Arrival Interlude
The Ghosts of Terra
Somewhere
Sometime
There was a bright light and for a moment all he could feel was pain.
Breathe.
Pain.
Breathe.
Pain.
It was a cycle of insanity, trapped between pain and the desperate urge to take a little air in his tortured lungs.
He wasn't able to see or control his augmented muscles. He wasn't able to see or to hear. At irregular intervals, flashes of ice, cities and plains came to his mind but were they memories or landscapes waiting for him once he was released from his torment? He didn't know.
Whispers were heard sometimes but they sounded muted and he didn't manage to guess their signification. Maybe they were people who would deliver him from this cycle of pain? One way or another, an end to this curse would be the greatest blessing he had ever received.
Breathe.
Pain.
Breathe.
Pain.
How much time had passed since this torture started? Years? Decades? Centuries? Millennia? Whatever the true answer was, he would say the impression was far longer.
And then it stopped.
For an instant he wondered if it was a cruel joke. He expected the pain at any moment to come back. After an endless period suffering from it, it was like an old acquaintance.
The hesitation did not last. Using the memories which had been psycho-indoctrinated in him long ago, a combination of commands was executed and with rapid moves he separated the helmet from his battle-armour.
Light.
Air.
Wind.
For a few seconds that lasted like an eternity, there was nothing to savour but the absence of the terrible pain, the air and the rest of the elements caressing his face.
"I AM...I AM FREE!"
That was what he had intended to say but his voice came out like the rumbles of rusted machinery which had stayed decades out of service.
The weakness of his vocal chords was a minor inconvenience, though. As his eyes acclimated to the light with their usual celerity, the scene in front of him was not the one he had seen before the torture began.
It was a desert, and a well-spread one at that. Dunes and the habitual formations of sand were everywhere. A yellow sun was shining hard in a blue sky devoid of clouds. A strong wind was raising a powerful sand storm at about forty kilometres from his position.
"Where am I?"
A desert was the evident question but the world and its position in the galaxy were of greater importance. Watching the sky, he saw no moon or any other aster allowing him to discover where he had arrived. How had he arrived here by the way? The traces left by his armoured feet were the ones he had made in the previous seconds. There was no trace of any tank, ground transport or any vehicle. Maybe a lander or another type of orbital-to-ground transport? But those would have left their own imprints in the sand, modifying the dune he was currently on.
Multiple scenarios played in his mind, but he stopped as a frightening thought echoed in his mind, one he hadn't tried to address since the pain had ended.
"Who am I?"
Ovael.
The word came like a whisper in his head, but one which sounded foreign and malicious. No, it was not his name.
"My name is...Psamtic." His twin hearts beat harder as the revelation comforted his mind.
"Psamtic Mehhur, Legionary of the Fifteenth Legion, 6th Fellowship."
A flood of memories erupted in his head and Psamtic remembered everything...close to everything of his Astartes life. He remembered the Legion. He remembered the Milky Way. He remembered Prospero. He remembered Tizca.
And he remembered dying inside. He remembered the Wolves unleashed on Tizca, he and his brothers trying desperately to defend the unarmed civilians and failing. The duel between Magnus and the Great Wolf in front of the Pyramid of Photep. A fight their primogenitor lost. The escape, their settling on the Planet of Sorcerers. An exile they had not deserved, a fate they could have avoided if their Primarch had not been so arrogant, righteous and convinced of his own infallibility. Psamtic had fought on Terra and saw how monstrous the eight other eight Legions following Horus had become. And to be honest the Thousands Sons had not been better, with the flesh-change consuming them one by one and the most gifted changing the very nature of reality at their whims.
They had lost and in the battle had only hastened their damnation. Magnus had taken refuge in his Tower and the Legion had been on the edge of annihilation as the flesh-change claimed more and more victims...the First Captain and several of the senior officers had believed they had solution...
And there his souvenirs stopped.
What had happened for him to arrive to this desert when his last memories were of the Planet of the Sorcerers, Psamtic Mehhur had no idea – though given the tendency of their patron to betray the Fifteenth Legion at every opportunity he could hazard a few unpleasant guesses. He somewhat doubted this desert was going to give the answers anyway.
Still, it would be premature to despair he concluded. Grabbing his helmet where it lied on the sand, the Thousands Son Legionary felt absolutely no pain, no flesh-change, nothing. His equipment was back to the red colour it had originally been painted. For the first time in what had felt like an eternity he was able to think clearly and choose his own path. Finished the constant bickering of the sorcerers mocking his weak pyrokinetic talent but ordering him around at the first sign there was Astartes opposition and they needed a meatshield. If he had had a choice, he would have rather chosen a Pleasure World than this kind of desert but he wasn't going to lament on it.
Oh, by the cursed beak of the Great Liar. A long walk had never killed an Astartes...Psamtic had just to hope this wasn't a Death World.
Now to decide the direction he was going to take. East, west, north, south same problem: as far as his extended vision could see, there were only dunes and sand. It was problematic. His battle-armour systems informed him where the magnetic fields were and a quick scientific calculus told him that the current position of the sun was close to its zenith but that was all the information he was going to get.
"Let's try the north, then." His helmet under his right arm – he really wanted to breath fresh air after being trapped in his armour for who knew how long – Psamtic started to march in long strides. The sun progressively descended on his left as the hours passed. Still no sign of life or anything which could be construed as civilisation. As the sun set in a flamboyant spectacle over the horizon, Psamtic started to slow down. An Astartes could easily walk three times this pace for a month but it didn't mean he wasn't going to require water and sustainment soon. His red armour had somewhat been restored to its effectiveness before the Sack of Prospero, with no mutation or any Warp-contamination. But it had also no supplies of any kind and it would be kind of embarrassing if he missed the only oasis in the vicinity because he was too unobservant.
The second day was more productive than the first on discoveries. An oasis was found, and fruit trees growing around the pond of water satisfied his transhuman organism. Moreover, they were old tombs with human remains on a hill nearby. None of the graves were harbouring symbols he recognised, but this didn't mean anything so far in the wilderness. In general the bureaucrats of the Imperium had still enough sense most of the time not to build gigantic monuments where a non-augmented human died in days. Usually.
In the last hours of the day however he came into view of ruined road signs directions. A quick dig revealed the sandy road a few feet underneath and the Thousands Son continued his adventure on a lighter mood. While the state of neglect was a bit disappointing, there was a possibility the human civilisation of this world had fallen on hard times. Many times the Fifteenth Legion had assisted entire populations flee their homes from an apocalyptic exodus. Earthquakes, volcanoes and space hulk impacts were nothing to be underestimated.
It was on the last hours of the third day he came into view of the first city. Or rather the half-buried houses and buildings of what had been a town. By the silence and the damage caused by the elements, humanity had long abandoned this settlement. The librarian and keeper of knowledge in him grieved for this loss of knowledge. Judging by the gutted state of certain buildings, some must have been up to twenty floors. It was far from the height some Hive World spires soared through the skies, but it implied a moderately advanced civilisation having realised the potential of large-scale industrialisation. No sign of any Imperial aquilas or eight-folded stars however.
There were more concerning issues than the lack of imbecilic two-eagled decorations unfortunately. After three days of walk – by Astartes standards, non-augmented humans would have been unable to follow his relentless speed – there were really too little animals, birds and insects for this kind of environment. Yes, a desert was a desert, Psamtic was well-aware of all the bad jokes and word games his brothers and he could imagine in these circumstances. But the oasis had had perfectly pure water and eatable fruits. Generally, where water existed animals gathered. It was a law of nature.
Had some kind of virus wiped out the humans and the rest of life on this planet? This was not a pleasant thing to contemplate. Not just because he would be trapped here until a new star-traveller. While a planet was immense, there had been no signs for the moment of anything which could justify a mass extermination.
Of course such things had never really discouraged the World Eaters of Angron before, no?
Several broken bridges had given him a clue of the roads layout and the Legionary continue north-east. Another point of water and wild plantations gave him what was required to walk and walk again. It was frankly liberating. Short breaks allowed him to meditate.
It was on the fourth day he saw the pyramids in the distance.
As he climbed up to one of the largest dunes up to that point and discovered the three structures majestically dominating the entire elevation in front of him, Psamtic Mehhur felt the urge to cry.
Had he been sent back to the ruins of Prospero?
But no, those pyramids were clearly not fit for human habitation or library studies. If it was, humanity wouldn't have built a large city in the valley below. It was not Tizca. It was not Tizca. Psamtic had to repeat it like a mantra a few dozen more times before calming himself.
But if it was not his home, where was he? The large river he saw the course on interminable kilometres was a source of water which must have been essential for the fallen great city buried under million tons of sand. The pyramids had their bases in the sand too. Descending the dune, he tried to remember how many post-Age of Strife civilisations had adopted pyramid in their cultures. It should certainly give him a hint or two on his current situation.
But the answer was 'a lot'. The 6th Fellowship contingent he had been part of had participated in the conquest of no less than ten worlds having ancient pyramidal designs. There were hundreds more dispersed all over the Milky Way. And none of those worlds had half-buried cities and pyramids in the sand. Not in any reports he had been able to see anyway.
He continued to walk. Any sign which might have been used to reveal the causes of this abandonment had been erased by time. Sometimes on walls there were inscriptions barely decipherable. One was 'Gold' or 'Golden' in a Khemetic variant of Low Gothic, but Psamtic wasn't exactly sure. The other was probably 'End-' something. Maybe.
It was sad to see a civilisation like this, disappeared and with no one to remember. It brought him bad memories. Tizca, Prospero. Of course the Wolves had ravaged their homeworld, it was doubtful even ruins had been left behind after the Fifteenth's escape.
Psamtic didn't stop his researches here, needless to say. Astartes didn't stop at the first obstacle and the Thousands Sons were Astartes, forgetting for one moment the problematic question of their allegiance. But as days passed his researches found little achievements. Whatever had destroyed the human civilisation of this world had done it in a thorough manner. The machines he found were not familiar and had not been conceived according to the standards of Mars – although it might not have made a difference if the disaster had struck hundreds of years ago. Then again, Psamtic had never been the one among his brothers who could in ten seconds build an improvised auspex or a vox station. He was as far as removed from a Techmarine as an Astartes could possibly be. Sometimes he found humans tombs here and there, but they were old and no records of any sort accompanied them.
The houses and structures had not been conceived to handle the weight of a transhuman warrior, limiting his explorations in the collapsing buildings. Psamtic was not a genius renowned by half the galaxy for succeeding in archeotech-finding missions. Not that it would make any difference he suspected. When there is nothing to study, the conclusions of an Explorator-Fleet would be logical, extremely short and to the point. Of course the fleet in question would have a far larger support base, greater numbers and more experience than him.
On the ninth day of his arrival he stopped momentarily his explorations and climbed the greatest pyramid. The view was as spectacular as he had expected. The pyramid dominated the desert and the river...but it had certainly not been built as an observation post. The heavy stones and the quality of the work spoke more about a temple or a military monument to commemorate false gods or past victories. How ironic the civilisation had been destroyed but the temples tried to proclaim the magnificence of their dead masters.
Humanity always had a flair for the dramatic.
Psamtic supposed that his belonging to the Thousands Sons disqualified him to throw stones or make snide comments. The moral of this story?
Pride comes before the fall.
Once at the top the greatest pyramid, he was able to confirm it dominated everything. Alas, what he saw was disheartening. The city he had explored had been the greatest of this region, but there were uncountable ruins of steel and other ferric materials in the distance. Not one of these urban centres showed the slightest sign of human life.
Psamtic waited there a long time. For several hours to be exact, until the sun ceased to lighten the world of its light and the stars became visible in the vault of heaven. There were a lot of comets blazing like a million fires the void. Without any pollution the sky was totally clear and there was nothing to impede his view. A pity he did not recognise any of these constellations. There were no warp storms or the major nebulas which could be seen from Prospero. None of the stars the astronomers of Tizca showed to their friends could be seen.
"The stars are bright tonight, aren't they?"
The voice came out of nowhere. Despite the surprise and the absence of any human presence until now, the psycho-training and the countless hours of battle endured during the Great Crusade and the Heresy afterward made sure his faithful bolter was pointing behind him mere milliseconds before the new arrival had finished speaking.
How the cloaked figure had managed to sneak mere meters behind him, Psamtic wasn't able to say. True he hadn't particularly on guard but Astartes senses could notice a rodent at several kilometres if there was no other interference.
"Calmly, Son of Magnus. I am not an enemy."
These words did not reassure him at all. In fact, it lowered the temperature of the altered blood in his veins by at least five degrees. The mysterious figure knew he belonged to the Fifteenth Legion. Somehow, the interloper had found him on this world without him seeing the slightest sign of surveillance.
There were several methods to keep an Astartes unaware he was under scrutiny and none of them implied pleasant possibilities. Monitoring stations linked with macrolaser batteries and demonic assistance came to mind.
"Not an enemy? Who in the name of Prospero ghosts are you?"
"A simple traveller searching company for the night."
The light tone and the preposterousness of the situation brought a smile to his lips. It didn't last. The cloaked being in the shadows was somewhat blurred, like his corporeal essence wasn't able to support the laws of the Materium. And this meant...
"Try again. I doubt this meeting is a coincidence, daemon."
"Daemon?" The figure sounded honestly amused by the Legionary calling him a denizen of the Immaterium. "I admit I had never been called by this term before."
Psamtic ignored the rebuttal. Far more intelligent and powerful Imperials than him had been duped by the forces of the Warp. All were liars and loved misguiding their followers and enemies alike.
"On which world are we?"
The answer came vibrating with a sense of sadness and regret so deep that if it was not a daemonic entity, the Thousands Son would have felt sorry for him.
"We are on Earth."
"Very funny. Terra or Earth is inhabited by billions and no one could see stars in its polluted sky."
"An Earth." Amended the figure. "Not your Earth."
"In case you aren't aware, Earth, Terra or whatever name you use for the homeworld of humanity...the planet has a moon." And his Astartes eyes had never caught a sign of it in nine days of observation.
"It was destroyed." Replied tranquilly his interlocutor. "Like I said: an Earth where humanity had never the opportunity to rise to the stars."
"You are speaking of a different plane of existence." The survivor of Prospero said, taking great care to show how ridiculous he found the affirmation. Demons were liars assuredly, but he was somewhat disappointed by how huge these falsehoods were. Cross-dimensional transfers required astronomic amount of energy that no star-faring race had ever managed to concentrate. Warp travel was the closest thing available and it was extremely limited. Being on a different Earth...the daemon could have said something more credible.
"I am." The figure turned its hood towards the river flowing peacefully around the ruins. "This dimension was similar to the one the Imperium emerged. But during the late decades of the second millennium...something changed."
"The Emperor?"
"If only." Behind the hood, Psamtic could almost see an amused expression. "As far as I am aware, the Emperor never existed as such in this dimension."
That...that was a far more worrying affirmation to expression. All the demons routinely insulted the Emperor by diverse nicknames, the most common being 'Anathema'. But almost none denied his existence. But it was a lie. It had to be.
"The great changes all started when he appeared floating over the Atlantic Ocean. They called him the Golden Man. He was able to cure incurable diseases and inhuman feats for the time."
Psamtic really didn't like where this story was going. At all. But he let the shadowy figure continue. It wasn't like he had anything else to do.
"It was five years after his first apparition that the superheroes and the supervillains started to appear. People experiencing the worst day of their entire life, people on the edge of death and insanity were suddenly granted fantastic powers. Flying, controlling metal, healing, shooting lasers, constructing devices centuries ahead of the technological base they had. But it was not a Golden Age. The people with powers – who were quickly renamed parahumans – were in majority criminals and lawbreakers. Their powers thrived on violence and battle, not in helping their neighbours and co-citizens. They were heroes who tried to enforce the mantle of justice, but the very nature of the powers' triggering was working against humanity. To make things infinitely worse, gigantic monsters rose from the abysses and the centre of the Earth, creatures able to kill hundreds of parahumans with ease and wipe out the greatest cities from the map in mere hours. Humanity was slowly dying."
"What was the Golden Man doing while the world burnt?"
"He tried to be a hero." The answer was pronounced in a sarcastic way. "But he wasn't really good at it. Just imagine: a being able to fly at speeds so elevated it was close to teleportation, save millions with an unlimited array of abilities, but with no sense of priority. Every time he acted, it could be to save an old woman come back home, heal a wounded man about to die from an accident or save a city from an Endbringer monster. But there was no known way to communicate with him and the scale of a danger wasn't a factor in his calculations. The Golden Man helped people. But he could try to solve a danger involving three lives while ten millions were dying at the same moment with far graver consequences."
This looked...awful, Psamtic had to admit. Assuming it was not another lie, the Golden Man had capacities on par with the Emperor. But even the Master of Mankind had showed more consideration to humanity than that.
"The best and brightest of humanity died one by one. The monsters - the Endbringers - ravaged at regular intervals the greatest cities and brought division, restricted resources and provoked refugee crises that no government could deal with."
The stranger paused.
"And then?" Asked impatiently the red-armoured Astartes.
"Then Tzeentch intervened."
Psamtic did his best not to groan in consternation. Of course the God of Liars and Change was to be involved somewhere.
"What did the Architect of Fate want?" He asked, preparing himself for the worst.
"A parahuman."
"The Golden Man?"
A burst of laughter came from the mouth of the traveller.
"No. Not him. Powerful enough but no mental flexibility or any kind of strategic thinking. No, he took a girl who had the power to control insects."
This...Psamtic would have dearly wanted to scream it was another lie but it sounded like something Tzeentch would do.
"What would one of the Four choose someone wielding a weak power like this?"
"Weak?" The amusement was so evident in the mysterious figure's voice it was impossible to miss. "Total control of any insects in her range isn't exactly a weak power. Imagine what she could have done to your Legion if she had the Naxorian Bees in her arsenal."
Psamtic could not avoid a large grimace. The Compliance of Naxoria had fallen to the Second Fellowship so he hadn't personally been there, but the reports of the survivors had reported it as a very nasty affair. A lost expedition of Mars had somewhat managed to manipulate insect DNA with a local carnivorous species and the result had been an Astartes-sized yellow insect with a sting, fangs and claws able to pierce the adamantium of their battle-armours. Worse, these things had been immune to most of the Legion's psionic abilities. One hundred and fifty Legionaries had been lost along with thirty thousand Imperial Army troops before compliance was finally accomplished. And Naxoria had been only a small moon with relatively little ground to conquer and the Bees had not been particularly intelligent. With a human having the ability to control these things...
"These Bees were wiped out. The Legion made sure of this."
"Congratulations. But I doubt you would be able to kill every insect species living in this galaxy."
The stranger had a good point. But that didn't mean Psamtic had not seen far more useful and powerful powers wielded by First Captain Ahriman and the sorcerers of his own Legion. And he left aside Magnus the Red, who was a law unto himself.
"What kind of danger can this girl represents?"
The figure simply nodded.
"An interesting question, indeed. What can the Last Daughter of Earth can do?"
This conversation was taking a more and more frustrating turn for him. The former member of the Pyrae Cult had the urge to set this impertinent on fire and teach him a lesson...but he had the feeling this thing wasn't inflammable.
"And the answer is?"
"She can save or damn us all. Weaver could be the greatest Hero of the Imperium. Khepri could be our greatest and final mistake."
The sentence had been delivered in a flat, deadly serious tone. One the Thousands Son would never have believed their author to believe. But Children or the Warp of not, there had to be a reason why the alien spoke like this. Something in his words must be the clue to the enigma. And after a few seconds of deep thinking he found it.
"It is the Golden Man, isn't it? He was not the first parahuman. He was their creator."
"Very astute observation." Psamtic Mehhur almost beamed before his interlocutor made another snide remark. "For an Astartes."
The red-armoured transhuman gritted his teeth. For the stranger's sake, he really hoped he could take a beating because he was going to give him one at the end of this conversation.
"The Golden Man was never a human. He was the avatar on this Earth of a powerful entity able to cross the dimensions at will and which used millions of shards to protect and empower itself. Each shard was a power. By giving the weakest to humans near oblivion, this species conducted grand experiments on planetary scale and understood better their own powers."
"This doesn't make a lot of sense, though." Psamtic remarked. "I mean, the xenos who presented itself as the Golden Man did not look like he had a long-term strategy."
"Because usually these entities travel in pairs. One Warrior. One Thinker. But the Thinker died on another version of this Earth due to a freak accident, leaving the Warrior alone here. Thus the shards were given randomly across the world and their results left unstudied."
The muscle left alone on a world where it was the equivalent of a God but without the initiative or the mind to play the role. Yes, he could very well recognise the magnitude of the problem.
"What happened when Chaos...spirited away the parahuman?"
The similarity between the eighteen Primarchs being dispersed across the galaxy before the Great Crusade did not escape him.
"The entity went on a berserker rampage across Earth." A sigh escaped immaterial lips. "You have to understand that after each parahuman's death, the entity recovers all the shards plus newly formed ones. It is a closed cycle. Each shard, each power is an energy manipulation loan the entity let the parahuman contractor borrow for an undetermined period of time. Nonetheless, it will recover it in the end."
"But not here."
"But not here. The Demons of Change are extremely skilled at covering their traces and when the entity realised what had happened it was far too late. It had lost a part of itself, no matter how tiny it was. And for the first time since it had lost its partner, it stopped grieving. It wanted something to pay for the theft, but the guilty party wasn't here. So humanity would have to do."
The shadowy figure sighed again and observed the stars for a long moment.
"They called it the Gold Morning. For six days, the entity went on like an unstoppable genocide machine on several dimensions. Billions died. The parahumans, the governments, the militaries...every group tried to stop the being they had considered their greatest hero. One by one they failed. Tectonic plaques were broken. Entire countries were razed and cultures were extinguished. Until a last-ditch plan was launched and ultimately it was slain across the dimensions forever."
The lone Astartes felt a point of envy towards these long-gone humans. Like the Thousands Sons at Tizca, they had fought against those determined to bring them down. Unlike the Fifteenth Legion, they had managed to kill their enemy. Prospero defenders had never managed to exact their retribution. Against their father, who had dismantled the orbital defences and send away their fleet in the hope his martyrdom would be sufficiently grandiose. Against the Emperor, who had ignored their accomplishments and casted them aside at Nikaea. Against the treacherous Horus, who had transformed the initial order from capture to ruthless annihilation. Against the Space Wolves, the barbaric Legion they had failed to slain in the ruins of their homes.
"But this Earth never managed to rebuild." Psamtic knew it was a lame comment, thank you very much. But if what his informer told was the truth...then a life-eater virus comparison might have not been so bad a comparison for what had really happened to this planet.
"There weren't that many living left when the final battle was over." Was the bleak assessment. "A few parahumans organised mass exiles to other dimensions. But once the fighting was over, there was little reason to come back save pillaging the resources of a dead world."
There was little to say against this decision. The Thousands Sons too avoided visiting the ruins of Tizca which had brought them to the Planet of Sorcerers. But it brought an interesting question to his mind.
"How do you know all of this? The inhabitants of this planet are long gone. Their libraries and other data vaults are reduced to dust. I have not exactly searched every city on this world but I do not think they will be in a better state than this one."
"I have my ways." Was the very vague reply.
"Then could you ask the question how I came upon this planet?" He asked impatiently.
"Of course." The new bow the figure addressed to him was definitely a mocking one. "You were one of the many Astartes of your Legion to be consumed by the Rubric of your First Captain. Like many Astartes with a weak psionic talent, you were trapped without a body in your battle-armour, reduced to dust and forced to endure an endless agony while the most powerful of your sorcerers took control and saw their powers multiplied ten times. They became masters of the Warp and you...well, you became puppets for their grand plans."
"Ahriman would never have tolerated this."
"I'm afraid your First Captain was exiled following his catastrophic Rubric experiment. But you're correct, he still err among the stars, trying to correct his greatest mistake. Not that his Chaos patron in the Warp will ever let him succeed.
You Psamtic on the other hand, were to be a pawn in the Demons of Fate's plans. The start of a dark web which would have ensnared entire Sectors and replaced the rule of the Imperium by something far, far worse."
"What have you done?" Harshly demanded the Legionary. If there was anything the Heresy had told the Fifteenth and the rest of the Astartes armies, it was that those who dared challenged the powers of the Immaterium had in general an eternity of agony to regret their audacity. But the figure didn't look concerned.
"I've brought you here and liberated your soul."
"Impossible." The words were on his lips by pure reflex. "Magnus had damned us all in his bargains with the Warp."
"Not exactly." Was it his imagination or the robed stranger looked more real by the second? A sort of faint golden glow was now surrounding him. "Magnus was betrayed at every turn by Tzeentch and the Rubric further complicated things. Sometimes, the Demons of Change are too clever for their own good and neglected a few details. From the moment you soul was trapped in this armour, past allegiances were somewhat muted. Needless to say they hoped to rebuild these chains the moment the Rubric was breached, but they were overconfident and weren't prepared for our intervention."
Psamtic didn't know what to say. Given his knowledge of the aetheric field, what the stranger told made some sense...in theory. In practise, if you hadn't the skill and the power to back it up, the best thing which would happen to you was the live dissection of your body in the Sea of Souls. No Primarch, no psyker had ever had claimed this type of power for himself.
"Who are you? Who in the name of dead Prospero are you?"
The figure advanced one step. The details of the apparition became clearer. The 'traveller' was covered from head to toe in a long light-brown robe which was just one or two shades darker than the sand surrounding the pyramid. A long sceptre was in his right hand, and the head of the white and black stone was decorated by a great double-headed golden eagle burning in golden fire. Grey-silver hairs were still visible thanks to the slight golden aura, as was a noble and patient face which had once been known and celebrated on a million of worlds.
But it was impossible. Utterly impossible. The Order who had worn these robes had fallen in obscurity with the Age of Strife and their last member had died in the last moments of the Siege of Terra. A great sacrifice made to give a chance for the defenders a last chance of victory. A feat no human would ever be able to replicate in millennia.
"You can't be here. You are dead."
Ancient eyes sparkled with amusement.
"Rumours of my death are greatly exaggerated." Seeing his interlocutor's bewildered eyes, the robed figure burst in laughter. "I always wanted to say it."
"My lord..." The Thousands Son Legionary bent the knee. "My life is yours to take. I betrayed my Oath and am ready to atone for my past actions."
"If I desired to smite you down, did you really think I would have brought you to this world?" Answered gently his saviour. "No, your death at my hands would not serve humanity. I have a mission in mind for you. Interested?"
"Command." Psamtic said, striking his fist above his heart.
"Rise."
The robed figure turned and began to descend the pyramid at a rapid pace, and Psamtic followed on his heels.
"Tell me, do you have heard of my Knights-Errant?"
The term was familiar, yes. Assuming the whispers of the Warp and the officers were right, it was a brotherhood of Loyalist and Traitor Legionaries having renounced their allegiance to serve directly...Him.
Surely the psyker in front of him didn't suggest?
"There were certain... rumours towards the end of the Siege, my lord."
"Good!" Declared enthusiastically the old man – although did age really counted if you were dead? "Good! In this case consider your mission as a trial to see if you're worthy of joining their ranks."
Psamtic had not the time to ask who the 'they' referred to as they reached the sands surrounding the pyramid. Once again someone had materialised next to him. But while the first figure still chose to appear in a brown robe and a half-intangible state, the woman in front of him was firmly anchored in the material realm.
Her attire was strange however. An Astartes could not pretend be aware of the latest fashion trends, but he was reasonably sure the tailored black suit, the white tie and the white shirt had not been worn for formal occasions since a few millennia. The black hair and the pale skin were somewhat attractive, too bad the stern expression discouraged the usual greetings and pleasantries.
But then he met the pure blue eyes and for the first time on this world Psamtic truly knew fear. It was nothing the woman had said or done...but he knew intimately that if she wanted him dead, the only question would be in how many pieces his transhuman body would be after the massacre.
"This is Contessa. She is going with you."
"Door to Aurelia." Said the woman in a Low Gothic that had no discernable accent.
There was no shimmer or resonance in the Warp, but the strange woman had apparently no need of aetheric talents. A window to another plane had just opened and the mysterious 'Contessa' passed its threshold.
"For good or worse, the Weaver Option must continue." Declared the being who once had led the Imperium in the greatest civil war humanity had ever fought. "Remember that failure is not an option."
Psamtic Mehhur felt suddenly many feelings inside his two hearts he had thought lost and forgotten buried across thousands of battlefields. Pride. Regret. Sadness.
But he had a second chance and this was more than the majority of the Fallen Legions had received. If there was a single chance he might erase his sins and those of the Fifteenth Legion, he would do it.
"I will not fail my lord. For the Emperor."