The Liberator's Day Off (part 4)
It's amazing how, one second, the air can be completely clear, and the next, filled with a towering mass of hellishly black skeletal metal and sickly mephitic illumination. The Eldar crouched as if to leap away, but wave of one spindly, metallic hand froze him in place. My hand dove for my bolt pistol while my own knees crouched to spring away.
"I'm quite offended, my dear Liberator. I am far, *far* more dramatic than some a 90-year-old harlequin child n the process of screwing up his Masquerade as a 900 year old Major Player. The real Leirahaz? That's would be a prize worthy of my galleries. But a cheap, childish knockoff careless enough to run into *my* galleries to avoid a minor, survivable beating? Youthful folly is the universes' most abundant resource, right up there with ancient cynicism. Scarcely unique- hardly worth my attention, or Solomnace would have collapesed into a black hole under the sheer weight of such a medicore, bloated collection. An unpreposessing sprout like this, in my museaum? I woudn't even carry it in my gift shop's discount bin."
Time, on the battlefield, is the most precious commodity, and monologuing enemy is the Emperor's Gift. The blabbering xenobot gave me more than enough time to feint with my bolt pistol and toss a looted Astartes grenade straight into the creature's immobile metal face.
To absolutely no effect.
My reflexes tried to carry me away, but another wave of one of those spindly hands pinned me in place.
"Certainly, above average reflexes, fairly special in an unmodified human." Trazyn continued in the self-satisfied tones of one endlessly pleased to hear his own voice. "Trained to a high pitch of competence! Certainly on the merits of comparative human physiology alone you are fairly special, but hardly collectable. But your decisions! You role! Your position as a Great Human of Human History! Commissar Ciaphas Cain, Defector from the Imperium, Liberator of the Cainite Protectorate and adjacent subsectors, ruler by right of might of Slawkenberg, he who reigns by the acclimation of and accordance with his people, someone with the wit, power, and will to summon *the weakest aspect of Nurgle* and shoot it in the face. You are quite, quite interesting. Quite possibly unprecedented."
He bent closer, his glowing oculars meeting my angry eyes.
"I do apologize for the delay. I had meant to have our little chat immediately after we arrived, but a certain backstabbing cryptek who shall remain nameless got far, far too impatient and had to be solidly thumped. Oh, do stop struggling, and to tell your fascinating new aide that spending his soul-power to shoot me would be an entirely wasted sacrifice when we have so much do discuss! His power-pack might not last before you get a chance to scrounge him a replacement."
"Cease fire, Jurgen!" I snapped, just as he brought the heavy weapon to bear. "Let's hear what our...host has to say."
"As diplomatic as advertised!" The sight of a giant skeletal construct leaping into the air and clicking it's heels in glee will forever be seared into my memory. "Oh, occasionally one gets to indulge in the pleasure of an entirely unanticipated conversation, and I assure you, it is very much my pleasure. The green eyes narrowed at me. "If I release you, do I have your word you won't try anything futile, like shooting or running?"
I gave the sort of answer the Liberator would give. The answer of the sort of man every man, woman, child, mutant, xenos, and heretic in the Protectorate believed me to be. "You have my word I won't try anything futile." I agreed. Grabbing for any slim chance of survival, no matter how tiny, will never be 'futile' in my book.
"I do promise, I did hurry here as fast as I could- it does not do to leave such a valuable piece of history improperly stored- only to encounter a scene out of legend! An epic of love, and loss. The liberator, at the deathbed of his faithful and loyal aid...quite a stirring scene, I simply had to let it play out- to an entirely unexepcted conclusion!" His eyes narrowed. "I had rather thought your arc was over." The looming monstrosity grinned at me. "I'd thought your confrontation with Nurgle to be your finest hour- The Diviner certainly saw no futures for you after that. The culture you're busy creating, blooming after your heroic death- and yet, given the glimmer of a chance to save your protectorate at the price of your loyal aide, the opportunity, nay, the duty, even, to return to your post, you refuse."
I straightened, hiding my terror, my face resolute and calm with the ease of a born dissembler, as the machine poured out the same astonished flattery I'd heard again and again: a role so very, intimately familiar, the role of the man I faced in the mirror every morning, whose sideburns I trimmed to neatness and whose square-jawed chin I carefully shaved, a paragon of courage and honor that I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, did not, and would not, ever exist.
The monstrosity burbled on. "Has there ever been an Imperial leader so quick to yield to their successor? Your Imperium's founding legends, the stories and powers upon which your civilization are built, model quite the opposite. Your entire species's cycle is a tale of scencesent old age clinging to life and power with all the audacity of that ever-undying corpse on Terra. Your foundational exemplar, your myth, has beein clinging to the last vestiges of his ambition for ten thousand years- yet it took you, the heir to his example- and it takes you less than thirty seconds to choose to yield power to your daughter in favor of saving your thrall. You may very well have a far more interesting part to play in the great drama of history."
"Jurgen not my thrall." I said, staring into those cold, avaricious eyes, wondering if the creature ever shut up and what it would do to me when it did.
"Ah, yes. Phrasing- such an important component of genuine cultural authanticity. Your equal, then." The being chucked. "Egalitariansim- such a rare philosophy, and one hardly ever sees it flourish."
"So happy to know you find the price of freedom so amusing." I said coldly. "May I invite you to a discussion of liberation over recaf? I gestured to one of the tables in the cafe." Jurgen, if you please, a recaf for our potential comrade..." I trailed off, 'Your pardon, since we have not been properly introduced, what is your correct address?"
"The great Liberator can free my name from the stiff protocol of title and such nonsense. You may call me Trazyn. Or if that's too informal, 'Curator' will do.'"
"My name is Cain." I nodded, playing the blunt, plainspoken host. I gestured him to a chair, and Jurgen, his face set, brought forth two exquisitely brewed cups of recaff.
I had given some thought- or rather, indulged in several terrified fantasies- about what, exactly I would do if confronted with the cruel and capricious Eldar God Cegorach, given that, with my luck, he'd show up during one of the few warpy interludes Emeli had managed to drag me into over the years. Malicia had been of little help, her sneering contempt of the harlequins matched only by her unease of them, but this was not my first go-around with Leirahaz, (although, given what Trazyn had said, it was abruptly obvious that the harlequin was not the one I usually encountered. I made a note I had just assumed that any pointy ear in a clown costume was him, and tasked my survial instinct with learning to tell the differences between a species that to my 'mon-keigh' eyes all looked alike before the dangerous assumption killed me.)
Still, in my meditations about Cegorach, I'd evolved the bare outlines of a plan. Cegorach was a trickster with a cruel humor, who gained amusement by cruel yet comparatively harmless jokes at the expense of his followers, and even crueler and deadlier jokes at at the expense of his enemies. To the extent that I understood the motivations of Gods, if Cegorach took a liking to me he'd find it funny to fuck with me, and the best way to survive his regard would be to make him laugh at my antics as the butt of the divine joke.
Which...was my favorite explanation for the sheer improbability of my survival so far: entertainment for the gods.
I studied the being with enough power to freeze an army of Astartes in their tracks, and pose them like dolls for a picture for all eternity, and what that said about his interests. I summoned every ounce of will and my consumate skill as a liar, and, once again, prepared to be Entertaining.
"So, Curator." I said. "What sparked your interest in joining me in the cause of Liberation?"
The necron blinked. Then left out a bark of laughter at the sheer audacity of me inviting *him* to be my subordinate.
Well, it had worked before...
"I have no interest at all in joining Liberation. But I have every interest in watching what you *do* with it! It's history of the rarest form- a genuinely distinct idea- not just in minor details like fashion or tweaks in styling, but in foundational philosophy! A philosophy that guides and informs all of your decisons, yes, and yet the results are so genuniely original." The being chuckled. "Yes, don't bother to take that Eldar youngling up on his offer to have you collapse the webway in the entire eastern spiral arm just to speed you on your way. I'll send a ship to drop you off...what was it you said? Ah, yes, the nearest imperial outpost. One of the nearest, anyway. By Necron reckoning, certainy not yours. Whyver not? So many epics tell of the lost sailors on their voyage home- you might provide as much as 50 years of entertainment. Yes, yes, now that's settled." And I dared to feel a spark of hope as the terrifyingly powerful creature talked himself into allowing me to continue to Entertain. " Now, to far more important buisness." The creatures eyes regarded me with avaricious interest.
"You claimed, let's see, let's check the recording here-' An impossibly clear double of myself sprang into life in between his hands, and I watched it comment to Jurgen that the display 'Had all the historical accuracy and tactical sense of an uphive juve in cardboard armor waving a stick and saying he's Astartes."
"It's so rare I get to have an extended discussion with a true subject matter expert." He said. "So, tell me. What, in your expert opinion, is wrong with my display?"
The Schola Progenium final exams were an excruciating, weeklong affair where every fact, weapons drill, tactical decision, and point of law was dragged out of cadets at bayonet-point over the course of one brutal week.
This turned out to be fine and entirely realistic training for my career chairing the meetings of and giving snap pop quizzes and the occasional in-depth exam to my absolutely horrifying collection of heretical subordinates, and for my career of then turning around to package their rampaging betrayal of all the Imperium stood for into something palatable for the populace and still with enough openings wedged into it that, when the imperium's inevitable follow-up reconquest fleet was run by anybody with half a working brain, could be used to ease the reintegration of the protectorate back in to the Imperium.
All of that was but the merest precursor to being extensively, exhaustively, and comprehensively grilled by a 65 million year old *enthusiast* on the accuracies and inaccuracies of his recreation of the most legendary battle of the Horus Heresy.
It took Three. Months.
In retrospect, the long, slow, extended quiz was very nearly relaxing. It allowed me to contemplate the sheer, absurd amount of tactical and strategic knowledge my unique position in Slawkenbrerg had gifted me with, and reliving an ancient battle with an interested and knowledgeable auditor allowed me to put that archive in a sort of mental order. I enlisted Liar-haz as part of the play as well. My excuse was using him as a prop to explain certain characteristics of melee, but in reality I managed to sneak in two hours a day of sword practice and gun drill for the amusement and edification of the necron. I had no intention of neglecting my body just because I was the cornered prisoner of a being of immense whimsy and power. In fact, I that was specifically *why* I was once again sharpening my fighting edge.
Jurgen, bless every button and buckle on his able and efficient body, put himself in charge of reminding the metal monstrosity that humans needed regular food and sleep. He also reminded him that relatively short-lived humans needed time to foster relationships outside of the one between them and the necron holdin them prisoner, which nearly got Jurgen frozen into a statue until I challenged the Curator to an official commessar's duel for my aide, complete with an entirely sincere-sounding 'You have irreparably impugned my honor,' flourishing of my chainsword, and contemptuous parenthetical commentary on the origins, reasons, uses, and practical applications of commissarial dueling as applied to defending the honor of ones followers against the insults of the unworthy.
Either the audacity or the sheer mind-numbing detail I went into describing the cultural reasons behind commissarial habit of stabbing eachother over points of etiquette diverted him away from this plan, and every time I drifted into an uneasy sleep I awoke find that the gallery had shifted to accommodate most, though not all, of my suggestions. I remained undecided about whether moving the enslaved, frozen bodies of astartes into more realistic poses and more accurate tactics was a better or worse desecration than the amateur posing Trazyn had done, but since there wasn't a damned thing I could do about it anyway I set aside that fruitless line of thought in favor of other angsts more likely to save my skin.
Things like keeping Trazyn Entertained until, finally, he appeared to get bored.
"This has been most diverting, has it not?" The absurd machine grinned at me. "But I'm afraid our time together draws short. You leave tomorrow."
"*With* Jurgen AND the eldar." I asserted. "I don't leave my people behind." The Curator's interests spanned a galaxy, which meant he needed relentless reminding to stay on task.
"Yes, yes." The necron waved a dismissive hand. "You can take the eldar child, too, as discussed. Now, is there anything we should do with our final day?"
"You can let all of my people go." I said, not bothering to hide my horror and anger that so many of the statues he had coerced me into to commenting upon were real people, trapped forever in what I knew with all the experience of a combat veteran was a recreation of the worst day of their transhuman lives. And this gibbering lugnutted lunatic had frozen them within that nightmare forever. "Snatching humans for your amusement makes you an enslaver, Curator, especially when you have a choice do to otherwise. Your 'hard light' sculptures make it utterly impossible to tell the difference between an original in stasis and a holographic copy. You do not need living beings."
"Ahh, yes, we can rewatch your 'Let My People Go' speech!" The Curator practically purred with delight. His hands waved, abruptly I saw myself from the outside. The tiny version of Trazyn asked, '"So, tell me. What, in your expert opinion, is wrong with my display?" Without missing a beat, the tall, confident, unsmiling Lord Liberator said. "Let's start with the most obvious- you have stolen the Liberation of thousands of humans to make them enslaved, unchosen props in your spectacles, and for that singular sin alone you deserve to be shot."
"Noted." The creature made a show of marking arcane symbols with a stylus. "Next inaccuracy?"
I watched, carefully concealing the clench of terror at the insane risk I had run, playing the part of the fearless Lord Liberator to the hilt, on the off chance that the obscenely powerful being would continue to find it amusing. It was not hard to keep my expression serious and sour as my holographic miniature detailed exactly how every component of his horrifying hobby that was against Slawkenberg law, against the ideals of Liberation, rounding the list speech with a final "Let My People Go."
"I do have an eye for these things, you know." Said the Curator. Such a fine speech! It is one they'll quote for a thousand years- if anyone else ever sees it." He rubbed his metal chin, a habitual tick and blatent tell he was excited about something. I braced.
His eyes gleamed with sudden mischief. "We should make that happen, I think. I have a planetary archive filled to bursting with this exact saga! The Voyage Home. The soldier, after the war, making a perilous and weary way home- sometimes to a lady love? Sometimes to a child? You have both, very traditional in these sorts of stories, so lets go with both. Tomorrow you embark on a dangerous and uncertain voyage to find a lost home, but you've angered a God. Oh, no, don't look at me like that, I'm not playing the part of the God in this tale. It was you who shot Nurgle in the face, so it's you who will face his endless attempts to turn you back. Me? I merely stole him before he cracked your planet in half, and believe me, it took three tries and more favors called in from longer ago than you can possibly imagine, though the prize was certainly worth it: a materium manifestation of a Prime Warp entity-"
I made an impatient gesture with my hand, a sort of 'get on with it' he'd quickly learned to interpret as 'get back on track.' "Oh dear, us old folk do wander of the subject. Now, where was I? Ah, yes. You meet a powerful and capricious entity along the way, who could grant all your wishes and send you home in an eyeblink, but- what was your delightly human idiom? 'I can't be arsed to." That's the part this humble actor before you shall play." He bowed elaborately, a holograph contriving to make the immobile metal on his death mask into a brief impression of waggling eyebrows. "I shall send you on your way, yes. Liberate you, if you will. And, as is my right, as inevitably happens when mortals have the audacity to challenge the powers far beyond their mortal ken, I will make you a cruel and impossible bargain." His eyes narrowed. "On the day you rescue the stolen souls of the necrontyr from whatever hidden slice of eternity our so-called 'masters' cast them, on the day you bring them home to us- on the day you free us from OUR shackles, my Lord Liberator. On that day, I will let your people go."
"Agreed." I said, in fiercest Liberator's voice. "For on that day, we shall all be free." I half spoke, half sang the words, shamelessly stealing from the most popular hymn to the glory of Liberation the Slawkenberg Ecumenical Chior had popularized along with the rest of the musical Liberation Uprising. It was all frak, of course, but it greased the wheels. Specifically, it was going to grease me right out of this metal megalomaniac's clutches and...of into the sort of obscurity I longed to find with every ounce of my cowardly little soul. But for now, I took care to really *sell* the act. What was another impossible job on top of the twenty or so I'd already shoveled out from under- or, more accurately, dumped on a more competent cadre before slinking off to drink myself into a stupor? It wasn't like he expected me to win, although I'm certainly he didn't' expect me to never even *try.*
Of course, if I'd known what sort of trouble that little singsong oath would cause, I'd have kept my big mouth shut.
"Delightful!" The curator clapped his hands with a wincing clang, then skittered off to the next subject. "Now, come come, come, let's finish setting up your gallery."
I considered another blunt, offended refusal, to conceal my crawling horror at the idea of helping this creature design the very prison he was cheerfully planned on stuffing me into the instant it suited his fancy, posed for all eternity an arms-length away from my bitterest enemy. I switched tactics to deflection instead. "I want you to have this." I said, unholstering the horrifically ugly, unwieldy, overdecorated bolt pistol that I'd been saddled with as my symbol of office, and holding it out to him.
"For me? Really?" The necron's eyes gleamed. "You don't have to, you know. When I want it I'll just take it."
I gave him a look of very limited amusement. Raising a daughter that from infancy that could tear me limb from limb was remarkably good practice for glaring at powerful, childish, utterly insane entity from the gibbering dawn of time. "I'll need to be incognito in the imperium, and a bolt pistol inlaid with enough precious metals to buy the entirety of a minor hive spire or a mid-sized system defense corvette does not qualify. And I think you'll treat it as it deserves." I spun the botd gun arround, catching it by the barrel and handing it to him hilt-first. The Necron's face briefly took on the untrammled joy of a child on Sanginiamas. Truly, Trazyn and Giorba's mostrosity masquerating as a gun deserved eachother, if anyone did, and this garunteed I'd never see the blasted thing again.
"But as for today..." I continued. "I see enough of myself in the mirror every day. I would rather see some thing educational. Something *historical.* Something else from your collection. Something with no sentient beings trapped in hard light sculptures"- I made that demand up front, lest I be dragged somewhere even more terrifying, like whatever this creature's vision of the Siege of Terra was like- "But some delightful component of Galactic history you wish to share with another." I paused, then ladled on the flattery. "Your enthusiasm and your interest is fascinating, Curator. Infectious, even, as is the impressive care with which you try to preserve history. I would like to...enjoy that part of you." I frowned. "Free from the reminders that you are an avowed enemy of Liberation."
"I won't argue again that your culture makes us enemies." The being said. "As you say, my living prizes are hardly the only things in my collection, even if they are, dare I say, the most exciting. Still, does not a good curator consider the interests and tastes of his audience? Let me think, let me think...Ahh, yes."
And so I spent my last day in the clutches of the Trazyn the Infinite, enslaver of eternities, plunderer of worlds, and the galaxy's most prolific thief, touring his collection of tarot cards through the ages. Despite a tendency to ramble, he was a compelling and exciting storyteller, imagining the stories of those who played and the reasons they played, displaying everything from the deck he claimed predated the Dark Age of Technology to his mile-high graphic of the variations in deck size, composition, and Tarot rules in the modern Imperium.
He invited me to a game, and I saw no reason not to accept, and, as I expected, found myself thoroughly outclassed by the most expert tarot player I had ever face, a fact that he quite clearly thought he was doing a brilliant job of hiding by allowing me to win almost every hand. When he suggested we play for slightly higher stakes than casino chips from casino-hiveworld Nova Las Vegas, I demurred, saying my last Tarot tournament had turned out to be quite higher stakes than I imagined. I hoped I was doing better at concealing my increasing ability to read whatever passed for the body language of a ten foot tall soulless metal killer. More to the point, I'd listened to him enthuse about 'cultural significance' and how 'ordinary things become imbued with the significance of the extraordinary when they once belonged to extraordinary events or people.' My entirely undeserved reputation certainly qualified me as 'extraordinary,' and I had no desire to somehow find myself stripped to the skivvies because I'd gotten involved in a game of Damoclese Strip Tarot with a known theif and expert cardsharp bent on relieving me of everything from my 'culturally significant' boots to my 'culturally significant' hat.
I also refrained from telling him I intended to ditch the incriminating Liberator costume as soon as he made good his promise to transport me to Imperial space and he could loot whatever trash bin I dumped it in with my goodwill. Slawkenberg hadn't had any official outside contact or communication with the Imperium since the Liberation, but at least one Inquisitor had gotten in and out with information and description, and my outfit and likeness sometimes seemed like my they grew on any flat surface left unattended for more than two seconds on Slawkenberg, so she, at least, would find me eminently recognizable. I had no desire to risk my shot at obscurity, and, more importantly, my life, by looking like the spitting image of a known, rebellious heretic, especially since that would be exactly what I *was.*
No, everything would have to go. The bolt pistol, the hat, the sash, the chainsword, even the carapace armor.
I'd briefly considered negotiating with Trazyn for some inconspicuous civvies, but once he considered something part of his collection, it wasn't hard to divine that it would take the Emperor himself stepping off the throne to give it up again. I'd had that lesson driven home when, the instant Jurgen needed to swap the power-pack on his melta, trazyn had appeared instantly with a crate of 'culturally insignifcant' replacements, reinstalled it from whence it came, and involved me in a five-hour-long discussion on the significant distinctions between powerpacks manufactured on forgeworld Metallicus Minoris and powerpacks manufactured on Mars Herself. Jurgen and I were suspended on the whim of a being capable of playing with entire armies of Astartes as if they were toys, whose insane monomania had spanned 65 million *years,* and I had no desire whatsoever to do anything to provoke his mercurial mind into reversing his decision to not add me to his collection.
So no. I did not up the stakes.
He then claimed regicide was more to his taste. I mentioned the traditon of shit-talking your opponents, and guided him through a brief course on the difference between various forms of down-hive friendly banter and fighting words. I thanked him for his expertise, and promised him a residency in the Slawkenberg Public Museum if he ever wanted to give up his distressing habit of galactic-scale enslavement and retire from cateloging the galaxy. He said when I brought back his soul he'd consider it. I drank recaf, he drank in my words, and all in all I've had worse days in far worse company.
Even if the tinehead giggled like a boiling teapot at my expression when I noticed that the bastard's sticky fingers had somehow wandered into my private quarters in the Liberation Palace and stolen my favorite Tarot deck.
They were supposed to be asleep.
Many were not.
The Liberator had spoken for them, demanding their toturer release them. The torturer refused.
Those who had ears to hear, sobbed in silent agony. After centuries...someone had tried.
Flickers of sanity began to return.
The Liberator had walked among them, along with their metal enslaver.
The metal enslaver talked of them, about them.
The Liberator talked to them. Spoke for them. A few whispered blessings. "Emperor protect you and keep you, Astartes." A few direct words. "You are remembered."
A demand for dignity. "No real soldier would do this. It dishonors their memory to pose them so."
For three months, the Gallery rang with light, with life, with change. The monstrosity was there, yes...but he brought Liberation to his halls.
In the Isstvan Dropsite Massecre Gallery, all who had ears...heard their metal torturer give the Liberator an impossible quest.
All who had ears to hear heard the Liberator's instant acceptance.
In the chests where superhuman double hearts no longer beat, the covenant was made. The promise was heard. Minds long ago sunk into madness...clutched the mustard seed of faith. And began to practice it anew.
The Gallery fell silent, and their sobbing, splintered static of eternally conscious stasis became interrupted as shattered minds reclaimed the ancient meditations that, with the persistent practice of faith, could start to heal the devastation of sensory deprivation. They were old, old practices, long since withered and died, but the tiny seed planted by the Liberator worked it's way into ancient soil, and began to sprout.
The Liberator would try for them.
So they would try for him.
If the Liberator came back...when the Liberator came for them...
They would be *ready.*
*For on that day...we shall all be free..."
Author's note: ahahah, more Trazyn being Trazyn and Cain being Cain! Also, nope, turns out the eldar wasn't the real Leirahaz after all! Durn those harlequin kids! I assure you, the real Leirahaz would *never* have babbled so much critical information to a human like Cain with so little prompting.
Also, I'm sure slowly returning a bunch of mad, ancient astartes frozen forever in time to sanity with a brief message of hope will have no negative consequences in the future for our dear liberator. None whatsoever. Nope nope nope. Nor will agreeing to Trazyn's cruel quest.
Anyway, I'm also starting another writing project addition to writing Cain omakes for the omake throne. If you want to know what an outbreak of poetry sounds like, you can read my ongoing bardic epic poem at Bard's got Talon(t): An Undead Bard's Silly Guide To Dragonslaying | Royal Road, featuring an undead bard who has to figure out how to get up out of the grave in the morning and go dragonslaying with an incredibly powerful, incredibly bewildering, and somewhat buggy magical artifact.