Tales of the Amber Vipers Chapter 91
Space folded before him, twisted and compressed by inscrutable science. Teleportation was elementary for the Necrons, their ability to manipulate spacetime beyond any cruder races' understanding. For Mathep it was as simple as stepping between two rooms for him to leave his pyramid-palace and emerge onto the muster grounds, hundreds of thousands of Kilometres away.
He descended the short steps of the Monolith, while the swirling green portal vomited forth Tamunn and Inotep. Before him thousands of Necron warriors awaited in perfectly ordered rows, their gauss flayers held in exactly matching grips. Into the distance they stretched, so many they could not be counted, all leading up to another staked pyramid. That was the tip of his personal flagship, the Unending Empire, which was docked to the underside of the Dyson Sphere and waiting for his embarkation.
Mathep strode confidently away from the Monolith, a mighty example of Necron power. Part drop-ship, part assault tank and part mobile portal, they were at the forefront of his armies and had been the bane of countless foes. Of course Mathep could have gone straight to his ship but there were traditions to be upheld. The Hyktot Dynasty had always undertaken a review of their troops before battle and so Mathep continued. It would be pointless to restore the Necrons to life if they did not maintain their glorious heritage.
Mathep marched between basic warrior forms and heavier Immortals. One breed common rabble, the other former soldiers. Few among them were capable of speech anymore and those that were able only ever gave instructions and commands in battle, relaying his will to their blank brethren. Mathep didn't care though, so long as they obeyed his will.
Tamunn eyed them and wondered, "Do you think there is enough of them left to transition back to flesh?"
Mathep scoffed, "Irrelevant, the common rabble were always quick to breed. We can replace them one day, so long as the Lords of our race endure."
Inotep muttered, "Those lords can be troublesome, they scheme and plot behind your back. Zathoem most of all."
"I will deal with my impudent Nemesor after I return from our initial raid," Mathep declared, "Now attend, tradition must be observed."
Their march took them past the common troopers and into the packed masses of War Machines. Canoptek Spyders, floating above the ground with their multiple legs and heavy weapons hanging under heads festooned with lenses. Curved Doom Scythe fighters, the bane of the skies on a million worlds. Annihilation Barges, similar to his personal conveyance but laden with weapons that could blow straight through a tank and out the other side. None of these were Necrons, they were machines and nothing more but of an order so elevated that usurper races would cower before them regardless.
All was in order but Mathep was vexed when he spied lurking forms ahead. They were hunched, feral things, never still, with wicked talons for hands and hungry gazes. Their forms were draped in fresh skins, still dripping blood, ripped from the stasis-vaults where Mathep kept those he dragged away after his conquests. Intended as experimental subjects for his Cryptek to work upon, but they were subject to frequent raids by those lurking before him.
"Flayed Ones," Tamunn snarled as he brandished his ritual axe and shield.
"Drive them away," Inotep barked, "Before they infect us with their virus!"
Yet Mathep commanded, "Leave them be, they are no threat to us."
"But Dread Lord," Inotep cautioned, "You know the tales of their infection."
"I do not believe in neural virus' nor that looking upon them will infect us. Neither do I think it is a curse by a shattered C'tan or a last revenge of the Old Ones. It is simple neural decay, the same as blights the warriors. The Flayed Ones are forgetting who they are but their symptoms differ. Instead of apathy and ennui the Flayed Ones become slaves to their basest instincts. The need to feed, to feel blood and flesh once more, it is the last thing to fade, long after all sanity has decayed."
Their walk took them past floating Wraiths, their legs removed and hands boasting dripping talons. They shimmered as they faded in and out of space, phasing into dimensions the Necrontyr had mastered aeons ago. They could pass through matter as easily as air, making no hiding place safe from their searching eyes. Next to them floated Destroyers, lower bodies replaced with skimmer units and right arms with long cannons that could blow through armour like smoke.
Mathep waved his arm and expounded, "These are the same, their minds decay leaving only madness. They mutilate their bodies in the quest to satiate their basest urges. Destruction, hunting, it is all that is left of their minds. They will never return to the ranks of the living."
"Yes, Dread Lord," Inotep recited in the tone underlings use to humour a master who loves the sound of their own voice.
They left the mutilated hordes behind and advanced to a unit that held special regard in the Hyktot Dynasty. Tall warriors with single eyes and long-barrelled rifles in their hands. They were cloaked in darkness, half in realspace and half in some mysterious dimension only they knew. The elite snipers of the Deathmarks. In their hands lay Synaptic Disruptors, weapons capable of destroying neural tissue and leaving all other matter intact.
Mathep paused and proclaimed, "Deathmarks, our greatest contribution to the Necrontyr. The Hyktot pioneered their usage, spreading their skills to all dynasties and adding to the glorious might of our race."
"Yes Dread Lord," Inotep stated flatly.
"We were there," Tamunn reminded him.
Yet Mathep was going to continue regardless and spoke, "We shared the technology, as a noble Dynasty should but only the least iterations, the smallest scraps from the table. We alone commanded the greatest understanding of leptons and synapses. We possessed weapons that could scour worlds of all sentient life, leaving the biosphere and resources untouched for us to claim!"
Inotep gently reminded him, "Dread Lord, your troops eagerly await your address."
Tamunn added, "If we wait much longer our prey will die of old age first."
Mathep ignored them both as he walked off, continuing their traditional inspection of the army. It took a great deal of time for the army was vast, but they would not all be needed immediately. Tradition demanded a series of escalating raids, to capture biological samples and learn the enemy's weaknesses before their total annihilation.
Eventually their walk had brought them to the end and Mathep left his armies behind as he stepped onto a floating disc. Tamunn and Inotep joined him and the disc left the ground, floating upwards to grant a commanding view of the serried metal ranks of Necrons. The disc moved with stately grandeur and Mathep remembered the feelings of pride and self-importance that such sights had once stirred within him. When he was alive he had revelled in having millions bow before him, and knowing billions more only lived or died at his whim. He had enjoyed such things, but now such emotions were as removed from him as weather patterns viewed from orbit. He no longer felt superior, but that did not matter for he knew he was superior.
The disc floated upwards, where it enjoined with another stage. The two platforms merged together as he ascended, living metal flowing and conjoining at an atomic level to become one whole. Upon the stage were two other beings, one a living wretch taken from the stasis-vaults, the only breathing thing in the assembly. She was kneeling on the platform, head bowed and Mathep vaguely noted the animal was of the Eldar species.
Yet his greater attention was reserved for the Necron looming over her. This one was even more hunched than Inotep, stooped and limping. It had been modified in strange ways, but unlike those corrupted troopers below this was not a symptom of neural decay but cruel and calculating intellect. The frame bore four arms, each one tipped by a clawed hand that had a green jewel on the back. One of these hands bore a curled lash that shimmered and blinked in and out of existence, glowing bluely as it sliced air molecules apart. The head was fixed with one single eye, set in the centre like some creature of myth. Finally it bore long black vestments that cascaded down its shoulders and back. These twitched and shimmered constantly, always in motion, for they were not feeble cloth but millions of microscopic scarabs, obeying the will of the bearer like an extension of his body. This was Ashtari, foremost Cryptek allied to the Hyktot and the only one capable of achieving the goal of returning his race to life.
Mathep inclined his head slightly, for Ashtari was the one individual in his kingdom he could not afford to insult. Servants and vassals and rivals he had aplenty but Crypteks were an order apart, free to come and go as they will and Mathep had no wish to lose the service of the greatest bio-weaver who had ever been born and reborn. The Phaeron spoke first, "Ashtari, you have my gratitude for coming."
Ashtari replied in a voice modulated to recreate his leering drawl from life, "I saw the far-scans and it pleases me. My bio-augurs detect the presence of the genic-gets once more, the usurper's crafted-warriors."
Mathep replied, "Ah yes, you spoke highly of their potential contribution to the great work."
"Never have I been closer to weaving a perfect host," Ashtari lamented, "But their maker was canny and hid the secrets of their creation, there is something in them beyond mere genic manipulation, an echo of the Warp writ in flesh. Even I must admit begrudging respect for so cunning an adversary. I was close to unravelling his secrets, so very close, but I ran out of subjects before I could complete my labours."
"Then we shall acquire more," Mathep assured him, "I see you brought the animal."
Ashtari waved one his many arms saying, "Do you wish to…"
"All in good time," Mathep said, "Tradition must be observed."
Mathep turned to the massed crowds of waiting Necrons and declared, "Soldiers of the Hyktot Dynasty, today is a day that shall echo forever. Our race once ruled the galaxy, we were the lords of creation. Then it was all stolen from us, by our ancient enemy, by the deceivers who promised us immortality. We have known betrayal, we have known deceit and defeat and when we arose from our Great Slumber we found our rightful domains infested by usurpers and inferior species. No more, today we set forth to take back what was stolen from us. Today the Hyktot takes the first step back to glory!"
No cheers greeted his words, no thunderous applause or stamping feet. The warriors below were incapable of such responses, they remained as they were, indifferent to anything save orders. It did not matter though, as it did not matter that he had made this exact speech many thousands of times over. Word for word repetitions occurring every time he led his army forth. All that mattered was the traditions of the Necrontyr endured, forever remembered by their Necron successors. When they reclaimed their flesh such practices would live again.
Mathep turned to the others and waved them forward, Ashtari dragging the Eldar animal forward and threw her at the Phaeron's feet. Mathep looked upon the vermin and knew it was a good choice, drawn from the stasis-vaults far below where millions of such prisoners dwelt. Intruders into his domain or captives taken in raids beyond the Dolmen Gates, the vaults were filled with the paused lives of those Mathep had conquered.
Mathep gripped his Chronostave and glared as he spat, "You filthy creatures think to rule the stars, to take what is ours. Just like your makers you deny us our due. You think yourselves kings of the galaxy but know that in truth you are nothing but weapons, failed attempts to deny our majesty. They made you to wage war, nothing more, yet they gifted you what they would not give us. In their cruelty and their malice the Old Ones denied the Necrontyr salvation from our short, diseased lifespans and gave you lives measured in millennia! Thus I take them from you."
He lowered the Chronostave the green crystal on the tip flared wildly, crackling arcs of power leaping out to touch the twin prongs and they shimmered as spacetime contorted around them. Usurper races would have decried this as sorcery but there was nothing of the Warp in it. The Necron's mastery of science surpassed all other's. Their complete understanding of the material universe let them manipulate the dimensions of realspace in ways others could never comprehend, let alone replicate.
Mathep lowered his stave at the prisoner and with a thought unleashed Chronometric streams of raw entropy. The Eldar screamed as time crumpled around her, years of life being robbed from the cells of her body with each passing second. Time rippled in an incredibly focused area as Mathep poured out his hatred, drowning the prisoner in years and decades and centuries. Eldar were notoriously long-lived but entropy could not be denied and the prisoner withered before his eyes, becoming haggard and gaunt as her hair rotted and her eyeballs greyed over.
Mathep kept the entropy at its lowest ebb, to prolong her torment, as he snarled, "Why did they give you immortality and not us?! What made your race so special?!"
"Please…" the living skeleton the prisoner had become begged.
But Mathep only growled, "They gave you everything but you don't deserve it. I take it back, every second of your life, all your centuries. I claim them all!"
One last burst of power flared and then the prisoner collapsed into a pile of mouldy bones, wrapped in rotting rags. The bones fell apart in seconds, becoming dust which then became free-floating atoms, leaving no trace she had ever lived. Mathep raised his Chronostave and declared, "The ritual sacrifice is complete. Board the ship."
Far below the ranks of Necrons turned and began marching in sequence into the distant pyramid of the Tombship. Meanwhile Ashtari fixed the Phareon with his one eye and mused, "Strange, your behaviour betrays traces of biological motivation. Were it not impossible I would say you are angry."
"Angry?" Mathep spoke, "No I am not angry, I have only clear and unwavering purpose. I shall claim back all that was taken from us, no matter the cost. Hatred is a choice and I choose to make our enemies suffer, so they will know how inferior they are before they die. It is a lesson I shall take to the stars and when the time is right the whole galaxy will acknowledge the superiority of the Necrons!"