~Reaver, Warrior, Scholar, King~
~798. M30~
~Segmentum Ultima~
~Approaching Chemos~
~The Emperor of Mankind, The Hero with a Thousand Faces~
The golden sword of his will cut through the tangles of the warp, sheltering the fleet within its psychic flame. Before him, a holographic projector displayed the plans of his armored carapace. A small subdivision of his will directed the cogitator, altering the details on the carapace as he willed it, which was always followed by a brief period of waiting as the cogitator worked through the predictions of what such a change would bring.
Subdividing his attentions like this caused the great barrier-sword around the fleet to shrink somewhat, so he couldn't afford to give his fullest efforts to the schematics. Instead he would adjust it idly, allowing the cogitator to handle more intensive calculations on his behalf. It would then require construction and testing to ensure the final product was efficacious, but if all went well he would be able to move about and still fuel the psychic amplifiers…
He hummed to himself, noting that he needed to give it a name. Perhaps something related to the Astronomicon? Its purpose was very different, and it had no reservoir sub-system, but the psy-technology was based on the same underlying principles. Pulling from the cogitator for a moment, he began to think.
It was a large chair-like structure placed at the top of a much larger pyramid-like structure. Four cables ran from it, two connecting to the back of the throne above his head and two connecting to the back of his throne about his feet. These cables ran to four psychic projectors mounted on the ship itself, forming the cross that was then projected outwards as a sword of his will.
He hummed again, ignoring the glances sent his way. Tetradic psyamplifier? Quaternary Will Array? Crossbeam projector? No none of those would do. Too technical, not enough grandeur. He thought about the other qualities of the structure, seeing if that would allow him to complete this task.
The pyramid and chair was a golden hue, primarily composed of aurichalcum, adamantine, and an admixture of various other materials. It shone under the light, almost mirror-like in sheen, due to the constant polishing the techpriests insisted upon performing.
Golden Throne it was then.
"Lord Emperor. Permission to speak?" The Deputy Commander standing next to his throne spoke, to which he nodded and replied.
"Granted."
"May I ask your thoughts? You seem to be considering something important."
Was he asking about his humming? Was he not permitted to make noise without scrutiny? Grunting, he decided to use this as an opportunity to bring their attention to a potential issue he noticed some time ago, and was waiting on the redundant mutant to notice as well.
"Lady Navigator. I ask for a second perspective." He refrained from answering the question directly, and instead caused the mutant to jump in her chair, quickly turning to answer him.
"Yes Lord Emperor! I am at your disposal!" Now if only she was actually useful.
"Beyond the path I cut in the warp, tell me what you observe."
She swallowed and focused, third eye widening and focusing behind ornamental bandages and golden threads. The rest of her equally lavish robes concealing her frail body, which shuddered in tension as she did her best to see further. Eventually she inhaled sharply, and spoke again.
"I see distant but constant movement, with how far out it is… I believe a warp-storm shrouds our destination…" This was met with a great deal of silence and tension building in the room, which he ignored. Nodding, he instead rumbled out a reply.
"Yes. That is what I observed as well. Archmagos, have all ships redirect auxiliary power to gellar fields." This would leave most of the ships in darkness, save their emergency lights, and with none of the luxuries for some time, but it would leave them better protected for what was to come next.
"Yes Lord Omnissiah!"
There was still tension, eventually leading to the mutant fearfully speaking once more. "M-my Lord Emperor… do you intend we stay our path…? Gellar Fields alone will not be enough to protect us… "
He chuckled, a powerful thing that echoed through the chamber with his gigantic mirth. A rolling and merry thunder issuing forth from deep in his breast. Warp-storms were dangerous, yes. Great build ups of turbulent narratives, clashing over a particular section of the material world for whatever reason, all doing their best to influence it. A sword was suitable for cutting through the tangles of the normal warp, but a warp-storm shrouded the target, covering it completely.
A grand and terrible maelstrom surrounding his destination, a calamitous beast made of a thousand songs.
He was a very old hand at slaying beasts. The trick was to find the heart.
And pierce it.
He focused his great will, and the image of the grand sword slicing through the rolling stories began to shift. The blade narrowed, a thrusting of white-gold will that annihilated lesser songs its tip touched. The hilt shifted, slowly turning downwards and eventually disappearing into the handle. The handle burned brighter still.
Then, in a burst, the golden sword-shape was gone, and the image of a grand arrow was in its place, shooting forwards like a comet, trailing golding light behind it in the warp.
He was glad he was seated, at this moment. Without the massive amplifying array of his golden throne, this task would be beyond him. He was just a man, after all.
"Leave the rest to me, Lady Navigator." He rumbled out amusedly, noticing the unacceptable number of stories slipping through to clash against the barriers of his outermost fleet. Brow furrowed in concentration, he slowly altered the psychic fletching of the great arrow as a potter molds clay. Slowly, gradually, the tip of the kilometers-long psychic projection began to shift in response to his mental alterations.
And the arrow began to spin, leaving a great wake in which his fleet was mostly protected. It took slightly more focus to maintain this rotation, but the end result was a truer path. It was simple knowledge that an arrow that spun was more accurate in turbulent conditions, which would be just as he needed to slay the warp-storm before them.
Grunting in satisfaction, he dedicated a small amount of his will towards the operation of the cogitator once more, and idly moved through slight alterations once more.
—
The feeling of inevitable cold brushed against his senses, causing his brow to raise as he turned his head to the door of the chamber. Opening up, several of his custodians entered the chamber, followed by Danu. She looked about the chamber with a blank expression, brass eyes evaluating everything in sight as she ignored the manifold stares directed at her. Eventually, her gaze landed upon him, and she began to walk forwards, flanked by the custodians with her.
Reaching the foot of the great pyramid, she stopped to evaluate the great staircase before her. Standing only as tall as any girl-child did, her steps were shallow compared to his own great stride. The steps before her were sternum-height, and a great challenge for her to overcome.
He smiled as she began to scramble up them all the same, not knowing of the staircase sized for mortal men that went along the back of the pyramid. Arms set on the metal, warmed by his psychic will, hauling herself up so that her leg could loop around the edge of the next step up, and then standing once more. Once she did so, she would repeat the process again, climbing up the golden throne with the inexhaustible stamina of a Primarch.
The custodians with her simply performed slight hops to ascend. They were almost three meters in height, and could manage the ledges with a small application of their great strength.
His daughter studiously ignored the looks of the various individuals in the bridge of his ship, the archmagos, the navigator, the helmsman, the many guards and adepts. All of which looked at her with both reverence and bafflement.
Eventually, she reached the steps of his seat, and stared up at him, then at the projector before him with its manifold images, words, and numbers. She turned his gaze back towards him.
Frowning resolutely, she grabbed hold of his golden greaves, and began to pull herself up further, eventually climbing up into his lap and making herself comfortable upon it. He smiled in bemusement, as she simply busied herself with being comfortable.
"Did you finish your studies for today?" He spoke out, causing her to grunt out.
"Yes." She did not offer further elaboration. He nodded, content with that, knowing that if she was having difficulties either she or one of the custodians would inform him.
"Would you like to know about what I'm working on?" He asked another question, to which a similar grunt and reply was given.
"Yes."
Nodding again, the holo-projector began to cycle through images, slow enough for her to look at each one as he explained them in detail.
"I am attempting to redesign my armor to allow the fitting of a 'Lordcross Soul' pattern psychic amplifier, a form of technology from before the Long Night. I do not wish to sacrifice its armor thickness, nor the warding of its field projectors, nor the power of its exo-frame. I'm afraid I will have to sacrifice one of those things, however, I have too little space to work with."
Letting her observe each of the projected images in turn, he rebegan the process of slowly making adjustments and allowing the cogitator to do the bulk of the calculation. With the majority of his will, he spun the great golden arrow.
After some time, his daughter spoke again. "Make it bigger."
He paused in the adjustments, and grunted out in questioning. "Hmm?"
She adjusted herself, looking up to stare at him more directly. "You do not have enough space to work with father. Make your armor bigger."
He considered that for a moment, raising a brow. Idly sorting through designs of various powered suits, he took the time to enter to write down what he remembered of older designs. The mark one powered armor that his Thunder Warriors used were designed from what he recalled of the common policing frames from the old cities of terra. Most full-scale warfare was handled by war-walkers and gene soldiers, leaving exo-suits to less dangerous tasks. Hardly having the industrial capacity to squander on war-walkers, he used a combination of gene soldiers and exo-suits for the bulk of his strongest military units.
An exo-suit larger than a policing frame would be more expensive to produce, and rare was the model that was actually that large… perhaps the bulkier mining patterns? He did not have their STC on hand, so it would require more effort on his end to redesign.
Starting from the ground up, a new armor began to take form on the holo-projector. Thick plates of golden-hued armor over broad and spacious limbs, two column-like legs going up to a torso that carried tow mounts on either side for mineral acid sprayers, protective pauldrons covering a well-recessed gap for the head to emerge from, and further two mounts on either arm for industrial drillers.
Then, mounted on the back, the relatively small fusion generator that powered the suit.
Massive, bulky, slow, and with plenty of room to work with, a great canvas for him to modify for her personal armor. He would not be as swift as he would like within it, and that was indeed something to consider. He hummed in through, idly spinning the arrow as he debated over this design.
…So long as he operated within the reach of an Imperial Teleportation Array, this lack of mobility could be safely offset. A defensive armor then.
He reached a hand off his throne's rest, and brought it to ruffle his daughter's hair. "Thank you daughter, that was a good suggestion."
With a blank face, she leaned into the hand and grunted in confirmation. Together, they ignored the stares of his many attendees.
—
The arrow twisted.
The heart was pierced.
The warp-storm over Chemos was ripped asunder, the bulk of its narratives pulled into the rotation and annihilated against the spinning head. Their songs were torn apart, and scattered as fragments to the immaterium.
And those fragments were consumed within.
And Chemos felt a clear warp.
—
Chemos had been long settled as yet another mining world, a place to toil upon, extract the mineral wealth of, and haul that mineral wealth to its neighbors in exchange for coin and commodities. For some time, this worked as well as all such colonies did, and the people enjoyed great wealth in exchange for all the dangers associated with labor in deep caverns.
This lasted until the warp-storms began to occur more frequently. The critical ships of foodstuffs and other non-mineral wealth were not able to pass through them as frequently, or even at all in some cases, and slowly Chemos began to starve. The people began to adjust quickly, the great companies that managed the mining operations transitioned into improvised governments, factories refitted to produce their essentials, and a mentality of eternal siege began to fall upon them.
For thousands of years of infrequent trade and a planet devoid of much of the required life to sustain life, the people endured. The world, shrouded in similar nebula clouds, experienced neither day nor night, merely a perpetual gray haze dim lights and failing machinery.
Inefficiencies building, mistakes mounting, and failures becoming more and more dire. Eventually, no matter the measures taken, a gradual starvation set in. All people upon it, toiling day after day, for as long as possible, just to buy another day of life for them all.
The work was not glorious, but it was necessary, and that was honorable in its own right.
Ships casting shadows, his diplomats communicated with the leaders of the planet below, and their integration into the wider Imperium would be handled by pre-planned parameters. A small detachment of his fleet would remain here, a bulk of supplies would be distributed, and much of the decaying machinery would be repaired and brought to order once more.
This tired world had little to offer the Imperium, save perhaps the dutiful souls of its people. That would be more than enough.
His armored boots carried him through the exhausted streets, to the soul he could feet in the hab block beyond. Feathered and burning, hungry and preening, renewing, burning, eager for greater and greater heights.
Drawn from his days of training, when each new swing of his sword revealed to him deeper secrets, when he was hungry for mastery, to hone himself further and further. Of the days of peaceful study, when countless experimentation brought him a clearer and clearer image of what he sought to know, to learn further truths still.
Three was desire with his desire to learn and master in mind, to understand and to hone himself further, to become the greatest picture of himself. Unlike him, Three would be gifted with the inexhaustible drive for more, never would she be content with merely being, but hers was to always seek to hone herself. Three was born with hunger in her soul, and with hunger she would master herself and all things around her.
She would not fall to the same entrapment that he did in the age of technology, in his time of sloth, when it seemed all troubles for humanity were long dead and he could waste much of his time on non-productive affairs. For had he spent more of his time preparing, the future of mankind would not be in such danger.
A failure on his part, one Three would not suffer from.
Reaching the hab block, he frowned momentarily. He was too big to fit through the doors leading in. He could diminish his form, but such open use of witchcraft would disturb the many mortals currently observing him.
He raised his hand to his chin, and scratched at it in consideration.
"...H-hello?" A voice called out to him, turning his head he stared at the mortal who spoke to him.
One of the many factory workers, currently nervously wringing his hat and trying his best to seem inoffensive. He looked down upon them, and waited for them to speak again.
"I-I suppose you're with them big yella fellas the men up top are so worked up about?" The man asked, wavering slightly in the face of a giant clad in gold and with massive eagle claws on one gauntlet. He recognized the smattering of languages at this point, and nodded. The worker, emboldened by the fact that he wasn't dead yet, spoke again. "W-well, if you don't mind me askin', can we help you with anythin'? My shift's about to start again soon, so I-i'm not sure how much help I can be but…"
He could recognize the attitudes of a servant-people when he saw it. The best way to speak with them was clear, directly, and then going back to overlooking them. Such people did not enjoy the direct attentions of their kings.
So he spoke. "I am the Emperor of Mankind." A wave of fear and tension washed over the dozens of mortals in attendance. "I sense the presence of my daughter in this building. But…"
A long moment, he waited for the man to speak again. "B-b-but what Lord, Mastar Emperor Ser?"
"As you can observe. I am too large to fit through the doors." He stated dryly, a note of humor in his voice. The tension hung in the air for a moment, all the assembled people were silent, before one voice quietly snorted in humor.
The spell broke, chuckles began to ripple through the crowd. After a moment, the man who originally spoke to him replied. "A-ah, well I can see about getting someone to find her… Do you know what her block number is…?"
"Second floor, back-right corner. I do not know the specific number." The man quickly nodded, and gestured a thumb inside the hab-block to another man, who quickly set down his nutrient paste-container and ran inside.
A more comfortable silence descended upon the mortals as he waited for his daughter to emerge. Quickly, he could feel the movement of her hungry-flame soul move about, first cautiously and then quicker. After some time, the doors opened again, and an awestruck man stumbled out, constantly throwing glances behind himself.
And following after him, the form of his daughter. Roughly of scale with a mortal maiden, dressed in the bulky and concealing garb of a worker, overalls and a deep-brimmed hat, all of which had been patched multiple times. One of her hands was hovering near her waist as she emerged, next to a clear canister of chemical spray, the kind used to protect oneself against unwanted advances.
"I dunno what this business is about being my fath…" Her voice trailed off as she saw who was waiting for her. Locks of pure white fell from the sides of her hat, one covering her face as she leaned back to take full measure of him.
Smiling, he knelt down, giving her a better angle. Her eyes were wide and mouth slightly agape at the giant before her.
"Hello, my daughter. Are your fosters home?" It would be the height of rudeness to simply leave without rewarding them, and likely to form a grudge in his daughter's heart for some time.
"...Ma and Pa won't be back for a few hours, no…" She muttered out, gulping in tension and suddenly being aware of all the eyes locked onto her from the many mortals around.
"Hmm." He hummed in consideration, before nodding. Standing up once more, he moved to the side of the hab-block, and carefully sat down on the mound of concrete bags that were likely set aside to repair this building later on. "Then we may talk as we wait for them. Have they given you a name?"
Swallowing, she slowly moved over to sit on top of a pallet of metal bars opposite to him, and replied. "Y-yeah. They called me Fulgrim, after the water-bringer."
A local cult then? Was their worship of it responsible for the warp-storm? Too early to tell, and it mattered little at the moment. He nodded. "Fulgrim then. We have much to catch up on. How old are you now, three, four?"
Slightly less stunned, she responded. "Four yeah. How'd you know?"
He smiled. They had some hours to pass. He began to speak, and feed the hunger in her soul.