Loki polished his gauss flayer, feeling discontented with his life.
It's not that what I'm doing isn't worthwhile. It is, it absolutely is! I'm contributing to the war effort in my own way. There was no doubt of it. But I really want to go stand by Imotekh. I want to join the effort in the Pariah Nexus. If he didn't do anything, he wouldn't. From what he understood there was no plan to pull away the God's Hands from their duties to join the assault on the Pariah Nexus. The orks never stopped so that made sense but it also made Loki sad. He couldn't miss the battle for all life!
Can I convince Calder to come with me? And if I can't, can I go without him? Loki agonized over the decision. He didn't want to leave his best friend. They'd been friends since childhood, when he'd thought his mum was going to die and they'd all moved to Hope's Landing and he'd met Calder there. His whole life had involved Calder, from running around and playing in the trees to having snacks with him to taking lessons together to joining the army together. They'd always been together. Could he really say goodbye, not because Calder was dead but because he wanted to?
Loki looked at his gauss flayer for a moment, seeing his reflection. He was in a Warrior chassis, he wasn't really worth an Immortal one. Loki accepted that, he'd never really been more than a common warrior, he wasn't too special. Yet right now, it made him feel sad. I want to do something big. I want to make a difference. He was making a difference in Luminous, he really was, and Loki knew he should be proud of that. And yet… It's not enough anymore. Loki made a sound that simulated a sigh and then headed out. He wasn't going out to fight today. He specifically avoided Calder – he'd notice the mood and ask what was wrong – and went to find Khas.
Loki really liked Khas. He was solid and strong and put up with Loki being Loki. Did Khas really like him? Probably not, but Loki was used to that, he was the weird kid that the other kids put up with because he was funny, but no one really LIKED him and he didn't get invited to birthday parties. Nothing had really changed over the years, people just kind of put up with him and Loki was okay with that.
Oh Loki, you need to make more friends, a voice from the past whispered in his mind and Loki responded aloud to it.
"I know mum, it's just hard," Loki said, looking around for Khas. Where were the mutants today? They didn't mix much with the 'pure-blood' humans, except the Knight Armor pilots, weirdly. Loki wondered if there was a story behind that, maybe he'd ask Khas. It was strange since the Knight Armor pilots were mostly nobles and should have been snottier than anyone else. Well, actually, that was unfair… low level nobles weren't much better than commoners really. Still, it was weird.
I'll be your friend, a sly little voice whispered and Loki thumped his head with the heel of his hand for a moment. His imagination was out of control sometimes.
"Get behind me, Satan," he muttered, forcefully silencing that little voice. That was a bad voice, the kind you didn't listen to. "I'm Loki, I'm the trickster, I don't get tricked." Not that he was really Loki or anything but he'd always been good at spotting when the other kids thought they could get one over on him. Calder was actually worse at that than him, although he didn't realize it… he took things too seriously, he sometimes didn't see what was going on beneath.
If you're really the trickster, shouldn't you play some tricks? Another voice said and this was a nicer one, one that he didn't mind listening to a bit although he didn't trust it much more than the other.
"No, that makes everyone mad," Loki said absently. Where WERE the mutants today? Oh wait, were they at the church?
They were, although not to worship. Loki watched, fascinated, as he saw they were just doing some work… someone had decided the church should have flower beds and the mutants were working on it with some of the pwi-necrons and Knight Armor pilots. This was a really weird team… hey, were they volunteers?
"Hey, want some help?" Loki ambled over and Kostan, one of the pilots, looked up.
"Hey Loki! Sure, grab a roto rooter and have a go." YAY! He could get to play with a roto rooter! …How did you use a roto rooter…
After some fun times, Loki figured it out and it was a lot easier to use when you were really strong. The mutants were plenty strong but they were still leaving the hardest parts to the necrons and clearing out the sod and debris. When a spot was ready, they started bedding down the plants… they were perennials, mostly, and Loki loved it as he saw the trellis' they were putting in for the vines. They were going to have vines going up the church! That was great!
They mostly did the front of the church and the sides, leaving the back alone. The back was mostly in shade and people couldn't see it much anyway. They weren't planting seeds, they were bedding down a load of plants they'd gotten from the nursery and when it was done it looked fantastic. The vines were gently fixed to the trellis' and they would grow into it with time.
I'm going to be a little sad to leave, Loki thought as he looked at the vibrant flower beds, the vines that would eventually grow into the church. This wasn't just a house, this was a home. The barracks, the church, the God's Hands and all the people… this was a home. Sometimes you need to leave home. The more he thought about it, the more Loki really wanted to go. He loved this place but it was just time.
"Khas?" Loki had almost forgotten why he'd come but now he remembered. The mutant looked over at him and Loki noticed again that his eyes were really weird and he had four of them. Would it be strange for him when he only had two? Loki couldn't see the rest of his face, he kept his cloak pulled forward for a reason but his eyes glowed a little. "Would you mind if I came with you when you go to join Imotekh? I mean… would you like it if we were in the same unit?" Are we friends? That was what Loki was trying to get at without actually coming out and sounding like a dummy. Khas seemed a little puzzled, although it was really hard to tell.
"Sure… that would be fine. Calder is coming too?" Loki winced a little inside.
"I haven't asked him yet. But I'm going anyway, you see," Loki said a bit lamely and Khas seemed to get it.
"Oh. Okay. Sure, that would be good." Loki felt more cheerful now and offered Khas a fist for a fist bump. The mutants didn't like most touches but that was okay and he returned it. "You should go ask Calder."
"Sure, I'll do that!" How was he going to bring it up though? Loki wasn't really sure. He fell back on making it a joke, like he did with everything. Loki knew that might not be entirely fair to Calder but he just couldn't come out and say it, he wouldn't even be able to get the words out.
"Calder, Calder!" Loki jumped onto the back of his best friend, making him stagger a bit. "I'm going to join Imotekh's forces to SAVE THE GALAXY! Do you want to come too?!" Please come too.
"No, and get off me!" Calder shoved him off and Loki went, hiding the sudden pain in his heart. At least having no facial expressions made it way easier. "Loki, you're good at puzzles, aren't you? Can you figure this out?" A puzzle? Loki looked at what Calder was holding and he had a hand-held game unit. Loki didn't own one of those, he honestly didn't play too many games like that.
"Umm, let me see…" Loki took the unit and stared at the puzzle. It wasn't too hard and he tilted it so Calder could see. "It's like this, see…" Loki moved the pieces around, it was a spatial puzzle. He solved it and Calder took back the game.
"Ah, thank you, you are so good at that… I am good at the riddles and poetry parts of this, not the things like that. If only you could have been a field engineer." Loki looked down, feeling a bit sad at the mention of that. All the tests had said he should have been a great field engineer and Loki had seemed to learn really well, but when he tried to work with machines he had an anti-magic with them. They broke down when he touched them, it was so bad he'd even had problems just riding the Pride tanks. At least that had seemed to go away when he was a necron, but it was still way too late to become a Cryptek, they only accepted field engineers.
"Yes…" Loki watched for a while as Calder played his game. It looked like fun but as he watched, Loki felt a deep sadness fall over him like a damp coat. Calder wasn't going to leave the God's Hands. He wasn't like Loki, he had many friends here and he cherished the way he could take regular visits to go see his family on Hope. Loki always went with him, he was the weird uncle to Calder's grandkids, but he'd never married or had children of his own. He wasn't into men or anything, he was just too strange for most women and didn't know how to talk to them. "…Bye." Loki finally said. Calder didn't look up, engrossed in his game and muttering to himself. Loki wasn't sure he'd even heard.
Feeling dejected but unsurprised, Loki went to see Captain Revalt. He needed to fill out the paperwork for the transfer and specify that he wanted to go with Khas and his crew, the ones who were getting biotransference. It shouldn't be a problem, they'd bring a ship in for them, that was the whole point of this.
"You want a transfer?" Revalt was a little surprised. Loki nodded. "What about Calder?"
"He's not coming," Loki said simply and Revalt hesitated for a moment before nodding.
"I see… well, here's the paperwork. We try to match our recruits to the character of their new units, so I think you'll probably be moving to the Cabbits." That would probably suit him better than the God's Hands. Loki was really only with them because he was so old and Calder's best friend, not because he really fit in. "However, possibly one of the newly formed units. You want to stay with Khas?"
"If I can, that would be good. If not it's okay, we'll still be pretty close." They would all be in Imotekh's army under Manric. Loki wouldn't mind too much if he wasn't shoulder to shoulder with them, he could still always find them for a chat.
Loki left Revalt then and went to his room. The sun was starting to set, it was late and while he didn't need to sleep it was still the thing you did when it got dark outside. Loki looked at his great collection of books and wondered… would he be able to take them? Then he regretfully discarded the thought. He loved the physical media but he could always just get a datapad with all of them loaded, it was much simpler.
"I'll donate all of you to a library," Loki told his books before reaching out for one of them. It was bound in dark blue leather and very fine, an old book. The leather was well worn from all the times he'd touched it and it came out smoothly. Loki looked at the cover, which had the title in silver gilt.
The Basics of Norse Mythology. Loki gently smoothed a hand over the book before looking at the rest of his collection. Norse and Celtic Runes and Magic. Norse Magic and Asatru. The Path of Druidry. An Inquisitor would have had a lot to say about this collection of books, but Loki knew none of it meant anything. It was just fiction, stories and silliness about a dead culture and religion. And yet.
"I sometimes wish it were real," Loki murmured. He dreamed of sword and sorcery, of a world where magic was real. Oh sure, psyker powers were real and they looked like magic, but it wasn't quite the same. It wasn't the magic he'd imagined all his life, something uplifting and glorious, not terrifying and scary, trying to eat your brains. "The real world is the wrong genre." He belonged in a fantasy story and he was stuck in some kind of sci-fi horror novel. "Oh well." That was fine, that was why he had books.
Being used as a page marker in this book was a thin necklace of silver, with a pendant showing the World Tree of Yggdrasil. Loki gently pulled the necklace out, looking at it… it was kind of funny that it predated the settlement of Yggdrasil by hundreds of years. This was an old, old pendant that his mother and father had gotten him from an antique store for his birthday. Loki had worn it all his life. He only didn't wear it now because it looked kind of wrong, on a necron body, and he didn't want it damaged in battle. It was safer with his books.
Loki took the necklace and put the book away, before going to the small table he had and picking up his cross. It was a simple cross, black and silver, the kind everyone on Hope used. Loki looked at it for a moment, just thinking about it. Do I believe in God? He definitely didn't believe in God the way Calder did. Calder just took it on faith that God was real, that the angels were real and watching over them.
Loki was different, he loved knowledge and stories, so he'd learned a bit about the Warp and the Immaterium. So he knew that God had to be real, because they believed in him and what they believed became real. But that made things hard because how could you believe in something when you just knew it was real? You didn't believe in a table, or the sun. They were just there, being things. Was God really more like that?
But was that actually… reassuring? Loki ran his fingers over the cross, contemplating it. Was it good to know that God was really in Heaven and there could really be something waiting, on the other side, if you were good enough? Was it good to know that Angels were real and they had talked to Manric Duleth and the prophecy was real and religion wasn't just something you had to believe in? Loki knew a lot of people had started going back to church after the prophecy was fulfilled.
Yet for Loki, he wasn't sure he felt that way. Could he really believe in God when he knew the necrontyr had existed over sixty million years ago and they'd worshipped a whole bloody pantheon of Gods who hadn't existed in the Warp because the necrontyr had tiny souls like the Tau? Gods that they identified as the Star Gods and had decided were the same as the C'Tan? And the aeldari had Gods like humans, but claimed they'd once been real people, so they were different? Could he really worship God when he knew all these things?
Yet in the end, Loki always decided he could. God was real and he cared about them. No, it wasn't perfect, God hadn't helped them against the drukhari but they weren't demons and they still needed to help themselves. Also, Loki knew that Hope had stiff walls of reality that made it hard for the Navigators to reach, which had to mean it was hard for God to reach too. He'd only talked to Manric, and he was the strongest psyker they had. God had spoken on Yggdrasil, but reality had been thin then, that was different. Either way, God was real and he was trying. They were trying too, wasn't that enough?
Loki gently wound the necklace over the cross, so the symbol for Yggdrasil was hanging right at the point where Jesus would have been, if they made crosses that way. Some people had that kind of cross but it wasn't that popular on Hope, they honored Jesus but preferred to worship God directly. Loki knew that was because they had started as a bit of an offshoot of some established religion, he couldn't remember the name anymore. Jesus was a saint and the Son of God, but God was God. That was what the Prophet had said.
Loki calmed his mind, before activating it in a very particular way. He'd learned a long time ago, how to make a state that was like a waking dream. He'd been able to do this on Hope a little, when he was still human, but it had just been a really good daydream. As a necron he'd briefly lost the knack, but getting a soul had brought it back.
Now it was different. It was like stepping sideways into a wonderland of his own mind. Today, his mind had manufactured a snowy courtyard of a great castle. Loki tilted his head back, seeing his breath steaming in the air as he looked up at the grey stone and the pointed turrets, the great windows of stained glass.
"So beautiful," Loki murmured and loved the sound of his voice. It wasn't a machine here… he sounded like he had, when he was alive. Loki had always had a beautiful tenor voice and he loved to sing. It was so nice that he could sing again.
Loki's boots crunched on the cold ground as he walked up to the doors and let himself in. As he did, he noticed he was wearing heavy grey, woolen gloves with the symbol for Hope as a little rune on the back of his hand. As he walked in, Loki wanted a mirror so there was one there, old and battered and leaning against a wall. Loki paused to look at himself.
"Oh, the usual." This wasn't how he'd looked in life, but it was how he liked to imagine himself in these dreams. In life, Loki had been pretty boring looking, just an okay face with dark skin, black hair and brown eyes. In this place, he was handsome young man with pale skin, fluffy blonde hair and bright green eyes. He also had horns, golden ones that swept back into his hair, a sign that he was Loki. Not that he really was Loki but this was a dream so he could literally dream, right?
Today he was wearing a very stylish grey, woolen trench coat and black slacks, tucked into black riding boots. His trench coat had an Yggdrasil pin in the lapel, made of silver. Loki smiled as he ran a finger over it. Wasn't that pretty?
The castle had a great, spiral staircase so Loki started walking up. Where was he going? Well, as high as he could to find a good vantage point to see outside. The view would be beautiful, he knew it. As he walked up Loki glanced down, noticing that on the ground floor the marble flooring made a pattern that looked like an Angel. Not a human Angel, but the other kind, the ones that had a lot of eyes and wings.
Loki gently held his cross with one hand as he walked. It was still with him, still solid and real. For luck, for safety, he usually took it with him when he dream walked. Not that he really believed anything would go wrong, but –
"Heh eh. Eh heh." Loki sighed softly as he glanced at a window. Curled up in the frame was something annoying and familiar.
"Get behind me, Satan," Loki said to the lizard. It looked like a feathered, winged iguana and one eye rotated to watch him as it walked across the glass, sucker feet holding it completely steady.
"Oh come on! I haven't even done anything," the iguana complained. It sounded like someone who had completely killed their voice with nic smoke, rasping and odd. Loki ignored it, keeping on walking, and the iguana landed on his shoulder. Loki jerked his head so one of his horns almost impaled it. "HEY!"
"I said get BEHIND me, Satan," Loki said sternly and the iguana muttered but jumped onto the wall and stayed behind him. "And we both know that you haven't done anything YET." Satan was always doing something. And then the birds arrived.
The birds fluttered down from on high, circling around each other as they descended. Two great ravens, Loki had named them Hugin and Munin. They weren't Odin's birds anymore than the iguana was really Satan, but Loki thought the names reflected their true nature.
"Hi Hugin, hi Munin. Why are you all here today?" Loki asked. It was kind of odd for the birds and the iguana to all show up together, it was almost like they wanted something.
"No reason," Munin said, landing on his shoulder. Loki let this one stay… the ravens were a bit scary to have that close to his face, with their giant beaks, but he trusted them more than Satan. Which wasn't hard, since he trusted orks more than Satan. He kept walking up the steps. As he walked, Loki glanced out the windows, but they were frosted over and small. He needed a bigger window with a better view. "What are you looking for?"
"Oh, you know me, just a good view," Loki said absently. That was what he usually looked for. Hugin had landed high above and was watching and patiently waiting for him to reach that part of the staircase. Then he'd probably fly ahead again… Hugin didn't talk too much compared to Munin.
For a while, no one said anything as Loki kept walking. The staircase got boring, so Loki deliberately shortened it… from one step to another, he jumped five floors, then five more. It was just a dream so he could do things like that.
"Oi, hold on a moment, you left Hugin behind," Munin said and Loki paused, looking down. Hugin was flying up and so was Satan. He could fly really well and was actually quite pretty when he did, flowing through the air like a flying serpent.
"Sorry, I should have warned everyone," Loki said contritely. Although that reminded him that these three were definitely here for something. Although Loki didn't think Hugin and Munin were necessarily in it with Satan… he wasn't sure though. You could never be sure of anything, really.
That basically brought him to the top floor of the castle. There were probably cupola's and turrets that went higher and maybe Loki would find one, but this would do for now. He walked through the cold stone hallway, his boots clinking loudly. Loki paused at times to examine the portraits. To his surprise, they all seemed to be Astartes? Loki examined the scenes, fascinated. Since the God's Hands had been set to defending the ork infested worlds like Luminous right away, he'd never seen a Space Marine in real life. He had seen them on the holo and illustrations in some of his books, though. So he assumed his imagination had made this too… it was a bit odd though. All the scenes were of Astartes in red and gold armor, with beautiful decorations and designs, fighting against other Space Marines. Those Astartes were of various types, although Loki recognized the Space Wolves in many of them.
"This is kind of a strange dream," Loki mused, still gazing at the pictures. His mind liked themes. These pictures would make more sense in a fortress-monastery like the ones he'd read about in some of his Imperial books. This definitely wasn't that kind of castle, he was in a more medieval castle like something from a Knight World. The pictures didn't really match. Maybe it was because of his mood?
Shrugging a little, Loki continued on his search for a large window. He opened doors and looked in rooms, seeing barren rooms with little furniture, much of it old and falling to pieces from quiet neglect. The windows they had were only small and Loki wondered. Would he need to find a cupola?
Fortunately it didn't come to that. Loki opened one particular door and to his surprise, the room inside was warm and well furnished. There were deep, plush carpets of red and gold, furniture of black wood with red cushions and a great roaring fire. There was a man in the room, a giant Astartes who was staring fixedly at what looked like a portrait of blue flames. Loki tilted his head, looking at it. It seemed to be flickering and making new patterns as he watched, but Loki could recognize an overarching pattern beneath that reminded him of a rune.
"Hey boss, visitor," another rasping, nic smoke voice said and Loki looked towards the window. To his pleasure, it was a large, perfect window and tucked against the frame was another flying iguana like Satan. It uncoiled and flitted to the strange Astartes, landing on his shoulder as he turned, surprised.
For Loki, looking into his face was really strange. His features seemed to shift all the time, while his eyes were blue fire. Loki wasn't worried. It was all just a dream, after all.
"Hello, I'm Loki. Not the real Loki, I'm just named that," Loki said, feeling that it was important to clarify. Once in a while, when he'd introduced himself to the figments of his imagination here, they freaked out at his name. The stranger tilted his head to one side, examining him thoughtfully.
"I am Ahriman. Are you here for an audience, young sorcerer?" Sorcerer?
"I'm not a sorcerer, I'm just Loki… you're not the REAL Ahriman, right? You're just named that?" Loki knew all the stories of old Terra and he remember Ahriman… he was the evil deity of an ancient religion and also a symbol of magic and sorcery. Along with what he'd just said, Loki was actually kind of worried. Only kind of, since this was his dream but he wasn't in the mood for a fight scene.
"I'm just named that… so you know the ancient Terran myths?" he said and Loki bobbed his head.
"I'm from Hope, you see. Most people know about those myths and they're still part of our culture. Ahriman is like Bahamut, it's a name everyone knows. Loki too… Calder says my parents were awful to name me that." Loki didn't agree because he loved his mum but he was willing to admit that maybe she'd liked the Tales of Asgard a bit too much. His dad hadn't been in his life too much… his mother had been a 'second wife' and then been forced to move away for her treatments.
"Hm…" Ahriman frowned as Hugin flew into the room and landed on his shoulder. The raven started to groom himself as the iguana on Ahriman's other shoulder hissed at him. The bird ignored it with fine indifference. "If you are not a sorcerer or here for an audience, what are you here for?"
"Well, I was just looking for a window," Loki said truthfully before going to the window and gazing out over the world. "Ohhhh…" He breathed out in awe as he beheld the glorious landscape beneath them. It was a great, boreal forest swathed in white snow. Loki could see great towers of grey stone, reaching to they sky. Sentry posts? Lookout towers? Loki didn't really know but they were beautiful. "I love places like this," Loki said, pressing a hand against the glass as he tried to see more. Were there people down there, on horseback? Then, to his vague surprise, a large hand gently touched his head. Loki didn't move – he could hurt Ahriman with his horns – and he felt a gentle prying on his mind. Feeling generous, he decided to share his wonder and joy.
"This is what you see…" Ahriman glanced around the room, before looking out the window. He seemed taken aback by the view. "I wonder," he mused before letting go. "Are you human?"
"Uh… well, no," Loki admitted. "I'm a necron," he said, owning up to it. Ahriman's eyebrows went for his hairline.
"Can you expand on that? And how you came to be here?" he invited and Loki hesitated, glancing at Munin. He just looked at him with a beady eye. Loki didn't glance at Satan, there was no help there.
"Well, it was like this…" Loki did his best to explain the sequence of events that had brought him here. By the time he was done, Ahriman seemed quietly amused.
"So on this planet of Hope, where Navigators can hardly go, you had visions. Then you became a necron, transferring your consciousness to a metal body, but lost your soul and stopped having visions. Then you regained your soul and began having visions again, but more powerful than before?" Loki nodded.
"Yep, that's what happened," he agreed and the iguana on Ahriman's shoulder stirred.
"Wow. His head, your point… whoosh." Then the iguana gestured with a wing, waving over its' head. Loki blinked at it, perplexed. What did they think he was missing?
"It does not matter. I think this is enough for today…" Ahriman was in front of him, a hand pressed against Loki's chest. He didn't feel any kind of threat from the situation so Loki just blinked up at him while Munin jumped off his shoulder, moving to the window sill. "But get trained, little sorcerer. You are a powerful psyker." Then Ahriman pushed him and Loki felt like he was falling, the world sharply breaking away.
?! Loki came back to awareness with a start, glancing around sharply. He was back in his room, his body, not dreaming anymore. It was dark out, he'd been dreaming for a while.
"That was a strange dream," Loki murmured, before setting down his cross and gently untangling the necklace. He needed to put it away, back in the book. As he did that, though, Loki thought to himself about Ahriman's final words. A psyker? Him? Because he could have dreams? That couldn't be true.
Could it?