A/N: Chap 13 review responses are in my forums as normal. I have some additional notes on this chapter at the bottom. Thanks for reading and reviewing.
Chapter Fourteen: Emisit Eum de Paradiso
As a young man in the newly unified Terra, while the Great Crusade blazed across the galaxy, Renold Stein traveled with his father across the Mericum plains to the Vada Wastess where the Confederation fought its last battle against the Emperor of Man, and capitulated in whole.
Renold's mother was just six months dead, killed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time during a food riot. Ouran Stein, who was already quite old when he married and had Renold, decided to deal with his own loss, and his son's sadness, with a father-son trip.
Young Renold didn't want to go. What was there to see in the blasted, post-nuclear wasteland where his great grandfather lost a war? He muttered about it the entire first day of the trip.
But by the second he began to get distracted by the various points of interest his father pointed out. The remnant preserves where various arcologies, or the newly formed "hive" cities, tried to keep plant life and animals alive, allowed for a glimpse of what Terra might have been like once.
By the third day, they reached the memorial that commemorated the Treaty of the Veda Wastes that joined Mericum to the Imperium of Man. Renold expected just a crass little plaque. But as he would come to realize, the Emperor did nothing by halves.
What he and his father found was a temple to the Imperium's greatness. A vast hall of gold and white marble, and within a meticulously kept museum of every piece of machinery used in the war. Of uniforms displayed on mechanical mannequins; of video of the war itself. Arnold watched enthralled as his great grandfather commanded the ten million soldiers of the Mericum Confederation–the allied arcologies that were trying to rebuild a semblance of a free society amongst the techno-barbarians of the blasted earth.
He'd been taught that the man was a failure and a traitor. But instead he watched a leader of men making good, tactical decisions but simply overwhelmed by an insanely superior force. "That mad bastard has soldiers that can lift tanks!" the long-dead Stein shouted in horror on one of the videos.
It made him realize as a young man that there were some monsters that could simply not be fought.
~~Revelation~~
~~Revelation~~
He woke with a body clinging closely to his own. The emergency shelter blended into a carved alcove that once, thousands of years before, likely served as a utility chamber. The heavy material provided a complete shelter against any light seepage or noise from within, while the auspex unit at the tab would alert them to any movement without.
His waking in turn woke Taylor. She lifted her head from where she used his arm as a pillow. The rush of blood made his fingers tingle painfully.
She sat up without a word, still in her body armor in case they had to run quickly, and stared into some unfathomable emptiness. After one of her typical long pauses, she asked: "What did you dream about?"
"Road trip I took with my dad as a kid. You?"
She snorted to herself, as if at some horrid jest. "Dreams are a function of our souls. I haven't dreamt in thirty thousand years. I remember, sometimes, but I don't dream."
She rolled over and began busying herself with the new routine of food, water and, in turns out of the tent, their portable chem toilet. He didn't question her any more. In the years they spent together, he had learned her moods. She'd been upset since they left Valdor, and he knew better than to ask about it any further.
In moments they were back in their helmets, with the emergency shelter collapsed and stored once more on his bike. They had to ride together since her bike was destroyed. He found he didn't mind it so much, though her added weight was enough that he had to fly at a slower speed to conserve the jetbike's power cells.
It was their third day since fleeing the Blackstone Prison. Two days since the demon.
The rot in the walls continued–a gradual corruption of reality itself. It seemed to stretch on forever. Some sections were worse than others, and on two separate occasions they had to use their weapons to kill the smaller but still dangerous neverborn that somehow managed to coalesce from the rot of Terra. Despite three days of travel, they were still well within the rings of the Imperial Palace. The palace itself dominated much of the old central Eurasian continental plateau.
"The Himalayas," Taylor told him one day. "An ancient mountain range that separated the eastern and western parts of the southern continent. He leveled the mountains to make the palace."
"Why?"
She shrugged. "It's where the heart of the throne was, I suppose."
So they rode. Several times they encountered the xenoplanar entities–the demons. Nothing like the monstrous being that the Custodes killed, but dangerous enough. Their Vulkite weapons proved effective against the ectoplasmic flesh of the netherborn monsters.
It took nearly another whole day before they reached the ramp that Stein's directions hinted at. He slowed the bike to a crawl as they began to slowly ascend. The ramp formed a broad spiral, going ever upward. On several occasions they had to dismount and walk the jet around collapsed sections of tunnel walls.
Even with the collapsed rockcrete, however, they were still able to make their ascent until to Renald's surprise, they found themselves emerging into the ancient mechanical roots of what looked like an old hive city.
Massive pipes thrummed around them in a dizzying maze that rose up into the shadows of the poorly lit space beyond the reach of auspex or eye. On several nearby walls he saw writing, but it wasn't Gothic, NeoMericum or any other language he knew. Taylor, though, recognized it. "The Sukkar Arcology. I think it's called the Sukr Hive, now. Our destination is in West Nordafrik. We've got a ways to go. Will that bike make it?"
Renold tried not to think about how low the power cell was. The spares were on Taylor's bike, and were lost with it. "Maybe. You ever been here?"
"Once, but it was so long ago the Indus River still existed. I don't think anything I knew of it still applies."
"Indus River?"
"The mountains that held the glaciers that fed the river don't exist anymore," she noted dryly.
"Right. So, my own map ends here. The Sigillite must have thought it was far enough out. I guess we keep going up until we find a surface level."
It was no easy ascent. Taylor recognized some of the lettering, but could not speak the Indostanic language itself. Very few could, as it had not been spoken in thousands of years. Eventually, however, they were able to find a utility stairwell wide enough to accommodate the jetbike, if just barely. They had to stand on either side of the vehicle with its gravitics on full and push it up manually. It was grueling work, made possibly only by the artifice of their archeotech power suits.
They made it up nearly twenty subterranean levels when they both heard and felt heavy, irregular thumps through their boots and helmet sensors.
"Artillery," Stein muttered to himself. "Damn."
"It couldn't be the main force," Taylor said. Then she added: "Not that it needs to be."
They kept pushing the bike up until they came to a level that had what once was a wide entrance, but was not partially obscured by rubble. By this time they could hear distant combat–the distant snap-pop of lasguns and louder projectile weapons. Screams.
Taylor removed her sniper rifle, got on her stomach, and shimmied through a narrow opening of the debris until she was able to see into a broad atrium.
"What do you see?" Stein voxed.
"Traitor auxilia."
With the help of their power armor, Taylor and Renold shifted enough rubble to get the bike through. They found themselves in a partially collapsed service tunnel that let out into the broader forum of a shattered hive city.
Peeking out from the tunnel entrance, Renold saw immediately that the mortal soldiers were not fleeing from the Imperial army. The Eye of Horus flew from staffs set over twenty Chimera transports as several hundred purely mortal soldiers were firing at the poorly equipped, rag-tag defenders of the hive city.
Behind the Chimera he could see a single Basilisk, and it was from this one cannon that the artillery they heard originated.
"I thought all civilians were conscripted to the palace," Renold muttered.
"Only the ones that could fight," Taylor said. She grimly pointed at the defenders, and he could see immediately what she meant.
Those fighting were the elderly, women and even children. They all fought with expressions of dread, as if they knew their situation was hopeless. "We're not getting through that easily," Stein noted.
"No, we're not. Get out the tent."
Her tone shifted; he could hear the stubbornness rising. "What are you thinking?"
"I count two hundred men. That's not a task force, they're deserters. Look at how they're fighting. They want slaves, Renold. That's the only reason those people are still alive. We're not going to let them win. Come on!"
Her plan was suicidal, but he'd come to understand she had a very loose grasp on survivability. After all, what would it matter to her if she died, since she'd just be reborn again? But even so, the sheer audacity of it at least gave them the element of surprise.
They unpacked the thermal tent with its chameleon circuit and used it as camouflage. With the jetbike stored in the tunnel, the two snuck out and stayed against the nearest interior wall as the fighting continued in the open forum of the city before them. The crystelflex windows that allowed unlight to flow into what once was a forum filled with gardens were mostly shattered, but the dirty light from a chaos-infused, scintillating red and purple sky allowed them to see the massive columns that rose up behind the defenders into the upper reaches of the hive. Just on the edge of his vision, Renold could see hints of damage to the columns.
No one saw them. No one was even paying attention. The Chaos auxilia were laughing as they took random shots at the desperate defenders. Stein overheard one man shouting, "Aim for the old ones! They're useless to us!"
Though he looked mostly human, Stein could have sworn he heard something non-human in the man's voice.
They continued to the Basilisk. The vehicle was essentially a tracked Chimera mounted with an earthshaker cannon. Though he was never in any armor or artillery units, he was familiar enough with the ubiquitous weapon. They were cheap and plentiful among the legions.
This weapon was only manned by two auxilia members. Only two.
Taylor didn't hesitate to pull her sniper rifle free, and having sensed her intent, Stein did the same. With the artillery piece behind the other Chimeras and the front line of enemy soldiers, no one even heard their shots.
They left their tent cover and sprinted over to the self-propelled artillery piece. "Can you work the cannon?" Taylor asked.
"Probably. What will you do?"
"I'll be driving."
"Where'd you learn to drive an armored vehicle?"
She turned her helmet over her shoulder, and somehow he knew she was grinning. "Your great grandfather taught me. I drove one against the Emperor!"
"So, what's the plan?"
"Blow shit up until they stop firing at the civilians."
"They'll just fire at us."
"Exactly!"
"This is not a good plan, Taylor!"
"Sure it is! We have a Basilisk! The cannon's arc of fire can go to ground level, remember? Aim low!"
She disappeared into the cab, and seconds later he both felt and heard the machine's engine roaring to life. With the course set, he ran to the auto-loader and targeting system. The hololithic display was set not on the terrified defenders, but on the hive verticar systems. The auxilia was using the artillery to trap the civilians for easier capture.
As the massive armored vehicle began crawling backwards, he manually set the targeting lower, to the lowest declension the self-propelled artillery piece was capable of. Which happened to aim the cannon directly at the line of Chimeras in front of them.
His vox beeped. "I'm going to take a side angle," she said. "They bastards lined their machines up all nice in a row for us. Start firing as soon as we're lined up."
"You're insane, you know that?"
"I hate bullies, Renold. These bastards aren't soldiers any more, they're just well-armed bullies."
He didn't know what to say to that–the entire Imperium of Man could be described as bullies. But their course was set. He started putting new shells into the autoloader as Taylor turned the basilisk horizontal to the Chimeras and started driving toward the end of the enemy armored formation.
If any of the traitor auxilia noticed, he couldn't hear. The vehicle quickly accelerated to its max speed of 65 kilometers an hour before slowing so fast he almost lost his footing. Taylor spun the whole chassis around on its tracked wheels until the lowered earthshaker cannon was pointing directly forward.
"Why the hell not?" He muttered as he fired the cannon.
The 132 mm high explosive shell left the cannon in a billow of smoke and fire traveling over 800 kilometers per second. It struck the first two chimeras almost instantaneously. The two armored vehicles blasted into the air even as the Basilisk crawled forward. It took seven seconds for the autoloader to deliver a new shell, and he fired again. In that time, the Basilisk moved forward fast enough to bring new targets into range of the now fixed-angle cannon.
It took only ten seconds to destroy four Auxilia Chimeras. As the next two exploded, the enemy pinpointed where the threat was and tried to act, but Stein knew from harsh personal experience that it was difficult to kill an enemy when pieces of blown-up Chimera were falling on you.
He could hear Taylor screaming angry curses at the enemy as she drove, and he found himself grinning at the sheer impossibility of their run. He fired again, and again.
The remaining Chimera drivers finally realized how vulnerable they were and tried to move their vehicles. Taylor, though, proved to be an able driver. She swerved the Basilisk in an S-shape that brought the cannon into perfect alignment with the slow-to start armored vehicles.
Stein fired, one shell after the other.
Lasbolts began to pelt against the cannon's armor plates. He ducked down behind the side armor of the basilisk cannon compartment, but kept firing. The last two enemy Chimeras broke away from the enemy formation, and did so in different directions, that Taylor had to choose. She chose the target that was moving against the civilians, and Stein did his part to blow the armored vehicle all the way to the Warp.
The other escaping Chimera turned its mounted multi-laser on them and opened fire.
Renold just managed to jump clear as the heavy laser cannon ripped through the Basilisk armor plates and tore the cannon apart. He landed heavily on the ground up tiles of the forum floor as Taylor surged the damaged Basilisk forward, spun it directly toward the enemy Chimera, and then opened up with the twin-linked heavy bolters that served as the SPA's close support weapon.
The enemy Chimera answered in kind, and the two war machines ground toward each other, ripping themselves apart. He saw movement as a slim, black-armored figure jumped free of the Basilisk cab and ran just seconds before the two war machines collided.
Their rampage decimated the enemy formation, but there were still easily fifty men left for each of them. Stein had no illusions about surviving. But even as he pulled his vulkite weapon to face his end fighting on his feet, the terrified old men, women and children of Sukr Have surprised him.
Someone among the defenders must have realized that the chaos Taylor and Renold caused was their only chance at survival. They rushed from their make-shift shelters and dugouts and with stolen las guns or even older projectile weapons, charged the scattered, confused auxilia. It provided enough of a distraction that Taylor and Stein were barely even a target any more.
He pulled out his long-las and began firing into the scattered enemy formation.
From her position across the forum, Taylor was doing the same thing. Shot by shot, targeting those soldiers who seemed to be most effective against the desperate defenders, they began reducing the enemy numbers.
It shouldn't have worked. Two against two hundred wasn't just impossible odds, it was idiotic. But somehow, through sheer luck and the lack of good command from the traitor auxilia, they did it. Somehow, they survived.
~~Revelation~~
~~Revelation~~
The defenders were not from Sukr Hive. They were not from anywhere nearby. Instead, they were refugees that had fled from all across the Urartu region in a desperate attempt to flee the Traitor forces.
"Most of the conscription was from the hives," Renold noted. "The Imperium just didn't have the resources to scour every inch of Terra."
At first the refugees were as afraid of their two saviors as they were of the enemy soldiers. And why not? They were black power armor and closed helmets. All that changed, though, when Taylor took her helmet off.
One of the older women who seemed to be leading the refugees cried out as if in shock upon seeing Taylor's face, and then fell to her knees with her hands held crossed at the thumbs over her chest, forming a pair of wings. "Devi Telos!"
"Mama, get up!" The younger woman pulled at the one kneeling, while other of the refugees looked on in concern.
"So…does that happen often?" Renold asked.
"Not since the Emperor wiped most of my temples, no," Taylor said. "He would have killed all the priests if I hadn't ordered them to agree not to proselytize anymore." She looked down at the woman. "What's your name, daughter?"
It seemed strange for this woman in her early thirties to call a woman approaching sixty 'daughter', but the kneeling woman did not question it. "I am Aghiti, blessed."
"Mother, what are you doing?" the young woman hissed again. "It is just a woman!"
Taylor ignored the protestor and knelt down to take the older woman's hands in hers. "Telos still lives in our hearts, so long as we let her," Taylor said. "I'm only ghost; a reminder of what once was. I'm happy you remember, but in the world that comes, you need to keep your faith in your heart. Until Telos is born again, you must remain hidden."
"Are you some sort of thief? Some worker of fraud to steal? We have nothing left!" The daughter shouted angrily at them.
"You are the Saint," the mother said, looking at Taylor. "My Naani had a portrait of you. It was in our family for many generations. Painted a thousand years before Unification. Preserved with oils. It looks just like you!"
"The Pythias liked to have one made every few generations," Taylor said with a wry smile. "After a few thousand, I just didn't mind any more. But remember the teachings, Aghiti. Saints are to be loved, not deified. I am no god, only a mortal reflection of Telos. I would much rather receive a hug than genuflection."
The woman looked at her, blinking back tears. "It is said you have lived thirty thousand years."
"Give or take," Taylor admitted with a shrug. "I was born at the end of M1. I died as Telos early in M2 saving the world, just like the Telosian Gospels say. And I was reborn a century later, and have lived on and off as a mortal shell since then. I grow old, I have families sometimes, and then I die and am reborn. I suppose that's why the Hindu of the world accepted Telos into their pantheon so quickly."
She stood, and pulled Aghiti to her feet. "How many of you are there?"
"Once over ten thousand joined us," Aghiti said, still clutching Taylor's hand. "Now we are only four thousand. But we have done much here to survive. Come, you can share a meal with us, and tell us what you know of the war."
~~Revelation~~
~~Revelation~~
The deserters had a flier. It was, Renold saw with an ambiguous sense of remembrance, the same model of lifter that flew he and his squad into the Merican arcology where he first saw Taylor, four years prior.
"Yes, I can fly it," she said to his unspoken question. "But we both know you'd be the better pilot. I'll handle weapons and nav."
They lifted off in the relative stillness pre-dawn, for what the constant cloud cover of the siege permitted of dawn. Through the canopy of the lifter, Stein could see an oily, sick yellow-red glow hanging over the entire eastern horizon, as far as they could see. Inside the lifter, their helmets were off. He glanced at Taylor and saw her staring with a carefully schooled expression.
He said nothing as he brought the lifter around and began flying west, staying just a few thousand feet over the desert. He needed to stay high enough to avoid pot-shots from the surface, but hopefully low enough avoid being an easy target from the untold thousands of traitor ships that controlled the void overhead.
The atmospherics bounced the lithe flier about like a child's toy, but even so they trebled their speed from the jetbike. Despite their speed, the distance spanned almost ten thousand kilometers. Stein found himself checking fuel cartridges and running the calculations in his head. It was going to be close, but if they could avoid any combat maneuvers, they would make it.
Under the heavy pall of ash and dust that seemed to cloud the skies like a shroud, with their thrusters running hot from the particulates in the air, they flew over the arid, blasted Phoenician Wastes and into the irradiated plains of Nordafric.
Neither spoke except where necessary to adjust course, or avoid perturbations in the atmosphere. After nearly an entire day flying, with them switching off to use the flier's portal facilities as needed, his auspex showed the far western reaches of the Nordafric plateau, and the vast Atlan Abyssal plains beyond.
"How will we know when we've reached your contact?"
"Look for a giant eye in the stone."
"What?"
"She lives near the ancient Richat Structure."
Having never heard of it, Renold entered the term into the navigational array, and instantly the hololithic array provided a course against the canopy, overlaid against the real world beyond. He followed it without hesitation, slowly bringing the lifter lower. They had less than an hour of flight time remaining.
Twenty minutes later, Taylor leaned forward and tapped a point against the canopy, manually adjusting the hololithic guidance. "There."
He brought the lifter down near a collection of mud brick hovels. Night was falling on another day despite their racing the sun throughout. When the lifter was secured, he stepped out in a surge of cramped, sore muscled and quickly began stretching away the day's journey before arming himself.
He came around to where Taylor stood, having also gathered all of her emergency supplies. She stared at the hovel with that schooled expression she'd worn all day.
When the woman emerged, Renold struggled to remember to breathe. Her beauty did not seem humanly possible, as if she were some xenos angel sent to tempt him. She seemed of average height, with long, silky hair that hung like night around her shoulders. Her skin was darker than his or Taylor's by a fair amount, but her features defied any ethnicity. Rather, she seemed to be an amalgamation of womanhood itself, as if she were composed of every standard of beauty from every ethnicity of humanity throughout time.
"I told him no," the woman declared, speaking to Taylor as if in the middle of a very old conversation.
"When has that ever stopped him?"
The woman wore desert robes that effectively hid her body. She seemed almost to glide over the soil, and as she approached Renold found himself bristling against a feeling of intense pressure, as if she made the air itself more dense. It was, he realized, the same feeling he got from Malcador the few times they met. With that, he also realized that this woman was incredibly powerful.
The beautiful being stopped before Taylor and regarded her with dark eyes. "When your father came to me, speaking of your mother's plans for you, I told him that you would be an abomination against man and gods. A melding of the spiritual and the physical would be a greater threat than the void dragon they faced. I saw your death as a blessing for humanity."
Taylor snorted. "And thirty thousand years later you helped the Emperor do the same damned thing." She pointed east. The glow was not visible, but the ash clouds covered the world. "That's as much your fault as his."
The ancient being did not argue. "I tried to stop it, but too late. Just like I was too late to realize that Telos was no abomination, she was our blessing." Stein watched tensely as the woman stepped forward, and then very gently wrapped Taylor in a tender hug.
"Soon, this ends," the woman said over Taylor's shoulder. "Malcador was wise to send you here."
They parted, though the woman held Taylor's shoulders and looked at her.
"Erda, was he right? Can you get us someplace safe?"
"I am bound to Terra by choice now," the woman named Erda said. "The one and only time I left here was the greatest of my mistakes, as you well know. I cannot leave, nor can I open passage to others. But I know one who might help us. I can call him, but he may not answer. My children have caused he and his kind terrible harm."
Kind. Renold opened his mouth to ask the obvious question, only to freeze when dark, powerful eyes froze him in place. She didn't say anything, and he found he could no longer ask the question.
Instead, she stepped back from them and stood like a statue. He felt the air grow incredibly dense again, and something vast and unimaginable slid against his mind. But it lasted only a moment.
"Now we must wait," Erda said. "Join me for one last meal, Taylor Hebert. Renold Stein. A meal in remembrance of what could have been."
The food she offered was simple–unleavened flat bread with salt; a rich black tea, and a paste of grains and ground fruits that was intensely sharp and savory. She ate with only the flat bread, no utensils, and he and Taylor did the same.
They were just finishing when something that did not belong stepped into the mud brick hovel. Stein jumped to his feet in alarm. Taylor and Erda rose more slowly; Erda bowed her head. "Thank you for answering my call."
The figure was no demon or Astartes–he was something completely alien. A xenos. Aeldari. His slim form was covered in strange, psycho-plastic armor that seemed almost to move with him. His tall, conical helmet brushed against the ceiling of the hovel, while the staff he carried glistened within a shimmer of distorted air.
With deliberate slowness, the Xenos removed his helm. What he exposed was a face that, like Erda's, was simply too handsome to be real. Only his long, sharp ears betrayed that this was no human being.
The xenos studied each of them in turn before settling on Taylor. One brow rose elegantly. "The farseer who trained me in my childhood shared memories of you, Taylor Hebert. Of a time before our fall, when humans had not yet learned hatred of all that was different."
Renold didn't know what to say. Even the Xenos knew her? For her part, she just nodded. "I remember, but it would have been your master's master, perhaps even further back. Seventh millenia, maybe? The Eldar Empire sent a delegation to Earth, and one of you attended a conference on faith and divinity."
"For the gods of my people were not so different from the gods of yours, at one time," the Eldar said. He looked back at Erda. "What is it you seek, Neith?"
"Neith faded into memory long ago," the woman said. "I am Erda now, and so I shall be when my end comes for me. I ask one last thing of you, Child of Asuryan. I ask you to keep this small sliver of hope alive. I ask for the Aeldari to give shelter to this perpetual shard of Telos and her champion until this war ends, and then take her to a human world untouched by war."
"You ask much, Erda."
"I ask for everything, Eldrad Ulthran. She is everything. Without her, there can be no hope. And if humanity falls, you must know they will take the galaxy into chaos with them."
The xenos named Eldrad turned to Taylor. "And what of you, Taylor Hebert of Terra? Your life is fhaisorr'ko. You stand outside of time, and not even the greatest of my brethren can see where your path leads. Do you wish to flee this conflict?"
"I do," Tayor said simply. "And I will remember, Eldrad Ulthran. Should hope ever be reborn to humanity–should I ever be made whole again–I will remember that the Aeldari gave shelter and aid."
The xenos stood silently in thought for a long moment before finally nodding. "Very well. I bid you farewell, Erda-who-was-once-Neith. I mourn for your people. It is for the hope of our mutual species that I will honor your request. Come, we must be quick. The path to and from Terra has become treacherous even for those of us versed in the webway. We cannot come this way again."
He turned and left the hovel. Stein followed a second later, pausing at the door as Taylor hugged the ancient woman. "I'm so sorry," she told Erda.
"As am I, child," Erda said. "We will not meet again."
With those last words, Taylor joined Stein and the two followed after their xenos savior.
A/N 2: Two issues. 1) FFN. I continue to have faith in FFN, and appreciate the platform that allows all of us to post and share stories freely. But I just want to say that in the worse case scenario, where we have a catastrophic and final failure that takes FFN offline permanently, I keep all of my stories. At that point, I'll decide where to repost if necessary. I saw this acknowledging that some of my older stories have not aged well.
2) Eldrad's arrival on Earth. I am not a lore expert on 40K. I went to the vast interwebs of Reddit and asked outright if it was possible for a farseer to reach Terra during the heresy, and the answer boiled down to maybe-probably-never. For the sake of this story, Eldrad made it to Terra and Erda's call, and thus helped Taylor leave earth permanently. Which plays into Lyta's quest to find where, in the galaxy, is Taylor Hebert. (I'm sure there's a game about it somewhere).
Thanks for reading.