was more like a staff than anything. It was longer than she was.

Espeon blinked, considering for a second, before dropping the first eldar. Because she was feeling a little petty, she didn’t bother maneuvering her above the land— instead letting her fall with a splash and a strangled squeak into the same filthy water she’d thrown Anabel into.

That earned her a glare, but no worse. Apparently, the dangerous look the one with the giant gun gave her was enough to settle any complaint. Espeon glanced between the two of them, and Anabel, and the gate— that mysterious, dangerous gate— before sighing. ++Can someone please explain what’s going on?++

………

She got her explanation eventually, but not before things settled down a bit more. Anabel (and, ironically, in strange counterpoint, the eldar Dire Avenger who went by the name of Iel’anae) both swaddling up in blankets and warming up by the fire, each offering each other the occasional glare. Haex had been (unfortunately) banished some small distance away for the sake of diplomacy, what with how his presence almost viscerally discomfortable for the two psychic aliens.

They’d broken out their single ration of recaf (the high quality stuff they’d been given during their stay in the spire) and even, on her own urging, shared some with the xenos. They’d… well, they’d clearly not liked it, but they had at least admitted it was fairly novel to them. From what she’d gathered of their somewhat turbulent and definitely highly complex psyche, it was less the drink that was novel, and more the act of sharing a drink in peace with two humans and a xenos. A subtle but important nuance.

Finally, after what felt like far too long, but the eldar felt rushed, Espeon broke the silence. ++So. I understand that the various different groups here have an… antagonistic relationship with one another.++ Iel’anae scowled harder. Anabel just scoffed. ++Hopefully we can reach a fruitful conclusion here that doesn’t involve breaking your Webway Gate down for scraps or killing Anabel or Haex.”

“The soulless mon-keigh is an affront.” Iel’anea scowled at Heax, who completely ignored her (which definitely wasn’t the right thing to do, if the way her ire suddenly peaked was any indication.) “It reeks of the yngir and their terrible abomination.”

“You must excuse the young one.” The other eldar dipped their head, the single motion eliciting a slew of complex feelings in Iel’anea. “She has heard of the ancient enemy, and knows the taste of it, but has yet to truly understand the terrible shadow of that foe. Its memory is etched heavily on our culture, and so to find even the slightest echo of it is something to elicit distress amongst our kind.”

“It—” a sharp glare, and a sour petulance, “he is a terrible counter to the psychic— and to be aeldari is to be, one and all, psychic. It is in our very nature to rule the immaterium.”

“To know the warp is to know chaos,” almost chantlike, Anabel, “to know chaos is to be consumed by chaos. To be consumed by chaos is to become chaos. A race of psykers can be trusted no more than a race of deceivers— and your species is known to weave the greatest and most terrible of lies.”

++Alright!++ Espeon smacked a paw down on the stone, the impact itself soft— but the way it reverberated amongst the gathered people so much stronger; jumping, rippling in flinches through Iel’anea and her fellow eldar (if in the second case a more invisible, subtle thing) and in frowns amongst the humans. ++Alright, this is stupid. We’re not going to insult each other, or else this isn’t going to work— so just… don’t. Please?++

“Of course. Ces’ail.” The second eldar nodded her head, which— to her and Iel’anea, at least, carried some significant weight. “We will refrain if the humans refrain.”

“The xenos…” Espeon glared a little at her (she wasn’t good at glaring, but she gave it her best shot) and Anabel shied back— “the eldar… fine. I won’t say anything, but how do we know if they’re trustworthy? Excuse me for saying the truth, but every imperial who’s ever had the misfortune of learning about their…” she almost visibly controlled herself— “of learning the history of the interactions between our two species knows that betrayal is a very real concern.”

Espeon flicked her tail. ++That won’t be a problem. Or at least, I’ll be able to tell if they’re being genuine. I can read their emotional states quite easily.++ That managed to elicit a reaction from the second eldar, a real, visceral shock.

Iel’enea was less surprised, but still clearly startled— and, of course, as blunt as ever. “Truly? Impossible. Perhaps myself, but Aewthe is a master psychic. Her thoughts are completely shielded.”

++Oh, you’re a master psychic? That’s awesome! I’d love to trade psychic techniques later…++ she paused, realizing she’d gotten a bit off topic, and ducked her head sheepishly. ++Sorry… what I meant to respond with was that, yes, you two are very easy to read. Your psychic shields aren’t emotional shields. After all, you can still feel, can’t you?++ There were ways to do it, but unless she was fighting another espeon, they weren’t all that useful. Their empathic abilities were rather unique to their species after all.

“How… fascinating.” How disturbing, went unsaid. “Well. Then.” The second eldar recomposed herself. “As Iel’enea mentioned, I am known as Aewthe Leawlor, Farseer of Craftworld Ulthwe, formerly of its rangers; now, disciple of Eldrad Ulthran. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ces’ail.”

++Eldrad?++

“The greatest of us. His is the word that has brought us through the long night of our people, and forth forwards to whatever may— and so, when he told me to come and guide you to wherever may, I could not refuse. Perhaps you will have the opportunity of meeting him, one day soon.”

++I already met him actually, back on Terra.++ Everyone glanced her way , clearly surprised, eliciting a bit of a sheepish shuffle from her. ++It was a future sight thing… it was why I could recognize the Webway Gate in the first place.++ That had been her first introduction to the aeldari people, actually— she’d not thought of it in a long while.

“I… see.” Aewthe looked somewhat disturbed. “Then, this will be easier. Eldrad told me that you would be of remarkable use against the ruinous powers. Something about you… apparently, the Enemy holds a great hatred towards you— and what the Enemy hates is salvation to our kind.”

++They did call me ANATHEMA the one time I met them.++ Even the word said so simply, carried, within it, an enormous and resonant force, echoing the pained scream of that terrible and ever-twisting monstrosity. All three of the others— the eldar and Anabel both— reeled back, clutching at their heads with unified groans of pain (though the eldar were rather more dignified about it).

Anabel recovered first, wincing still at the psychic backblow. “What… what about Iel, then? If you’re here for Espeon, then—”

“That’s Iel’anea to you, mon-keigh—”

Anabel rolled her eyes. “Fine, whatever. What is she doing here?”

“I had been sent to open the gate, for whatever reason— you can’t expect me to understand the whims of my betters, can you?” She huffed, crossing her arms, scowl only worsening at the slight smile that flicked onto Aewthe’s face. “It wasn’t supposed to open so easily. It’s hard to convince a gate to open into a warp storm, especially one so rarely used. Whatever you did…”

She just tilted her head. Clearly, Iel’anea was waiting for an answer, but she didn’t even know what she did. ++I think the lock just liked me, honestly?++ It had grabbed onto her power, and then… like greeting an old friend, like reaching out, arms outstretched in benediction for what had been lost…

The mental remnant of the lock’s regard shivered, achingly bloated in the back of her head. It was…

The memories really were mind-bogglingly insane. Of battles that quenched stars like someone might crush ants underfoot, of terrible weapons that had sundered the heavens and forever polluted the warp, of Divinities of a very, terrifyingly material kind. She shivered, for even just remembering that was enough to set the Immaterium around her shivering in anticipation of that ancient violence.

“I have my theories.” She tilted her head at Aewthe, who inclined hers in response. “The Ces’ail is possession of a curiously unique psychic power, so utterly placid and untainted that it evokes memories of the ancient Sea of Souls and the Old Ones that ruled its expanse. Perhaps it is that the Webway recognized. Kin, of a sort.”

Iel’anea scowled. “That’s absurd. To compare the, this… this cat to the great Old Ones? To those Powers that were so surpassing in their divinity that the whole of the Pantheon were as children to them?” Espeon glanced at Anabel and Haex as the eldar argued with themselves, only to receive equally puzzled looks in turn. Apparently, whatever these so-called Old Ones were, they were unknown to the two Imperials. Maybe to the Imperium as a whole. If she really did get to see Eldrad, then she’d ask him…”

That, and their theories about her power— which rang with some small truth— were both interesting, but not entirely relevant. ++I don’t mind the technical details of things, whatever they may be. There’s more important things in play at the moment— right now, we need to focus on stopping this storm before it consumes the planet.++

Aewthe nodded. “Indeed. The Ces’ail speaks truthfully. I fear that if the storm is allowed to consume the whole world, Tessera IV will be subsumed into the Realms of Chaos, and a Daemon Prince will be allowed to walk the Materium once more.”

Anabel hissed. “So it is true. This is the work of a greater daemonic faction.”

“A powerful one, at that. It is part of why your help will be so critical.” Espeon narrowed her eyes at Aewthe’ half-response. She didn’t feel like their help would actually be helpful, more that it would protect them. Craftworld Ulthwe, she figured. “Have you ever heard of the Thousand Sons of the Daemon Prince, Magnus the Red?”

Anabel’s eyes widened. Haex looked disturbed. Espeon… it took her a bit of digging through her various hard-memories and whatnot, but eventually, she chanced upon it— solidified beneath the golden glow of the emperor's soul—

++He’s one of his children. The one who tried to warn him, and was betrayed for it.++

“That’s heresy. He was a traitor to the imperium!”

Espeon just half-raised a paw, utterly unimpressed. The Imperium— even Anabel— seemed a little too quickly inclined to dismiss the truth, which (she had to admit, at this point) was rather annoying. ++I’ve only heard about him once, and that was from the Emperor himself, so I speak from ignorance.++ It was maybe a little sarcastic— the way Anabel’s mouth flopped between open and closed as she sought to find something that wasn’t in some way heretical to the Imperium was somewhat funny. Though Iel’anea’s smug look somewhat soured it…

Luckily, Aewthe was at least somewhat mature enough to cut between the two of them. “We will, of course, help with repelling them from this world. The Tessera system is too close to Ulthwe to allow a daemon prince to gain a foothold in— together, we should be able to sunder the ritual with great effort. Apart, we will surely fail.” Again, not entirely true, but…

Haex turned to her, and she nodded. It was true enough. Perhaps there was some ulterior motive, but it was not to the extent of betrayal. That, at least, she was relatively confident of.

++Very well then.++ There would be more time to talk afterwards, once the threat had been dealt with. ++Let’s go deal with a daemon prince.++

………

Espeon had thought their prior approach had been stealthy. Espeon had also been, coincidentally, very wrong. The eldar were a humbling reminder of just how far all of them had to go when it came to the art of moving silently through the storm.

Haex was offered the least corrections— his assassin’s training already conveying upon him a highly developed subtlety that he carried with his every movement (somewhat undermined, rather significantly, by the bubble of enforced reality that pushed against the chaotic storm around him). She herself got the second least— whether that was because her presence was naturally quite muted if she pulled tight her mental barriers, or because of her natural feline grace, or because they simply didn’t have anything much of note to offer to someone with such a different body plan than them, Espeon wasn’t entirely sure. Whatever it was, she was left largely alone.

Anabel… Iel’anea, to say the least, was very fond of testing the bounds of their alliance. Her constant snipes at the woman were… well, constant, ceaseless in how they mocked her for her ‘mon-keigh clumsiness’ or ‘psychic beacon begging to be eaten.’ At first, she’d sniped right back, leading into endless arguments that could only be broken up by Aewthe— but after a short while she’d simply stopped responding and started listening. It was all good advice, dug from that spiteful heart— each word knifelike in its cruel truth, and Anabel recognized that.

She was not too prideful to completely ignore so much expertful advice, even if it did come from a loathsome, contemptible xenos. After all, her perspective on those had been somewhat altered over the past few weeks already, anyways…

The opposition was just as fierce, and as they trudged further south, only ever the fiercer. The storm winds and lashing rain became a fiercely chilling snow, caught and blown forth in the blast winds of the south. They very quickly learnt not to look up— for to look up was to see, looming far closer than it did in reality, the corrupting gaze of the Eye of Terror and the horrors that lurked within its carmine fathomless depth.

Hoards of demons roamed the land. If they’d proceeded as they had before, they never would have gotten within twenty miles of the Black City at the south pole (as they learnt it was called, in the scrawled remnants, bloodied corpses scoured clean by that terrible storm, littered along the roadside). Even as they were, the creatures were relentless. Twisted and grotesque things, they clawed or slicked or loped their way forward, their voices piercing— laughing, sometimes, and wailing at others, never at peace. Never simple violence.

Espeon got a lot of practice in fighting them. The Farseer led the first few fights— proving, clearly, that she was the one who’d been clearing out some of the bigger monsters in her way, her gun capable of blasting gaping wounds into even the worst of them with a single, well placed shot— but Espeon quickly became responsible for slaying them. A simple spike of psychic energy (which, apparently, none of the other psykers could— or dared to, with the daemonic so omnipresent around them) was able to rip gaping wounds into their spirits. Very deadly, very efficient, and most of all, very silent. With the others to clean up and keep watch for anything else that might attack them, they made great progress south.

Iel’anea was clearly a bit salty that she didn’t get much action— even less than Haex, who was at least useful in banishing the less immediately tangible daemonic threats (that was, the pestilences and curses that Espeon could see swirling in the storm around them). At least she contented herself in doing more than Anabel, who was relegated— by her relative vulnerability to the Immaterial— to doing basically nothing at all.

Finally, almost three weeks after they’d first fled the ruins of the citadel, they arrived at their destination— from the storm, they stepped into its Eye, and beheld the terrible working of the Ruinous Powers. Thousands of souls, it must have been, lay in rictus positions across the ice-bound city, frozen in their last acts— of betrayal, of madness, of lives taken in the dark, of knives dug into sculls and grotesque statues made of flesh and murder. It was sickening— though Anabel was the only one who actually looked visibly distraught, she could feel even from the Eldar a hot disgust, a mournful silence for those, even of their lessers, who had lost themselves to the deprivations of the warp.

It was the long night (of winter, here on the south pole) but it felt like midday, almost warm— the entire city cast in ruddy blush and blueish hue— from (she did not dare look up into) the Eye of Terror above.

Aewthe cursed suddenly, pulling them all into a crumbled building’s shadow. “There. Do you see it?” Espeon peeked around the corner, eyes catching on the lumbering forms of… armor. Familiar armor— not quite as golden and shiny, but in many respects still, similar. “Chaos Marines.” She all but spat it. “In this case, servants of the Changer of Ways. They are some of the most terrible and powerful of Chaos’s warriors.”

++Not like the demons we were fighting earlier?++

“Not even remotely similar. Those demons were the endless legions the Four spill forth to drown their enemies in seas of blood. The Chaos Marines are the very tip of the Enemy’s sword.” So… she flicked her tail at Hex, who nodded in return. Sneak past them, find the location of the ritual, and… destroy it? Something like that.

“Perhaps if someone could offer a distraction—” Anabel gave Iel’anea a heavy look— “say, perhaps, a Dire Avenger who could quickly escape their attention after a short engagement.”

Iel’anea looked like she dearly wanted to respond, only to be stopped by Aewthe. “A meritorious idea. We three will be able to provide a… delectable distraction.” There was a hint of meanness in her voice, but not enough to qualify as malice. “The three of you can distract them while we proceed to the ritual site proper. Unless you think that you can bear the weight of She Who Thirst’s attention, Iel’anea?” The other eldar snapped her mouth shut. “If you can protect the Null until he reaches the Rubricae, then their connection to their foul master will certainly be severed. Iel’anea, I trust that you will guard Anabel against the Enemy’s corruption, and Anabel, I trust that you will prove effective in sanctifying those Imperial enemies you are able to defeat.”

Espeon considered it for a moment, tasting the shape of it in her mind, before nodding. ++The plan is fair. So long as Iel’anea fulfills her role completely, and Anabel does so in turn, then I see no problem with this. You’ll do that, right, aeldar?” Again, both Aewthe and Iel’anea shivered— almost atavistically, she surmised, at what the slightly more sorted bundle of scattered memories informed her was their species most ancient and holy name— unspoken since the time of the great Old Ones.

The three of them looked a little disgruntled, but, ultimately, nodded in their assent, much to Aewthe’s clear pleasure. She clapped— once, the sound quiet, for fear of the present astartes. “Then it is decided. I have already divined the location of the ritual, Ces’ail, and I shall lead you there posthaste.”

++It’s location is obvious…++ she let the thought trail off, rolling her eyes, trying not to let the weight of the split get to her. The threat of it… ++I’ll see you again. Don’t you dare die.++

Haex just snorted. “You probably said something sappy there, didn’t you?” She merely blinked at him. “Of course. Just as I expected… the same to you, Espeon. Fare well and fare safely, and bring us victory. Glory to the God-Emperor of mankind. Glory to the Amicus Imperator.”

And their course was set.

………

Haex watched Espeon depart with mixed feelings. He’d long since stopped doubting the cat. Whatever he thought was impossible was probably possible to her, and even amongst those things he wouldn’t doubt that she would still manage to surprise him. Frankly, the thought of her dying— the thought of her dying to chaos, after she’d spat in the face of (apparently, Magnus the Red, and rebuked him) was absurd. The eldari would rot to bone and they could be pulped to so much meat, but Espeon would survive. She was like the Emperor, in that regard— undying, indomitable, ever striding forth against the void.

That was probably a heretical thought. It didn’t mean it wasn’t also true.

The eldar drew her blades, the movement as perfectly graceful as everything else about them. Well, except for her attitude. He was worried (that, he could readily admit, if only to himself) about their ability to operate as a cohesive unit without the Farseer.

He envied the way that Espeon had so effortlessly handled them. The farseer had seemed to respect Espeon— as a peer, (or even, dare he say, a superior), what with that strange Ces’ail title and her ability to tell whether they were lying or not. He really wished he could talk to her, if only to laugh about how much of an impact her every movement seemed to have on the normally unflappable beings.

Another time, maybe. For now, though, his goal was far simpler—

Make a distraction for Espeon.

He hefted his power blade, and watched carefully as he Anabel pulled out a holy book (that had probably, at one point in time, been taken from the ecclesiarchy). “Ready?” Both of them flinched (and how he’d gotten used to not getting that reaction, from the psychic cat) before nodding. “Right now, we, what we do right here, may decide the fate of Tessera IV. It may decide the fate of your craftworld. We are the blade of the Emperor and the outstretched arm of… your ancestors.” Iel’anea was still for a second, before nodding once, curtly, and he let out a short sigh of relief that he hadn’t horribly misjudged the strange and alien xeno.

A Pariah giving a motivational speech. His life was a joke…

Together, they sallied forth to meet the enemy.

………

The sound of combat— crashing armor and heavy fire and roars— rose up behind her, and Espeon very deliberately put them out of her mind. She would need to focus on her task, which would probably be difficult enough.

The corruption became even more obvious as they progressed through the twisting alleys and black-hewn buildings, the entire city around them littered with strange blue crystals that twisted and pulsed with the baleful light of the Lord of Destiny. Like invitations, each of them, shimmering eerily above them as they snuck past the distracted regiment of Rubricae and took extra care to avoid the attention of the astartes proper and the daemons. Flesh clung to the spires, grotesque draparies, sheets of sinew and pulsing muscle intertwining itself through the architecture in profane worship to that terrible, horrible thing that had confronted her so long ago in the perverted memory of her past. Blind eyes and teeth that spiraled inwards in mocking, self-mutilating patterns…

All flowing together, and flowing out of, a circle that burned with a frozen light. A pillar of energy burst forth from it, a cyclone of swirling spiritual force that merged with the still air of the eye and became the eye— that merged with the storm and was the storm. All around the circle knelt a thousand frozen statues— half of them caught in the act of killing the other half, some desperately clawing, some seized with terror or panic, others with rage. All of it, in that moment— somehow (she knew how, by the infinite will of the Changer of Ways arranged) facing inwards in supplication towards that horrible ritual.

Beside her, Aewthe’s breath hitched. “This is… this is a grand ritual. They truly intend to bring their Daemon Primarch to the material realm. This must be stopped, lest the whole galaxy fall into chaos and dissarray.”

Espeon nodded. If for no other reason that this was… cruel. It was cruelty itself, cruelty for the sake of cruelty, perpetuated over the lives of so many. Standing in front of the ritual itself, arms upreached to the Eye, stood a single Chaos Marine. Aewthe’s gaze locked onto him, and Espeon heard her sigh heavily.

“So this is it,” she murmured. “The face I hath forseen, the enemy that is mine by destined right. I know this man.” One gaunt hand pushed her down, giving her one last (one first) pet for good luck. Then, Aewthe stood, gun held loosely in her grip. “I know you, Adrophil Tchek-tan! You have graced this galaxy one last accursed time!”

“Ah! My Destined Foe! I bless the Great Conspirator for bringing you to me at last! Our story shall be legendry— and shall we write it, now, beneath the eye of our Fourfold Audience?” He waved his staff, and a dozen fireballs burst forth around him, flickering with unworldly color. “For the Glory of the Changer of Ways— I will offer your still-burning skull to the Chaos Gods!” And the battle began.

What a furious battle it was. Espeon watched for a moment as Aewthe twisted and danced through the descent of sorcerous fire, taking every opportunity she could to counter his spells with a wraithbone blade that she seemed to have drawn from nowhere. Whenever she could, she took a second to take a shot at the Chaos Marine himself— though the powerful fire, which had slaughtered daemons before, was seemingly shrugged off by Tchek-tan…

Right, the ritual. The moment Tchek-tan’s attention was dragged away from her alcove by Aewthe, she darted out, slinking beneath the legs of the frozen penitents and racing straight towards the ritual circle itself. The Eye’s gaze felt like a million lead weights, but she didn’t let it stop her. Chaos could do nothing to her. Those so-called gods, those perverse twistings ont eh psychic background radation— she denied, and they in turn denied her, rumbling still with that one word that had been said in past and future and now—

ANATHEMA

Tchek-tan’s gaze snapped over to her, the focus of his sorcerous firestorm suddenly shifting— but it was too little, too late. With a shout, she wrapped herself in psychic shielding—

And jumped straight into the center of the ritual circle.

The whole world was washed out around her. In good news, that meant that Tchek-tan was completely unable to reach her. In bad news, that meant that she was affixed beneath the gaze of something so much greater.

Like looking through a pool from above— over unspeakable distances they were thusly connected, her on those frost-bitten and cracked black stones, and him in his tower of silver and magical mystery. Bedecked in prismatic wings, clad in an ornate armor of such terrible and bitter sorrow, each hieroglyphic rune etched with fathomless meaning… and his eye, that gaze, heavy against him. This was not the gaze of an unthinking divine. No… in that eye, in that psychic echo, Espeon could recognize someone so very human.

“Who are you?”

“Who are you?” She paused, then shook her head. “Wait, that’s a stupid question. Magnus the Red. I’ve heard about you.” She noted, dully, that her speech was quite comprehensible, here in this strange realm of thought and power. His power— or rather, the power of his master, channeled through him first and through Tchek-tan second.

“You… I remember you.” He looked surprised. “You were the creature that dared to rebuke me during the storming of the citadel.”

“That’s a… horrible pun.”

Magnus scowled, the petty annoyance on his face so utterly at odds to his regal appearance. “I shall not be lectured on my language by a cat. For daring to interrupt my incarnation, I shall smite you, and that shall be the end of this nuisance—”

“Why?” She cocked her head.

“Why what?”

“Why… this?” She flicked her tail, but the meaning was clear— the incursion, the ritual, the deprivation, the chaos. “I’ve seen the terrible hatred that was Horus and stood directly against your master. They were Evil. You seem…” evil, in a sense, but more so sad. “I don’t understand.”

That seemed to catch the winged primarch off guard for a long, long time. “How do you know of these things?”

“Didn’t I just tell you?”
‘The thought that you faced Tzeentch and lived is ridiculous.” Yet, he knew it was true. There was nothing else it could be, not in this realm of chaos and meaning and— beneath the echo, therein, of the Changer of Way’s terrible proclamation. “How do you know of Horus?”

“I healed your dad.”

“My— the Emperor?” A sudden anger overcame him. “The Emperor? The Corpse Emperor? You, you, a xenos, healed the Corpse Emperor of Mankind, to whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day so that he may never truly die? In whose name countless armies steal and pillage and desecrate and destroy, spreading their golden blight throughout the galaxy, for whom sins greater than any demon could ever envision are done?” The primarch laughed, then and it was a hysterical laugh, filled with power enough to make Espeon crouch and shiver beneath its slightly maddened echo. “You?!”

Still, she stood firm against it. Becuase… now, she could see a way. Not just to end the ritual. But to end all the rituals.

She locked eyes with him, violet gaze to violet gaze, and told him— so simply, so bluntly— “it doesn’t have to be this way.”
“The dice are cast. Prospero is burnt. We are all set onto our course, bound in a million invisible strings.” He sounded… redesigned. “For my Thousand Sons, I will suffer this burden—”

“It does not have to be this way.” She filled it with all her conviction, all her hope, all her meloristic— perhaps naive, yes, that even the most profane might see at least the feather’s touch of redemption.

And Magnus had a lot of feathers.

It was not just a sentence, there, as she poured into it her whole self— it was an arrow, a psychic sending thrust in reverse, upstream against that flood of power. It glittered sharp as it cut through the aether and struck the primarch in the face, causing him to reel back with a shout— and more importantly, severing a bundle of threads to the great and insane god further beyond even him.

“What are you doing!? Do you know— have you any idea of what you’ve done?” The ritual was destabilizing; the power was shattering apart, flooding out of control and shredding itself to pieces. Soon, the connection would be broken entirely. “Do you think that you can defy the gods? Do you think that you can change fate? Do you dare to think that you can rewrite a story that already has an ending?" Something was speaking through Magnus, now, its voice clawed and scratchy and awful in a way that few things truly were— in a way that was recognizable.

The connection was failing… but they were still connected, for a moment longer. “Of course I do.” She narrowed her eyes, crouching— “hold on. I’m coming over.”

In unison, Magnus and the creature that was wearing him blinked and squinted at her in utter bafflement. “What?”

She leapt—

The connection trembled, and shattered into so many motes of light and a single, immense bolt of lightning—

And landed worlds and realms away, in Magnus’s room.

………

“No… no! No no no— this cannot be!” The ritual shuddered, the circle containing it failing as it bloated with uncontrolled power. No longer a controlled wisp, disappearing a hundred or so feet into the air— it was a writhing, living coil of power stretching straight to the Eye of Terror. Far beyond them, about them, the eye of the storm sloughed inwards, the winds dying as it collapsed inwards on itself. “This was supposed to be mine! My victory, my perfect transcendence! I would become a god! How? How?! The Primarch Himself anchored this ritual! Not even an eldar should have been capable of opposing it!”

Aewthe would have replied with some pithy statement, but she was utterly exhausted. Instead, resting on a knee, bruised and battered and bloodied, rifle shivering with arcane power overload, she just smiled. “You have no idea what force you faced. The Ces’ail is well a match for your foul prince, mon-keigh.”

“The cat? The cat?! No! I refuse! Changer of Ways! Architect of Fate! Father of Lies and Deception! All demons I have bound and all powers you have granted; Tzeentch! I invoke the, I beseech thee, smite my enemy and—” and the ritual broke, an enormous bolt of lightning searing down from the eye as a deluge of power more intense than everything Craftworld Ulthwe could produce in a year was released in one enormous, uncontrolled burst. Aewthe’s eyes widened, and she shielded herself— and was still thrown back hard against the stone behind her.

This was the true backlash of the ritual. The backlash of a planet-sized work, of a daemon prince’s doing turned foul against its foul master. Arcs of pure energy curled off, one slamming into Tchek-tan with such immense force that he didn’t even get a chance to scream before he was erased utterly.

It would not destroy the demons that were already summoned… but, as she laid on her back and watched that lightning branch through the sky to those Tchek-tan held under his thrall, she was certain it would at the very least blunt the worst of the Chaos Marine’s presence on the world. Already, the Eye of Terror felt far less pressing. Less present. Once more relegated to a horrible wound in reality, far away adrift over a night sky, and not a second sun burning fiercely against her.

She blinked as the last of it dissipated, reaching out— only to find that Espeon was gone. For a single, horrible moment, she thought that she’d somehow let the cat die— but no, she knew that wasn’t possible. That twisted power would have slid off the Ces’ail’s shields like oil off water, utterly immiscible. No…

As she pulled on her sight, and traced the thread of the impossible creature’s presence— the creature that had somehow moved the Webway to action when even their gods had not been able to truly grasp the workings of the Old Ones, the creature that had called them aeldar and had been, in turn, called by the Enemy ANATHEMA— she was not dead.

The thread of her presence was flung, high overhead— straight up and into the Eye of Terror. She wasn’t dead.

She was taken… and Aewthe didn’t know if that was worse.

Chapter Text

The Tessera system was a peaceful system, according to the navigator. Long protected from Chaos by its proximity to Craftworld Ulthwe (even if they didn’t realize their continued existence lay at the sufferance of foul xenos) it was a calm island compared to most of the systems around it. Caught in a small warp storm as it’d been for the last while, it should have been even calmer. Constantin Valdor had expected it to be little more than a light stop for the fleet after their long and somewhat fraught journey through several other far more besieged systems.

His expectations were proven wrong essentially instantly. “Warships detected! Scanning… sir, hostiles in system!” He scowled as the tech-priest read off the reports the holy augur arrays read out their reports in incomprehensibly dense binaric. “Report… one cruiser, two lighter support craft…”

“Report: that is clearly a modified Astartes strike cruiser (heresy era).” Constantin nodded his thanks to the Archmagos, who was busy pushing the menial tech priest out of the way and interpreting the data competently. “Addendum: this unit finds it highly probable that the sigillary displayed assigns ownership of the vessel to the traitor legion designate: Thousand Sons. Should we engage?”

Constantin suppressed a scoff at the question. Should they engage? “Full thrust ahead. Obliterate them in the name of the Emperor.” What a ridiculous thing to ask. They stood on the bridge of one of the most powerful battleships ever built by mankind, surrounded by a significant portion of the entirety of Battlefleet Obscurus, and he asked should they engage?

The foul traitor’s ships tried to disengage. Emphasis on tried. The thought of outrunning the Bucephalus was absurd to begin with, but even beyond that the ship had clearly been wounded by something. A terrible scar had burnt itself along the entire aft side of the ship, curling around to port in a gnarled and twisted river of only recently cooled metal. At least half of her engines and a significant number of her batteries had been rendered ineffective.

It was like stepping on a grape, or sweeping the dust off his armor. They tried, desperately they tried, but it was just so utterly insignificant in the face of their overwhelming might.

He smiled. It was always a good day when he got to see the forces of chaos purged by the might of the Emperor. Now if only they could find the Amicus Imperator here, then his day would be wonderful. “You. Tech-priest.” The formerly dismissed tech-priest standing around off to the side stiffened as he addressed him. “Hail the Planetary Governor. I wish to talk to him.”
“Of course. May the blessings of the Omnissiah be upon you.” A few seconds passed as they fiddled with the vox (and the vox team, because of course a battleship this large would have a vox team— he remembered, back from the Great Crusade, that they’d had an entire company of tech-priests solely dedicated to maintaining the vox on the ship. He wondered if it was their descendants that served, now.) Then, an archeotech hologram powered up, fizzing as the Governor’s office came into relief.

He crossed his arms. “Governor.”

The woman behind the desk— robed, curiously (and somewhat concerningly) in the robes of a ranking member of the collegia psykana— nodded back to him, curiously composed. “Lord… Custodes. I will admit that the arrival of your…” she glanced at something offscreen, “fleet is a remarkable relief for this system. We recently suffered a severe Chaos incursion. Only through incredible sacrifice was it repulsed, and had it not been, I am made aware that the Daemon Primarch Magnus the Red would be greeting you in my place.”

That… it was a relief, certainly. He had lived to see Magnus the Red in his loyal years, and knew the shape of his power— and knew that he did not match up. No man did, to the Sons of the Emperor. He nodded gravely to the Governor. “Then the noble souls who sacrificed themselves shall be remembered as heroes of the Imperium, for they have certainly performed a great service.”

“She’s not dead…” at first, confusion. Then, a sinking feeling of dread. “According to Farseer Aewthe, Espeon has been spirited away to the Eye of Terror.”

“She what?” His gauntlet hit the railing of the bridge with a furious boom before he was even aware of its movement, the tech-priests around him— even the Archmagos— flinching back at the sound. “The Eye of Terror?” He all but growled the words. He’d come all this way, only to be thwarted at the last moment?!

He sighed. Would anything just go right for once?

………

Espeon landed daintily on Magnus’s magic floor, and immediately got blasted with the full psychic force of a god.

The tower behind her exploded outwards, prismatic flame consuming utterly twisting lines and orrery circles, and geometric charts. Crystals shattered and metal warped, disintegrated— erased into ever-scattered, transforming little sparkles of light. It felt like what she imagined being hit point blank by the full-bore attack legendary felt like.

She survived, though. Mostly because of her resistance to psychic attacks, though the utter profligate wastefulness of Magnus’s burst. Then, though, her feet were on the ground— and she found herself as empowered as Magnus was. In some small way, at least— for they half a foot dipped into the waters of the Immaterium, and within those boundless and chaotic seas worthfully seethed a boundless and infinite power.

She grasped Magnus’s next spell before it was even entirely formed, maniples of psychic binding clamping onto its structure and twisting it out of the Daemon Primarch’s hands. It writhed like a living snake, imbued with foul power— but it was still power, knowable power, the Master of Mutation’s power— and so she simply…

Changed it.

It wanted to change. It wanted to change so badly that it didn’t even realize how much it wanted to change until she bid it change. If the Architect of Fate had been able to wrest its grasp over her, then it would have surely stopped her… but in some ironic way, the mere presence of Magnus prevented him from manifesting himself.

The energy snapped at her, and she snapped back— “be made in the image of light!” And it was as golden and brilliant as the Emperor’s refulgent glory.

Magnus shied back, an inhuman screech escaping his mouth as he raised a hand to shield himself from the piercing glow. “What is this? How have you done this? You’ve… that is his! That was his!” He leapt at him, physically this time, an enormous and very scary blade manifesting in a flare of warp-flame.

It was too late. Espeon had finally begun to get her footing back underneath her, and while she knew she very well wasn’t the more powerful of the two of them— she was confident that she was the better sorcerer. Even the Changer of Ways simply could not do some of what she did— for he was corruption, and corruption by its very nature could never quite be pure.

A wave of boiling psychic flame roared out towards her as she nimbly dodged back— and she grasped it, again consuming its power and this time reforging it, taking inspiration from Magnus’s halo of fiendish fire to forge a halo of her own.

She had to admit, even if it was a remarkably foul power, its sheer malleability allowed for some really fun tricks. Fun tricks that Magnus was simply… ignoring.

Well, it would only make her victory ever the more easy.

She pulled on the psychic deluge around her, the sickly cyan energy twisting and transforming into the image of ten thousand grasping hands. Each individually was only a minor impediment— but together, it made it look like Magnus was looking through molasses.

Espeon took the moment’s reprieve to channel her internal energy— to channel the Changer of Way’s energy above it, so torrentially much of it, so ironically changed out of his control (and oh she could hear his fury at that—) into her future sight—

The battle’s fate was foretold.

She could see so much. It was almost bewildering, still the sheer depth to which she could see with the fathomless power offered to her by the Immaterium. She could see the threat that the Architect of Fate was trying to follow. She could see the threads questing in from outside the Eye of Terror— Aewthe’s and Eldrad’s and even the Emperor’s, so faintly yet immutably, his presence providing her invisible yet not unnoticeable assistance— she could see Magnu’s thread, a pitiful thing, so pridefully held by his own hand and hatred, and yet those hands, still, held by the laughing god who occluded his sight. A cruelty, made merely for the sake of being cruel, that he might always be tempted with the thought of ever truly being free.

In the center of Magnus’s psychic sanctum, her abilities magnified sevenfold times seven, she could see the past, the present, and the future—

Perhaps, in that moment, the best of anyone in all of existence.

She could see her path. One paw reached out, a gleaming claw cutting a single thread. The twin tips of her tail caught the immense, the fathomless deluge of psychic energy as it burst free and a blast of pristine psychic energy swatted aside the Chaos God’s hands, the threat that was Magnus, the thread that led to Magnus, in truth, the strange and corrupted and changed— for that was the true essence of Tzeentch, of change— cradled lost in an infinite expanse of stars.

It looked up at her, as she stared down at it, from an infinite distance away. Not quite malevolent. Not even entirely sad, for it was not enough of Magnus to remember all of that. It was the core of his being, the absolute essence, the spark of his mortality that made him, him.

It was lost, and afraid.

And so as the Changer of Ways raged impotently above, his wrath casting Sortiarius in a terrible psychic glow as the warp blew and blustered and seethed— Espeon reached out a thread, and pulled—

Come home.

Him free from the divinity’s grasp.

Magnus gasped as his soul was rendered, for the first time in almost ten millennia, fully his own. His mind was vast and complex— far more complex than even the aeldari’s— and still mangled by the trickery of the Lord of Change as it was she could only get a glimpse into its disarray as he collapsed to his knees, kopesh clattering loudly to the ruined floor.

A deathly silence hung over the two of them for the longest second of her life. Then, Magnus turned to her— eye glistening with unshed tears as at last all those thousands of years of emotion collapsed into one, enormous, grief. “Why? Why…” his voice hoarse— asking, begging, wondering and wishing and cursing… “why me? After everything…” not a daemon prince, or a Primarch, or even an accomplished psyker— merely, now, the boy who had tried so hard, and delved too deep, and lost everything.

It was… pitiful. And Espeon couldn’t stand leaving pitiful things to stew in their own misery. That was half why she’d leapt through to his tower in the first place. She mewled softly and stepped forward, nuzzling against him— and, hesitantly, his scarlet and scarred hand traced (so very gently, surprisingly) the side of her head in careful caress.

The light of the emperor brushed across them, just enough to be felt, just for a moment— before it was gone with the roaring winds of chaos.

Laden with a terrible and agonized sorrow, yes, as was the wont of the Emperor of Mankind, but also, for once—

Just a little bit, hopeful.