A/N: Review responses are in my forums as normal. Thank you to all who read and reviews. I'm glad you enjoyed the double post, because here's another. In this case, I was actually thinking about cutting Chap 40 entirely. Instead, I'll do a double post and ya'll can decide to read or not as your pleasure requires.
Chapter Thirty-Nine: Terrebis Me Per Somnia
The ship echoed with a scream. The psychic wave that accompanied the physical sound struck Etrodai like a hammer blow and sent the life-ward sprawling to the polished, onyx floor of the Process.
Nearby slave-carls cried out in slobbering fear; two fell dead where they stood just from the psychic blow.
For the longest time, Etrodai lay insensate on the black tiles of the Process floor, simply overcome. Deep instinct, though, prodded him into motion. His master cried out; something terrible must have happened.
All around him, between the tarnished pillars of the kilometer-long Process, the many tens of thousands of skulls began to clatter and chitter. The sound rose up around him like a swarm of insects. Most of the skulls were human, with bits of flesh still clinging to them. The alien ones twitched louder than the others. The sounds of the skulls filled the Process and sent the goat-headed slave carls into even more of a panic.
Though it pained him, Etrodai forced himself to his feet and drew his changling blade. He rushed toward the weeping black door behind which his master communed with the higher beings of the Immaterium. The door stood easily ten meters tall, and nearly as broad. Arcane runes adorned its surface, only visible during times of heightened anger.
They virtually glowed red now, burning with the rage of elder beings.
The urgency grew more intense in Etrodai's heart, and he found himself sprinting while the skulls chattered and hissed at him. Some terrible thing had happened, and he needed to be there for his Master. It had been thus for 90 years, since he murdered his predecessor, and it would be so until another murdered him.
He reached the steps and stood, blade raised and eyes down.
After several minutes, the skulls of the Process fell silent. That silence was worse than the sound of their calls. Into this void of sound came the wet, sucking of his master's chamber opening. The black, weeping stone of the onyx door slid into the wet marrow of its hatch seal, but revealed nothing of the interior. The inviolable chamber was not for mere mortal eyes, for into that place resided the Will of the Gods.
He emerged, violating the null field of his chamber with the harsh blades of his armor until it reformed with a moist, slurping sound behind him. Etrodai cast his eyes down respectfully, but could not help but notice the blood that ran from his master's eyes.
"Magister, what is your will?"
"My will?" The Magister's voice sounded to Etrodai brittle and angry, and yet it carried tones to it that he could have listened to for the remainder of his life and been complete. "It is no longer my will that we must serve. The others await."
Enok Innokenti, Magister and Warlord, swept past Etrodai with long, powerful strides. The old warrior turned and followed at a quick jog, deeply disturbed by his master's haste.
They moved quickly through the kilometer long Process, itself lined with the skulls of those killed by the warlord's forces. Webs hung free, flittering in the spectral winds that set the many skulls to speaking as master and servant strode past.
He did not move to the data vaults, but rather strode purposefully through the anteroom. The magister's Retinue fell in without question or hesitation, ninety-one men in seven squads of thirteen each, formed up around their master. Their armor was a dark blue, almost black in the sepulchral lighting of the process–the same as Etrodai's himself. They marched with one hand on their weapon, the other arm swinging in time.
Their visors and helmets hid their faces, which had undoubtedly been changed by their master's will and the gods he served.
They left the Process. Slaves and soldiers alike fell instantly to their knees and prostrated themselves on the deck of the massive ship the Magister claimed as his command vessel. Etrodai looked intently for any that would dare look upon His glory, ready to sheath his changeling blade in heretical blood.
None dared; few could have looked the Magister in the eyes even if they wished it.
Even for the master of the ship, traversing the many kilometers was a time-consuming affair. The lifts that carried them between the dozens of decks were themselves large enough to hold an army. After nearly half an hour of travel, they reached a chamber sealed by a void shield that was strong enough to withstand even capital ship fire.
The shield disengaged with the Magister's first touch, and the doors beyond slid open.
The Retinue took their place beyond the shield; only Etrodai followed their master within.
The ship had a captain, slaved by technology and sorcery to the ship itself. But within this chamber was the true heart not just of the ship, but of the entire warband of Enok Innokenti's command. More soldiers, armor and weapons were commanded from this room than most Imperial planetary governors could dream of.
A choir of blind psykers knelt in rows around the room, their heads split by the augments of the Dark Mechanicum to feed their psychic powers into the chamber itself. In the center of the room hung a hololithic diorama of the Sabbat Worlds, with their forces highlighted against the enemy crusade.
That shimmering view faded, and opposite formed a figure out of nightmare. Etrodai, loyal unto death and beyond to his master, still averted his eyes in respect as the arcane coordination of technology and psychic power combined to cast the warlord's voice and image across time and space.
"You felt it?" Urlock Gaur's voice burned Etrodai's mortal ears. He shivered from the utter malice and power of it.
"I felt it," Etrodai's master confirmed.
Another figure appeared, and then another. One by one, the magisters of the Chaos Forces of the Sabbat Worlds formed. The psykers moaned as the conference drained them of their life essence. None would survive the conversation to come, Etrodai knew. Even if the drain did not kill them, the knowledge they transmitted ensured their deaths.
"The Will of the Gods was clear," Anakwanar Sek declared. "We cannot do the god's will while fighting each other. Since Nadzybar's fall, the Enemy has encroached ever forward as we squabble amongst ourselves. No more. Unite under my banner, and we will…"
"While the Blood Pact is mine to command, you will not be Archon," Gaur declared. The two immediately began to squabble.
Sudden cold gripped Etrodai's heart. Hoarfroast began to creep across the floor. The psyker's moans went silent as they lifted their heads in prayer. The other magisters continued to bicker, until a voice slid across theirs like a blade slicing through unwilling flesh. It was deep, and smooth, and yet it penetrated every iota of their beings.
DID NONE OF YOU UNDERSTAND? YOU, WHO CALL YOURSELVES MAGISTERS?"
Etrodai's own master said nothing. Anakwanar Sek, who for many years was high among the forces of Chaos under Archon Nadzybar, felt no such caution. "Who intrudes on this meeting?"
The face that appeared in the center of the hololithe table was larger than the others. Three massive horns protruded from the head, which featured a stunningly beautiful face the likes of which legions of old would have worshiped. Eyes that burned with forbidden knowledge regarded all those within the chamber.
Etrodai's master knelt. He did not hesitate; and if he knelt to this being, that Etrodai prostrated himself, for who was he to be higher than his master?
The others slowly did the same.
EVEN HERE IN SICARUS, I FELT THE GOD'S WRATH. THE ARCHENEMY OF CHAOS, ONE THOUGHT LOST EONS AGO, AWAKENS. THE THREE FACES OF HERESY WALK NOW AMONG THE MORTALS. ALL THE GODS ARE ALIGNED IN THIS TRUTH–THE THREE FACES OF TELOS MUST NEVER BE WHOLE. ALL ELSE IS INSIGNIFICANT. ALL EGO IS EMPTY. ONLY OBEDIENCE WILL BE PERMITTED. SAY THE WORDS, OR PERISH.
"I obey, Master," Enok said.
The others echoed.
THEN HEAR ME AND OBEY ME NOW. NOTHING ELSE MATTERS BUT THE DEATH OF THE REBORN SAINT, SABBAT. NOTHING ELSE MATTERS BUT THE LIVE CAPTURE OF THE ETERNAL ONE, TAYLOR HEBERT. DO THESE THINGS, OR DIE IN THE EFFORT. MY CHILDREN COME. OTHER SERVANTS WILL AS WELL. INNOKENTI, YOU ARE CLOSEST TO THEM. YOU SHALL TAKE YOUR SHIPS AND TRAP THEM. FAIL IN THIS, AND YOU ANSWER NOT TO ME, BUT TO OUR MASTERS. SAY THE WORDS.
"I obey, Master," Innokenti said. "I shall take my fleet to Hagia and trap them there. I will kill this saint, and capture this Eternal One."
YES, YOU SHALL. MY DARK COUNCIL COMES. THEY WILL NOW LEAD YOUR FORCES. THIS IS THE WILL OF THE GODS.
The face disappeared. The choir of psykers cried out in agony as, one-by-one, the augments in their skulls sparked and burned. A hundred psykers died in a chain reaction of unleashed psyhic energy that did not end until the entire chamber went silent.
Etrodai remained prostrate, unsure of his master's mood. He, like his fellows, had been in contention to lead the Chaos Forces. But now that seemed no longer possible.
"Master, what is your will?"
Enok Innokenti stood, sorcerous power flowing around him like white-green fire. "A glorious day! A great demon prince has shared the word of our gods with us! A glorious day. The fleet is to make all haste to Hagia. We shall emerge from the Immaterium as close to the planet as we can, I don't care of the risk."
"And our forces in the world below?"
"Leave them. They will fight and die in the name of their gods. What better death could they hope for? All ships to Hagia!"
"It shall be done, Master!"
~~Revelation~~
~~Revelation~~
In the aftermath of the battle, all thought of discussion or planning was put aside as Sabbat walked among the many wounded. Taylor followed and watched as her other self healed the surviving Ghosts with little more than a touch and a blessing. There wasn't a golden apple in sight; it looked more like Warp magic than anything she'd researched regarding Telos' original healing power.
Men and women she'd fought beside wept uncontrollably as they were restored from their wounds, some of which were immediately life threatening. But even with Sabbat's healing, Taylor saw with growing horror just how many Ghosts had been killed in that final, desperate battle. If not for Sabbat killing those Word Bearers, everyone would have died.
Taylor couldn't have said if hours passed, or just minutes after the battle. She moved around in a state of befuddlement, unable to truly believe that another version of herself was moving among her men, healing them with glances and waves of her hand. Taylor knew in theory it could happen—she had heard the prophecies of Telos return in one form or another over thousands of years.
But it had been so long. The hope and faith she'd clung to for the first twenty thousand years could not possibly have survived the last ten thousand.
When Sabbat could find no more soldiers to heal, she walked back to the Shrinehold and asked the hovering, anxious ayatanis for a moment with her 'sister.' And Taylor followed because what else could she do?
And so there they were, in the very sepulcher that once held Sabbat's body. The glass casket was opened and empty–proof that it was not a new body Sabbat occupied, but her old one somehow remade. She looked seventeen, but Taylor suspected that was part of the glamor.
Sabbat didn't meet Taylor's eyes. Instead, she made a point of looking around the place of her own internment until, with a muttered "Finally!" she reached under the right corner of her now-empty casket and pressed something.
Taylor heard a loud thunk, and then a grinding sound. Curious, she stepped around the casket only to see the floor sinking down into a narrow, steep stairwell. "A tinker lab?"
Sabbat opened her mouth, then closed it. After a second's thought, she smiled. "Just call me Dragon. Want to see behind the curtain?"
Without waiting for an answer, Sabbat started down and Taylor, without any reason to do otherwise, followed.
A shaft of directed sunlight bounced down through various mirrors through a seemingly endless pit that stretched down into the core of the mountain. Just three meters underneath the sepulcher, Taylor saw a bus-sized stone hanging horizontally in the air in the center of the cylindrical pit, supported by nothing. In the reflected beams of sunlight, she caught the hint of alien runes on it's oily black surface.
"What are they?"
"Magical load stones," Sabbat said. She led the way down the stairs, which were carved into the granite of the mountain underneath the shrinehold. "When I first arrived on this world, these stones spanned this continent, nineteen of them. They created a highly localized glacier that formed a defensive wall to hold back the chaos corruption that lingered in the north. After I'd established myself as a saint, I came back and repurposed the stones, with a little help from a few psykers."
"To do what?"
"To revive me if you ever stood before my casket."
Taylor tried to process that, but there was only one possible conclusion. "The Emperor told you to do it, didn't he?"
"He strongly implied I should," Sabbat admitted. "He usually spoke to me in dreams or visions, when he could. He was slipping–his soul was already so fragmented that it was difficult for him to bring any portion of his consciousness to bear."
"Did you approve? Of what he did? Of the Imperium he ended up creating?"
"That's a loaded question. You know we're the same person, right?"
Something about the question—the tone or the arrogance behind it, rubbed Taylor wrong. "I've lived for almost forty thousand years. Twenty thousand years of real time, at least. I watched us rise to the highest levels of civilization and then watched us fall to dust and barbarism. I've seen more of my own children die than you can even count. We had the same origins, Sabbat. But we are not the same." The words came out harsher than she intended, but Taylor found she couldn't bring herself to regret them.
Sabbat considered it a moment before nodding. "Right. That's fair. I knew you were out there, but I had no idea how I could ever find you. And no, to answer your question, I don't approve. I never did. It's horrifying. I accidentally set off an STC during my first years here, and it triggered an exploratory fleet that would have burned this entire world to ash if they saw how deep the chaos corruption ran here. I didn't agree to serve Him because I agreed with his Imperium. I agreed to serve to save my new world. To save the people I'd come to love."
They continued their long walk down, illuminated only by the shaft of reflected sunlight.
After a few moments, Sabbat broke the heavy silence between them. "I spoke to an avatar of Pythia Sabbatina XV. She told me a little about you."
Taylor's spiraling thoughts came crashing to a halt as the name brought up long-suppressed memories. "What?"
"It was you, wasn't it?" It felt so odd, hearing how she must have sounded to others when she was hopeful. There was a moment of discognizance, as if hearing her own voice recorded and played back.
"I…I've known hundreds of Pythia over the years. I'm not…" Her memories caught up to her raging thoughts, and suddenly she did remember. She remembered because it was the last time she saw Kratos of Sparta, God of War. After he shattered his swords, he forever after became solely Malcador.
"Yeah, I guess that was me. Where did you find it?"
"Here, on this world. Hagia was the last colony of the Telosian church. They landed and founded the colony right before their STC became corrupted. And many thousands of years after that, a traitor marine found a piece of that robe we enchanted for Sarah back on Earth, and used it to summon me across time and space."
Taylor considered all of the possibilities of where her other self would have been summoned from, but decided to ask to save time. "Summoned you from where?"
"From my death," Sabbat said. Her glowing eyes stared with painful intensity. "You've seen thousands of years, Taylor. Tens of thousands. For me, it was a split second of dying when we exploded, to being pulled into this world. I was our original age when I came here. Sixteen and burned so badly my fingers were gone before I was able to heal myself. I lived perhaps two human lifetimes here as Telos of the Trees until the Imperium came, and to ensure that the world was not purged, I agreed to serve the Emperor as one of his saints. All I had to do was give up my divinity. I did it using the same magic mother used, but instead of a potion I enchanted the bifrost eyes before removing them."
Taylor blinked at her other self. "He made you surrender your godhood? Really?"
"He never claimed to be good. Not to me. He was just the best of several very bad options."
For some reason, Taylor found that darkly hilarious. She thought of all the speeches he made throughout Unity and the Great Crusade about the greater good. About guiding humanity out of its barbaric past and into a bright, shining future. All the children he stole and perverted into gods and monsters. His bright, shiny future didn't work out.
"His Imperium makes fascism look tame," she said when she caught her breath. "Genocide is a side-hobby here."
"I know." Sabbat refused to look at her as they continued walking down. "I spent a lifetime fighting for it. Not as long as you, I know. But I spent a century fighting for the Imperium. I'm not a child either, Taylor."
They finally reached the bottom of the stairs. Taylor didn't quite understand what she was looking at. She knew it was a tree, but she didn't understand why an alien-looking tree would be at the exact center of the shaft of reflected sunlight, directly over which hung nineteen massive stones like magnets held end-to-end in a chain between the tree and the sepulcher.
The tree… "Is that…?"
"A holy tree," Sabbat said. "The descendants of your colonists called them weirwoods. They were the first gods of this world, and sheltered it from chaos just like our parent's pantheons did. It held my soul until the conditions were right, and you came to me. Just like He said you would."
In her tens of thousands of years–her thousands of lifetimes–Taylor had seen many impossible things. Psykers in this imperium, both loyalist and followers of Chaos, could do things that only gods could have done in man's earliest history. There were many who could have been a real threat even to their father, the literal God of War. And Sabbat was both, she knew. Both Vanir goddess and Warp sorceress. Her healing was not a function of her native magic, but whatever Warp powers the Emperor granted her as his saint.
Still, she felt an odd thrill when Sabbat stepped into the white bark of the tree as if it were a doorway, and emerged moments later.
She held a single gold acorn in her hands, an acorn Taylor had not seen in twenty-five thousand years. "That was in your sepulchur. How'd you move it into the tree?"
"The one on the sepulcher was just a painted acorn. This…" She held it up critically. "Like I said, I spoke to the avatar of this world's first colonist and the church's last Pythia. She held it in trust and gave it to me when I saw her. I've held it ever since, waiting for you, or the other."
Even as she spoke, she refused to look at Taylor.
It then dawned on her why. "Why can't you look at me? Is it because I have no soul?"
Sabbat finally looked up, and winced almost instinctively as she did so. "I've met blanks before, but that was before I had all of my divinity restored. It's…I'm sorry. You're just hard to look at with the bifrost eyes."
"You see the truth, still?"
"Not in you. I can't see your truth. You're a blank."
"You have my soul, what did you think would happen?"
Sabbat opened her mouth, and then closed it with a wry smile. "I suppose you're right. When I was reborn, almost all the history of what happened after I died was lost. Can you tell me what happened?"
"You want thirty-five hundred years of history?"
"Broad strokes will do."
The tension between them hurt, but for one split second Taylor chuckled, as did her doppelganger. "Mother used to say that all the time," Taylor said.
"Usually when Emma and us got caught doing something we weren't supposed to do."
She threw her other half a bone. "You look just like her, you know."
"Funny, I was going to say the same. Not surprising, I guess. Tell me, Taylor. Please, what happened? When did you first return? What happened to dad?"
It took Taylor a moment to register the question. "You didn't know about dad?"
"I went from being burned to my bones in the center of Scion's core to waking up on Hagia over thirty-five thousand years later. I only know what I could read later, and most records of those years were lost. Tell me about Dad, please? You saw him again, after you woke up? When was that?"
"The records weren't lost during the long night," Taylor said. "Most were lost during the Heresy. Dad and the Emperor hoarded eons of information and records in the palace, and half of it was lost during the siege. What was left was locked away by dad's minions."
"Dad had minions? Wait, back up. When did you first wake up again?"
"About two weeks after Sarah Rothschild died."
Sabbat frowned. "I'm sorry, I don't know who…you mean Sarah Livsey? She married?"
This time it was Taylor's turn to frown, only to shake it off. "Yeah. She married and had three kids–two sons and a daughter. By the time she died, she was revered almost as much as the Pope. She lived to be a hundred and twenty-four."
"That's…"
"I married her great grandson."
"...amazing. What?"
Taylor shrugged and chugged the rest of her tea. "We were sixteen when we died. We hadn't lived at all, not really. We'd never kissed a boy or gone on a date. We never went on vacation, except to the cabin. We were quite literally bred as a weapon, and never had any fate but to die fighting. Then I was reborn. Fourteen again in the early twenty-second century. I didn't know where else to go, so I went to our church. They called me a miracle and…well, funded my life. Went to school. Got older. Met Reginald Rothschild III in law school. Had a family."
For a long time, Sabbat just stared as if enthralled. "You had children?"
Taylor snorted. "I've had more kids than I can count. But that first time? I had five. Three boys and two girls. I hated…"
"Being an only child, I remember. But Dad? Did he know?"
"He knew." Taylor debated on how much to tell her. "Dad changed, Sabbat. I don't think you'd have recognized him in the end."
"Changed how?"
"He put down his weapons. Once he aligned himself with the Emperor, he abandoned his own divinity and embraced the Warp. He lasted tens of thousands of years, serving the Emperor the entire time, seems like. I was usually just an afterthought."
"He's…" Sabbat swallowed convulsively. "He's dead, now, then. I wondered. Did he die well?"
"He died in agony. His soul was burned into nothingness. Just like everyone else, the Emperor called on him to sacrifice his life for the Emperor's vision. And Dad did. I found out later. He sat on the Golden Throne and lasted just long enough for the Emperor to kill Horus."
Sabbat stared back at her, eyes going wide and jaw hanging open. "What?"
"Dad became Malcador. And the Emperor burned him up and threw him away. Don't feel special, the bastard did the same thing to several of my kids over the millennia. It's what he does–he makes everyone else die for his vision."
"He's suffering too, you know. I've felt it!"
"Yeah. He ran out of friends and family to sacrifice. Are we done here? I need to go talk to Gaunt."
It was probably unfair. Taylor was old enough to accept and recognize she was being unfair to her other self. But as much as it hurt Sabbat to look at her soulless form, it hurt her far more to see what she could have had. How much she could have done over her tens of thousands of years of life.
She started back up the long flight of stairs.