A/N: Chap 26 Review Responses are in my forums. This is the last Chapter in Book 2. We are definitely going to be seeing Lyta again after this chapter, but Book III will be a primarily Taylor POV. Thanks to all who read and review. I appreciate you.
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Extende Manum Tuam in Caelum
Hovash Phalias, Lord Inquisitor, was dead. He was the second lord inquisitor to die fighting Lyta's fights. His night-world hierophant was dead. A quarter of his troopers and senior officer were dead. The augmetic ogryn he employed died fighting the bloodthirster demon back at the citadel.
His crusader interrogator, the Sororitas crusader Skeld, died in flame.
In fact, the only survivor of his immediate retinue was an assassin. The woman looked slim and lithe, using speed and agility over brute power. Her cameleo armor consisted of small matt-black plates woven tight to her form and providing a scattering field that made her all but invisible when active. She wielded a power sword that she'd sheathed, and now knelt with her helmet off near where her lord died, exposing a copper brown face that revealed densely applied ritual tattoos as she prayed silently.
Death cult.
Artigan made his way to her. "Phalias's people were new recruits too, from Luna," he said in a low tone. "First time on Terra for most of them."
"How many?"
Artigan shook his head. "Eighteen troopers left, and ten arbiters with Kurzmann. I have Dols and Gabon rigging a conveyance for Lord Moro."
"Smart, thanks." She looked around in the dark, foul-smelling sewer. She tried to imagine just how old the place was. "Gather what supplies we can and prepare to move out on foot," Lyta said. "Strip the Valkyries of anything that they don't need to fly. We have no idea what we're heading into."
He nodded and turned to make ready.
Lyta drifted over to the crashed Shade where Maerya was placing field-medicae cuffs on the stumps of Moro's legs, not so dissimilar to what Eta Bequin had on her arm. The null and would-be assassin sat near them inside the crashed vehicle, watching with a blank expression as Maerya worked. She was eating a protean bar as well, likely the first food she'd had in some time.
Looking around, Lyta realized several of the team were taking the opportunity to eat a ration bar. A good idea was a good idea; she took one out herself and ate as she sat painfully on the rails of the open door of the small ship.
Caligus was prowling the perimeter for the sorcerer.
"It'll be at least an hour on foot," Moro said once she settled. He seemed to understand her unspoken question. "There are some dangerous creatures in these tunnels, but the light might scare some off."
Neither believed that would happen.
"That sorcerer is going to follow," Lyta noted.
"Of course. All of this was just to stop you." Moro's injuries would not have been life threatening for a younger man. But he counted centuries, and even with the power of rejuvenat treatments, he was at the end of the most optimistic span of human life. He gazed at her now not as an Inquisitor should, but rather as a penitent praying in a basilica.
"Your ocular implant is gone. You've been restored. When?"
"The Fortress," Lyta admitted. "I'm not sure what happened."
"The Saint appeared and saved her from one of Rassilo's disciples," Maerya said absently. She injected a pain medicant into Moro's thigh before settling back. Her hands hovered near the injured inquisitor, but did not touch. "The inquisitor was killed, and Interrogator Rothid restored as you see her."
"Like Luna?"
"Yes, Lord. It was the same, but even more pronounced."
Lyta blinked at that. "Rassilo told me there wasn't any security footage of Luna."
Moro shook his head. "There was auspex and picter readings from multiple sources. The Inquisition suppressed all we could find. I suspect Lord Caligus found some we missed. It's how I knew it was time to ask for you. Don't ask more–we can't risk compromising the loyal Inquisition."
She wanted to ask more; the loyal member of the Ordos sounded very much like a conspiracy within the Inquisition itself. Glancing at Eta, she said, "And what of the Cognitae?"
"There's never been one, consistent Cognitae," Moro explained. "At least, not that we know of. The organizations rise, fall, reorganize or claim the title from past efforts. Sometimes they oppose the Imperium openly, other times they believe they do the Emperor's will. And from somewhere outside of time, different elements are played against each other."
Bequin said nothing; she ate in silence and stared at them with dark eyes. So close, Lyta felt a dull, oily weight from the woman's disruption of her Warp power.
"I still don't know where the saint is," Lyta said. "We don't know if they have the other…key. We're operating on Faith alone."
"We always have," Moro countered. "It is faith alone that has sustained the Imperium for the past ten thousand years. Faith and sacrifice. But never hope. Hope is discouraged or destroyed, because it can lead to lies, or so the liturgy says. But without hope of a better future, we fall further and further back into an idealized past and a decrepit present."
Lyta considered what Malcador told her. "Perhaps, Lord."
Artigan walked back to join them. "We have a conveyance for you, Lord. It won't be comfortable, but it will work."
"Let's see it, then, Commander," Moro said. He sat up with a pained wince.
The conveyance was the co-pilot's seat of the valkyrie the sorcerer destroyed, removed and mounted on a series of suspensor buoys and attached to a pair of metal ribbings torn from the destroyed ship's hull. Moro glared at it suspiciously. "I'd almost rather walk."
"The absence of feet would make that problematic," Maerya helpfully pointed out
A pair of troopers lifted Moro from his place in the Shade and positioned him in the cushioned chair as gently as possible. The chair wobbled dangerously, until Maerya steadied it with her hand.
"I take it back, this will work nicely. Well done, Commander," the Inquisitor said.
The assassin, Khazaad, drifted over. She kept her visor down now that her prayers were done. "We pursue the traitor?"
The woman sounded angry. As Lyta climbed out herself, she realized that Phaelias' people would not be comfortable with their true mission. By the standards of the Inquisition, Lyta was now a heretic. She was actively searching for a divine being other than the Emperor, and doing so was the height of heresy and treason.
Moro realized this as well. "We won't find him," the old inquisitor said. "But then again, we don't have to. He will stop at nothing to prevent us from doing the Emperor's will. We continue on my original mission, and I have no doubt the traitor will strike again."
"And what is that mission?" The assassin was the last of Phaelia's retinue alive. She spoke with a definite accent, as if Gothic were not her native language. "I do not understand what we are doing here if not to destroy the traitor sorcerer."
"We are doing the Emperor's will," Moro said. "For how else could you explain the presence of our friend, Lord Caligus?"
Moro's timing was perfect, as the black-armored custodes arrived at that moment.
The assassin turned her helm to glance at the giant. "I have vowed the death of the traitor. You believe he will follow?"
"I know it," Moro said.
"Then I come."
"And we will be glad to have you," Moro said. "Commander, Interrogator, get our people formed up. Two klicks further down the tunnel. Be on guard, there are other creatures down here."
They formed a line along one side of the sewage tunnel,
Kurzmann and his Arbiter troopers formed the core of the group, while the better trained and more heavily armed Ordos troopers took position in front and behind. The thick, sticky air seemed to swallow the light beams of their helmet lumens. The darkness beyond each narrow beam felt absolute and endless, giving up its mystery only at a direct look and illumination. The air felt hot and humid, steaming their visors every time they opened their helms.
There were creatures in the tunnel with them–pale, scaly monsters that fled the flash of their lumens. She wondered if this had always been a sewer, or if it was an arterial conveyance of some kind. She thought of the tunnels that Taylor Hebert and Stein used to escape the palace ten thousand years before. Unlike those dry, abandoned tunnels, these were littered with massive bits of debris and obscene-looking fungal growths of all shapes. Some appeared to glow. She could see the massive support beams overhead crossing the convex curve of the tunnel.
She switched her helm to prey sight that brought everything into much better focus despite the lumen beams. With her helmet on and a new vox bead, she heard Artigan issuing orders. "Conserve charges. If it's not biting you or throwing warp witchery at you, don't worry about it."
The further in they went, the more alien the tunnel felt. They came across a nest of creatures that scuttled away, but not before Lyta saw bone thin, humanoid builds bereft of hair or skin tone. Some went unclothed, their bodies covered in sores or infections. It was difficult to count the number of mutants she saw, but it was significant. Malformed heads or limbs, missing features or too many. All of them scurried away like insects from the lumens at the ends of their lasguns, or that floated ahead of them.
The mutant creatures did not attack them. In the stormtrooper's carapace armor and her more exquisitely made power armor, even if those mutants did attack they would die. The stormtrooper hellfire lasguns could vary between power and velocity, and with a mass of unarmored, weak opponents, her small force could easily mow down hundreds or even thousands of these wretches.
It would waste charges on their guns, though, and do nothing to aid their mission but make it easier for the sorcerer to find them.
"Here," Lord Moro said.
He flashed a hand lumen and Lyta saw a large crater in the floor of the tunnel. As they approached, though, Lyta realized it wasn't a crater. It was a clearing. Millenia of debris and detritus had been removed, or never allowed to accumulate, forming a two meter-deep area large enough to hold a valkyrie or many other small fliers. The floor looked ancient–pitted rockcrete with a rusted line carved into its surface and filled with the dust of ages, forming an odd, reddish line bisecting its surface.
The clearing ran all the way to the curved interior wall and an ancient, rusted iron door. The security pad next to it shone with a single red light. "Either the Rosette, or your blood, Interrogator," Moro said. "Your father made sure it had all of his children's gene codes."
Lyta used Lord Moro's rosette. She held it close to the security panel, and the device's ancient machine spirit read the codes of the rosette and accepted it. The light flashed gold, and the door swung open silently. It had been maintained, it seemed.
"Another klick. We're almost there."
Lyta nodded, then stepped aside to let the vanguard lead them in. The new tunnel was only a fraction of the size of the one they left, wide enough to permit a small ground car, perhaps. However, it was relatively clean, insofar as it lacked fungal growths and sewage seepage. The floors had two of those rusted red lines carved in the rockcrete, but otherwise it was unremarkable.
It was not straight, though. The tunnel curved repeatedly, and had several dead-end side tunnels that felt like they would make very effective killing fields or ambush spots.
At last, the tunnel ended at a large pair of adamantine doors, ribbed with beams of ceremite and anchored into the surrounding walls firmly enough to withstand even armored assault. Despite their good condition, Lyta's power spoke of age almost unending. These were the doors built at Malcador's personal orders.
Artigan carried Moro up beside Lyta as she considered what might lay beyond. She couldn't find any security panels at all. "How does it open?"
"It opens with prayer," Moro said. "Speak her name in your thoughts. Pray, and if you have faith, the door opens. It was the final test for all who came before. It was…Lyta, it was a test your brother failed, and you and your sister never had a chance to take."
Lyta stepped to the door and stared at the pitted, ancient surface. Telos, hear my prayer. I am your daughter. I have been so lost for so long. I pray for hope. Please guide my steps, so that I can guide yours.
At first nothing happened, and a crushing sense of failure settled over her shoulders. But then a line of white appeared before her, so bright that the stylus-thin line cast the tunnel behind them in blinding light. The door swung outward, the meter-thick edges almost brushing against Lyta's armor.
The light within made her visor polarize, but the polarization didn't work. She took her helmet off entirely and felt her eyes watering.
Two trees rose from a mound of green, living grass. They rose impossibly high, a hundred meters easily. Their bark was a smooth white color, bleached by the ages, but the branches and the leaves were a brilliant, painfully bright white-gold, as if they had captured Sol itself and held the star captive within their boughs.
Each trunk was as wide as a rhino transport. She drifted in, her breath coming in short, pained pants from her injuries. The dome rose up high above, topping at easily two hundred meters high or more to encompass the trees easily.
"What is this place? Interrogator, Inquisitor, where have you led us?"
Arbiter Kurzmann sounded angry. She turned and saw him staring at the dome walls. The dome was so huge that the curve at the ground was barely noticeable. On that wall, she saw the impossible. Though the rockcrete had cracked in many places, what remained was covered in life-like depictions of a Terra from before the diaspora of man. Oceans and clouds in blue skies that glimmered under the golden light of the two trees.
Her breath caught in her throat and her broken ribs throbbed as she stared at a mural of people in the painted landscape. People sat in a circle around a winged girl surrounded by a halo of light. A stark mountain rose behind her. The girl bore the same face that Lyta had seen in her memories. This was Telos as she was.
Among those that looked up in adoration at the winged figure was a woman in a white dress. She sat behind the figure, while others sat in front or were in profile. But the blonde woman sat behind, facing squarely out from the picture. The artist depicted her face with almost photo-realistic quality, capturing the turn of her nose and what, under the lumens, appeared to be green eyes.
It was Lyta's face.
"Throne preserve us," she heard Artigan gasp. "Lord...is that you?"
"Your soul is very pretty," Maerya said as she stepped to Lyta's side. "Younger than it should be, and yet ancient as well. You are a saint, Amelyta Rothid. But you are not a saint of the Emperor. You are a saint of she-who-was and will-be. I wonder…"
She never had a chance to finish.
The ear-ringing crack of a bolter pistol turned their attention back behind them. To her horror, Lyta saw one of Artigan's Ordos troopers falling with a shattered helm. The arbiter troopers, led by Kurzman, had as one drawn their weapons and fired on Artigan's men, as did Phaelias's troopers.
Caligus began to move, but a dozen hellgun and boltgun muzzles turned in his direction.
"Lord, please do not move," Kurzmann said to Caligus. He pulled off his helmet and then with deliberate slowness removed an Inquisitorial rosette. "I am Inquisitor Cordic Ghorman of the Ordo Hereticus. Listen to me now, all of you. I was assigned by Lord Inquisitor Rassilo, before her murder, to investigate the heresy of Abrin Moro. Lord Inquisitor Abrin Moro, Interrogator Amelyta Rothid, Psyker Adept Maerya, I charge you with heresy and treachery against the Throne, as well as consorting with heretics and cultists to pervert the faith and Imperial truth. You will be taken from this place and…"
As he spoke, Lyta felt herself tensing more and more in anticipation of the coming violence. Something was coming, of that she had no doubt. But whatever was coming, it would not be what the new Inquisitor thought it would be.
When the Chaos Sorcerer chose that moment to attack, she felt no surprise. Fear and dismay, yes, but no surprise.
With half their soldiers dead at the hands of the other half, the troopers proved little challenge to the traitor chaos sorcerer. He stepped through the open doors as if he were a master of the chamber. His shouted spells and curses made Lyta's ears ache and her head throb.
The man she knew as Kurzmann–Inquisitor Ghorman–spun with a startled shout and fired a well-made bolter pistol, but the traitor marine gave him no opportunity to actually hit his target. Green-tinted balefire blasted into Ghorman with such heat and intensity the inquisitor barely managed a scream before the entire upper half of his body splattered into a dense mist.
Demonic terrors sprang from the ether at the sorcerer's shouted spells, quickly overwhelming the stunned troopers that Ghorman commanded.
In the chaos, Caligus once again sprang to action. As powerful and dangerous as the Custodes was, however, the chaos sorcerer appeared to have learned from his first encounter. The warp seemed to explode into the domed chamber, causing the air itself to shatter as a wall of concussive force struck the Custodes like a mobile brick wall and sent him flying against a wall.
Eta Bequin tried once again to use her pariah aura to disrupt the sorcerer. The demonic creatures faltered as they attacked her, unable to maintain their corporeal form in the presence of her null field. But the sorcerer did not just possess warp magic; he was Astartes. Even one handed, and heavily wounded, he spun the staff Lyta thought he lost in the tunnel and struck the Cognitae assassin in the side.
The slight woman went flying with a cry, struck the wall opposite Caligus, and crumbled senseless to the ground.
A shimmer of Warp force slammed into Moro, blasting him from his impromptu conveyance.
Artigan took position in front of Lord Moro, firing his hellgun-pattern repeater lasrifle. Lyta fired her own laspistols as fast as she could, but the air before the sorcerer seemed to catch each shot as if they were toys being tossed by children. Nothing even got close to him.
Maerya screamed and raised her hands, and to Lyta's shock unleashed an astonishing Warp lightning attack.
The blow startled the sorcerer, throwing him back for a brief second. Maerya was far more powerful than Lyta had ever realized. And yet…she was still human. She hadn't lost herself wholly to the warp. There were some thresholds she would simply not cross, for fear of her very soul.
The sorcerer knew no such boundaries. His soul was forfeit eons ago.
The atmosphere of the dome crackled and burned as Warp energies clashed with each other. Lyta's mind throbbed under the assault as she ran, squatting low, to check on Moro. She had only moments, though.
The sorcerer overcame Maerya with a brutal laugh and a shouted spell that surrounded the young psyker in a pocket of vacuum.
Lyta turned and saw the woman paling and gasping desperately for breath as the agent of the Great Enemy slowly, cruelly suffocated her. Caligus was still on the ground, either dead or so severely injured not even he could defend them. Artigan fired so many lasrounds his hellgun barrels were glowing crimson from the heat and threatening to melt, but no shot made its way to their target.
We're going to die. Whether it was the coldly analytical aspect of her power, or just common sense, Lyta understood in that moment that this sorcerer was far stronger than the one she faced on Luna. He overwhelmed not just an entire force of Ordos troopers, but easily swatted down a Custodes with his magic.
Short of another miracle, what hope did she, Amelyta Rothid, have against a traitor marine and chaos sorcerer?
Even so, she had no intention of dying easily. She left the panting Moro on the ground, drew her power sword, and faced the enemy. Artigan was slowly giving ground, unable to do anything with his weapon, while demons crowded the floor around the ancient, sacred trees of the lost Terran goddess of hope. Where was hope, Lyta wondered, in the face of such evil?
The answer came in the form of a hammer. The hammer was larger than she was, by a fair margin. It slammed down on a three-armed horror of a demon with such force the Warp-spawn was instantly destroyed and sent screaming back to the Immaterium.
Their savior stepped from between the trees. Lyta did not know if he had always been there, or not. But what she did know was that he towered well over three meters–taller than any creature she'd seen since the bloodthirster. He came wearing the most extravagant, scaled green artificer armor she had ever seen or even imagined. Dark, impossibly black skin covered a massive bald head, while red eyes regarded everything with preternatural calm.
The sorcerer's reaction was almost more extreme than Lyta's own shock. The man screamed in rage. He lifted himself with his Warp power, rising into the air in a nimbus of flame and sparkling Warp plasma. He lashed out at the new figure with fire and force; with lightning and plasma.
The giant in armor charged forward, moving faster even than Caligus. His massive hammer swung like a pendulum, sparkling with ancient, archeotech power. The sorcerer screamed again, beyond mere words, and summoned a powerful shield of Warp energy. Lyta's power informed her the shield could have withstood a lascannon blast from a capital ship.
It shattered like glass before the giant hammer. The impossible giant's blow was so powerful that it compressed the air itself, forming a contrail in its passage that pushed against Lyta. It slammed into the sorcerer's shield, and then through it. The traitor made one last cry before the massive hammer's head slammed into his helmet.
Not only did the hammer crush the sorcerer' head, it slammed his entire body to and then deep into the dirt floor. The single armored gauntlet and the two ceremite boots jerked and spasmed with residual nerves and warp power before the sorcerer went still.
Before Lyta could truly comprehend what was happening, she found a sword at her throat. "What is happening?"
The assassin, Khazaad, stood behind her.
Lyta had no answer. She could only watch as the dark-skinned giant with the red eyes turned back toward her.
In a voice that sounded like mountains grinding against each other, he said, "I am Vulkan. I am the Emperor's son. Release her."
The absolute, utter note of command could not have been ignored by anyone, not even a death cult assassin. Khazaad removed her sword from Lyta's throat and backed away. "What is happening?" she asked again, even less sure than the last.
Vulkan ignored her and instead stepped toward Lyta. His red eyes glanced to the murals that held Lyta's face, then back to her. "I have been waiting for you for a long time, Pythia."
Pythia. The word carried so much meaning. "I don't understand how."
"It is as my father willed," Vulkan said. "After the War of the Beast, he came to me in my dreams and commanded me to stand guard over this place after my last rebirth. To ensure that hope was not lost. But it was you, the priestess reborn, who was to guide her home."
It felt like too much. Too impossible. "But I don't know what to do," she said. "I have the acorn, but…"
"Lyta, come here."
Moro sounded so very weak. With effort, she turned her attention from the impossible Primarch, ten thousand years out of time, and rushed to her lord's side. Moro was panting, his face pale as bone. Whatever the sorcerer struck him with, it did far more damage than just cutting off his legs.
"Lord?"
With one shaking, bloodied hand, Abrin Moro removed a filthy militarum patch. It looked like a sergeant's insignia, of a regiment she didn't recognize. Her power quietly whispered to her of a powerful resonance, unlike any that she'd seen or felt before.
"What is it?"
"It was hers," Moro said, gasping a little between shallow breaths. "The last thing I have of hers that she touched. That she valued. It will guide you the rest of the way. It will tell you where she is. I'm…I have faith. I believe it will work."
Maerya crawled toward the ancient, badly injured inquisitor. She bled from her ears and eyes, and her hands were shaking violently as she reached the old man she seemed to love so much. She didn't speak, she simply curled up beside him as if seeking comfort.
"Did you know a primarch was here?"
Moro's smile looked almost mischievous, even as he struggled to draw his next breath. "How else could I be so sure that we did the Emperor's will? The dragon that guarded the trees was set there by our god emperor himself. His own son."
"It is time, Amelyta Rothid of the Terran Rothchilds," Vulkan said. His voice was so deep; his frame so impossibly large. "It is time for you to guide the Sigillite's daughter home."
None of it felt real. A figure out of myth and liturgy stood towering over her. Behind, another giant of myth, the Custodes Caligus, was slowly picking himself up from the ground. And in front of her, a man she realized had been guiding her steps her whole life, lay staring urgently at her with a filthy militarum rank badge in his hands.
"What if I refuse?" The question came from the back of her mind.
"If there is no choice, there is no humanity," Vulkan said. "But you would not be here, now–you would not be who you are–if refusal was ever an option. Like Moro, you are a creature of faith and loyalty. You are exactly where you are meant to be. Do your duty, Lyta, Pythia of Telos."
Her hands shook as she reached for the badge. "For her," Lyta said as she took the badge and immediately began to fall into the shadows of memory.